section 2 (Kristi Nimmo - Shelly Bryant)

Kristi Nimmo - Love Affair On Rapa Nui
Tobi Cogswell - Incisor, Paper in Plastic, Escape Into Orange
Dana Kroos (artist) - Jack Be Nimble, They Licked the Platter Clean
Ray Succre - Shone Perhaps Too Frequently in Drink, Astray at Twelve O'Clock
Abigail Uselding - Tumbling After, This Is Never Going to End, Ketchum
Sandra Ketcham - Acrobat, Misplaced
John Sibley Williams - We all arrive by different streets, Kiss
Pat Smith - Wintry Mix
Julia Paul - But This
Alexios Antypas - The Lost Child
Regina Coll - Absolute Assortment
Martin Balgach - The Paces
J.S. Watts - The Effect of Moonlight on the Human Voice
Michael Shorb - ON VAN GOGH'S 'THE NIGHT CAFE' (1888)
Carl Palmer - tit for tat
Thom Dawkins - Der Musiker Spricht
Les Wicks - Dig
Nina Bennett - A Georgia O'Keeffe Sunset
Shane Allison - HELLO MR. CENTO
Floyd Cheung - So Valued
Nicole Koroch - The Masses, Mayflies
Nancy Carol Moody - In Answer To Your Question Concerning the Disposition of the Soul
Peter Schwartz - rattles
Kristene Brown - Gojira
Imee Cuison - De Stijl
Jim Davis - Transience as Arcade
Tracy Darling - Hinges
Mitchell Storar - 12 Anathemas
David Raymond - Kenneth Noland's Mysteries Afloat, Piero Della Francesca
David Tomaloff - blues song, thirty five dollar Hollywood
Kirby Wright - UNDER THE BEETLEBUNG TREE, MARTHA'S VINEYARD
Shelly Bryant - Acrylic on Canvas

Kristi Nimmo

Love Affair On Rapa Nui
 
Eerie like the hand of spirit toppled, a topknot
On its side, moved from the red quarry stone.
Around you goes the bustle
Of the restaurant, queso cinco—the
Burst of soft, rounded sounds—
What would you like?
The coffee rich-bodied, the richness in
The aroma, breathing through
 
Earth open, soft, porous earth in which
Has settled the dust of volcanoes and
The fingers of aching giants
With barrel chests. If only I knew,
If only the music of the sunrise were as smoky
As that on the radio at the bar,
A persistent mood of entertainment.
Here the pleasure of the Chilean wine, aged
Beyond my reach, your reach still asleep in bed,
Felipe calls to the kitchen now,
Gusting the reddish tint in the curls of
Hair. There is splendor in morning,
The magic in the eyes, in the softening heart.
Who cannot soften? No one, ever.
Eternal is the collapse of giants and the blue blush
Of the companion skies, jagged waves.
The sea rides up, a white crescent
Barelegged. If I had coral eyes, they would say I am
Of the sea.  Incoherent, the cold of the
Ancestors pass us by.  The colors of
Their eyes no longer expressed as if coconut hulls
Ground to ink, a watery mahogany-brown.
It is a strange habit, prostrate men in an army
Of volcanic ash, digested by feathers,
Bird-like. Time returns amid the pouring.
No time in the heart of the hunter
In the heart of the beast.
Stranger things have gone before apparitions,
Such as the leaning thoughts of desires—
 
A horse lies down to scratch and toss.
Where do I go?  Along the island trails
Unmarked, no footsteps beyond horse
Hoof and bones of the poisoned nag.
Yellow lupine caressing the mistake,
The beginnings woven. For
Who can tell the difference between?
Take the start and the end.
Where is the middle? In history there are
Stories and the planets, the quaint
Mischief of waking.  In the window is the reflection
Of clouds, 100 oceans, land, multi-generational
Layers of creation and evacuation stirred and expanded by
Volcanic urges. How deep is the sea
When there is no bottom?  It accounts for much
The layers of traveling particles,
The possibilities of a glass of wine,
Evening fireside, unseen journeys to arise.
 
Still you hover in the morning every
Possibility of it granted.  I could write a novel at this
Table and remain unknown.  For all those
Words reveal naught of anyone.  Trapped
Between gesture, face, the thoughts inherited,
Passed down from the methods determined
By passage into earth realm and out again like
A distant twinkling star, there was no
Moon last night.  The petroglyphs in the cave
Didn’t enter my dreams; yet, they are the texture
Of this image: roughened, legs darkened,
The stillness erect, the two heads turned
Into one another, from aside an angelic
Pout of mouth carved in stone, the other the sage
Thick eyebrows.  Machinations of MakeMake.
 
How does one call the secret sands?
The rose of listening petals stone ground
In ocean’s mortars.  Mercy.
Mercy. Navel of the world, a round stone
Dragged from platform to the seaside arena.
Seated enclosure, stone wall, knee high of that.
Te Pito O Te Henua, iron pebble, lodestone.
They have come from afar to touch the belly of the first king—
Padre.  And not am I for the experience, the 17
Who stand upright, my heart a ping of
Sentiment.  Travel with me great ones,
Tinting the dreams of those whose understanding
Is far beyond.  In the beyond I go with steps of kings.
 
In the vessel that I am, there is a light surging. 
Is it not like the sun,
The apparition?  To Santiago
A young man went to his grandfather.
Arguments, the old man cursed the young man
To die when he returned home.
I am changed, altered, no object to love.
Cheered by your disposition, by your
Footsteps, if I should be pricked by nettles
Along the shore, you will remove the thorns and
The wounds close.  They came with crystals
To the navel of the world.  Sun eclipsed.
Do not be afraid of the curses,
No better, no worse if you should
Speak the tongues of the ancients.
Cup the wind in your hands and be spellbound.
 
It rains the rain of the sea, ocean, felt-covered hills.
I have been robbed of all suspicions and regrets.
The tiniest hair thrills my conscience as if it is the
Line of communication to
The doorway, an escarpment in a valley of singsong
Voices, sanguine refreshed, the urchin I ate:
Shells, sweetness.  Pedestrian in our
Journeys, sipping coffee with people
Divided by boundaries. The hand
Gestures the wave, rolling ocean, and tongue tasting
That which is touched, all senses surmised.
Too many thoughts, the heart becomes
The thought, softening into a blur of eternity.
The vapor hung like a sheet of rain
Over the sea, between me and the dry
Hills, horse and cattle, sable-haired vanquished.
 
Final moments arrive.  The week in which the
Ground view was the view, the slant
Of the head catching the four corners of sun
Beneath the hat.  The sun
Rises but does not pierce the clouds.
The golden yearning for more to come
Will and does.  You cannot stop
Me from yearning; my hands are open
And I am unbound. So it is the feeling of
The bird in the flesh—
There are many long ways to see.
 
We stood on a platform overlooking the island.
The red hibiscus in bloom, the eucalyptus
Fragrance not yet apparent.  The tracks in the earth, we
Had followed straying to feel everything in total.
The heart, the solar plexus, the crown, the feet,
Two pesos unearthed like the spears of obsidian scattered
Along the coast, near the caves and the ahu and greenhouses.
Who are we and why in the marrow of the bone? The answer
In the pale circumference, I regret nothing.  We hold
Stones in our hands and let them go. The wind
Combing the body of light, you are in my thoughts
That rise like this continent from three volcanoes.
How do you say for how long

In all the tongues of the world?

Kristi Nimmo is artist, writer, and meditation facilitator.  www.astonespeaks.com

Tobi Cogswell

Incisor
 
. . . and on a Tuesday he
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . wrote:
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...  “oh God, I want you so badly.
 . . .  Seems
 . . . . . like
 . . . . . . . my
. . . . . . . . . . vocabulary's
… . . . . . . . . . . . .   . . . . gone
............................... .   . . . . . and
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   . . . . . ... that is all I can say.
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... I want to suck your
 . collarbone”.
 
………………… xoxo

Paper in Plastic
 
Motrin, Cottonelle
Condoms, Cat Food
Colgate – Cavity Protection,
not Whitening
Asparagus, String Cheese
Rit Dye
Ritz Crackers
Shampoo, Conditioner –
not the Leave In kind
Pluots
Paper Towels
Ball Point Pens
Gummi Bears
Tampons
Tuna
Mayonnaise
Soup
Deodorant
Tomatoes
Avocado
Pop Tarts
Frozen French Fries
Ham, Eggs
Frozen Ham and Egg
Breakfast Bowls
Tide
Bleach
Coffee – Decaf,
Regular
Mascara
English Muffins
Condensed Milk
Bacon
Ice Cream
Spam
Bottle of Red
Salted Cashews
Nylons
Diet Coke
Ginger Ale
Vogue
Stamps
Lottery Ticket

Escape Into Orange
 
Regards and regrets, the smell
of canvas underpinned
with ochre and blue.
How does a face take on
flesh, when brushstrokes
are thick with mercy
and only the earrings
are honest.
 
Moonstones for goodness
shimmer, peacock feathers
blossom radiance into song.
If you squint you see
the stippled spikes of memory
stretched and stapled
by one after another of
travelers come home to rest.
 
Brushes wait patiently
in a jar by the window.
The errant whine of a car
beleaguers the street.
Words of a mother
as she moves a chair
closer, the ocean
before dawn.

Tobi Cogswell is a Pushcart nominee and co-recipient of the first annual Lois and Marine Robert Warden Poetry Award from Bellowing Ark.  Publication credits include Willow Review, Illya’s Honey, Rhino, Slab, Blue Earth Review, Psychic Meatloaf, Decanto (UK), Red River Review, Spilt Milk (UK), The Enigmatist and Askew among others, and are forthcoming in Iodine Poetry Journal and Hawaii Pacific Review. She has three chapbooks and her full-length poetry collection “Poste Restante” is available from Bellowing Ark Press.  She is the co-editor of San Pedro River Review.

Dana Kroos

Jack Be Nimble

They Licked the Plate Clean

Dana Kroos completed an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005 and an MA in Fine Arts at Purdue University in 2003. She also holds an MFA in fiction writing from New Mexico State University. She has always been engaged in both creative writing and visual art. Recently her work has been exhibited at the Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts in El Paso, TX, the Rio Grande Theater in Las Cruces, NM, the Museum of Art in Las Cruces, NM, and the Unsettled Gallery in Las Cruces, NM.

Ray Succre

Shone Perhaps Too Frequently in Drink
 
 Whole bantering mouths, shielded in white teeth
are off-key snaps to me now, fizzy pink mouths,
any scrape imagined with gladdened noise.
 
I have yellow teeth, old actors: 
There are grim phrases to end against them,
not frank snaps to end me,
not snake fables to lean me,
but a poor kiss of facts, maladjustments,
with an injury licked to accuracy, lipped
in an auditorium of wet flesh and tone.

Astray at Twelve O’ Clock
 
 In a portrait of twelve o' clock,
one hand beneath the buzz,
one searching up a talkdress,
the two quail that scavenge
these streetlamp petals,
engulfed and astray in
the clinks of pony glass,
and were, with each nip,
more frankly the bobfloats
merging atop a malted sea.
 
They walked home, hip,
saluting the argot-mouthed,
skullcapped youth, each hogged
atop a scene, and encroaching
the twelve o’ clock night
like two geese on a
temple’s lake edge.

Ray Succre is an undergraduate currently living on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and son.  He has had poems published in Aesthetica, Poets and Artists, and Pank, as well as in numerous others across as many countries.  His novels Tatterdemalion (2008) and Amphisbaena (2009), both through Cauliay, are widely available in print. Other Cruel Things (2009), an online collection of poetry, is available through Differentia Press. 

Abigail Uselding

Tumbling After

Down the hills they rolled
with their heads fitted into their necks
and their bodies full of blood that boiled with noise.
Landing with their backs in the grass,
they lay gently –
their lips, rough and pink,
spilling out sounds
like the blare of the birds overhead,
suspended beyond them
in the breath of the trees.
His teeth, shining ornaments, smiled at her
and grazed the wrists that bathed in her skin.
She swam to him
to fill the broken trails around his mouth.
Wordless, she’d tossed herself over the side
to follow him down, spinning like a fever.
Now, her hand settled in his
that felt to her like the heat from the sun.
From where she lay, the grass inching up to lie in her hair,
he filled her view
and built her prospect along his ribs,
tilting up and down
like she was sinking and floating on the sea.
Rising like the dark,
she flew into the trees
and perched there, with the birds,
to sing him to sleep.
 

This Is Never Going to End

Sideways veins, like wine bottle countries,
bruise and face east,
gurgling,
drowned in Ophelia skin.
Tender white,
I am unkissed and aligned to perfect,
both arms overturned through the water,
warm and hidden away
from the air
that settles into the lines around my mouth.
Gone under,
sunk like morals,
I bend to the weight of wailing –
a kind of godless relief.
Apples lower the branches overhead,
full and closer to me, bending the grass on the banks nearby,
with sunny seeds that chip away my teeth.
I move like rotting glaciers around the curves of throats,
sweet fingers travelling around the jaw, across a dry mouth
that dies, grinning blindly up into some kind of sun.
 
 

Ketchum

He’s growing sad -
Reloading in the dark basement,
crowded in by crumbling boxes and olive-green curtains.
He’s been assured of his rebirth.
So, spoiling the air with the stench of blood
means nothing.
The taste of wind and sand howls in his mouth,
even as he stands here,
mutilating himself and muttering that once,
though a long time ago,
days were longer and easier to live through.

Sandra Ketcham

Acrobat

There's a post in the middle of his living room
that reaches up to breach the ceiling
of rotted wood and nibbled wires

There's a pile of junk by his kitchen sink
some bowls and socks, a broken phone
he used to lose his job

There's a vale of light in his hallway
that warms his face after breakfast
and fills his head with jazz

There's a half-naked girl down the hall
she's an acrobat, she sucks on cinnamon sticks
hoping he will notice her

And there's a coffee stain on his sweater
at night it helps him remember
who the acrobat thinks he should be

Misplaced

I measure only inches between us. Or empty miles.
Chickenpox constellations. Or ribbons of red and blue.
Philly fits beneath my fingernail.

And
I can watch you with a magnifying glass, shake you off
like sand on a beach towel. Or turn you into a tumbleweed and blow you into Texas.

Inside me is an expanding ocean.
One drop and you will drown.
One drop and we lose the Eastern Seaboard.

Sandra Ketcham currently lives in Orlando, where she works as a full-time freelance writer and editor. She is pursuing her degree in psychology and spends her free time working with autistic children and their families. Sandra has a strong aversion to llamas.

John Sibley Williams

We all arrive by different streets

Act I

We all arrive by different streets
with different dialects of silence
exploding in our mouths

and the whole city hears
this beautiful holler
rise uncertainly above it
like a storm cloud
awaiting its rainbow.

Act II

We all arrive by different streets
shielded by our personal mantras.

You say beauty is
this shared anonymous silence.

I say the whole city will die,
silently, with me.

We argue well into night
and somehow are comforted.

Act III

We all arrive by different streets
fearing the transparency of clothes—

that in our own hideous undress
we wear the whole human race.

Kiss

This scintillating taste of words
upon the bland flesh of matter:

forever carry us further
from the torn-out heart
left pulsing, beautiful, in our hands—
this pierced eye
these open ribs
this kiss
misunderstood but in its poetry.

John Sibley Williams is a poet and book publicist residing in Portland, OR. He has a previous MA in Writing and presently studies Book Publishing at Portland State University, where he serves as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and publicist for Three Muses Press. His poetry was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize and won the 2011 Heart Poetry Award. His debut chapbook, A Pure River, was published in 2010 by The Last Automat Press. Some of his over 100 previous or upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, RHINO, Rosebud, Ellipsis, Flint Hills Review, Euphony, Open Letters, Cadillac Cicatrix, Juked, The Journal, Hawaii Review, Cutthroat, The Furnace Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Aries, and River Oak Review.

Pat Smith

Wintry Mix

I know I’m riding my bike upside down.
Gotta get off the red hibiscus cotton prints
hanging over the highway ramps
where angry white beaks and raisin eyes
weave around my windows.

It’s Gleason again, jeez, I can’t escape
the redundant brass buttons on his bus driver suit
as he climbs a brick chasm over rushing white water
to the stage where he does his bug-eyed shtick.

I want to live by the white water, too,
so I zoom in on the neighborhood map
and stroll there with wife and kids wondering
about the black smoke above the gorge

on our ritual return to a rock in a park,
a monument to god knows what
delicate disembodied hands flopping like fish
in a gutter to become a fur clad girl in fuzzy tights
and red Doc Martens. She smiles
and stacks bronze coins in my palm.

Now the train runs downstage instead of up
where the world is covered in pink wallpaper.
I hang my bike in a hole in the wall
and drape wet clothes by the window.

Last week’s blizzard is crusty black
dumped from a rogue cement mixer
dawn through a lattice of clouds.

Toybox, jukebox, medicine chest,
crib to coffin chemistry set
to deep sigh in January sun.

Pat Smith grew up in industrial Ohio, studied theater at Carnegie-Mellon University, earned a BA from Columbia and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His play Driving Around the House has been produced at theaters around the country and is published by New Rivers Press in the anthology Slant Six. His job history includes steel mills, amusement parks, years as an adjunct instructor in university English departments across New York City, as a writer and editor at Time magazine, and as a screenwriter for marketing and educational video. He is currently Communications Director for the PSC-CUNY Welfare Fund, a health benefits service for the instructional staff of the City University of New York. Recent publications include the poem What’s Doing This Weekend, published by Haggard and Halloo Publications, haggardandhaloo.com. His blog is Not in the News Today, notinthenewstoday.com He is married, the father of two teenage children, and he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Julia Morris Paul

But This
after the charcoal drawing, “The Visionary,” by Bradley Paul

Bats emerge from the caves
of his eyes, smudge the sky
like a Carlsbad dusk.
He doesn’t blink. Like a camel
in a sandstorm, eyes glazed open,
leading men through the desert’s
heart, he doesn’t blink.

He sees what you are blind to,
little sister: worms fattening
on the battlefield’s flesh:
blood running through our pumps:
the laced up black boots
under your skirt.

He sees what others don’t
through the black moons
of his skull: the widow’s
view from the mantilla
that covers her face: the netted
landscape, pinpricks of light
like stars threading the darkness.

There was a time before time
when his eyelids fell
like velvet stage curtains. Iris
shutters held back the litany
of the sea. He was something
to see then. With flesh he became god
but his thirst was greater than the redwoods’.
No rain could satisfy the parched well.

And he sat for a very long time, astonished
at what ceased to astonish him:
the brochure’s small print warnings,
fallen fruit seething with ants,
pupils abandoning their teachers.

But this - the mirrored pools’ reflection:
a woman approaching, reading her beloved
Shakespeare aloud, making music with her bones.
And eyes lifting.
Jewels of courage brightening.

Julia Morris Paul’s poems have appeared in journals such as: RUNES, Connecticut River Review, Broken Bridge Review, Common Ground Review, Connecticut Review, and Caduceus and in anthologies, including the award winning anthology, Lavandaria: An Anthology of Women, Wash and Word. A selection of her photographs and poetry based on doors is featured in the online Open Doors Poetry Zine. She was recently named a finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award 2011. She is an elder law attorney in Manchester, Connecticut.

Alexios Antypas

The Lost Child

Those were the days of fierce indoor sports and crumbling walls, doors
blown in and blown out, tables that collapsed at breakfast, wild dogs who
slept on the porch. There were always deep shadows in our rooms. I could
not help sleeping as much as I did. You kept busy plotting the overthrow of
your parents, long dead. There was the time you wouldn’t get out of bed for
three days because you felt caught in a cartoon, your voice and body
freakish. We trembled at the lonely sound of cowbells at dusk. Our little daughter, you might remember, liked to sing: “It’s raining, it’s pouring.” She
sang, “It’s raining,” and ran around the living room with her arms open as
though she were embracing the world. “I know, baby,” I used to say, but
what did I know? She looked so ephemeral. There are times even now
when I can’t bear to wonder what ever became of her.

The poetry of Alexios Antypas has been published in Sentence, Poetry International, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Bitter Oleander, and other journals. He lives in Budapest, Hungary, and teaches at Central European University.

Regina Coll

Martin Balgach

The Paces
           
When everything is in my eyes
I push words against my lips
 
Then in my palms           
a child plays with daylight
 
A magician
poofs a rabbit out of smoke
 
But I still know
that time is the shy kid
bloody-nosed
in a fistfight
over lost love
 
No one wins
and everyone walks away
angry as catapults
 
So here I go
into the aromatic paces of life
pulling skinless raindrops
through the noses of bulls

Martin Balgach’s writing and criticism has appeared or is forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, Cream City Review, Margie: The American Journal of Poetry, Many Mountains Moving, Opium Magazine, Poetry Miscellany, Rain Taxi, and elsewhere.  He holds an MFA from Vermont College and he works for a publishing company in Boulder, Colorado.

J.S. Watts

The Effect of Moonlight on the Human Voice

 
I am listening        for the effect of moonlight
on the human voice       remembering
when I heard it first             heard it last
                                  listen
 
I am listening for moonbows trailing
their pale gauze over high stone beds
the sleeping grounds of countless
nameless ages       hunting
the siren’s call of the riderless horse
as it wades breast bone deep
in the lulling sea-green waters
clasping the island like a holy child
head straining up and out
towards the plains of sweet wide grass
trodden only by the wind
 
The wind is singing moon songs
 
I hear strong hands planting their music
in the rich damp soil of the mother home
hymning the beauty that serves as
goddess to his priest
her pure Eucharist poured
from his softly torn throat
the songs flowing back       arterial green
into the land      across the hills
bathed in the flame
from his heart’s flawed emerald
 
The heart is always sighing moon songs
 
Its singing is a tear drop from the moon’s silver
the crying of owls in the feathered black
on an empty moonless night
as it rustles through abandoned factory halls
the touch of a once loved hand in the endless dark
 
It is here           it is now
it is always
 
                                                listen

J.S.Watts was born in London and now lives and writes in East Anglia in the U.K. Her poetry, short stories and book reviews appear in a variety of publications in Britain, Canada and the States including  Acumen, Brittle Star,  Envoi, Hand + Star,  Midwest Literary Magazine, Orbis and Visionary Tongue and have been broadcast on BBC Radio.  She is Poetry Reviews Editor for Open Wide Magazine and Poetry Editor for Ethereal Tales. Her debut poetry collection, "Cats and Other Myths" will be published in 2011 by Lapwing Publications. For more details visit: www.facebook.com/pages/JSWatts/84833615566. 

Michael Shorb

ON VAN GOGH'S 'THE NIGHT CAFE' (1888)

Look fiercely if you will:
Make from the yellow floor
A curving shard of summer sun, 
shape waves concentric,
green-gilled, spilling
Fear from the 
hanging lamps,
Turn empty bottles, 
clock and tables
Into altars for a god 
of leaning men.

And dream of her, beauty,
without whom scales of night 
are dry and coated with silence,
She who salves your fevered
brain with water by 
The promise of 
    her turning face,
Deft hand flicking back 
Loomed hair, the loaves
Of her thighs rising.

Michael Shorb is a poet, technical writer, editor and children's book author who lives in San Francisco. He writes frequently about environmental issues and historical topics. His work has appeared in over one hundred publications, including MICHIGAN QUARTERLY, THE NATION, COMMONWEAL, RATTLE, THE SUN, SALZBURG POETRY REVIEW, EUROPEAN JUDAISM, QUEEN'S QUARTERLY and THE SHAKESPEARE NEWSLETTER.

Carl Palmer

tit for tat

the butterfly
on her left breast
needs ironing

Carl Palmer, nominee for the Micro Award and three Pushcart Prizes, from Old Mill Road in Ridgeway VA, now lives in University Place WA.

Thom Dawkins

Der Musiker Spricht

Begin with the poem, believe it to be contrast
taking shape. Not black and white, per se, but
orange and words that rhyme with orange.

Step inside the lid. Beyond the keys you must
cry silently. There will be no one seated at the bench.

In the evenings, you will walk cul-de-sacs. In Summer,
you can wait for the Fall. There will be an innocence
in your wish to be encumbered. In your dreams,

the animals will become women, and the women
remain indecipherable. There are notes attached

to their bodies. A-minor will insufferable; F-sharp
too complex. There is music in the almost said.

Thom Dawkins is an MFA candidate at Chatham University, where he also serves as a poetry editor for The Fourth River literary journal. His work as a poet and critic has been most recently published in Puerto del Sol, The New Formalist, and The Cafe Review.
http://thomdawkins.blogspot.com/

Les Wicks

Dig
 
It was supposed to be just us.
The related cadaver wanted a soundtrack
was only a chat
what cheek
though no cheek remained, he
was after all in shorts
mint condition
mint green. Why wear a hat mate
the damage has been done.
 
We are obstruct clarity
as spinal photographers clatter
the goth marriage at Meat Beach
a facility appropriately doomed,
soon to disappear. Graders applause
the schmaltz of a cannibal waltz
sand no hands clapped out
just
redundant.
 
This is that last pneumonic gasp a
community art
tarmac graffiti the shipping containers
use a huge black pen to get into character,
right on queue. Their inelegant steel bulges
with the immigrant dead Sydney needs
so much more
& so a beach simply goes… lesser shore subsumed
to funerary crust.
 
Sunbake on ashes.
Dear compadre – you were ahead of your time
terminal trendsetter, dead fashionable
nail clippings of the rich & famous, ham all
flam as plague ships flap their flimsy food,
flare towards our lungs. Flu flies first class.
 
I am the afterthought of birds.
Me & Felix
toss the bone. Fetch.

Les Wick's books are "The Vanguard Sleeps In" (Glandular, 1981), "Cannibals" (Rochford St, 1985), "Tickle" (Island, 1993), "Nitty Gritty"
(Five Islands, 1997), "The Ways of Waves" (Sidewalk, 2000), "Appetites of Light" (Presspress, 2002), "Stories of the Feet" (Five Islands,
2004)  & “The Ambrosiacs” (Island, 2009). He's performed at festivals, schools, Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects like poetry on buses & poetry published on the surface of a river. http://leswicks.tripod.com/lw.htm

Nina Bennett

A Georgia O’Keeffe Sunset
                       
Distant mountains shimmer
in the saffron light of late afternoon.
Dun adobe glows cinnamon
under the gaze of the descending sun,
the sky behind me a river of honey
smeared across the horizon.
 
I drive up I-25
into the Sangre de Cristos.
I want to get drunk, fall in love,
quit my job, move to Santa Fe.

Nina Bennett is the author of Forgotten Tears A Grandmother’s Journey Through Grief. Her poetry has appeared in online and print journals including Alehouse, Panache, Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, The Broadkill Review, and anthologies such as Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS. Nina is a contributing author to the Open to Hope Foundation.

Shane Allison

Hello Mr. Cento

I need a job today.
They raised the price of
Dreams every morning roundabout
Nine. I didn't mean for
It to happen as the

Man who can buy his
Cake buffed to a subtly
Numbing sheen falling from the
Ceiling in the delivery room
Of blindfolded violinists sponging

My sweaty stomach thru the
Arches of trite self-examination
Witnessed by flanked, short eyes
In another form of pussy
Feeling ever so American as

You eat blood, semen and
Shit in circles of shimmering,
White light sitting on the
Living-room floor watching Saturday
Morning clouds big enough to

Run across a Bourgeois idealist
That drove me into Barnes
& Noble two years ago
In the suddenly squeaky-clean
New York scene. Shock the

Shit out of people between
Two ideas. It was Oscar
Wilde after all who described
Your shoulders in the clouds
Or masses of flowers. Load

The walls held back in
An eternal pause of the
Local heavens' various fragments of
Flowers with warm, flowin' liquids
Of the imagination, which wipes

Across our moving brows to
Erase a glass coffin stifled
By roses to make the
Most terrible Gods lose weight
In a country of splendor

& High rain-dampened nostril
Hair leaning back away from
The hot water. Kissing sweetly,
Smooth & delicious flesh of
His feet until you reach

For me with your ass
Down around the end
Of each digit for hours.
And when you get here,
The first thing you do

Is strip, get down and
Empty the heart in Korea
Of what will see us
Through and I know that
Peace is soon coming as

If heaven cared looking out
The window for no reason
Except a throb through five
Seconds to spit out your
Semen with an eye for

Men to tickle and pull
Them and feel the public
Brush toward the toes to
Give it the butt of
Beowulf, the gism of Jesus,
The crotch of legions of

Men on their way to
Conquer lips closing over
Silky glands, brushing backs of

The arrogant toes I moan
And twitch with a pretty

Face, with my mouth like
Marbles or your cunt you
Have harbored under the kiddie
Potty up south in Greece in
1939 with a mild speech

Impediment eating yellow snow cones
Wherever he thrusts a
Handful of tan knuckles to
My face if I whirl
The whip faster and faster,

You turn on your back
Feeling the wire hire, the
Hairbrush, the wooden spoon
Inside a hundred different men,
But the needs of the

Heart to me, puts on
Heavy boots adorned with many
Golden, burly black men and
Truckloads of buttocks moving like
Palm trees, like a slow

Scent to the railroad from
The great north road, which
Curls up on the solid
Earth under the French horns
Of a November afternoon. A

Man in the rusty deadpan
Ends of space of my
Mouth has made a temporary
Language no great size while
You limped and feel no

Such a language.

What love is not easy,
But the Chippewa poem tells
Us my taste will not
Have turned insensitive to you.

Shane Allison has work forthcoming in Fence..

Floyd Cheung

So Valued
response to Thomas Wilmer Dewing, The Spinet (c. 1902)
oil on wood, gift of John Gellatly to Smithsonian American Art Museum

just like an Utamaro print
portrait of the floating world

ikebana, mirror, woman
her back to us

playing not shamisen but spinet
in a New York City drawing room

shoji replaced by wallpaper
red, black, and gold gilt swirls

instead of chrysanthemums
daffodils leaning

she, wrapped not in kimono
but evening gown, off-the-shoulder

her nape, that erogenous zone
so valued by the men of Edo

the Empire State and us
not visible in the mirror

Floyd Cheung teaches at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. His poems have appeared in the Apple Valley Review, the Naugatuck River Review, qarrtsiluni, Rhino, and other journals.

Nicole Koroch

Mayflies

Mother had her wind-chimes.

They hung from trees
and shepherd's hooks--
metal and bamboo.

Sometimes they would tangle in the cornfield wind.

At night I would hold vespers
for the mayflies and dogs.

The chimes:

they sang in the yard.
I could only choke out their sound

one at a time.

The Masses

In the distance green
flanks the Other

and coffee steams in the morning

a mixture of paste and bleach and cheap
Vosdanik smells of rain

as red beads drop from her hair
into my mouth

dried cherries and lowering clouds

I will lie there
incidental

everywhere
dirty and heavy.

Nicole is currently an undergraduate student of Literature and Writing and Indiana University.

Nancy Carol Moody

In Answer To Your Question Concerning the Disposition of the Soul

it's all about muscle memory:
the way a politician understands
weather; how the bluebird
navigates the wide-eyed sky,
scarlet rippling beneath her wings.

The octogenarian has become
a caricature of himself.
All moustache and skin, he dreams
his own extinction
seven miles downwind
of a tourist hamlet.

When the action is over,
the theme song plays,

and if the skeleton on its lazy hinges
recognizes a horizon, let it be this:
rhyme and meter of marrow,
the meticulous music
of ligament and sinew.

You will hear words: pinnacle,
pearl, promenade, profound.
My complacent one,
do not be seduced
by these perfect plums, evidence
of nothing but the black
hole's inexorable ardor.
The passage is rocky. Or it is not.

Ahead is a gate.
A bare bulb above it illuminates
a single saber of grass
of the most alluring green.
The miasma swirls: nebulous, resonant.
Stay put. Step through.

It's the same on either side.

Peter Schwartz

rattles

I rattle like lost light
but battle with ministry and wear giant pants
through all your cities

and what am I if not
your frostbitten holiday, the gloves of another
kind of trust

(your most allergic reaction)

don't let me crush anything
you still think beautiful, this was never supposed to be
a thriller, it's the placebo

I love so.

Peter Schwartz's poetry has been featured in The Collagist, The Columbia Review, Diagram, and Opium Magazine. His latest collection Old Men, Girls, and Monsters was published as part of the Achilles Chapbook Series. He’s an interviewer for the PRATE Interview Series, a regular contributor to The Nervous Breakdown, and the art editor for DOGZPLOT.

Kristene Brown

Gojira

A man pub crawls on all fours

Sidelong

Towards the romance of neon lights

And wet pavement

Slick with peacock colored gasoline spills

Nights warm sidewalk spinning vinyl

Of beat-boxes

A sky view of back alley balconies

Spidery black

Legs lightening across sky

The steely gray hush

People sleep inside the dark dwarf houses

Alone I walk, Tokyo’s mistress

Chasing paw prints on tar-floor roofs

In the muck-trap of insomnia

Hushed

There is a fierce feathery turning, a soft

Caress of destruction

Inside the city’s center

A Godzilla

Kicking the cobblestone

Batting down planes

Sirens and smoke, assault of sound

Daybreak mushrooms

Honeycombing the city in light

On a bus bench I wait

Softly saying

I’m alright, I’m alright

Kristene Brown is a writing student at the University of Missouri Kansas City. She has previously been published in The Unrorean and Amphibi.us. She is also a psychiatric social worker for Kansas City, KS.

Imee Cuison

De Stijl

(Red)

I dreamt that my skin was covered in your voice.

Silk. Cream. Velvet.

Under lavender blue magenta lights.

(White)

Sultry. Sweat down my neck.

My voice infused with your flesh.

Your vibration against my chords.

Sylphlike.

(Black)

You smelled like bourbon and honey.

I held my breath to steal your scent.

Tasting your double helix.

Violets. Raspberry. Orchids.

I woke with a startle.

Your voice like sepia in my head.

Imee Cuison is a freelance writer in Charleston, SC. Her work has appeared in Quiet Mountain Essays, phati’tude Literary Magazine, and the anthology, Same Difference.

Jim Davis

Transience as Arcade

The simple brilliance of black coat, red coat, boots.
What is important to everyone, matters to few.
Uncertain dirt of the thumbnail scribe
quotes the broken pattern, you
impatient stranger.

Howl, then, let us all.
Listen to the lions.
The call, pause, to signal a break
in our lovemaking. Breathing
the damp enclosure of sheets.
The ruined universe.
The many stagnant lives of the tide pool.

Report the news, cast the weather.
All the things arriving might have meant.
Pack the stove with green branches.
Cover the wet grass with a heavy curtain of smoke without flame.
Each choking blade punctuated with dew.

Jim Davis is a graduate of Knox College and now lives, writes and paints in Chicago. His poetry and paintings have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Quarterly, The Ante Review, Chiron Review, The Café Review, Red River Review, Midwest Literary Magazine, and Blue Mesa Review, among others. In addition to the arts, Jim travels the world as an international semi-professional football player. www.paintstrong.com

Mitchell Storar

Mitchell is an emerging writer and a recent graduate of the College of Wooster.

David Raymond

Kenneth Noland’s “Mysteries Afloat”

The chromatic
The chromatic beat

Retrieves the blue broad heart
The blue eared star

In the square sky
As a powdered wet

Flour dust hue
Fading to lilac

Like the center able to hover
Hoverable green

Made of resisting blue
The center beat

Flits, flits enough
Just flits.

Piero della Francesca

Spirits, says Piero, we are spirits
dreaming someone dreaming someone.

Under the slipping violet sky,
the wet air cold as a ziggurat,
dreaming a face
framed between two hands,
warmer than a vanishing point,
a Brancusi face, speaking

like a bronze bell,
declaring in fragments,
the total of the face,
the tendons of the neck,
the body self,
passes from a hall
with blood wooden
doors
through rooms of floating feathers.

David Raymond lives in NH and writes in NH and in Massachusetts where he is professor of fine arts at Merrimack College. He makes sculpture in Massachusetts and writes columns on art and reviews art in Maine, NH and Massachusetts for New England Magazine. He prefers Scotland.

David Tomaloff

[d]avid : [t]omaloff (b. 1972) | is a musician, writer, photographer, and all around-bad influence | likes: jazz | hates: jazz | photography: yes | his work has also appeared in publications such as: Ditch Poetry, Otoliths, elimae, Counterexample Poetics, and Calliope Nerve | see: davidtomaloff.com

Kirby Wright

UNDER THE BEETLEBUNG TREE, MARTHA'S VINEYARD
in memory of John Belushi

Here you lie under the beetlebung tree.
It's nearly Halloween.
Red leaves rain on your grave.
You lived as long as Jesus.

It's nearly Halloween.
I like your skull & crossbones headstone.
You lived as long as Jesus.
Beetlebung wood is as hard as bone.

I like your skull & crossbones headstone.
You packed it in at thirty-three.
Beetlebung wood is as hard as bone.
You're ten stone throws from the ocean.

Your name is carved in granite.
Red leaves rain on your grave.
What would Bluto say?
Here you lie under the beetlebung tree.

Kirby Wright is the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA'I NUI AHINA, both set in Hawaii.

Shelly Bryant

Acrylic on Canvas 
(a response to Ed Moses’s acrylic on canvas Fal.2008)

synthetic        material               in
bold               streaks                 across
a                   reposing               silence

in                   a                         material
silence           across                  synthetic
streaks          bold                     reposing

across            synthetic             streaks
material         in                        a
reposing        silence                 bold

Shelly Bryant splits her time between Singapore and Shanghai, working as a teacher, freelance writer, researcher, and student of Chinese language and culture. Her first volume of poetry, Cyborg Chimera, was released by Sam’s Dot Publishing in October 2009, and her second volume, Under the Ash, followed in December 2010. Shelly loves to read, write, cycle, and travel, and enjoys the opportunities for all of these that her present migratory lifestyle affords.