Saturday, August 31, 2013

Announcing Kind of a Hurricane Press's First Annual Poetry Contest!

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE 2013 KIND OF A HURRICANE PRESS EDITOR'S CHOICE POETRY AWARD ARE NOW OPEN!

First Place Winner gets $200 (US)  Payable via PayPal

for more details check out the Kind of a Hurricane Press Editor's Choice Poetry Award Site:

Three Poems by Michael H. Brownstein


BUMPING INTO THE SKY 
  
You think intolerance a white paste 
you can spread across the air. Day comes 
with a break between minutes, the red 
flash of the red-winged blackbird, 
a greeting from your I’noGo tied*
slung not to your belt, but to your insides: 
If you say you cannot tell 
what is true and what is not true, 
you are saying you have lost 
faith with what is real. Clouds bunch 
beyond the lake, lay out a steady rainfall, 
move within wind like a herring gull 
in need of food. 




*Among some Alaska natives, the i'noGo tied ("house of spirits") refers to a luck and protection amulet made from blubber encased in seal fur.--Wikipedia


 
 
 
A CHANGE IN THE WAY WE BREATH OXYGEN
 
This story is about three men tied to a cave,
black bear no longer once upon a time,
two brothers, coyote and wolf,
the beginning of the flight to urban legend.
 
I tie a knot to two ropes,
then I tie three knots to five more,
but still the balloon is too heavy to fall from the sky
and the cloud eating dragon hides well in the blue clouds.
 
This is not a tale of love-lust and greed—
everything turns brown on the other side of things
and nothing else stays green for long.




A DAY AT THE BEACH
 

the blue eye opening in the sky,
a graying, a washing of seed,
a great ray slips into the shallows
and warm waters form shadows
around him.  In the distance
the eye blinks and sunshine fills us.
We light the bonfires and pass out
sticks, marshmallows, graham crackers.
Soon the eye will blink again
and we will leave the surf and sand.
This storm is an easy one, the trees
bend to the wind, and we make
our way home to plywood and shelter.
 
 
 
 
Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published. His latest works, Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (http://booksonblog35.blogspot.com/) (Camel Saloon Books on Blogs) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missori, 100F Outside and other poems (http://barometricpressures.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-katy-trail-mid-missouri-100f.html) (Barometric Pressures--A Kind of Hurricane Press). The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100F Outside And Other PoemsHis work has appeared in The Café ReviewAmerican Letters and Commentary, Xavier ReviewHotel AmerikaMeridian Anthology of Contemporary PoetryThe Pacific Review, and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), and I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011: (http://tenpagespress.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/i-was-a-teacher-once-by-michael-h-brownstein/). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).
 
 

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

A Poem by Michael Cluff


Symbiosis          April  22, 2013

The world is fluid
all parts melt, meld and blend
without restraint
one into the other and then another.

Man should take the hint
refine the example
nature has always set
for our rebellious kind.

Imposing human egoism
and power-mongering ambitions
is a construct of the hubristic mind
not the ebb and flow
that allows all species
to exist within their own needs.

Survival is not plausible for one
if it goes about willing, gleefully
glorying in the extinction of one
after the other
and another.

Green is a lucky leafy color
in symbology
not brown or grey
dirt or dryness clinging
to these shades.

A willow weeps
when the land is abused
shamrocks and geraniums
drop into nothingness
when pesticides overwhelm
their lovely leaves
streams turn brown
from a hoe's raping of the ground
and gulleys carry nutrients
away to the brackish bays and seas.

The Sea of Aral
is decaying, dying
'cause of mankind's need to
reduce the whole world
to fit into his self-centered needs.

Today
listen to the hushed yet rising song
in the Norco winds
imploring the ear:

"all life is only kept all
when people work to keep any one form alive
at no one's  benefits
but at all's."

And San Onofre
is just south of Corona
awaiting an earthquake or tsuamni
all its own.



Mike Cluff is a writer living in the inland section of Southern California. He is now finishing two books of poetry: "The Initial Napoleon" and "Bulleted Meat"-- both of which are scheduled for publication in late 2013/early 2014. He believes that individuality is the touchstone of his life and pursues that ideal with passion and dedication to help the world improve with each passing instance .He also hopes to take up abstract painting in the next several months.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

A Poem by Zach Fechter


Rainmaker

Sing that song you dark rainmaker
You who stand frozen in deep stride
Over our cities of the plain
You who flash breathless whites
And snap unearthly jaws
 
Sing that swirling mad twister
Of grey blues about our empty homes
You who to me are a mass of
Dreams expired in the dawn
Who’s going to tie you down tonight?
 
Sing of that marble river
Of our chase for the mystical tiger
Of our final journey as men
And cry for us
To sweep us away
 
The rainmaker was a poor mummer
Just a useless beautiful map he was
But we saw the map and were
Swept away from the mindless nothing
In the reggae blue
 
 
 
Zach Fechter lives and writes in Southern California. He has been published in Poetry Quarterly Magazine and Kind of a Hurricane Press. He is a graduate of Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. 

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Three Poems by Kelley White


Wild Root Charlie
 
lived on the Cat Path.  Employed by the Fish
and Game department to test fences he had
a wife and a fawn and an appetite for cigarettes.
Daddy’d take me after supper bump dusting
down the narrow road and we’d click our tongues
at the turn-around ‘til Charlie’d come nosing
his smooth cool face through the wires diamonds
to tongue my carefully offered carrot and potato
peeling. .I longed for the doe who stood
at the edge of the trees and the tiny face peeking
beneath her flank.  Oh, Charlie.  One day you leapt
them all, seven fences, barb-wired and rolled,
picketed and spiked, storm and stockade and
electric buzz for some apple orchard in your
dreams.  They retired the project.  In a decade I’d
wrestle boys at the empty turn-around, their
tobacco mouths hard against my teeth,  remember
your beauty and grace and wonder did your doe
still wait out in that darkness for your return.  




Swoosh

Just when I'd forgotten to believe
wind lifts leaf and twig and stick
rush of darkness water world
wood trees angry angels
fighting back and rain
is more than lighting
changing earth rock ledge
conversation of power
light and black cloud hold
fool human body pressed
mossbark wet frightened
creature waiting eyes.




Who is dancing?

daughter
feather
leaf

the voice of snow




Pediatrician Kelley White worked in inner-city Philadelphia and now works in rural New Hampshire.  Her poems have appeared in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA.  Her most recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books).  She received a 2008 PCA grant.

Monday, August 19, 2013

A Poem by J.K. Durick


Weather

It’s great the way it defies us like this,
keeps us guessing, looking to the sky
As it builds up and tumbles toward us.
We track it on radar as if it were another
incoming bomber or speeding motorist.
We name its most memorable moments:
there’s Katrina and then Irene and Sandy,
name them and blame then, watch their
approach, their progress, and what they
leave behind. It defies us, reminds us,
treats us like children, afraid of thunder,
mythologizing lightning, seeking shelter,
places susceptible to wind damage and
flooding we never see coming our way.
It takes our hiding places away, makes
short work of all our efforts, our houses,
our roads and bridges; even graveyards,
our final resting places, aren’t spared,
are sent downriver with the rest of us.
It’s always with us, whether we want it
to be or not; like today, after days of rain,
it’s hot and humid, gathering its forces,
piling clouds over the lake, ready to make
the afternoon over into what the weatherman
calls occasional showers and the possibility
of localized flooding, much like yesterday
and the day before that, and the day before.



J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Decades Review, Northern New England Review, Third Wednesday, and Up the River.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Two Poems by M.J. Iuppa


True North
 
What frightens you isn’t Ontario stretching out before you, calm as
a yawn, its taffeta ripple stippling the surface of morning’s grays, but
a fallen branch, the color of coal, posed like a withered arm on the sand,
waiting for you to pick it up and point it in the direction of traffic, where
soon you will merge with the day's reckless continuity.
 
               
Feast Day
 
The mulberry, ripe with berries, ousts
its horde of ransacking birds

into summer’s steamy air—

and, one by one, they return

to filch a few more.
From the porch, we watch wings
swell       & flash out of the shaken tree—

dissolving into the safety

of the wood’s emerald shadows.
Restless, I rise
& lean against the railing.

The day’s momentum quivers

in its feat of all or nothing—
I hold my breath, anticipating
the conference of birds returning

to settle this tree’s estate—

the berries they will divide

& cart       in spite of

petulant cries.
 
 
 
 
M. J. Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario.  Her most recent poems have appeared in Poetry East, The Chariton Review, Tar River Poetry, Blueline, The Prose Poem Project, and The Centrifugal Eye, among other publications.  Her most recent poetry chapbook is As the Crow Flies (Foothills Publishing, 2008), and her second full-length collection is Within Reach (Cherry Grove Collections, 2010).  Between Worlds, a prose chapbook, was published by Foothills Publishing in May 2013.  She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor program at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

A Poem by Christopher Kenneth Hanson


Staid, The Night
This night, the day fowl laugh hazily
Through the wafted green air-
Said night-as seeded, dazed:
And quiet, frequently-
 
To a realm of callous currency now:
Here fly- the frigid clipped mocking birds;
Lurching past frigid chirped contingencies-
 
Towards a space of tempered reality; even
Sprouts of a languid sky- infinite-
Here lie-here lies-
By lone skewered sky
Sedated, in posture- as tripped night.
 
 
 
 
Christopher Kenneth Hanson (ckhanson81)

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Two Poems by Susan Dale


August 2nd, 06

The wind singing phrases
of bawdy clouds
And a draconian sun penetrating into
Heavy afternoon
Sun - miles deep 
Fathoms wide
Quivers of heat waves
wrapping around 
crackling tales of corn
bellowing with pomposity
To surge ten feet high
 
Standing water
rife with the debauchery
of spawning mosquitoes
Pink-gold frailty of peaches
Hanging in dreams of voluptuous peaks
 
Brooding heads of flowers
hanging down
 
Lustful vines of grapes
Bindweed enveloping a cringing landscape
Laser waves corresponding
With pink-cheeked tomatoes

Back of the woods, wheat fields
shorn of their beards
shimmer in brown corpses
 
Shrieks of black-eyed susans
Silver-blue thistles wearing spike helmets
Dragon flies painted with Art-Nouveau wings
 
And the lavish praise of butterflies on phlox
 
Mosquitoes with brass knuckles
Melancholy flies humming at the screen door
Honey sticky winds
Métiers of bird song; shadows of bird wings

A narrative of sun and sky
Of summer; languid, wet-lazy summer  



August

High, wide, deep August
Hot, thick, soupy
high-summer
Woven in garlands of chicory-blue and queen anne’s lace
Fastened with tansy buttons
 
Drinking nectar from orange lily cups.
Holding tight, breathing heavy
encompassing, erotic August

Every nook and cranny does she fill with wanton flesh.

Lover of the red-flame sun thrashing pigment from her skies
Ripening copious spawn.

Languid, lush August
of purple-popping grapes
And pools of black-eyed susans
Hammering heat pounding rivers and lakes to froth.
 
Succulent, sultry August
thunder drumbeats
and cracks of lightening
sizzlingthe skies to curdle
to rent open
to rains of blind-passions 
That lick tree-tops, and suckle the steamy earth.

Decadent, voluptuous August
Climbing in vines thick and rampant
Tangling within themselves, wrapping around tree trunks.
Rushing lickety-split
up and up
Enshrouding swollen clouds of autumn‘s promise.
Bursting, juicy-ripe August
Rubbing sun-soaked limbs
Against the bronzy flesh
of melancholy September


 
 
 

Susan Dale’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Ken *Again, Penman Review, Inner Art Journal, Feathered Flounder, and Hurricane Press. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan. 
 
 
 

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Two Poems by Rick Hartwell


Tern Around
 
Not lonely, alone.  She is
solicitous of her solitude.
Her limitless blue world
expands seasonally to
four compass points.
Speckled tan against ivory,
head cocked to one side,
she is the focal point
centered in the stark
arctic of her world.
Is she praying in this
austere light or the prey,
or perhaps part of the
prayer itself?  She is
unique, vibrant in a
world of visual sterility.
Some subtle switch in
electromagnetic flux,
perhaps a temperature
trigger in her cortex;
for whatever reason,
she prepares for extended
flight, unaware of any
Darwinian dilemma.
Why now, here, right in
the middle of creation?
 
 
 
One Leaf Falling
 
I watch one leaf drop from
a rose tree at twilight and
wonder what it signifies.
 
I note it was not a petal
from a bloom long past
its blush, but mere leaf,
one of many, not one
soured by the sun, tanned,
not fit to serve any longer.
 
It was a leaf still green,
presumably still full of life.
 
What made it fall then?
 
Why let go mother branch?
 
Or was it flung from its nest
for some unseemly conduct?
 
I’ll never know, not being
knowledgeable of leaf lore,
tree coda; but I would wager
that within the tale of the
fall of the leaf – or was
she or he pushed after all? –
lives the story of mankind.
 
Yes, I’ll wager; but what

will you put up on your side?
 
 
 
Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember the hormonally-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing, Rick would rather be still tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon. He can be reached at rdhartwell@gmail.com.

Friday, August 2, 2013

A Poem by Heidi Morrell


Kauai

Ever changing light angles down
onto volcanic ridges and jutting peaks
cloaked in myriad greens,
seamed with the white froth
of elongated thin waterfalls,
like the piping on a velvet robe.

Mottled laden clouds burst forth,
torrents pound the porous ground,
while burgeoning magenta and yellow green plants
palm and plumeria,
are once again showered,
green vines snake up huge monkey pod trees,
all joyous in the washing.

Wild cockerels accompanied by their hens,
strut and arch,
adorned with vivid emerald and copper tail feathers,
they scratch and peck abundant insect life,
after rudely breaking the delicate dawn.
Flowers and fruit fragrance the silken air,
soft, rounded, whispering into one’s face.

The gentle Hanalei bay,
breathing with eternal tides,
conceal a silent kingdom below;
by day, blue green skin,
but at sunset,
the red gold water reflects the treasure
of its sky.



Heidi Morrell's poetry has been published in:  Big River Review, Unaureon -2 poems (broad sheet), Cat Fancy magazine ‘90’s, Emerge Literary Journal 10/12, St. James Newsletter 2010.  Heidi also writes a bi-weekly column for Examiner.com - L.A. disability.  Go to: www.examiner.com/user-hbmorrell