Sunday, November 24, 2013

Two Poems by Colin Dodds

The Patron Saint of Transitions

The toothless man in a cowboy hat
collects the bottles off the tables.

“I’m tired kids,
I woke up before you were born,” he says.

He’ll tell you about when the year had 360 days.

The bartenders give him soda and quarters
for the pool table.

He gets an ideal spot to wait
for his luck to change.





Scary Silent Prayer

Above us patrons, lost in our devotions
to the blather, the stunt and the oily coast, 
a mood stitches the horizon down.

It is not dramatic, one more failure.

But it takes a thousand failures
to make a person, and a few billion people
to make us feel like this.

And god all muddy, here we are.

“What I do to entertain myself
is just that, what I do.
But all the while,
what I’ve really had in mind was…”
someone croons into the space
between jukebox songs.

Fraud our fodder,
give me something to say
to the man on my left, the woman by the door
and the bartender before me.

Anything except the scary silent prayer
that becomes the floors and doors
of this room.




Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City.  He's the author of several novels, including The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing "something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people."  Dodds' screenplay, Refreshment -- A Tragedy, was named a semi-finalist in 2010 American Zoetrope Contest.  His poetry has appeared in more than ninety publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Samantha.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Three poems by Felino A. Soriano

from antiphonies & spectrums


as when this mentions

each curl embeds a signature
erasing prior
           generational fantasies       from
figments and all aspects of
tonal
-imaginary spectrums

these curls are morning (pluralized among momentary resting)
and

inform the early-rising caws of
crows' separating curtain
                                                their wings revealing
splay as art as insignia's
contoured abstraction of sound
and
          rhythm's entrance onto
burgeon's reflectional
persuasion and
                                    realized recollection to                                 commence



Of an evening's version of sound

each aggregated evening
moments climb gates leading
into angled versions of light's
vocal insinuations

with legs of alabaster clarity
voices of gray and dusk's
wandering wardrobe
clothing absence in the
mobility of sound's
always moving reconstructed
rhythms --

these rhythms engage and enthrall and
redefine spontaneity's oval brand of
return's
unsolicited becoming



this corner, then that -- paralleling faces

more than,                       more so than
                              or
         much
forward-finding need to analyze an environment's
enabled tableaus

the faces
find their voices among braids of unsaid
transactions
the shine of tonal jewelry
enlisted onto physiognomy's imaginary
images, such in the facet of spreading jazz and
the wind's vocal cycles
                   onto these bodies and brand of
interactive leanings and prayer of prosaic curving
carving a hopeful mathematics into
equating collocated happenings, these

needed truancies from forming segregated
mobility among concerts of same-style
impersonations


Felino A. Soriano is a member of The Southern Collective Experience.  His poetry finds its foundation in created coocurrences, predicated on his strong connection to various idioms of jazz music.  His poetry appears in various online and print publications, with recent poetry collections including Of these voices (whitesky ebooks, 2013) Pathos|paticular invocation (Fowlpox Press, 2013) Extolment in the praising exhalation of jazz (Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2013) and Hinge Trio (La Alamedo Press, 2012). He lives in California with his wife and family and is the director of supported living and independent living programs providing supports to adults with developmental disabilities.  Links to his published and forthcoming poems, books, interviews, images, etc. can be found at www.felinoasoriano.info. 

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Two Poems by Jack T. Marlowe


seize this
 
you have
met the
enemy
and it is
i, sneers
the tin
weather-
cock in
the mirror
 
the epi-
center-
piece
of your
shifting
fault line
 
about to
turn from
kissing
the glass
to licking
ambition's
sputtering
abyss
 
an almost
shameless
graduation
 
but when
tomorrow
brings its
stinging
aftertaste
you will
struggle to
remember
whose ad-
vice it was
to seize
the day
 
you and
your little
fistful of
thorns
 
 
 
my left hand
 
dear parasite
your name
doesn't
answer to
memory  
although
you do
look
familiar
a poor
relation
seen
from a
distance
a near
enemy
my dear
enemy
an unwel-
come
guest
the
clumsy
beast
at the
bar, a
harbin-
ger of
dead
fish, a
hanger-
on, the
hairy
wineskin
tugging
at my
arm, a
jaundiced
paw, a
phalanx
of bitter
bones
playing
at war
numb
from the  
carpal
theater
 
 
 
 
 
Jack T. Marlowe is a gentleman rogue from Dallas, TX.  A writer of poetry and fiction and a veteran of the open mic, his work has appeared in Handful of Dust, Rusty Truck, Bone Orchard Poetry,  Napalm and Novocain, Zombie Logic, Tendril and many other zines (both online and in print). Jack is also the mad editor of Gutter Eloquence Magazine (http://www.guttereloquence.com).
 
 

Friday, November 8, 2013

Two Poems by Sharon Rothenfluch Cooper


Wishes
 
Thoughts about disappointments
rarely run away with purpose.
Wishes are only whims and head
droops in mocking silhouette
formed to placate the moment.
 
There's rhythm in time's passage
that's touched with the barest
of breeze to soothe taut nerves.
 
Lips taste curious excitement
and my strings shake
with calculated risk - desire a magnet.
     I tremble, I want, I need...


 
Sculpted Imagination
 
In that floating moment
before morning
when night turns
from the rising light,
dreams quiver
in a nauseous state.
 
I feel like -
I'm holding my breath,
waiting for tragedy
to bleed me of sap.
 
In the shiver of morning,
daylight knocks
and the dream winks
and closes its eyes
as mine pop open.
 
With throbbing pulse
the suffocating fear
washes away.


 
Sharon Rothenfluch Cooper’s poetry has appeared in numerous International, hard copy and internet magazines.  Her chapbook, ‘Reach Beyond’ was winner of a MAG Press, International Chapbook Competition  and she has two chapbooks, Mood Magic and A Slice of Life published by Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry.  Twenty-three of her poems were presented in the play, ‘Soldier’s Heart’ to Sold Out audiences and recorded on DVD. Her latest published pieces are 'featured' in the Summer issue of Poetry Quarterly and published in the October issue of Flutter.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

A Poem by Glenn Lyvers


Kazuya  Yamamoto
 
I
Kazuya  Yamamoto worked
at the sushi bar, cutting perfect
sashimi for the society elites
with their fat wallets and
ultra-gold credit cards.
 
They filed in and out, for 10 years
while he served them with a smile.
 
He seasoned perfect sticky-rice,
and trained others to roll it thrice
into little circles of perfect form
almost too pretty to eat.
 
II
Sally brought her little girl to
eat at the sushi bar. She taught her
to hold the chopsticks just so
and to spit in her napkin
when she didn’t like
the edamame
and kanikama.
 
They came every Tuesday and
Thursday like clockwork toys,
the mother and the girl--smiling
with a barely recognizable konichiwa
before spitting out the nijimasu
in a neat paper napkin for two.
 
III
Kazuya saved the napkins,
in a leaking yellow ball
that sat quietly
on the window ledge.
He worked it with his hands
kneading it just so, before gently
slicing it into perfect circles,
and wrapping it tightly
in a nicely seasoned nori.
 
He served it with a smile,
saying konichiwa imi imishe kuso
and while bowing very low.
 
 
 
Glenn Lyvers is a poet and author living in Virginia Beach, VA. Lyvers is currently the editor of Poetry Quarterly and several lessor known journals. He has won two annual poetry prizes, a Wolfson award in short fiction and is the recipient of several Pushcart Prize nominations. Lyvers most recent book, Burnt Umber, published by MLM is available on Amazon.com until it is sold out. Learn more about Glenn Lyvers by visiting his online blog  www.glennlyvers.com.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Two Poems by Joshua Bocher


Light and Dark

I.

God is a few aimless particles floating
            In a vast emptiness.
Religion is finding meaning in circling
            The emptiness.

II.

If we illumine life with a thousand suns,
Will we not be blinded by our own light?

III.

All religions
Seem to ask:
What doesn’t
Collect dust?

IV.

If I can't rid the world of darkness,
I'd at least like to dispel the endless nights.



Variations

When people die
They don't become angels
— Only flowers.



Joshua Bocher works at public health non-profits in the Boston area.  His poems have appeared in many publications, including Illuminations, Subliminal Interiors, The Germ, The Mind[less] Muse, and Point Mass.  He lives with his wife in Somerville, MA.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

A Poem from your Editor April Salzano


Protect Me From This Wind
 
you say, leaning into your wife, her hair
not thick enough to form a shield. Our son is
playing defense again while both sets of his parents
pretend to watch the soccer ball kicked
back and forth across the length of the field.
All shoulders are hunched against autumn
air, prelude to the cold season ahead of us.
My husband, not one for awkward situations,
takes our other child to the swings where they can
both be autistic. You tell me about a five foot snakeskin
in your attic, the mice in your shed, a groundhog
you will need to call pest control to remove
from its hole in your front lawn. I pretend I am
not laughing but coughing as I wonder how
you managed to make it to adulthood, how
you are already nearly bald, if your new wife
has realized yet that you are horrible in bed.
There are things I never thought
I would turn my face against wind to say.
How was your weekend at Daddy’s? to my son
is one, followed by another for the autistic boy:
First see Daddy, then see Mom. Of course I never
could have predicted all done Jim Henson,
but that is another story entirely.
Our triangle becomes uncomfortable
before halftime. I count minutes as I listen
to you telling her stories of your glory
days in sports, tales I have heard
a thousand times before in warmer weather.
 
 
 
April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two sons. She recently finished her first collection of poetry, for which she is seeking a publisher and is working on a memoir on raising a child with autism. Her work has appeared in journals such as Poetry Salzburg, Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Montucky Review, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle. The author also serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press.