January 2017 | poetry
December collapses
with a heaved sigh.
Only the bachelor jay
bathed in his cerulean vest
resists the fait accompli
of ephemeral gray.
The lynx pads soundlessly
into this laundered, stony light,
tufted ears twitching
to the avian colic
attending her
persecution
of wending,
eremitic hare.
Mounting spoor—
shallow spoons
from snowshoed feet;
roods upon whispered white.
Deep inside this refuge,
her feline eye—burnt
ochre to its edges—
promises peril
in a clasping, crushing end.
Though a button breeze,
Time’s muted arbiter,
foretells some misgiving:
cryptic rendezvous
in a lethal distance—
the southernmost verge
of an endangered range.
Gina Bernard
Gina Marie Bernard holds B.A., B.S., and M.A. degrees from Bemidji State University. She writes and teaches high school English in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her daughters, Maddie and Parker, are the two halves of her heart. Her work has recently appeared in Appalachia, Balloons Lit. Journal, The Bat Shat, Border Crossing, Cimarron Review, Fox Cry Review, Glitterwolf Magazine, Tule Review, and Uprooted: An Anthology on Gender and Illness.
January 2017 | poetry
I loved the humidity then.
It could have smothered me.
I didn’t mind,
in the tree house,
lying on my back like a forgotten swimsuit,
drinking in the hum of flies.
I rolled over the uneven planks until the call for dinner.
That verdict now in.
Heat waves never drove
down my street
when I was seven,
but one crawled over our back fence
when I was thirteen.
I timed the drops
of sweat, beads like men
solitary and suicidal leaping from my face
until my father drove up.
Even the heat
didn’t dare go near him.
Candice Kelsey
Candice is a passionate educator who has been challenging students to think and live well for 18 years. Her poems have been published in print and online publications, including The Forum (San Francisco City College), 13th Floor Magazine, Tethered by Letters’ f(r)iction, 50 Haiku, Assaricus; she has read at various LitQuake and open mic events from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Candice is also the author of a 2007 trade paperback book (de Capo) which led to her spot on NPR with Diane Rehm. Candice earned her M.A. in literature from LMU. She is an Ohio native who carves out life in Los Angeles with the help of her three children and many pets.
January 2017 | poetry
Obliquity
Give me poems—
poems which speak to the heart
and not the head;
whose words roll from the tongue
like water over polished stone;
which say straight out
what they have to say;
whose truth does not lie buried
beneath endless layers
of meaningless metaphor;
poems unlike those
fawned over by the literary elite,
but leave me asking:
What fuckery is this?
Rescued
Standing in the bathroom,
attempting to text
and pee at the same time,
I dropped my cell phone in the toilet.
In a flash, I saw the phone’s
micro-circuits signing off, one by one,
as I reached down and took hold of
the little urine-soaked rectangle.
And now,
after three days of silence,
no texts, no emails
no help from the ubiquitous Siri,
the phone still buried
in a bowl of Uncle Ben’s long-grain rice,
I wonder who, in truth, has been rescued—
the cell phone or me?
Bad Kitty
He was a bad kitty,
and did not care.
Dining according to the dictates
of his own finicky palate,
he turned up his nose
at all the rest.
Without warning, he would
bite the very hand which fed him,
if that hand strayed where
he deemed it should not be.
He shat and pissed and wiped his butt
wherever he chose—oriental rug,
litter box or easy chair,
they were all the same to him.
Clueless that he owed us anything,
he slept through the day curled in front
of the big glass door, twitching in the sunlight
as he dreamed his ephemeral, feline dreams.
For he was a bad kitty,
and did not care.
Howard Brown
Howard Brown is a poet and writer who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee on Lookout Mountain. His poetry has appeared in Old Hickory Review and Poetry Super Highway. In 2012, he published a book of poetry entitled “The Gossamer Nature of Random Things.” His poem “Pariah” placed first in the poetry division of the 2015 William Faulkner Literary Competition put on by Mississippi’s Tallahatchie Riverfest. He has published short fiction in Louisiana Literature, Extract(s), Gloom Cupboard, F**k Fiction, Crack the Spine, Pulpwood Fiction and Mad Hatter Review (forthcoming).
January 2017 | poetry
Some men are born
gathering a nest
of white and dark
fabulous musical notes
to them,
and some men,
born broken like two halves
of the April moon,
discover that to drink
alone at night –
under the glass chandelier’s
metropolis of stars
buzzing over a river’s
boardwalk where tugboats
usher in ships
whose melodic horns
blow mournful refrains
like liquid train whistles
over the bay –
is to discover
the very edge
where heartache
and music, those twin
companions, prevail.
And so at night,
they lift up
their strong arms,
and they carry their horns
under a twilight,
and they saunter out
where the moonlight glows
like a great partridge pea
hanging loose in the sky
so that they can feel
all that aloneness
there, holding court.
And then they blow their horn
to the moon,
and to the Goddess body,
and to the many bodies,
and to beauty
and to soul,
and to the vast category
of inscrutable love,
and thus is their benediction –
many forms: a tuneful ladder.
And when they find it,
their song –
they become forsaken
by every sweet summer
night,
every lost love
they could never
hold tight,
and, within themselves,
smoked holy
with the music one feels
when one is blessed full
with camphor and blues,
they depart.
Ken Meisel
Ken Meisel is a poet and psychotherapist from the Detroit area. He is a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee, Swan Duckling chapbook contest winner, winner of the Liakoura Prize and the author of six poetry collections: The Drunken Sweetheart at My Door (FutureCycle Press: 2015), Scrap Metal Mantra Poems (Main Street Rag: 2013), Beautiful Rust (Bottom Dog Press: 2009), Just Listening (Pure Heart Press: 2007), Before Exiting (Pure Heart Press: 2006) and Sometimes the Wind (March Street Press: 2002). His work in over 80 national magazines including Cream City Review, Rattle, Ruminate, Midwest Gothic, Concho River Review, San Pedro River Review, Boxcar Review, Otis Nebula, Kentucky Review, Birdfeast, Muddy River Poetry Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Lake Effect, Third Wednesday and Bryant Literary Review.
January 2017 | poetry
I swear I can feel the grass
extend myself out, reach to touch
pet and adore, show my affection.
Light makes me marvel
all those photons busy working;
a free painting every second.
If my hope were tangible
I could easily say
it lives in times of quiet
blessed by a hummingbird
beating its wings.
Penney Knightly
Penney Knightly is a survivor of sexual abuse; themes about that are often found in her work. Her poetry has appeared in Broad Magazine, Big River Review, Dead King, Ink in Thirds, and elsewhere. She lives with her family on a sailboat in the San Francisco Bay, where she writes and makes art. She tweets @penneyknightly and shares on her blog http://penneyknightly.com.
January 2017 | poetry
The little ant stood on the edge of
the curb, to avoid being stepped on
and looked down,
as the city crowds shuffled by,
faces clinched to another
average day.
And someone noticed the little ant,
on the curb’s edge – and shouted
to the ant, “Jump! Jump you little fucker!”
It’s tough out here.
Tony Walton
Tony Walton is a Caribbean writer living in the Cayman Islands. His works have appeared in Storyteller Magazine, Moonkind Press, Whisperings Magazine, Mountain Tales Press, Out of Our Magazine, Poydras Review, Poetry Bay Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, Wilde Magazine, Nite Writers Literary International Literary Journal, Tiny Moments, Avalon Literary Review, Iceland Daily, East Lit Literary Magazine, Boston Poetry Magazine, Eunoia Magazine, Olentangy Review, Carnival Literary Magazine, Verity LA, Phantom Kangaroo, Tincture Journal, Star 82 Review, Seltzerzine, Literature Today and Morphorg Magazine.
