Huffy

by Jim Landwehr

beneath these wheels of my three speed Huffy
summit avenue races by – a road taking me
and my brothers past the mansions of attorneys
brokers and bankers – we are not impressed by
their wealth and stature – because we are going
fishing while they build their empires on
scotch and mutual funds – we aim to build ours
on peanut butter sandwiches and fat carp down
at the mighty miss – school’s out for summer
and fall is a distant dream that is lost in the
bottom drawer of my tackle box swinging
precariously from the handlebar of my
three speed Huffy.

###

Jim Landwehr’s poetry collection, Written Life, was released in March of 2015. His first book, Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir was published in 2014. He has non-fiction stories published in Main Street Rag, Prairie Rose Publications, Boundary Waters Journal, Forge Journal, MidWest Outdoors Magazine and others. His poetry has been featured in Torrid Literature Journal, Wisconsin People and Ideas Magazine, Off the Coast Poetry Journal, and many others. He enjoys fishing, kayaking, biking and camping with his kids in the remote regions of Minnesota. Jim lives and works in Waukesha, Wisconsin with his wife Donna, and their two children.

This, Many Times

by darlene anita scott

After Kindred, 1979
It looks like noise.
The interruption of her is not just blood
but a cautious letting of the tools of a trade
long benefiting others while she stood
with one half her arm buried in a wall,
a time, a space that travels through her veins
as if an intracoastal waterway between Now and Then.
Sometimes when I drive I-95,
the part that is the Route 1 of my father’s boyhood,
the autosave feature of my blood flips through its catalog.
It could be noise.
My dad appears in my dreams and my temper
often enough that when his phone number appears
on my caller ID, Daddy? I say jovially like a joke
is being played, half expecting to hear
water, humming. Which may explain
when I met her, I already knew her.
The blood does not forget. And noise is its
coagulate. This. Many times.
Every time: genesis.

###

darlene anita scott is an insatiable daydreamer and so-so runner who likes homemade popcorn and alone time–not necessarily together.

Her poetry appears in diode, The Baltimore Review, Quiddity, and J Journal among others.

scott’s manuscript Marrow imagines Jonestown Guyana, a spiritual community whose residents were coerced into suicide by their spiritual leader. It was a semi-finalist for the Crab Orchard Review First Book Award and still seeks a publisher. In the meantime she is developing Breathing Lessons 101 a poetry collection illustrated with her own photos that explores the good girl stereotype as it is applied to girls of color.

scott lives and teaches in Virginia.

A Majority of Sound

by Tom Sheehan

Silence comes
out of bullets
that rot in the Earth
or a bucket
of grenades
some meek hero
threw overboard
in the Leyte Gulf.

Silence is
a wet stone
without a carved name
taking storm knives
in a mile-wide
cemetery in
the Philippines
or bones
in a Kwajalein cave
coming up white as
good teeth
in a hard jaw.

Silence is
a big RBI some kid
drove home in Kansas
in ’41 and a father
remembers the ball
going like a bullet
into left center.

Silence is
a brother swimming
100 miles off
a New Zealand beach
saying your name,
through salt
in his teeth,
one last time.
###
Sheehan served in 31st Infantry, Korea 1951-52, and graduated Boston College, 1956. His books are Epic Cures; Brief Cases, Short Spans; A Collection of Friends; From the Quickening; The Saugus Book; Ah, Devon Unbowed; Reflections from Vinegar Hill; This Rare Earth & Other Flights; Vigilantes East; Korean Echoes (nominated, Distinguished Military Award); The Westering, (nominated, National Book Award); Murder at the Forum; Death of a Lottery Foe; Death by Punishment, and Vigilantes East. Published in 2014-15 were An Accountable Death, In the Garden of Long Shadows, The Nations, Where Skies Grow Wide, Cross Trails and Six Guns, Inc. He has multiple work in Ocean Magazine, Rosebud, Green Silk Journal, Linnet’s Wings, Serving House Journal, In Other Words-Merida, Copperfield Review, KYSO Flash,, Soundings East, Literally Stories, Literary Orphans, Indiana Voices Journal, Frontier Tales, Western Online Magazine, Provo Canyon Review, Rope & Wire Magazine, The Literary Yard, KYSO Journal, Fiction on the Web, The Path, Faith-Hope and Fiction etc. He has 30 Pushcart nominations, and five Best of the Net nominations (and one winner) and short story awards from Nazar Look for 2012- 2015. A chapbook, Swan River Daisy, is currently in publication process, and two short story collections have been accepted for publication.

Roadside

by Theresa Lockhart

People used to flick cassettes from car windows,
Keep driving, laughing, rejecting songs no
Longer worth hearing, in their opinion.

Roadside ribbons blow casually upward,
Pretending they are attached to balloons
That never touch the ground,
Instead they settle in static coils amidst weeds and gravel.

Hitchhikers,
Abandoned vegetable stands,
Crosses in memoriam and
Kitsch attractions,
Were these tossed out a window as well?

If picked up and gently unwound, would someone
Else be able to hear the songs of our past?

###

Theresa Lockhart lives and teaches in Michigan. Her work is forthcoming from Kaleidotrope.

Veils

by Sindhu Verma

Veils of so many colors,
Dressing windows and wounds,
Opaque, thick, heavy
Fluid, translucent, transparent,
Thick, heavy, dusty,
Flimsy, paper-thin, perforated.
Embroidered, embellished
Torn and frayed,
For every time and every mood.
For every person and every place.
Drifting in the wind,
Wafting in the breeze;
Drawn in daylight,
Thrown open in the night;
Ripped apart by thieves,
Violated by voyeurs.
You look at me and I look at you
Through yours through mine.

###

I live in Bangalore, India and work in a multinational semiconductor company as a wireless systems engineer. I love working on technology but also have a keen interest in literature and fashion. I write poems and design and stitch clothes outside my working hours. I want to eventually pursue a career in poetry and fashion as well. My poems are heartfelt and personal and they carry my thoughts and feelings about the world around me. My poems have appeared in Verse-Virtual, The Rain, Party & Disaster Society and Reading Hour.

Wisp

by Johanne Boulat

When the wind strummed
The electric lines
I think I finally heard it then –

What whisper made
The heads of wheat
Sway in the timid light
Of unburnt day –

It was the flesh of clouds
The breeze of opened reveries.

###

Johanne  Boulat is a freelance translator and editor. She will soon begin her Masters in English at The University of Lausanne.

Clouds

by Robin Dawn Hudechek

The cloud is a dog, paws tucked under his chin,
nails curled above the mountain pass,
and another cloud is a maiden.
The dog rolls on his back and the sun
illuminates tufts of fur
the girl’s hand bends to touch
and can no longer reach.
Fur spikes up in hard outlines of light.
Across the mountain range
and an expanse of blue,
a white vein of lightning pulses.
The sky is a leaf curling upward
and backward into dusk.

###

Robin Dawn Hudechek received her MFA in creative writing from UCI. She has two chapbooks: Ghost Walk, The Inevitable Press, 1997, and Ice Angels, published in IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks, Silver Birch Press, October, 2015. Robin lives in Laguna Beach, CA with her husband, Manny and two beautiful cats.

Exile

by Howie Good

Looking serious
and faintly melancholy,
a grounded sparrow
gazes skyward,
a little feather hat
in hues of brown
tending toward gold.

###

Howie Good’s latest poetry collections are Bad for the Heart (Prolific Press) and Dark Specks in a Blue Sky (Another New Calligraphy). He is recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his forthcoming collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements.

Washed Away

by Tricia Mccallum

Rushing in to a truck stop,
Three a.m.
A quick rest room visit; coffee.
I stand alongside her.
She leans in deeply over a sink,
Peering in the mirror,
Wide-eyed under the fluorescent light.

I try not to stare.
She’s washing her face
With the bright green soap from the wall dispenser,
Pumping out more and more,
Lathering it up until her face is thick with it.
Her diaphanous gown grazes the floor.
Her silver heels are perilously high.
She may be 17.

Do you want some coffee? Some food, I ask,
Quietly,
She turns to me, her face traced with suds,
No. Thank you, Ma’am,
In a tone that heads off
Anything more.

She needed to eat.
Her face must be stinging by now.
She’ll snag her dress on those heels.

###

Tricia Mccallum is an author and a writer. You can follow can follow her at Huffington post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tricia-mccallum/ or at Micropoetry http://micropoetry.com/author/celtpoet

Things the dead leave

by Rick Richardson

Two fishing poles, a feather,
a leather jacket with holes
on both elbows, forty-four
dollars and change in
an envelope, some dope,
a pair of worn out cowboy boots,
a clay flute shaped like a bird
that can’t whistle a tune worth a lick,
an unused bus ticket, a picture
of two kids laughing pretending
to fly; an eyelash in my eye.

###

Rick Richardson is a professional archaeologist, an avid reader, dog lover, father, and poet. Rick lives on the coast of North Carolina. His poetry has been published in the University of San Francisco’s The Ignatian Literary Magazine and The Ginosko Literary Journal.

Grasp

By Shannon P. Laws

Mist disappears into clean air
Turns into the space between us

Once we were something no one could hold
All could see, none could breathe

An occurrence that clung under limbs
A pair like lady slipper and pine

###

Shannon P. Laws, Bellingham WA, is a 2013 Mayor’s Arts Award (Bellingham) and 2015 Community Champion Award (Writer’s International Network, Richmond, B.C.) recipient. Her poetry appeared in Clover-A Literary Rag, Five Willows Literary Review, From Bellingham With Love, and Noisy Water: Poetry from Whatcom County, Washington. She has performed in Western Washington University’s “Erotic Poetry Night”, the “West Coast Tagore Festival”, Writers International Network Canada, Village Books “Literature LIVE” and worked as a contributing poet for the Chuckanut Sandstone Writers Theater and Bellingham Repertory Dance Company “Phrasings” collaboration

Shannon is a co-founding member of World Peace Poets Bellingham, who promote harmony through words for local and international writers at various public readings, including the annual “Read-in! Write-On!” event.

In 2015 she coordinated a charity album “Blue Skies for Bellingham” featuring 17 local bands. All album proceeds go to the Blue Skies for Children’s Our Little Wishes Instrument Loaner and Enrichment Programs. These programs provide low income, homeless and foster children ages six to fifteen living in Whatcom and Skagit County funding for music lessons and musical instrument rental to help increase hope and raise self-esteem.

Her publications include two poetry books, Madrona Grove and Odd Little Things. Her next book “Fallen” is set to release fall 2016.

Akizuki

by Joe Helmick

Once a year the cherry blossoms burst into view
lining the promenades and chic avenues.
All the while people stroll and exclaim
how Nature in her wonder endures such fame.

With your girl hand in hand, sashay to and fro
over bridges where gurgling brooks and streams do flow,
and the trunks of the trees are covered with moss
soft and thick like velvet deep green in a gloss.

And the petals on the flowers stand out anew
in a twilight of evening the sun sets into
the mountains of shadows tall and bold
keeping guard o’re the village where sakura are told

to be the most grand and vintage all around,
form a tunnel the branches with lanterns are bound.

###
The sonnets Joe has submitted were all composed in and around Fukuoka Japan during his sojourn there as an English teacher in the 1990’s. He has also taught English in the remote mountains of Jeongseon Korea for 5 years and recently 1 year teaching in Riyadh Saudi Arabia.

His hobbies are hatha (Sanskrit for Sun ha, and Moon tha) yoga, vegan-vegetarian cuisine, and both landscape and figure drawing. Travelling to archaeological sites in Asia and Europe for the purpose of creating a drawing portfolio, bicycle touring, refining his singer-songwriter persona for performance, and mastering Japanese language are some
of his recent interests and goals.

Joe is an eccentric type person who has had an exhilarating out-of-body experience (In a dream to awaken) and prefers a bohemian lifestyle to one of convention. Now in the USA, he would like to expand his circle of friends who share common interests and values such as creativity, adventure, open minded, healthy vegetarian lifestyle, and athletic fitness.

Money, as viewed by a poet

by Edilson A. Ferreira

I suffer from cold fits when I hear of money.
Does a poet need money? Does he understand it?
They ask if I want to sell my house, my car,
how many dollars do I want for them.
I rarely remember if they are mine,
or how much had I paid for them, if so.
They do not know how impertinent they are.
Should I value my things, my labor, my time,
or, by chance, my life?
People cannot understand poet’s measures.
Is it possible they do not know that they are
the human happiness,
a plain smile
and permanent beauty’s ravishment?

###

Mr. Ferreira is a Brazilian poet who writes in English rather than Portuguese, in order to reach more people. Has been published in four printed British Anthologies, online or printed reviews like Cyclamens and Swords, Right Hand Pointing, Boston Poetry Magazine, West Ward Quarterly, TWJ Magazine, The Lake, The Stare’s Net, The Provo Canyon, Snapdragon, The Gambler and some others. Short listed in four American Poetry Contests, lives in a small town with wife, three sons and a granddaughter and began writing after retirement as a Bank Manager. See more of his poetry in www.edilsonmeloferreira.wordpress.com.

An alliance with sleep

by Vasudha Chhotray

Come sleep,
be my ally.
Better an unwilling alliance,
than to stand alone.

And don’t leave me with the morning.

The night brings me stars,
maybe a million strangers.
And the day?
Nothing.
But one iridescent sun.

Come sleep,
ally with me.
Ally roughly,
if I make you angry.

Be a reluctant lover.
Refuse to be wooed,
into my selfish love.

I mean nothing,
of my spoken words.
I am faithless,
when awake.

Come sleep,
ally with me.

###

Vasudha Chhotray teaches politics and development studies at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. She studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and Lady Shri Ram College for Women, New Delhi. She lives in Norwich in England and Mumbai in India, and travels extensively. Her poems have appeared in the Telegraph and the Indian Quarterly, amongst other places.

Spider Medicine

by Angela Muir

Spent the day relocating spiders from their homes
Tucked in corners and on window sills
Refreshing the damp towels with dry ones
And wiping the slates clean

Chalk powder collected from years of ideas
Now just dust among the banana peels
And lemon rinds

Soon I will put the books and old letters in boxes
Stacked and labeled
Ready to ship

Twenty four days of sea sick pans and denim cut offs
Until the anchor drops

And then I weave again
New life made from shreds of tattered scarves stored through the winters

I can only hope you have your silk to share.

###

Angie Muir is an artist, writer and yogi living in Kailua, Hawaii. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan where she studied English, Theater and Film. She spent ten years in Seattle working on several short independent films and writing a feature length screenplay now in post-production. Currently, Angie works with The Spirit Weavers Gathering and aspires to finish her first collection of poetry by the end of the year.