by Earl Moore
the spring garden
passionate love poem
softly echoes
my longing for you
but now emptiness
butterfly
the garden bench
Monarch
floating softly to my
tender as your soft touch
southern grass
soft morning fog
lightly moves
as your fresh body
at the movie last night
white dove
lands a few feet away
picnic basket
sudden echoes in a lost past
with marriage vows to last
by Devin Harrison
The children dip midday under broad-armed elms
by the edge of the lake cup their hands in water
send schools of marbled green glass minnows
shuttering through the shallows
we have just come off an endless summer road,
stopped for play after miles of wheat and Milo
and dust billows from the siege of tractors
chugging fall planting furrows across the dry plains.
I join them squeeze through bottom silt with them,
peek under lime-colored algae bend together in depths
which sucks all that is living down into it up I feel
the urgent sun soften feel my skin swallow then close
it seldom happens a respite like this pulled from time
the children recognize this rake their fingers purposefully
through the slowly eddying afternoon drag for tadpoles
newt eggs ideas filled with unfathomable possibilities
###
Devin Harrison has published poetry in numerous periodicals throughout the US and Canada. These magazines include: Contemporary Verse Two, Grain, Event, The Amethyst Review, Kansas Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Passages North, and others.
by Amit Parmessur
Around blue, white oceans,
in a blue and black house dwells a black
speck. So black, so blue
black alive, emotionally blue.
Sometimes like a fresh road, after the rain,
spellbinding every periwinkle and
sometimes imitating a baffled bluebird
he has had the blues so, so often that
he never listens to the blues and
his eyes have long gone into his
socks that smell of cheap cigarettes.
On his neighbors lips are perched
black curses that threaten to recreate
him every day, and his disloyal wife’s
hair flies in the wind in such a way
that she might inspire him into frothing
himself off some mossy cliff, any time
on one of those moonlit, blue nights.
He’ll never understand that he’s
the symbol of a country losing itself
because of people like him.
###
Born in 1983, Amit Parmessur lives with his black cat nowadays. Since 2010, his poems have appeared in more than 100 literary magazines. His book on blog Lord Shiva and other poems has also been published by The Camel Saloon. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius. As long as he gets published, he knows he is on the right track.
by Dr. Prakash Kumar
A helpless worm on the point of a needle,
Wriggling in vain for release,
The indecision and cowardice in the matters of Sex,
Before eyes appear attractive but mercilessly searching-
Making the desire Cold.
Photo by Diena Grant-Thomson
by John Wright
This overcast morning
leaf and lawn are drenched in dew-soaked air.
My window frames a filigree masterpiece
of lilli-pilli pollen buds and scribbling eucalypts.
I watch a bulbous spider
beige as paper-bark, build her web
busily embroidering
a white St Andrew’s Cross
oblivious to the beauty of all she is.
She tats a delicate network of interconnections
weaving no frills.
She spins beyond entanglement
labouring to create a nest for new life
while lacing, with precise obsessive care
a jewelled snare.
In circular creation, beginnings are ends.
Her life-&-death work
is designed to attract innocence that strays.
This dull gun-metal day, beside a dry
leaf-curl mysteriously spinning
in no breeze, on a single invisible
thread, she sits and waits.
Bright yellow stripes across her back
warn the wary she’s there.
Her four pairs of long legs
have become the white diagonal
preparing to pounce and wrap
the future in a shroud of silk.
She knows the fate of prey.
And as she waits under a veiled sun, poised
at the centre of her mythology
her abdomen grows.
She knows her children will be fed.
Ready to kill or burst
with life, she glows.
###
John Wright was born in Cheshire, England 1950. Visits to County Mayo, Ireland in childhood left lasting impressions as did weekend work on a farm in Cheshire. Arriving in Australia in 1969, he worked as a psychiatric nurse and received the NSW Premier’s Award for 40 years Meritorious Service. His poems have been published since the 1980s. Now retired, he lives with his family near Gosford on the Central Coast of NSW. His current book, CHESHIRE BORN
was published in 2011 by Balboa Press.
By
Gavin Gerngross
She filled the tube
with her red.
A prism of weeks reduced to jelly,
this nutria,
scattered among the glade.
Reduction: dollop of discontent.
Tilling imagination flocks out at will.
By nightlight, there are prayers
of meager request
scrolled across the carpet.
In this manifestation, heat
pulling at her socks, the breach
of her white sister’s sheets.
The collapse of an entire stage
in one movement
of the hand, an
elbow changing the landscape.
The harsh tickle of two fingers.
###
Gavin Gerngross is 34 years old, a graduate of the University of Houston with a degree in Creative Writing. He has been married 10 years, has a daughter, Trina, named after his deceased sister, and a son, Asher, named both the tribe of Israel and Chaim Potok’s character Asher Lev. Despite being laid off twice in the past year, he still resides in Houston; because he loves the city a little too much. He is affectionately known as, G, but only by his wife, Jami. Gavin Gerngross has no website links to speak of.
by Jane Hanser
He who offered so much life
lies resting in the ground
Stones and grass and monuments
and flowers all around
Our breaths are frozen in the cold
Our thoughts more frozen still
Our son his youth a memory
upon this wind blown hill.
We’ll ne’er forget his laughter
or his smile or his face
The plans and schemes and hopes and dreams
The warmth of his embrace
And then our ailing hearts
are shaken, roused from misery
And turn we must to other deeds
that God hath for you and me
###
I’ve an M.Ed. in English Education and TESOL from Temple University Graduate School. I taught English and ESL at CUNY for 14 years, as well as in Camden, New Jersey and Valencia, Spain. I’ve written and developed a popular software program for high school and college-aged learners of English. I have a self-published grammar book, The Grammar HELP! Student Handbook which will be revised this year under a new title and as an e-book. My blog, “Dogs Don’t Look Both Ways”, has, for several years, attracted a number of people and dogs who have found solace and encouragement in the story of crisis and hope, and in interacting with Joey, the Labrador Retriever, on the blog. The story was subsequently covered in the print editions of the Newton Tab (Newton, MA) and on the front page of The Daily News Tribune (Waltham, MA). I live, work, write and play in Newton Centre, MA.
by Amy Wright
Let us long because we are to be filled…
that is our life, to be exercised by longing
-Saint Augustine
The nighttime of our lives is filled
with crickets chirping in the darkness
of their dark bodies. I hold your hips
with the grip of my thighs, twitch
when you kiss my temples thrum
the counterpoint of peace as an
argument for peace
The rhythm is in
the unexpectant break
of melody.
When you give me each movement
of your grandfather’s tango
by opening and closing
your eyes, I can read anything
and never have
in this language
I am learning to speak
so that I can explain it
to your mother,
offer her something
in the southern manner
when you leave the sails
of her arms for mine.
Tell me
everything
exceptel momento
preciso you began
to scent our bed w/
the waft of another,
because knowing it
has no reason
is not to trust
the ending.
###
Amy is the author of three chapbooks, Farm, There Are No New Ways To Kill A Man, and the forthcoming The Garden Will Give You A Fat Lip, which won the 2012 Pavement Saw Chapbook Award. She is also the Nonfiction Editor of Zone 3 journal and Zone 3 Press.
by Camryn Barganier
Ice cream is for grown ups
And love is for lesbians.
She was ice cream
Warmed by the forgotten time of deep kisses
The flavor of the week
And I wanted to spoon her.
Mrs. Cherry Garcia.
She was tasteful?
And carefree
Dripping down my waffle cones
I wanted to catch her with my tongue.
And become Mrs. And Mrs. Cherry Garcia
She was the reason I turned my cup over after the last drop,
Just hoping she would give me more.
See she, was the cause of my melting core
The hello, goodbye and waiting kiss at the door
And she swore,
My eyes twinkled.
She said, when I laughed,
My nose crinkled
She noticed the little things, big things, and gave attention to all things.
She melted through my fingertips
And my hands stuttered and babbled
Aimlessly the first time around.
I had secrets climbing on my earlobes
But my lips only shared them with her.
And goose bumps upon my collar bone
Like children
Balancing on a log
But I was no child.
She invaded
And I surrendered
And we played the lovers game
For months behind closed doors
And lived on lying lips
That told love stories over ice cream sundaes
We were Juliet and Juliet
Forbidden and in love.
We were beautiful
She made me snap, crackle and pop
First and last
Every time
And then,
She would chuckle
As I morphed back into childhood
Curled into myself
Like two lips with a secret moon behind them.
She caressed my hair.
And right then I should have said,
I don’t care what they say.
I should have told her then
Because I had her
Melting in my fingertips
I was there,
I was in love.
But I didn’t
And she got tired of waiting
On my fear to flee
But my female intuition said
You have something to lose.
And so, she was lost.
My Ice cream melted away.
###
Camryn Barganier was raised in Houston, Texas by her parents Doris Forte and Art Barganier. At a young age, she discovered her passion in many art forms, especially performing arts and writing. By the age of fourteen, she began performing spoken word poetry and studying her true passion. After graduating from the University of Houston with a bachelor?s degree in broadcast journalism, she continued her writing career in television and radio. Since 2006, she has been an administrator for Be A Champion, Inc., a non-profit organization providing after school enrichment and tutorial programs in the Houston area.
As a bilingual English and Spanish performer, writer and presenter, Barganier works with children in her daily life, reinforcing positive self-expression through art and creative writing. She continues to spread the importance of knowledge about the effects of domestic violence through her Stop Shops, the practicum concept behind her book, Squeaky Speaks. Since the age of 12, she has been performing spoken word poetry nationwide, and in 2009 she qualified for the National Poetry Slam Competition.
These seminars focus on the elements of play therapy, the natural and familiar form of positive self-expression for children. Her passion for stopping the cycle of domestic violence drives her career, aspirations and art. Barganier lives in Houston, Texas with her dog, Winston, the inspiration for the pet in her book.
by Matthew J.Hall
Rise from under the depravities of old.
Loose the shackles of yesterday’s shame.
Be strong, be ruthless; ten thousand fold.
Keep to the confessions in secrecy told.
Battle curses, fire and pain.
Rise from under the depravities of old.
Ancient compulsions left you cold.
Remember the patterns of what you became.
Where victory belongs to the brave and the bold.
Take up your weapons and hold, hold.
Stubbornly shield, protect and maintain.
Rise from under the depravities of old.
Respond to transgressions, smash the mould.
Deny oxygen to devilish flame.
The burden of success heavier than gold.
A soul is redeemable however it was sold.
See through intention and keep a good name.
Rise from under the depravities of old.
Be strong, be ruthless; ten thousand fold.
by Nanette L. Avery
The wind, the sky, the light weaves in and out
Las estaciones del a’o, they speak to all
Faithfully returning like an evening porch light
Primavera
Her crocus petals showing off new skirts of lavanda
Budding twigs sing out estamos aqu
Spring when the heart is awakened
Verano
A sultry wind wavers without a care for time
Languid afternoons become steamy nights
Summer when el coraz’n is aroused
Oto’o
His dead leaves crumble into orange flakes
As winds whittle vacant patches in canopies
Autumn when the heart strikes oro
Invierno
Blanco, a cold and pale evening’s crossing
Snow descends like a cloudy hoard
Winter when the heart seeks amor
###
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 Americana Magazine of Popular Culture, Digital Americana, Riverlit, Florida English Journal, Middle Ground, Broken Circles, and more. www.nanetteavery.com
by Glen Sorestad
If a minimalist poet
presents a workshop,
how many words
is he allowed to use
###
Glen Sorestad is a well known Canadian poet with over 20 books of poetry published, the latest a bilingual, English/Spanish edition called A Thief of Impeccable Taste(sand Crab Books, 2011). In 2010 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada, the highest non-military honour his country offers.
by henry 7. reneau, jr.
Sunday, February 21st standing at the podium,
The Audubon Ballroom in Harlem
Preachin to the choir & pauses
In a moment between tick & tock, a d’j’ vu that hovered
A glimpse of repetition,
Epiphany that sowed sorrow in the stutter of his heart;
His blood recounts the iron weight of shackles
& a balmy ocean breeze soothing an equatorial shore,
The sound of whiplash striking flesh & shots ring out
Has happened all before as in, Pandora’s Box,
When freedom became the dream
& hope, handled with a chain inside a frozen scream
###
henry 7. reneau, jr. has been published in various journals/anthologies, among them, Nameless Magazine; Subliminal Interiors Literary Arts Magazine; The Chaffey Review; The View From Here; FOLLY Magazine; Entering; Tule Review; BlazeVOX; Black Heart Magazine; Forty Ounce Bachelors; Suisun Valley Review; and Tidal Basin Review.
by Aleisha Goodman
We are split
in different directions
that our pride and egos
will not let us touch.
keeping us at a distance
that not even our words can reach
They will be spoken
then evaporate in thin air
as they leave our hungry lips
like the ambers of a cigarette
They will hang onto your earlobes
for balance
crawl through your ear canal and into
your empty mind
by then it will be too late.
You will be numb and stiff
deaf by the ignorance that has consumed you
###
Currently a college student pursuing a career in journalism. I am currently reside in Manchester, New Hampshire but am originally from Baltimore Maryland.
by Dave Margoshes
Everybody knows the man in the moon
is blue cheese, that dogs keep the sun at bay
in winter, that fireflies are the souls
of the dearly departed, flickering through
the transparent evening for honey. We know
the danger of the frozen swing to the tongue,
the heartbreak of the grosbeak legging it north
in early spring drunk on forgotten apples, we’ve all
heard our mothers’ admonitions
about clean underwear and dirty thoughts, there’s
no shortage of certainty and conviction. Still,
when you turn to me as you do now, I hesitate,
all that gossamer wisdom no help at all,
no damned help at all.
###
Dave Margoshes is a Saskatchewan writer whose stories and poems have appeared widely in Canadian literary magazines and anthologies. He’s published over a dozen books, including five collections of poetry the most recent, Dimensions of an Orchard, won the Anne Szumigalski Poetry Prize at the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Awards. His new story collection, A Book of Great Worth, is being published in April 2012.
