Book of Life

Sister, it’s flooding sunshine. Days drop

like caramels. I turned my back

on you, the hunted dogs

of our girlhood. Here’s the devil

coming from my palm, the mad

raisins and relished dirt. I’m in

the open, the cream soda bad.

Is rubber your only feeling?

Wooded and measured out, you

stomach the untried, the vanilla

pudding that won’t feed you.

Why did you take orders?

A cube of hesitations,

the learned magic won’t leave us.

 

by Kimberly Lambright

 

Kimberly Lambright’s debut poetry collection, Ultra-Cabin, won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award and was published in 2016. Lambright has been awarded fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and Sou’wester Arts Colony; her work appears in Columbia Poetry Review, phoebe, ZYZZYVA, Sink Review, Bone Bouquet, The Boiler, Wicked Alice, Big Bridge, Little Patuxent Review, Texas Poetry Calendar, Not Very Quiet, and The Burnside Review. She lives in Brooklyn.

Breaking News

Mother earth is off the wagon.

According to reliable eye witnesses,

She’s been drinking again:

Hammered on Greenland ice melt,

Falling down drunk from glacial rebound,

Knocked off her axis from mantel convection.

 

When this reporter confronted her

About her alleged drinking problem,

She denied, denied, denied.

I’m not a drunk, she said.

I’m as sober as a judge

At a high school beer blast.

Hey!  I’m a pop culture celebrity,

A rock star with an agenda.

Any planet can spin on its axis.

But me, I put a new spin on things.  Listen.

 

Earth vacillates, undulates,

Oscillates, pulsates,

Rattles, rolls and shakes,

Shivers, quivers, quakes.

Ask any social tweeter,

We totter as we teeter.

We wibble as we wobble,

Just a hiccup of a bobble.

We sway as we play,

We’re surreal as we reel,

While twirling and swirling

Out of orbit we’re hurling.

We sprang from the void

In a big bang boom,

To that we’ll return,

Womb becomes tomb.

 

I swear by the sun, moon, and stars, she said,

And every can of beer I ever drank,

I’m stone sober as I tell you this.

 

Now there’s a sobering thought.

 

by Susan Martin

Susan Martin is a retired English and creative writing teacher. She has had poetry and short fiction published in several literary journals and anthologies. Most recently she has had a short story published in Brandt Street Press’ anthology, Dammit I Love You, and poetry published in The Aquillrelle Wall of Poetry: Book Seven, WestWard Quarterly: Summer, 2018, and Blue Unicorn Magazine: Fall, 2018

visions from “high” country: our So. Cal. so-called makeshift decompression chamber

If This Is Paradise Why Are We Still Driving

— Brendan Lorber, June 2018

 

 

on the occasion of my seventy-third birthday celebration,

having finally begun to learn some rules of paved roads

 

‘stead of taking usual straightshot hellbent damn 405

freeway from spitfire West L.A. down to pacific

 

Redondo Beach, fam elects to use an iPhone

Waze app to navigate lazy side streets —

 

where wobbly young lowlifes in pajamas

vape nicotine or maybe marijuana —

 

that then meet up with ocean views

as soon as possible which fluid

 

continuity more than makes

up for few extra minutes

 

sort of like coming up

slowly gently coolly

 

when you’re doing

SCUBA diving —

 

oy to thus avoid

The Bends.

 

 

by Gerard Sarnat

Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, has been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards, and authored four collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016) which included work published by Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Virginia Commonwealth, Johns Hopkins and in Gargoyle, American Journal of Poetry (Margie), Main Street Rag, MiPOesias, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Voices Israel, Blue Mountain Review,Tishman Review, Suisun Valley Review, Fiction Southeast, Junto, Heartwood, Tiferet, Foliate Oak, Parhelion, Bonsai plus featured in New Verse News, Eretz, Avocet, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords, Floor Plan, Good-Man-Project, Anti-Heroin-Chic, Poetry Circle, Fiction Southeast, Walt Whitman Tribute Anthology and Tipton Review. “Amber of Memory” was the single poem chosen for my 50th college reunion symposium on Bob Dylan. Mount Analogue selected Sarnat’s sequence, KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY, for pamphlet distribution on Inauguration Day 2017 as part of the Washington DC and nationwide Women’s Marches. For Huffington Post/other reviews, readings, publications, interviews; visit GerardSarnat.com. Harvard/Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails, built/staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO and Stanford Med professor. Married for a half century, Gerry has three kids/ four grandkids so far.

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