Michael H. Brownstein

The Water Lillie Contemplating Suicide 

 

The flower rickshawed through her,

a water blossom yellow and strong

like a plank of wood, smooth and narrow,

a one by two, only true as if true

could ever be exact or honest

or even a deity worth dying for.

 

The stem of her body fluid and full,

her root work deep and philosophical

as if the voice of pain could ever be a flower,

the thick trunk of a tree, a nearby stream

bubbling over river rock, the carcasses

of the dead fish who swim there.

 

Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), and I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

Christy Hall

Later, You Returned to the Sea

To the coast, what other setting but by the shore.

We crept along the promenade holding hands,

staying close in the cold.

You were reluctant to step onto the sand

in canvass shoes, so I piggy-backed you

towards the surf, and the bank of wet stones.

A sprig of seaweed, typical litter, a twig.

I set you down there, safe

and threw a rock or two seawards; you laughed.

Hooking yourself to me and using my feet

as stilts to keep out the damp.

I leant in. You turned back.

The wind now whipping hard at our necks

and I can taste the salt of the chips we had.

Christy Hall is the tenant and manager of a pub in Beverley, East Yorkshire. He is a graduate of the Creative Writing Master’s course at Hull University. He has had poems published throughout the U.K as well as in America. He hopes one day to publish his own collection.

Ivo Drury

Atavist's Statement #23

You asked for a paragraph or two about my paintings,

but what’s the point?

You like them or not.

You understand them or not.

Your opinion is equal to, greater than, less than mine.

Nobody really cares – they come for the cheese and the chardonnay,

but chiefly the chardonnay

Ivo Drury workshops words in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Recent work has appeared in Liliput Review, Conium Review, Curio Poetry and Elimae.

Arun Budhathoki

Dark Ages

The flushed sky reserves miniature eyes

Enwrapped in bluish blanket

For the darkening city,

I’ll pluck all and paste it on my forehead.

The blind city wonders at my brightness

Fireflies and moths suck radiant tits

Visiting every home to pass the awesome light,

I’m losing my foresight.

I’ve been growing a child in my belly

The world is round and so is my navel

Circling adults who walk without sights,

The child of mine is rage.

The flushed sky protects winking eyes

Dotted tactfully over the mind’s ignorance

Silencing the soured iron-clad tongue,

I live open-mouthed.

I’ve engulfed scores of stars and burst into millions of filaments

Stitching you with my belly,

Eat me now. 

Arun Budhathoki, alias Daniel Song, is a Nepalese poet / writer / founding editor of The Applicant, a Kathmandu-based literary journal.

Rory Fleming

Gen Y

It's about having everything at your fingertips and still being bored
Going to work and realizing you have nothing to do
You tell me something that I can look up
Using google
On my phone
When else were gods this lost

Rory Fleming is a future law student at UNC-Chapel Hill.  He also composes poetry and prose, some of which can be found at Thousand Shades of Gray, Camel Saloon, and other places.

Mike Berger

Coos Bay Oregon

The smell of the ocean tickles your nose.

The view across the gray ocean-endless.

The little town is quaint with trees growing

everywhere. The logs in the paper mill pond

are a jumble, jammed in at odd angles.

The drive all along the shoreline is green and

somber. Stands of pine obscure your view.

There in a protected cove is a small island

laden with sea lions.

They bark and there raspy, rancorous voices

assult your ears. They were a loquacious lot.

They bask in the sun and frolick. Across the

cove is an old lighthouse standing defiantly

against that sea breezes.

Outside the cove the breakers crash against

the rocky shore. The eternal battle between

rock and wave has existed for eons of time.

 

Mike Berger is an MFA, PhD. He writes poetry and short stories full time

He has been writing poetry for less than four years. His work appear in seventy-one journals. He has published two books of short stories and eight poetry chapbooks .The winner of several poetry contests, he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is a member of The Academy of  American Poets.

Mark Nenadov

The Road To Maine

The hot 401 drive spirals down

under screaming, spinning rubber

the angry, vengeful Toronto stretch kicks you to the ground

you spring back gasping for air in Oshawa

then cool Kingston air caresses you hair

like cattails waving to the road's rhythm

sit back and sigh softly till Montreal

while sweetie softly sleeps.

You’ll remember some of what you see

like in Quebec near Vermont you feel the hot air 

of road-rage raging resolutely

or the quiet defiant resolution

of a man using horse drawn buggy 

to pick up his groceries

(I don't think the Amish trot Quebec

and I don't suppose Amish men go shirtless and without beard)

Eventually on to New Hampshire behind a truck

bravely lugging logs and languishing beneath the load

then you feel like you are being folded

swiftly tucked away like a stained napkin

into the expansive breast pocket

of majestic cloud-shrouded mountains.

 

 

Mark Nenadov lives in Essex, Ontario, Canada with his lovely wife, a cute young daughter, and their cat. He's fairly new to the world of literary journals, but has been writing poetry for a long time. He has a forthcoming poem which will appear in WestWard Quarterly.

Joan Colby

Papa

In the cellar by the boiler

You jacked the house up to install

Long before I came along.

You take a swallow of your beer,

Eject a dog-colored stream

Into the brass spittoon. Tell me how

An orphan, taken in by farmers

For unpaid labor, you forgot the bread

Baking in the woodstove. A beating

Was certain, so you fled, 12 years old

Riding the rails west.

In the mines, you drove a mule train, liked

Horses better, just like me. You

Joined the Wobblies, damn the bosses.

Met Mary and got hitched after courting

With a rented nag and buggy.

Seven kids, four lived. You loaded coal

On the docks at Calumet. Your tongue

Sliced for cancer, you still had your chaw

Until the day you collapse

Shoveling snow, too stubborn

To wait for help.

Joan Colby lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois with her husband and assorted animals. She has had seven books published including "The Lonely Hearts Killers" and  "The Atrocity Book". Joan is widely published in such publications as Poetry, Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The New York Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Epoch, and others. She has received two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and an IAC Literary Fellowship. Joan also received an honorable mention in the 2008 James Hearst Poetry Contest—North American Review and the 2009 Editor’s Choice Contest - Margie, and was a finalist in the 2007 GSU (now New South) Poetry Contest, 2009 Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize, 2010 James Hearst Poetry Contest and Ernest J. Poetry Prize. She is currently a finalist in the 2012 Pablo Neruda Prize. A new chapbook “Dead Horses” forthcoming from Future Cycle Press.

Thomas Zimmerman

After Visiting Mycenae

                                                King George Palace, Athens

King Agamemnon’s tomb was cool as thought,

a shaded haven gouged in mountain, bored

within Mycenae’s pocked and sun-scorched skull.

That brilliant dreamer Schliemann got it wrong,

however: neither palace, tomb, nor mask

belonged to Clytemnestra’s husband, so

our local guide explained. She then curtailed

the tour because of triple-digit heat.

Now, drinking Mythos lager in an air-

conditioned room, I’m excavating words

and actions: much of life’s misread. But fact

is just a tool that etches, sculpts, or dulls

realities that we ourselves create.

That tourist ouzo that I bought today:

the bottle has Apollo’s Attic shape.

Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, MI. His poems have appeared recently in The Meadowland Review and Big River Poetry Review. His chapbook In Stereo is forthcoming from The Camel Saloon Books on Blog.

Diane Webster

Paged Stat


The patient is the out-of-order
soda machine in the hospital’s lobby.
An administrator-type lady leads
a scrub nurse look alike
and with scalpel precision
she inserts the key and lays open
the chest revealing the inner workings
and finds a punctured pop can leaking
its sticky residue throughout
the once-finely-working machine.
With forceps fingers scrub nurse carefully
almost repulsively removes
the malignant can and stuffs paper towels
into cracks sopping the escaped fluid
stopping any further damage
until the vendor specialist is paged
stat to the hospital lobby.

Diane Webster tries to remain open to poetry ideas in everday life and then attempt to write with slant or an interesting point of view.  Her work has appeared in Illya's Honey, The Rainbow Rose, The Old Red Kimono and other literary magazines.

J.S. MacLean

The Traders of Rorré

They were already settling at dawn,

when wall shadows were still

in fashion, tempted from down

the Rednow River

by rumors of our caging

the whims of time and the savage

etiquette in our drool of food.

"We are you." they said,

"We rest in the river

and soak the sturgeon dreams

of ancestors."

They offered fish skin rope

for muteness;

took morality for shame.

We fed their driftwood faces,

made them raiment of raven tail

and lion's tooth pappi.

They bartered for our dead

with bread and tales of Rorré.

Our feast was confiscated

and then ritually gifted

soaked in blood and hollow sky.

Trades made like aurochs do

with the tsetse flies;

mourning for the false dawn,

last glimpse of dusk

for a procession of silhouettes,

and our guiltless children

for fractals of thunder

twisted into snares.

J.S. MacLean lives in Calgary, Canada. He has had poetry published in a variety of publications in Canada, the USA, the UK, and Australia. His first collection, “Molasses Smothered Lemon Slices” is available on amazon.com. In his spare time he works.

Christopher Hivner

On a Quiet Street

 

The cigar tastes like

tree bark

in my mouth,

a 50 cent foible

that leaves me

spitting out slivers of leaf

after every inhalation.

Lightning bugs drift all around,

their yellow bodies blinking

on and off

like warning beacons.

I wonder about their purpose

as a cloud of smoke,

frank and biting,

layers over my head.

It’s a cool night

and I should be comfortable

but I’m restless

looking for solace in nature,

too busy counting stressors

like bleating sheep

to recognize peace

on a quiet street.

The cigar is down to the nub;

I stare at the glowing end,

alive with heat,

soon to be ash,

the night sky seems darker than usual,

another firefly nods to me

in passing.

I allow the butt

to burn my fingers

while I search the silence.

Christopher Hivner writes from a small town in Pennsylvania surrounded by books and the echoes of music. His poetry chapbook "The Silence Brushes My Cheek Like Glass" can be read for free at scars.tv. He can be visited at www.chrishivner.com

Brian Le Lay

Embargo in Red

Children, we built you
A bold red dot that is a heart attack
Hiding in the iris-embroidered tablecloth
A thread waiting to inflame

The weeping atlas says You Are Here,
Fastened to the walled-off square,
The dirt and cement
Where we delivered you

Though you've never been high enough
Above the shadows of the soles
Of your shoes to know if this is true,
Your precise position in longitude and latitude

Children, you are here. Do not to move.
You'll catch the tripwires
That bind your ankles,
The way we delivered you.

Brian Le Lay is a poet based out of New York City. His first book of poems, Don't Bury Me in New Jersey, is available from Electric Windmill Books. His work has recently appeared in The Rusty Nail, Hobo Pancakes, and Drunk Monkeys. He blogs at http://www.conceiveyourself.blogspot.com.

Kevin Ridgeway

Getting High and Watching Cartoons

cobwebs line the ceiling just above

the head in this dark, cavernous attic

pillows caked in dust, minds on a bender

of illusions and arrested development

singing children’s songs and puffing

from a broken glass pipe

blood dripping from fingernails

and into piles of brick weed

that stings the throat

and deranges the cultural pallet

all those memories of innocence

brought to this:

dirty slippers, a broken ego

afraid of the blinding sun

that peeks through the

tin foil over the window

smiling a sinister come-hither

that causes one to recoil

in terror, seeing double

from these dollar store

cartoons on a broken,

duct-taped VCR here

in the pit of squalor

Kevin Ridgeway is a writer from Southern California, where he resides in a shady bungalow with his girlfriend and their one-eyed cat.  His chapbook of poetry, Burn through Today, is now available from Flutter Press.

Donal Mahoney

On Emigrating To Iceland After Iraq

Consider first the Alabama heat,

consider next the toad

still as a turd on this rural bridge

rupture slung across a stream

where offal floats,

where clumps are belching.

Note the toad, the reeks

that genie up beside it.

Then remember Iceland

and the freshets of its Spring.

Iceland had no toads,

no reeks to genie up beside them.

 

Donal Mahoney has had work published in Misfits' Miscellany and other print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. 

R. Gerry Fabian

Memphis 2AM

 

Blues filter from the bars

along Beale street.

Lost lovers, unrequited lovers,

unfaithful lovers and, of course,

circumstantial lovers are mourned

with wailing harmonicas,

bent stringed electric moans,

a head pounding bass

and a bottom beat

that drives through the soul.

Since you left

this is all I have to

cheer me up.

 

  

R. Gerry Fabian is a retired English instructor andeditor of Raw Dog Press. http://rawdogpress.bravesites.com/. He has published in various little and literary magazines since 1970.Currently, he is putting the finishing touches on a poetry manuscript of his published poetry and searching for a publisher.

Karen Delasala

moon dials

the elderly gentleman says
"thank you dear"
as I hold the door open for him
he takes some small steps
with a cane for support
and a weary smile appears
he says
"I have to watch this step here"
And I wait patiently behind him

he had asked the salesgirl in the Japanese store
for watches
with moon dials
but they were all out


Karen Delasala holds a BA in English and recently completed a professional certificate in editing from NYU. Her poetry has appeared in The Four Cornered Universe, Dragonheart Press, Living Poets and Down in the Dirt Magazine.

Jayne Marek

Range in the Stars

 

For a minute I drift into the photograph of distant mountains

at dawn, a lavender peak afloat above another ridge, dark purple, the whole sky

dusted with pink, the nearer landscape in maroon, its tree and cactus shapes

emerging.  The January cold of Arizona surprised me

during my first visit, held me in a clinch.  I learned to love that cold

as my mother loved this mountain range, the Sierra Estrellas.  She could sense

how every day the mountains breathed far away, rising from either side

toward the single crest above the dry  Valley of the Sun.  Even hidden

by smog, some days, the mountains were there, her privilege,

a place she would go to some day, she said.  In the photograph, the range gently

draws a line between lingering gloom and the rising light.


Still in the college classroom after all these years, Jayne Marek teaches literature, writing, and film studies and wishes she could write more.  Her message to readers is to put your own writing first; if she says that enough, she might actually listen.  She has given numerous poetry readings and has had short plays performed near Indianapolis and in New York City.

Anthony Ward

Searching for a Signal

I looked into your eyes

Staring into space

Nothing but darkness

The light of your eyes

That once brightened my world-

Burnt out

Dying in the density

That pulled you down

And drew me in

To your vacuous immensity

Searching for a glimmer

That’ll re-ignite us

And lighten the burden of your wait

Remaining static

Like a screen of fretful pixels

Anxious for coherence

To form a picture we could both relate.

Anthony Ward has been writing in his spare time for a number of years. He has been published in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Turbulence, Drunk Monkeys, Speech Therapy, Thousand Shades of Grey, Ginger Piglet, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.

Kyle Hemmings

Last wishes

When I die,
don't feed my ashes
into the lazy river
that runs past
the condemned buildings
that were city factories
with broken-eye windows,
a harbinger of down-size
and hostile take-over.
Don't give my humerus
or tibia to the woman
whose son turned
to calcified dreams
under desert storms.
But rather,
take from me what is
still light and durable,
stretch and sew it
into a kite.
Give it to a child
who can run all day
under clean sweep of sky
near the swaying evergreens
that still
remember me.

Kyle Hemmings is the author of several chapbooks of poetry and prose: Avenue C, Cat People, and Anime Junkie (Scars Publications). His latest e-books are You Never Die in Wholes from Good Story Press and The Truth about Onions from Good Samaritan. He lives and writes in New Jersey.

Jeff Dupuis

Vulnerability to Bishops

Sitting in a packed lecture hall,

'Topics Shakespeare'. Only five free spaces

all diagonal from my seat

down to the lectern, where

the professor, a Renaissance man

well-past his prime, fiddles

and fumbles with his laptop,

the projector, and other implements

of the twenty-first century classroom.

After a day of work

and two classes,

I, wrapped in a parka of fatigue,

drift peacefully toward sleep,

safe on either side, and front and back.

Protected from all, except the flagrant

Achilles' heel, the vacant diagonal seats

creating a distinct vulnerability to bishops.

Jeff Dupuis writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. His work has appeared in The River Journal, The Acta Victoriana, and Blood Lotus Journal, among others. In his off-hours Jeff likes to train in the martial arts, or if nothing else, watch straight-to-DVD martial arts movies. He currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

David R. Morgan

Higgs boson

A silver watch you've worn for years
suffers a particle reverse and vanishes,
leaving a pale white stripe
blazing on your wrist.

A calendar marked with all
the appointments you meant to keep
disappoints,
leaving a faded spot on the wall
where it hung.

One night the glass in your windows
vanish,
leaving you sitting in a gust of wind.

The child you've raised for years,
combing each lock,
tailoring each smile, tending each tear,
each valuable thought,

suddenly changes into a harlequin,
dances into the parade passing in the street,
never to be seen again.

One morning you wash your face,
look into the mirror,
find the water has eroded your features,
worn them smooth as a rock in a brook.

A blank oval peers back at you
too mouthless to cry out. 

 

David R Morgan teaches 11-19 year olds at Cardinal Newman School, in Luton, and lives in Bedfordshire . He has been teaching at the school since 1991.

David has been an arts worker and literature officer, organizer of book festivals and writer-in-residence for education authorities, Littlehay Prison and Fairfield Psychiatric Hospital (which was the subject of a Channel 4 film, Out of Our Minds).He has had two plays screened on ITV and over 200 hundred poems published in National and International Poetry Magazines. His books for children include:  The Strange Case of William Whipper-Snapper, three Info Rider books for Collins and Blooming Cats which won the Acorn Award and was recently animated for BBC2's Words and Pictures Plus as well as a Horrible Histories biography: Spilling The Beans On Boudicca.  David has also written poetry books, his latest collections, Beneath The Dreaming Tree was published by Poetry Space Ltd in October 2011 and Lightbulbs In The Sea by Knives, Forks & Spoons Press was published in November 2011.

Howie Good

Panicky Anarchy

The only way through is full of crimes and rivers. There are also mirrors that plead incomprehension. It’s better not to remember the cat clinging to the fiddle or the word scribbled in yellow on the surgical site. The last time anyone looked elements of the Soviet security apparatus remained. I point as a substitute for speaking. Someone who shouldn’t have got it gets an injection. The bride and groom close their eyes when they kiss. After a week, spasms.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Dreaming in Red, from Right Hand Pointing. He is also the author of numerous chapbooks, including The Devil’s Fuzzy Slippers from Flutter Press and Personal Myths from Writing Knights Press. He has two other chapbooks forthcoming, Fog Area from Dog on a Chain Press and The Death of Me from Pig Ear Press. In addition, he is editor of twenty20 journal and co-publisher of White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely and co-editor of cur-ren-cy with Wisely and F. John Sharp.

Ashley Fisher

Kinsky Square

We eat bramboračka
in a Kinsky Square restaurant,
before walking across where
Černý's pink tank
once raised a glass-fibre finger
to the invaders of 'sixty-eight
upon their own five-metre plinth.

They have moved Tank 23
"Josef Stalin" out of Prague
 to the museum in Lešany,
where, safe from the gaze
of the public and the
post-velvet questions,
it need not be displayed.

Tonight I will meet you on
the left bank of the Vltava,
wearing my heavy coat
and clutching an edition
of Fráňa Šrámek's poetry
which I cannot read
but think a suitable gift.


Ashley Fisher was born in South Cumbria and currently lives in Hull, East Yorkshire, where he runs the monthly Fresh Ink Open Mic poetry night and co-edits the poetry magazine Turbulence. His website can be found at www.ashleyfisher.co.uk

Anna Bilbao

Stairwell

I saw him on a Detroit
stairwell, all whiskey
and paper bag despair.

That was Thursday. The
new week offers no
changes, no hope, no

delusions of ambition.
Just his own thoughts
wrapped in newspaper

blankets and stale urine.
I tell myself that one day
I will speak to him, offer

some sort of comfort. But
never do, never break my
own slavish conformity.


Anna Bilbao was born in Spain and now lives in Detroit, Michigan where she writes compulsively and roams from one dead-end job to another. She is becoming less certain that one day everything will make sense.

Marica Szendry

Alien

Now and then
I hear the foreignness
in my voice echoing
down the stairwell,
mingling with the smell
of metropolitan piss.

I occasionally write home
(if that is what it is)
in a rusting mother's tongue -
assuring indifferent relatives that
all is well and I will write again.

The last time I visited I
felt alien, turning stotinki in my hand
and, in a moment of panic, dumbly
pointing at fruit in the grocer's.


Marica Szendry was born near Plovdiv, Bulgaria and grew up in Portugal. She moved to the UK to study English Literature in 1997 and has lived in London since then.

Welcome

Welcome to Driftwood Bay, a new poetry blogzine based somewhere between Iceland and England which will publish poetry from around the world in English.