Rich Ives

POETRY GROUP 5-10

EMBALMING CLOUDS

if the name of the architect is Mr. Rock perhaps the name of the fallen rock
should be Mr. Man it appears there has been a mistake at the mortuary
Mr. Rock has already been filled with the preservative known as Scotch

Mr. Rock however is English and Mr. Man was thrown at him to create this
accident and clouds have nothing useful to do with arriving at the mortuary
but afterwards small clouds are installed to replenish the deceased’s potentials

Mr. Rock is still a child like all men but now he’s a dead child
Mr. Man left a piece of himself in Mr. Rock’s head because he’s broken
no one removed it now formaldehyde comes out of the closet

oh no oh no says Mortuary Director Glenlivet too brightly who is named
for his liver this blood is still pulsing Mr. Rock is not seriously a dead man
and Director Glenlivet ceases and desists his ghoulish draining

whereupon Glenlivet offers a cute little suture-bow to the sliced vein
and Mr. Rock is filled rather than emptied until borrowed essential fluids
adequately support the return of pre-embalming opportunities

Director Glenlivet begins floating himself again now pickled and disguised
as Mr. Cloud but no sign of rain in his levitated mortuary heaven persists
and meanwhile the guilty indifference of Mr. Man grows legendary

later at the opening of the new mortuary they will all laugh about this and the party
will laugh about them and the indifference of the trees will laugh about everything else
but the clouds will not laugh and the rain will only fall upon them equally

POCKET FULL OF WINGS

a young man often builds something supportive with wood
this is not what a man is but what a man does and a tree
or a cloud are only tools for the creation of his man-things

a man’s first man-thing is often above him like a tree-house
and no women are allowed in paradise number one
paradise number two could be sympathetic clouds that melt quickly

paradise number three is not a woman but a young man’s dream
of a woman which the man creates as if he were a helpful tree
containing a house that was ready to offer itself to the woman

but that tree continues climbing its own ladder of dreams
which always returns to the ancient sun and father sun
may still fill the tree with leafy man-child simplicity

trees are always pointing and they never get where they’re going
until they let go and find themselves feeding what fed them
a young man is not a tree but the hope that remains after reaching

wood taken from the tree waits not in green dreams but graying houses
wood is the holding part which the man-child must use to create new rooms
which contain moonlit intentions and he will first be mistaken and later mistaken again

that’s not something that deserves criticism it’s not the same as
throwing spoons at butterflies or robbing postal workers or eating stale mutton
but be careful now falling clouds do not dream of transcendent wood

nor do falling clouds write epics about mankind or weather’s acceptance
falling clouds won’t explain what they’re doing or do it over again
each cloud is a tentative thing made of waiting and then knowing

flying ants were filling the young man’s pockets with wings
and of course there is pain here you’ll like it a lot
best advice I ever got says the old man

THE TENDENCY TO RELINQUISH THE BURDEN

perhaps you have wondered if fear is a prison
or an innocence that separates you from others but a prison
removes you from the source of your imprisonment

you don’t have to lock up a box of fear like a prison it can be
shared because opposing dreams live in the wood
which has been taken from vertical history

when the innocent man-child can see the determined tree
approaching the top of its misdirected cloud-ladder
his innocence falls away like a useless appendage

the women are watching what complicates them and
they place rocks to keep the dreamy ladder from rising
into man-heaven where no more men can be made

but man-heaven is lonely and falls day by day with the rain
upon the shoulders of the waiting women who carry this burden
as if it might pop out of them and walk away

THE SONG OF THE CLOUD CRADLE

now the clouds are opening and singing a song we’ve heard before
and it falls upon leafy conical ears that reach out to gather
enough sunshine to hear that deep old voice in the wood

listen with your tongue unhinged like the birds
such naked accessible ears gather more than we understand
and spread it around which smells like a baby urinating

aren’t you going to kiss the smelly fallen clouds aren’t you
going to lick the salt from the corner of the baby’s troubled eye
aren’t you going to cover the table tonight with terrestrial longing

hitch a ride on one of those old sky turtles we thought were deities
the wet moon creaks on its hinges and seems to be folding out over a porthole
as if it were a milked drink you could spill all over the deck of its longing

caught in the branches of the king’s favorite tree the last cloud before sunrise
soaks up the opportunities and bloodies itself for the sun
as if that pagan creature’s song were wounded back to peasantry

Günter’s worried about the snow with its friends all melting away
don’t expect him to act like fallen sky doesn’t matter
Ingeborg told the neighbor’s kids to leave him alone for a long time

listen to the ridiculous babies licking themselves with their beaks
musty nests and closets filled with dormant odors opening everywhere
you wouldn’t even be able to hear yourself if that weren’t you singing

REJUVENATION MONOLOGUE OF THE FALLING ROCK

the rocks’ offspring gather teeming with visitations of rain
children of broken down planets and energy re-cycled
what can you say of your parents who separated so many of you

blown about the voice of dirt your singing a granular thrust
through hardscrabble breakfast what can you say
that is not said better by soil given to a random neighbor

each grain hobbles its own tentative shoe but patient justice stands and
admires its accomplishments while children disassemble themselves
and toss about their lives in a frenzy of starting and more starting

brush quickly away the dangers and let the funneling field offer
internal fingers for the mystery because touching back isn’t always painful
follow the late rain into everything and follow the worm back out of your excess

adjust the invisible planet of the new home too small to fail
pedestrian energy disseminates the walls and soaks up little
generosities it’s a birthday of every moment spilling transitions

once more is so inevitable it’s small enough to go unnoticed
once more is not enough to move past me keep going
once more is what you say to me when I listen to myself

© Rich Ives 2013

Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Dublin Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Daily and many more. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. In 2011 he received a nomination for The Best of the Web and two nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. He is the 2012 winner of the Creative Nonfiction Prize from Thin Air magazine. His book of days, Tunneling to the Moon, is currently being serialized with a work per day appearing for all of 2013 at http://silencedpress.com.

John Grey

THREE POEMS

INVADERS

Alien craft over Washington DC
or was that a Mexican truck
heading north toward the border.

Four-eyed monsters,
says the supermarket weekly.
Illegal monsters,
declares talk radio.

They’re armed with ray guns,
their technology is so advanced,
they intend us great harm...

They’re squeezed into
the truck’s secret compartment,
sweaty and starved of breath,
one or two already dead,
and yes, they intend us great harm...

Their planet’s dying.
They want ours.
Their country’s a basket case.
They’re looking for work.

THE HOOKER WITH THE ROSE TATTOO

A tattoo is nothing more than a look back
at the night you had it done.
Were you drunk? Did some guy dare you?
It’s a lovely red rose but it’s a flower from seven years ago.
Today it would be a heart saying “Michael”
or maybe the devil or a diamond or a star.
A man rubs your back, thinks what luscious petals,
but that’s not what you’re giving him.
He gets Michael, the guy you’d rather be with.
Or the devil, the imp that sleeps with all comers.
Or a diamond, the moneyed dream that pretends
to make this worth it.
Or that star, the ultimate in elevations,
the coldest for all its bright light.
So let him have sex with his nose in yesterday’s budding.
It’s wilted. It’s dead.
You’re wilted. You’re dead.
It’s a skin to tell a lie.

CHIPS ALMOST CASHED IN

It's 2046,
the oldest living Deadhead
is on his deathbed ...
the marijuana's medicinal,
the music's immaterial
because he can't hear it anyway.
Over and over,
he mutters the word 'Truckin"
to the great-grandchild
seated faithfully at his side.
Soon, he'll join Jerry Garcia
in that great outdoor concert
in the sky.
It's as he's always said:
Life sucks,
then you tie-die,
then you die.

© John Grey 2013

John Grey is an Australian-born poet, works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Chrysalis and the science fiction anthology, “Futuredaze”with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Sanskrit and Fox Cry Review.

Mike Finley

THREE POEMS

Toothbrush

My brother and I peed into the toilet,
our streams dueling one another,
the amazing hydraulics of a 7 and 9 year old.

Then we brushed our teeth and Pat bumped me
and my toothbrush sprang into the unflushed water.

If we flushed away the evidence it might
break our grandparents' pipes.
If they came upon it they would surely be annoyed,
and I had made up my mind
I was not going in after it.

Grandpa Lawrence, thin and diabetic,
stood in the doorway and without a word
knelt and retrieved the dripping toothbrush.

We'll get you a new one, he said quietly,
and rinsed his hands.
We didn't know he was a farmer and lived his life in piss.

But we gaped at each other, the way kids do,
realizing someone was wholly on our side.

Kansas & Arkansas

Spring flows all around us or ought to
each field of corn is taut
with arrows and bows
Our hands can't contain
the gifts we are given

We subsisted on shucks
and gathered in sheaves

Blind as corn and armed
to the eyes
Stethoscopes hang from every ear
Everyone craves
the combination

In all this flatness we
keep needing to jump

Dukkha
in Buddhism, the inevitability of suffering

Some folks have to live in shit
Others live next door to it

No escape and if there is
The 'suffering of no suffering' is his

The pain of unfeeling, not being at all
A cavity that swallows the soul

So do not envy the next guy's grass
Everyone gets it up the ass

© Mike Finley 2012

Mike Finley is a Pushcart winner -- not a nominee! And he lives in St. Paul, where he operates a small foundation helping Mpls punks in trouble

Donal Mahoney

Raspberry Hives

The ancient man
with raspberry hives
on his cheeks
since childhood
will live alone
no longer.
He’ll marry, he says,
the first woman who’ll have him.
Till now
he has wanted
to die
as he’s lived,
alone in his room
with the radio playing,
the water in the bathtub
dripping.
The drone of hours,
however, has become
the drone of years
and the ancient man
with raspberry hives
on his cheeks
since childhood
fears death will convert
his hives into pocks,
take his body
but reject his soul.
For reasons
he can’t articulate,
he believes
if he weds
the first woman
who’ll have him,
death will have reason,
for the first time,
to do the job right.

© Donal Mahoney 2012

Donal Mahoney has had work published in MuDJob and other print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
Some of his earliest work can be found at The Gravedigger's Son See also: Christmastime in America and In Memoriam

Shelby Stephenson

"I rise because you sink"

I rise because you sink.
I smell the nests of birds I pass where we have walked before.
Give me your hand.

Everywhere I go I see your face.

“Talk to me!”

Let’s go camping: you can play your uke.
We’re a duo.
O I know others might want to see
how we borrow from the angels to keep our living strong.

When you seek out the roads, I’ll be there.
We need no more, now that the best is yet to come.
The selves we have been or become
lived centuries ago in others.

Your mother’s an expression of beauty.
And mine.
No mother or dad climbs above another for the ride.
I am trying to show our best character,
as the poet takes Depression out of its grave
and stands it up and says, “Run!”
And Garbage climbs into the truck.

Past, Present, and Future get up and race, too, looking for a warmer clime.
To be in the middle of something is to hear you say on a cold, February morning,
“You want to walk with me?”

"I say I'm always wanting you"

I say I’m always wanting you; having you makes it easier to face tomorrow,
even those times I can’t touch you,
like lovers in a fog over there in the Nimrod Stephenson Memorial Cemetery,
especially Martha Johnson and Greatgrandpap Manly Stephenson (died 1912),
Civil War Vet and lover, farmer, and friend to July, the slave girl.
Always loving you shuts me out and hurts me too.
So you walk with Cricket and I catch you later,
my intentions encouraging your style.
Behold, the sun itself, and on its visage, slating its breast on yours,
the balances and bends, right here, where the roots of my raising run deep.
See the frosted grass, the white and blue clouds.
Behold, in western Johnston County, far from western New York State,
or in Wisconsin, where we lived in the brittle cheer of ice-fisherman and sailors,
behold, on Lake Mendota, those sail-boats writing smoothly as on glass −
there in Pittsburgh, the trolley and the Cathedral of Learning,
the lake at Canonsburg where we camped and fished and cooked.

Your eyes float out of sweetgum, come to me through that buttermilk-sky
while you lean against the moon and cheese, your hair the breath of rye
tall under stars higher than I can stretch, though I reach for you
and our fingers almost touch dawn.
The sun squeezes light in my face.
An image sweeps before me, how Sunset must come with taste and as much grace.
The rock gathers us around and holds what splendor spins,
an iceberg in our dreams, melting, the sweat and panic, no button to push.
Tell me how you swish and set your body poised to frail and sing?

Could this be a dream?
I sit and look out − away from meanness and pain.
You are the castle of my dreams, my junior and senior highs, prep and graduate,
the in and out, history and varied trimming of discussions,
the balm and the fever.
You are intention set in sprung motion −
hail to rain, blushes in snow hushed −
you are this place, this South
come down from the winter of your birthplace.

I step back to see workings intricate and beautiful −
the thousands of farms we pass,
the surprise and the drama, the once-upon-a-time-ness
we met and came here,
quiet, certain.

"I want to hold your hand"

I want to hold your hand.
Exercise did nothing for me.
My eyes on the lilac in the hedge, I hurry back to you,
noting the lot-well, filled in.

With your father, the lawyer, entrepreneur, marrying Linda Collens (four daughters)
your mother, Newton Center actress, daughter of Charles Collens, architect (Cloisters)
with the Letchworth connection, Mabel, your father’s mother living on Owasco Lake,
with our courtship there lapping and ebbing and camping in Letchworth Park,
with William Prior Letchworth giving the land to the State of New York,
with Letchworth your middle name,
with Glenwood Falls marveling beacon sparkling,
with the slave girl, July, bearing up to show us how to live,
with One The Angel in the grave working us to humanity’s steeple.
I’ve had nothing but pleasure since you’ve been well.
Every day’s a holiday, today, Valentine’s.
To your memory I’m true − including the three sleepless nights soon after our honeymoon,
the valium your dad gave you for sleeping, your yearning unfocused,
your body present though not returning the ritual we celebrated 30 July 66.
Rings of gold will not rust our 50th six years away.
O the magnetic flesh waiting.
Where the soul moves you turn to distant places, your walks along the old house
calling for the hearth to line up our flames, stars shining bright.

Of relatives in “important” positions, ceremonies, recognitions −
all endorsements arrive in spirit so that they appear
shiny and unaligned with expectations
bearing the dawn and the dusk,
the first and last the same ever changeless and changed,
points of view, the edge of the water,
the wonderfulness of bluebirds, feeding in the field, their flights down,
fluttering gracefully as maidens praying.
The delicate curve the moon peals promises prayer,
as you keep your eye on the page, wanting to understand.
Others may wonder; yet friends shall walk in and complete the picture.

My heart’s stripped today.
It’s bulging with push.
The stars twinkle around us.
My feeling unfolds without a goal,
embracing inimitable women of the world.

© Shelby Stephenson 2012

Shelby Stephenson's Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the 2008 Bellday Poetry Prize, Allen Grossman, judge. Find out more at www.shelbystephenson.com

Gary Carson

The Weather of Railroads

Nodding on a cockcrow Amtrak,
Lulled by the ticking of ties,
The sweep of a floodstage Missouri,
Birds wheeling the luminous oxbows.

Railclatter crossing bells.

Back in the diner,
Conductor blows rings at forms:
“John door’s broke, AC’s broke,
the train crew’s broke…”

Trackside junkyards flow:
Miles of loading docks,
Rustpiles, tank cars on sidings.
Cranes dangle hooks over
Wrecks heaped like husks:
A school bus full of mufflers,
Cracked foundry ladles
Like church bells on a flatbed.

Black grandma across the aisle:
“Jesus what makes you breathe..,”

But Heaven’s only a switchback
In this here to there stream
Of iron slang and rocking Pullmans,

And we are the weather of railroads,
Just blowing through.

Thunderstorm Seen As an Event of the Central Nervous System

Midnight,
41st & Walnut,
walking the dog in the rain,
neural nets lulled
with St. Pauli Girl Dark,
Missouri Gold.

Sidewalks stream
this side of the optics.
High beams flare.
Twig snags whirlpool gutters.

The cyclone night
flows through the cortex,
synaptic triggers
on currents of association,
retinas wandering
riffles and pools,
archipelagos of blacktop,
focusing rain in lamp light,
snails in rings of reflection.

Dog sniffs
old black roots
then signs his name.

Splashing across Walnut
in lightning and downpour,
we are neon fiber,
conscious filaments.
Ventral roots thunder.
Alpha waves wash cellular shores.

The city pulses,
nervous with sirens,
the weather for tonight:

thunderheads of the spine,
drumrolls
in the reptilian complex.

Leviticus

Am That I Am burns a bush,
Cold flame, shrub of veins;
Lamb with seven horns & eyes
Savors a bed of flesh coals,
Fretting leprosy in fire,
Incense of screams, sentient offering;
Laps bullock blood & dung,
Demanding carcasses for idols,
Rams for sin, kids of goats
Stripped to the spine for Trinity;
Host of Hosts down on His knees,
Slurping gristle, rump, fat of the innards.

How He loves the little children.

© Gary Carson 2012

Gary Carson is the author of the apocalyptic thrillers Hot Wire and Phase Four, both available from Amazon and BlastedHeath.com. His short stories have appeared in Hardluck Stories, Noir Originals, and the 2009 Thuglit anthology, "Sex, Thugs and Rock & Roll." He edits and writes for The Ancient World Review (http://www.ancientworldreview.com) and Ominous Planet (http://www.ominousplanet.com), and his writer's site can be found at http://www.gacarson.com.

Donal Mahoney

BACK THEN AND WRITE NOW

When I began writing in 1960, there were no website "magazines." Print journals were the only place to have poems published. Writers used typewriters, carbon paper, a white potion to cover up mistakes and “snail mail” to prepare and submit poems for publication. Monday through Friday I'd work at my day job. Weekends I'd spend writing and revising poems. Revising poems took more time than writing them and that is still the case today, decades later.

On Monday morning on the way to work, I'd sometimes mail as many as 14 envelopes to university journals and "little magazines," as the latter were then called. Some university journals are still with us. Some are published in print only and others have begun the inevitable transformation by appearing in print and simultaneously on the web.

"Little magazines," especially those published in print without a presence on the web, are rare in 2012. One might say, however, that their format has been reincarnated in hundreds of website publications that vary in design, content and frequency of publication. Depending on the site, new poems can appear daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually. For many writers, these websites are a godsend. Some "serious" writers, however, still feel that a poem has not been "published" until it has appeared on paper.

I can't remember what postage cost in the Sixties but it was very cheap. Nevertheless, it would often take six months or more to hear back from many editors of university journals and little magazines. Sometimes I would get no response despite my enclosing the mandatory stamped self-addressed envelope (SASE).

Submission etiquette at that time required that a writer send nothing other than the poems, usually a maximum of three, and the SASE. What's more, simultaneous submissions were universally forbidden. I don't remember any editor wanting a biographical note until the piece was accepted and sometimes not even then. All that mattered was the poem and how much the editor liked it.

Today, in contrast, some web editors want a letter from the author up front "introducing" the poems and/or some aspect of the author's life. I've never been comfortable providing that kind of information in front of poems I'm submitting. I can't imagine lobbying for poems that I hope speak for themselves.

In the Sixties, my average acceptance rate was roughly one poem out of 14 submissions of three poems each. Two or three poems accepted rarely happened but my hopes were always high.

The rejected poems I'd revise if I thought they needed it; then I'd send all of them out again to different publications. Often the poems would have to be retyped because the postal process or some editor's fondness for catsup or mustard would result in messy returned manuscripts. I followed this pattern of writing, revising and submitting for seven years. I loved it because I didn't know any other way. I had no idea that in 30 years there would be an easier way to submit poems, thanks to the personal computer. What a difference. No more carbon paper. No more catsup or mustard.

In 1971 I quit writing after having had a hundred or so poems accepted by some 80 print publications ranging from university journals to hand-assembled little magazines. I even made it into a few commercial magazines and received checks for as much as $25.00. I was on a roll or so I told myself.

The reason I quit writing poems is because I had accepted a much more difficult day job as an editor with a newspaper. Previous editorial jobs had not been that taxing. I still had enough energy to work on poems at night as well as on weekends. But the new job wore me out. The money was good and helped me deal with expenses that had increased as my responsibilities had increased. Other demanding jobs would follow in subsequent decades. As a result, I didn't return to writing poems until 2008 after I had retired.

I hadn't really thought about working on poems in retirement but my wife bought me a computer and showed me where I had stored--37 years earlier--several cardboard boxes full of unfinished poems. It took a month or more to enter drafts of the 200 to 300 poems in my new computer. It took longer to revise and polish them. Finally, I sent out the “finished” versions by email to both online and print publications.

It took a few weeks at the start but eventually lines for new poems began to pop into my noggin. Alleluia! I was ever so thankful to "hear" them because it answered an important question--namely, could I still write new poems after such a long hiatus?

I found submitting by email a joy. For a while I sent an occasional poem by snail mail to journals that did not take email submissions. But in six months I stopped doing that. I did not want to lick envelopes any longer. Looking back over the last four years, I'm thankful for the response my work has received from various editors in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Since I am an old-timer writing and submitting poems, I'm sometimes asked if I notice any difference in the "market" for poetry in 2012 compared with the Sixties. I'm also asked if I would I do anything differently if I were starting out today.

Yes, I notice a difference in the "market" today, and, yes, I would do some things differently if I were starting out now.

If I were starting out now, I would revise poems even more than I did when I was young. I revised a lot back then and I revise a lot today. I believe strongly in something Dylan Thomas once said—namely, that no poem is ever finished; it is simply abandoned.

It's taken four years for me to gain some sense of how the "market" for poetry has changed over the last 40 years. In preparing my own submissions, I have had a chance to read a lot poetry by young writers, some already established and many unknown. Sometimes I compare their work in my mind with the work of poets I remember from the Sixties.

Although Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, among others, had their followers back in the Sixties, and still do today, I find that in 2012 "confessional" poetry has become even more prominent. Some of it strikes me as good, both in content and technique, but that is a subjective assessment. Much of it, however, strikes me as "raw," for want of a better word. In some cases I also find it difficult to distinguish certain poems from prose disguised in broken lines. I don't remember "prose poems" as a category unto itself when I started out. Today prose poems seem to be very well accepted in some circles but I suspect they would have been a hard sell in the Sixties.

I suppose as a stripling and now as a codger I have written what some might call "confessional" poetry, both good and bad. Nevertheless, I think a young writer does well to write about someone or something other than one's self. Observing other people carefully and writing about their mannerisms and aspects of their behavior can help to develop one's craft. This is important because as most writers know, writing poetry or fiction is as much a craft as it is an art and without craft, writing may never reach the level of art.

Perhaps it is my imagination but it seems that over the last couple of years there has been an increase in poems written about broken relationships or other distressful matters of the heart. The writers of these poems seem to be primarily women who sound very angry and no doubt with good cause.

Apparently male poets find it easier to move on from a break-up and seek love or companionship in all the right or wrong places. I don't think that's a new development, men being who they are. I hope it's not chauvinist of me to suggest that the power to motivate a man to behave better usually lies with the woman. I feel that a woman has a gift she should not unwrap too quickly no matter how eager a man may be to undo the ribbons. Not many ribbons were undone in the Fifties prior to vows. In that era, of course, women were old-fashioned by current standards. The ones who were not "old-fashioned" were called a lot of things but not "liberated."

There are other types of subject matter common in poetry today that didn't appear too frequently in the Sixties. Graphic sex, science fiction and horror seem to appeal to many male writers, although some females also like to write about these subjects today.

I've never been interested in horror and I doubt that I would have the imagination to handle it well. I never fantasize about anything that even borders on science fiction. Sex, on the other hand, is a different matter. But sex has always struck me as the easiest subject to write about. I could write about sex well, I believe, but why should I? Why should I make my wife angry? Even if I were single, I suspect I'd be restrained by a line from Emily Dickinson that I first read it in college. Ms. Dickinson wrote, "how public like a frog."

In contrast with my early years in writing, I am never satisfied today with a poem even when it has been published. If I go back and re-read a published poem a year later, I am certain to find something "wrong" with it and I feel obligated to fix it. Sometimes I can't fix it but in the process of trying, I occasionally find that I am suddenly in the middle of writing a different poem, an offshoot of the original piece or something entirely different. I've found benefits and problems in that.

Rodin's "The Thinker" is set in bronze and marble and not subject to revision but few if any of my poems acquire that status in my mind. And if one of them does, I eventually come to feel the poem could be improved, even if at that moment I might not know how to make it better. Maybe in six months I'll read it again and hear something errant in the lines that I will suddenly know how to fix. It doesn't hurt, I believe, for a writer to listen to a poem the way a mechanic listens to a motor. Both want to get everything right.

My purpose in writing this piece has been to record "for the ages" what it's been like writing and submitting poems in two distinct eras. I certainly like the ease with which technology today has enabled me to compose a poem. The "delete" key is wonderful. But there is something to be said for the anticipation caused by finding an envelope in the mailbox from an editor, the way a contributor might have done back in the Sixties. One knew immediately by the thickness of the envelope whether all three poems had been rejected or one or two of them had been accepted. That was a wonderful time for a young writer to cut his or her teeth.

© Donal Mahoney 2012

Note: MuDJoB Has not previously posted much in the way of non-fiction articles, but could not resist putting up this piece by Mr. Mahoney, and we think his insight into the "industry" may prove inspiring and perhaps helpful to other writers looking to get their stuff out there. Good writing will almost always find an appropriate venue. Thank you, Donal.

Donal Mahoney has had work published in MuDJob and various print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Mitch Grabois

He’d Never Met a Skinhead Hater

Thirty years ago
gentle Singh opened a jewelry box
to reveal eight kinds of pot
Sikhs are not too different from Rastafarians, he said
He grinned, and his long hair fell from his turban
He took a long toke
and reminded us that he was from a warrior class
With great pleasure he described ancient hand weapons
and their gristly uses
He’d never met a skinhead hater
with an automatic weapon

Tossing the I Ching

Careaga visits the same fountain
every five years on his birthday
It’s like tossing the I Ching
or asking God to write his name in the
Book of Life on Yom Kippur
Will he finally be recognized as the genius he is
and be hoisted in a chair above everyone’s head
like a Jewish groom,
or will he have to go back to the mailroom
and schlep mail?

He's Hardly a Robin

A bleached robin pulls a worm
from a brown spot on my lawn
I’ve applied Revive three times
but the blazing sun has its way
Drought has its way
I’m no tender green blade

© Mitch Grabois 2012

Mitch Grabois’ poetry and short fiction has appeared in over seventy literary magazines, most recently The Examined Life, Memoir Journal, Marco Polo Arts Mag, and Haggard and Halloo, all published this Spring and Summer. His novel, Two-Headed Dog was published in April by Dirt e-books, founded by NY agent Gary Heidt. He was born in the Bronx and now lives in Denver.

John Grey

SUDDEN DUST STORM

In the particles of dust, some of the face
gathers filthy pink and grubby-blue-eyed.
The day is willful. Human flesh is on trial.
A tempest hums inside this fog of dirt. Shards
of petal, waxy and green, surrender to the
imposition of some distant desert. In dead of
lake, water cries out to be saved. Wind whips
up the haze. Skin croaks froglike. The
earth crouches back inside its hovel of oxygen,
refuses to remember the better days. A solitary house
disappears in a powdery flood. !f only it would rain
but moisture has been warned off. The sun is cruel,
joins the rampage, rides roughshod over shutter
blinking air. What happened to paradise? Eden fights
for breath, its lungs clogged. Sorry, it says. I never
meant for this to happen. The map just laughs. You never know
what's coming when you live next door to the devil.

Inside, you frantically shut blinds, tape windows,
as if the weather's coming for you. A bad dream
finds itself with feather duster in one hand.
The determined gray splatters the bedroom,
screams underneath the kitchen door. It knows
no human laws. Brows knit with grit. Appetites
cower before the mighty horde. The artificial
perfect lawn is the first to go. Roses die, praised,
at the end, for their shriveled candor. 'The world
convenes as an army of whips. Drunken ash grows wings.

ON THE DEATH OF LUELLA

Something huge and luminous fell out of the sky,
The earth surrendered, somewhere in its oceans.
Lower depths ran for their lives.
The sea-bed rose like a sudden heaven-bound tide.
You sat on your veranda, watched the bleak horizon
fire hoses at the stars.
The harsh red of the following day flung itself backward
against the bars of night's dark dungeon,
exploded in a scream of strontium and blood.
The moon dripped like a wax candle.
Orpheus gathered everything he could
from the crumbling underworld,
streaked across the wretched firmament. .
And a great tsunami headed your way.
You were on your third rum.
Your chestnut hair did nothing to discourage
your throat from sighing softly.
It was that night when it happened.
Your lips lay like a lovely child
in the cradle of your mouth.
Your eyes were at the height of their ascendancy.
And your skin announced to all and sundry pearlers:
dive here.
But your dog licked your fingers
like no man could.
And you laughed at the belligerent burst of water.
The sound of your voice did nothing but tree you.
Long after you were swept away,
you poured yourself another rum,

THE DRUMMING OF THE ETERNAL

Eternity lacked blue eyes and long blonde hair
despite what the nuns had told me.
Sure, it stretched farther than any time had a right to

but it was missing the touch of a soft hand on my wrist bone,
the attentive breath inches from my ear.
And if feeling couldn't see reason, then what could reason feel?

First Communion threw up its hands at all physical law.
Gravity? What is that? Evolution? Who invited it to the ritual?
It was wafer and wine or nothing. And there I knelt,

all body and blood and, despite the priest's exhortations,
unable to taste the likeness.
And there was eternity, the ultimate reward,

the payback for the childhood bullies, the dud romances,
the lousy jobs, the pain in the gut.
But what of those who lived among equals,

who loved the here and now, who wrote for a living,
whose health ticked blindly on.
Heaven, for all its scrubbed walls and floors,

its blissed out angels, was more nursing home than shining apogee.
I still had a life to lead, a good one. It would be nothing compared to all of time.
But something sure could learn from nothing.

© John Grey 2012

John Grey is an Australian-born poet, who works as a financial systems analyst. Recently published in Poem, Spindrift, Prism International and the horror anthology, "What Fears Become" with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Hurricane Review and Pinyon.
http://www.carcinogenicpoetry.com/search/label/John%20Grey

Kenneth P. Gurney

First November Tuesday

sold
its offspring for a handful of silver coins

and a substance that blotted out the moon
so dreamers would have to face
their auctioned reality

and a cube of the masses’ hunger
that fit easily in a box for next day shipping

and the rejection of an amazing woman
who chose not to have her face
added to Mount Rushmore

and a small breach in the universe
that let the finches fly
to a happier place
before the back room seamstress
sewed it up.

We Took a Slow Walk to Paris

Your statement
The ocean is a field of Daffodils.
allowed us to cross the Atlantic.

We entered the train station
moments after the Orient Express
departed for Istanbul.

I always wanted to interrupt
Hemingway
at Thirty-nine rue Descartes

or tip a cauldron of hot wax
for Robert the Strong
during the Viking siege.

You simply wanted to sip coffee
at several unnamed bistros
located on a leisurely tour

of cobble streets
while in search of a colored pastel
active in the hand of Degas

or settle for the magic
of a steady rain shower
in a movie by Woody Allen.

Usually

Sometimes, I find myself wondering
about cantaloupe moods
and how their moods change
from green to ripe to rotten.

And whether they like
being set on the counter
adjacent to oranges or apples
or honeydew or a buttered piece of toast.

And if in any way they say farewell
or shalom or aloha or ciao
with the first incision of a knife
that penetrates to their hollow core

or if they simply fear for their seeds
going out into the world
and how birds and ants
might end their vine.

Usually, I grab the vanilla ice cream
and fill the natural bowl
of the half cantaloupe
with two or three scoops.

© Kenneth P. Gurney 2012

Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM, USA with his beloved Dianne. His latest book is This is not Black & White. To learn more visit http://www.kpgurney.me/Poet/Welcome.html

Rusty Kjarvik

Another worldview

Law
at dawn's sacrificial wading

a groove sweetly prized
as the relative truth of our frantic, overgrown hallucination

in sickening respite
from the earliest lame vanity

before the show appears
as human death

powerless to the mold
resounding to an inner frequency

deranged sad laughter
groaned thick in a sumptuous tumult

under the prying talons
a delectable fire answers in blues-swing hoodlum homes

temporary as the submissive
upbringing of one purifying lash

rending the nerve-wracked fingers
of torturous warring
within the Nile’s tantrum phase

skinny, lingering smoke fix
and we eye the 99 names

to the moment's reaching up
to the negative female symbol

comrade against these forbidden culturati
timed to the arrival of the outdoor preacher

worshipping the lost dead
world of stone and writing.

Northern mind

lip sweet
and unfettered thought
swung music
intensified in the intimate romantic environment

ideal collection of the two-bodied
trailing waves in the ocean
of serene all-encompassed feeling

silently bringing the visions of the blessed to realized heights
in amnesic bliss
hearing only the fizzing of a tongue
sifting through the hydrated glory of a deep violet sight
darkly fixed inside the arborescent wilderness

to the foreign drum of an impenetrable toxicity
left unconsumed and needed by feet
lit under concrete sustained magic
of the urban disillusioned

northern mind
bringing in the steady rings of a consciousness
prepared as the instrument of a government culture
performing the theatrical stronghold

of minority no-release
a fish-burdened town of extracted marrow
through procedural temperaments
that go un-led and steam up
with chaotic strictures
that demean the meaning
of man and woman
or masculine-feminine time

Lonesome day of movement

grown thin with distance
as another hairy, greased band shines
reckless before the arrow spy
and his envisioned grave

who hails cabs
in the Siberian gruel of angry change
as we ransack the factories of uproarious disrepair
and the mechanistic bored train crashes
killing the meagre European glance
into the frantic rush of civilized absence

lonesome day of movement
through spider web sands
and drunken coasts
of blood red remorse
filing in by the pulp fiction pages
breeding scummy eyes that talk in kisses
and swoon on the porch of another early breakfast

groom who wails curiously at night for the pub dreary life
that awaits
after the cut string of golden dreams seethes and falls
to the ash of the smoky avalanche noon

in Canada’s hibernation mind
of the un-bloomed
and unborn

wenches who lament
the dry phantom queen and her uncaring cool sleeping high
with simple touches of the grave beyond
landing in sun croaked alien poverty

my first wishes grow callous
at the knock of a burnt vegetable gum
that sneaks into the cracks of layered skin
beaming with the color of a white night
turning in late with the last nest of wild being

unloved rhythms, fuming with uninspired dread
as we caress the lung wired cane
of bone sweat
carved merciless into the roaming wood
that answers in black hills
and a flat womb of earth

I’ve been taken, not today.

For so long now, I’ve been taken
But not today.

The spell of my urban hermitage has now broken
In a place where all prayers are spells
There is only one way out of this dream

I need helpers
A conscious community
To lead freely, without bickering for followers

My hermitage walls have given way to a translucent realization
Beholden with rage
I am disquiet and feed strength with tears

Tied in a knot
The way to get untangled is to create
Consumption has been a frequent spell in this broken palace of towers and rain

I hear the engines of folly
As they drain the black earth of all color and frighten the terrorized youth
White

Greed is suckling the thirsty mother’s teat
Her eyes are wet with separation
For your love has aged beyond the fruits of her chest

You are getting old now
Taste the milk from the divine
There is none sweeter

Cuddle close under the embrace of the absent one
She is inside
Your mind need not work to produce the fruits of her labor within you

Confront your pain
A ghost waits
At the top of the universe, hang on while it lowers you to grace

Death is not hate
Do not be short-changed by the living hell of the crackling incinerator
The hearse Earth vibrates to weak leisure and silly goals

Your tongue is the pith of all ground
Walk lightly upon its unchanging core
Spill your inborn need without ransomed poverty

Scale the cliffs beyond inhumane judgment
Your is one name
Unshared

Though you retain mystery
From the recoiling lore of intuition
Full as the harvest moon in your empty belly

Fast for the power torn from you
That it should bear more likely hands
To shape the instruments of friendship and respect with equal humanity

If I could speak...

If I had a voice...

What would I say to a stranger passing by?

To hold them fast in that moment
Against the confident pressure of my heart

What would I say to a new acquaintance?

To ensure they hear my voice
Balancing delicately over the thrifty ledge
Of a shy and battered mind

What would I say to a causal friend?

That they may lift their self to know me
To meet each other anew
At a higher and closer level than ever before
Recognizing our presence

What would I say to an old friend?

That I may say again at their funeral
With love in my heart

What would I say to each individual in my family?

To all, I will say:

“Speak!
And I will listen.”

© Rusty Kjarvik 2012

Rusty Kjarvik is an emerging writer, world music percussionist and artist. His poetry has been accepted in various online and print publications including 3:AM Magazine, The Body Electric Anthology (and/or), Steel Bananas, ditch, and Marco Polo Arts Magazine. He has also published short fiction in Haggard & Halloo and visual art in Maad Sheep. He performs music regularly with Vi An Diep and lives in Calgary, Alberta where he blogs at www.rkjarvik.blogspot.com.

Holly Day

This Man

I read through my son’s emails, wonder
at the beautiful things he’s written
to girls, wonder if his poetry
is as sincere and sweet and I believe him to be
or if he’s turning out to be some slick-tongued
manipulative creep. My little boy

once made me promise I would never die
because he didn’t want to be left alone
and I promised, because he was three
and I couldn’t stand to see him cry.

Now he hides his interest in girls
from me, writes beautiful letters that I would
have died to get from a boy when I was 12
this man he’s becoming is so strange to me.

Breathless Lullaby

sometimes it seems the closer we get to understanding each other,
something happens to collapse these thin card houses
of love even further than they were set up before. Fatal archer
you bend your body beneath me each night, you are
so completely without rhythm that the only
way either one of us can sleep is to leave. I

go into the spare bedroom, think of my mother
sit with my back to the wall and think of spouses
in my very own home, you’d think I’d be smarter
shouldn’t have to protect my heart from arrows far
flung, random strung. Your breath is the only lonely
lullaby for me, but sleep isn’t something I

signed up for in this marriage. I go lie beside
you when I know you’re asleep, hear you wake up hours
later: go away yourself. I don’t find comfort
or validation from this, I don’t get you, and
sometimes I think that’s how it’s just going to be. In
Heaven this will work, and all I know is, I’m not

patient enough to wait for Death’s blind eye to find
the bull’s-eye painted on my chest. All I want now
is for the strength to go away for good, for dirt
to fill the safe little hole I’m in, hourglass sand
to dull the echoes of this bell jar. Take my sins
wrap me in linen, spit on my grave, let me rot.

Peach

first bite of food after a 30-hour fast
a ripe peach, flesh firm, dripping sweet nectar
filling my throat. I know I ate more than that
peach, a sandwich, I think, but I don’t remember
whether it was salty pastrami on black rye
or sweet mustard and glazed ham
or just peanut butter and jelly on soft
store-bought white bread
all I can remember
is that peach.

Armageddon, Marilyn-Style

(the lights down, just a little more, collect your things
go. throw a red scarf over the bulb by the bed—
wheel in the post-holocaust gig city model
and let the rats start the maze.) I’m walking in your
dreams, Mr. President, on a white beach bare feet
leaving no footprints in the sand. This piece of ass

is the only real person here tonight. Wings
of angels beat on the glass of the hotel, dead
to anything but our blind sins. (pour a couple
more buckets of homicide on the beach, cover
up the swollen corpses, Joe Public’s bloody feet.
kill the rats). I almost called you up again last

night, knew the phone was right by your head, but I knew
that thing in your bed was down visiting for the weekend
and would pick up the phone, collecting your calls—I
hugged the plastic receiver between my wet thighs
and pretended I was collecting pieces of
you through these dreams, it was you, down on me, all night.

(the Armageddon simulation will redo
itself tomorrow. Let’s call it a day. The end
of any era means that something has to die.
In a place by the ocean, the fake red skyline
reads “The End.” Armageddon, the lights go off. Logoff.
Clear the set, the blackened beach. It’ll be all right.)

I Know She Loved Me

all the other kids had sandwiches
in their lunchboxes, olive loaf, pimento
bologna. I’d hide my lunch from my friends
bury it deep in the rumpled-brown paper bag
cover green sushi rolls with my palm, pink shrimp puffs
sweet rice balls wrapped in sea weed. Every day, I begged
my mother to make me peanut butter crackers
ham on white, something normal.

my stepfather would hear me from his office and laugh
“Your mother’s a wonderful cook! They should be
so lucky to have her for a cook!” speak at length
of his childhood, his own mother’s disgusting attempts
at making jellied baby squid, peppered mussels so hot
they made your pee burn.

my mother would just sigh, suggest
tampopo for lunch, told me I could tell
the other kids it was just
chicken noodle. “You don’t know that their lunches
are any better than yours,” she’d chide
heaping mounds of steamed pea pods, caramelized ginger
and salt-and-pepper shrimp on my plate.

© Author 2011

Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes in the Minneapolis school district. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Oxford American, and Slipstream. Her book publications include The Book Of, A Bright Patch of Sunlight, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One for Dummies, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.

A.J. Huffman

Feathers and Dynamite

“there is a war between the mind And sky”
          -- Wallace Stevens

The moon looks diseased.
All blue
in its shining.
Like me.
Whenever you are near.
I feel your pull.
And I fear it.
And the conflict is often too much.
I am drained.
A crater
waiting to be filled.
But you are the tides.
Refusing to rise.
Until I crack.
And crawl.
Leaving you a trail
of blood and flesh.
You have no choice.
But to clean.

The Sense of the Serpent

Touch is the sin you cannot shed.
It claims in layers
thicker than any skin.
Building itself into and through
your every curve and corner.
It burns your senses.
Until you need its fire.
To breathe.
To bleed.
To be.
Anything
even close to alive.

Beaches of Isolation

Footprints grow from nothing.
Scarring random blankness.
Smooth
          and dissolving.
It all swallows
the salty water of memory.
Drowning.
So beautifully.
The sun has no choice.
But to turn its eyes.
Away.

© A.J. Huffman 2012

A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has previously published four collections of poetry: The Difference Between Shadows and Stars, Carrying Yesterday, Cognitive Distortion, and . . . And Other Such Nonsense. She has also published her work in national and international literary journals such as Avon Literary Intelligencer, Writer's Gazette, and The Penwood Review. Find more about A.J. Huffman, including additional information and links to her work at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000191382454 and https://twitter.com/#!/poetess222.

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

HALF BLIND

I look at the world half-blind.
It does not bother me.
I take my glasses off and see
the blurry mountains in the distance.
The afternoon light makes my eyes
water. It leaves me nearly blind.
I look at life with disappointment.
Dust is thrown in my face
by the passing busses. Lack of love
feels like soap in the eye.
Wounded, I keep my head up.
Perhaps love will come;
happiness ever after;
everything I missed out on.
This dark heart needs light.

AT THIS HOUR

At this hour

the sunrise hides
behind the mountain.

A brilliant cloud
veils the golden sun.

The rose wilts.

Life is good.

The flowery garden
awaits the sun
and welcomes the rain.

The greatness of this hour
must be divine.

FLOWERS FOR HER

I gather my thoughts as I gather
flowers. The hummingbird
watches me as does the butterfly.
The flowers are for the one I
love. The birds sing without
judgment. I choose yellow, red,
and white flowers. They are
sparkling with dew. In the early
morning I am half-awake. I want
to make a good impression on
the one I love. I think of sweet
words to say to her. The flowers
are brilliant. It starts to rain.
Still the birds remain singing.

© Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal 2012

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal's poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Orion Headless, and Right Hand Pointing. Pygmy Forest Press published his first book, Raw Materials (2004). His latest, Peering Into The Sun, was published by Poet's Democracy (2011).

Vivian Faith Prescott

A Dead Woman's Shoes

Ten pairs of shoes, laces intertwined with Styrofoam and plastic six-pack rings, piled together, tossed aside at the Wrangell City Dump. I untangled laces as if unraveling the mystery of her lingering within the musty cardboard box.
I rummaged through her life–way worn soles of brown patent leather, faded red cheerleader shoes, black dress flats, tennies and white canvas slides. Now, I wear the dead woman’s shoes and each stride senses that my footfalls have somewhere else to go; each step pulses her soul’s quickening. And as I walk, I wonder where her shoes might have tread, where she is now—if she even needs shoes. And if I continue to wear the dead woman’s shoes, will she forever be a transient, footloose—walking from her world to mine.

In My Father's Cabin

The oil-barrel stove sears fire, spinning black soot into spider webbed patterns on the ceiling. Wool socks hang drying on bunk bed rails, river sand scatters across the floor. On cabin porch, I swat mosquitoes, and glimpse a dark silhouette awash in graying light; its yellow eyes lope into my thoughts.

It is here at the end of the world that clan brother chases sun and moon, fleeing with tracks and windblown sand. Inside the cabin, my sleeping bag is unable to warm the howls wounding the nightfall; its aching bay answered
deep the timber behind the cabin.

Like the man beneath the transformation mask, the cry releases loosely hinged cedar, unfolds its split image panels and exhales on the burning lantern, bellowing the flickering shapes, shifting cabin wall to forest path, invoking a story my grandparents told me about hunting in Thomas Bay—
at dusk wolves ambled through the treeline and in waning daylight, stood—transformed—and walked like men.

Doubt

Last Sunday the preacher said she must believe
          in three gods, in wrath, in brimstone,

fire and death, things she could not see.
          But this, she glimpsed every night

from her veranda, their glint and flash,
          their phosphorescent fins.

So one night, shadowed on the cliff
          behind the old Iglesia, she stood atop

her grandmother's crumbling crypt,
          let her words be her guide, the black chant

of ancient fishermen curling her tongue in exotic fire.
          And with a hand loop on her wrist,

coiled line and net, the lead line over her left shoulder,
          she unwound her body into that space

between twilight and morning where belief
          sometimes nestles, gray and faded.

and pulled in with all her strength
          a castnet bursting with silver stars.

© Vivian Faith Prescott 2011

Vivian Faith Prescott lives in Kodiak, Alaska. She and her family are involved in the Lingít language revitalization in Southeast Alaska, and have established a non-profit called Raven’s Blanket, which is designed to enhance and perpetuate the cultural wellness and traditions of Indigenous peoples through education, media, and the arts; and to promote artistic works throughout Alaska by both Native and non-native Alaskans. Vivian has been published in several journals and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry. She blogs at: Planet Alaska http://planetalaska.blogspot.com/

Poet: Abigale Louise LeCavalier

Isolate

Willing to do nothing
in small rooms,
not thinking much
of daffodils or daisies;
pocket money
less the pockets.

Picking the dust
form the bottom
of an ink well,
writing names and initials
in broken cursive,
some I remember.

Some I remember I forgot.

Pushing thumbtacks
in my sole,
or in my soul,
gravitating without the gravity
to the center of me,
or what used to be me anyway.

And the voices outside
scare me a little
scar me a little more,
I wish they would go away,
I could go away.

To a field of snapdragons
and lilies,
put my head to the stone
and quietly
slip away.

A Whole Hole

Shaking like an aspen
in a static summer breeze,
there are no
sunny feelings anymore.

Not ashamed,
because I gave it all I had
and it left me empty,
hollowed in the middle,
a whole hole
where sand and sugar
used to be.

Shallow,
not being able
to see through walls,
or the sarcasm
in her smile.

She aggravates me, truly.

Been buried before;
I can handle the weight
but not the pressure.

And I wash
in warm wine,
slipping into fine frustration,
grasping at the not so many straws
I have left.

Believing,
the next time it will be better.

Or at least trying too.

The Simple Life

Cut in two pieces,
she wears razorblades
around her neck
and wrists.

A not so subtle warning.

Bewildered;
the crying stopped
long ago,
but the screaming
never did.

And she holds the world
accountable,
spitting through the syllables
of simple conversation.

Though that’s exactly what it’s not.

Moving the air in and out
with velocity
and momentum,
shouting fire
without the heat,
without the heart.

Impatient,
she breaks.

And there is no one left
to put her back together,
again
and again.

© Abigale Louise LeCavalier 2011

Abigale LeCavalier's poetry has appeared in many online as well as print magazines: Fullosia Press, Feelings of the Heart, Black Cat Press, The Sheltered Poet(twice), The Same, FreeXpression, The Journal & Original Plus, Abandoned Towers, Negative Suck, PigeonBike, The Linnet's Wings, Vox Poetica,The Blotter Magazine, Roses & Vortex's, Language and Culture, The Writers Block, Visions and Voices, Camel Saloon Press, The Second Hump, The Eclectic Muse, Lit Up Magazine, Leaf Garden Press, Illogical Muse, Raven Images, Ken*Again, The Scruffy Dog Review, Jerseyworks, 63 Channels, Speech Bubble, The Stray Branch, Clockwise Cat, and, Record Magazine.

Poet: Diana E. Backhouse

My Thingamajig

I first met what’s-his-name thingamajig
Whilst setting to sea in a two-sailed brig.
He swung from the mast which he’d gone up to rig,
Had the what-do-you-call-it thingamajig.
He wasn’t too small and he wasn’t too big,
Not human, nor monkey, cat, dog or pig,
But a what-do-you-call-it thingamajig.
His feet were quite large but his figure was trig,
He was ugly but said he did not care a fig,
That what-do-you-call-him thingamajig.
His head was quite bald but he wore a blonde wig
That had been fixed on by a welder named Mig,
Firm on the head of the thingamajig.
He was drinking ale from a four-handed tig.
As he chatted to me he kept taking a swig,
That ,now rather tipsy, thing-ing-amajig.
As, on the deck, in our chairs we did lig
He told me he really wanted to flig,
Be a pilot, a dare-devil fligamajig.
He took out a Vesta and lit up a cig’
When I said “that’s not healthy”, he took the hig,
Did that huffiest, puffiest thingamajig.
He leapt from his chair like a chirruping crig,
Got on his high horse, called me a prig,
That hopping-mad what’s-it’s-name thingamajig.
I tried to cajole him, I gave him a dig.
He relented, cheered up, then we danced a jig,
Me and that funny-old gigamajig.
When we got to the river, with a pin on a twig,
He caught some trout and a nice fat snig,
Then I dined in style with the thingamajig.
We reached the shore, had a ride in a gig
And rode to his home which was funded by thig,
For he was so poor, was that thingamajig.
The house was a dump but he wasn’t called Stig.
His name was Zygo, his twin sister Zyg.
For I now knew a pair of thingamajig!
After rushing around like a fast whirligig,
All dressed in white with a flowery sprig,
I walked down the aisle with my wonderful, funny-old thingamajig.

© Diana E. Backhouse 2011

Diana E. Backhouse is a sixty-something Yorkshire lass who writes (often at the 6S Social Network) to escape.

Poet: Paul de Denus

Yard Sale

the boy, maybe ten
has a chipped toothbrush holder and two Scooby-Doo cups
which I tally at two dollars
and he gives me five for the three.

his companion stumbles and twangs
over my dented guitar,
asks how much and I say, depends?
do you play?

men and women in shorts and long faces
pull up in beaters and Volvos alike
to run the tables and gamble
on my cheap winners.

I got most everything
worthwhile
to someone else
but not for me, no more.

I’m out of here
after they’re all done
ransacking
my life.

A Cop Can Make You Twitchy

a cop can make you twitchy
his lights an intermittent strobe
flash disco

your eyes cock crooked in the rearview mirror
fingers tighten snug
in the glove compartment

you’ve seen this movie before:
the tap on the window, the click-
HANDS IN THE AIR ASSHOLE!!!

you’ve done nothing wrong,
well, maybe a mile or two
of speed

the cop looks shaky; he’s a drinker too
you can tell
his hand trembles proudly

as he issues the citation
- you’ll throw it away later -
bars cross your minds

Tossing Cards

in hand,
my extra deck,
- doubles, singles and triples -
bent around the edges,
some plain worn out
lesser players
I’ve already saved,
held together with
a thick rubber band
like a wad of pure cash.

they sail through the air
like lazy fly balls,
good sports hoping to
hit the wall perfectly
as close as possible
for a win.

Wilson flips his own deck of losers
he’s hard to beat
I hope he’ll make
a rare mistake
like a Hank Aaron
in the outfield.

© Paul de Denus 2011

Paul de Denus is a graphic artist by day, writer by night. He has been published at Six Sentences (The Love Book, Word of Mouth, and 6S Vol 3), Smith Magazine, Fictionaut, and Espresso Stories.
These poems have appeared previously on J.M. Prescott’s blog as part of her April Challenge. Paul's other writings and self published books appear at his blog: Me, the Other Twin.

Writer: Bill Floyd

Plague Clock

He cleans the gun reciting
placenames
like an insomniac
counts sheep:
San Ysidro, CA, Killeen, TX, Blacksburg, VA, Littleton, CO, Tucson, AZ, etc.

It is never quiet anymore
inhere;
"I have been wronged"
and now you
will listen to me.

He lives down
yourway
across divides measuring the
slimmest of
moments.

Distant Sighting

We just went to the mall to get me some shoes.
Ronnie’d been working his new job for about six weeks and he’d finally saved up some money and wanted to buy me something. I was always carrying on about how my feet hurt cause I had to stay on my feet all day talking to the customers. I think about that a lot, how it was my bitching that got Ronnie killed. Even his own mama said that’s bullshit and it wasn’t no one’s fault except that sick crazy bastard’s. But I don’t know. There’s this look in her eyes when she says it.
Everyone saw the news reports from afterwards or the security camera footage that leaked on the Internet, so you know what the mall looked like. It was Saturday afternoon, lots of people there. They say the guy was trying to set some kind of record. We never even got to the Foot Locker. We were in front of the fountain outside the bakery, you know how it always smells so good you just have to buy a cookie? That’s when the guy started letting loose. This blank look on his face. The shots were so loud. So unexpected, so out of place.
Ronnie pushed me behind him and fell on top of me. I heard him grunt a few times and I knew he was shot. One of the bullets came right through him and hit me in the knee but I was so scared I didn’t really realize it until after. The screaming from all around. The crazy guy made this sort of wailing sound right before he put the gun in his mouth. Horrible.
I rolled Ronnie over and started calling for help. He had this real strange look on his face, kinda peaceful. The big dumbass always wanted to be a hero.
My hero.
I had a mind to go after the crazy guy and do something to him even though he was already dead. But when I tried to get up my leg just went out from under me. People held me down and told me the paramedics were on their way. They thought they were being helpful. I guess I kind of lost my mind for a minute there.

After I got home from the hospital all kinds of strangers sent me messages and gifts. This church group from First Presbyterian came by the house with food and some things they figured I’d need for when I recovered. One of the things they brought me was this brand new pair of walking shoes with real cushiony soles and all. The minister said the doctors had told them I’d need shoes with some support. They even got the size right.
I just cried and cried. I took it as a sign, like Ronnie was trying to tell me he was okay. Can’t nobody tell me any different.

© William Floyd 2011

Bill Floyd is a writer from North Carolina who is feeling his way around the on-line world of micro-fiction. He blogs occasionally at www.sixsentences.ning.com.

Guest Poet: Brad Rose

Arrow of Time

No one prepares you for this, certainly not at school,
but when you turn fifty,
the arrow of time reverses.
Everything spools backward:
your best deeds shrug undone,
echoes ricochet back into throats,
volcanoes bury their heads in sand.

In sifting sieves, the hours empty themselves,
their hour-glassed seconds, vacant Saharas.
Your memories become children,
infantilized at the mere thought of now.
Zeno halves the distance,
until next to nothing remains,
zero’s empty egg.

When, at last, you reach the gleaming bead of origin,
a tiny speck in the chromosomes of clocks,
you are nothing, again,
ciphered and concentric,
waiting for your fathers to be born,
your mothers to be loved,
waiting for something taut and true
to take slow, deliberate aim at you,
and with perfect point and pitch,

      release.

© Brad Rose 2011

Brad Rose's poetry and fiction have appeared in: Third Wednesday, Off the Coast, Barely South Review, San Pedro River Review. Tattoo Highway, Boston Literary Magazine, Imagination and Place, Right Hand Pointing, FutureCycle Poetry, Unfold, SleetMagagazine.com, Six Sentences, Fiction at Work, Monkeybicycle, Up and Under/QND Review, Getting Something Read, Espresso Stories, SMITH Magazine, SpokenWar, Pow Fast Flash Fiction, Six Little Things, Short, Fast and Deadly, Staccato, and Blink Ink.