Two Poems by Ajise Vincent

Distortions

We cohabit in a world of banes,
Saturn's twin luminary,
where pollutants
from profit belching colosseums
slowly kills the gladiators of our adaptability.

Here, the sky is raped
with carbon monoxides,
the waters fed with sewage--toxic.
No iota of solace.

This world is now plagued
with the disease of cataclysm.
Lo!  It needs a panacea to extirpate this malady
that is about to rendezvous at extinction.

For the virginal ambience
of its ancestry
has been defilled by excretas from innocation
and natural disasters
now erase maxims of geomorphology.

it needs detox.



Our Outcry
(for elephants in central Africa)

They, poachers,
slaughter us--the large ones.
They put us in a basket
and herald nomenclatures of zest.

We are a generation
sold to the partial god of greed;

Wirra!
A sacrifice to appease
his famished progeny, extinction.

For blisters of woes
have been tattooed
on the nucleus of our dynasty.

And the fetus of our grace
has kicked the bucket
in the infirmary of salvation.
Help us.  Please.

Ajise Vincent is a Nigerian poet.  His poem "Song of a Progency" was a shortlisted poem at the Korea-Nigeria Poetry feast, 2015.  His works have been published in London grip magazine, Kalahari Review, Sakonfa literary magazine, African Writer, I am not a silent poet, Poetry Pacific, Commonline Journal, Novel Afrique, Black Boy Review, Tuck Magazine, and various anthologies.  He is currently finishing up a major in Economics at a prestigious university in Nigeria.

A Poem by Ken Allan Dronsfield

Envisioned

Pink shadow patterns of
elaborate faceless tries.
Sonnets of tasteless lust
are a virtuous surprise.
Colored dreamy piety as
Sinful Saturdays beget;
regret filled Sundays,
a weekend totally spent,
within dutiful lists of
timeless treasured gifts.
A bleve of hated fate
in the levy of the envisioned,
while pink shadow patterns
swim upstream just a bit too late.

Ken Allan Dronsfield is a published poet/author/digital artist originally from Hampton New Hampshire, now residing in Oklahoma.  He has been writing for many years and enjoys spending time hiking, playing guitar and spending time with his cats Merlin and Willa.  His published work can be found at numerous print venues:  http://whispersinthewind333.blogspot.com/  https://leastbitternbooks.wordpress.com/   http://promanusa.wix.com/   http://www.indianavoicejournal.com/   http://tuckmagazine.com/

Four Poems by Denis Robillard

Fear Moves in My Mouth

1.

Fear moves in my mouth
My gut, my trembling need.

2.

Like a plant, fear rooted
Moving along in dark ways, spreading its dark wants.

3.

The way obsidian moves in dreams.

4.

Fear has its mouth agape, gasps and waits.
Like a scar, in time only leaving of its own accord.

5.

Fear breaks the mother board.
Leaves me broken, brother bound.
I try to escape this nightmare, grasping for air.

6.

At the edge of glass.  I am death's quarry pursued
in a houndless night.



Old Songs on the Radio

You have trouble
managing the static
of an old love song
in a far away radio.

Its frequency unreachable
by human hands.

You can still feel
some mellowed out riffs there
with tears drenched
in the background.
The muted notes of poetry
still stuck in ancient wires.

89 megahurts of nostalgia
vibrating the rusty wires
inside your chest.

Tonight
is all about shadows
moonlight preparations.

Then you lift up
the sonic veil to reveal
one hell
of a Hallelujah maze
dripping through your boneheaded
bardic vibrations-
like syrupy voices
caught in ether
floating forlorn above this place-

-hook lines
like tiny knives cutting
up background noise
while old scars
welt to the heterodyne surface.

Your fingers itch
to close
the and-gate
of an old memory.

What remains
is deadlock and busted key
rain spiraling down
from the trees.
You want to capture
the singing beneath the beams
of your bloodline
one more time.

It's how we patch up holes.
How we navigate the loss.
How we dare move on.
It's how we get our feet
back on the ground.

The old music coloring
the outlines of a lost life
while we bleed ourselves
back into our limbs
with
the faint signals
always calling us home.



God Death and Triangles

I told her I couldn't sleep anymore.
There was something in my undormant
eye--
I'm receiving messages through the wall.
But she was skeptical.  Come on honey
I can hear them faintly in the wallpaper
like a chorus of baby mouths mumbling
over their saliva.

What else can you see there?  she said.
--cancerous meat
--cups of semen, bird blood and bees
--a two headed calf in a field of lighter fluid.

With such raw confessions
my desire is all but dead.
Desire stifled into obeisance.

The malignant tree suffers the rot.
Summer ends with an abused sky.
Tonight I cling to my own morbidity.

I see the shadow of a macerated man.
The candle inside my head is going hot.
The moon, a stray bullet buzzing at me.
A terrific tension rents the air.
The room crashes into
a discordant whirl of colors.

I can feel a bird's strobic flutter over me.
Your hands over me like palpitating wings.

There is an unlocked door but I can't move.

Snakes and birds
and bees crawl out of the woodwork.

I keep thinking of God and death and triangles.



The Painter's Studio

Let's put on a few operatic pieces first.
Then you can disrobe quietly
behind the screen.

Why don't you tease out
that luxurious golden hair just a bit.
Like that.

I'll prop my sketch book up.
It is quiet here in the front room.
Not even a cat to stir these pages.

There is a horn book here too
with your initials on it.

I will start with something soft
to amuse you.  Would you like
portrait style or full frontal?

What angle of repose best suits
your delicate hands?  Hold it.

We must hurry before the ink dries.
Only one chance to get it right.
Keep this as a dream rest.
A book mark for your eyes.
An endless reverie caught
by the smoke of the muse.
A Galatea held in perpetuity
by Dali.
You are Arvida Dollars
caught in my priceless palindrome.

Denis Robillard hails from Windsor, Ontario.  His poems have appeared in small presses and magazines across Canada, USA and England.  Publications include:  Rattle, Rampike, Word Riot, Nashwaak Review, Cliff Soundings (Michigan), Orange Room Review and Dusty Owl.  Since 2011 Robillard has been published in The Windsor Review, Jellyfish Whispers, The Mind[less] Muse, and  Dead Snakes.  In 2013 his poems were featured in a Black Moss Press war of 1812 Anthology called An Unfinished War.  To date Robillard has had over 190 poems published nationwide.

Three Poems by Leland Seese

In My Almost Dead Caprice

The Tremeloes come on the radio
to send us looking back, the way we alwasy do.
We have pulled up to a snowbank
near the lakeside boulevard, walking
with a love, with a love that's oh so fine,
watching ducks crash land on lake ice shining
in the February sun.

Our mechanic's knuckles are perpetually gashed
to let hydraulic fluid fill his bloodstream,
mixed with coolant, vapors, gasoline,
as he goes about his business,
never to be mine, checks a tire's pressure,
wipes a Volvo's windows clean.

When I turn on the engine
heat like cat's tongues licks our faces dry
as I try to understand the cloud bank
now descended on your mood.
It occurs to me my feet,
two slabs of meat latched onto clutch and brake,
hang but a firewall away from hoses cracked
and leaking molten sludge.  Tiny shards of metal
eat the cylinders, no matter how I try-
aye-aye-aye-aye-aye-aye-aye.  Our mechanic says
it's time to say Goodbye.



Mother and Son

Maybe he was asking for a loan
Maybe if she'd listen he could just explain
Maybe he could quit at any time

They had pulled up next to me
at the guardrail by the street end
overlooking derelicts

a trawler and a factory ship
a tug
a decommissioned ferry now a dance hall by the pier

I had my windows up
the ball game on
and couldn't hear a word they said

But I could see his posture
see him close the gap between them
leaning in

Maybe five feet tall she was craning
at his shaven head
his lips as plump as segments

from a blood orange
whiskers like a field of dragon's teeth
on his unshaven cheeks and chin

Her shield was the covenant
between some mothers and their sons
Something still aflame behind her eyes

His shoulders sagged
the slightest bit
a movement such as only flies on walls detect

He turned and slumped back in
behind the wheel of their battered
Grand Marquis

She stood at the rail and eyes the derelicts
daring one to fire back to life
or failing that to list a little more



The Skagit River Tour Boat

Every twelve-year-old on planet earth should wear a badge of dark brown dirt
between their ankle bone and heel to mark their barefoot summers

August afternoon and stranded sprawled across the lawn of someone's
lakefront Craftsman with temperamental fuel pump given out

My swim coach and his friends came back from Vietnam to scavenge parts
while others did their damnedest to evade the draft

Two-hundred bucks in cash plus a Triumph TR 4 in trade for an
Elco flat-top cruiser built in 1929 christened with can of Rainier beer

The Skagit River Tour Boat

Sitting with our fishing poles in hopes of catching sockeyes
breathing dieselalgaefishsmell anchored near the river mouth

Half a mile away my dad in suit and tie enduring ordered repetition at the Boeing plant

Toss me a beer and I won't tell even though I'm only twelve
Happy under blue sky sun when daylight lasts till after ten pm

Girlfriends through summer game as anyone to heave the flywheel till the motor coughs to life chunk-
chunking echoes off the shore

One guy's mother yelling from their dock
Your manager is on the phone and mad as hell!  Have you forgotten all about your shift?

Early morning swim team workout dads drop off their kids while on their way to work
My coach calls out the starts IMs on 1:30  Ready.  Go!  Ready.  Go!

My dad stays and makes a paddle motion with his hands to say Kick harder boy!
then leans once more toward the mother of the little kid her hand rests on his forearm as she laughs at
something he is saying showing off her pretty teeth

Coach hits me on my shoulder tells me I'm a little shit and says I should get ready
We're going on the boat today at two

Dozing on The Skagit River Tour Boat's decaying deck as they pass around a joint though not to me and talk
about pollution Richard Nixon and the war

I am listening to every word they say these older guys
and scratching at the dark brown dirt around the hollow of my ankle bone and heel

Leland Seese does several things with great passion:  parenting foster/adopted/bio children with his wife, Lisa Konick; pastoring a kooky, wonderful congregation of progressive Christians; and writing poetry as a means of holding body, soul, mind, and heart together.  The latter has led to publication in several journals, including Pyrokinection, and a nomination for a Pushcart Prize from the kind editors of the same.

Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

Scars Like Catnip

Cloud fragments lift their dress
Of the sea green that I still remember
The branches of my tree are like the sprawl
Of your shy kisses and all that they foretold
The sun comes down like fallen apples
And is called forth to do so by underwater gods
Still alive but forsaken long ago
Night is real cream preserved in wild cherries
And is as purple as my glass is now
That it is empty of all save ice
The water front is glittering
Like a half moon sighing
And can be felt as if by the touch
Like reading in Braille
And is crisp in a blindfold's
Sun ripened hinges and telepathic
In its beauty in all that it rhymes
The city is now less than the dust in its streets
As it attempts to feed the impatient neon beast
Its pimpled face skid row goes through countless costume changes
Then is beaten to an enchanted bloody pulp
Like Lovecraftian tic-tac-toe frozen in 3D in many places
An unconscious rhapsody is dragged through its gutters
Full of strange miracles remembered like
The song of songs that my heart still sings
Reminding me that I am still the firebird
Like Stravinsky's Petruska reborn am I
In its own ashes like all simple things.



Portrait of Mary Shelley in a Coney Island Arcade

Like an eerie dance of drowned bodies
In the other worldly Mad Hatter depths
That are painted in the abandoned cat and mouse
Whose reliable flesh are the large tunnels of my own dreams
I find myself moving into outer space like R. Buckminster Fuller
Where gravity will no longer be a crown of thorns to me
And once past the screen door whose voices are still shouting
I will reconnect the shiny delicate wires
To a Kodachrome rainbow that I once knew
And in the butterfly float of morphing and shifting
I will become infinity's Mr. Toad.



Just Like a Real Baby

A coastal rainstorm like dribbled ice cream
As her kisses stunned my brain hotel
With a sun blast of shivers
That bled into my broodings
Candlelit and heaven bound
Like a dog long dead
Thanks for nothing
Go put under the microscope
For playing a red, green, and gold harmonica
On the outskirts of the dark side of the moon
Where the fingerprints of Jayne Mansfield
Were still everywhere and in every grinning
And jiggling girly mag that lay like shipwrecks
In the ragged edges of the rhythms
Of the dust storms that jerked and twitched
Like white chocolate land mines exploding.




For the past thirty-five years Ken L. Jones has been a professionally published author who has done everything from writing Donald Duck Comic books to creating things for Freddy Krueger to say in some of his movies.  In the last six years he has concentrated on his lifelong ambition of becoming a published poet and he has published widely in all genres of that discipline in books, online, in chapbooks and in several solo collections of poetry.  

 

Three Poems by JD DeHart

Afternoon

We discussed death this
afternoon and it was consuming.
Then we spent some time
considering genealogy.
The same story was known
to be heard at least three times.
Now I rest, my mind cycles,
like the tide nearby, and all
I can do is roll my way through
these conversations in my mind
again and again, ebb and flow.



Cognizance

I think, I love
there is a synaptic firing
in my brain known
as what I remember about
Algebra.
As one wise woman
once put it, when the brain
stops, where does
the knowledge go?
Does it escape like
a fine vapor
or just sink into the earth?



Transparent

He began as a solid
figure, immovable--
or so it seemed.
Slowly, the fingers
began to smudge
at their very tips, then
the toes.  Then the
arms were blurry.
We saw (or did not)
see him three weeks
later when, finally, a word
or image or thought
could pass right through.



JD DeHart is a writer and teacher.  His chapbook, The Truth About Snails, is available from RedDashboard and on Amazon.

Two Poems by Michael Lee Johnson

Tequila

Single life is-tequila with lime,
shots of travelers, jacks, diamonds, and then spades,
holding back aces-
mocking jokers
paraplegic aged tumblers of the night trip.
Poltergeist define as another frame,
a dancer in the corner shadows.
Single lady don't eat the worm. . .
beneath the belt, bashful, very loud, yet unspoken.
Your man lacks verb, a traitor to your skin.



Jesus in a Nighttime City

Jesus walks
Southwest side
Chicago nighttime city
in bulletproof vest
barefoot
broken
beer
bottles
glass,
stores closed,
blasted windows,
mink fur stolen,
a few diamonds for glitter-
old parks, metal detectors, quarters, nickels, dimes,
coins in the pocket of thieves, black children
on Merry go rounds, Maywood, IL,
danger children run in danger
in spirit, testimony,
red velvet outdates Jesus' robe.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era.  he is a Canadian and US citizen.  Today he is a poet, a freelance writer, amateur photographer, small business owner in Itasca, Illinois.  He has been published in more than 880 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites.  Author's website:  http://poetryman.mysite.com/  Michael is the author of The Lost American:  From Exile to Freedom (136 page book) ISBN:  978-0-595-46091-5, several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems.  He also has over 83 poetry videos on YouTube as of 2015:  https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos  Michael Lee Johnson has been nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry in 2015.