2018

 

 

 

SEPTEMBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Joe Balaz, Saloni Kaul, Lynn McGee, Todd Mercer, Tony Press, Maureen Sherbondy,

Dana Sonnenschein, John L. Stanizzi, Patricia Walsh, Louise Wilford, Rodney Wood.

 

 

 

 

 

JOE BALAZ

 

Killah Instinct

 

It’s always interesting

how da eggheads come up wit dis stuff.

 

 

You would tink dat dere wuz moa pressing concerns

 

like searching foa da cure foa cancer

or developing da immense potential of cold fusion

 

but I guess everyone

has dere field of curiosity to explore.

 

 

So now I’m being told dat menopause

da change in which females no longer produce eggs

 

wuz wun evolutionary development

 

dat helps to end conflict

between maddahs and daughdahs.

 

 

Da scientists dat wen say dis

 

wen use killah whales

as wun study group

 

and dere research showed

dat old females go through menopause

 

so dey will lose out in reproductive competition

wit dere own daughdahs.

 

 

It wuz speculated

 

dat if old female killah whales

wuz able to continue to bear offspring

 

it would harm da survival

of da whole pod group.

 

Now as it is

 

oldah female killah whales

are seen as leaders and caretakers

 

sharing dere food

and teaching younger members how to survive.

 

 

All right den

 

we got some curious notions

of evolution down

 

but it’s da present aspects

of post menopausal females today

 

dat needs further explaining                           

 

especially if you going apply                 

dis study to humans.

 

 

So fill me in as to why Grandma

wen angrily hit da roof

 

and wuz very upset

 

wen her daughdah nevah bring da kids by

wen she said she would.

 

 

Da old lady had da whole weekend planned

at wun amusement park

 

but she had to cancel da outing.

 

 

Da aftermath wuzn’t pretty

 

cause female teeth

wuz gnashing at each adah

 

and tearing and ripping apart

opinions and feelings

 

like da captured bodies of helpless seals. 

 

 

It looks like wun important part

of da evolutionary process

 

dat fosters unquestionable devotion

and support

 

failed to leave da ocean

wen da amphibians did.

 

Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai'i Creole English) and in American English. He edited Ho'omanoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature. Some of his recent Pidgin writing has appeared in Unlikely Stories Mark V, Otoliths, Angry Old Man, and Neologism Poetry Journal, among others. Balaz is an avid supporter of Hawaiian Islands Pidgin writing in the expanding context of World Literature. He presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

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SALONI KAUL

 

Experiments High Jaunt

 

And with that absolute intrinsic essence flowering                            

Each sonnet brims with reveries to read.

All ready high to fly, each line that sings assuring        

Contains a lifetime’s wholesome fill and feed.

With utmost ease of minstrels leisurely

Strolling through some wide open garden gate,

Lyrics of song committed are to memory

Lapped up as though what is sung were in fact their fate.

Music welloved plays in the mind and haunts,

Affects us skin and sensibility;

Yet we’d ever be keen to launch experiments high jaunt

With most immediate ground-breaking novelty.

Bring on the reassuring old from which we learn

But see that today’s novel elements rightly earn.

 

Results All Speak for Themselves

 

Each permanent aspect lovingly shaped,

Each linear detail painstakingly cast,

Results then speak directly for themselves

Like ties that in perpetual time enduring last.

Yet something in your disposition firm ingrained

Examines the perfect whole as each part anew;

Like glossaries, rosters of facts tortuously soon ascertained

By one dependent on dissection for his clue.

We who’re used to today’s creators and their isms,

Find it so hard to recognise truth when it comes straight to the test,

Those shattered splintered elements ejected through flash prisms,

Pureed mishmashed like baby food most easy to digest.

It is all perfectly written, the music’s scored.

When you say yes, by all it shall be totally adored.

 

 

Kindness All On  

      

When there is direct active verbal sparring

And people at each other senselessly sharp lash,

Or when head to foot in the thick of it downright jarring

Discordant voices like arrows at war point clash;

And when with frail unsteady rule of tide’s thumb

Unwarned the scales of fortunes startling dip,

There’s always some bright remedy quite close at hand

For that one restless wavering coin to flip.

For who are we to yell and shower blame,

Firm ostracise those left out in the cold,

Who living on shoestring from some strange shores here came,

And slam the door on faces lined with problems old.

May kindness-courtesy be at your threshold,

A smile heralds a seachange in the life you stark behold.

 

 

Saloni Kaul was first published at the age of ten and has stayed in print since on four continents. As critic and columnist she has enjoyed all of forty one years of being published. Her first volume, a fifty poem collection was published in the USA in 2009. Subsequent volumes include Universal One and Essentials All.  Most recent poems have been published in The Horrorzine, Misty Mountain Review, Mad Swirl (contains ongoing Saloni Kaul poetry page), The Penwood Review, The Voices Project, Cabildo Quarterly, AJI Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review, River Poets Journal,Taj Mahal Review, Verbal Art, Poetry Pacific, Ink Sweat And Tears and Military Experience And The Arts (As You Were: The Military Review), OVI Magazine, Blueline, Five 2 One Journal and The City Poetry. Upcoming publication acceptances include those of The Penwood Review, Scarlet Leaf Review, The Voices Project and The Horrorzine. 

 

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LYNN MCGEE

 

Profile

 “Self-summary” from a dating website

 

What I’m doing with my life

… scanning the horizon, ligaments in my eyes taut,

giving what’s in front of me, permission to blur.

 

I’m really good at

… chopping vegetables, guiding the blade,

flipping the knife and sweeping pieces into a skillet.

                          

The first things people usually notice about me

… I’m carrying my weight in big ideas, string of unborn

projects around my neck. My wings are tucked so tight,

they look air brushed.

 

Six things I could never do without

… leaves slapping my helmet when I bicycle under trees.

Tools—cosmetic, hygienic, metaphoric—and animals

that let me touch them.

 

I spend a lot of time thinking about

… who I used to be, who I am now, and why.

 

On a typical Friday night I am

… dropping my leaden shoes, unclasping the claws

of jewelry and highly strategic bra, in that order.

 

The most private thing I’m willing to admit

… I’m ready for my injection, keeping an eye out

for the gleaming vial of happiness hiding in plain sight.

 

I’m looking for

… stars, bargains, road signs, things I’ve let fall

from my pockets; a way out, a way in, a place to rest,

a faster route, my keys.

 

You should message me if

… my words collapse your hard-won walls.

 

Lynn McGee is the author of Tracks, a collection of poems that originated on the New York City subway, forthcoming in 2019 from Broadstone Books. She is also the author of Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), and two award-winning poetry chapbooks: Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press, 2015), and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press, 1996).

 

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TODD MERCER

 

Jimmy’s Heavy Metal Phase

 

Jimmy, fifteen, guesses the shallowest crossing on this stretch of Grand River,

rolls his pant-legs, fords it by the intake pipes of the plant that would one day

be a Superfund site. He reaches the south bank without slipping, submerging.

He’s wet though, almost late for school. His books keep dry, and the river saved

five minutes from the Logan Bridge route. Heavy metals swirl in tannin

but the public and young Jimmy don’t know of it ‘til a future decade after the plant’s

sold twice and decayed. Kids from several neighborhood wade here,

those whose mothers warn them that the railroad bridge is too dangerous.

Men who get by outdoors snag fish near there, cook them over barrel fires,

behind concrete bridge supports, where flickers are off the radar

of the law and order people. Jimmy, that year blissfully oblivious,

wears damps pants through his classes. The managers of the polluter

make payments on their houses, draw the least attention they can,

toss whatever, let the river sort it out. Lighter effluent floating,

heavy metals piling in the mucky bottom. Barefoot forders

such as Jimmy wipe those toxins on grass, shoe up, motor on 

 

Todd Mercer was nominated for Best of the Net in 2018. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, appeared at Right Hand Pointing. Mercer’s recent work appears in Literary Orphans, The Magnolia Review, Praxis and Zero Flash.

 

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TONY PRESS

 

Rules Change

 

My mother, who was born

one hundred years ago,

never failed to laugh

when I, once again,

reminded her to use her seatbelt.

 

“We drove you kids across the country and back,

plenty of other trips, too,

Wyoming, Texas, Tahoe, more,

before anyone ever heard of these things,

and you all turned out okay.”

 

She was both right and wrong,

as often we are, yet

would have hooted herself into apoplexy

had she lived to see shiny helmets

upon tricycle-riding tots.

 

Rules change, but voices remain.

This is a truth to be savored.

  

 

That Chair

 

Twelve years she sat

could no longer ride her horse

nor jog the river path

not even walk

 

She sat, that chair her favorite –

windows open to the world

reading book after book

 

She did not complain

I do, often, but then remember,

and do a bit better for a while

 

 

Tony Press has one story collection, Crossing the Lines (published by Big Table), and an e-chapbook of poems, Equinox and Solstice, via Right Hand Pointing. He claims two Pushcart nominations, 25 criminal trials, 12 years in a single high school classroom.

 

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MAUREEN SHERBONDY

 

Fire Sale, Baby

 

Welcome to the fire sale, Baby

the Devil opened his mouth

and breathed on my house.

 

I’m disposing of every last thing –

Queen Anne mahogany chairs, end

tables, the fiddle, the violin.

 

But I’m keeping all my sins –

philandery, gluttony, envy

and sloth. Come on in, take

 

The gold-rimmed Lennox china,

the ivory-tusk chandelier. Burn

until all ceilings and floors are bare.

 

The Devil’s waiting for me

to join him on the happy-hour

tour, we’ll pound down gin

 

While we sing the last adagio

and dirge, watch the flames blow out

the roof, purge the last tchotchke.

 

 

My Neighbor Cleans Up Crime Scenes

 

Picture the aftermath of murder,

measuring the distance

from body to blood stains, tracing

the splatter of scattered droplets,

the red path from the murderer’s shoes.

Inhale the imagined stench of death, wonder

which cleaners and tools are used

to wipe away anger and violence.

Do death stains ever really fade?

 

He says there is schooling for specifics–

like clothing to wear to protect your own skin.

What about the interior unsuited self?

Does he dream of swimming slowly

through red seas? Does he hear voices,

the victims’ last words? When he listens

to angry voices rising in other rooms,

does he shake his head?  Once so intimately

familiar with what human hands can do,

does he stare at his own palms

in the moonlight and ask, Why, How, When?

 

Maureen Sherbondy’s work has appeared in European Judaism, Stone Canoe, Calyx, and other journals. Dancing with Dali will be published by FutureCycle Books in 2020. She lives in Durham, North Carolina. www.maureensherbondy.com

 

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DANA SONNENSCHEIN

 

Whistling for Byzantium

 

pat 3-13-23 usa

risdon mfg co naugatuck conn

 

This is no country for poets.  The young stretch out

beside turquoise-enameled pools and turn

to one another along the bar; on screen

their idols glitter and riff and reach out

for change, love, diamonds, mirrors, toys of brass—

for every shining thing that ever was.

 

Long ago the woods went up in acid clouds.

We made new guns and silver-plated all

we could reach, lining rivers with metal until

no fish swam there, no dark-winged eagle soared

except on finial and weathervane,

clutching arrows, turning in wind and rain.

 

Now factories turn out cameras with flash,

ballpoints, candy, miracle drugs, bright airplanes,

and we want more—it hums in our veins—

a dream of progress, the past, free time, or cash.

But since we must work until the whistle blows,

let us all glance toward those high windows,

 

and let me make something like this bird of brass

as thin as paper, perched above a kind

of water-pipe.  When the photographer

blew into it, dogs barked and children laughed—

the birdie fluttered, and all eyes fixed there

for eternity, focused and full of wonder.

 

And let this folded bird be found in years

to come, upon a shelf with other bent

and broken bits, and let some gleam or dent

hint it is more than junk or souvenir,

for if you hold it like a feathered thing,

and take a breath and wish, you’ll hear it sing.

 

 

Lost Art

           

As if feathers could be spun into silk, the cranes

embroidered by my great-grandmother step

into yet another century, their light

dull behind glass, red crowns faded to rose,

wing-feathers frayed, toes splayed to hold their weight

in a world without a sense of what they meant             

 

when they were an art, like flower arrangement,

learned at Marshall Fields.  When silent cranes

in breeding plumes floated free of the weight

of needle, wooden frame, and marble step,

she bit the thread and sighed.  Attar of rose

cooled her thin wrists; on satin wings the light

 

shimmered like sun on waves and her delight

in things from afar and long ago.  She meant

these birds for the daughter who loved roses

from Limoges more than home-grown, so the cranes

crossed the prairie and landed on her step.

Glass rattled when Grandma hefted their weight;

 

she wouldn’t sign.  Then they got lost, a weight

she shrugged off, smiling, as if the past was light

and her mother’s white-winged birds could step

off maps, beyond history, to somewhere meant

for them and the arcane dance all pairs of cranes

were born to—heavy-footed yet how they rose

 

above the plains, sunrise and sunset rose

tinting their breasts.  Until the last flock’s weight

went to feather ladies’ hats.  But the silk cranes

had been returned to sender, still wrapped, light

as Audubon sketches, an heirloom meant

for whoever missed their stately, measured step

 

and lamented to great-grandma’s heir.  They step

forward now, wings rising as they always rose.  

The Great Lakes freeze like Hokusai’s wave, meant

to fall but hovering unbroken.  Weight

and time are held like breath and winter light 

as, formally, to east and west, her cranes

 

turn, bow, and wait.  Regret pricks a blood-rose

when I sew.  Her needle picked out steps of light

I meant to learn; she knew the grace of cranes.

 

 

Dana Sonnenschein is a professor at Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA, where she teaches Shakespeare and creative writing. Her publications include books of poetry (Bear Country and Natural Forms) and chapbooks of prose poems (No Angels but These and Corvus). 

 

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JOHN L. STANIZZI

 

Nam

 

          for James Walter Sincere

            KIA – Quang Nam Province, Viet Nam

            November 22, 1968

 

You were killed five years to the day of the

Kennedy assassination.  Three weeks

in Viet Nam and you were gone for good.

There is so much that you would not believe

since those days when you would call my house and

my mother would answer and say Hi Jim.

I’ll get Johnnie, and shout into the air,

phone against her shoulder, Johnnie!  Jimmy!

A few people still have phones like that, but

now we have cell phones, iPads, and the Cloud.

There’s email, and a thing we call texting,

which takes the place of real conversation.

There’s Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

But there are also things that are the same,

like the sad fact that after all these years

kids your age still go off to war and die.

 

 

Elect

 

            -November 8, 2016

                        -  Ye gods, it doth amaze me

A man of such a feeble temper should

So get the start of the majestic world…

           

                        -William Shakespeare

                        - The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

 

The air has mass.  We breathe in a thickness

made weighty by the acicular words

that roil and topple, and the black rags of

loathing snap, and multitudes of wretched

screaming mouths wrest what light there was from the

eyes of the hopeful, wrapping it in hate,

in sotted shadows, dimity nylon

masks that stretch over fear and anger, the

noses flat and twisted, recognition

vanished, a horrid molding of neighbors’

faces into gnarled and grim phantasms

tumbling like Frost’s magnified apples, the

rumble of discontentment, and whatever

trepidation I must overcome I

can’t name, though each sense is lined with despair.

 

John L. Stanizzi's full-length collections are Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallalujah Time!, and High Tide-Ebb Tide.  Besides The Lake, his work is widely published and has appeared in Prairie Schooner, New York Quarterly, American Life in Poetry, The Cortland Review, Paterson Literary, Tar River Poetry, and many others.  Chants, his latest book with be out this summer.

 

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PATRICIA WALSH

 

Insufficient Evidence

 

Standard procedure, as is said, you’ll be fine

not even emojis can help you now

slender mercies comforting the inevitable

burying under a sleeping problem white events.

 

God, that’s sore!  Crushed under weight of expectation,

technological problems dig for deeper measure

keeping the flies away, excellency through failure

thinner chances computed over fear of the worst.

 

Being renowned never pays the bills

sun being shone, now a consummate nuisance

swooning over celebrity or at least the good-looking

friendship through intelligence, downstairs table.

 

Soaring through the following week, prices aside

knowing lots through procedure, sickened through worry

no news being infinitely good, at a glance,

licence to weep over lost entitlement.

 

Cleanly imbibing a trap for the hubris

worldly music encroaches on a worrying situation

summertime for some, free food for others

smiling under duress, fear ripping the psyche.

 

The burial of the stripped of heart, once, twice

making out paperwork over glitches supreme

knowing income, statements, furnished throughout

a weekly awaits excoriation through the stroke of a pen.

 

Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland. To date, she has published one novel, titled The Quest for Lost Eire, in 2014, and has published one collection of poetry, titled Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010. She has since been published in a variety of print and online journals. These include: New Binary Press; Stanzas; Crossways; Ygdrasil; Seventh Quarry; The Fractured Nuance; Revival Magazine; Ink Sweat and Tears; Drunk Monkeys; Hesterglock Press; Linnet's Wing, Narrator International, The Galway Review; Poethead and The Evening Echo.

 

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LOUISE WILFORD

 

Painting The Study

 

Let me lay here for a while

breathing in this childhood smell. Emulsion paint.

Dust sheets ruched in wormcasts at my toes.

A light-bulb moon above me hangs unlit.

 

Spread thin, this blue’s quite dark,

moodier than the turquoise on the tin:

I’m floating in a sea, adrift

in waves of night-blue cloud-dust.

 

The slats of the blinds slice the evening light.

Beyond, cars surge and ebb,

the daily wax and wane of other lives.

But let me rest here, crowd-surfing gentle

 

fingers of thought, remembering

all the other rooms: grubby magnolia transformed

to rose or tiger-lily, grass or hemp or barely peach.

The shoulder-aching effort, push and drag

 

of brush or roller - paintpad once – twisting a room

from that to this. Capturing a dream

that slithers off, that won’t be caught -

replaced by other wraiths – fire-red or Chanel grey,

 

sand or cloud or dusk or sunset pink or cyclamen.

Promises that won’t be pinned to the plaster.

But this sleepy blue’s a lullaby. 

So let me stay here while the humour lasts.

 

 

Yorkshirewoman Louise Wilford is a teacher and writer who has had around 100 poems and short stories published in magazines including Acumen, OWP, Pushing Out The Boat, Tears In The Fence and Agenda, and has won or been shortlisted for several competitions.  She is currently writing a children's fantasy novel.

 

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RODNEY WOOD

 

Montriuex

“Gherardo, the younger brother of the famous poet Francesco Petrarch…

 tended his 35 brothers as each fell ill and died, until only Gherardo was left.” 

Joseph Patrick Byrne

 

our delightful souls walk in the sun / and I’ve learnt not to pretend

I know that much at least / our delightful souls walk in the sun

I know that much at least / and I’ve learnt not to pretend

 

my rage / tedium / greed and love / I’ve had enough of fame and money

the birds look strange this evening / my rage / tedium / greed and love

the birds look strange this evening / I’ve had enough of fame and money

 

some things are of no interest to you / others sing with starlight and wine

beyond the banal enigma of my body / some things are of no interest to you

beyond the banal enigma of my body / others sing with starlight and wine

 

there’s only me / Gherardo / and the dog left / I’ve buried the other 34 monks myself

and we’ll soon forget / there’s only me / Gherardo / and the dog left

and we’ll soon forget / I’ve buried the other 34 monks myself

 

 

Rid Ye of the devil

“The Black Death of 1348-49 was the greatest biomedical disaster

 in European and possibly world history,”

 Norman Cantor

 

they control shrines and mines and carbines / wear empty rags / that hide a bummy smell

bastards have grey hairs / they control shrines and mines and carbines

bastards have grey hairs / wear empty rags / that hide a bummy smell

 

the beat is money / the refrain is greed / sneaking along walls / dirty as soiled sheets

the DJ plays the gravy train / the beat is money / the refrain is greed

the DJ plays the gravy train / sneaking along walls / dirty as soiled sheets

 

they sell cocaine / hopelessness / fear / they sell austerity / burning towers / war

the bastards are red or blue and more / they sell cocaine / hopelessness/ fear

the bastards are red or blue and more / they sell austerity / burning towers / war

 

nothing’s ever wrong / lying isn’t a crime / the plague comes for the lonely and the dying

the dead leave their evil / money and fame / nothing’s ever wrong / lying isn’t a crime

the dead leave their evil / money and fame / the plague comes for the lonely and the dying

 

 

Rodney Wood published his first pamphlet, Dante Called You Beatrice (Red Ceiling Press), last year. He has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. He jointly runs an open mic at The Lightbox in Woking, UK.

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