April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
1. The First Day
Cubette manacled, beslacked
and boringbuttoned to the neck,
flogging freeways towards debtless hope –
I’ll be cubed like cheap ham at a salad bar,
smiling behind circuited gallows,
noose in a half Windsor,
not without doldrumming dress heels
typing into sterile carpentry.
Hairsprayed stare to spread bullshit like butter,
one foot on the bottom rung,
the other in quicksand security,
I folded like a clothrusted hide-a-bed
forgotten under days
2. Co-workers
Poloshirted, hunching
future quasimodos, pocket change tolling
in vending machine spires,
window-staring champions
tanning fluorescent, clockwatching
heartbeat swimming in coffee regimen,
keyboard galloping in protocol to ratatat ringtones –
the break room oasis warmed by
that sweet droning, the choral hum
of iridescent glucose
3. Medication
and I dream of weekends like I dreamt
of middle school crushes in math class –
blessed by hallowed Friday night,
whiskey caress reaches till Sunday,
inviting Mondaybound hangovers, with
docile lights roaring between the calm
slaps of lukewarm caffeine and the
respiratory embrace of nicotine;
I take my fifteen to paint porcelain
the colour of one-too-many and remember
I am 2,080 hours richer
than a life I might actually enjoy.
by Michael Harper
Michael Harper fled to Oregon right after getting a degree in English & Comparative Literature from one of those biggish schools in Southern California. His work has been featured in Dash Literary Journal, Hibbleton Independent, Lexicon Polaroid, New Verse News, Origami Condom, and Verdad. He now lives beneath your couch, hoping you won’t look under there too often. You can find more of him or ignore him at openmikeharper.com
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
I dropped your mother’s
mirror. A horse reared: I spilled
hot coffee on your lap in Amish
country. I walked under three
ladders to get to the office every
day. I hid a small black cat in
the front bedroom. You hated
cats. I was busy hating myself
by Kelley Jean White
Kelley’s writing has been widely published since 2000 in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Friends Journal, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle, the Journal of the American Medical Association and in a number of chapbooks and full-length collections, most recently Toxic Environment from Boston Poet Press, Two Birds in Flame, poems related to the Shaker Community at Canterbury, NH, from Beech River Books, and “In Memory of the Body Donors,” Covert Press. She have received several honors, including a 2008 grant for poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
If tires could score patterns into pavement
then these would be indelible whorls,
fingertip prints dancing like
overburdened bunting,
stretched until tight,
then released
to snap in rubbery tangles,
twisted and perfectly unplanned.
Everything’s reflecting
as visible music,
an evening composed in motion,
all the shining eyes aglow,
waypoints, lit fuses,
blurred meteors blinking
over darkened sidewalks
as I nod my ragged head,
frayed heartstrings
rubbed thin and ringing,
dilated gaze anchored
onto an uncommon image,
gleaming up from blacktop water,
shimmering in joyful ripples
while earth flies by below,
constant and faithful, steadfast
as the path is abandoned
under shorn sycamores,
as the solitary garden patiently bears
a flattening weight, the fallen body
of a man in love with the moon.
by Joshua Herron
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Variegated strands of weather weave
their magic tapestry on my mind.
I revel in their changing voices,
interpretative attire, and cacophony.
I look forward day to day, no, even
every moment, to their malleability.
I love sun, blue sky and light breeze,
but no less mad tempestuousness.
The splendance of the greyest dawn
smiles, blows scudding across my day.
It is dramatic change I seek, almost
as the leech smells out fresh blood.
Fastening tenaciously, I suck the
marrow of the barometer’s change.
I meter not my days, but greet each
a new acquaintance, friend or lover.
I extend my soul in welcome as a
knight did his in visual declaration.
Holding no weapon, bearing no
malice, I am seeking no combat.
I wish only to enwrap, submerge,
enjoy weather’s spirited vagaries.
Each changeling child of revolution
brings her own unique enjoyments.
No doppelgangers exists in this with
the parting curtains of each dawn.
Regardless how low the light or loud
the music, my day is a unique option.
I tease out deeper meaning, affinity of
an All: earthly, ethereally, spiritually.
Therefore: every day is acquiescent:
geographic, atmospheric, temporal.
I, too, add or subtract from each day
by the attitude and demeanor I bring.
by Rick Hartwell
Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember, the hormonally-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing poetry, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Have you ever felt music?
have you ever felt a sound?
have you felt it swirl through the air
until in penetrates you
stirs up the past and present
show’s you the future.
And you’re no longer numb
you’re alive, you woke up
the sounds come from within now
you’re the player
and the instrument
you’re the audience
every note is powerful and strong
every note has meaning.
Don’t listen – feel,
let it penetrate
let the sounds fill you
music is magic, it’s sublime
and listening’s too rational
feeling is the key of every piece.
by Jonas Cimermanas
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Surrounded by the Buddha’s bounty,
a calming serenity hushes the crowd
as a docent provides a brief biography . . .
The bump of knowledge crowns his head with
Tightly bundled curls of second-growth hair,
Framed by long lobes stretched by gold earrings.
“Only real Buddhas have these three things!”
I hear her, but I wonder if it’s truly those that
make Buddhas something more than . . . men.
It is this “something more” in which to bask,
a golden warmth of subtle majesty renounced,
to shoulder the suffering of the world at large.
A larger world was what he sought,
the world of intense introspection,
in order to understand . . . himself.
With minds on fire and pillars of intellect,
exposed, crucified, pinned as for dissection,
performing mundane exercises, shoveling shit;
Bodhisattvas exchanging thoughts for actions,
expiring moment to moment in Phoenix flames,
waiting to be reborn . . . endlessly.
by Richard Hartwell
Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing poetry, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon
