Prismatic strands and bright flecks of stardust,
stretch across ebony fields of empty ether.
Kepler’s Secret
by Benjamin Schneider
Prismatic strands and bright flecks of stardust,
stretch across ebony fields of empty ether.
Light knows no boundaries;
the living, breathing cosmos.
Father Time, surely bends and distorts
as hidden strings and stellar fabrics,
of space eternally alive hold
each comet and every new star
in their place. Flowing elliptical models.
No perfect circles. No celestial spheres.
Galaxies spiral outward, in harmony;
A peaceful hurricane, shaping the dreams
of this young universe. Beautiful fractals
exist terrestrially too. Our Mother Earth,
births seashells and cast cyclones,
from the same ancient mold.
The blueprint to all matter,
a golden script of life and death.
Yet long ago, I told myself: I’d never fall in love.
###
Schneider is a journalist major and creative writing minor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
so pigeons keep coming to this narrow chimney-like space. i hate opening the windows as i am afraid
alone
by Indah Lestari
so pigeons keep coming to this narrow chimney-like space. i hate opening the windows as i am afraid of the coming of toilet smell. and i am scared of the view, the dust, the rust, the most, faded disturbing pink paint color. but they come. flapping their wings, i see them, and they see me. sometimes a feather comes into my room, falls on my purple-black stripe carpet, left a promise of love, freedom and gentleness?
###
Indah Lestari was born in Singapore and lives in Jakarta, Indonesia. She completed her B.A. in English Literature from Padjadjaran University, Indonesia and M.A. in English Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Now she is juggling her career in translations with writing anything poems, travelogues, reviews of books, arts, movies, cultural performances, etc.
Tomorrow’s fear is but
yesterday’s panic
forgotten.
Today’s love is but
Heaven, forgotten,
remembered.
###
Frank is a retired physician who writes for the pure joy of doing so. His poetry tends to touch on the theme of human pain and also on the transcendant nature of Spirit. He is grateful when another is moved or comforted by his work.
“Boy,” she said, “Pick a Christian name,”
I stared blankly back at her,
And my heart died the moment she put the blades of the scissor to my hair
I winced as I heard the sickening -kerplunk-
of the thick braid, as it fell from the nape of my neck and onto the floor
“Boy, Pick a Christian name,”
I purged my spirit from myself and into the sky,
Praying that some small part of me would fly back to the land of my brothers
These light-skins did not want us to hunt on white lands,
They did not want us to hunt great buffalo
Theseschool chairs, as they called them, were not easy
I longed for the soft tufts of grass on the warm home lands
“Ohiyesa,” my father said to me, “You must stay”
and “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” came not too long after that
“For the last time, pick a Christian name!”
I opened the said great book before me,
and pointed to the first white word I saw,
Sending Ohiyesa back to the land of his brothers and sisters
I answered the teacher,
And I became “Charles”
###
Amanda Iacampo is a 20 year old, full-time student at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. She is a published poet and the Editor-In-Chief of the universitys literary magazine, The Willow. Amanda is also the President of Salve Regina’s English Guild and continues to work diligently as a pre-service, English Literature teacher.
Frequencies compete
Bouncing in and out
Speaking over each other
Radio
by Michael Vander Does
Frequencies compete
Bouncing in and out
Speaking over each other.
From one direction comes a preacher
Exhorting
Telling me prayers are not answered overnight
You have to wait
And I wonder
What good is religion
If it only helps you wait
For the fullness of time.
And competing for air
Duke and Johnny Hodges
Are saying to me
Now
Listen to this sweetness now
And if this is what you want
You can have this sweetness now
And I pray for the preacher’s voice to fade.
###
Michael Vander Does writes for and performs with The Jazz Poetry Ensemble in Columbus, OH, where he lives with three cats and a garden. He has been published off and on for more than 30 years in places like The Croton Review, Negative Capability, Caf Noir, The Istanbul Literary Review, Connotations Press, and Tryst ( who nominated him for a Pushcart Prize). He has occasionally been recognized for his work, most recently as the Honored Community Artist by the Columbus Community Festival. For more information about Michael and The Jazz Poetry Ensemble, visit www.makejazznotwar.org.
i would like
you
to see through the mist
on a rainy evening
i would like
by Mai Phung
i would like
you
to see through the mist
on a rainy evening
the mountain far away
i would like
you
to hear in the storm
through the darkness of the city
the enchanting flute
i would like
you
to feel my dream
and shadows of the past
haunting my elusive days
i would like
you to wake up
in the smell of roses
by your side
and as the world turns
day and night mingle
to fuse my heart
into a single spot
point where we meet, subtly
in undertones, a miracle i long for
time after time
###
Mai Phung is originally from Vietnam, earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from California State Polytechnic University-Pomona and a Certificate of Proficiency in Translation from English into French from Georgetown University. Phung has lived since the war ended in the Washington metropolitan area. Phung has a passion for poetry for Shakespeare and E.E. Cummings.
I forgot how jealousy
looked on you –
a brooch of many colors
pinned to her dress
just above the breasts,
or a thin bright ribbon
trailing off a straw hat.
and how it smelled –
too much perfume in a
tiny space or
lemons bursting off the branches
to bloom at her feet.
and how it sounded
like too much music
for one room to hold,
so it had to be shared
with a stranger
who wore candlelight
beautifully.
I forgot
how it sat on your tongue –
a sharp insect
shedding its wings,
and leaving me
to dream of her.
###
I am a lifelong beach bum who has turned from acting to poetry, as I find it a more remarkable muse. I also enjoy surfing, sailing and diving. My work has been published at Wordsmiths, The Missing Slate, Every Writer’s Resource, Gutter Eloquence, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, After Tournier, Bareback Magazine and Bare Hands.
A landscape enormous and wide
opens with great remembering:
Prairie
by Paul Sammartino
A landscape enormous and wide
opens with great remembering:
grasses sway,
alone
they practice
forming the word,
mother
mother
mother
in winds that course across those plains.
###
Paul Sammartino holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia and an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Manitoba. His fiction has appeared in FreeFall Magazine, Glossolalia and Prick of the Spindle. His poetry has appeared in The Glass Coin and he was shortlisted in the Writer’s Union of Canada’s 2012 Writing for Children competition.
If I could speak in any language
it would be the one winter flirts with
before kissing the fall with its first closed-mouth snow.
Hungry Seasons
by Evan Warren
If I could speak in any language
it would be the one winter flirts with
before kissing the fall with its first closed-mouth snow.
But it would all be a lie.
Sweet talking the p-coat armored
hipster hair crowned girls of autumn
I’d chase them around under fading trees
until the reddest leaves
bury me in flame.
Under the pyres of autumn,
under skies like shallow fire
I would soak soft flesh like summer,
reversing the hungry seasons,
giving girls who so far have only known
the slow crawl into frigid arms
ashen skin, and post-immolation recline.
and that would replace love for me,
that could be love for me,
dead leave blood chroma,
like embers in volcanic rain.
On the fly leaf,
I leave words.
Implied leaves
flutter past, green
The Tree Poems
by Phil Boiarski
I
On the fly leaf,
I leave words.
Implied leaves
flutter past, green
gone brown, slow
leaving so soon.
Let go, I write,
we are fated not
to be left out
on a limb, made
not to stick around.
II
Laughing aspens
shake their golden
garments, drying
in the wind, dying
in a sigh of fluttered
wings, flapping
joyous end to their
old awakening.
Maples, hickories,
poplars, apples
celebrate their coming
nakedness by putting
on their brightest dress,
dancing in this lessening
light as nights grow
and roots contemplate
snow falling like
the leaves.
III
The spirit of trees
comforts, cradle
to coffin. In wood
shelters, on oaken
chairs, we hide
behind doors.
The grain in wood,
an image of time,
crosscut rings
emanating out
from the heartwood,
from the moment
seed took root
in the sunlight.
Shade becomes
bony shadow but
the light at night
beholds all things
with tenderness,
caresses, softens
hard edges, offers
the eye surcease
in the subtleties
of darkness.
IV
Morning breeze
brings the sound
of rain falling
not from skies
but leaves.
Clouds, having
moved on,
look back
and hear
trees whisper
the soft, wet
story of their past.
V
Underfoot, the crush
of leaves gives off
whispers of summer sun,
hush of starlit nights,
musty essence of time
in their becoming dust.
# # #
Phil Boiarski has been writing and publishing for more than forty years. His work has appeared a number of times in The Paris Review, The California Quarterly, The Rocky Mountain Review, The Ohio Journal, Aspen Anthology, Indiana Writes, Handbook, Green House and numerous other publications. Recently, his poems were translated and published in Nowa Okolica Poetow, a Polish literary journal, OFF_ Antologia, a bi-lingual literary magazine published in London & Warsaw; Private Photo Review, an Italian poetry/photo magazine, and The Tangled Bank, an Australian anthology celebrating Darwin’s bi-centennial. www.boiarski.com www.boiarskitheblog.blogspot.com
I peered through granny glasses
at the standard issue
crew cut frat boys
The Epitome of Cool
by Art Heifetz
I peered through granny glasses
at the standard issue
crew cut frat boys
strolling through the commons
with one bottle blonde
appended to each arm.
I was Sargent Pepper in my
Russian army greatcoat
which nearly swept the ground.
I was Dylan in a long red scarf,
singing in a voice laced with gravel
on MacDougal Street.
I was the epitome of cool.
Go ahead and accuse us
of stealing the last good causes,
of having the lines of battle
so clearly defined
you knew where someone stood
by the length of his hair.
Stoned out of our minds
or recently returned
from bad acid trips,
we laughed hysterically
at jokes we couldn’t explain,
feasting on frozen pies
and dinners of blue meatballs
and red spaghetti
that Seuss would have loved.
I remember the sad-eyed ladies,
their funky frizzy hair
sprouting in all directions
like exuberant undergrowth,
the dark promise of their nipples
clearly visible through
their sheer, flowered tops.
If only I were poor or black enough
to take them in my arms.
Tell us about the sixties, you ask,
as if we were discussing ancient Rome.
I answer with an aging hipster’s sigh,
to truly understand
you’d have to be
at least as cool as me.
###
Art Heifetz teaches ESL to refugees in Richmond, Va. He has had 60 poems published in six countries. You can see his work and leave comments at Polishedbrasspoems.com.
U.S. 1 drips into the into the Atlantic
where the sun sets and tourists applaud;
Good-bye Florida
by Nanette L. Avery
U.S. 1 drips into the into the Atlantic
where the sun sets and tourists applaud;
not because they have never seen such a sight,
but because the margaritas are sweeter and
the parrot on the man’s shoulder squawks on cue just as the
oranges and reds flirt above the horizon.
They strike a pose barely long enough to focus the camera
before slipping into the water and getting swallowed-up in twilight.
###
Nanette L. Avery grew up on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; a small island in the Lesser Antilles. She is the author of a number of books including Sixty Jars in a Pioneer Town and My Mother’s Tattoo And Other Stories For Kids. Her poetry and literary works can be found in publications such as Poetica, Everyday Poems, Americana Magazine of Popular Culture, Digital Americana, Florida English Journal, Middle Ground, Broken Circles Anthology, and more. www.nanetteavery.com
She died like a poem
Wordless and obstructed
In emotions nonplussed
It was clear from her face
All her life she was ambiguous and vague
With a question mark of indifference between a prose and a poem.
She never yearned to take flights of abstraction
Her impracticality proved fatal to her meaninglessness.
Unable to sell ever
Like peddling novels
Like the meaning deeper kicked out on margin
She kept on wriggling
Her hypersensitive existence
While she could have carved a niche for herself
Onto page of any journal.
She was a world of her own webs
Whereto on every door
Have grown obstacles of norms.
Endeavoring to internalize essence epical
In her haiku stature
Cursed as perennial critique
Of ogles suspect
Her demise requires no reviews posthumous
She died like a poem in earnest desire.
###
Born at Moradabad (UP)and educated at Banaras Hindu University ,Varanasi in disciplines of Politics and Management; obtained Doctorate on Globalisation and its Impact on sovereignty of India. Writes in English and Hindi.Poems and articles published in various Magazines and Periodicals.
I love to see a parking lot being
reclaimed by the weeds,
when it becomes
In Defense of Ruin
by Joshua Converse
I love to see a parking lot being
reclaimed by the weeds,
when it becomes
Defiant of asphalt and stone.
-The yellow dandelions
push up through the cracks
with joined voices of
silent
patient
rebellion.
###
Joshua Converse was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and grew up on a horse farm in Louisiana. He spent 4 years in the U.S. Army and deployed to the Middle East during the war. He holds an AA in English and a BA in Literature, and continues working toward an MA as a grad student at San Francisco State University. He lives in Monterey, CA with his wife and their children.
