A Poem by Alan Catlin

Post Card to Church from Block Island Oct. 2012

Hey Churchman,
          Still think of you every time we
come here.  Rhode Island was your state,
Man, Providence, your home.
          I'm sitting on a bench overlooking
the Old Harbor, as usual, when I write.
The ferry has been and gone.  No one much
comes here this far off-season, anyway.
Only fishermen, painters and old poets,
like us, and their wives.
          Warm, clear blue, cloudless sky.
A great day to be alive.  I wish you were
still with us.  I really wish you were here.

          Catman

Alan Catlin has been publishing for decades now.  Some days he feels like The Ancient of Days, other days, like The Old Man and the Sea.  His latest anticipated collection of poetry is Last Man Standing from Lummox sometime in 2015.

Three Poems by Patricia Walsh

Mauvaise Foi

So much for camaraderie.  Sorting your fix
by the bandwagon, take no notice
of what lies behind, samey, repetitive
cliche rears its grubby feet.

The blind man navigates the tables and chairs
compensated in senses for lacking sight
nothing is sacrilegious to my burning eyes
rotting through insomnia, coffee overload.

Too wired to function, condemned to be free
at a tight end, trademarks always suffice.
Consumer culture invades our privacey
hackers in the background make fools of us all.

Not sleeping, not eating, a ticket to a mess
of someone's making, not just my own
growing tastebuds to deal with the situation
sprouting aggressively to hold up pretense.

A void in the cityscape cries out,
editing out typos to heart's content.
Navigating through a mess to stay afloat
references to failure finally going amiss.

Not posh, not eternal blue sky, am I,
but sprawled on the hard drive for evermore,
a song for the dispossessed soul, a lost and found
not exiting in glory but through spite.



False Detective

A benevolent informant, a world of persecution
skulks in corners awaiting doom.
A twelve-year's old life is interesting now.

A dictionary of anger, biography of outrage.
She'll hang you out to dry, no mistake.
What crime fits the punishment I'll never know.

Staring out windows, a multiplication
salves all curiosities save depression.
Attention sought and delivered in time.

Freedom for discos is out of the question.
Social life unimportant, toxic at best
paving ways towards derision, if you're lucky.

Healing the brain is another question entirely.
Inside the upstairs will keep you sweet
an illusion of studying for ever more.

Letters to friends go censored.
Phone calls go through silent screenings
to glean some excitement, an innocuous scandal.

Every move I make is known, for my own good
paranoia becomes me, a constant glare in the corner
watch my back for the reporters, fleeting as they are.

A rod for my back, repeatedly every day
around surreptitious corners, looking with intent
on my latest design, however chaste



Epistolarium

It pays to be a total bitch sometimes,
guarding your heart against transience.
Hoarding wedding rings against circumstance
hoping for an eternity of surmise.

Some unbound paper trail follows you home.
A missive attack on my fleeting person
exposed between sheets of rancid bedtimes
pages of desire not lost on annoyance.

Stale perfume, holding close, dependence
the promise of a future with me runs riot
my watery applause does not dissuade you
not marriage proposals promise night.

Asking for derision never rang so true.
Courtship by letter engenders a fear
paper dolls hem me in, marauding creatures
death and defeat are our only options.

Meanwhile, the tarot cards change, you, bold fiancee
push away your honor, out of sight
never wake again, in joyous sleep
suicide by duvet is your only answer.

I did not attend, nor entertains such paperwork
nor produce an armalite from a paperclip
appropriate as it would, in your pulped arsenal
laying down your pen in gracious defeat

Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the small parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Republic of Ireland and now lives in Cork City.  She has previously published one collection of poetry, Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010.  She has also published in various journals such as Revival Magazine, The Snapping Twig, and Rain Party Disaster Society.  In the latter publication, she is to be featured as guest poet of the month.

A Poem by Jay Frankston

Pregnant Words

Pregnant words
hanging from the line
waiting to be picked,
sorted and arranged,
sentenced and given meaning.

Pregnant words
like ripe red grapes
hanging from the vine,
picked, crushed, fermented
and encased in a barrel
of premium quality wine
to be swirled in a glass
making you giddy,
absent minded and inebriated.

Pregnant words
squeezed into
a light headed poem.

Three Poems by Gary Beck

Chill Out

The day before the first freeze
city dwellers mostly sheltered
by urban comforts,
ignore changing conditions
considering the weather
an inconvenience
to normal routines,
only interrupted
by occasional storms, snow,
paralyzing blackout,
frigid temperatures
an opportunity
for displays of finery
by the fashion conscious,
a reason for complaint
from the disaffected,
all forgetting discomfort
when warm winds start to blow.



Urban Oddity

Time and again
a store or restaurant
opens for business
near a store or restaurant
that sells the exact same thing.
Survival depends
on customer loyalty,
convenience, better service,
more appealing product,
all the tangibles
that allow success
in a trade war
that no one understands
why it happened
on the same street.



Obedience Training

Presidential proclamations
fall on deaf ears in Congress
where special interests supplant
agendas that help the needy.
Many ignorant voters
never seem to understand
the purchaser's of legislators
expect them to do as ordered,
regardless of any harm
to the American people.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn't make a living in theater.  He has 11 published chapbooks.  His poetry collections include:  Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press).   Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways (Winter Goose Publishing).  Perceptions, Displays, Fault Lines and Tremors will be published by Winter Goose Publishing.  Conditional Response will be published by Nazar Looks.  His novels include:  Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press), Acts of Defiance (Artema Press).  Flawed Connections has been accepted for publication (Black Rose Writing).  His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications).  His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway.  His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines.  He currently lives in New York City.

Three Poems by Randall Karlen Rogers

The Hair Starts Growing Upwards on the Neck (and therefore it should be shaved)

The beard grooming specialist
said if you don't have a well
trimmed beard it means you
just don't care.
Exactly, I said.



Death, The Final Frontier

I tired to remember
to forget.

Do the things we can
not think about.   Exist?
Only in infinity
and imaginations
and melatonin driven
dreams
outside the Universe,
probably.
Though it is said
by some, for eternity
to be real, any
combination or singularity
of thought is possible
and may have a possibility
of being reality,
if it can be thought.
And, if endless infinity
does hold sway,
since as it has
already
been said,
"The [present] Universe
is far stranger than
we can imagine" (Issac Asimov).
Unless, of course,
we consider eons
into the future,
when our Sun eventually
blows up/burns out/stops shining
and we have not transferred
to artificial intelligence
indestructible, non-aging,
self-rejuvenating some
type of organic or not
"machines,"
rather like
we are now,
but healing
much longer lasting
than we currently are, or
in a final analysis,
of course, if we are
mute-silent, and
very much
stone cold Dead.
Though even when expired
we
live as much-motion
atoms, nuclei, quarks.
It then appears,
if life, as well
as Death, we are
so gloriously
and persistently,
indestructible.
Recycling all the time.



The Morals of Nature

"[Words] cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth."

                                       -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The morals of nature,
are in question.
Unethical
in the extreme.
Unless
killing plants, I suppose,
by herbivores and
omnivores, is not
a violation of
"thou shall not kill."

Randall Karlen Rogers is fifty-three and resides in Rapid City, South Dakota.  Last published in "The Camel Saloon" and "Dead Snakes."

A Poem by David Chorlton

Sunday Drive on Interstate 10

Dark clouds over pale mountains;
the sun breaks through
and shadows in the sky
shift back.
            Sparrows perch
along a power line, a horse
drinks from a trough,
a vulture rises from the dry
mesquite.
              The desert shopping
outlet stands in silence
without even a security guard
to protect its vacancy.
                                Windbreak
trees that withered in the sun
stand grey on a grey
day.
   Before and after
the San Diego turnoff
are billboards for the expensive resort;
for boots; for the adult boutique; and one
saying how to give up cigarettes
with another telling where
to buy them.
                 A cattle train
has stalled sixty wagons
long with a moan contained
in slatted steel,
                     while three
bold letters painted in white
on faded red say Vote for Van
for the Senate, although
there is no election
                          and nobody
knows Van.

A Poem by Yi Wu

Rain

The slow moment
you turned away
casting the slender long shadow
still smoldering with the Sun's
remnant warmth that brings back
memories of how it used to singe
where the two of us touched and
how we parted ways screaming in
flaming agony on the surface
of our epidermal spaces,

still smoldering, until your shadow
utterly blocked away even the morning star
and when H2O huddled together in cold
to be your unwitting messenger,
seeping through linen rags I put on to
clothe my mind to send a chilling reminder
that reverberated onto wherever blood flowed
da, da, weeeeeeeeeeeeeh
da, da, weeeeeeeeeeeeeh
shaking each of my moving part
to get its acts together, lest
I break apart into soaked debris,
each piece still physically repelling water
before the time would come for me to freeze

into tombstone,
and rain to slowly etch out the name and epitaph
you made for me



Yi Wu writes poetry and essays in Brooklyn, New York