A Poem by Ally Malinenko

Red Birds – Central Park

It was me who suggested going to the park or the museum

but you who decided on the park,
in the cold that just dropped over this city like a blanket.
The wind tells us that he is here to stay. Get used to it.

But in the park, we are safe

and we walk down steps and hills
and around slowly freezing water
till the buildings that define this city
vanish
against the bare-boned white of stark fingered trees.

We spot the cardinal first.

Then another.
Everything is muted brown
and black and white and grey
except for this fluttering creature
in her great glorious red.

And above her is the stillness of another

a mass of feathers, a wide body.
We stare and wonder aloud.

I ask the old woman next to me

and she says, in nearly a hush
that it’s a red tailed hawk.
She offers her binoculars,
her partner nearby leans heavy on his cane.

I spy on the hawk

and it turns its head toward me
its beak crooked.
The hawk sits and waits.
Not for me, or for you, but for something we’ve forgotten.
I wonder if this hawk is the famous one
who nests in buildings and I want to ask but

the woman tells me there are a lot of them in the park

and I pass her back her binoculars
thanking her.

We leave

the leaves under my feet crunch in their death
and I remember being a girl
and the woods where I followed the hawks
their wings spread,
the way they just hovered above me
like a streak of brown paint on a blue canvass
before swooping off with a beat
I could hear in my blood.
I ran
out past the rocks
where the mountains split past the water
but that was long ago when I was young.

When the night was still filled with stars

and not just streetlights.

Ally Malinenko has been writing stories and poems and novels for awhile now. Possibly too long. Occasionally she gets them published. Her second book of poems entitled Crashing to Earth is forthcoming from Tainted Coffee Press and her first novel for children, Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb, was recently published by Antenna Books. She can be found blathering here: http://allymalinenko.com/

Three Poems by Michael H. Brownstein

Buddha Comes to Highland Park to Visit a Tree

 

When the Sorokku tree came to us—

dead?—half dead?—panting?

was it the change of air, the foreign soil,

the strange language we used around it?

We anchored it with a ring of candles,

jasmine and sunshine, the greenhouse

blossoming with leaf and hornet,

flower and beneficial. The tree held

its breath. We researched, googled, asked

young girls to take turns kicking its bark

(and when my wife joined the line,

heard a no from somewhere, a you’re too old,

and she stepped away). The greenhouse

gathered moisture, let insects lay eggs

on scale and mites, welcomed butterflies,

beetles, ladybugs, the smell of soap,

sandalwood, peppermint, pickle juice.

Still the tree refused to breathe,

and so we talked to it, stood before it,

and finally listened. It was then we found

the piece of crystal, small and inexact,

with just a hint of the Buddha shape.

We buried it between roots and trunk

and soon, first leaves, new shoots,

and we celebrated, offering more candles,

spices and sugar, water from the homeland,

young girls with broad feet and we thought

to bury another crystal, but did not

understanding now the value of understanding.

The tree, satiated at last, let its leaves flow

to their length, and we began to feel its breath,

marveled at the way it held itself as if in prayer,

its leaves the palms of hands rejoicing

as if it too had need of reverence. 

 

 

 

THE COLOR NEAR THE RIVER

 

Gray bricks of mud

and silver water bandaging itself.

A swale and a bottom wetland,

the paper wasp nest, the paper birch,

a stream and the log covering it.

Somehow a stronghold of buckthorn,

poison berry, a groundswell of root.

Can you not see it? Mud hard dried,

sun dried, hand dried, chapped

gray and leather.

 

 

 

IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO PUT A FACE ON GRIEF

 

Who believes in trees?

A racing from ravines on fire?

The safety of sand at the entrance of water?

Soon everything is black faced and charcoal.

A house opens its lid

And lets in the stain of its own destruction.

Elsewhere silence so immense,

Light and texture shape the wind.

Who worships trees?

A race from one space to another?

Two feet of water in the middle of everything?

 

 

 

Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses.  His work has appeared in The Cafe Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com 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), I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011) and Firestorm:  A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012).  He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

 

 

 

 

 

A Poem by Favour U. Onyeoziri

Lazy

The early morning rays of light,
Secretly escaped into my four walled
Habitat, and gradually crept until
It was overhanging my face. I rubbed the back of my palm over
My face, shielding it from the menace
Of this insistent intruder.

I rolled on to my side,
Backing the sun and trying to get back to sleep,
But it made a mockery of my flimsy attempt
And unleashed its angry terror on my back
Which lit up in a scorching heat.

I rose up from that mat,
Though not awake
And staggered to a corner at the far walls
Where this unwelcome intruder
Had not yet invaded.
I leaned against the wall and fell back
Into a dis-illusioned rest-sleep.

Favour .u. onyeoziri is a 19-year old Nigerian poet, who resides in Lagos, Nigeria. He is currently an undergraduate student of history and education at the university of Lagos. A staunch lover of poetry and prose works, he is greatly influenced by the likes of wole Soyinka, chinua achebe, allen poe, William blake and John Milton. In addition to these, he also owns a blog (www.favour-onye.blogspot.com) where he publishes his works amongst other things.

A Poem by Lisa Pellegrini

Bird Nests

Presents spring from tree roots

as gifts carved from stars.
Eyes are blind to baskets of bliss,

too clouded by the screen

of backstabbing and betrayal
to appreciate surprises built of brown.

Arms that support them never tire

or groan from winter's shake.
Wings of fire sculpt hearths,

insulating jewels of blood,

the new stars destined
to populate air's canvas.

They are intangible pillows

for hearts with dour prospects,
soiled gems for workhorses

during life's daily commute,

gracing them with reasons
to believe in hope and liberation.



Lisa Pellegrini resides in Warrington, PA. Her poetry has appeared in Zouch Magazine, Downer Magazine, Dark Matter, The Rainbow Rose, and Misfits' Miscellany. She has forthcoming work that will appear in Bolts of Silk, Eunoia Review, The Rusty Nail, L'Allure des Mots, The Lascaux Review, and The Alarmist.

Three Poems by Martin Willitts, Jr.

Black-Locust and Honey-Locust Trees

Black-Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia Linnaeus)

Honey-Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos Linnaeus)

The Black-Locust survived the locust borer.

It lasted in areas where it was not expected.
It flourished among root suckers searching for survival.

It communicated its strategy for success

to its relative the Honey-Locust
who listened with its knothole,
and vibrated the news
in its zigzag twigs
down through its blackish ridges
which curved outwards.

Quiet

You can feel the cold with braille fingertips.

Listening is a bird threading through white-out.

What you want to know, you can’t.

The land diminishes into solemnness of no-sound.

A killdeer’s speckled egg blends into the shush.

The grey hibernating land is unsettling in the loss.

How long will this last? A coyote sighs in the thicket,

small breathes of curious light, no two alike.

Fishing In Silence

*

We launch out on a row boat

before the sun floats out of the lake.

Prayers begin of the unspoken,

fishing for something to say.

             *

A drunk fisherman falls out

of the boat, into silence.

Divers in wet suits, splash back-

wards, wordless,

down blackness, thick with silence.

Weeks later, a body bobs up.

             *

Bait in a bucket is punctuation —

leave that behind, we do not need it.

             *

Fishing for what to say,

nothing is caught.

             *

In the lake, the reflection of pines,

stillness of shadows,

the meditation of poems

drunk with caught fish.

But I tell you, there is nothing bigger

once you catch it.

Martin Willitts Jr retired as a Senior Librarian and is living in Syracuse, New York. He is currently a volunteer literacy tutor. He is a visual artist of Victorian and Chinese paper cutouts. He was nominated for 5 Pushcart and 3 Best Of The Net awards. He has three full length books "The Secret Language of the Universe" (March Street Press, 2006), and “The Hummingbird” (March Street Press, 2009), and “The Heart Knows, Simply, What It Needs: Poems based on Emily Dickinson, her life and poetry” (Aldrich Press, 2012). His forthcoming poetry books include “Waiting For The Day To Open Its Wings” (UNBOUND Content, 2013), “Art Is the Impression of an Artist” (Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House, 2013), “City Of Tents” (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2013), “A Is For Aorta” (Seven Circles Press, e-book, 2013), and “Swimming In the Ladle of Stars” (Kattywompus Press, 2013).

Three Poems from Mohana Das

Hyacinths in the gutter:

late afternoons, i cross the culvert-

they are all over the 2' width of stagnant black,

huddling close, closer, one

over the other-

catch my eyes, i blink. and

for a moment everything is forgotten-

the spiced tamarind puchka-mix,

tinnitus of trivial chatter-

skins of purple silk,

unfolding sugar labia outwards,

reincarnated peacocks-

origami memories float down

sip with shivering lips

green dew off leaves that conceal,

behind veined cheeks

blackness, the grim called reality

and i'd rather choose a lie,

trapped in a moment of internal stasis

i cannot feel my heart.

suddenly it is all different, like

melancholy mirrored on glass,

translations, graded violet/indigo

rubbed over with golden dust-

the skies are pregnant with inopportune rain.

 

 

 

Twilight~

 

time weeps tears of tea,
hiding absinthe eyes in
eclipsed mists.

twilight has bloomed.
precipices refract fire

inside cumulus.
creeks twist naked-
distorted like secrecy.

 

 

Poppies

 

They kiss his inky feet,

with revered passion;

tremulous,

in soft red swells,

breathing as one

in the filtered afterglow.

Obscure euphoria,

restless on coral wings,

listen-

half-entranced -

to the amateur Venus

paying court.

Shadowed by the dusk:

transient splendor -

their sweet ignorance

lulls their eyes asleep

beneath hosts of

unchristened proboscis.

 

Mohana Das is a poet by passion. Currently pursuing a degree in engineering, she is allured by all things creative, and abstract. Stars, colors, wildflowers, bees and butterflies are all her darlings. A Pushcart nominee, her poems have been published or are upcoming in a number of anthologies, Vayavya, The Brinks Gallery Cafe, vox poetica and Tuck Magazine.

Two Poems by Michael Lee Johnson

Moon Sleep

I stick

my hand
out toward
the sea,
roll out my palm.
I offer a plank,
a trail for you to follow
into the salty stars,
where you stretch out
and give your heart
to this final moment
of the glass night sky;
draw me in—
sketch my face
on the edge
of a wave—
over ages of celestial
moon sleep and dust.

Playful

Nothing

more playful
than a gray
moth dancing
- skeleton wings-
and a green-eyed
cat prancing
-paws swatting-
around a
lit kerosene
lamp
-shadow boxing-
and we all
had fun
in the
moonlight

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet, freelance writer, photographer, and small business owner of custom imprinted promotional products and apparel: www.promoman.us, from Itasca, Illinois. He is heavily influenced by: Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, Herman Hesse, Krishnamurti, Charles Bukowski, Leonard Cohen, and Allen Ginsberg. His new poetry chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are available at: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/promomanusa. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7. New Chapbook: Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems, by Michael Lee Johnson: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/challenge-of-night-and-day-and-chicago-poems-%28night%29/12443733?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/2. Michael has been published in over 25 countries. He is also editor/publisher of seven poetry sites, all open for submission, which can be found at his Web site: http://poetryman.mysite.com. All of his books are now available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=michael+lee+johnson. Borders: http://www.borders.com.au/book/lost-american-from-exile-to-freedom/1566571/. Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s?store=ALLPRODUCTS&keyword=Michael+Lee+Johnson