October 2016 | poetry
it’s a shortcut for me
when I’m riding my bicycle to the city,
to take a short bit of the pathway
which /wīnd/s itself through:
the cemetery;
and on this one, grand occasion —
a horde of black Dragonflies were flying,
en masse, all about it;
it didn’t mean anything, and
I’m not going to make it mean anything —
it wasn’t a symbol of the deads’ departure from,
and through, the living world, and,
it wasn’t an omen,
either;
what it was, was
Dragonflies in the cemetery:
but it was also a moment of
clarity to me — and these moments,
I find, are happening
more often.
a father and daughter
are eating green Apples, on:
a stone bench
in the city, speaking,
no words.
Leonard Zawadski
Leonard Zawadski is a poet currently residing in Chicago, IL. He has studied the art of poetry writing at the University of Iowa, Northwestern University, and the Newberry Library.
October 2016 | poetry
backstage failure
so hung over
on blinding sunny day
messy suite of boutique hotel
prada shades, rolex, silver cross earrings
head foggy pounding
like a flux capacitor
in those lonely painful hours
just stepped out of a guy richie movie
moment gripped by the balls
gang piles into suv
took two uppers
makes it hurt more
being a complete unknown
back entrance cowboy
trying to kick into gear
need a punch in the face
not a good one-night last stand
people don’t give a shit
like in a sixth grade martian musical
have to inhale the atmosphere
not let it flush to waste
souring one in turn
like a dickhead
in sub minimum wage job
barback, washing glasses
cleaning up vomit
heckled by life’s audience
you’re driven mental
drinking strawberry infused water coolers
supping on mystic mad granola bars
makes heartbreak, pain somehow worth it
not to over think panic
power lies in imperfection
just kiss loads of people
become broken all over again
good to be you
should be enough
boomer logic
called out on twitter
furious millennial lecture
i had gotten mine
wanted what was his
this everyone get a trophy generation
reminded me getting beat
by red squad in sixty-eight
in grant park
marching for civil rights
in st. louis
being drafted in sixty-nine
scared out my mind
in tay ninh city
being broke in tucson
with two kids in diapers
taking collection calls
leaving heavily mortgaged house
with three bucks to eat on
for four days
of being shot at twice
on the job in chicago
wrestling a 357
from angry student’s hands
surviving molotav cocktail
thrown through office window
school children being shot
by sniper with high powered air rifle
riding in ambulance escorting
children hit by drunk
while playing at recess
listening to the pleas
of a distraught mother
child having been kidnapped
taken to california
by a known molester
yeah i got mine
hope you get yours
endeavor
wind settles itself
mist forms like stained glass
on the thermo pane surface
frost soon to etch
zig zags like
firing white synapses
blurring tufted heads
at feeders and suet
old squirrel’s last winter
cold brings on rendition
alarming, or unnoticed
like mile markers and cemetery stones
slowly slipping from memory
once held so sacred
as never abandoned
but toil and journeying
create so many whispers
covered by blanketing snow and rain
over berry brown leaves
stiff maudlin grey limbs, twigs
in cold hungry earthy grip
of what will have been
everyone’s reality
spider woman
wind picked up
rain turned
into popcorn snow
beginning of the season
when thunder goes away
wind speaks
in many voices
strikes like death
robbing the living of value
creating living ghosts
like names in the graveyard, unspoken
so as not bother the dead
no word for religion here
only by listening
does one learn
silence brings knowledge
startles with its simplicity
like using hotdogs for bait
squirrels cutting on walnuts
high in an oak
no witchcraft here
just greeting the day
with a silent chant
a pinch of corn pollen
Dan Jacoby
Dan Jacoby is a graduate of St. Louis University, Chicago State University, and Governors State University. He lives both in Beecher and Hagaman, Illinois. He has published poetry in Anchor and Plume(Kindred), Arkansas Review, Belle Rev Review, Bombay Gin, Burningword Literary Journal, Canary, Cowboy Poetry Press-Unbridled 2015, Chicago Literati, Indiana Voice Journal, Deep South Magazine, Lines and Stars, Wilderness House Literary Review, Steel Toe Review, The Opiate, and Red Fez to name a few. He is a former principal, teacher, coach, and former counterintelligence agent. He is a member of the American Academy of Poets and the Carlinville Writers Guild . Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2015. He is currently looking for a publisher for a collection of poetry.
October 2016 | poetry
New Model
My high rise tops real rubber tread and interstellar from toetip to ankle Converse Chucks no knockoff logos faster than reentry orbit more powerful than a charging hamstring laced halfway up my post gravity butch striptease calves come for a ride with me I’m jet propelled and ready for liftoff.
Noizeland
-after reading an interview with Non
The deaf spark shrill speaker groan shrieks feedback epilepsy landscape shudders the concrete battlefield spilled beer old blood and crushed aluminum after the set the doom psychosis switchboard operator asks the soundman how he got the drone reverb effect he answers you mean out of the amplifier you just destroyed
Conspiracy Fact
–after the Abbey Road controversy
Look closely see Paul has no shoes moonwalking listening to his wireless headphones time warping backwards against shoeless left hand traffic the original Smoothest Criminal fourteen years before twinned dimensional Volkswagens on either side of film set street this has meaning proves time travel faked moon landing Paul Michael Illuminati.
Hypnogogic Blues
On the tangerine lips of rippled sleep curdled past its expiration date the Pringle pop top takeout bag crackle muscles spasm migraine like Cronenberg Scanners vintage Windows boot-up meme violet hallucination hum of supersonic extraterrestrial burnoff sounds like thin Theta sounds like Paul Anka Put Your Head on My Shoulder.
Genelle Chaconas
Genelle Chaconas is a 2015 MFA Writing and Poetics graduate of Naropa University. Their first chapbook is Fallout, Saints and Dirty Pictures (little m Press, 2011). Their work has been published or is forthcoming in WT Paterson’s The Asylum, Former People: A Journal of Bangs and Whimpers, Menacing Hedge, Futures Trading, Crack the Spine, Weirderary, Dirty Chai, Third Wednesday, The Fem, Crab Fat Magazine, Door is a Jar, Five 2 One, Bombay Gin, Calaveras Station, Late Peaches: Poems by Sacramento Poets and others. They hosted Red Night Poetry series in Sacramento California.
October 2016 | poetry
All is quiet…finally
after the two sisters quit re-living the day
and drift into hide-a-bed snoring.
Until 4 a.m. when the brother
rattles the unfamiliar bedroom door knob
and slices light into the hall
where he bangs the bathroom light switch on
and spotlights my room like the cops
cornering an escaped convict,
and he stands there
suddenly unsure where the toilet is
or emblazoned by super nova flash
off white porcelain
like I am by his skinny ass in the doorway.
Eventually he slams the door shut
as I flip the blanket over my eyes.
He flushes that late-night roar
of water down the drain,
fumbles across the hall
before releasing his lifeline
on the bathroom light,
and I dream of watching
my morning TV show
at just the right volume.
Diane Webster
Diane Webster grew up in Eastern Oregon before she moved to Colorado. She enjoys drives in the mountains to view all the wildlife and scenery and takes amateur photographs. Writing poetry provides a creative outlet exciting in images and phrases Diane thrives in. Her work has appeared in “The Hurricane Review,” “Eunoia Review,” “Illya’s Honey,” and other literary magazines.
October 2016 | poetry
Let’s start with this coffee I just spilled,
stain spreading, steadfast as the walnut floorboards
that must still swell with moisture
in the room my family swarmed for dinner as a boy,
window shades filtering the adamant,
decaying sun of summer evenings.
I focus all attention on the earthy, robust smell,
that seems darker than the coffee,
and I refuse to recognize the way something dark,
and completely simple,
like this now half-cup of coffee, trembles,
then stills a second as I hold it,
and stare into it a long time,
until I am remembering that man¾
how heavy he was that morning
he dropped from the South Tower¾
and that house where I watched him on the television,
ten years old, with a certain sense, bewildering
and paralyzing as the takeoff of a plane is to a toddler.
And despite a looking back
that said goodbye before I could say anything,
and his deep breath, his wave,
he still turned carefully away, forever,
scrutinized the skyline, face tilted upward
as if supported by the feeble sunrays
girdering through the smoke,
and stepped off.
Like light he desired darkness.
Sometimes, when I try to imagine myself as that man,
I feel released for seconds,
and if that release persists, terrified.
And to be honest, as a child, I was terrified of everything:
clowns, bad grades, the filthy fingers of a family friend all over me.
But that other fear is different.
Even so, I thought I could forget that man
cascading through the chaos¾determined, free¾
and whether or not his fall was peaceful.
Bathed in the television’s tide of light, I sat,
a moth fixed to the flame of what it wanted,
and watched as the camera trembled,
going out of focus…
Then came a reporter, sweat glistening her forehead
as she talked, calm as habit,
the microphone shaking in her hands.
And all the youth I felt,
whatever left me in my nervous laugh,
did not return in the deep breath I drew in,
slowly, a second later,
the first breath of a young man.
And who knows where that boy went,
too numb to speak about what he thought
was only a someone’s cowardly surrender.
But maybe, after all, he’s here,
in this coffee stain on the carpet¾
its shape not a body flattened on concrete,
but only the random result of gravity,
a blind design whose silence and force
transforms everything.
Domenic Scopa
Domenic Scopa is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the 2014 recipient of the Robert K. Johnson Poetry Prize and Garvin Tate Merit Scholarship. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poetry and translations have been featured in Poetry Quarterly, Reed Magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Belleville Park Pages, and many others. He is currently an adjunct professor for the Changing Lives Through Literature program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and at New Hampshire Technical Institute. His first book, Walk-in Closet (Yellow Chair Press) is forthcoming in 2017. He currently reads manuscripts for Hunger Mountain and Ink Brush Publications.
October 2016 | poetry
Teach me your ways,
O’ Mistress of Mislead Mystery.
How do I cloud my own
past and present without
walking straight into a
nightmarish field of peril?
“Forget all tension
stirring in your entire being.
Do not over analyze.
For once,
do not even utter a
single syllable.
Relax, my dear, and
love will show us how.”
Hark!
The celestial voice
hath spoken,
courageous cats of the cellar!
Bliss is on the other side when
Gaia’s work takes its course.
Your tantalizing heart has
the beat,
the rhythm,
the melody,
the lyrics,
like a fresh song!
Oh, my Good Goddess!
I can dance to this tune
for the rest of my life!
Care to join me in our
first waltz,
blushing pink rose girl?
Our bodies breathe in the
method of love.
What the world needs now is
love.
Do not forget this soulgasmic word:
love.
Can you feel it under your breath tonight?
Can you feel its prism-like presence,
floating gently towards the
candidate you have your eye on?
What the world needs now is
love,
harmony,
camaraderie.
Your
stable smile,
your
luxurious lips,
and your
voracious voice
turn this light bulb
all the way on!
Run up the electric bill and
spread this good word to
your neighbor,
your master,
your sobriety,
your nobility,
your only grain of salt,
with the word of love.
The word of love!
The game of love!
The symbol of love!
The power of love!
The song of love!
The poem of love!
The dance of love!
The kiss of love!
The touch of love!
The ever-fruitful union of love!
We don’t need a
Merriam-Webster definition!
We just need a
vow, a
promise, a
confirmation!
We just need a
prayer, a
miracle, and an
entrance to
love itself!
Your love holds
no limits,
no laws,
no corny justification for the
gestating cynics of Pandora’s Box.
Your love reveals
your inner mind,
your inner senses,
your inner beauty,
which matters just as much
as an external shell.
Your love is a
once in a lifetime opportunity,
an infantile flower,
a privilege and an honor to be with you.
Your love climbs
hills of hilarity,
mountains of madness,
ladders of lurking lakes,
walls of waterworks, and
dimensions of delusion.
Your love reminds me of
a siren song.
Time ceases everywhere.
Stampedes rumble and cause the
earthy vibrations that happen
between the sheets.
Your love,
like a flask of fermented grapes,
doth not disturb the sweetness
that is preserved.
Dominance preludes to guilt, but on
occasion, eludes holy fantasies.
Your love cannot replace
our brightest star,
our fretting moon,
our beast with two backs.
Your love
dries away a monsoon,
clears away a mist,
melts away a blizzard,
liquefies a wildfire, and
shakes back an earthquake.
I would live for you.
I would call upon the fates for you.
I would set the sun for you.
I would bring the moon to you.
I would balance the chances for you.
I would change my name for you.
I would marvel at stones for you.
I would cross a line for you.
I would die for you.
I would take a bullet for you.
I would tiptoe on Mt. Everest’s peak for you.
I would set the world on fire for you.
I would walk on lava for you.
I would run swiftly a thousand miles for you.
I would do that and so many other
obnoxious obstacles for:
Your heart,
your hand and word,
your commitment and blessing,
your breath on my neck.
I live in and for the
State of Euphoria.
I live for the
End of Night Terrors.
I live for the
thrill of the future.
I live for the
hard times.
I live for the
paid off minutes.
I live for
life’s next day.
I live for
tomorrow because you are there,
waking up beside me.
I live for you!
I live for!
I live!
I…
Z.M. Wise
Z.M. Wise is a proud Chicago native, poet, co-editor and poetry activist, writing since his first steps as a child. He has been a written-word poet for almost two decades and a spoken-word poet for four years. He was selected to be a performer in the Word Around Town Tour in 2013, a Houston citywide tour. He is co-owner and co-editor of Transcendent Zero Press, an independent publishing house for poetry that produces an international quarterly journal known as Harbinger Asylum, with his dear friend and founder Dustin Pickering. The journal was nominated Best Poetry Journal in 2013 at the National Poetry Awards. He is also an Assistant Editor at Weasel Press with another dear friend, Weasel. He has published four full length books of poetry, including: ‘Take Me Back, Kingswood Clock!’ (MavLit Press), ‘The Wandering Poet’ (Transcendent Zero Press), ‘Wolf: An Epic & Other Poems’ (Weasel Press), and ‘Cuentos de Amor’ (Red Ferret Press).
