Note: Are you ready to whack summer into the newborn shadows with spoonfuls of black sun? Arrive prepared to your accidental birth: Take these twelve scratching fingertips to heart, wearing only garlands of perfect possibility.
-Kali
Contents
.............................................Dan Hedges
One Night In Ten........................Bruce McRae
It Wasn’t So Long Ago.................James Babbs
273.........................................Dan Hedges
Bruised...................................C.S.Fuqua
The First and Most Learned..........Jnana Hodson
A recipe for summer cocktail........Clark Theriot
Ready?....................................C.S. Fuqua
Quick Sketch.............................Bruce McRae
Principles of Accounting..............Frederick Pollack
Sweet Bev................................Jnana Hodson
Cold Pizza................................James Babbs
____________________________________
Dan Hedges
{In
ART
it is not
uncommon
to be
ostracized
by
‘the neighbourhood’
for a lack
of
clean
weed-wacking}
____________________________________
One Night In Ten
Bruce McRae
It was the eleventh day of Christmas.
I awoke to the sound of pins marching.
The dark was raining its felt hats.
I rose several times, uninventing the bed.
All through the house I felt it,
the presence of another, of another’s hands
making little tea cakes from dreamy remnants.
I walked among a surplus of darkness,
room to room, floating several inches in the air.
Mice were stirring their cauldron of heads.
I sensed ghosts conferring with roaches.
The neighbours’ dreams were playing loudly next door.
Peeking past a curtain, I saw the stars scratching.
I thought of frozen cubicles, cubes of blue ice,
a thousand innermost thoughts.
The moon had been replaced by an errant cloud,
by a streetlight on the fritz down the road.
In the wooden houses I could hear ears listening
to the long scraping of year into year.
A summer’s day flashed its breasts in my mind.
Perhaps I was dreaming, like a fish, with my eyes open;
that I was sleeping like a horse, standing up.
This revelry was broken by a crack in the pillow.
A voice called to me. Like a world opening.
Like a door pushed shut by the wind passing.
I drifted days on a sea of my breaths. Or seconds.
I returned to the scene of my accidental birth.
The bed whirled in tempests of quietude.
Many times I laid down before closing my eyes,
my mind’s eyes, which went everywhere
and saw nothing.
____________________________________
It Wasn’t So Long Ago
James Babbs
I don’t dream anymore
something happened and
now
when I close my eyes
I see only darkness
like looking at the night sky
without the light of the stars
shining down
nothing left for me to wish upon
nothing
I want to wish for now
and it wasn’t so long ago
when I dreamed I was flying
soaring high above the earth
just by spreading my arms and
jumping into the air
maybe
it had something to do
with believing in
endless possibilities
thinking
I could do anything
I set my mind to
but now I’m not so sure
now
I feel hesitant
and afraid
and I don’t know
where the hell my wings are
____________________________________
273.
Dan Hedges
{Like an un-ironic round of PLINKO
we drop discs of semantic value
down into our innards
where soul singularity
occurs and converts
all strange
nomenclature into a
palatable experience
that exceeds
stardust for its
reputation to defy
timespace
conundrums
but which also
rises as an
ordinary building
block of so-called
persona}
____________________________________
Bruised
C.S. Fuqua
Bruises. She
craves bruises --
here, she says,
fingertips hesitating
across her chest,
down her abdomen
to her inner thighs --
a garland of desire, of love
that withers, fades
as certainly as
the petals of a summer rose.
____________________________________
THE FIRST AND MOST LEARNED
Jnana Hodson
a pattern of fern shadows cast by candles playing into a snug culmination rented theaters where hillsides tottered in the unspoken gamble of her slightest motion, some indication if anyone commenced singing against the walls and ceiling of an unclothed expanse of potential a warm hand broaches, scratching its initials on frosted windows and then a lower back arched for precision a capella with the choir we clocked a blizzard of treetop squirrels far below whatever our season and there you have it . tenderly
____________________________________
A recipe for summer cocktails
Clark Theriot
Last summer you learned how to make: the perfect cocktail. Today, you place ice in the clear glass. You pour the vodka freely… “Oh,” perhaps, the person from last summer, really did have a point in measuring the shots?
Last summer, the person mixed in an entire eleven oz. can of mandarins between the two glasses.
Placed a silver spoon and pushed the mandarin against the inside of the glass, round and round. The person smiled sweetly, each of you anticipated... The cocktails would again be placed next to the mattress on the floor in the front room. The person turned off the front stoop light.
Round and round you were on top of the person, then person on top of you, dampness dripped. Bodies pulsated, stopped-- when one or both needed to gulp the icy treat. That perfect summer cocktail took you both to another place.
Today, as one, you have almost all of the ingredients for a perfect summer cocktail.
____________________________________
Ready?
C.S. Fuqua
It would be ludicrous,
the teacher said,
to run a marathon
without training.
Same with trumpet,
or driving,
or any damn thing worth doing.
In the next room,
a newborn cries,
out of the blocks,
not a clue.
____________________________________
Quick Sketch
Bruce McRae
I’m drawing a picture in the present tense.
I’m drawing a forest in the third person,
one that’s difficult to comprehend,
what with all these trees blocking our vision.
Bent lines represent broken sticks.
Black slashes are crows on a branch.
That red I spilt is a campfire or autumn leaves
or a cabin burning – I haven’t decided yet.
Now I’m drawing a twisting path
through the confections of nature,
ink-splash for staggering footsteps,
a sky suitably darkened with charcoal clouds,
mountains in silhouette, a black sun,
a black horizon, a black mindset.
Scratch paper with a pin –
these are people, their lofty tenements
abandoned to the elements,
their city a sine wave, a math corrupted
by sentiment and longing.
For the world, a circle in freehand,
the symbol for a zero absolute,
a future-perfect infected
with free will and kind intent.
Space, underspace, subspace –
all are an accidental smudge.
There’s even a god
in the form of a thumbprint,
my sketch undersigned
with the blur of a hand.
Studied beyond all reckoning.
____________________________________
Principles of Accounting
Frederick Pollack
I did something wrong. Not so wrong
that, drunk on guilt,
I play in traffic
that speeds through my room
and over my pillow, seeking
arrest. Where the ego,
dented and empty,
is repeatedly stolen
from where I, then each
successive set
of thieves left it; and
bargaining hopelessly
with the insurance company,
for years I walk home …
Not that wrong. Only wrong enough
that my sole concern
is to get away with, and from it.
So that I behave
presentably, the mind
maneuvering the robot from a cave,
meanwhile running its main program,
resentment.
Being wrong this way is like being right,
impeccably,
uselessly; growing smaller
as space expands and more decayed with time …
Humiliation is good.
It keeps you young. It teaches
privacy, unbreakable codes,
unspeakable ecstasies; everything in fact
but how to escape it.
____________________________________
SWEET BEV
Jnana Hodson
maybe I should have let all the correspondence expire right there they’d mostly fall away, in any case, too quickly ignoring the besotted side of Santa Claus beneath the chipper vocalizations, no dispatch of cards or presents the holidays came upon me too quickly, perhaps in part just constantly on the road; then, too, this felt so contrived and coerced compared to Christ’s power and expansive love I could see Christmas as an especially wicked flu to carry in such travels, wake up, voiceless, coughing and sore when we need rest
____________________________________
Cold Pizza
James Babbs
eating cold pizza
before going to sleep
probably not the best thing
for me to be doing
drinking a glass of water and
I start thinking about
when I was younger and
how I ate cereal
sometimes
before I went to bed
I liked Honeycomb and
Fruity Pebbles and
even Corn Flakes
covered with spoonfuls of sugar
then
when the cereal was gone
drinking the milk from the bowl and
I remember my father eating popcorn
almost every night
always popping it
using the same copper-bottomed pan
never using a bowl
but eating it
right from the pan
sitting in his favorite chair
putting a handful at a time
into his mouth
even when he didn’t have any teeth
____________________________________
James Babbs has published hundreds of poems over the last several years in print journals and online. He lives in the same small town where he grew up. He works for the government but doesn't like to talk about it. He has a cherry tree and two grapevines in his back yard and several pesky rabbits. His full length collection Disturbing the Light is coming soon from Interior Noise Press.
C. S. Fuqua’s published books include Big Daddy's Gadgets (novel), Trust Walk (short-story collection), The Swing: Poems of Fatherhood (EPIC selection for Best Poetry Collection 2008), Alabama Musicians: Musical Heritage from the Heart of Dixie, Divorced Dads, and Notes to My Becca, among others. His work has appeared in publications such as Main Street Rag , Dark Regions, Iodine, Christian Science Monitor, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Cemetery Dance, Bogg, Year's Best Horror Stories XIX, XX and XXI, Amelia, Slipstream, The Old Farmer's Almanac, The Writer, and Honolulu Magazine.
Dan Hedges is the editor of HUMANIMALZ Literary Journal. His writing appears or is forthcoming in journals such as The Monarch Review, Wilderness House Literary Journal, Haggard and Halloo Publications, The Apeiron Review, and more than seventy others. He has completed three poetry collections: Agrammatical Humanimalz (2011), Field Guide Aesthetics (Middle Island Press, 2012), and An Inflammation of Nouns (Middle Island Press, 2012). He prefers poetry that stands as a conduit between transpersonal psychology, language, and reality in general.
Jnana Hodson celebrates kayaking and canoeing when he gets the rare opportunity. He blogs at Jnana’s Red Barn (jnanahodson.net).
Originally from Niagara Falls, Canadian-born Bruce McRae is a musician who has spent much of his life in London and British Columbia. He has been published in hundreds of periodicals . His first book, ‘The So-Called Sonnets’ is available from the Silenced Press website or via Amazon books. His second, ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy’, is to be made available later in 2012. To hear his music and view more poems visit his website: www.bpmcrae.com.
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press. He has other poems in print and online journals. He is an adjunct professor of creative writing at George Washington University.
Clark Theriot lives and writes in New Orleans. His work can be found in 3: AM Magazine, Apocrypha and Abstractions, and purchased in Monolith Magazine’s BORDERS Issue. He may soon move to a place he can pause and reflect and write, more.
