A Poem by Sy Roth

John and Thomas

They spar
Sparing little of themselves
lightning rods ensnared
in the snap-crackly air.

Their thoughts bitter
dressed in blue velvet,
gold buckles
he in homespun cloth
draped in insouciant words
couched in aphorisms.

They beat each other with their silences
ancient heroes
ancient warriors,
drooling octogenarians
stiffly jousting with their words,
combating their own fearsome angles
devil's grappling,
locked in the battle of last moments
lost moments bent in the clutches of the living
an indolent history.

Brisk breaths breathed last
in lusty lungs-full.
One withheld
one bold
both wrapped in sweeping gestures of similitude.

A Poem by Inna Dulchevsky

To My Muse

                                  Words of poetry do not belong to people
                                  Or names
                                  They are the sanctuary of the soul
                                  At the physical plane

You take away my sleep
I neglect to cover my naked shoulders
Your voice pulls me closer
In tete-a-tete heartbeat
My plea escapes from your heart

Or     maybe
Your heart escapes from me with its plea

Scatter through many dimensions
Swell my recalls with the scent of yellow roses
Cure my hands from the stings of dark thorns
Clean my wounds
Reduce my pain     with more pain
To the threshold of numbness

Or     maybe
I lie to myself that this numbness exists

Meaningless words
Translated through senses
Detach from me and     floats away
Your voice ties my fragmented expressions in lament
My breath has no sound

Or     maybe
My heart is out of breath     when you speak

Poetry

Inna Dulchevsky spent her early school years in Belarus.  She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.  She was awarded the First Prize 2014 David B. Silver Poetry Competition.  Inna's work has been published in numerous anthologies, books and journals, including Pyrokinection, Jellyfish Whispers, Napalm and Novocain, Petals in the Pan Anthology, Element(ary) My Dear Anthology, Happy Holidays Anthology, book Lavender, The Cannon's Mouth, The Otter, New Poetry, Calliope Magazine, Calliope Magazine Anniversary Issue, Aquillrelle Anthology, 4th annual LUMMOX poetry anthology, KNOT Magazine, Antheon, and is forthcoming in Secrets and Dreams Anthology.  Her interests include metaphysics, philosophy, meditation and yoga.  The light and expansion of consciousness through the connection with inner-self and nature are essential in the writing of her poetry.

A Poem by Christopher Hivner

Hi Fi

A song plays in my head
on a cheap, old
record player,
each pop and hiss
a ghost on my skin.
The opening of Rats in the Cellar
makes me twelve again
reading the liner notes
on the album jacket
while trying to understand
the lyrics,
each word
as big a mystery to me as
the girl in third period
I can't stop staring at.
My driving route
becomes grooves on a record,
I'm looping in circles
ever tighter,
skipping over warps
in the record,
moving closer to home.
The last song of the album
plays in my head
crackling from the tinny speakers
like a bonfire
warming my face
more than the girl
that sparkled in my eyes.
The song ends,
the needle lifts,
side one is over.
I sit in silence,
settle my eyes on row 4, seat 1
waiting for class to start.

Christopher Hivner writes from a small town in Pennsylvania surrounded by books and the echoes of music.  He has recently been published in Saudade, Syzygy, and Deadsnakes.  A chapbook of poems, "The Silence Brushes My Cheek Like Glass" was published by Scars Publications and another, "Adrift on a Cosmic Sea," was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press.  Website:  www.chrishivner.com, Facebook:  Christopher Hivner - Author, Twitter:  @Your_screams

A Poem by Diana Woodcock

Envisioning Mercy

     Mercy shall not be for man alone, but shall go beyond and embrace the whole world.

                                             -- Swami Vivekananda

The elephant with severe arthritis
is forced to perform,
its owner blind to her pain,
deaf to her moans.

Feel for a human pulse
within the phenomenal world's
workings.  Stand
at the still point of darkness:

observe EArth hanging
by a thread.  A wise man* once said
you can judge a society's morality
by how it treats its animals.

Once, I swayed for nearly half a day
on an elephant's shoulders.
Arrived sunset, Karen village
deep in Thailand's jungle.

When the harness was removed,
and I saw the raw groove
rubbed by the friction of it against hide,
I cried.  There were tears, as well,

in the old elephant's eyes.
Lying awake that night
on the floor of my host's hut,
I wondered what the elephant was up

to, tied just outside the door,
taken so many years before
from her family.  Lonely,
solitary.

If I could have,
I would have taken her
into my arms and rocked her
all night long, wiping the tears

from her eyes, the ooze
from her weeping side's
wound.  If she was up to it,
I would have stolen her away,
ushered her back to the scene
of the crime, searched high and low
till we could find her family.
Feel for a human pulse.

Stand at the still point
of darkness.  Imagine
what lies beyond pain
and starkness.  Dare ask

the question yet again,
What will you gain,
though you rule the world,
if you lose your soul?



*Mahatma Gandhi

Diana Woodcock is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, most recently Under the Spell of a Persian Nightingale.  Her first book, Swaying on the Elephant's Shoulders, won the 2010 Vernice Quebodeaux International Women's Poetry Prize.  Chapbooks include Beggar in the Everglades, Desert Ecology:  Lessons and Visions, Tamed by the Desert, In the Shade of the Sidra Tree, Mandala, and Travels of a Gwai Lo.  Widely published in literary journals and anthologies (including Best New Poets 2008), her poems have been nominated for the pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award, as well as performed live onstage in Lincoln Park, San Francisco at Artists Embassy International's 21st Dancing Poetry Festival.  Several of her poems "toured Alaska" as part of the "Voices of the Wilderness" Traveling Art Exhibit, Alaska 2014-2015.  Prior to teaching in Qatar (since 2004), she worked for nearly eight years in Tibet, Macau and on the Thai/Cambodian border.

Three Poems by April Salzano

Of Moods and Mornings

I opened my eyes as the sun
fired a warning shot.
I broke my back on a moon
of my own making.
Where is the headlong happiness
I pledged myself in childhood?
I have only birds and cigarettes,
porches and promises.
Crows cry in unrelenting fog.
There are jackals in the driveway.
My bed is not a raft, but I am
drifting in the sea of another dark day.



Growing

These days are early.
I could still wake you.
Back when a nightmare
meant something, held meaning.
Your hands were a magic noose,
and I still sucked you,
and you still ate me.
My body was nearly new, birthless,
and your eyes told their squinting story,
refracted light as if for the first time.
The implication of laughter loomed
largest in our corners,
vined our rented walls.
Our floor was a mattress,
the windows, a metaphor for anything
but eyes.  We hung a mirror,
called it ours, rearranged the chairs,
took down all the curtains.
We outgrew that incubator,
walked surely into the mouth
of the moon, fingers unlaced
and all the furniture forgotten.
The whole house wept
to see us go.



My Body is Not a Chance

anyone is willing to take, save
the familiar men of nightmares
and domestic duty.  Aging,
I fatigue easily,
I am naked, worth less
than a decade ago, the blink
of two tired eyes.

April Salzano is the co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press and is currently working on a memoir about raising a child with autism, as well as several collections of poetry.  Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in journals such as The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle.  Her chapbook, The Girl of My Dreams, is available from Dancing Girl Press.  Her poetry collection, Future Perfect,  is forthcoming from Pink. Girl. Ink.  More of her work can be read at aprilsalzano.blogspot.com

A Poem by Diana Raab

Wishing Well

Yesterday

I dropped a penny

in that deep orifice
of darkness
pleading for wellness.

Diana Raab is an award-winning poet, memoirist, blogger, transpersonal psychologist, and author of nine books.  She teaches writing for healing and transformation and has been widely published in national trade and literary magazines.  She has been writing since the age of 10 when her mother gave her her first journal to cope with her grandmother's suicide.  Her latest poetry collection is Lust.  She is a regular blogger for Psychology Today, Huff50 (The Huffington Post), BrainSpeak, and PsychAlive.  Her website is dianaraab.com

A Poem by Joan Colby

Nashville

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle,
Blonde, big-breasted amazon.
The train wheels clatter south.
My mother and aunts ahead
In plush seats cannot forbid
Spurious adventures.
Nightfall:  Nashville,
The Noel Hotel.  My bed,
Two chairs pushed together.
A matter of economy.  My cousin Clare
And I wander the streets.  A boy's
Eyes meet mine Hey Red.
I feel excited as Sheena
Swinging on vines.  Clare
Grabs my arm.  We have to go back.
The neon evening disperses.
Morning, we're at the mother-house
Where Clare's older sister is to be
A Bride of Christ.  Seven girls
In wedding gowns prostrate
Before the bishop in a
Mansion like Tara.  Clare's sister,
A novitiate, her veil white
With the purity of unconsummation.
I am tired of prayer.  Scan the crumpled
Pages of Sheena battling tigers
In the church of the jungle
The darkened streets glistening
With desperation and alarm
Where boys loiter smoking.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, etc.  Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature.  She has published 16 books including Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press which received the  2013 FutureCycle Prize and "Ribcage" from Glass Lyre Press which has been awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize.  Colby is also a senior editor of FutureCycle Press and an associate editor of Kentucky Review.