A Poem by Ryan Kauffman

Sunset in Morningview, KY

 

1.

 

Night

crawls - like

a toddler slowly scoots

toward curiosity - over the hills 

that have become a shelter for the declining sun.

 

Light

fractures and

re-fractures into a million

shades of purple, pink, orange and red,

distorted by the wonderful atmospheric prism.

 

2.

 

Fires

burn hot in

the surrounding valleys,

sending the natural sap-tinted

smell of renewal floating through my nostrils.

 

Gardens,

newly plowed,

give off the scent of

fertile soil, as if the earth has

been ground down so finely that it too can fly.

 

3.

 

Chives,

fresh from the dirt,

taste like sweet onions,

causing my mouth to water and rejoice

in the bountiful flavors that nature has provided.

 

Tomatoes,

not yet ripened,

tease the taste-buds with

the promise of the juice induced

happiness that will come in just a few more days.

 

4.

 

Dew

falls like silent rain

over a bed of grass and

leaves that have parachuted from

the tip-tops of giant Oaks and ancient Sycamores.

 

Breezes,

gentle and comforting,

quietly gust and cause little

bumps on my arms and neck in delight

at the temporary relief from the valley’s humidity.

 

5.

 

Coyotes’

harmonious howls

echo through the valley like

the violins reverberating in Beethoven’s mind.

Crickets chime in with their chirps of up-tempo percussion.

 

Bluebirds,

and red ones alike,

tweet their evening song

as if wishing the world fruitful dreams and

giving a final melodic offering to the emerging full moon.

 

 

 

Ryan Kauffman is a first-year MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University. His previous work has appeared in Mused: The Bella Online Literary Journal, The Western Online, The Fringe Magazine, Writing Raw, and Haiku Journal. He currently lives in Marquette, Michigan.

Two Poems by Normon J. Olson

a view of Nova Scotia from Prince Edward Island

 

I saw Nova Scotia

prostrate on the sea,

like a fallen angel with her

head pillowed on the blue tinted horizon…

 

sunlight danced across the

electromagnetic

ripples and painted deep blue

with flecks of gray and silver

 

the fish have gone, turned by

greed and

the bellies of gourmands into

shit… the shit is also gone…  fishing

boats rot in the bushes

or sit in hopeful desolation with

a fly specked sign that reads

“for sale / best offer”

 

 

 

flying from LAX to DTW

 

flying first class on an employee

pass,

sipping a cold drink as the

flaming GE vortex and vast

Boeing wings bring our

aluminum tube up, over

the white line of El Segundo

surf, through the overcast

and

into sunlight, like the bang of a ladle

on a two quart saucepan…

 

over a wrinkle of mountains

 

soon circles of irrigation fields fill the

flat country

 

then the green of Minnesota… 

Lake Michigan looks like a flat zinc plate

and

the face in the window mocks a fat

old gap toothed man

who does not really belong in

first class,

or anywhere

else for that matter…

 

Detroit is another story…

 

 

 

Normon J. Olson is a 65 year old poet and artist and since publishing his first poem in 1984, has published hundreds of poems and drawings in literary print and ejournals all over the world...  a current publication is the cover drawing on Poetry Repairs at www.poetryrepairs.com

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:

http://editorschoiceaward.blogspot.com/

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 Review, American Letters and Commentary, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The 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).

 

 

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.

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. 

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.