Words Surfacing
Words Surfacing
Editorial Poet finds poetry lying on the handcart between the legs of the child labor asleep there, finds dangling from the shrub whose name his honey keeps reminding him every time he asks, and it is time to ask again. Poet hears the fishmonger performing a short poem. The commuter who is way too late. He finds it everywhere but on his desktop. Rowan Williams says in one article published in The Guardian, Poetry happens at a sort of junction in the mind at a place where new combinations of words and ideas spring up together. I cannot agree more and differ more. A poet is a receptor, a minute chip in the heart of the collective consciousness that conjures and records the continuum of thoughts those themselves are fine blend of everything else- philosophy, art, business, politics, economics, mother's authentic recipe and the truthful copy of the same by someone else. Do you recall what Milosz wrote? ‘The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.’ Yesterday I told one of my closest ones, Marrying impossible situations and improbable phrases is often good poetry, not necessarily always. It takes years of practice to play with nonsense and communicate it sensibly. Here the two mainstays of poetry meet- Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility and as a resistance against the intelligence. The former is a Wordworthian concept and the later originates in Steven. When we conceived this magazine I felt the urge to see poetry as a continuum. Because you adore Frost you cannot forego Bukowski. Because you like Simic you cannot unlove Wiman. We all sit on the floor of this planet and bring small pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle to its possible places. This inaugural issue embraces the vastness of poetry and I believe if you finish the entire volume you are bound to see coherence. Here we have the best of West and East. North and South. Here we have the dessert and the salad. The meal and the drinks. And before you turn the page let’s salud. ~ Kushal Poddar, Founder and Chief Editor, Words Surfacing
Words Surfacing
Words Are Her light Is my midnight by Pablo Otavalo Two Poems By Sana Mohammed Featured Poet : George Szirtes Three Poems Two Poems By Scott Thomas Outlar Why do I care By Debasis Mukhopadhyay Two Poems By Donna Snyder Artwork by Cal Leckie Three Poems By Kevin D. LeMaster Artwork by Julie Kim Shavin Two poems by Julie Kim Shavin Two Poems
Words Surfacing By Wale Owoade Two Poems by Andrew Scott Artwork By Igor Bartolec Two Poems by Swastisha Mukherjee Colossus By Nalini Priyadarshni and D Russel Micnhimer Artwork By Shain Bard Laughter
By Nalini Priyadarshni Two poems By Janelle Rainer Cold Fire By Rahul Dey Three Poems By Darren C. Demaree
Vanity
Words Surfacing By Ajise Vincent
Four Short Parts By Bekah Steimel
Two Untitled Poems By Barbara Maat
Antelope, Occupy and Sour Romance By James Diaz
Two Poems By Glen Wilson Two Poems By Joie Bose Two Poems By Andrew Bellon
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Š 2015 The copyrights of the content in this magazine rest with the authors and poets of the work. All Rights Reserved Published by: Kev Ku N Joo , USA, India
Words Surfacing Her light Is my midnight by Pablo Otavalo for Mariapia An instant, no more, a crossing through the night and yet such light in her infinite eyes, intelligent yes, but the music inside more human than human like water on a thin pane of glass unlikely, fragile, a dangerous beauty like a death's-head moth or the white flowers of the suicide tree that quickly paralyze the heart yes, lovely, but my Ave Maria is best whispered in near dark and then she is gone like an ember whose mystery re-ignites a spark like an arrow cutting through the air into the water missing its mark like a kiss that never happened beneath a triumphal arch a kiss that never tasted like cherry blossoms blooming Mid-march a kiss that was never held so long that it stilled the city & paralyzed my heart.
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Two Poems By Sana Mohammed Senryu Why did waves return Our forsaken child to us? Wet sand waiting black
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The ranting of N Narcissism, I pick you from the deck Of an empty ship, aboard, Disowned by the Pacific, You adorned the hat Of a Pirate, A captain, A Shipman, Of a soldier. Narcissism, I wore you on my head Zipped at the back Spread over my chest Tightened at the sides. Only the eyes were bare. The naked eyes. Narcissism, You mock the mockery Of the mocking birds, Kiss your reflection that Walks on the muddy roads Tramples on hypocrisy Parades down the shipyard To board the polished deck.
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Featured Poet Three Poems By George Szirtes IDIOMS OF CENTRAL EUROPE So much barbed wire under the stucco. * So much sluggish blood in the pool. * So many crickets in the cracks of the mirror. * So much intelligence opening on deserted streets. * So much sugar in the nerves and in the eyes. * So much fear of the mirror and the window. * Such abundant charm in the grimace. * So many fine inflections in the howling mob. * So much washing of the same irredeemably stained shirt. * So much of sky in the windowless room and the damp cellar.
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It is Possible It is possible to think too much. The same thoughts in the same patterns. It is possible that the same thoughts and patterns look somehow different. The possible things are possible that is why they keep returning. The clouds bubble up into configurations that are possible. The voice changes shape into possible hearings. The ear picks them out. The possible light presses through the window, soft insistent, the same. Everything that is possible appears. The rain, the cloud, the bright sky. It is possible to change and yet be the same. The cloud changing shape is still the same cloud though the light changes. Nothing is impossible. It's the same darkness in changing weather, you think. It is possible.
Words Surfacing
Words Surfacing
NOTES ON MIGRATION 1 The third floor window overlooked fighting. It closed on its own comfort. * The bodies were white with lime and the trees were bare in the boulevards. * The map was spread out as big as the world itself. The night too had shrunk. * In the small station a straggle of refugees with gifts of luggage. * The barn at midnight. A solemn trade-off: grave goods for the vanishing. * Life is not a walk across a field, but this was a field. Life at night. * How the cold sang. Mud frozen under snow. Murmurs. Whispering. Silence. * A dark copse of trees. Suddenly torchlight. The call of another world. * They have deserted themselves. The field they have crossed retains their lost bones. * Arrival is all, no matter where. To arrive is to have come through. 2 The night aeroplane with its whirling propellers
Words Surfacing diving into light. * Warm woollen blankets, grey army issue. Headache. A cup of strong tea. * The night coach. Headlights and women squatting. Relief in small spreading pools. * Sleeping and moving. You are the stillness inside your own spinning head. * Everything distance can bring you it has brought you. Welcome to distance. 3 Suddenly the sea, snarling, implacable, dark, dream-troubling, constant. * Understand the sea, that it brooks no argument and does not listen. * You pick up a shell and put it to your soft ear to hear its hard words. * Where has the sea been all this time? Where have you been? Why has it found you? * You are an island. Donne was wrong. We are islands, archipelagoes. * The sea keeps thrusting its hands and tongue out at you, half contempt, half grief. * Nothing beyond it, the sea does not recognise its limitations. * All limitations, you recognise yourself in the sea's lack of them.
Words Surfacing * When the sea begins to speak you are quiet. Now you may speak again.
George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England as a refugee in 1956. He was brought up in London and studied Fine Art in London and Leeds. His poems began appearing in national magazines in 1973 and his first book, The Slant Door, was published in 1979. It won the Faber Memorial prize the following year. By this time he was married with two children. After the publication of his second book, November and May, 1982, he was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Since then he has published several books and won various other prizes including the T S Eliot Prize for Reel in 2005. Having returned to his birthplace, Budapest, for the first time in 1984, he has also worked extensively as a translator of poems, novels, plays and essays and has won various prizes and awards in this sphere. His own work has been translated into numerous languages. Beside his work in poetry and translation he has written Exercise of Power, a study of the artist Ana Maria Pacheco, and, together with Penelope Lively, edited New Writing 10 published by Picador in 2001. George Szirtes lives near Norwich with his wife, the painter Clarissa Upchurch. Together they ran The Starwheel Press. Corvina has recently produced Budapest: Image, Poem, Film, their collaboration in poetry and visual work.
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Words Surfacing Two Poems By Scott Thomas Outlar The Camel’s Back We have to stop smoking inside the house, she slurred, as she snatched the cigarette from my hand and snubbed it out in the ashtray, before leaning back drunkenly while obliviously taking the next drag from her own. It was, as they say, the final straw.
Words Surfacing Orbs A cacophony of noise in the night An orange moon with a screaming chorus of crickets and then‌ Sound becomes Light and I can see
Scott Thomas Outlar hosts the site 17Numa where links to his published poetry, essays, and fiction can be found. His chapbook "Songs of A Dissident" will be released in January 2016 through Transcendent Zero Press. His words have appeared recently in venues such as Yellow Chair Review, Harbinger Asylum, Section 8 Magazine, Dissident Voice, and Poetry Quarterly.
Words Surfacing Why do I care By Debasis Mukhopadhyay "I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive." `Jorge Luis Borges in Boast of quietness I'm besieged I go to seek the way Sun glints on the cobwebs of the piano keys I keep the sun aside to think I forget the face Sea stops to shine green I keep aside her mermaid breasts I look on The flowerpot sky I sing Why do I care Sky gets bigger and bigger I keep aside the sky I spread the tablecloth I see a spider forlorn I imagine If the sky gets bigger and bigger An endless sprawl I keep aside the spider I look up Dreams fall full of sky I imagine If dreams fall from high above I look into the well Dark water full of sky Lies low a sky Choked in the deep An endless sprawl Why do I care This is how One lives to live What's to be done Debasis Mukhopadhyay grew up in Calcutta, India and now lives in Montreal, Canada. He holds a PhD in literary studies from UniversitĂŠ Laval. He writes poetry in both Bengali & English. Debasis' recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Snapping Twig, Eunoia Review, Silver Birch Press, Of/With, and elsewhere.
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Two Poems By Donna Snyder Saturated with secrets
Never much good with secrets, I hang my dirty linen out to dry confession’s damp map of stain in sundrenched mountain air. I sweep grated red yam, make piles of ruby peel that smell vaguely vegetal until withered, pallid and dry as unwanted flesh. Beneath the rug, I stash night’s ash but you roll it into a riddle’s cruelty, redolent of conch, a shiny madness meted out in rhythm and pearly rhyme. Moist whispers soft against naked skin, sustenance found alone in shadow soaked with ululations, secrets known only to you, me, and every nose and ear near enough to sense the senselessness of skin, of sky, of the never ending sigh.
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Enthralled
A sea monkey punches me in the face. Crying for mercy, I fall to the ground. Over my shoulder, I see the alpha take his son and daughter by turn, ignoring their piteous whimpers, the sign of thralls tight about their necks. Hoodlums loom, sea monsters in the gloom. You hand me a cigarette. The inhalation dizzies me. When the morning comes, I wake to your absence, your scent like rose petals about my lips. Words hover above my head in balloons, a presage of my next thought.
Donna Snyder lives in El Paso, Texas. NeoPoiesis Press will publish her third book of poems, The Tongue Has its Secrets, in 2015. Her work appears in Malpais, Puerto Del Sol, Red Fez, VEXT, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and elsewhere. Until recently, she worked as an activist attorney for indigenous people, immigrant workers, and people with disabilities. Her blog is poetry from the frontera.
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Artwork by Cal Leckie
Words Surfacing Three Poems By Kevin D. LeMaster After the news they would come with their bags of fast food to get their pain shot their fat kids would scarf burgers from greasy bags cold fries shakes thick as mud it was like an ER picnic without the blankets or ants or sun just the fluorescent hum or a discontented ballast and a nurse asking who's next
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Oh, Christmas branched, coated green, like Caesar's laurel, a crystalized glow, halo silent. woven nature, gnarled like first winter, it breathes as if the bane of its existence depends on this night. dying a little with each felled needle, each chop of the axe, dragged by the hair, like ancient ritual to be adorned like Christ outliving its last day by one.
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The Sky Let Out Its Gown it rained today and I felt a sting from its sequined stain with every felled drop a war among brothers everything wet ground to dust every orifice drowned wandering blindly into a dessert and evaporating stone bled sore from the trek laying down to die the blisters weren't fat enough weren't engorged enough a delightful oozing that gave way to storms and their mothers wiping us from its face wiping away everything silent every noiseless sound
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Artwork by Julie Kim Shavin
Words Surfacing Two poems by Julie Kim Shavin Midday Navigation Without Reason Dangling from the ironing board a string, Shirley Temple ringlet. I iron out a dream, but can't decipher its smooth countenance, the disparate more disparate now. Brain becomes a mother: Who irons anymore? You did what exactly. With your life? I put the things away. Tonight's dream will warp the damage, the capsize, the catch of smooth sailing.
Words Surfacing Exonym Tonight the moon is oversized, huge, wears a corona, baby in a bonnet. My daughter, when she was three, drew faces in the sky no bodies, only heads, faces. As though she knew, just knew.
Words Surfacing Two Poems By Wale Owoade The Missionary the missionary thought you to be selfish. how to be the caller and the receiver at the same time the missionary thought you to be lazy. your chest up. face up. your job is watching me go in and out of a raining cart.
Words Surfacing Waiting I love in broad sea-light when sand opens and stone turns when the ocean grows wings and sprays prayers on shore my fears are as lifeless as cobwebs I smell cold and want to be washed by it I wait outside your lips waiting for you to call my name
Words Surfacing Two Poems by Andrew Scott Hail to the Chief I stand here listening Watching our speaker from afar Sweat from his head glistening The heat today does not take away from the star Powerful words coming from his voice Arms waving to all Telling us all to rejoice How he is to continue to tear down wall after wall He has said all of this before Giving us hope for many years now While stealing and treating us worse than a whore How do you take from nothing? I do not know how I remember when I believed the talk of prosperity When we lived off just hope Not the fields that were empty Ruins down every slope Memories of working with broken backs With nothing but empty arms to bring to our family Hands scarred, no time during daylight to relax Barely breathing under the heat’s brutality When the new leader replaced the old This was all suppose to go away People believed in his words and were sold Today though, I feel the same as I did yesterday I am so tired and broken Belly empty from hunger Waiting for the better day that has been spoken I do see him getting fatter From us, he is getting richer We have never seen the promised aid He kept all for himself, making him better Just ripped off out only band aid Still everyone shouts in celebration when he speaks He has them believing all will still happen With powerful words from a mouth that wreaks More untruth in words spoken The shout to the one I call sinister “Hail to the Chief!” I pull my trigger and whisper “Hail to the Thief”
Words Surfacing Maggie’s Piano Maggie has seen days that have been better, now she is held together by the old stitches of a tattered dress, her gibberish screams at passerbies make her seem sinister, she cannot keep it all calm and together, Maggie’s mind is a mess. Maggie’s magic happened each night before we settled in, she would sit, smile and give a gift like no tomorrow, touching us all before she would really begin, the mystical, magical sound of Maggie’s piano. Every day her eyes looked so worn, head down and tired when she takes a dirty seat, scattered worries race through her mind, so forlorn, Maggie cannot figure out when next she will eat. Each day, Maggie helped our homeless strive, lifting our wandering sorrow, touching us to come alive, by the sweet sound of Maggie’s piano. People walk by Maggie with her hands out, street cratered face, years of street and alley living, as they went by, she gave an angry, unrecognizable shout, one that sent them away from giving. When most of our bodies felt like death, sweet sounds gave us smiles for tomorrow, that on extra, smooth breath, from the heart of Maggie’s piano. We were so sad when Maggie left, gone, to us, was that fighting courage, to the rest of us, it was the higher power’s theft, tired of watching her get kicked like every day garbage. So he took her to a better place, where maybe her clothes were sparkled new, where there was no more anger in her face, where weathered skin could be new. Each night, we close our eyes, listening for her grace, gifts from the skies, to the battered piano in this place How it takes away our tired and cold, a warm, safe place to go,
Words Surfacing for the warm, unkempt and old, at the foot of the always playing Maggie’s Piano.
Words Surfacing
By Igor Bartolec
Words Surfacing Two Poems by Swastisha Mukherjee BLIND IS BEAUTIFUL You saw me as a deciduous lover, The autumn end of a modulation When, you entered my womb as an opera, Becoming a poet from a bard. The looking glass, Godot's Ghost, but, my water broke out in a premature gush, And I was blind, I had to see you as the Horla of mine eyes.
Words Surfacing CARDINAL LOVE In another ten years, I'd find you Standing here. She committed to her alternative mirror Commitment for commitment's sake, she never could fathom leave alone colonise the end Yet she trusted the glass More than the reflection it cast The maestro of her middle age had long given up On silhouettes, had returned home, suffering from a beautiful song, Perhaps, the most beautiful woman of the world She said, ‘the end doesn't last, 'tis the suffering that does.' Her palms are still fresh from last birth's pangs.
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Words Surfacing Colossus By Nalini Priyadarshni and D Russel Micnhimer Curl spirals of your tongue into amphorae of my understandings taste nexus sureties deep through unfolding wings tightly mapping thin stitches you sow into furrows not yet planted in inquiring fields. These seeds are fertile; inhale your fill; open your fingers and feel warm elixir rushing into your mouth from between the stars. I spread you across my mind Flatten the parchment of your knowings Against my gossamer chest Tracing the contours of the continents Along the edges of your limbs, I feel My way around your sighs and smiles your hair curls around my fingers Unfurling new thirsts down my throat Inhaling deep the scent of your discontent I reach out to salver of new learnings Contours of your curves rise to caress crevasses of fissures across my deeply frozen heart; they thaw raw crumbling edges with melting drops of glowing amber unguents, reunite lost fragments scattered by winds of molten wanderings, merge heated glazes with patinas brazed on fragile shells into new veins that trace threads that stitch old wounds into newly healing scars your silken touch polishes like priceless heirloom crystal set on an endless leavened table where we dine as one. You’re the wet sand between my toes after high tide Behind your ribs my storm celler heaves Dreams of gushing rivers and broken dams Tip toe into afternoons where you interpret them as we peel mandarins on deck and let their tangy sweetness drip onto our fingers to mingle with cranberry and vodka on our breaths. I gather your laughter in chalice of my gut to heal lightening charred fissures with scent of forgiveness your damp fingers at the back of my neck are sacred as the rite of passage to becoming freestone
Words Surfacing In tight embrace of still dark night I listen to your breath safe inside corner stone that deflects sorrows like beacon lights across the bow of your becomings; lift sparks of undirected sands to polish grains beneath your steps into constellations that engrave victories between soundings of your keel onto wide charts of aged celestial mysteries that have awaited patiently your deft explorations to expose layers of ripening flesh, free from stone, into which your lips and teeth and tongue slowly drown.
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Laughter
By Nalini Priyadarshni Camouflaged as spicy mangotini that passed between their lips it melted into a pool of thirst on his warm tongue her laughter was rousing and he had addictive personality
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Two poems By Janelle Rainer Daily Is it cliché to start from the beginning? The sun lifting and lightening, the alarm shrieking with self-importance, the shedding of nighttime dreams with a shake of the head. One foot, two feet on the ground. One step leads to more. One cup of coffee leads to one egg and one bowl of fruit. There are doors involved. The bedroom door, the bathroom door, the front door, the car door. It’s not the journey that’s insane. It’s the belief that we must justify our journey to anyone else.
Words Surfacing Thoughts While Engaged The man parks his Buick sedan along the shoreline. He and his wife leave the car for the beach downstream. They walk slowly, he with one hand on his full-moon belly, her with one hand pressing her gray hair down in the wind, and with their free hands they hold onto each other. I watch them from the porch, alone but thinking of this young love we’ve promised to each other. How slowly we must move, now, to find ourselves someday old and holding hands. Janelle Rainer is a 25-year-old poet, painter, and community college teacher living in Spokane, Washington. Her recent work has appeared in Harpur Palate, The Louisville Review, Oddball Magazine, Atticus Review, Emerge Literary Journal, HASH the Mag, POPLORISH, and elsewhere. Her paintings can be viewed at JanelleRainerArt.com. She earned an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon.
Words Surfacing Cold Fire By Rahul Dey The bright sun painted the sky amber, While dew drops trickled down cold leaves. A strange silence crept in. The river stopped flowing. And as the wild lay still, The frozen forest burned.
Words Surfacing Three Poems By Darren C. Demaree EMILY AS THE WATER TAKES THE SUN Maybe we should have been primed by the other limbs of the world, but since we are edge-people & together, happening amidst the disappearance of the yap & pace of good, bloodless stars, we must take the remainder of the warmth as a blessing. We must live in the waters now & breathe through each other’s lungs, each gift of I want you more & the one of us that outlives the other, won’t bother with the surf.
Words Surfacing
EMILY AS WE MET IN THE PARK AT NOON What now? What? Now? What, now? Now. Now. Now. What?
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EMILY AS GUT STEAM It takes a woman more woman to be naked & to grab your eyes only with the slow rolling of her fingers into a fist. Emily is gravitas, always tightening around her angry want. Darren C. Demaree is the author of "As We Refer To Our Bodies" (2013, 8th House), "Temporary Champions" (2014, Main Street Rag), "The Pony Governor" (2015, After the Pause Press), and "Not For Art Nor Prayer" (2015, 8th House). I am the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology. He currently lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio with my wife and children.
Words Surfacing VANITY By Ajise Vincent I have drank greedily from the gourd of auspicious desires. Slept nude of
on the breasts frivolities.
I have even dined on the table pride With men of esoteric foresights. Lo! I tell you all is vanity upon vanity & a strike after the wind.
WE.. Yesteryear, they, our progenitors dispelled development with the spell of corruption. They threw a banquet to glorify this dementia. There, they feasted on propriety till their bellies became paunchy. Lo! They ate our future. They left behind memories filled with debris. Filthiness. Wirra! They left behind the catalyst for redundancy. We are now an immethodical sod yielding smeared skeletons of our shamed past. A hapless municipality seeking reincarnation at the shrine of Endor. For our seer has taken the sham pill of debauchery. Gluttony. & the gods of our land are presently mourning the death of their ambitions.
Words Surfacing Four Short Parts By Bekah Steimel I. I crave you like the first pill I revere you like the last Your absence depresses me like the empty bottle
Words Surfacing II. Love is a willingness to walk along the fault line of another to stand your ground even when it trembles I will not slip through the cracks of your imperfections I will not repair them Love is a willingness to walk along the fault line of another and see the beauty in a broken landscape
Words Surfacing III. Your kiss was arson, your words the accelerant let me burn you are the spell I recited, the rogue prayer secreting from everywhere but my lips A plea for completion my heart has an anthem, composed and conducted by you All can listen, none can understand I did not fall for you I did not stumble My motion was deliberate, intentional, measured without hesitation or uncertainty As is this.
IV.
Words Surfacing Love renders muscles irrelevant but my arms were never stronger than when they held you and now these tendons and now these ligaments securing your scars to my own closed wounds two disfigured women fitting flawlessly Bekah Steimel is a poet aspiring to be a better poet. She lives in St. Louis, MO, USA and can be found online at www.bekahsteimel.comand followed @BekahSteimel.
Words Surfacing Two Untitled Poems By Barbara Maat
1 the redness of your blossoms arrests me.
among leaves and the shadows of leaves the sleek wet snake of the river disgorges, flicking sunlight, hissing the glistened stones stairstepping to the sea.
sparrowhawks laugh, scry down their secret names on us, knowing they are magicians of the morning, for men have forgotten the way.
among the lichen yellow moments, at three green strokes past an hour of blue, voices come through you to paint the afternoon.
no froth of warring stars, no corrosive desire in the purpled curves of dusk, no worn griefs flayed on the thorns of a day,
Words Surfacing just hayblown warmth, fragrant cicada drowse and flare, the flaming of red flowers burning fields down to the river to quench a longing for the sea.
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2 place the book before me so that i may see the worn valley of so many hands. say that this is the sea. my hours speak to me of longing in tongues the shape of you. night is a waterfall.
Barbara Maat is a constant gardener of words, resides in Florida, USA
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Antelope, Occupy and Sour Romance By James Diaz I am only yelling at you to keep the scabies that have burrowed into my upper arms from becoming an existential problem. There is, I think, enough of a history between us that you can understand the impulse to distract myself in this particular way. If a chair thrown through a window symbolized love for a certain famed alcoholic poet our version would most likely be a toaster that no longer works. The bite marks on my skin are swelling with biblical undertones, patches of red spread out like the desert where Christ thought about giving up the whole messiah gig for a single but nonetheless everlasting moment. When you lay down with activists on the sidewalk at night outside of Wall St. you are bound to wake up with microbial exchanges unasked for skin fucking complications. It was for the larger picture though that you endured thisbut bread that won't brown is a deal breaker. Ah, love.
Words Surfacing Two Poems By Glen Wilson Unresolved I swung punches in the dark unable to switch off the thoughts that would not surrender to sleep. They regrouped, reformed in more metallic armour, fuelling the fear that I would never extradite myself from this ever awake, never rested state. The hours dripped like Chinese water torture, softening my comfort, leaving me aware of the attrition. I remember praying and repeating “the lord is my shepherd I shall not want�. Then I was aware again at my desk in work, looking at my knuckles bruised and grey.
Words Surfacing Two Cats She sits on the back step and drags on a cigarette. Her friend ambles up to her black and white markings loosely covering supple refined, lean muscles. She runs a slim hand along her body and tail - the back arches. She stubs out the cigarette and takes the cat into her lap, stroking her glossy coat. The front door rings she sets her down and goes inside changing stride as she passes through the corridor. Glen Wilson lives in Co Armagh with his wife Rhonda and children Sian and Cain. He has been widely published including work in The Honest Ulsterman, Iota, Boyne Berries and The Interpreters House. He won the 2014 Poetry Space competition and was shortlisted for the Wasafiri New Writing Prize. He is working on his first collection of poetry. Twitter @glenhswilson
Words Surfacing Two Poems By Joie Bose Night Rain The whites of my eye turn dusky orange, With a temperature setting down; And the magnifying heat burning, I'm a fireball in the sky, dropping... Summer sweat is better I say, Than saline high tides flooding; My cheeks and staining them dark, I'd rather be in heat, now... I lack the strength these days, To brave the haunting rain; Possess me, drenching my skin, With a deathlike cold into numbness... I could have walked failing, Holding the railing for support; Pride overtakes, I'm couped up, I'm watching the rain outside the window...
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1985 Headlights in our face, blaring Squinted we are drifting on the honking highway By the car streams, continuously repeatingThere are so many of us Doppelgangers and hallucinations Twins and lovers, we are all Sinning and singing and smoking and stroking and stalking and skydiving And it's all lost for a moment and back, And it's 1985 once more We are all crying, For that's all we could do Save sleep and now, We can't cry, so lets be in 1985 again, Let's sleep, its night now, Let's sleep and pee in our pants, It's 1985 again and we don't think, And it's OK, not to. Joie Bose is an educator and a corporate trainer. she has been a part of various poetry organizations. Her poems have been translated into Albanian and she has recently joined Personae, as its managing editor. Founder of ‘English On Track’, an English & Soft Skills Training Institute she is currently editing & compiling a book of short stories and editing two text books on life skills and creative writing. Her works have been published in many anthologies including New Asian Writing 2010, Thailand, Beyond the Diaper Bag, USA, Seagull Poems for Peace, India, in several Chicken Soup for the Soul series apart from many national and international journals. She is currently pursuing her PhD specializing in feminism and the Indian Diaspora. She is the author of Corazón Roto and Sixty Nine Other Treasons.
Words Surfacing Two Poems By Andrew Bellon Untitled futures ago liriope in blue shoots sunlight through young leaf brown shambles of autumn still littering winter. i sleep between nothings mind an empty drawer old snow albedo
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Epitaph for the boy found on a beach near Bodram Yesterday morning his mother tied his shoes. This morning the surf combs his hair.
Andrew Bellon read poetry at Rutgers College and NYU Graduate School. Worked on 47th St. in Manhattan for nearly thirty years. Presently lives, reads, writes poetry in Florida. Authored two books of poetry, Strewn Musics, and Maps of Water, and edited an anthology of anti-war poetry, Words against War. All are available on Amazon.
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Earthly Cosmos By Nancy Davenport Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis. Searching casting for faults in the clouds of delusion. Shall we go, you and I while we can Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds? ~~Robert Hunter did you
know
that there is a cosmos a
constellation
on
your back?
I can’t read
stars
but
there is
on the
handwriting warm
your back in the the moon
light of
wall
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Nancy Davenport is a single mother who was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay. She has had poems published in Burning Grape, Bicycle Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Lilliput Review, Blue Fifth Review, Poetry Quarterly etc. She has had her work translated into German and Spanish, and has been published in three anthologies, UNDER COVER, SPARRING WITH BEATNIK GHOSTS, and ARCANA: THE TAROT POETRY ANTHOLOGY. Nancy’s chapbook, La Brizna, was published in May, 2014 and she is currently working on her second book, Smoked Glass. She is the mother of an amazing son, a student at the University of Puget Sound. Nancy’s favorite quotation is is Beckett’s: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”