A Poem by John Tustin

SQUATTING UPON MY FAILURE

Squatting upon my failure;
my failure as a father,
my failure as a son,
my failure as a husband,
my failure as a good kind of man.

Glaring at me in the nightlight mirror;
redfaced,
blue-eyed,
fatnosed,
yellow-teethed,
unshaven,
potbellied,
falling falling detritus
of skin, of bones, of hair.
Expanding me.

And here I am
and here she is
and they’re in there
and there you are
and there you go.

Squatting upon my failure
like some mad hen
with a preening rump of feathers
fanned
over her perfect oval babies.
They are smooth
and they are whole
and here I sit
in my sweat
and my stink
and my unholiness,
my wicked shapelessness
and I wait.

I wait to unshape
you.



John Tustin graduated from nowhere, edits nothing, and has no awards. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry is a link to his poetry online.

Three poems by James Stout

Collective Arms

Her back wears lines of flesh-risen scars.

Her face a hidden mask of filth and smeared grease.

A muddy path of tears runs over her sooty cheek,

To tightly stretched lips

Which silently mouth, “I hate you!”

Over and over to the human race.

She bore us. Birthed us. Nursed us in our infancy.

Look at the gratitude for her gift of life—

Ravaged by vicious machines and explosives.

I swallow my rage. Piss lines to squelch the flames.

Why does she lay still and mute through it all?

She will die the silent sufferer and wait us out.

Our fate is hers, only we are too stupid to admit it.

Mankind’s collapse is fire and she, the phoenix.

Go, pick up her broken body in collective arms.

Hold her. Clean and bandage her. Arraign her in fine garments.

Place her on the throne of honor she deserves and worship.

Do not passively watch while we defile our mother earth.

Drip, Drip, Down the Drain

Possibility abounds in almost everything.

As I stay down on my knees, eyes shut tight each day

Apollo makes his rounds lines deepen on my face

With each passage choices diminish and opportunities decrease

I can always look back wistfully or ahead with hope

Here, now—whoops, already gone and too late

Ephemeral contentment eludes every grasp

Goes drip, drip, through my fingers

And down the drain

Drip, drip, down

The drain.

Archetypical You

A digital camera captures your image in 10.0 mega pixels

Your face attempts to conceal years of mutilated memories

A mask to try and hide between molecules and mind.

As they travel through lenses, betraying your secrets on a photograph,

That character you play falls away—briefly—but long enough

Your lip curls into a sneer.

Now you want to explain, give reason for this sui generis

Not necessary—you cannot change anything before now

Your parents? Your town and country? The universe is a sad place

And you are who you are.

James Stout teaches Middle School Language Arts in Morrisville, North Carolina. He has two children, three dogs, and seven chickens. He enjoys sunshine and his blueberry shrubs.

A Poem by Peter Grieco

 

WHEN A CERAMIC MUG CHIPS

 

Noticing the chip in the sink,

it took a few heart beats

to discover its source

& mirror image in the pock

left on the lip of my coffee mug.

One of a pair, it had come free

years back, wrapped with the purchase

of a bottle of Myers’s Rum, whose colorful

likeness, together with fragrant

hibiscus, was depicted twice

around its white sides:

 

brown bottles sporting golden labels

whose pyramids of barrels

lettered

                          RUM,

                    RUM, RUM

                                                 remained

undisturbed, though a few palm fronds

& a patch of sky were missing. I could fit

the piece back—they sell glue that will mend

it perfectly—& forget anything was wrong.

 

Or I might chuck it like a broken doll

treating this small loss

with the guilty aggression

of waste & replacement that drives

our culture & economy. For now I’ll keep it,

& bring up the sharp edge to drink.

 

 

 

The author is a Ph.D graduate of SUNY Buffalo where he wrote his dissertation on working-class poetry. A former school bus driver, he has taught at universities in Ankara, Turkey; Seoul, South Korea; and Buffalo, NY, his native city where he studies French and is finishing his degree in Mathematics Education. Publications include At the Musarium, a chapbook of semi-procedural verse based on word frequency lists.

A Poem by Rishan Singh

LOST WITHOUT A SOUL

When we were little
we used to play hide-and-seek
and you would play games with me
until I made love out of words.

Those times were wonderful when the sound
of the rain pitter-pattered, on the umbrella
I held above us, and you would look
at me deeply; ignorant of my affection.

We parted to sail beyond a thousand seas,
and my heart, while being in exile, could
tell that this ground, England, never felt so strange.
But then there was you, whose doorbell broke,
and me like a mindless idiot, stood –
turned and pushed your door knob;
thinking that you were ignorant
to the voice of your only love.

You whispered, my name, in my ear once,
and never had I felt love so meticulous before,
and this girl, in my cabin, lit a fire
and poured two glasses of wine,
but all I could think about was
how much I love you.
I never felt something so beautiful,
and I know, she might have even
felt the same way too.

Beyond the horizon, far away,
to where I belonged, my home: Southern Africa,
brought some memories, of us, with me,
but will I ever speak to you again
or drink a cup of tea under the moonlight
with you, at the local funfair.

‘the sound of his voice eludes me
and he is taking over my life, Jay’
‘I think he is the one, Jay’
‘What do you think?’

He limped with one hand in his pocket,
distraught by the silence of her presence.
It’s him she loved, she needed him, unreciprocated
from a childhood love fetish.
He wanted to hear her whisper his name
under the moonlight, with some more
robust, romantic, ravishing
love to give.

There was that time they clashed:
he left Armani, and she smiled at his greeting

and walked past,

leaving behind nothing, than
the scent of his perfume.
They sailed across a thousand seas,
to become what they wanted.
And with the stethoscope around her neck,
she examined his broken leg, and then
paged the man, visible by her glowing smile,
in some other unfamiliar place.


Rishan Singh is a South African, prize-winning, poet who was born in KwaZulu-Natal, a province in which the city of Durban in based in the Republic of South Africa. He has had poetry published in journals and books and has worked as a tutor in Biochemistry and Analytical Biochemistry at the Durban University of Technology in Durban, South Africa. His achievements in poetry initially saw him start as an amateur p oet struggling to even find a publication or platform to showcase his work, to being recognised as a literary icon in 5 different countries by ordinary people and award-winning poets and English Professors. Writing is one of his professions.

A Poem by Ashok Malli

The Mother

I bow in reverence , respect, love 'n' gratitude;
For giving me the precious, coveted gift of life,
Even today the dusty 'n' thorny paths I salute;
On Which you had tread painfully in the dire strife.

You taught me always to bravely 'n' confidently smile---
And calmly walk thru every raging ,tearing storm,
And I picked up from you the nuances 'n' guile;
To weather the rough rides without any qualms.

You tossed me up alarmingly in the cold airs,
To dispel all my disturbing phobias 'n' fears;
When I cried you hugged me to your bosom;
With your sacrifice, love 'n' care I fully blossomed.

And from you I have learned to live always happily 'n' love;
And you are perched in my heart 'n' soul like a white dove,
You are the epitome of all the soft, tender loving passions--
Without you my life would be in shambles 'n' without reason.

 

 

 

 Ashok Malli is a freelance poet and lives in New York. He is a teacher who has published poems in Poetry.com and world poetry movement e- zines.

A Poem in Parts by Jacqueline Markowski

The Strength of Horses
Part I

….She had horses who waited for destruction.
She had horses who waited for resurrection….

She had horses who got down on their knees for any savior.
She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.
She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her bed at night and prayed as they raped her.

She had some horses.

She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.

These were the same horses.

--Joy Harjo (She Had Some Horses)

That year in biology I was learning

frogs, dissecting their life. Learning

about their mating, amplexus. I

equated this with sex; instinctual, natural,

the female knowing her duty, suppressing

the screams. Nothing taken, nothing

broken. I gave you what had already been

taken. I wished it had been you who had

reached that place first. My consolation:

I wasn’t terrified with you, just nervous,

but you were gentle, concerned.

That was two decades ago—I can still remember

saying goodbye to your cerulean

eyes, so clear my reflection reached out

to me from somewhere deep within

your compassion, your invisible embrace.

I never trusted what shown back at me;

I was too flawed—holding onto

ancient tragedy. Tangled in my memories

of that first day, my awkwardness stands taller

than pain, brighter than the scabs I’ve picked

for years. Your gentle hands guiding me, your

long artist fingers against my pale vernal skin.

I held on to the barbed wire that circled

your long, thin arm half expecting to pull back

a sliced open thumb, a fresh cut. Instead I found

I had steadied myself. I didn’t feel the fear

I had anticipated, had reasoned would be

worth it. My only worry was that

after the epochal moment, I would begin

counting the hours, minutes, memories until I had to

say it, the inevitable goodbye that would punctuate

our twice a month visits. In two weeks

we would have our second encounter. Your bus came

in at 11:45. It was just after midnight

at the reservoir, where all the punk kids came

to drink cheap wine. It was quiet and still,

even the dirt road we’d taken

from the bus station was desolate. You covered me

with your long, lean body. You asked if I was

scared. I said no. I hadn’t yet realized

I had always been scared, had spent my childhood

running, chasing after the dangling pair of scissors.

The Strength of Horses

Part II

…She had horses who danced in their mothers' arms.
She had horses who thought they were the sun and their bodies shone and burned like stars.
She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.
She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet in stalls of their own making….

--Joy Harjo (She Had Some Horses)

Two days later my mother drove us to the bus

station. She liked you, despite the tattoos.

She sat silently in the car, watching through

the windshield as I held onto you, begging

the God I didn’t believe in to nail us

down into that moment. She held me

while I cried watching the bus pull away

from the curb. She made friends with me

on the drive home. I began to trust

her, told her I thought I might love

you. She laughed until she saw

my face. With a softened voice she told me

that she was jaded, that love might still be real

for a someone like me, someone

at my age. Those words stung,

showed my naiveté. I was naked; I knew

I better get used to goodbyes. So I swam

into the murky, dislodged portion

of my sixteenth year. The snake slithered

to the salty surface: for the first time

my mania showed itself in plain sight.

I was clouded and shrouded and getting used

to goodbyes. I let you go. If I hurt

you, you didn’t show me—to this day

I am grateful. Your empathy covered me

like a stained blanket I threw away

years ago, like a dress I had outgrown.

I sought eyes without reflection,

landing quickly in the arms of the first of many

vampires who fed off me, off the ego-less,

needy mass I was. I hardly remember any of them,

they had no distinction,

no artistic tendencies,

just rusty barbed wire, the kind that would

slice you, cut open your flesh when you tried

to steady yourself. No cause

and even less effect on anything

but circumstance. Those memories

are different, empty. They do not pull

me back. They do not echo.

The Strength of Horses

Part III

…She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.
She had horses who were skins of ocean water.
She had horses who were the blue air of sky.
She had horses who were fur and teeth.
She had horses who were clay and would break.
She had horses who were splintered red cliff…. 

           

…She had horses who laughed too much.
She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
She had horses who licked razor blades….

--Joy Harjo (She Had Some Horses)

One day you called, five years had passed—

a lifetime … we were still young. I was still

fucked up, still avoiding provocation. We met

for a drink. When you spoke, you became

irritated when I wouldn’t make eye contact.

I was still afraid of my reflection, certain I’d see a monster

as you tried to know me, to show me. You knew

I was in there. But when I felt you prying

off the mask I had glued on tight I lashed out,

accidentally showed you the pieces of me I reserved

for solitude. Finally we sat in your grandmother’s driveway,

my small car idling in the dark night. I tried

to mirror your honesty. My thoughts swirling,

confusing what was true with what I’d wished

was true; I let rain down years of tears.

If only I had said less, thought more,

been cognizant of who I was

really angry with. Maybe then I

would have heard what you were

saying. Self-absorbed, I spent the exchange

formulating my attack. I can’t remember

what you told me of your life—

where your education was taking you,

where you wanted to go. All I

heard was the performance of a false-self

and critical conjecture. From there I abandoned

reason, didn’t let myself acknowledge this:

You were the horse I dismounted too early,

there was a blanket underneath the saddle.

The Strength of Horses

Part IV

….She had horses who called themselves, "horse."
She had horses who called themselves, "spirit." and kept their voices secret and to themselves.

She had horses who had no names.
She had horses who had books of names….

….She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.

These were the same horses….

--Joy Harjo (She Had Some Horses)

I’ve thought about you every year

on Groundhog Day, wondering if

I’d ever see your shadow.

This year I looked for you.

This year I found you.

This year holds six more weeks of spring.

I take comfort— your shadow is still

yours. We’ve grown up, both had children

and our fair share of life experience. Your home

is a blue ocean away. But your shadow is with me,

I carry it like a blanket. I keep it in a jewelry box

next to my children’s teeth. I reference it like

an anthology.

Finally I recognize the girl

in the reflection. She is also a horse

who was set free too soon; but she has

found her own shadow, it comforts her

like a blanket, it tells her that

love doesn’t have to hurt, that

a cracked little girl can be glued back

together, that horses are beautiful

creatures.

Jacqueline Markowski is a writer of poetry and short stories. She lives in Charlotte, NC where she divides her time between writing and being a homeschooling mother. Her poetry has appeared in Chronogram Magazine, Cochlea/The Neovictorian and Permafrost Literary Journal. She was awarded first place in poetry during the 2006 Sandhills Writers Conference. She is currently working on a compilation of short stories but who’s she kidding- she’ll never finish.

A poem by April Salzano

Swollen Tongue

It’s been that kind of day. Your

girlfriend, in from Milwaukee, woke

with a swollen tongue, unable to spit

or swallow, but maybe able to talk,

our eight year old tells me later. Pulled from under

covers, untangled, I drove 83 miles to relieve you

of our sons. They had been with you nearly

24 hours. Too long. Your reasoning:

something about $3.00 in gas she had

no car she flew here we are moving to

Wisconsin together tomorrow temporarily and if

you are getting remarried anyway, we would

like to live in your house just deed it back. Her tongue

is what? Three dollars

won’t get you to

your destination. The line I drew

2 years ago is beginning

to blur. You know nothing of my repeat

mammogram tomorrow, of dense

heterogenous fibroglandular tissue or

nodular asymmetry present in the anterosuperior

right breast, the one that provided consistently

2 ounces less at each nursing, and dried up

2 years before the left. You know nothing of

the fact that my sister won’t babysit

tomorrow because she is getting her picture taken

for the church directory. Of aloneness.

Of unfortunate dependency relieved only

by the mercy of others. Of the crying in the backseat

from Knox, westward across I-80, all the way to Mercer,

for the misrepresentation of both history

and current events. Of the magnitude of misperception.

Her swollen tongue is beckoning like an emergency,

to which I, to which you, to which our children, must

respond as if it once provided their sustenance.

April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Pyrokinection, Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Rainbow Rose, The Camel Saloon, The Applicant, The Mindful Word, Napalm and Novocain and is forthcoming in Jellyfish Whispers, The South Townsville Micro Poetry Journal, and Inclement. She is working on her first collection of poetry and an autobiographical novel examining the beauty and pain involved in raising a child with Autism.