Data Flow

Social sensibilities

in the Information Age

are communicated in sound bytes,

exchanging mostly trivia

in brief, revealing detail

that neither satisfies,

nor extends relationships,

tersely structured

for minimal response

from diminutive users.

 

by Gary Beck

 

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways (Winter Goose Publishing). Perceptions, Displays, Fault Lines and Tremors will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response will be published by Nazar Look. His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.

AJ Huffman

Of Fucking and Fleeing

 

I do not need

the residual bullshit of whining

Will you call me’s,

nor do I believe in the transcendent

lies of I’ll call you tomorrow’s.

Mine is a nature that learns

from past catastrophes.  Names

are irrelevant.  Sex is my church.

I confess

I enjoy sinning, giving

myself to another in shadows,

but I am temporary, a tangible ghost,

naked.  I disappear

with an unceremonious slam before dawn.

 

 

To Kill Or Not To Kill

 

hasn’t been the question in years.

Who to kill is the new front runner

in my rapidly growing list of opathies.

Homicidal and suicidal are

as interchangeable as hours on a clock,

days in a week.  Bitterness is

the only pill I can stand to swallow.

It covers the taste of regret

staining my tongue.  I am stuck

and solidly alone in the war I wage

in my mind.  I have though about changing

my name to volcano, but that implies

some elemental hope of survival.

My fissure is wider.  When I break, they will

call me Pompeii.  Nothing

will be left to breathe beneath my ash.

 

 

Another New Heart

 

He snapped his fingers and pointed at me.

He spread his hands wide, indicating

he was available.  I took

out my notebook and put it on the table,

decided to start with the last chapter.

He began to tell me a story, a minimal account

I had heard before.  When he finished

telling it, I nodded, made a note—

not because it was important,

but because I was trying to keep myself

breathing.  He never said another word,

just dissolved into a dream I had conquered

too many times before.

 

by AJ Huffman

 

A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her new poetry collection, Another Blood Jet, is now available from Eldritch Press. She has three more poetry collections forthcoming: A Few Bullets Short of Home from mgv2>publishing, Degeneration from Pink Girl Ink, and A Bizarre Burning of Bees from Transcendent Zero Press. She is a Multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, and has published over 2200 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com

 

 

Ossuary

Oh, home of cracked bones,

crypt of condensed composure.

My time has arrived.

 

One bone, two bones, three bones, rattle my bones,

shake the box until its cobwebbed truth tumbles out

onto hard-packed dust. Shredded into ivory splinters,

you’ll find the derailed train that hurtles toward you,

only a few feet away now. Before you crash, look

closer. Find the starfish patterns that sway on my

prison’s wall and congratulate them for commendable

perseverance. Scratch the surface of the midnight air.

Breathe the chemicals that rise from your skin. Pray

to the earth, press your lips against the summer’s final

remaining blade of grass and beg release from your

bindings. Remember the last time you swallowed

a watermelon seed, and remember the first time

the winter wind clutched your umbrella, allowing

the cold to seep quietly, smoothly into your bones.

 

Oh, home of new bones,

crypt of condensed composure.

Your time arrives soon.

 

by Hannah Warren

Hannah is currently an undergraduate English major at Mississippi State University. Upon graduation, she wishes to pursue a Master in Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing; she is published in Nota Bene. She may be found rambling at inksplatteredwords.blogspot.com.

Tables and Chairs

It’s all firewood now, the scarred, splintered,

broken-apart tables, benches, and chairs piled

 

high far behind a country inn, all the dinner engagements

and family celebrations they’ve accommodated now firmly

 

past, service so demanding as to render this furniture

debris, the owner and his son, keeping a hose handy,

 

igniting the fire, flames swirling the mound instantly,

the crackling from within it at first spare and subdued,

 

then turning resonant and rhythmic as if in recitation

of its own, long, complicated story, the story of work

 

well done, of promises kept and promise redeemed, all

ending in this blaze through which it relives its history

 

of giving, the woodsmoke scent—lingering

long after the fire expires—surprisingly sweet.

 

 

by Mark Belair

 

Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry East and The South Carolina Review. His most recent collection is Breathing Room (Aldrich Press, 2015). Previous collections include Night Watch (Finishing Line Press, 2013); While We’re Waiting (Aldrich Press, 2013); and Walk With Me (Parallel Press of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2012). He has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

 

Dancing with Time

I see corpses when I look at people

they are dancing with the past and dreaming about future

they desperately mark their territory

they scream

yelp

make noise

thinking that returning echo

will be them

or their soul

 

and there is silence

there is nothing

not even as much as blackness

that would have a meaning

 

they are standing squatting

it is very funny

 

one leg here

and there without a leg

 

by Frederick Rossakovsky-Lloyd

 

Frederick Herbert Rossakovsky-Lloyd lives and works in UK. He published nine volumes of poetry. His work can be found in numerous international anthologies.

 

On the Road to Atheism

She looked into the mirror very closely

As she just combed her hair morosely.

 

No doubt she was extremely beautiful;

Beauty dumped on her by the merciful.

A face that could launch million ships;

Eyes that so sent men on ecstatic trips

 

But her life had been a crisis-series;

Crises that chronically really wearies;

A ton of poison for an ounce of gold.

She would not return to the Divine fold.

 

 

She looked into the mirror very closely

As she just combed her hair morosely.

 

by Rajagopal Kaimal

Listed at Duotrope
Listed with Poets & Writers
CLMP Member
List with Art Deadline
Follow us on MagCloud