Background Noise

July 2013 | back-issues, poetry

Let us lie

underneath a coffee stained sky

blend the brown of our skin with the brown of the earth.

Moist, fertilized, this is a reincarnation.

So that’s the poem, what do you think?  He asks with half rhymes dangling from his tobacco tinted tongue. I shrug and frown that’s how New Yorkers respond. Feels like he wrote this before, serenaded an ex girlfriend who sat unaware of the effort it took him to come up with an ending. Yeah this is déjà vu. Dangerous déjà-poetics that paralyze right hand impulses but still we pop E pills, fill our E tanks with fuel for love. He was from the Boogie, I from Brooklyn, yet we spoke the same language. Keep reading.

I’m almost there.

Let us lie

among the singing crickets, crack their crispy green scales

during public love making sessions. God is watching

and she’s listening intently as we orchestrate nature.

We are the music.

His poetry is like the salsa songs I grew up on minus the congas and timbales, like hip hop legacies minus Run DMC, like Adidas shell tops minus the stripes, like the Apollo minus the lucky tree stump. Still it’s good background noise as we tweak. Its 2:15 in the morning, but my neighbors don’t sleep and neither do we. Pass me a cigarette, will ya?

I’m almost there.

Let us lie

in bed sheets that change colors, sweat through pores that change motives,

and penetrate tonight until tomorrow is born. One day we could be

lovers. But for now, I just want to count your goose bumps,   

  hundreds of them, and give each single one a reason to exist.

Newports shrink in mouth-aided bear hugs and ashes falls through gaps in the fire-escape. We stand there squinting as the sun taunts us with her bright slutiness. The darkness is almost over, paintings on the wall lopsided and his poetry subsided. “You should write about this moment”, I tell him. Love poems are overrated so we kiss, spit, and blink.

I’m still not in love. Go figure.

by Maria Billini

Maria Billini  is a New York City born and bred poet with an MFA in poetry from The City College of New York. Previously her work has been published in Shakefist Magazine and the Promethean. She is currently working on three chapbooks, Beautiful Mentirosa, Cuchifrito Dreams and Gentleman Prefer Virginia Slims. Recently, she had the pleasure to perform in the Show N’ Tell Em showcase, Nuyorican Poets Café, MFA Reading Series at Bar 82 , the CUNY Turnstyle Reading Series, and the SpeakUP showcase at the Sofa Lounge.

What I Saw One Day

July 2013 | back-issues, poetry

An old man with Alzheimers

bit by a rattler in his front yard

Freckled kid swinging on an old tire

Rope gives way and he falls

breaks his leg

I watch both events from my kitchen window

I go to the Arches

and stand under a rock arch

worth millions of tons of rock

and think: Is this the day

this arch gives way?

It never has

but on one day

I saw an old man snake-bit

and a swing give way, kid break his leg

And I saw bees burn with false sweetness

and I saw my fat, slovenly sister stand in front of the cemetery

and eat a gallon of Rocky Road ice cream

out of the container

all by herself

by Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois

Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois was born in the Bronx and now splits his time between Denver and a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old, one room schoolhouse in Riverton Township, Michigan. His short fiction and poetry appears in close to two hundred literary magazines, most recently The T.J. Eckleberg Review, Memoir Journal, Out of Our and The Blue Hour. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, most recently for his story “Purple Heart” published in The Examined Life in 2012. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, published by Xavier Vargas E-ditions, is available for all e-readers for 99 cents through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. A print edition is also available through Amazon.

Coffee for Two

July 2013 | back-issues, poetry

the coffee shop overfilling and ringing

with mirth and memorable conversation,

floating and finding ownership in the

crooks and crannies of the enclosed room.

no longer smoke but steam.

spent words between friends and strangers alike.

the aloneness cuts through and slices

the moments like a dark dagger cutting

through the thick fog offered up by the

grand imagination of nature.  the hunger for

life is measured by one’s own cravings and

constitution to offer themselves up to the

magical moments we have with each other.  

by Steven Jacobson

Steven Jacobson was born and raised in the Mid-west graduating from UW-LaCrosse, WI with a double major in Physics and Mathematics. His poetry has been submitted to Access Press, an online newspaper, featuring selected poetry. He has attended (8) classes from the Loft Literary Center, promoting all levels of creative writing.