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.