Conversant

Two nights after the breakup

Drunk

I dial your number wrong

Suddenly, through fate and pulses

Twitches through air

I am connected to a stranger, you

Minus one number, or maybe two

Transverse.

Your name sloshes around, lulls out of my mouth

Half-cocked

Loose on my misshapen tongue

Even after hearing an older woman answer

I carry on talking to you.

She doesn’t hang up, doesn’t break our connection

And in her reply there is a furry, conspiring, lilt

She is fluent in slurry and beg

In sludge-mumbled anger and desperation

And all that ugly language that love

Reduces us to. Or is the booze?

I thought I heard her say

“don’t do it”

I stared at the phone, glowing apps

But her voice could have come from antiquity.

“don’t do it”

maybe she said

“sleep on it”

Maybe she told me to shut the fuck up

Then hung up

Sending that connection looping back

A rubber band, snapping,

Racing back to where it lived.

 

by Jennifer Ihasz

Jenn Ihasz. is 42 years old and recently went back to college to study History and English Literature.

 

Mattias Renberg poems

Involution

 

In the early mornings

when the world sleeps

we stretch the thin membrane

hiding our sneering beast

from a world of ironed shirts.

 

Territorial claims at the bus stop.

An unaware prey (still sleeping),

is awoken by a hyenas’ mad stare.

 

The bus driver, half pig,

greets all and no one with grunts.

He is on schedule but actually never left the station.

 

The metro is buzzing: 

everyone is collecting nectar

for the sacred weekends.

And when the grasshoppers awake

later in the day,

Ironed shirts rule once more.

Only the occasional ragged dogs

rummage through the garbage

in search after some spilled honey. 

  

 

 

The Invisible Hand

 

Move along and continue to consume.

There´re still people over there to impress.

Never mind the elephant in the room.

 

New cars, jewelry, champagne and perfume –

Adopt the lifestyle and scent of success.

Move along and continue to consume.

 

There is no dusty scheme to exhume.

The wheels must turn to create progress.

Never mind the elephant in the room.

 

Dampen angst, down to a moan, and resume

The search for solace with food in excess.

Move along and continue to consume.

 

Limping charts and numbers reeking of gloom.

Suppress, forget and invent things to possess.

Never mind the elephant in the room.

 

There’s a dead emperor and no costume.

Calm down people, there´s no need for distress.

Move along and continue to consume.

Never mind the elephant in the room.

 

 

Mattias Renberg lives in Stockholm, Sweden. He has studied creative writing in both English and Swedish. He has previously been published in Over Yonder, an anthology by Rofous Press.

Peycho Kanev poetry

Yes

 

hungry helicopters

circling in the sky

killing the little

pieces of my sleep

 

my tired brain

wasted a long

time ago

on this battle

of existence

on this world

we called wonderful

 

and here is only

one cat on the floor

and there is only

one bottle of wine

and here I am

alone

 

come and

get me

before

they do.

 

 

 

White Communion

 

I am watching

the smoke from

the chimney

the fog the whiteness

of everything around

and I rise from the mud

and step on the rocks

like some modern Lazarus

I stand up and look there

where my dreams can’t

find me

hidden even

for

my nightmares

that I am him

 

 

 

Something in a flowerpot

 

the night is coming slowly like an old

gray cat and I am

looking for matches to set the moon

on fire

 

the hunger of the mind

insist to carry on

 

she knows how much to fill my glass

and after that to stand up and

to pour water from the kettle

upon the thing in the flowerpot

 

my love is dying of thirst like

wheat in August

 

the streets are gloomy and silent

welcoming my steps upon the faceless

sidewalk, reminding me your silence

during the times of war

 

the world turns slowly like gymnast

going nowhere with all the things upon it

and the silence the silence, yes,

just for a while

while the audience applaud the bones

of Chopin

 

I can continue to paint but I will leave this

to the old dead dogs barking in my back yard

between the roses and the stones

 

she bents down over the flowerpot

and she says:

you are quiet

ah, you are so silent

 

my eyes believe in everything

and the honorable ladies sleep with

the picture of Paul Newman

waiting for their eternal repose

 

the water is pouring upon the green thing

just like the wind parts the curtains in the sky

 

but the world lies down on its back

and lies down on its back and waits

for me to penetrate it

but I sniff at the stench and the rottenness

of the centuries and pull back

talking to him:

child, ah, you are only child

 

and outside on the streets

little girls are playing,

not yet turned themselves into women

strong enough to bring down each and every

man

 

me?

 

 

       I am thinking about the paintings of Caravaggio

       looking at the left hand (the one with the brush)

       and remain silent.

 

 

 

Small revenge

 

I don’t care about the metrics, the iambus

and the rhymes – I have read the classics and then

I’ve put them back on their dusty shelves:

we write about something that comes from the guts

and the nails as the flowers outside

explode…

 

The poetry, can I say that I don’t care?

 

I prefer to drink alone in this room in front of

one candle

as the shadows in the corners sits and show us

their ugly faces;

ah, I know that the words are greater that we thought

and we will fall in their holes,

we will spill ourselves like ink upon the Chaucer’s paper:

let me be myself while I read the classics,

let me be afraid in airplanes,

let me be bored in churches,

let me be silent before the tigers in my blood:

these words are too tuff for us to misspend them

just like the big boys during their time.

 

The rivers are flowing through me

and I burn like matchstick lighted by the words

of all Shakespeares …

And today I am closer to insanity,

I am watching the black birds on the wires,

waiting for our degradation,

for our small defeat while we walk upon the land of

Dylan and Frost, especially on the thin ice

of Frost…

 

…find me one small torch,

not too big, just big enough to set this night on fire

and I can hear outside the young girls laugh,

never heard about the hunger of Villon or the madness of Pound,

please feed me so well and I’ll never again use their words,

let me find a little warmth,

allow me to find my sunflowers

                shaking in the wind

                and under the sun

and the God of the Word not Death.

 

 

 

 

The night

 

The moon talks to me

and tells me stories of tortures

and burned love;

sad songs are pouring out from

broken window

and here is only the smell

of stale wine and cigarettes;

outside

dogs are wailing in the dark

and nothing is real more than

it should be,

the dark stillness of time

is hanging like a broken clock

and finally the night

locks me in.

 

 

Peycho Kanev is the author of 4 poetry collections and two chapbooks. His collection Bone Silence was released in 2010 by Desperanto, NY and Уиски в тенекиена кутия (Whiskey in a Tin Can), 2013, Американски тетрадки (American Notebooks), 2010, Разходка през стените (Walking Through Walls), 2009 were published in Bulgaria. Peycho Kanev has won several European awards for his poetry and he’s nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of the Net. Translations of his books will be published soon in Italy, Poland and Russia. His poems have appeared in more than 900 literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Columbia College Literary Review, Hawaii Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Coachella Review, Two Thirds North, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.

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