Poehemians Poetry Anthology Issue II
Edited by Eva Xanthopoulos
Copyright Š 2013 – Poehemian Press Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Publisher E-mail: theartisticmuse22@yahoo.com Website: www.theartisticmuse.com Currently Accepting Poetry and Art Submissions for Issue III (2014)
Submit Here: www.theartisticmuse.com/submissions.html
Poe路he路mi路an: a poet or artist who does not adhere to the norm; a bohemian of poetry or art; a poet or artist who is quite possibly (subconsciously or consciously) inspired by the great Edgar Allan Poe.
CONTENTS Betsy Burke Anna Ellis Shira Marble Silva Merjanian Mike Wilson Edward Valladao Linda Crate William Davies Jr.
Southend and Scatter More Musings Peace Take This Poem and Hover Stylin' The Heart The Poem That Tried Too Hard To Be A Poem RT 274
Nick Falkowski
On The Farm
Mike Gallagher
Intercession
Dawnell Harrison Rachel Peevler Sy Roth Giuseppi Martino Buanaiuto Victor George Fon Tuma
Above The Gable Masterpiece Firmaments of Yellow Stars and Burden of Conscience Vibrant Matter A Heart's Best Friend Flashing Fantasies
Clinton Inman
Diana and Sylvia
Robert Karaszi
Cafe Angelika Revisted
Zac Krause Floyd Lawson Terry McGoldrick Gus Palmer Jr.
Electrifying and Gift Shop Sha Mo Gre Costume Ball The Novitiate and
The Oldest Trees Andres Reyes
Killing The Dead Love
Tony Roberts
A Family Inheritance and Apollo Beach
Melanie Simms
Ode To A Lover On The Susquehanna
Zakiya Holman
Dandelion Puff
Mark Sebastian Jordan
Matter Matters
Eric Chase
Flowers
Colin Dodds
The Galleries of the Rain
Neil Ellman
A Modern American Tomb
Isabalino Anastasio Guzman
The Couple, Blindly In Love
Chris Perry Christopher Gretkus
Holy Cow Untitled
Chuck Joy
The Editor
Geoffrey A. Landis
A Villanelle
Joan McNerney
Rendezvous
Thom Douglas Carlisle
The Poet... (Referencing Moonglow)
Allison Chaney
The Sweetest Lie
Lloyd Wayne Russell
The Mad Parade
Billy Harfosh Thomas Piekarski
Face to Face Blind Spot and Antistate
Alvin Rhodes
The Stars Are Throwing Tantrums
Epiphany Roa
Sleep
Marianne Szlyk Roy K. Austin
Scene from a Bolivian Restaurant Two Observations (Apophatic Sage)
Heather Browne
Collected
Vicky Nall
Remorse
Heather Ann Schmidt
Golden City
C.S. Vincent
Dysphoria
Alicia Bair
Mortal Contention
Tony Manfetano
Antediluvian Raconteurism
Douglas Troland
Ego
Alexis Dunn
The Solution
Michaela Kline
Farm House
David Thornbrugh
No Experience Required
Jen Galik
Beginning the Atlantic: An Erasure Poem
Andrew Sacks
A Lover like the Muse
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Two Poems By Betsy Burke Southend Say goodbye to this and piece together the hello that stitches you here as you watch the metal scales shift, recognize the color, the shape, the zippers and compartments, the bulk of things and brace-because the contingencies of something new, well those were placed with the bricks, mixed into the asphalt, fell with the rain that shined on the doorknob I turned and met you-and you’ve made this a sheet dividing lines, so read between them and know that when I grasp at handles for home, my hands are already full of you, and
goodbye —goodbye is a bottle of whiskey’s broken glass, soaked into the heels of red socks, pinched into the threads of winter sweaters, fallen from the hood of a raincoat, and I wear it every day. Scatter You were my comrade in childhood, Like the delicate yellow cusps of honey Thriving sweetly in the sun above you. Your burgeon moon of white feathers held Every hope of a wish, clinging softly to home In polite protest of possibilities unknown. At last, you silently release your one beauty into The sweeping swell of an evanescent breeze, Brought to life by tiny lips, set on a round face; Eyes shut tight, behind which imagination danced, Like your brave offspring in the wind. I broke what was left of you and explored The linear life of your form, looking for magic. Your nutrient dew smelled of green; Sharp, clean, safe-The scent of nature’s grace held us In time as I flew with you through the Spinning blue of childhood seasons.
And I long to see you again, as I did then, With bare, immaculate eyes of innocent youth,
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More honest than anything so far held—when the Majestic was not lost in the mundane and Elegance blazed in everything. Instead, You are a memory I come across, Fleeting, fixed, found— the vision; A child, in a field, breathing you in, and then Scatter. *Previously published in The Coraddi and Willows Wept Review.
More Musings By Anna Ellis the eloquence with which she whips the wisps of hair back and forth, the square stare in the eye quicks the heart beat for a short. the breeze as her passing perfumed of gardenia and periferal crowns, a mere glance and only breif assumed subliminal images measuring in pounds. a wee muse passing through... starlit gazes collected in pocketbook notes dividing divine intervention to whom seek but to listen to the hooks... Water the mind divine with knowledge deeper than your cup will hold. Seek self whispering collages, then act with a love so bold.
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Peace By Shira Marble Coarse sand settles on skin like faux fur on soft hands Zephyr of dust pirouettes through the air As mortars whistle in the distance Absorbing the sounds of hunger and despair Worms festering in outstretched bellies Care not for who owns whose land In the fight for power and control Victory parades surrender its grandeur Amongst dead souls
Two Poems By Silva Merjanian Take This Poem Take this poem I bit into its flesh it bled bitter aftertaste of you yet on cracked walls it flowed honey thinned and washed in words I carved with trembling hands take this poem dance my voice it sounds perfect flapping in morning’s silence when all you have is fake sunlight through windows smeared with praise of wolves and forged kisses take this poem grafted carbon footprint under the right light you will remember under the right light it’s the only song that matters tucked under wing of an angel yours
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Hover she watched a hummingbird hover over pink bougainvillea draping her window wings fluttering glistening in mid summer morning nectar on its mind‌ bougainvillea jutted into the air like a monument its glorious color burst into mist of seduction painting everything else ordinary gray and she realized between a full mouth of pastries and a sip of tea she was no hummingbird to hover like that and he was no bougainvillea she let go‌ a long time ago yet he still sees wings flutter over a faded color spilled on the floor she tiptoes over it barefoot ‌
Stylin' By Mike Wilson Short, pithy sentences Do more than loquacious soliloquies to grab peoples attentions. Quash those qualifiers, Keep the quasi-cool quiescent March strong columns of words solo, sans modifier crutches. Sly slang can come across as sleazy, Shelve it when in doubt; Stick to safe, sure convention. Spelling and Grammar are good soldiers, enlist them to edify your educational lines of literary knowledge. Sameness is stultifying and boring -Vary your varnished prose in length, tone, flavor, vocabulary, and flow. Strive for a garden of literary delights: Strong verbs, clever nouns, sparing adjectives; Bordered with connectors and enhancers colorful prose that infuses light into the world.
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The Heart By Edward Valladao What is it that can set the heart afire? My words have fallen on her ears as though I were a mute, Shall I then, like the ancient Greeks, play the lyre? Nay, for musicians less skilled than I follow suit, They play but a single note and tis enough, She responds, she loves. But, to her, my chords and melodies are no longer in key, Do we musicians not play the same instrument? Do we not pluck the same strings? When I spotted her, an uncharted paradise like no other I was on a hellbent course pointed nether, Continually ravaged by sickness and hunger I entered her bay and gladly tethered. Flowers on her cliffs did call to me from above I did respond. I most certainly loved. In my eyes her landscape could never lose its succor, Even after her natural, stormy fits sent me asunder. Still do I wish to smell her flowers and her caves explore Though surely others have since found her beauty, And she has become mine no more. My heart was once like a hummingbird Having taken its very first flight. It soared and fluttered, Basking in love’s glorious light.
Till too soon fate’s cruel hand left it maimed, And hurled it back to down to earth in shame. Still alive it beats, yet now it sputters, No longer does it soar, no longer will it hover. When my heart fell, it fell amongst strange flowers They did respond, they did love. But these flowers were for the bees, Though numerous, these flowers were not for me. So once again I ask, what is it that can set the heart afire? Is it extended metaphors draped in luscious language and a rhymed scheme? Tis worked in centuries past, but Shakespeare is long dead and I am not he. Neither am I a reckless adventurer Nor a musician whose fingers bleed. In truth, my passion in words is all I have left to offer With hopes that these, when read, will finally prosper.
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The Poem That Tried Too Hard To Be A Poem By Linda Crate there was once a poem that tried too hard to be a poem; it was full of pretty purple prose -alight with metaphor, personifications, and pretty words pirouetting across the stage it was all sound and fury yet it signified nothing; like Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the hearing of his wife’s death, so she too stood unmoving the hearts of no stone; she laid beneath the lilies, her roots reaching out but garnering no water; she soon died forgotten -a derelict of dust left only in the waking mind of the poet that created her, mourning the death of his beautiful, poorly constructed bloom.
RT 274 By William Davies Jr. A red-tailed hawk motionless on the wire, a musical cleft on a blank bar graph.
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On The Farm By Nick Falkowski this spring is not like the last. the ground is tired. the potatoes heavy & rotten in the sack. the old willow broken over in grief; wrecked cruelly by last month’s storm. the ground is tired. the birds black & mute nesting in the bare arms of the trees – spring’s lie – not coming home again – just like that boy with the baby blues & lust written in his stare. the farm has lost its laughter. the ground is tired. yet the ivy still grows, climbing up the worn bricks of the house, creeping onwards in the fading light of the late spring sun. we are roasting a pair of rabbits for dinner, hanging them over an open fire, the broth bubbling away to the background roar of the ancient machinery still grinding away in our heads – faith, work, forgiveness, toil, the silent metronome of our lives. the valley is bleaker than ever before; but it still holds a stark beauty like an uprooted tree. I grip your hand & pretend not to see the tears burning so fiercely in those blue eyes, so like his. we both know the truth of it. the ground is tired. the well is running dry. old faithful must soon be put out to pasture. all that’s left is the waiting, waiting for the rise & fall of the scythe in the cold wheat fields. the concluding sound of our last harvest.
Intercession By Mike Gallagher Mourned a wagtail today, He only hurt a fly; But he wont get to Heaven, So why should you or I? You saw him at the hurley gate Laid out in black and white; You thought of him, that he, like you, Should try to be contrite. You say he didn’t have a prayer, Did not adore our god, But that was hardly his fault, No one told the bloody sod! You say he hadn’t got a soul But he loved and ate and thought, Did everything we humans do, So pray tell me, why not?
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Above The Gable By Dawnell Harrison Above the gable and White horses I rose In a sun-glinted sky Of summer’s soft meanderings. The purple pansies and Orange poppies hoisted up Their heads in the dewy Hours of a moth-breathed day. The walking tears of winter Have descended into a shroud Of clouds and fully disappeared. Summer’s brazen-breasted light Glows in my soul.
Masterpiece By Rachel Peevler I will perform your autopsy. I am a composer – my opus sprawled out on this cold Metal table like a Jackson Pollock painting. I’ll raise my scalpel, Cue the orchestra, and fill these halls with a symphony of surgery. If I am an artist then you will be my canvas. This is a symbiotic Relationship. I’ll open my arms wide and embrace you. I will be your crucifix. I will perform your autopsy. I am a child pressing my nose to a window, fingerprinting The glass, peering into an aquarium of death. I’ll crack Open your ribcage and look inside. Tell me, how did you die? I will ascend the horizon on the architecture of the moon To capture your eulogies midflight, pull off their wings, And watch them scuttle across the floor. I will perform your autopsy. I’ll pick prayers from your heart like little parasites, Pin their writhing bodies to a board and examine their origin of species. I’ll carve confessions from your tongue like tumorous cancers, Hold the sticky masses under microscope and study their chemistry. I’ll saw salvations from your mind like dandelion psychosis, Press them into the pages of antique anthologies and watch them resurrect. I will perform your autopsy. I am a butcher. I’ll dig through a labyrinth of blood
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Clot and sinew – play connect the dots with a razor. I am A gardener of timelines cut short wiping angel hair from my face; Smearing baby’s breath into my skin. I’ll deconstruct the remnants Of your life and when I’m done I’ll piece you back together And stitch your incisions with spider’s silk. Come. Take a seat. Lay your head here. Put up your feet. Relax. I promise This will only hurt a little. I will perform your autopsy and you will be my masterpiece.
Two Poems By Sy Roth Firmament of Yellow Stars Yellow stars awake now glum in a landscape of shouted “get outs� cutting the air like chattering machine guns. Early morning moonlight casts shadows on bedeviled faces hustled into the street in front of barked commands. Like a garland of thorns, fog rests on them. German dogs snarl and nip at the air, and the backs of legs. Black boots kick at errant buttocks and slumped shoulders. Discarded flotsam of hasty departure left in their wake while morality breathes dully in the silence left behind. Curious neighbors peep from behind their curtains. Lust, foot-pounding impatient, finds a hidey-hole behind their eyes. Frenzied spelunking, joy at their good fortune, while yellow stars, hushed memories, fill an ephemeral firmament. Burden of Conscience Choices rub up against you, not like purring cats seeking to have their bellies rubbed, but like scratchy wool pressed against the skin, an emery board rubbing it raw. Choices nothing more than other’s ideas requiring no thought. Noisome gnats swarming about the head, swirl until thoughtlessly accepted.
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Beaten, leaded marionettes follow, toss grenades that explode in their hands, bayonet other nameless strangers. Expendable, interchangeable toy soldiers, names resting uneasily on their victory plaques. Feather men choose engagement without murder. White-feather fodder comforting without weapons, bodies bloodied like the others. Playful gods whistle airy dough-boy tunes. They bear the burden of conscience.
Vibrant Matter By Giuseppi Martino Buonaiuto The earth battles back, Loma Prieta and Katrina destroy our complacency, Earthquake and hurricane chase us from our homes. The bees go out on strike, Refusing the work that sustains us. Drought destroys germination, Our flood-ravaged farms fail us. Our food at war with our metabolism, Energizing while poisoning our bodies. Dioxin & mercury cross our epidermis, Infect us; kill us in revenge. The air itself in rebellion, Hot, fetid, over-carbonated; Unbreathable. The atmosphere itself, Voting us off the planet. The non-human and the inorganic conspire against us, Plot extinction of our species, Condemn us for crimes against the earth.
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A Heart's Best Friend By Victor George We wore our misery Like draped follicles of Chilled indifference and A garbage stained couch with That same damn dirty, decaying retriever Who loves me more than You do He’ll be gone soon, despondent Eyes with lapping breathes which Fill the void of empty threats of Memories which disappear along With everything we’ve ever been And I cleave myself in Two with the image of you N’ him, together, fixed in a Greco-roman embrace of hedonism While I’m in the other room, pizza Man at the door but maybe A little promiscuity injects the Murky red of my being with an Ethos of difference, stroking my Curiosity and my heart May just survive you For now, I’ll pet the dog: Good boy
Flashing Fantasies By Fon Tuma Once, when my father's people were young and the days were cold, A family of familiars walked in out of the dense rainforest floor, Walked into the dusk of a peaceful people playing village. Once, when Cush was dead and Carthaginians spoke of the 'chariot of gods', Several shadows of amorphous colour and assumption came to become kin. These tall travelers were spiritual beings, their skin kaleidoscope, Their teeth had been sharpened by many an enemies’ bone: They came in peace they said, they had come to survive. They came with gifts - sapling seeds nursed in raffia bags, healing leaves, Cure and remedy. Their women were taller than our men, full of grace, full of nose, Thick of hip, the musicians, entertainers, the artists of this traveler ring. Once, when my tribe was young and the Fon* was beginning to lose faith: Fascinating things crept in from the forest floor to become a part of us.
*title of tribal chief in the western grassland of Cameroon
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Two Poems By Clinton Inman Diana Drag your white skull before blind seas That tumble dazed to your mono-eyed magic. Go tell Neptune when the night is through. Charm him, too, with your waxing and waning. But you can’t catch me with those veiled half smiles. Your borrowed brilliance exposes you As I know your darker side. Go charm some other star struck rhapsodist. Sylvia I hear they have placed A pretty blue plaque High above your flat So that tourists can find you And say that this is the spot Where you killed yourself. Lucky girl, you modern Sappho To take the quantum leap Like a comet to take your place Among the darkest regions of empty space With a brilliance that few can keep And even less the mind to know Where no dull planet can perturb you As fallen flowers have no faces.
Cafe Angelika Revisited By Robert Karaszi Twilight's saffron haze reduced to memory as light strengthens its spars over the horizon silhouetted gossamer, woven upon ash wood and hedge taut like strings on a violin from my terrace down; closely packed houses, roof tops gnawing at the pith of the air, where starlings wings stretch for sunshine through eastward glints I recall factories and windmills, wheeling under huddled clouds across the contoured path of the Danube where low tide exposes rockweed, tangled like knotted hair, I remember omnibuses nosing northward towards Cafe Angelika; over mocha layered crepes the first kiss gleaned from your lips, revived this weary traveler
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Two Poems By Zac Krause Electrifying Alarm clock sounding Like a crying baby Eyes slowly opening To discs I scroll out of bed Insert myself Into the car The sign at the doctor’s office reads You die in the body you live in! He says with a laugh Let’s check out this hard drive As he places his stethoscope on my heart All I can think of is how it looks Like he is plugging headphones into my chest He types in rhythm click-Click, click-Click, click-Click I text my girlfriend After the check-up T9 changes the words to Let’s break up What I meant to say was
Make sure you live in the body you die in But I sent it anyways Gift Shop Without enough money To pay for being myself I wrote poems On the backs of one dollar bills And on the sides of coins And traded those for a loaf of bread Then I wrote poems on the backs of the bread And fed the slices to birds Who flew away and were killed By men Who ate them And finally internalized my words. I wrote poems on the backs of library cards And business cards And placed them under the cushions of waiting room sofas And the mirrors on the mantles of marble mansions And on the banks of rivers And next to door hinges. When I died God asked me for a souvenir; I told him to look on the soles of his shoes.
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Sha Mo Gre By Floyd Lawson She looks and cares I’m privy to the piercing glares Her eyes are sun wrought spears, Alas, I’m so bare The audacity of attempting to plunge Rapiers into my indurate heart….Do I reck? I’m bumfuzzled by my Corazon’s nudity. Must I repent to her loves impugn? I’m not shackled, stymied, or gyved, yet I feel petrified And cautiously tethered to her palpitating sanctuary Closer she wades The propinquity is a certainty But my heart feels inurned by expedient spades “Egad tis a kiss?” “pardie! Pardie!” is my souls rejoinder We are alone Only those walls can tell our gest She flutters at our eynes connect We shoot words to the breeze as it’s the only thing between us She tells me grope and I squeeze Exhale and inhale Oh how she trembles as if covered in hail Running the length of her chine She utters “tis your abode, and thou art mine” My teeth elicit a response from her nape We’ve transcended love that is agape I taunt her with my lips as my hips restrain her pelvis on the apprehensive wall My digits act as strings, adjoined to her souls vassal Being tuned for euphony by her hips A heartfelt moan as my appellation is deified
Vinculum matrimonii attained without marriage There’s an atypical beat of her heart Are lives being attuned? I’m neither nuncio, novio, squire, nor beau Still she grants me a buss She turns a blind eye to my indifference A deaf ear to my words of unmanned rejections Are thou feigning Eros? What be it of her erogenous desires? Her friends urge her to repudiate my existence I beseech her “harken to their words” She stares and inquires “why?” “im too callow for affy, Your life has just begun, You’ll find one with thrice my allure” She smiles as if she’s heard naught “ you know you’re going to be the cause of my defloration” I’ve become a daft infatuate Now her words and actions have feck Pray this is an illusion, an apocryphal will-o- the wisp A lewd is by her side I can see the concupiscence in his wisps Who is he to elicit the same response as I He makes tactual advances with nary an opposition from the lady Amor vincit omnia? To what end? Fie! I’m finished Vapors rive my ducts tearing whichever way tears must I hem and haw as the ham and eggers In their appraisal of another’s probity I was an itinerant and she my Baedeker Until I changed guides and discerned the prime rose path Devoid of the vale of tears Was I in l---?
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Costume Ball By Terry McGoldrick As my memory serves me, it seems that I first began to renege on some First Communion promises-that very same afternoon; but seven is too young to be held accountable for any pact made in a white shirt, and a clip on tie to a God that I never could see, nor refute a sin that I never knew I could commit– however venial. And how about Bonnie, adorned in that glorified white dress? Surely, if there was a God, she would always be protected, I mean—she was Bonnie! who spoke only in Angelic, and Sacraments like Penance were for boys like me. Now, the world has begun en masse to shun the same God of our youth, and Bonnie (wherever she might be),
and me, the one that learned to plagiarize the sins of others-look back to the time when our stares seemed to exonerate all of those that forced us to play dress up that day.
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Two Poems By Gus Palmer, Jr. The Novitiate for Markie 1980 The feared for hunter is no more His sweat goes dead at the roots of His elemental hair. No flinging wild shirt takes to these woods. Nothing dark or fernlike, save for the sleeping, shaping Dust. But an image grows up and begins to take shape in his mind. Trembling, waking and the thought leaps inside him Like deer flickering in thickets. Steaming, stamping men step from behind trees with guns Sealed blue to their lips. Nothing dark or fernlike, save for the sleeping, shaping Dust. Convolutions of men used to pour out of these woods. They poured out like sweat, he knows, to bag the prize deer. He sees their laden shoulders streaming in the bracken brush And wood. He sees these warriors stave off stones hurrying Dancing, dancing.
The wise deer are in their hovel timber alone, far from vast-hearing, dancing. The Oldest Trees These are the oldest trees but we saw where the ground spat them out, throw up its arms, rise up like a person, and then fall backwards, trees whose bent bodies ached and broke open the ground in unison like so many ruined animals. Before the brave stars somewhere in deep space only Indians know, ancestral eyes are watching, keeping close together in the nameless rain that severs our already ragged clothes. With ironclad teeth, our breasts redden, shriek like wounded beasts. But the rain does not taste as sweet as it did anymore. When we were children we weren’t supposed to talk or laugh about such things as mayhem, tragedy; or dying, that thing that mimics freedom. That. That was all there was to it. (On the occasion of the April 13, 2012 tornado in Norman, OK)
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Killing The Dead Love By Andres Reyes In his closet, he finds a large Ziploc bag, full of old love and heartache. Like the memories, the bag was just occupying space. Like a squirrel scrounging around Elm Street for nuts while Autumn softly caresses the air with a touch of coldness, Grizzled Youth searches for the old shredder that was given to his dad long ago. This was the first time he touched the love letters since the break-up. Every day, he is reminded how it’s been a downer year in the love department. He takes one deep breath, plugs in the shredder, dumps the letters like shitty store-brand
Alpha-Bit soup across the futon sofa. Letter after letter, memory after memory, their fates meet by way of the shredder. Each letter was a morgue of the old love: a preserved body in each letter. So many “I love you’s” and “I miss you’s.” The drama and the romance between these young lovers did not compare to the state of their love’s demise. High school sweethearts turned sour with the concoction of infidelity, lies, miscommunication, and lack of trust. The buzzcutting of the shredder hisses through the air. At 50% complete, it encounters a jam. Grizzled Youth unplugs the shredder, forks it, cleans up the jam, plugs it back in and continues to mow his
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overgrown lawn of guilt. Old messages of after-school plans, high school semis, the prom, and cute puppy love kisses him “goodbye” before they are reduced to shreds. Grizzled Youth watches the bodies cremate slowly. The process takes an hour. When he finishes, Grizzled Youth gathers the shreds inside an old Valentine’s Day heart-shaped candy box and sets it all into flames.
Two Poems By Tony Roberts A Family Inheritance i. She stared at her reflection in the silver spoon. It was her Nanna’s. The spoon, not her reflection. ii. Her face was her father’s. And she hated him for it. It was all he left behind. Apollo Beach Coal coughing cumulus clouds. Palm trees posturing prettily. Manatees meditating.
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Ode To A Lover On the Susquehanna By Melanie Simms “Ever newer waters flow on those who step into the same waters” -Heraclitus Love needs no language, Not here, Along the Susquehanna, watching as she twists and bends Returning to mouths, Where sunlight and lovers meet. Not here, Where the silver maple and black cherry sway patiently, Amidst the romantic odes of the meadowlark, Or the ecstasy of the osprey, As they dive and reemerge, Fed by the river. Not here, Where the haunting tales of lush mountains record through the ages, Those first seedlings of love. Here, along the river, she reveals us to one another, As we confess our love, baptized between her gentle waves. How has she found us? Here along the Susquehanna, reflecting in our gaze, the memories of our ancient love’s return.
Dandelion Puff By Zakiya Holman Silent wishes suspend from ether flown parachutes, In the field of one who has never sown its seed, An exciting mid-flight event, No landing, Pure jubilation without rationale, Each second is a first for the cooing child, Within, Remember when?
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Matter Matters By Mark Sebastian Jordan Late days turn eternal nocturne: I nod by day unendingly, While my wide eye roams, A restless planet, by blinking night. Columns of numbers tote themselves And patterns emerge from random spatters Of letters spread across my desktop badlands. Glass arpeggios stack askew only to collapse In the additive shift: A rock fractures, this is decay. But now there are two rocks. Then four. Then a world. The ladders of matter matter to a disintegrating system. Though the dream may fall apart, the atoms eve upon A dawn at every turn of the knife in the ribs of an old world. Past every blink a universe emerges that has always been, With chains of matter climbing high into the potential Holy depths of dream buried deep in the walls and particles, The very galaxies of implication in every quark. We outer planets aren’t so much are as could be At any given time. Heisenberg’s cat is out of the bag, But he still can’t catch a wing of dream in such stillness, The appalling allness of all the is which isn’t.
Flowers By Eric Chase He bought them and put them In a vase They slumbered on the table With a green tablecloth They were for someone Special They wilted They cried They Died Buried on a table With a green tablecloth
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The Galleries of the Rain By Colin Dodds The rocks protrude and elude resemblance, but allude and allude to something, like a speaker who doesn’t want to be held to what he says Orange stones bask and brazenly insinuate human races too good to live, human races too vicious to survive, cities where gods and men broke bread, and lastly, the vast, faceless geological fable Shattered sphinxes and zeppelin ports are all that remain of an illicit, divine coition abandoned at the moment the seabeds were raised and carved to statuaries, the statuaries melted to nonsense In the end, it’s more than you think it is and less than you think it is, reads a message sent to me in the desert The canyon where the Indians say the world was born now buzzes with lawnmowers, echoes with the barks of tourist children Among the tri-fold brochures and minimum key replacement costs, the silence ululates It starts as a ringing in the ears and moves down the neck And something does come of it Soon, I will return home to the innumerable forms like the stain in the tub, the bruise on my ass that would be beautiful if I didn’t know what they were
A Modern American Tomb By Neil Ellman (after “Mixed Media” by Dylan Egon) When the archaeologists dug him up from his tomb where Forest Lawn used to be his bones were neatly displayed like bric-a-brac in an étagère, a jeweled crucifix at his side; an electric guitar on which he surely played paeons to his other gods; Coca-Cola, sour mash whiskey, cigarettes used at orgiastic feasts and festivals; a watch to tell the time of day even in the afterlife and gun to keep the rabble at bay. He must have been the King of America the scientists thought, buried with such pomp and opulence or just an average man interred with the toys he loved so much.
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The Couple, Blindly In Love By Isabalino Anastasio Guzman
Holy Cow By Chris Perry How unusual this land of new sands the men adore me falling on robed knees at just my presence so unlike the hills of my homeland I’ve seen many brothers led to demise, heard their cries erupt from blood-red barn taken by fellows not unlike these with bleached white faces one voyage across vast, blue fields so rough to where the very stars have realigned watching masses weep when one, such as I, misfortune meets, crying over spilt milk and the blood of beef
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Untitled by Christopher Gretkus Imagine that the entire energy and mass of Universe is concentrated at a very little single point. Billions of galaxies and nebulas, millions of magnificently developed civilisations. Imagine the universe, embedded in a super heavy grain of sand. Imagine yourself holding it under your tongue. You can swallow it. You can worship it. You can scatter it all over the table. You can duplicate it like a molecular chip. My name is Bethlehem-man. You can call me a space-time merchandiser. The Californian people are so nice to me. I am what has not come. will come, is coming...
The Editor by Chuck Joy New Delhi, it’s crazy the streets, these lanes jammed with trucks and bicycles everybody shouting, blowing horns the editor hated late, being late late was evil for the editor and he was at least at risk yet he noted a flaw in the mix he would turn the horns down turn the voices up inside the next building, an orange hut the international poet Lakshmi Uhuru posing relaxedly, improvising a few lines her hawk’s eyes scanning the horde of photographers and poetry fans enter the editor, shoving his way to a place near a table thinking, Asia is a crowded subway car studying the poet’s physical presence, emphatically female all curves, a concert of flesh artfully draped with belted silk the editor had not one suggestion a squat cat passed him a sheaf of pages stapled, the text to her poems a disaster various fonts, off-plumb printing infrequent misspellings
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laughable choices for enjambment the best to be said, all was legible but when she spoke the effect was hypnotic her voice an instrument, playing its few notes in marvelous complexity, amplitude, intonation subtle shading, the editor saw visions brown swoops and black smudges, the wall of a cave he recognized the language as English the editor did, although some parts seemed Mandarin and another part Swahili if she talks long enough, the editor thought I could learn any language
A Villanelle By Geoffrey A. Landis I'm in the middle of a villanelle It should be saucy, short and sweet But it's not going very well Trying to write is giving me hell What words will make my thoughts concrete? I'm in the middle of a villanelle It's prying a pearl from an oyster shell To find a line I can repeat And I don't think it's going well Will it be a classic? I just can't tell I just won't know till it's complete I'm in the middle of a villanelle I don't care if it's good, I just want it to sell If I have to hawk it on the street But I think it's going not so well The poem should ring like a carillon bell It should be good enough to eat I'm in the middle of a villanelle And I don't think it's going very well.
*previously published in MagnaPoets, Jan 2010
Poehemians Issue Two
Rendezvous by Joan McNerney That was the name of a paint can from J&M Hardware. With sweat lingering on her face, she colored her room. Tinted now like insides of ripe plums, like perfect grapes. When the sizzling lemon sun dropped from heaven...night became moist and black. Her fan whirled thick air stained with cigarettes coffee, turpentine, white wine. She sank into her wicker couch as fog horns trail the horizon. Lotus screech relentlessly for water always wanting more more more water. Closing her eyes, remembering him now tasting the feast of his smile.
The Poet . . . (Referencing Moonglow) By Thom Douglas Carlisle
Novels, novellas, writers of documents and manuscripts, Bred of grace and order, What makes a 'Fellow-of-Letters' construct for the mind that which the eye Can never see? New passive resident in moments of ancient breathing, held down, bound tightly In this ethereal, far dimension, Forged in the common-ceremony of, 'Feather and Parchment', My nimble fingers probe each new unfolding leaf. And with more than subtle indifference I do now advance Myself In the Far Echos and the Long Art.
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The Sweetest Lie By Allison Chaney
Your plastic hollow shaft-Charcoal feather Wanna be rock star Soft Ticklish Tucks into a band of glitter To play a game Of debauchery, exploration LIBERATION-Inky feather Wanna be movie star For a costume, you are made Died bold and daring To adorn in the night-Stygian feather Wanna be Greek god Curved without direction Delicate power, fated thus Your captive writhing beneath your plastic rachis and synthetic vanes Soul burst free from the river of death Believing the sweetest lie Believing the delicious promise Plumed, Plucked, Pierced, to life by your idol’s bow
The Mad Parade By Lloyd Wayne Russell millions of faces pass me by like soft white milken ghost aimlessly they wander in gypsy vagabond night so enslaved lost in the mad parade of society just working in this rhetorical pantomime to pay debts of mortgage rent or fancy attire gold laced chariots that are just destine to erode and mansions that are destine to rot and this flesh turning to dust into this insane karmic merry go round here we go
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Face to Face Billy Harfosh In the end We all come face to face With others That we refused to be Along the road We make exceptions For questionable behavior We ride with movers We learn from shakers Entering the Havana Club Red carpet rolled out Vacuumed and fluffed For our gold plated heels And our powdered noses We all come face to face With the best and the worst Hated them But hate is a strong word Loved them But love isn't tangible Ran from them But running is temporary Slept with them But sex is just physical
We all come face to face And finally We become them Faced with a greater enemy Forced to break bread Side by side Fighting time
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Two Poems By Thomas Piekarski Blind Spot The patriarchal parasite has only two choices, two ways to go when watching brilliant red, orange and yellow kayaks paddled single file between creosoted beams of the well-anchored pier. Only two ways to go as the kayaks’ reflections bounce across windwhipped whitecaps. Either persevere like parsimonious granite or migrate permanently away into an expired sunset. And while walking stoically against a fierce headwind blowing south off of a bone cold ocean it has but two viable options. Sally forth into the froth and probe perfection at time’s end or most definitely die trying.
Antistate It eschews common sense to become complacent on the eve of an everglade’s genesis. You’d as well be a purposeless porpoise stuck in a slough filled with brown wastewater. And then instead of needing a steel dinghy to rescue you, you’d require an injection, mixture of helium and nectar to raise you from that antistate
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The Stars Are Throwing Tantrums By Alvin Rhodes it seems i've caused imbalance in the upper stratosphere because i haven't claimed the love that you have made so clear the clouds have all been weeping in that gray sky up above there'll be no pleasant weather till the day i claim your love the tides are thrashing wildly for the moon is pulling hard for me to take your heart as mine he's frightened i'll discard the power he's emitting just might tear this world apart the oceans may start boiling lest i take as mine, your heart the stars bounce off each other like a pinball game in space and leaving streaks of madness till i finally take my place the constellations wander for they don't know what to do
the stars are throwing tantrums till i throw myself at you but i shall dry the tears from all the clouds up in the sky and pacify the sullen moon who also hangs on high and i shall calm the fury of the stars that fly above for now i know that life will end unless i claim your love
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Sleep By Epiphany Roa
Battling Restlessness Seething deceitful sleep Relinquished fate Her presence guides this lost soul to salvation. Salivating each step towards my awakening Which could bring me to my maker Righteous rivalry reveals the path to a realm of forgotten lifetimes A high frequency state of mind All energy is exchanging and rearranging the atmosphere
Scene from a Bolivian Restaurant By Marianne Szlyk I drizzle neon green sauce onto fat, starchy kernels as late morning’s light slinks in like an impossibly thin teenager past the bar lined with liquor no one drinks. Families eat lunch, not breakfast, not brunch. Nursing my can of diet soda, I wonder how the hot sauce and corn would taste at home with our smaller, sweeter kernels. I forget we are only two blocks from the mall, one block from the bus back home.
Poehemians Issue Two
Two Observations (Apophatic Sage) By Roy K. Austin I pluck the lion-tooth, all interpretations are murderers of truth ; for God is like one's shadow one needs the light to see it, and what is more – forever more we all must die to be it, behind it's bars of thought the brain has not the point of view and I will never get parole until I see that God is you; though God is something some thing is not God for God is as nothing yet no thing is God, for God is the limit of human perception, as God is a tree but the tree is not God and God is the world but the world is not God so look what a human being's doesGod is man but man is not God,
all that there is has fashioned the eyesthere is no surprise minus the ego ? If we believe we preconceive to circumscribe our prize, such deception may promise bliss but God will not be this.
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Collected By Heather Browne Come play with Me here in the surf O my soul Come splash in the edge of my tide soft foamy white tickling toes covering feet lapping your sand castle designs Kick up my sand as you twirl as you dance cartwheeling wind by your side Find treasures I've placed for you stars rock scattered shells Gather Me up with delight into deep pockets I go bulging full overfilled Tuck me carefully crunching away until home where we go
to be placed into thoughtful jars upon shelves window sills Your pride of today collected waiting for sight
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Remorse By Vicky Nall I am riding high on a cloud of angel's dust, cajoling almost-forgotten regrets and half-hearted promises from beneath stubborn finger joints; the light of dawn singes my shattered wing bones.
Golden City By Heather Ann Schmidt In the middle of life My womb is an open country When the moon has not gone to sleep And the sun has not awoken And both are on the horizon And I want to love The way my voice did at twenty When I sang my first aria in the conservatory And the halls echoed back And I heard what my own voice sounded like. I could understand my life In Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven Jeremy played on road trips to Ann Arbor where the streets led to somewhere I had dreamt To the beginning of understanding And a tabla dance that stepped over sidewalks and Onto the Diag under an oak tree where I sit On an April afternoon waiting for the words to come That show me how to begin my life again Now that the hidden self has stepped into the sunlight And said hello. My eyes are a different ocean than I had imagined-A reflection off the coast of Cape Town or St. Petersburg And I will wear a magenta sari and not white battenberg When I vow to stay who I am because that is the only way To really love other humans. We all see the ocean’s color a bit differently
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Dysphoria By C.S. Vincent I pluck out my hair and pull down my conscious with dysphoria. growths sprout like blisters on my chest; they keep swelling and it's cramped -my torso isn't formed right, my ribs wear an organ-coating, binding me. (I can hardly breathe, but I'd love to taste the air) my body is one itch I can't scratch out and I can't watch it peel away but I still hope for that day. (please let me tear off the skin that feels so tight)
Mortal Contention By Alicia Bair A majestic and deafening bell tower sings, A tyrant wails and the torrent rings. Breath is heavy in the tunnel so deep, The knight finds the beast at the heels of the keep. Ashes of flames flicker and dance, The tune of the hour is a vibrating trance. Torn asunder in the doorway so cruel, The shield on his shoulder becomes only fuel. Dreams of a smile commence without end, A trusting grin on the face of a friend. Ghostly skin discolored by touch, Private discourse is a damaging crutch. This towering creature, unforgiving and scarred, Stares into armor that's broken and charred. Sauntering in arcs that beat and forge song, Impassioned struggle produces the strong. Metal meets smoke with a shimmering fail, A duplicate sweep and blade pierces scale. Vengeance is instant and flames are a flood, Monstrous teeth surrender the blood. The strangling blast reveals a strange birth, The scent of embers determines the worth. Fire lights the wave of red at his feet, In a battle to death, no choice for retreat.
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Behind savage eyes, a light appears through, A newfound strength and defeat is askew. Who is this man running out of the deep? Where is his princess, secure and asleep? Armor removed, hair falls to her back, The hero is the damsel, her face coated black. Eyes of an ocean fill her vacanted mind, The waves of that sea are calming and blind. Who is to be saved by this soldier so cracked? To rescue herself is all that she's lacked. Is the beast the villain? Or is it the girl? The clearing smoke allows truth to unfurl. With a face in her mind, she shuts her burned eyes, A lunge and a bite destroy the last cries.
Antedeluvian Raconteurism By Tony Manfetano There is plenty left to do But it's not What they want to hear about. I haven't put the bottle down-but I have loosened my grip quite a bit. So the night fades into a deeper Shade of nothingness as I drive alone and talk to memories. But the aridity of now is not, Will not, last forEver, that I'm making towards the OK. For all the changes we experience with age-as well comes weariness. I'm too tired to fight. But here we are And there we are Melted then diluted To the point that our focus cannot be concentrated for more
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Than mere moments. Our conciousness under constant Attack by the ambient cacophony of throw away that surrounds us. So tell me I've faded away And my style Is that of a forgotten time There is plenty left to do And no one will Read this till I'm gone anyway Anyway
Ego By Douglas Troland I could have been: a spiral staircase to heaven; the holiest of wines; to sit with oracles who spin ancient tales until the next crescent moon. the boardroom where every folder is folded and every pencil is sharp the keyboard awaits my decisive touch. Crisp shirt and windsor knotted tie my shoes so shined they look like glass. a kindred soul to the wall street crossroads. Instead I sit in pastured fields with swaying blades of emerald grass I took the road less traveled and ended up here a tree stump at my feet, where ants crawl in circles. Industrious and social.
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I prefer a quiet night to the blaring trumpet of God's parade‌.. a quiet mist to the tempest's churn in oceans' ravaged currents - so furious and boiling that only dead fish rest on its surface.
The Solution By Alexis Dunn They all dissolve. One, after the other. In a perfect sort of rhythm. Not an off beat missed. As they dissolve, Into the soft, black, nothingness, Bubbles shoot to the surface. Sharp, accusing, stabbing. As they dissolve, Into the soft, black, nothingness, Bubbles shoot to the surface. Sharp, accusing, stabbing. The bubbles bring pain. The urgent air cuts too deep. They hurt, And they smell of Rosemary. The black nothingness is a lie. It was supposed to be sweet, It was supposed to be soft, It was supposed to dull the pain-filled murmurs. The final pieces dissolve slowly, Leaving a new, dark, nothing solution. Everything in numb, empty, And it smells of Aloe and Bellflower.
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Farm House By Michaela Kline We drive by; Pops points and says, “That’s all that’s left.” A farm house — empty fields — a spring, dried up. I wonder, “What happened to the rest?” He grew up in a time that lived on less. Basement shelves with fruit and syrup. But there was nothing left. He was born in a coup, chickens on their nests. Now weeded over and boarded up. Roof sunk in like an old man at rest. He picked one-pound apples, bushel-fulls hugged to his chest. The pies— fresh pressed cider in his cup. “The memory of smells,” he said, “Is all I have left.” He and his brother would race to the outhouse, to see who’s best. As we walk that way, he says, “What’s your hurry up There; it’s gone like the rest.” At home, he draws a diagram, sitting at his desk. Of the spring right in his house, bubbling up— but that’s all he has left-And I have question after question. “Nothing more tonight,” — he says, hunched over himself, “I need some rest.”
No Experience Required By David Thornbrugh Human existence seeks equilibrium, the economic bloodstream oxygenated by jobs. There are people who make a living painting over graffiti. They even drive vans advertising the company name. Tomorrow this apparatus may be gone, replaced by something new. In London, Paris, lamplighters no longer carry ladders from pole to pole, banishing the night, but the darkness is always there, waiting.
Poehemians Issue Two
Beginning the Atlantic: An Erasure Poem By Jen Galik Throat had snarly stick. A pathway parapet that the water herd whistle. Beginning the Atlantic. She slowly scrambled the drifting, rare tunnel with not a great passing. Sun chambers slowly grew windows shallow on the seal. The last year Swagdagger snapped had been the sycamore .
A Lover like the Muse By Andrew Sacks And do they then desire A lover like the Muse-Who visits unexpectedly Dispensing her epiphany On those that cannot Think or see, or hear or feel, Or write a word, After she has gone To sprinkle onto other men That selfsame blinding fickle light, and curse, Identical in passion and in kind.