A Poem by Richard Schnap

Anonymity

He sat in the backs of buses
Lingered in the corners of coffeehouses

And when he went to a movie or concert
Chose a place in the very last row

He did not know why he did this
He just felt more comfortable in the margins

As if the spaces between light and shadow
Were reserved especially for him

But he noticed that as he grew older
He seemed to become more transparent

To blend in like a chameleon
Till he was barely visible at all

And somehow he knew when he died
He would enter neither Heaven nor Hell

But a room that was lined with mirrors
To forever be alone with himself

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

A Poem by Christina Murphy

Dappled Stars

 

We are searching for wildflowers on a misty day.

 

We are walking, and I am wishing you would tell me

something you want me to hear, but I have made my peace

with our silences. Our lives have become coextensive orbits,

visible, but not in range in any meaningful way

beyond our mundane daily rhythms.    

The trail is streaked with wildflowers captured by the wind. 

I would like the wildflowers to be like gems—stationary

against all the changes of times and seasons that will come

to claim them as fragile beings. And I would like my heart

to be motionless on this spring day in which the weight

of the mountains against the horizon is almost unbearable.   

 

Soon you have found the wildflower you love most

for its gentle blue color that makes it look as if

the sky bent down for a moment and lost itself in mystery.

 

The blue wildflower and the blue sky that we are tempted

to think of as one even though the blues do not touch,

and the blue sky seems another illusory world away

filled with dappled stars and incandescent meanings.

 

The mist is now rain, steady with a soft

drumbeat of insistence. You draw your jacket

tight and brace yourself against the wet winds

as I watch the wildflowers get beaten down, as if

their colors were tears draining off into the land.

 

I reach for your hand and hold it, feeling the coldness

the wind and rain have instilled. For a moment, my sight

is blurred by rain or perhaps by tears, but everything

is silent, and I would like to believe that we can escape

our sad hollowness of spirit.

 

I am hoping for this as I listen to my heartbeat,

my own pulse, and wish that the

chill of icy rain could comfort me and pass for feeling.

 

 

 

Christina Murphy’s poems have appeared in a range of journals and anthologies, including, most recently, Cease, Cows, Chicago Literati, and Dr. Hurley's Snake-Oil Cure.

 

Two Poems by Laura Rojas

when you cross the street like a sailor breathing underwater

 

there's something about

the

cold

and the

sadness of winter

that makes

a cat curl up

and

makes my hands

curl up

and makes everyone in the world

long

for someone else in the world and

yearn

for something else in the world

     something more in the world

so I listen to your voice

until I fall asleep

and it's spring

 

 

 

 

(now, dear)

 

If I sit on the train
and the seat goes
backwards
I’ll watch fields green with rain
people lonely or together
holding bags, umbrellas, hands
a collective of rain jackets
stitched together like a colourful plastic quilt
and sleeping
people sleeping
talking on the phone
the earth muddy and promising
trains driving on parallel tracks

but we divide so easily
thin hairs or blades of grass

and people are fragile
soft bodies soft flesh
imbalanced things, so tentative
with mouths for kissing
each other’s mouths
and kissing
each other’s hands
which we hold together
in prayer in movie theaters under school house desks
under heavy blankets
in the daytime rain
my seat goes backwards
and I go back 8 hours
to the blue sky of morning and
a city
talking on its own

 

 

 

 

Laura Rojas is a 19 year old university student currently living in Toronto, Ontario but originally from Bogotá, Colombia.  She dreams of publishing a book of poetry as well as saving the Amazon rainforest.  She's in love with everything, so she writes about it. 

 

A Poem by Taylor Graham

Geology of Teeth

The puppy has left

jagged enamel
with a drop of blood at the root

on the bedspread this morning:
pre-molar, mini-Sierra.
The Minarets, The Needle -

sharp rock of puppy-tooth.

Geography of peaks and passes.
Take her out on leash,
she pulls me toward horizon,

aspiring to know

Earth's whole landscape by scent,
by taste, by tooth,

a world entire to a dog's mouth.

Teeth that itch to grab
and hold - tug-toy, my hand.

Teeth that ache for news-

paper, my left boot, this very
moment, Life.  She leaves

scant evidence
on the bed:  sawtooth puppy
fragment.  Fossil

of her time already past.



Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada.  She's included in the anthologies (Everyman's Library) and California Poetry:  From the Gold Rush to the Present.  Her book What the Wind Says, poems about living with her canine search partners, is due out later this year; and her latest chapbook, Walking the Puppy, is about to be released by Lummox Press.

Two Poems by Diane Webster

I PRAY FOR SUN

I crack the window barely an inch
and like cats hearing
the can opener’s first buzz
everyone flings wide every window,
knocks each other down
to rev air conditioner to high cool,
rolls out hurricane fans
that plaster unsecured papers
to window screens bulging to bust
out the debris like a
decompressing airplane porthole.
While I pray for a ray of sunshine
all my own that follows me like a halo
so I can bask like a mama cat
with her young nestled
in a contented wad
of feline fur and purr.



　

SLEEP DUO

My cat lies on my lap
as I sit in my chair
in front of the TV
until she closes her eyes,
and her head nods
heavily on my leg
as she jerks in kitty dreams.
I smile
until my leg jerks,
the cat jumps
with claws seeking traction,
and I realize I missed
the last program due to
the sleeping duo
who woke up
to go to bed.




Diane Webster realizes poetry ideas present themselves daily. Diane’s challenge is to remain open to the opportunities and to write as soon as possible. Diane’s successes have been printed in “The Old Red Kimono,” “Rockhurst Review,” “Wilderness House Literary Review” and other literary journals in print and online.

Two Poems by Bill Jansen

Picnic/tsunami

on the beach
one day
gulls became the sand

the same day
a soccer ball
gazed at us
from 7 waves

salt & light

in flagrante
on flocks of dunes

stoned kimono dragons
in kudzu

nude
conscientious objector
sun
took the 5th
and half
the wine

we are social animals
but not
that
social,
I reply
to something I misunderstood
her say.



Crime tape 

The used bookstore has moved a few blocks
from where I remembered it.  Used bookstores
make me tough/potent.  I become Charles Bronson/
Charles Bukowski in film noir fedora and suit.
The slim volume of poetry has no chance to escape.
A woman who looks a lot like Rita Hayworth
in tweed flounce/glasses, giggles uncontrollably
as I pay her for the book.  Nice kid.  But I got
that appointment with Nike rep at Guantanamo.
I have some difficulty with door, but stumble outside,
change direction a few times to throw them off,
then move south like something lethal in Bermuda shorts.
The book is by some smart dame I never heard of.
I assume the photo on the cover is her, sultry, cool.
She's sitting on a sidewalk, tambourine tip jar,
her back against a concrete wall tagged by Rimbaud.
Everything points to summer in Berkeley, 1972.
About 20, fake Hippy, fondling pill bottle in left hand.
Minoan eyes, closing.  Elizabethan smile.
Something about the set up reminds me of dead Jews
in Poland, 1940, or the gaping corpse of a Nun
in Madrid, 1936; some sneering anarchist with his arm
in a sling blowing cigarette smoke into her dry face.
As I look for my Mazda in Hillsboro, Oregon, 2013,
I shuffle past her in betrayed revolutionary sunlight.
To disguise my shortness of breath I stop frequently
and feign interest in my surroundings and thoughts.
A strand of yellow crime scene tape tied to a meter.
Dissembling, inquisitive wind is blowing the tape,
like fantasy hair of stoned free love goddess
panhandling in front of a KGB cafeteria.
I throw the book in trash can.  Unbelieving. Just in time.

Bill Jansen lives in Forest Grove, Oregon.  Work has appeared in various ezines and journals.  A poem is scheduled to appear in Gap-Toothed Madness in September.

A Poem by Richard Schnap

Signposts

We are not born fully formed
But in stages, our first school day
A book beginning, our first kiss,
A flower opening, our first job,
A road unraveling, till the face
Of the world is fully revealed
In all its splendor and with
All its sorrows

And so it is with death,
A slow letting go, our withered
Bodies, candles dimming, our friends
Leaving, songs ending, landscapes
Changing, seasons shortening,
Until we hear strange languages,
The dawn of new dramas we will
Play no part in

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.