Ben Nardolilli Traverses Ancient Riverbeds, Deserts of Pills, Lyres That Are Orifices, The Laboratory of "To Be"

Life Pictures

His grip sucked the life
from ancient rivers,
whose substance was earth,
the welcome house for all

with sores on,
I received your words
without pride, with
the right human veins,

the world opened, others
persuaded you,
their eyes criss-crossed, flashed
like rotten anger

a salty soul,
witch of an euro-american legend
to our mouths,
a sweating gown

deep like the day,
orifices like lyres,
we commuted in the worse
on all their words and pictures


 Saturday Morbid

Waking up with the hope this morning
Of finding the ambergris of good health,
I emerge from a mattress, cracked
And divided like a desert lake bed,
My mouth an oasis for green pills.

Last night I dreamed I was better,
But I still had misfortunes to deal with,
Swimming in the water by a cruise ship
My sister and I were nearly hit
By an airplane tumbling from the sky.

Now the coughing starts up again,
My lungs pulse like swollen red vines
Woven together in a tapestry of irritation
And my nose drips a steady stream
Of whatever lubricant cools my thoughts.


Soliloquy in Late May

Am love, am good to be
Removed and lost,
Am we that you are, am just,
So many to spend, am value,
Wanted by others, am valued,
Spending years, am a halo
Going back around a board,
Am as bad the value,
Almost am failure, am almost
A warning for everyone else,
The mind to mind being made,
Just you taken, am a big laboratory.
Am a receiver for the projection,
The station, the direction, she,
Am beneath you, am the dislike,
Am the cane and shoes to bear.


Ben Nardolilli currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. His work has
appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine,
Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, THEMA, Pear Noir, The Minetta
Review, and Yes Poetry. He has a chapbook Common Symptoms of an
Enduring Chill Explained, from Folded Word Press. He blogs at
mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel.

Frederick Pollack And A Short Treatise On Evil Under the Surveillance Cameras

Lifestyle

They want only privacy – freedom

from conscience, taxes, or any

comparisons but theirs –

but through the long afternoon

they have to show me

their wine- and gun-cellars,

stables, pool, cars (insisting

they only ever drive

the Ford), her designer shmates,

his pills, embarrassing documents

from every encrypted or vaulted

depth: the whole thing

in fact.  And though I ooze

humility – sipping microns

of the same two fingers’, grazing

one congealing canapé, not

knowing what to do with my hands,

my brain, the dead – I

still inspire hostility.

She asks about “my people,”

yet however hard we search

we find not one being

in common.  He, increasingly icily,

talks sports.  Gazing out, I plan

a park, reclaimed farmland;

they have too much glass

for a picturesque ruin.  Day wanes,

the oil flows, security cameras

pan hopelessly back and forth, and thus

eternity finds us.

Tuna Melt

He liked such places more than he could say.

A mumbling speedfreak busboy cleared away

The old, slapped down a new soiled fork and plate.

The wrinkled waitress, focusing her hate,

Mistook his order, meanwhile loosely pouring

Some cloudy lukewarm stuff he sat adoring,

Tasting the walls, the clientele, the grill.

He peered and ate delightedly until

The shadow of the offices across

The street dispersed as if the sun were boss

For fifteen minutes, looking in.  He waited.

The coming horror could not be overstated.

It might take place outside, where ambulances,

Tour-buses, cruisers, cabs were taking chances

Past lesser vehicles, and passersby

At great unconscious length prepared to die

While, armed, an as-yet unembodied grin

Began to light … It might occur within.

Or not.  That place is safe, if any is,

Whose sadness welcomes other sadnesses.

That place is good, is home, which lets one sit,

Will never close till someone closes it,

And fills your cup unasked while you think, vaguely:

Evil is better than being merely ugly.

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press, and a collection of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, forthcoming in 2015 from Prolific Press. His work has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), 

The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Representations, Magma (UK), Iota (UK), Bateau,Fulcrum, etc.  Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. Adjunct professor creative writing George Washington University.

Kevin Heaton With Driftwood Crosses, A Fleetwood Mac Reference, Gestures of Smoke, and False Prophets

Cautiously Pessimistic


Meerkats are auditing ‘The Book of Life,’
rejecting all angel submissions, blotting out points

of light. No new names are being written down in Glory—
Coptics and old Kansans were left kneeling behind their

altars; lobbying like Protestants. I hear the pinprick noise
of a Gnostic cross dragging itself through Christ thorns—

‘ooo baby, ooo, said ooo.’ I see the white-winged dove
as she circles Ararat for her errant olive branch. I look

up, I look up, from where Jonah sleeps with fishes—
in hopes the next first star I see will mark a bright child.



Scars & Empty Vases


Van Gogh’s mad ear enflamed a field
of purple irises—marring the face of
a sleeping homeless man. Artists render

people like pastels & watercolors.
The wounded gather shopping carts & talk
about Jesus, their smiles resemble burn

scars. They tape magazine clippings
to bedroom mirrors & blow cigarette smoke
into perfect images hoping to see a heartbeat.

Liars parse sermons like ravens, then genuflect
at driftwood crosses & line their egos
with Cardinal feathers—change sangria

into green tea. Would that I were sickle
& whetstone—a reaper of men, or palette
& canvas—the turned cheek of Christ.


Meth


Tina accepts my swirling mind:

its tics & fidgetings,

its slipped knots of rage & rancor—

then babbles me away to the afterlife.

Kevin Heaton is originally from Kansas and Oklahoma, and now lives and writes in South Carolina. His work has appeared in a number of publications including: Guernica, Rattle, Raleigh Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Adroit Journal, and The Monarch Review. He is a Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

Valentina Cano And The Voices That Crack Glass, Reverse Black Holes, And Form Pearls

For R

Your voice is like the cracking of glass,
like a silver key,
like sun on a patch of ice.
It is a knife,
all edges and light,
and I could let the roughest part
of my skin become a whetting stone.



In a Theater

Her hand is pressed to your cheek
and the light dims around it.
A black hole in reverse.
Your skin prickles,
each follicle rising up to meet her.
And then it is just you,
rising out of the darkness
like a fog.



Audible Patience

She hums,
patient as an oyster forming her pearl.
A sibilant breath,
a sound carried and rolled
by her hands.
She waits for him
to wade by and pick her out.



Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time either writing or reading. Her works have appeared in Exercise Bowler, Blinking Cursor, Theory Train, Cartier Street Press, Berg Gasse 19, Precious Metals, A Handful of Dust, The Scarlet Sound, The Adroit Journal, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Welcome to Wherever, The Corner Club Press, Death Rattle, Danse Macabre, Subliminal Interiors, Generations Literary Journal, A Narrow Fellow, Super Poetry Highway, Stream Press, Stone Telling, Popshot, Golden Sparrow Literary Review, Rem Magazine, Structo, The 22 Magazine, The Black Fox Literary Magazine, Niteblade, Tuck Magazine, Ontologica, Congruent Spaces Magazine, Pipe Dream, Decades Review, Anatomy, Lowestof Chronicle, Muddy River Poetry Review, Lady Ink Magazine, Spark Anthology, Awaken Consciousness Magazine, Vine Leaves Literary Magazine, Avalon Literary Review, Caduceus,White Masquerade Anthology and Perhaps I'm Wrong About the World. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize.You can find her here: http://carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com