Three Poems by Yevgeniy Levitsky

Rotten Fields

 

Strawberry havoc,

seeds with little

implanted deeds,

volumes of vegetables vanish.

Stolen farmers reap

what they sow, a garden

of pity. Topless trees

of termites. Acres of

poison.

Injected needles of

growth in fruits of

bitter nectar. Spoiled by

mother nature,

ruined by mankind,

tasteless.

Sunlight nonexistent

lamps of bio-heat

squashed grapes

by others feet. Beets lay

decaying. Melons harvested

by felons, the government

plans to sell us.

 

Dry Watermelon Seeds

 

Fermenting in moisture,

soaking up water

from tangled roots

pebbles incorporated

with dead beetles,

a touch of

leaves with the

dirt of a

tree.

Loosening up through

green stems,

tiny ladders climbing

towards purification,

naturalization deems

itself appropriate,

self-destruction is

imminent.

 

 

 

Immobilization

 

Sweet soil rains on

hollow footprints,

sulking deeply into

muddy waters,

creases between

the outer

grasslands.

Little ponds are

created daily from

the dew of tropical

leaves as caterpillars

chew holes in leaves

causing sunlight to

scatter in obscure

holes.

Sunlight baths the

undernourished children

of the ground,

starving for that

warm sensation

that dims its

bright rays.

solid

soil

saves

sunlight.

 

 

Yevgeniy Levitskiy has received a B.A. in English-Education from Brooklyn College, and is currently pursuing a M.A. His writing has been published numerous times in The Junction. His forthcoming publications include The Books They Gave Me (Free Press/Simon & Schuster), Maggot Bible, Eunoia Review, Pyrokinection, and The Smoking Poet. He is currently at work on his second novel.

Two Poems by James Stout

Honeybee Existence

If I take a moment to reflect

On my lifespan versus that of the honeybee

My awe turns to envy:

How little I do.

Shall I confess?

I am the lazy salesman

Who sits in the dark corner,

Customers walk right by me.

I am the sleepy parent

Who turns on the television set,

Watch the show and be quiet my son.

My self-portraiture is interrupted,

As dusk comes swiftly.

The honeybees return to their hives,

Legs packed with pollen,

Stomachs gorged on nectar.

For the last time I think

About tomorrow and more tomorrows—

And all of the squandered yesterdays.

Inspiration 

I meditate beside a fresh flowing stream

And hear water falling faithfully over rocks

Down…always down.

I cup water into my hand and drink.

A winged rainbow flutters by

Alighting onto an allium flower,

Resting…then flying

Above the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains.

The water speaks of its voyage.

Endless tales of coming and going

Splitting…water braided.

From clouds to mountaintops, through passages.

I quench my metaphysical thirst.

Contemplating multiple sinuous sources of energy

Meeting…channeling.

Several interconnecting streams meander.

The bedrock river is absent of alluvium mantling

And my reflection ripples pensively

Grinning…no, not quite.

I look downstream between ancient banks

Glistening jewels of sunlight

Dapple the streams’ surface

Riches… treasure chests

Causing my eyes to tear in the cold mountain air.

Reminding me in my silence to do my work

With mastery like the water cycle,

Purifying… ever flowing.

The ephemeral significance evaporates in time.

If you fall from the sky, do so with courage.

If you rise from the sea, do so with love.

James Stout is teaching his thirteenth year of Middle School Language Arts just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. He has two children, three dogs, and seven chickens. He enjoys gardening and running.

A Poem by Peter Grieco

Return to Cappadocia
           
              for she I sang hath gone from me -- "In Praise of Ysolt"

A loop connects the Rose& Red Valleys.

Waves of rock cascade in stillness.

Where the rock is white, it looks like creme shanti

or knees draped in satin. We walked a dry water

course arched by vaults of rock

broken by skylights

where trees fan branches rim to rim above

a surge of circular motions, a vortex

of balanced counter-pulls, placidly elegant

as if scooped by an elegant hand. We climbed

& sat at a vineyard’s edge

atop the ridge taken in

by the canyon wall opposite, massive

sculpted in excesses of baroque modernism.

Mid-point we sank into an orchard

half a dozen apple trees, heavy with opulent fruit

picked & ate, & I thought of Eden as

a land before memory, without any of the gap

between desire & the objects desire invents

where memory is blank. One day

when we re-entry paradise

memory will present itself again

in the guise of what is to come

the horrors of pleasure lost

restored to the earnest tranquility

of pleasures met.

 

 

 

The author is a Ph.D graduate of SUNY Buffalo where he wrote his dissertation on working-class poetry. A former school bus driver, he has taught at universities in Ankara, Turkey; Seoul, South Korea; and Buffalo, NY, his native city where he studies French and is finishing his degree in Mathematics Education. Publications include At the Musarium, a chapbook of semi-procedural verse based on word frequency lists.

Two Poems by Stephen Jarrell Williams

Searching
Sunday morning walk
in the city of sinners

and I'm one of them
searching
for the altar of the sun.


Trusting
I breathe
through my days
and drift of stars

good-natured
under trees
beside buildings

vulnerable
trusting
unstoppable conclusion

I live
I love
I believe.


Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to stay up all night and write with lightning bolts until they fizzle down behind the dark horizon. His poetry has recently appeared in a handful of stones, The Camel Saloon, The Rainbow Rose, protestpoems, Black-Listed Magazine, BoySlut, Orion headless, The Carnage Conservatory, and Aphelion.

A Poem by Kelli Allen

Perhaps Wolves

I may be the animal with paws

half-buried in mud. I am afraid

To be this fertile white-furred

hound moving with more dampness

Than courage. Where is it written

that my own sharp toes make

Conversation with soft grass

impossible? I am resigned to dirt

And am full of wobbly longing.

Oh, pups, your pull under my belly,

Has brought me thick with milk

to pause alive, tired. Nothing

My tongue transmits against

your tufty ears will make you learn

It doesn’t last, none of it, but it is easy

to forget, here, over wet ground.

 

 

 

Kelli Allen is an award-winning poet, editor, and scholar. Her poetry and fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, Echo Ink Review, Poetry Quarterly, Fjords, Abridged, Other Poetry,Lyre Lyre, The Blue Sofa Review, WomenArts Quarterly, The Caper Review, It Has Come to This: Poets of the Great Mother Conference, Foliate Oak, Greatest Lakes Review, Lugh Review (where she was the featured author), Blackmail Press, The Chaffy Review, Euphonyand elsewhere. She has been the featured poet for Desperanto Press’s segment“Tea With George” for September 2011. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she was a finalist for the 2011 Rebecca Lard Award. She is the author of two chapbooks (Applied Cryptography; Picturing What Breaks) and has served as the Managing Editor of Natural Bridge. She is also the founder of the Graduate Writers Reading Series for the University of Missouri St. Louis. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Missouri St. Louis. She is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Allen gives readings and teaches workshops throughout the US. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, is forthcoming from Fjords New Book Series October of 2012. www.kelli-allen.com

A Poem by Carol Alexander

Tsunami

 

Thousands drowned in the juggernaut wave,

blanched in the salt, tossed like small terns

gasping beneath the bold, resurgent smashing

of the seismic sea swell bashing the scrawny coast.

 

Tiny islands, blips on the radar of the bream,

vanished in the churn of the rutting sea

recasting the atolls, flooding the sandy seams.

 

The fisher clinging to his raft, his child

plucked by the watery claw

 

the slim man, naked,

climbed the shuddering palm

straining taut muscles, stripping fragments

from the slippery bark

 

the punishing whip of the mindless storm

peeling back eyelids, lashing wet spine

melding into the frantic tree

his dark mouth choking on the rain

 

only to feel some sneaking lull,

a  marine prayer that inbound sailors

mutter in their hempen chains

in the battering trains of certain colder waves

 

while the bright electric eels transmit loss

and the logy fireflies light our man safe home.

 

We watched his scraped shins pale against palm

one eye trained on the bruising sea

fingering his wounds, tasting bile, afterglow of

salted bodies rising, drawn up by the moon.

 

 

Carol Alexander is a writer and editor in the field of educational publishing. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including  Avocet, Chiron Review, Mobius, Numinous, The New Verse News, Red River Review, and OVS. New work is scheduled to appear in Canary, Eunoia Review, Sugar Mule, Poetrybay, and the Mad Hatter's Review. Her work has also appeared in the anthologies Broken Circles, Joy Interrupted,  The Storm is Coming, and Surrounded: Living with Islands.

 

A Sample from the Editor, A.J. Huffman

Bleached [F]Right

Three stark featherlings

                                        fall like snow

                                                                drops

of down along a branch’s widowed edge . . .

Their silent mobility speaks:  volumes

of calculated caution.  Grown on a wind

‘s wing, the triad clicks.  Harmonizing

eye over beak.  Learning the burn

[ed language] of synchronicity.

                                                     Flutter . . . Glide . . .

                                                     Flutter . . . Glide . . .

A twisted shuffle stutters: s s s s s s s south

for (safety? and) solace beyond the basic

tickle of ‘flauge . . .

Understanding is reached.  Destination

disbands.  Solidarity hangs:  home-

less as a tree.

A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida.  She has previously published four collections of poetry: The Difference Between Shadows and Stars, Carrying Yesterday, Cognitive Distortion, and . . . And Other Such Nonsense.  She has also published her work in national and international literary journals such as Avon Literary Intelligencer, Writer's Gazette, and The Penwood Review.  Find more about A.J. Huffman, including additional information and links to her work at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000191382454 and https://twitter.com/#!/poetess222.