I Pour You This Poem

But I can only pour you this poem:

with poor cloth-made and form not yet shaped,

metaphors rain upon flesh and bone

floating riddles dress in pale champagne froth

tiers of honeysuckle foam pin to a clover’s song

light seeps inside the ink droplets black–

an ever-musing vestal rhyme

charts my fingers to your mortal gasps.

With warmth of day the eyes grow dark,

I breathe your name of caress reigns

where wings of holy light stretch my ocean vast,

in soft similes of wind-drops caught

and hollow crowning thorns.

Weak nods full of sleep in the shadows deep,

old notes draw your breaths once more–

depart soon as last sighs coax from my lips,

courting you home.

 

by Lana Bella

 

Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and flash fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with more than eighty journals, including Aurorean Poetry, Burningword Journal, Chiron Review, Contrary Magazine, elsewhere, The Criterion Journal, Poetry Quarterly, 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.

With a Slash Between

She scribbles a few letters on the back of her card and hands it to him. She smiles and says something cheerful. The words don’t matter. As he takes the card, he answers in kind, if only to keep his tenuous grasp on the vision of civility he’s retreated into. He does not think of all the countless things he would like to say, because he does not want to risk their appearance, even in his eyes. But she is not as perceptive as he fears. She has another appointment waiting, and he is not the face she puts on a world’s betrayal; he just isn’t that important to her.

In the elevator on the way back down, he presses himself into the corner though no one else is riding;  it’s the only way he can keep from pacing. He walks past the metal detectors, where a man is shaking his head as he struggles to undo his belt; false suspicion has shamed this nameless man into stripping away another layer of his pride, if only to prove his innocence. The security guard that mans the machine doesn’t notice this inner struggle the man is having, but only does his job instead. But our man notices, just before he hits the door and once more takes a breath of the good air under an open sky. He wishes he could remember what it was like to take that for granted.

 

by D.F. Paul

 

D.F. Paul lives in the Midwestern United States. He’s been writing since he was a child, when he uncovered a beat to hell typewriter cleaning out the garage. Many years and a lot of wasted paper later, he still doesn’t understand the process any better. A list of his published work can be seen at: dfpaul.wordpress.com

Dan Jacoby

luck

 

young dog

standing in the blocks

four blue bills working

in against a cigar smoke call

once more around

try to take them

tree high shots

tipped one and feathers

out of another

but the steel shot

fails me

they are gone

like mad buddists

westing to the timber

only the grey spent husks

to show for

 

normal heart

 

day has a playlist

heartfelt grooves

breaks creative logjams

emphasizes flaws

errors honored

as hidden intentions

sing into the sadness

canons for life

makes a tasty soul

 

write a catchy tune

about a nerve induced asthma attack

don’t miss a beat

wage a heavy peace as

going around corners is scary

see it with new eyes

get into woodworking

follow hockey in church basements

crush the capsule

 

life is a godzilla disaster movie

success beat you down

tough to imagine

ever being young

an original american horror story

billionaires in birkenstocks

johnny cash not being played

on country radio

teenage jesus jerks in cowboy hats

 

creative people don’t always turn out

to be interesting

like chance meetings in london tube

someone called amy

conversation like watching sausage

and politics being made

world just gets tinier

it used to be a stage

a private confessional

 

by Dan Jacoby

 

Dan Jacoby is a graduate of St. Louis University. He has published poetry in Belle Rev Review, Black Heart Press, Canary, Chicago Literati, Clockwise Cat, Indiana Voice Journal, Haunted Waters Press, Deep South Magazine, Lines and Stars, Red Booth Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Steel Toe Review, Red Fez and the Vehicle. He has work soon to be published in Bombay Gin, Dead Flowers, Floyd County Moonshine, Maudlin House, R.KV.R.Y., and theTishman Review.. He is a member of the American Academy of Poets.

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