July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
But I can only pour you this poem:
with poor cloth-made and form not yet shaped,
metaphors rain upon flesh and bone
floating riddles dress in pale champagne froth
tiers of honeysuckle foam pin to a clover’s song
light seeps inside the ink droplets black–
an ever-musing vestal rhyme
charts my fingers to your mortal gasps.
With warmth of day the eyes grow dark,
I breathe your name of caress reigns
where wings of holy light stretch my ocean vast,
in soft similes of wind-drops caught
and hollow crowning thorns.
Weak nods full of sleep in the shadows deep,
old notes draw your breaths once more–
depart soon as last sighs coax from my lips,
courting you home.
by Lana Bella
Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and flash fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with more than eighty journals, including Aurorean Poetry, Burningword Journal, Chiron Review, Contrary Magazine, elsewhere, The Criterion Journal, Poetry Quarterly, and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine, among others. She resides in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam with her novelist husband and two frolicsome imps.
July 2015 | back-issues, fiction
She scribbles a few letters on the back of her card and hands it to him. She smiles and says something cheerful. The words don’t matter. As he takes the card, he answers in kind, if only to keep his tenuous grasp on the vision of civility he’s retreated into. He does not think of all the countless things he would like to say, because he does not want to risk their appearance, even in his eyes. But she is not as perceptive as he fears. She has another appointment waiting, and he is not the face she puts on a world’s betrayal; he just isn’t that important to her.
In the elevator on the way back down, he presses himself into the corner though no one else is riding; it’s the only way he can keep from pacing. He walks past the metal detectors, where a man is shaking his head as he struggles to undo his belt; false suspicion has shamed this nameless man into stripping away another layer of his pride, if only to prove his innocence. The security guard that mans the machine doesn’t notice this inner struggle the man is having, but only does his job instead. But our man notices, just before he hits the door and once more takes a breath of the good air under an open sky. He wishes he could remember what it was like to take that for granted.
by D.F. Paul
D.F. Paul lives in the Midwestern United States. He’s been writing since he was a child, when he uncovered a beat to hell typewriter cleaning out the garage. Many years and a lot of wasted paper later, he still doesn’t understand the process any better. A list of his published work can be seen at: dfpaul.wordpress.com
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
luck
young dog
standing in the blocks
four blue bills working
in against a cigar smoke call
once more around
try to take them
tree high shots
tipped one and feathers
out of another
but the steel shot
fails me
they are gone
like mad buddists
westing to the timber
only the grey spent husks
to show for
normal heart
day has a playlist
heartfelt grooves
breaks creative logjams
emphasizes flaws
errors honored
as hidden intentions
sing into the sadness
canons for life
makes a tasty soul
write a catchy tune
about a nerve induced asthma attack
don’t miss a beat
wage a heavy peace as
going around corners is scary
see it with new eyes
get into woodworking
follow hockey in church basements
crush the capsule
life is a godzilla disaster movie
success beat you down
tough to imagine
ever being young
an original american horror story
billionaires in birkenstocks
johnny cash not being played
on country radio
teenage jesus jerks in cowboy hats
creative people don’t always turn out
to be interesting
like chance meetings in london tube
someone called amy
conversation like watching sausage
and politics being made
world just gets tinier
it used to be a stage
a private confessional
by Dan Jacoby
Dan Jacoby is a graduate of St. Louis University. He has published poetry in Belle Rev Review, Black Heart Press, Canary, Chicago Literati, Clockwise Cat, Indiana Voice Journal, Haunted Waters Press, Deep South Magazine, Lines and Stars, Red Booth Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Steel Toe Review, Red Fez and the Vehicle. He has work soon to be published in Bombay Gin, Dead Flowers, Floyd County Moonshine, Maudlin House, R.KV.R.Y., and theTishman Review.. He is a member of the American Academy of Poets.
