###
William Aarnes teaches English at Furman. He has two collections of poems: Learning to Dance (1991) and Predicaments (2001) both published by Ninety-Six Press. His work has appeared recently in the Red River Review, Curbside Quotidian, Prime Number, and Ascent.
Farewell: the rain
trickles like candlewax
when the flame is snuffed out
by that last gasp of air
and the world is static
and hearts cease their music.
You were a poem:
a ballad;
a sonnet.
Now an elegy.
Cradling her wounds she thought back
Pressed to the ground
He had stolen her perfection
Once bright white porcelain and pure
She was now broken and scarred
She did the only thing she could think to do
Though soaked in her own blood
She threaded her needle with her yarn
And stitched herself back together
###
Crystal Lane Swift is an Actress, Singer, Writer, Public Speaker, Model
waves
american trains
running through
veins. endless
whiskey tears
golden hearts
and crazy
Fear.
she rides
it all
and calls
the world
her
shell.
###
Ian MacMenamin is a psychology student in Deventer, the Netherlands. Basically he listens to a lot of music, reads a lot of books and plays the piano, the guitar and the violin. He enjoys reading works of Wilde and some modern poets. Sometimes he plays at a rundown blues bar in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. Web-site/blog: still-stone.blogspot.com
We’re a myriad of thoughts In a kaleidoscope of dreams And everything seems real But nothing’s what it seems The evil that we do Is for the good of all we know And when there’s no evil left Then there’s nowhere left to go (Napkin Poetry, Broken Publications, 2010)
###
Jennifer-Crystal Johnson is originally from Germany, but was raised all over. She has published one novella under her former last name, The Outside Girl: Perception is Reality (Publish America, 2005) and, more recently, a poetry book, Napkin Poetry (Broken Publications, 2010). One of her short stories, The Clinic, has recently been featured on Jack Meets Jill (dot net) and her poetry has appeared in various anthologies including The Lightness of Being (International Library of Poetry, 2000), Theatre of the Mind (Noble House, 2003), Invoking the Muse (Noble House, 2004), and Our 100 Most Famous Poets (Famous Poets Press, 2004). She currently works as a freelance writer and editor for Phati’tude Literary Magazine published by the IAAS. She lives in the Pacific Northwest. Her author web site can be found at www.soulvomit.com and her publishing company is Broken Publications: www.brokenpublications.com
Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. is a Communications Officer in the Middle East and author of ‘A Fistful of Moonbeams’, his first poetry chapbook published by Kilmog Press in April 2010. Although foremost a poet, he is also a fictionist, an essayist and a playwright. Somoza hails from Siquijor Island in the Philippines. His writing has been widely published in his home country (Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphics, Ateneo University Press, Cultural Center of the Philippines, etc.) and internationally (Moria Poetry, Troubador 21, Gloom Cupboard, Haggard & Halloo, Barnwood International, etc.). He received a degree in Bachelor of Mass Communication from the University of the City of Manila and masteral units in Creative Writing from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.
midwest afternoon blue,
riding solo all the
compass points,
to diner somewhere,
for breakfast,
hot coffee
and smiles,
brighter than dew
you eat,
you drink,
waitress catches like
a splinter of glass
in your eye,
watering for her beauty,
name tag says Annie
and how you’d
sparkle with Annie.
###
Chris Lawrence born 64, lives in an English seaside town of West Kirby writes poetry and stories his most recent publication was in Zygote In My Coffee he can be reached on Twitter @clawfish
Jan Marquart is a licensed Clinical Social Worker who specializes in family counseling. She has a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the University of California/Santa Cruz and a master’s degree in Social Work from San Jose State University. A member of the New Mexico Book Association, National Writers Union, and the National Association of Social Workers, Jan has authored eight books, two booklets, written articles for local papers and has written more than 88 journals. Visit with the author at www.awareliving.net.
Tin heart
Thanks for the keychain.
Do you like it? I thought you would.
She is proud.
But why?
The ugliest thing I’ve ever seen
Selected just for me, this loud strange trinket
Clatters into the drawer of birthday gifts
Forgotten.
Next year no gift comes
No longer loud and strange
The keychain goes in my purse
At work, they gym, gas station, grocery store, and with me
Until the day the tin heart breaks
Like mine.
###
Karen Sideris lives in Mesa, Arizona with her husband George. She works for the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University and is a reader for Hayden’s Ferry Review. Her fiction has been published in Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine and various e-Zines, where she has also published poetry. Originally from Dayton, Ohio, Karen has degrees from Miami University and Wright State University. Karen volunteers at a high needs school in the Phoenix Elementary School District.
Heterophemize
v. — to say something different from what you mean to say
You are my noun,
I set out to say,
my person, place,
and thing, but I verbed
instead, stammered
out adjective
after adjective, but spoke
so adverbly you
exclamated. I thought
we were gerunding
well, but you saw nothing
but a split infinitive,
separating to from be
together, misplaced
modifiers left us,
nothing.
A fragment.
Syntax and semantics stumped
me, failed to notice the lack
of a coordinating
conjunction, always more
of a math person, where variables
are solved for, able
to understand what x equals
and y,
where one
plus one
always equals two.
###
Kevin Brown is an Associate Professor at Lee University and an MFA student at Murray State University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters, Folio, Connecticut Review, South Carolina Review, Stickman Review, Atlanta Review, and Palimpsest, among other journals. He has also published essays in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academe, InsideHigherEd.com, The Teaching Professor, and Eclectica. He has one book of poetry, Exit Lines (Plain View Press, 2009), a chapbook, Abecedarium (Finishing Line Press), and a forthcoming book of scholarship: They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.
Just as the fire rages in the furnace
when the wind rushes through the stoker
you are blowing your breath all over
the coals of my anxieties
and the embers of my disorders are alight
As the hammer
dipping into water, heating up in flames
beats molten iron
you beat my mind and emotions
The reach of my sorrow expands
At times I feel: how marvelous is your handiwork
What sort of skill is this? Amazing?
What are you trying to make?
You are so lost in your effort
I am afraid to ask about your creation
lest I should hinder you
Yet should I stay quiet, asking nothing, I worry
some fearsome creation might take place
Tell me how long you will keep stoking this fire
how long you will beat my mind and emotions?
Could it be that you have mistaken me for metal?
Translated by: Manjushree Thapa
Pratik writes in Nepali. He is a poet/song writer.
Dearest, tell me where the cicadas have gone.
Didn’t summer only exist in the past?
For I see myself sitting at the window
years ago, in the wild songs of cicadas
about how they had waited life long
to find the summer unbearable, Nanjing’s summer
hot as a stove. In spite of all the singing,
the wind would never come until the autumn.
I would watch the leaves of the parasol trees,
for which the old Chinese city had been famous,
monotonously green as if in a silent sleep,
their thick branches inherently sky-pointing
yet desperately blocking each other’s way
and thus weaving a web of shade
the stove-natives saw as a blessing on the road.
For a long time I hadn’t been able
to tell the leaves from the wind. Don’t laugh,
how could the cooling power belong
to something invisible, I hadn’t known.
Xiwen Mai has a doctorate in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan. Currently she is an Assistant Professor of English at New York Institute of Technology, Nanjing.
One either believes in God
or one probably really is
going to hell and Ohioans
know the difference, because
like the small seeds
in her brown fields,
you are below the surface
yet visible, corn hands waving
as relatives stand near
to measure your success, to see
where you are by July. From
one end to the next,
crosswise and looping,
roads ribbon the ground
stringing together sown
cities and fields across
knolls the last
exhalations of the Alleghenies?
over land smoothed glacier-flat,
or through valleys ladled out
by God himself. Spring mornings
look out into a patent sky
laundered each night; the last
drops of water wringing
onto new-mowed blades of grass,
sharp enough to prick
bare feet, the loose stuff
clinging. It’s here
anyone not doing
hard work God’s work?
is lost, a slacking tourist. It is
here the Rose of Sharon
is intentionally grown, where
sweet pea seeds, marigolds,
and zinnias come in
packets from the TSC
or Kmart, where combines
and tractors are cleaned,
at the ready, pride-parked
in poled shells of corrugated
sheet-metal waiting like soldiers
at attention, soldiers in the
king’s army, ready to do
holy work. I’ve seen it
my whole life: behemoth
droids bred for service,
mutants among machines
in a place that bows
to machines as they strain
at the struts, pulling
to free themselves, to charge
armed, into full-bellied fields.
Grace Curtis chapbook, The Surly Bonds of Earth, was selected by Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Stephen Dunn as the winner of the Lettre Sauvage 2010 Poetry Contest. She has had poetry in Scythe Literary Journal, The Chaffin Journal, Waccamaw Literary Journal, Clockwise Cat, and Dark Lady Poetry, among others. Grace received her MFA from Ashland University in 2010. She lives in Dayton , Ohio where she helps out as a volunteer at The Antioch Review.
Some animal, some low
beast
has done me a favor:
it
tipped over the trash
can
in the alley early this morning,
scattering
the contents, everything —
brown
banana peels, wads of Kleenex,
open
soiled diapers, moldy carrots,
chicken
bones and greasy aluminum foil,
gum,
dental floss, a Hershey’s wrapper —
so that
I must pick up each piece
and
consider this too comprises
my life.
Henry Mortimer lives in Baltimore, Md. His poems have appeared in print and online publications. He writes Scribbleskiff.com, an occasional blog about books, music, and other distractions.
I looked for that which is not, nor can be,
And hope deferred made my heart sick in truth:
But years must pass before a hope of youth
Is resigned utterly.
I watched and waited with a steadfast will:
And though the object seemed to flee away
That I so longed for, ever day by day
I watched and waited still.
Sometimes I said: This thing shall be no more;
My expectation wearies and shall cease;
I will resign it now and be at peace:
Yet never gave it o’er.
Sometimes I said: It is an empty name
I long for; to a name why should I give
The peace of all the days I have to live
Yet gave it all the same.
Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfit
For healthy joy and salutary pain:
Thou knowest the chase useless, and again
Turnest to follow it.
