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Saturday, June 20, 2015

A.J. Huffman and an Ekphrastic Eden


The Hungry Garden

after Nursery  by artist James Lott McCarthy

Barren expanse of green, craves color, seed, becomes canvas
for stars.  The midnight movement chimes, churns.  A rapture
of eruption begins, the constellations consult aurora borealis
before the palette is set.  Apollo acquiesces, the star dance begins.
Soon the sky is a volcano, shooting missiles of light in all directions,
but eventually everything must fall.  And in the center of this latest
Eden, a lone fountain waits to gather.  One star enters, spins
its waters to blue, the next runs them molten gold, blood red follows,
then a rainbow of colors there are no earthly names for.  By dawn,
the four pitchered mouths are exhausted, but surrounded by lavish
buds of the coming Spring.  This rebirth is both blessing and thank you.

The cold stone of the stature settles in for another bountiful year.


A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her new full-length poetry collection, Another Blood Jet, is now available from Eldritch Press.  She has another full-length poetry collection, A Few Bullets Short of Home, scheduled for release in Summer 2015, from mgv2>publishing.  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has published over 2000 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com

Monday, June 8, 2015

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois Speaks of Merfolk, Suicide Convicts, Hollywood Horrors, and Atrophy by Social Media

Nyad

Diana Nyad
exhausted
drops her mask, 
custom made to protect her from 
jellyfish stings,
onto the sand

Jellies are vicious in the waters between
Cuba and Key West
Key West and Cuba
and they have bedeviled her
her entire life
but now, at 64 
she has accomplished her dream

I squat to recover the mask
People’s bodies press around me
Adulation all around

Before I rise 
I press the mask to my face
and feel for a moment
what it is like to be Nyad

salt-burned, swollen
weary 
triumphant
alone


Guard

It was not immediately clear
how W was able to hang himself
He was on suicide watch

The guard must have had to answer the 
call of nature
and maybe he was constipated
He took too long
Maybe he had a magazine in there
a girlie magazine

Maybe it was a newspaper and he 
was fascinated by a story 
about the events unfolding in Syria
and in the United States

his strong feeling that 
World War Three is creeping up on us
and there’s nothing we can do about it

Maybe he had a philosophical moment
in which he recalled his favorite scenes
from Dostoyevsky’s novels
especially Crime and Punishment

We don’t really know how
W got the opportunity
to kill himself

but now he’s gone

The guard feels guilty
feels terrible about it
but he won’t feel that way 
for long


Reading Frankenstein

Louise blisses out in Paris 
and in return
the universe awards her 
a swollen neck gland

She’s reading Frankenstein
and the monster’s neck is swollen too

She was always an impressionable adolescent
She went to a summer creative writing class
and met the famous science-fiction writer H D

H D invited all the students to come up to his mansion
on Mulholland
and when everyone else left
Louise stayed behind

They sat on a couch and she adored him as he told her
how he had written the famous books 
that became the famous monster movies

He asked his black house servant
to go out to the garden and cut some 
fresh mint for tea
He didn’t give Louise alcohol
or drugs
She was high on being with him
She was only sixteen

He fucked her
she got pregnant 
he paid for the abortion
done in a private clinic
used by Hollywood stars

When she was waiting in the lobby
another young girl asked 
Do I know you?

She never told her parents
That was the last she saw of H D

Now she’s drinking too much wine in Paris
It’s so many years later
she suddenly remembers him
She’s no longer angry 
no longer sees herself 
as a victim

She’s reading Frankenstein
for the fifth time
Her neck is swollen

Her friend comes back from the bathroom
lipstick smeared


Someone Mourns His Dog

Someone mourns his dog on Facebook
Someone celebrates a raise
Several people have insomnia
they always do this time of night

I run a record on yellow graph paper
I try to draw conclusions about the 
world and the 
“universe” by how many people have insomnia
on any given night
by how many people are angry with 
other people for being
douche bags or assholes

Sometimes I make bets on horse races
based on this data
as if I could successfully generalize
across life domains

I’m spending way too
much time in front of my
computer

My muscles are getting smaller
and weaker
remarkably fast


Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over six hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for work published in 2012, 2013, and 2014. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. He lives in Denver. 

Monday, June 1, 2015

Joe Farley Tells You Something Inside Of An Iceberg

28 Inches of Snow

stuck in the house
no whiskey no chocolate no love
how will I survive?


At The Glacier

I sleep with an iceberg,
warmed by its frost.

Light dances and changes color
against blue-white skin.

I remain hopeful,
ever hopeful

for a slight thaw
or sudden crack

that will change the world
and crush me with beauty.

Joseph Farley received his BA in English from St. Joseph's University, and his MA from Temple University. He edited Axe Factory from 1986 to 2010. Farley writes poetry, fiction, plays and essays. He also performs with Improv on Rye. His books and chapbooks include Suckers, For the Birds, Longing for the Mother Tongue, Waltz of the Meatballs, Her Eyes, and Crow of Night. His work has appeared recently in Bellview Park Pages, Bewildering Tales, Beyond Imagination, BlazeVOX, Crack the Spine, Danse Macabre, Concrete Meat Sheets, Thunder Sandwich, Horror Sleaze Trash, Schlock, T. Gene Davis Speculative Blog, US 1 Worksheets, Verse Wisconsin, Visions and Voices, Whole Beast Rag, Ygdrasil, Literary Hatchet, and the anthologies One Hell of a Christmas, Thirteen O'Clock Press, 2014, and Night Walkers, Thirteen O'Clock Press, 2014.