Saturday, September 29, 2012

A Poem by Kristin Roahrig

THUNDER RUMBLES SWEETLY

Thunder rumbles sweetly
A familiar grumble like the sound of an empty beat
A comfort, knowing the familiar signs
that can bring a harshness or a cure, depending on the timing
to lull me into a sleep
One where my eyes close while I rest as the thunder weeps
The water runs- formed from our sweat
The sky, already changed to gray blends with the clouds, neither able to be seen
They wrap around me- invisible- letting me dream
A sleep that never let me gain rest

Soon enough the storm passes, leaving behind a solitude
Leaving a musky sun in it’s wake that changes the leaves to a languid green
Like the tone of my own body in the glare of dimmed lights
I rub my hands down the newly shaved legs beside me,
skin a greenish tinge that dims against the dark covers crumpled up beside us
Laying quietly after the thunder
After the rumbles that sweetly took the sky, leaving all rest sundered
 
 
 
 
Kristin Roahrig's poetry and stories have appeared in local and regional publications. Her poem, "Dance of the Drums" won the Melba Geoffrey Memorial Poetry contest in 2010. She is also the author of several plays and lives in Indiana.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Two Poems by Adukuri Jagannath Rao

Lake

this side of lake is colors in evening
of hordes of birds around the rocks
rocks are their colors, birds’ colors
paddling and resting before paddling
flying away from them,and to them
the ripple is colors of spinning sky
tree shadows , green on blue, black
and dense in the core, gray to ring

rocks are birds flying low in the sky
the sky is lake ,white cotton cloud
lake silent in tree like summer sky
tree is stuck in the blue sky of lake
lake is left holding the baby of tree
the rocks paddle , fly away as birds
low flying birds of sky around birds
of white hovering on trembling lake
the lake trembles in blue of the sky

On the other lake is an orange fruit
trapped in the distant birds of rocks
its skin peeled away as sheet of gold
its birds fly from rocks to apartments
the houses fall into a trembling lake
lake left holding the baby of houses.

rocks rest and fly to the other rocks
birds paddle to rocks that do not fly
they fly in lake that has turned sky
the sky is now trembling in the lake
the sky is eating up the orange fruit.
 
 
 
 
Larvae

From trees, on a gentle wind from the hills
A new light shall fall on the fluff of marigold
Its petals scattered for bees to tempt smells
On antenna of viscous honey, pollen of love.

The larvae are growing as luminescent dust
In beams of light that travel down from the roof
In chinks of old tiles, awaiting their change
After the moss turns on them black in sun
When new tiles will replace them, by workers
Sitting on the roof as if they are sky-birds.

The larvae are growing in white water- clouds
Hoarding river and sea for tomorrow’s festival
When they will be beating tin-roofs like drum
And send down snakes of water to our ground
Pushing dried flowers down their corrugations

Of light dust and snowflakes the larvae will grow
Till evening when they will vanish in our pages.
 
 
Adukuri Jagannath Rao is a retired banker who lives in Hyderabad, India.  His poetry can be found at http://adukurispoetry.blogdrive.com
 
 
 
 

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

A Poem by Agholor Leonard Obiaderi

A TALE TOLD BY A TREE
 
Winter has a red throat and
a black eye ring.
Ice flakes
 
season pale red blood
courses down with sap
thoroughfares of many tree rings
forcing my beauty to drift
 
in the snow. Bark cracked,
lips broken by the kiss of
frost.
 
Ice my veins, scanty leafy
tresses frozen by gusts of chilly
wind cruel harbinger of black eyes.
 
My femininity flees to hide
until spring
comes. I shed black
eye rings, discard mourning.
 
In Spring, I stretch
into colourful attires. Pink lipstick,
eyelashes of
green envy.
 
Summer;
I heal. Cracked bark seals
the bloodied wounds .
The magic of sunny fingers
calms me down to my
roots.
 
My flowers blossom, attract
bees in search of romance.
 
Autumn
comes message of leaves
falling. Each note holds
 
another winter
of red throats and black
eye rings. 
 
 
 
 
AGHOLOR LEONARD OBIADERI lives in Delta State, Nigeria. He holds a Bachelor's degree in the English Language. He loves poetry, crime novels and wrestling videos. His poems have been published in UptheStairCase Quarterly; Barnwood International Magazine; and Pyrokinection.
e-mail; obiaderi@yahoo.com  

Monday, September 17, 2012

A Poem by William G. Davies, Jr.

The Lewistown Narrows
 
The sun unzips
Along the uneven teeth
Of the pines
Before folding
Into a ruck
Of umber,
Stirring crows
From their huts
To speckle
The sapphire sky.
 
 
 
The writer has been happily married for 38 years and lives in a valley of birdsong and wildflowers.
He has published in Jellyfish Whispers, The Cortland Review, The Wilderness House Review,
The Blue Lyra Review and others.
He eats PBJ sandwiches everyday for lunch!

Saturday, September 15, 2012

A Poem by Janet Rice Carnahan

EMPTY WELL
 
Bottom,
Dwelling space,
 
Echo into the night,
Begging,
 
For fullness to come,
Silent if needed,
 
Stir the stars,
Into action,
 
Prepare,
To overflow,
 
Once heard,
Through cloudy mist,
 
Doubting the downpour,
May chase,
 
Pounding potential,
Deep underground,
 
Afraid to sound,
The call again,
 
Despite all,
Whistle,
 
See if rain,
Drizzles, drips,
 
Wind whips the sea,
Snow melts fast enough,
 
Perhaps just the dew,
Of a million flowers,
 
Will, at least, cover,
The empty depth,
 
Never to drain out,
Needlessly . . .
 
 
Again!
 
 
 
Janet Rice Carnahan lives in Laguna Beach, California, among artists, photographers and writers and all who enjoy the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. Born on the northern California coast, she’s inspired by the sea, a joy shared with her husband, adult children, family and friends. Janet’s published work includes a cover photo, caption and poems in an anthology, “Prompted: An International Collection of Poems”, December 2011. More recently, her poems were published in, “Pyrokinection”, “Jellyfish Whispers”, “The Camel Saloon”, “The Mind[less] Muse” and “Three Line Poetry”.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

A Poem by Andrew J. Stone

A Lane with Poplars
 
(after Vincent van Gogh, 1885)
 
decaying
pumpkin-color
leaves litter
the dusk-
dry grass
 
they are the
impressionists
brush, painting
their canvas
like a withered
Van Gogh
 
 
 
Andrew J. Stone is a nineteen-year-old dissident attending Seattle Pacific University. His poems can be found here or there, but most recently, at Aberration Labyrinth. His debut chapbook of poetry, "Teenage Angst & the Ekphrastic Exercise," is forthcoming from Collective Banter Press. He dwells in the graveyard from time-to-time: http://andrewjstone.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

A Poem by Laura Winton

Autumn
 
Listen how feathers
borrow the wind from trees how they
steal breath from the candle dreaming
of light off the glass. Feel your hands
on the cookie you read
it like a braille book, explore the
texture see how they
taste on your
fingertips.
 
 
Laura Winton, aka Fluffy Singler is a writer and performer currently living in Minneapolis . She has been writing for more than 25 years and her poetry has been published and performed around the world. She has performed her experimental poetry at the Bowery Poetry Club, the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, and Bar 13 in New York , the Green Mill and Trace Bar in Chicago and at dozens of venues in the Twin Cities. She published Karawane: or, the Temporary Death of the Bruitist, a journal devoted to experimental writers who perform their work, for roughly 10 years. She loves Surrealism and Dada and believes that the Surrealist goal of the liberation of the imagination is the most political act that a writer can perform.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

A Poem by Denis Robillard

The Spirit World

Late autumn. Snow covers every inch of this place. No more walks to the Damm Festung or the Hauptkirche. A solitary black bird perched on a pine tree calls and cackles a wintry echo across a barren field. Northern winds murmur up and down the spines of endless trees. Something hollow like Scheidts Galliard Battlagia. Dolorous trumpets blow down dead gone leaves. There is a strangeness here even Leibniz would not understand. At every step I wake up ghosts in synaptically connected trails. Spirits know no boundaries. Everything is passable and transparent like a thin veil of ether.



Denis Robillard was born in Northern Ontario and now teaches high school in Windsor, CANADA. For the past 15 years several of his poems have appeared 90 times in the small presses and on line magazines across Canada, The USA, England and Scotland. Some of those include: Rattle, Rampike, Word Riot, Nashwaak Review, Algoma Ink, Cliff Soundings (Michigan), Sidereality, Orange Room Review, Dogzplot Magazine, Dusty Owl, Dufus and many more. In 2011 Robillard was published in Windsor Review, Bolts of Silk and Ottawa Arts Review. He is an avid photographer and traveler. You may see his article work on occasion in the pages of Hey Philippines Magazine.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

A Poem by Shelby Stephenson

A Selection from Country

All over the place forceful resources
double and riffle effect into Ownership,
 
multiplying and dividing the Wide Sea of
Heartbreak, object as dream-lover wrecked as the
 
lives of tenant-farmers “throwed away” to
unending poverty, as Linda Flowers writes,
 
art as business done for, fallen to pieces like
the unused dollhouses of pasteboard little
 
girls worship or a Ken that never catches on,
though 2012 may be his year, Barbie already
 
on the road again to fame, however rocky, wide
and deep, as the one leading Don and Phil Everly:
 
you tell me some brother duets − harmonious,
splendid with faith in a permanent artistry
 
and belief in entertainment as a business too
and I’ll show you the Everlys − Kentuckians,
 
moving to Nashville for stardom in the glory of
dashing neon, their meeting with Felice and
 
Boudleaux Bryant who wrote “Bye Bye Love”
for the boys who eased right on out into easy
 
pickings: “Wake Up Little Susie” woke up
Joan & John Q. Public: the brothers left
 
wakes of success right and left, showing up
on the Ed Sullivan Show and Dick Clark’s
 
American Bandstand, the Bryants contributing
“All I Have to Do Is Dream” and “Bird Dog,” a
 
silly song, I thought, until I remembered my
father’s hounds: as I’ve said before, Daddy
 
said Slobber Mouth could outrun the Word of God
with the Bible tied to His tail. Whose oh
 
Whose? Somewhere the rainbow fills of gold.
The Everlys wrote “Cathy’s Clown,” “Devoted to
 
You,” “When Will I Be Loved”: they parted
ways, on and off again, you never know: the F
 
word I wonder about, too, if it could be the
flourishing fad or fenced-in finish to
 
coherence, where the popular flap-doodle
dies over one syllable which means what it
 
says, the after-glow of love-making strung with
strings of the violin family and held, the word
 
dedicated to music in rows down and back;
plows plovers follow, crying in soft autumn,
 
killdeekilldee, the breaking furrows folding
and following, leading the feet of the plowman and
 
Fever, his mule, without worry, the Sea of Clods
there in the swimming landscape, harking
 
back to the Greeks and Romans, perhaps called a
“cither,” as words get cited and bend out of
 
shape along the decades, fiddlers keeping
Time, especially on viols shaped like Europe
 
I revered in Miss Jones’s fourth-grade class at
Cleveland, upon hearing the words Tigris
 
and Euphrates, rubbing my fingers across the
cover of the Geography Book, the future
 
tuned in four strings of varying thicknesses − and
fixed, stretched across a bridge on a box, adjusted by
 
means of pegs inserted in the head, tuned and
played by the fiddler’s pressing down or
 
stopping the strings with fingers on the fingerboard,
all part of the neck, scrolled: what sounds come when the
 
bow vibrates those strings, a continent of worlds −
North America, blending traditions, fusion in
 
styles from England, Ireland, and Scotland,
varieties of styles, the stiles turning, tuning in
 
concert halls and honky-tonks, barrooms, backyards,
fields and fields of festivals, bluegrass, new grass,
 
country, western, classical, jigs, reels, hoedowns,
throw-downs, general stores (check out R.A. Fountain General
 
Store and Internet Café, Fountain, North Carolina),
hootenannies, jubilees, jamborees, camp
 
meetings, barnyards, cornshuckings, turkey-trots,
pig-pickings, taffy pullings at St. Peter’s Basilica,
 
church socials, tractor-pulls, picking parlors,
living rooms, back-porch swings under last night’s
 
full moon, the fiddler pulling a bow with
many other fiddlers served by Mastertone
 
banjos and Gibson and Martin guitars,
Kay bass fiddles and Gibson mandolins,
 
Emmons or Speedy West steels and some snares,
keyboards, underlining the Fiddle. Ashley’s
 
hammer finds the finishing nails whackwhackwhack:
he’s been here since early morn, building a
 
shelter for the Equator, the Leonard, and the
Grumman: I’m into the well of F’s, take one:
 
placed a poem yesterday in White Pelican Review
out of Tampa: “The Burr in My Stride”: I feel it
 
now, really a page or two from Paul’s Hill:
Homage to Whitman: I need you O bearded
 
Father of Long Lines, innovator-equator
riding the I-am with busted tires on our open
 
road, for poetry, digs yielding rich lodes:
saw in the paper today someone around Hiddenite,
 
North Carolina, dug in one of those gem
mines and a vein the size of a seven-up-bottle
 
yielded an emerald worth 1.5 mil: now
that’s a chunk of change: my tank, cap-less,
 
coolant corrosive down to my Hanes around
my ankles, I am wobbly as a new-born calf
 
reeling out from its mother’s tits, the cow herself at loose
ends, tail raised for a brown gully-gusher − oh if
 
she were a gazelle with legs to spraddle and run
fast from the lips of her new-born babe.
 
 
 
 
Shelby Stephenson's Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the 2008 Bellday Prize for Poetry, Allen Grossman, judge.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

A Collection of Cinquains by Marilyn Braendeholm

SUMMER MEMORIES

SKIPPING STONES

Coddled
And mottled, licked
Smooth as glass. Flicked and slicked
Skipping stones, tripping alone on
The waves.

HERMIT CRABS

Vacant,
Silent vagrant,
Takes up new house and home,
Room for one, he lives alone in
Seashells.

SAND DOLLARS

White doves
Flying free in
Sand dollars. Bony white,
And dried hot on stones and salty
Sunshine.

DRIFTWOOD

Wind kissed.
Stripped and ripped bare.
Fair tides are welcoming
from beyond and afar. You are
adrift.



Marilyn“Misky” Braendeholm lives in the United Kingdom. Her interests include gothic architecture, gardening, recipe testing, baking yeasted and sourdough bread, photography, and writing. She has poems and fiction published with Mouse Tales Press, Poetry Quarterly, Sprout Magazine, B-Gina Review, Pyrokinection, Jellyfish Whisper, and Napalm and Novocain.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

A Poem by Heller Levinson

Manitou
                          (Winter/12
 
brown weep warps the earth
                                         homeowners rake
groom the ground
                                vegetal shroud
covering the covered the coveted the cosseted
lymph brocade
 
rulings administered through beams of a solar canonical the leaf
suspended for months in licentious tease blushes, bruises with color, with a crimson erotic fervor, then lets go, releases, anthems the soil, the grass, the rock, . . . the pulled down things
 
s(or)(au)cering nutrients
             --allocation allot alight alit
concupiscence wearied
                                     (some will survive the Winter, some will not
sturdiness laced with lamentation, ... oblongs pathos,
underbellies melancholy
the considerations have time to harden, to frost, to ice
leaves await their orders
 
 
not retreat          but entrenchment unthreading        baring
cold disrobement
robust exposure
trees peeled to skeletal gasp
strike skyward
souse-calendric surreptition performs
a squat           shearing
to silhouette             the language
hardy, lean, ...
noun-things
 
month to month
soon it will be February
clasp burnish
mouth to mouth
a month is a mouth opens & closes
with less frequency
 
the tree tidy in its time-li-ness, in the long longitude of speculation, absentees the cursory, the provisional is pronounced, a stuck in the ground, a struck upon gourd, the components that ‘make it work,’comfortably furtive
the fleet protecting their knowing
 
 
this season of no leaf
of little splash
-- the hunkering
thick & not without pleasure
 
 
 
Heller Levinson lives in NYC where he studies animal behavior. He has published in over a hundred journals and magazines including Alligatorzine, The Cartier Street Review, Counterexample Poetics, ditch poetry, First Literary Review-East, Hunger, Jacket,The Jivin’ Ladybug, Mad Hatters’ Review, Mad Swirl, Mid-June, Moria, Omega, Otoliths, Poets for Living Water, Skidrow Penthouse, Street Cake Magazine, Sugar Mule, Sulfur, Talisman, Tears In The Fence, The Wandering Hermit, The Toronto Quarterly, A Trunk Full of Delirium, Venereal Kittens, and Wood Coin. His publication, Smelling Mary (Howling Dog Press, 2008), was nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Griffin Prize. Additionally, he is the originator of Hinge Theory.
His latest book publication, January 2012, is from stone this running, Black Widow Press, order from www.blackwidowpress.com,
Or Amazon.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Two Poems by Alan Britt


ODE TO A COMMON SPIDER,
GREYISH-BROWN WITH ZEBRA
SUSPENDERS

There's this spider
webbed to our patio door.

Disappears, sleight-of-hand,
during routine human traffic.

Vanishes like the pea
in a New York City shell game!

Sure, I love his lust for freedom,
and emulate his fluid, arachnid guile,
buy, mostly, I'm jealous
of his endearing patience
for every fingernail moth of fate.



THE BEE
 
So, this portly black bee
with gold suspenders
hoisting his hippopotamus rear
dances our encounter.
 
He says to other bees halfway across the yard:
Don’t go near that patio. The man
sitting there is not a flower!
 
I wonder…my genteel Italian cologne,
or perhaps this faded sweatshirt
like wrinkled geranium petals fallen from grace?
 
Suddenly, like a drunken bullet,
the bee grazes my chin,
then vaporizes into tropical overcast
at the edge of the patio.
 
 
 
Alan Britt's interview with Grace Cavalieri for The Poet and the Poem will air on Pacifica Radio in January 2013 (http://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetpoem.html). He read poems at the World Trade Center/Tribute WTC Visitor Center (TributeWTC.org) in Manhattan/NYC, April 2012, at the We Are You Project (WeAreYouProject.Org) Wilmer Jennings Gallery, East Village/NYC, April 2012, and at New Jersey City University's Ten Year 9/11 Commemoration in Jersey City, NJ, September 2011. His poem, "September 11, 2001," appeared in International Gallerie: Poetry in Art/Art in Poetry Issue, v13 No.2 (India): 2011. His recent books are Alone with the Terrible Universe (2011), Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). The Poetry Library (www.poetrymagazines.org.uk) providing a free access digital library of 20th & 21st century English poetry magazines with the aim of preserving them for the future has included Britt’s work published in Fire (UK) in their project. Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies, The Robin Hood Book: Poets in Support of the Robin Hood Tax, by Caparison, United Kingdom, 2012, American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, Chicago/Athens/Dublin, 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008. Readings & Presentations: Panel Chair for Poetry Studies & Creative Poetry for the PCA/ACA Conference 2008 in Boston, Ramapo College in Mahwah, NJ (2009 & 2012), the WPA Gallery/Ward-Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River, NY (2008), Ultra Violet Studio, Chelsea/NYC (2008 & 2009), White Marsh Library, Baltimore (2011 & 2012), Enoch Pratt Free Library (Canton Branch) Baltimore (2011), Pedestal Magazine Reading at the Writers Center, Bethesda, MD (2012). Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formerly feral cats. Links: http://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/potw.html#fp1;

Sunday, September 2, 2012

A Poem by D.M. Aderibigbe

AT THE BEACH

The rambunctious water is rising like a cat's hackles,
It charges towards us like a lion does to an antelope.
   
I'm with a mannequin, our legs are being buried alive,
By the water-logged beach,
As minutes are brutally murdered by the day.

The water runs towards us,

She holds me tightly, begs me not to desert her if
The water attempts to abduct her.

The water runs towards us,

People scamper to safer areas with their histories stamped
On the soft soil, trailing them
I'm scared, but can't tell her to let us
Run, I'm valiant, I'm a liar.                                

The water runs towards us,
         
I pray against the upcoming water, My prayer clouts the water's adrenaline,

It becomes calm, cleanse our legs with its spillage,    

And withdraws back to where It comes from.
       
"Yeah, the water just washed away my sin." She says
"Of course, but it'll come back with your sins, if we didn't leave here." I reply.  

We go away before the water returns back
To us.  


D.M. Aderibigbe is a 23-year old writer from Lagos, Nigeria, an undergraduate student of History and Strategic Studies of the University of Lagos. He writes poetry, fiction, non-fiction, plays and lyrics. His work has been published or forthcoming in the UK, Canada, Australia, Nepal and the United States by, Vox Poetica, Pressboard press, UP Literature, HUSMW Press, The New Black Magazine, Misfits' Miscellany, Thickjam, Ditch Poetry, Bluepepper and The Applicant. His debut novel Sisyphean, will be published in America, soon. He lives and schools in Lagos.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

A Poem by Emma Ambos

4:00AM

In the morning
tooearlyforlife
(very-much nightlike
in fact)
 
the periwinkle snails
str-etch-th-eir-le-g-s
and go for a stroll
 
the coldcoffee-cockroaches
have wings like gossamer
and, alight on the backs
of fairy-terns, they
lookdown on us
(in all our slumbers)
forthevery
first time
 
the pistol-shrimp
shed their Great Grey Skin
pull on Pink Party Dresses
and dance to ‘Swan Lake’
-Perfectly-
 
the breadandbutter-flies
draw too near thefire
and make themselves intotoast
 
the new-dawn fawns
dappledwith thieves fingertips
tie their roller-skates up
and clumsy-clatter do-
wn the street
(they’d never leave-
Rudolf out)
 
in the morning
when our bedclothes lully-byeus
something extra-
ordinary
greets the day forus
 
 
 
 
Emma Ambos is a writer with itchy fingertips and a love for the great Outa-Doors.