April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Her laughter escalated
into muted hysteria,
lasting a second too long,
like an unfortunate accident,
a gasp, an inhalation
with throat muscles constricting,
breasts heaving,
shoulders shaking.
A moment of mirth
escaped unawares,
triggered by happenstance,
initially apologized for,
then later
subtly savored.
by Gary Glauber
Gary Glauber is a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. His works have received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. In 2013, he took part in Found Poetry Review’s Pulitzer Remix Project. He champions the underdog to the melodic rhythms of obscure power pop. His collection, Small Consolations, is coming from The Aldrich Press in 2015.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Getting to know you
How do you feel about thunderstorms?
I realize I have no idea how you’d answer.
My cheeks burn;
the thunder cracks;
it must be a sign.
I miss a lover I don’t know
and the thunder is judging me.
Have you ever
tried to write a poem
and the poem won’t write
but its lines keep insisting themselves to you?
I’m being silly.
It’s storming and I’m blushing and
I don’t know you
but I know you don’t write.
The thunder snorts
and the poem about you keeps insisting itself to me.
burning.
when you kissed me,
did your fingertips
feel like lightning?
No,
i guess that was
just me.
Thunder.
Shame on you for making me feel something.
Shame on me for thinking it meant something.
So
how do you feel about thunderstorms
and relationships that won’t go anywhere
poetry
and me?
The thunder is crackling now,
cackling now,
but I don’t think it’s laughing at us.
by Daniele Walker
October sixteenth
The world in which I am living
is not the world in which I woke up
this morning,
because you are not in it.
The world is not the same,
and I didn’t even get to say goodbye
to it
or to you.
This kind of sadness is how I imagine drowning like you did.
And I wonder if it hurt.
And I wonder if you were afraid.
And I wonder
if
you knew
what was coming.
And I wonder if you knew that I loved you.
by Daniele Walker
Daniele DeAngelis Walker is twenty-three years young, but her soul feels much older. An avid lover of colors and words, she graduated from Drew University with specialized honors in creative writing. She works in the publishing industry and lives in New Jersey with the fiancée she never thought she’d have.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
when I close my eyes,
my bones quiver like I’m
the girl I was last summer,
waking up eighteen on
the banks of the river,
four inches deep in little boys
that press themselves flush
into the creases of my barefoot callouses
it’s there:
honeysuckle, rationed
single drop by single drop,
nectar touched so gently
by our green mother
that it’s bitter to my tongue,
pressed inside my cheeks,
to bite, to knead,
sewn into silk-hewn soil
that bleeds roots from seeds,
bursting leaves like sunburst skies,
like the amber-glossed eyes
of every horse I led to water
only to never let them drink
by Alora Ray
Alora Ray is 20, temporarily lives in Northern Virginia, perpetually lives in a state of denial, performs for whimsy, writes by necessity.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
flibbertigibbets
on pulpits,
lucid with bliss,
gold, crimson and chartreuse,
a tricky weave
in thatched looms,
chirps tuned
to dulcet grace,
coy as they syncopate,
fragile as a drizzle
of satyrids,
murmur of aria, whirl
and frond.
fantasia of mince,
lilt-borne chimes,
troupe
of felicity,
young as breeze,
buoyant with glee,
irresistible
aerial
delectable
playful
flight.
by Chris Crittenden
Chris Crittenden writes from a struggling fishing village, fifty miles from the nearest traffic light. He is pretty well published.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
i want to build you castles of words,
letters looping into stairs & banisters –
standing up billboards of breath
in a sleepless city lit by commas &
question marks. i want to sprinkle consonants
into your dreams & i want you to wake up with poetry
under your tongue. i’ll soften all the vowels
that dewdrop on the roses & i’ll sculpt
the adjectives into a vehicle
to the extraordinary. my fingers
may be feeble & my heart may spin
rambling novels before it’s through,
but i’ll keep restacking these bricks
and trimming these topiaries
until every last syllable
comes out right.
by Sarah Marchant
Sarah Marchant is a writer, poetry editor, and literary enthusiast living in St. Louis.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Like The Blue Like Infinity
From you,
the wings of a seraphim grow.
Like the blue.
Like infinity.
You tore the currents from
the shore,
you belted the sky against its flesh and
held back the threat of rain.
But there was a recent time when you
fell through the thick of clouds
and fell some more,
the heart pattered out,
the bone slipped into death,
and the truth peeled away at the skin.
A limpid metaphor.
Your tendons were led, strung up like
skulls on pikes.
Your tears, clear droplets mingled with
plump pity were
flicked beneath the burning sighs.
While breaths wrung out to be strangled by
the claws of mud-coated ground.
But, the patient one, with hearty bale of madness
you had carried on.
Stripping apathy of its sorcery.
Leaving it eyeless and dull.
Then you stirred when tomorrow arched
across yesterday,
where the hallowed calm
darkened over water-lights of today.
Pleasures and pain. Glory and shame.
And skyward to light you soared,
on extended wings.
by Lana Bella
Under My Dark
Five long hours. Under my dark. I sprawl awake.
Tumbling through the house. Sinking against the
windowpane, watching rained acoustics patter on
the terraced roof. Cries of raindrops. Mingle with
a symphony of ghosts roaming about me. Then I
pour myself a memory from a simmering cauldron,
flavored of alphabet scars and flakes of consciousness.
Hands on the pot. A sudden blink. How do I pour the
liquid thoughts and lettered inks into a bottomless beaker
without leaving my body in a pool of shadows? But now,
my lips thirst for drink. To warm over the cold where the
bone is hollow. Until, I lean in, something exposed and
glassy, echoing on the surface. It is my eyes staring back
at me. Gliding through the fluid with hooked arms. And
its mouth slurping up the pale gullet, heaving off the
squirting blood. The muddy mass of flesh throws up
in the mirage. Then high above, a dullard of rain again
breaks over the house. If I listen, my heart would once
more weep and my eyelids would suspend in tears. So I
stretch my skin where the stairs lay muted and heavy,
under the particled air into which darkness goes.
by Lana Bella
Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and flash fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with more than sixty journals, including Aurorean Poetry, Burningword Literary Journal, Eunoia Review, Mothers Always Write, New Plains Review, The Criterion Journal, and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine, among others. She resides in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, with her novelist husband and two frolicsome imps.
