XV

Note: Sometimes in the dark holes, we cultivate an appreciation for trickles of light caught even under an overcast expanse. And sometimes light is too bright to distinguish fine detail. Or too dim to illuminate our pages so we strain our eyes to compensate. Warming, then it burns. There, then gone. We might mistake it for a shadow. If we forget it for what we call “our own good,” it says we’ve been hallucinating, anyhow. Sometimes it hides, dancing on crags without us. Inside the clearings is where light keeps the luxuries we hear chits and chatters about. And when we haggle, it reaches for the gun again.

-kali



Contents:
Forecast...................................Bruce McRae
The sand-spit............................Dawnell Harrison
Winking at the Apocalypse............Nicholas Petrone
Head-Swirl................................Bruce McRae
39 lovers—all here.......................Eric J. Bergman
Cops of America, Fisherman..........Jeremiah Walton 
Canary.....................................Mitch Grabois
Tugging On The Invisible...............Bruce McRae
Coincidence...............................Lila Lavender
   _____________________________________________________________




Forecast
Bruce McRae

Just between you, me and the gatepost,
the weather’s gone a little bit funny lately:
a paisley wind, homeless raindrops begging
at the intersection of Space and Time,
thunder resounding like an off-Broadway hit
being mangled by a drunken choir,
snowflakes the size of dinner plates,
fog taking a yellow taxi to the curb,
lightning in the form of a run-on sentence . . . 

It’s got to the point the poor meteorologists
are terrified of making any long term commitments,
forecasting Fear, but with a chance of Knowledge.
It’s gotten so you don’t know what not to wear.
Every day is a different temperature.

   _____________________________________________________________



The sand-spit
Dawnell Harrison

The cloud-hinged sky hung
Like deer heads on a wall.

Sea and waves.
Seagulls gathered on the white

Beach then fluttered off the
Sand-spit when I approached.

Waves crashed against the
Snuff-colored rock-face—

The pure blue of it filled
My eyes with a sweetness.

The moon was a white Madonna
Mulling in the sky with a
Stoic gracefulness.
   _____________________________________________________________



Winking at the Apocalypse
Nicholas Petrone

All our Big Bombs
All the Big Men behind our Big Bombs
All our Big Men who courageously give speeches
All our heroes who drop Daisy Cutters on daisies
All the far-flung baby body parts & patriotic stamps
All our beefed up batting averages
All our World Cup vuvuzela prayers
All our remedies for Nothing
All our pointless Poems 

All our unexplained stanza breaks
All our unexamined dance crazes & breakfast cereals when no one fasts anymore
All our unexcused absences
All our undiscovered orgasms
All our fracked up countryside
All our unCapitalized forests
All the Jesus Freaks and Wall Street Free Loaders
All our solar energy
All our mass graves & rebate checks
All our PROTESTS & counterinsurgencies
All our endangered species
All our One True Gods

All our other random stanza breaks
All our crossword puzzle sonnet mongers & grandmother Internet poets
All our unpaid blues bands
All our unheralded single Mothers
All our trashcan babies & tennis court Buddhas
All our Bigger Bombs
All our Grace
All our Goodness
All our fallen angels
All our born again garbage piles
All our Super Bowl Hangovers & paperless stock bubbles
All our post-war rubble & Robber Baron Reconstructions
All our normal shits
All our enemies of the hour
All our high speed chases & low budget philosophers
All our lovemaking
All our Touch Down Dances
All our sibling rivalries & fast flowing beer piss
All our Fear
All our letters to Santa
All our lessons from Satan
All our meditation
All our Moon Landings & soap operas
All our incantations & Genocides
All our banners & bunting
All our karma 

All our goddamn bosses
All our grown up tantrums & great Fourth Quarter Comebacks
All our Jails & Churches
All our Churches & Jails
All our children & pets
All our hapless victims
All our TVs
All our TV Dinners
All our TV Dinner Dates
All our garage sales & holidays
All our wineries & porn sites
All our funerals & prom nights
All our prom night porn sites & funeral hangovers
All our wealth
All our inner poverty
All our public introspection
All our Facebook friends
All our long winters

All our Springs
All our Marathon Training
All of our beauty
All our hugs
All our Abuse Shelter Blankets
All our radio jingoism
All our wombs & gravestones
All our genuflections & foursquare twilights
All our magazine covers
All our secret lovers
All our dreams & day jobs 
All our tanks & diaper rashes
All our proud mountains
All our scattered ashes
All four winds
All good time

All our flirting with the End
All our rhyme & irrational typing
All our motorcycles
All our vacuum cleaners & time zones
All our Rugged Individualism
All our Universal Joys
All our grand prizes
All our gift certificates
All our noisy mufflers
All our sidewalks
All our horny evangelists
All our sidewalkless suburbs
All our Hurricanes
All our innies & outies
All our cell phone addicts & cocaine pioneers
All our music resonating past the planets
All the aliens digging Hendrix
All the necktie factories
All the Saints
All the ducks in rows
All the child laborers & corporate pimps
All the love
All the will not to write hate
All the failures of will
All the Bombs are back
All the railroad deities & lost pages
All the motherless trout
All the poets that never made it
All the missing adjectives
All the applause & Creation Myths
All the caves that were home
All the painters who could not speak so painted caves
All the cartoons we watched as kids
All the souls up in the attic
All the Inquisitions

All our shiny new stanzas
All our antique cumshots
All our crude words
All our censored animals
All our Glory
All our far-flung theories
All our actions
All our vain memorials
All our endeavors
All our flesh
All our ideas & Heavens
All our Hells
All our flowers & bloodstains
All our idiot politicians
All good times
All our toasting
All our beer spills
All our boasting & marshmallow roasting
All our nursery rhymes
All our toilet paper haikus

All the ways to start a War or end a Poem
All the homes we wrecked along the way
All our sisters & brothers
All our families
All our hot air
All our modest accomplishments
All our Foolish Pride
All our inevitable triumphs
All our futile efforts to avoid returning
to the solar explosion from whence we came.
   _____________________________________________________________



Head-Swirl
Bruce McRae

Immense ticking, from whence dost thou hail?
From the chaos at the bottom of God’s creation.
The ragged buttonhole of a dead mayor’s vest.
Out of a rift in the temporal continuum.

You’re cool starlight brushing up against this vessel of flesh.
The last breath of the Ancients seeping from a canopic jar.
A ringed planet in the grip of Shadow.

I daresay Light and Dark balance on the tip of your mind,
that Time is the little dance you do when you’re sad,
Space the nightmare replacing your untroubled slumber.

Machine-heart, gone to where nothing rises or falls.
Massive stone, burning a hole in the soul’s water.
Where Cosmos advances, then steps back, bewildered.
To where the sweet All commences and ends.
   _____________________________________________________________



39 lovers—all here
Eric J. Bergman

39 lovers—all here
to celebrate the new year.
The New Way of thinking
at each other from a distance.

39 piles of stones—each
offering free tickets to
the show. A performance
meant to shine for the crowds.

Some offspring—free of
memory begin to believe
what their parents tell
them about a harvest.

Maybe someday we can
wait in line together
chat about aunts and uncles
now lost to photo albums.
   _____________________________________________________________



Cops of America, Fisherman
Jeremiah Walton 

Half-bred baby poems jotted madly in cold winter blue snow blankets wrap
red toes warm for dreamless sleep under crooked stars in perfect alignment

Cars flow along rhythmic stream

Almost no trout

Only trout in river hooked 

Mouths chewed snuggle teethed barbs gnaw eternally

What a beautiful day it is!
   _____________________________________________________________



Canary
Mitch Grabois

Dulce can’t sleep, her mind races
She thinks about things she don’t want to think about

Like a canary—she saw one she wanted so bad
but it was like sixty bucks, so she bought her boyfriend
a goldfish instead

He just looked at it
Didn’t say nothing
   _____________________________________________________________



Tugging On The Invisible
Bruce McRae

It’s in the great subtraction where the takers reside.
Their houses are without doorways and halls.
They’ve removed the light from their windows.
In their lives something vital is missing.

The takers, whether you’re driving into Babylon
or staring down a sewer pipe
or rounding up your Christmas chickens –
they’re there, but in and of themselves solely.

Sometimes it’s a seat on the bus or last of the cornbread.
At other times it’s a kidney or a faint breath,
the takers only too pleased to shift the unmovable,
to create an ache from absence.

What began as a finger has turned into a hand.
From beginning to end, our deaths are dreamed into being.
   _____________________________________________________________



Coincidence
Lila Lavender

i think the dots are
another hallucination
or maybe the universe 
is throwing some bones
in lieu of flowers.
   _____________________________________________________________




Eric J. Bergman is a stay at home dad, loves film noir, Steinbeck, fresh water fishing, and garage sales.


Mitch Grabois’ poetry and short fiction has appeared in over seventy literary magazines, most recently The Examined Life, Memoir Journal, and Haggard and Halloo. His novel, Two-Headed Dog was published in April by Dirt e-books, founded by NY agent Gary Heidt. He was born in the Bronx and now lives in Denver. 


Dawnell Harrison has been published in over 60 magazines and journals including The Endicott Review, Abbey, Iconoclast, Nerve Cowboy, Mobius, and has had 3 books of poetry published through reputable publishers titled Voyager, The maverick posse, and The fire behind my eyes.


Lila Lavender has never been married but lives with a man by the nickname of Chu, whom she met inside Mohegan Midnight at the slots.


Originally from Niagara Falls Ontario, Pushcart-nominee 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 and anthologies. His first book, ‘The So-Called Sonnets’ is available from the Silenced Press website or via Amazon books. To hear his music and view more poems visit his website: www.bpmcrae.com.


Nicholas Petrone’s poems can be found in many places, including The Ranfurly Review, Willows Wept Review, Epiphany Magazine, Word Salad, Poetry Super Highway and in boxes in his attic.  He lives in Syracuse, NY where he spends a lot of time counting snowflakes and drinking heavily.


Jeremiah Walton is 17, and lives in New England.  He manages small press Nostrovia! Poetry, and is author of To Your Health: Humanity's Diagnosis and LSD Giggles.  Street art, music, and urban exploration are three passions of his that influence his poetry.