Ken Allan Dronsfield's Child Collages, Albino Ravens, Meteors, Sung Simoons, and Corn Growing Taller Than Words

Tasting of Fire


I've thrown myself into it;
thrown myself in.
And the fire has been lovely.
It's flames jump, and tickle,
leaping toward impossibility,
beautiful stars above.
So if today,
my body is dragged down,
the courage which hurled me
into the heart of the flame
has smoldered into mere embers.
The knowledge is there,
even today, when an albino raven
comes to sit upon my shoulder,
my vision doubling all objects
indiscriminately.
Those which I choose to see and
those which I do not,
the images imprinted on my eyelids
over lapping one another,
awkwardly, as a child's collage.
Yet I see beyond the darkness,
beyond the terror, beyond the spark.
Oh life of mine, incredible
harvest, the taste of fire, of
hope which we feed with ourselves.
I've thrown myself into it,
I’m warmed from within,
a soul afire, peace smolders.



Requiem of White Ash



An albino raven meditates

during an alabaster moonrise.

Darkness reaches from shadows

to grasp the soulless.

Hideous cries from the upper branches

of the tall Stone Mountain pines.

Ghosts from another time reincarnate

as swirling mists over fields of cotton.

Magpies joust upon the old sagging roof

of a forgotten plantation cabin.

Hooded one’s chant to their lesser being

who fulfills their twisted dreams.

They praise the Sun and Moon each night

as spirited white flames flicker.

Cherry blossoms scattered in the grip of

a heartless tempest blow.

Meteors strike the golden mountain;

a stark truth is finally told.

Life was hard in the Georgia of yesterday,

pantries stored nothing but memories.

The water from the pump was a hazy red,

smelling like decrepit sulfur.

Witches cast spells; send superstitions to hell,

as white ash rises under the full moon.

Wispy tendrils of foggy spirits rise into a red sky,

as he of the white flame greets the dead.





Tempest of Cold



By the graves I felt the storm

shall Death bring his batters?

Eagerly I looked for cover;

loud thunderstorm drumming

of the tempest that is blowing.

'It's that beat,' I muttered swinging;

That vicious, vicious pounding,

and the floodwaters never inhaling

I sing the splendid sudden simoom;

screech louder than the tearing sails;

crave the becalmed, blowy bellows!

I ignore the smashing, severe sleet;

take thy lashing from out my heart.

I threw its ghost against the walls

I await the defeated, dreich drum,

here stands an unflustered peach.





Witches and Stone



That which gives often...

often receives nothing in return.

Do not be deceived by writing in stone.

Corn often grows taller than words;

words often grow taller than deeds.

In what field strides a dark Witch,

through stalks as thick as bovine legs.

We take a cache and fill silos

forty moons per the fields.

Geese feed in flocks as a night

haze dissolves with the sunrise.

Wrung one’s neck for our bellies

now we give it spit and hot coals.

At dusk, we watch a coven of witches

feed the flames below their cauldron.

They gather petrified stubble and stone

to craft tonics and spells whilst the

crows and ravens pick clean all

discarded husk and bones.

Within a breath, the sun disappears;

darker times fill life’s circle.



Ken Allan Dronsfield is a disabled veteran, prize winning poet and fabulist from New Hampshire, now residing on the plains of Oklahoma. He is widely published in magazines, journals, reviews and anthologies throughout the US and abroad. He has three poetry collections, "The Cellaring", 80 poems of light horror, paranormal, weird and wonderful work. His second book, "A Taint of Pity", contains 52 Life Poems Written with a Cracked Inflection. Ken's third poetry collection, "Zephyr's Whisper", 64 Poems and Parables of a Seasonal Pretense, and includes his poem, "With Charcoal Black, Version III", selected as the First Prize Winner in Realistic Poetry International's recent Nature Poem Contest. Ken won First Prize for his Haiku on Southern Collective Experience. He's been nominated three times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net for 2016-2018. Ken loves writing, hiking, thunderstorms, and spending time with his cats Willa and Yumpy.

Shawn Yager Presides Over The Airplane Graveyard Trailer Park Childhood, the Ennui Of Progress, Living High On The Landfill, And The Boy In The Plastic Bubble

Ballad of the Sad Trailer Park

Like that airplane graveyard in Tucson,
Here’s a place for mobile homes to die.
As they crumble, residents patch holes with old plywood,
Tarps, or plastic sheeting.

One trailer stands apart, abandoned,
Full of holes, a side caved in,
No windows, no plumbing—
Slanted floor,
A rusty shell.
Given up on.

The horde of kids living in these immobilized homes,
Wheelchairs with flat tires,
They haven’t given up on it.
They love that old broken down metal shack,
Made it their own.

It serves as a pressure relief valve--
When things get out of hand, they go there.
When Mom and Dad are fighting,
When Dad and Uncle Pete are drunk and the guns are out,
When Mom’s boyfriend comes over and they need alone time,
When the police come over to talk to Daddy about where he was last night,

The place actually helped raise these kids.

It is also a lab--
What kids witness at home, at school, on TV,
They try out here.
“Got some beer from my brother!”
“Stole cigarettes from my mom!”
“Let’s play house!”
“Ouch!  Stop that.”

The residents of this park
Could never afford a house in town,
Snuggled up close to its neighbors,
Down the street from the pizza place,
The library, the school, the police station.
They could not even afford the rent on an apartment
Over the general store.

(Besides, none of the families would fit, they tend to be large and unruly.)



Looking Out the Glass Door of the Last Subway Car on the Way to O’Hare


The rails move closer together
As they get further away

They touch the silhouette formed by downtown buildings--
A giant black crown.

You made it this far,
But you still haven’t left.
The car has you hostage.

You’ve gotten accustomed to your cell.

Your past is visible in the present

Your future is known—
Will you get off at the last stop,
Or will you choose to return to your origin,

Seeing the same thing
In reverse.

But the world rotates around the sun, and

Everything is in constant motion.
--So, even if you’re moving backward
` The things you revisit will be different.
Technically, then, you’ll be seeing things for the first time.

Does forward exist?
Does backward exist?
Is there such a thing as progress?


I AM NOT A GOD (But I play one on TV)

From my shack high on the landfill,
I see ships floating on the water.
The big ones bully the little ones,
The little ones call out to me for help.

Filled with sudden senses of purposes,
I, grunting like my cousin the ape,
Heave a cracked toilet seat into the air,
But the injustice continues.
I realize I must do more.

I grab a rope and some wax,
Run downhill as fast as I can,
Through sleazy waterfront neighborhoods,
To reach the harbor--

I am too late!  All the little ships are gone.
Victims of hate
Victims of philistinism
Victims of carpe diems.

I throw my rope and wax into the oily waters, and
Glare at the supertanker, smug in its berth.


Letter to Friends on Vacation in Florida
March, 2004

Hello, pioneers in the melding
of High and Low, alchemists,
Friends of long-standing duration.
Hope you're doing all right in
The land of strangeness and Geritol.
Hope you make it back with
Your insanity intact.
And your kitty cat.

The days of your absence are cold
And empty.

Return, renew, and replenish us,
With your absorbed, radiant warmth,
And stories of weirdnesses,
And all of that which is only dreamed of,
Talked about, up here.

Up here, where it is gray,
And cold and inward and
Vacuum-Packed-Sterile-Until-Opened-But-Never-Opened.
Hurry back,

And maybe we can rip the wrapping off this bitch,
Introduce some contaminants.
I'm sick of this Boy-in-the-Plastic-Bubble shit.


Shawn feels that writing is an act of discovery.  While he has had
seven short stories published online or in print, this marks the first
time that any of his poetry has been published.  He currently teaches English
to at-risk students in southwestern NH.

Matt Borczon Returns To Discuss Bones In Duffel Bags, A Three-Legged Horse, Tipping The Ferryman, Chem Trails, And A Messianic Sailor

Today


is a
Michigan
ghost town
it's a
duffel bag
full of
human bones
it's moths
drinking tears
from the
eyes of
birds while
they sleep

today is
afraid to
come forward
it's drunk
and horny
it's a
tire fire
out of
control and
a coal
mine long
abandoned

today is
hung over
on a
park bench
it's reading
my mail
it's a
rusted out
VW bus
left in
a forest
of bare
trees and
it's turning
water into
wine in
northwest
Pennsylvania

today is
walking a
3 legged
horse into
oncoming traffic
it's fighting
dogs in
suburban
basements
it's paying
its taxes
on time
it's demanding
our attention
and robbing
our sleep
and breaking
promises as
it wipes
the dust
off of
the moon.

Mother Angelica pray for me


 Tip the
Ferryman
your waitress
the dealer
before you
leave the
table exit
the restaurant
sail quietly
into the
hell you
made of
your life
smile and
hope you
get lost
along the
way

stare at
airplanes
leaving
chem trails
like white
calligraphy
across ink
black skies
pray for
a star
to guide
you

and remember
that Jesus
was a
sailor
when he
walked
on the
water.

Matthew Borczon is a poet from Erie, Pa he has written seven books of poetry so far. His new book Code 3 the prison blues is now available from Alien Buddha press. When he is not writing he is a nurse for developmentally disabled adults.

Stefanie Bennett Holds Her Cain Renegade Neutrons During The Trepidation Lid Or Not

SEIZURE    

In my Mother’s House

A deceptive land,

An impulse

Waxes lyric...

While un-encumbered

The axe-head

And wood-block lie – seen

Only from

 The bi-fold window.

There, time steps through

The filaments’

Grasping squall, and

It’s found

How I am – now, twice

As able

As once

Was Cain.

THE TREPIDATION ACT   

Renegade neutrons

Fall apart

Laughing

On the front lawn, yet

You, with

Your cold

Aerial-of-souls’

Clip-board

Hand them

A clean

Bill

Of health. Seems

Strange how

A ‘for real’

Shooting star’s

Never around

When

You want one.

STEAM AND GOSPELS    

So much to answer for.

No-one to answer to.

Maybe add

An arthropod

With intent

And put a lid

On it.

Stefanie Bennett, ex-blues singer & musician has published several books of poetry, a novel, & a libretto & works with No Nukes, Arts Action For Peace as well as Equality. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee], she was born in Queensland, Australia.

Ian Gannasi Loses His Sneaker's In A Yearbook Dream, Ponders Egrets AND Regrets, And Buying The Middle Of Nowhere A Coke

ACCIDENTAL DISASTER

Indispensable figments of my imagination.

Becky beckons.

Whichever direction I go it’s the wrong way.

She was a nurse

With a sexy voice

And nothing to say.

What does it mean to have lost one’s sneakers in a dream?

Old high school yearbooks don’t amount to much.

What kind of a guy

Are you and I?

Despite all his faults he really was an idiot.

A vice when successful is called virtue.

In my father’s high school yearbook:

“From a drip to a dope.”

Pictures of an exhibitionist.

A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.

I got cars you got cars all god’s children got cars.

Well-wrapped in his defense mechanisms,

He got trapped in the bathroom.

THE USUAL MISCALCULATIONS

Like trying to plug the holes in a sieve,

It could have been worse, but not by much.

A bowling buddy?

A driver of last resort?

“Home, Hives!”

“Unsend, Unsend,” “Abort, Abort.”

We have wasted our lives.

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs

Were an indelible part of the show.

They were completely right, and wrong in part.

I guess you’re as much you as you can be.

So am I, but we’re playing in different keys.

“I don’t know what I’m going to play,” he repeated.

Egrets from the train window.

(Not to mention regrets.)

It is posed and it is posed,

What in nature merely grows.

“Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing!”

Blue moon, blue cheese,

And whatever else she wanted to sing.

Funny how I didn’t see that coming. I did see it going however.

The executioner took his time as he fondled the lever.

Taking a long time to come to bad decisions:

At the hanging the criminal’s head popped off

Due to someone’s miscalculation.

OFFERINGS

Accused of a crime I was considered to have considered,

I preferred to stay in bed.

“You’ve beaten and you’ve been beaten”

Was the theme of The Lost Weekend.

Me no like.

The thought or speech balloon

Gets halfway there and then deflates.

The anonymity of glamour, the glamour of anonymity,

Dark glasses in the middle of the night.

I’ve about had it.

It depends at what depth one focuses the lens,

At what power of magnification.

Shocking where he got off,

On the platform in what seemed

The middle of nowhere.

I’d like to buy the world a Coke.

All the various offerings are worth a hill of beans.

The best defense against germs is to ignore them.

She had a vivid orange in her tortoise shell pattern.

My paraphrase can’t compete with the original.

Prestidigitation, misdirection,

Valentine cards and mourning doves ...

But no satisfying explanation of the snake

That crawled out of Anchises’s tomb.

Ian Ganassi’s poetry, prose and translations have appeared in more than 100 literary journals. Poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in New American Writing, The Yale Review, 2Bridges Review, American Journal of Poetry and Clockwise Cat, among many others. His poetry collection Mean Numbers was published in 2016, and is available on Amazon. His new collection of poetry, True for the Moment, will be published in the fall of 2019 by MadHat Press. Selections from an ongoing collage collaboration with a painter can be found at www.thecorpses.com.

John D. Robinson Going Straight For The Throat

I HAD TO

I heard him crying

one night, alone,

I crept downstairs

from my bedroom

into the lounge,

he wasn’t aware of

my presence:

I crouched down

and watched my

father weep, drunk,

confused and

fucked-up:

for several minutes

I remained silent

and then I

returned to my

bedroom and wept,

I didn’t know why

except that

I had to.

A HURTING KIND

He hurt with

his punches

and he hurt

with his words

yet walking away

to go live

 with some

fucking pill-head

whore

and die at the

 age of 43

is a wound

still fresh

three decades

 later.

IF ASKED, I’D SAY

Write something down that’ll

kick-hard between the world’s

legs, let it know you’re

around and that you’re not

fucking-around for applause

or pages in books:

write something down that’ll

seize readers by the throat

and will force the heart to

beat faster, to take away a

breath, to leave a scar, give

no mercy and fuck the

consequences:

write something down,

scribe the truth

and don’t be afraid.

John D Robinson is a published poet from the UK: hundreds of his poems have appeared in print and online: his latest chapbook publications are: 'Hitting Home' (Iron Lung Press)  'The Pursuit Of Shadows' (Analog Submission Press) 'Echoes Of Diablo' (Concrete Meat Press) and just unleashed is 'Too Many Drinks Ago' Paper & Ink Zine publications.

Dick Bentley Observes The Peach Sunset, A Carpathian Psychoanalysis, The Buddha In The Bronx, And The Sizzling Arrival Of A Starchild

CAPTIVITY

I was welcomed here.
This room, clear, golden
And dark as a medieval chamber,
Is love on an autumn night.
The fresh perfume of some lotion,
The dark hair and pale and
Hardly visible face,
And the lace of reflected street lamps
Across the ceiling
Scored by window frames
And the folds of curtains.
The perfect unburdening of disappointment
Into tenderness. The perfect response
Of one body answering the other,
And the slow journey
Toward that captivation of our senses,
Into that country
Whose mountains seem alien and overwhelming
Tinted peach at sunset
Vast presences seen and unseen.
And then,
Sweet sleep.



CARPATHIANS

There are countries of the spirit,
Where the villages are lit by torches
And the bears weigh 700 pounds.
The clocks are sad
And strike the wrong hours
While park benches are as empty as the sky.
The tyrannical government
Lies about the weather,
Lies about the sun, moon, stars,
Sex and the mists off the river. The
streets are named Liberation Avenue,
Redemption Boulevard, and Square of
The Sixteenth of January.
This is the world we ran to from the world
While storms of cursing exiles fled the other way
And a father loomed above us all—
Loomed like a mountain range.
A Carpathian father ready to drink the blood of humans.
Seeking counsel I ask,
“Can my father really
Be mastered through
The interpretation of dreams?”
The therapist replies,
“According to Cornell Medical School’s
Malaise Inventory, someone who is disturbed
May also have a genuine complaint.”
The doctor has a pleasant if inexpressive face
And a disarming manner.
You can see
A fine lucid intelligence in his eyes.
“You must be very confused,” the doctor says.
You nod.
“How lonely it must be having your condition.
How baffling and troublesome and unfair.”

You bow your head silently in acknowledgment.
Like most educated people,
You are conversant with the basic
Tenets of the therapeutic relationship,
Issues of transference and countertransference
And so forth,
So you do not wish to acknowledge
The fact that you wish with all your heart
To embrace the man, to clamber up
The cliffs of his soaring Carpathian lap,
And remain there



LINES COMPOSED UPON
THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE
AFTER AN ALL-NIGHTER

Wind peels waves off the river
and heaps them against the pilings.
Gulls cry and dip low,
then shoot straight up again.
We wonder, why don’t doormen
ever go to sea? Why don’t nuns
pray before the great stone Buddha
up in the Bronx?

“Deliver us from the heavenly
beauty of the sunrise over Queens,”

Our hearts are armored
with booze and grass,
and we ask the prayerful nuns
to intercede,
“Spare them the knowledge
of where they are going
when the bridge they cross
disappears in a thick rain.”



New Child

From the teeming sky he falls
Sizzling past the spacemen.
This infant is a house on fire,
Burning into our spirits.

We close our eyes and hear the blaze rage,
Catch the rooftop’s crackle.
Soon he’ll lift his empty spoon
To catch the embers.

He came from far away, trillions of light years,
Before he came hurtling into our kitchen like a comet.
Eternity is endless even in a universe as young
As our newborn.

Until you are healed.


Dick Bentley’s books, Post-Freudian Dreaming, A General Theory of Desire, and All Rise are available on Amazon.  He won the Paris Writers/Paris Review’s International Fiction Award and has published over 260 works of fiction, poetry, and memoir in the US, the UK, France, Canada, and Brazil.  He served on the Board of the Modern Poetry Association and has taught at the University of Massachusetts.  Check his website, www.dickbentley.com.

Michael H. Brownstein Brings a Missive from Cassandra, a Painful Latin Hallway, and Mascara with Knife

APOLLO’S GIFT

My dear Cassandra, I must punish you. From this day on you will only speak the truth, but no one will ever believe you.
          —Apollo to Cassandra after she broke one precept or another

My name is Cassandra,
But you believe me to be someone else,
And, yes, I am a woman.
Listen! My eyes are green,
My hair is black,
Greeks do hide in the belly of the horse.
I live here, behind that wall,
My bedding, that corner.
I need not latch my door
Nor do I need clothing during sleep.
Legs gapped open, I wait for you.

Always.


A BODY’S LANGUAGE IS SOMETIMES WRITTEN IN LATIN

One morning you roll over and wake to a stranger,
your body splintering into hard time.
Suddenly fingers do not remember how to lift a fork,
feet need a rhythm to climb the stairs,
even hair refuses the demands of a comb.
At the hospital, they make a study in mistakes,
the hard gurney bending too much into the wrong shape,
doctors arriving to play doctor, tests made, blood drawn.
They check your ears, look long into your eyes,
move you from one room to another, tell you to go home.
Sometimes there is nothing more anyone can do.
They send you away with prescriptions for pain and swelling,
directions you can barely see, your eyes so full of fire,
the skin surrounding them sulfur yellow and rotting eggs.
So it goes. All of your life this is your body.
It did its work and brought comfort to you.
Tonight you try to walk a straight line down the hallway.

Even in bright light, shadows are instruments of pain.


COSMETICS

Night is the perfect mascara
Every bump, every turn, every pothole,
Crack, fissure, splinter, snap,
Fracture, rupture, splatter, break,
Slit, slash, scratch, split, every tear.
And lipstick? A beacon. A breeze.

How someone connects to a knife.



Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Rasputin, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011), Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012), The Possibility of Sky and Hell: From My Suicide Book (White Knuckle Press, 2013) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100 Degrees Outside and Other Poems (Kind of Hurricane Press, 2013). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

John Levy and the Slavic Guitar Center, Bonnard Bathtubs, Copenhagen Hippos, and Cygnets Fishing in Seaweed

Levy's Accordion Straps

They cost $19.99 at Guitar Center. "These
beautiful one inch leather accordion
straps

from Levy's
exude
style and security." I can imagine

meeting an accordionist who asks
"Are you related to the Levy
who makes those great accordion straps?"

Before today, April 26th, 2018, I would've been
baffled. I would've said "No," but known
zero about what those straps

exude. I happened to discover them
like most discoveries, at least mine--by
accident. In Gregory O'Brien's poem

"A Genealogy" I saw the word spelled "accordian"
and wondered if that's a variant. Googling it
(and not finding "accordian," although O'Brien

is from New Zealand and maybe that's
how it gets spelled there?) I found the Guitar
Center site and decided to educate myself

on accordion prices, never dreaming
I'd also see straps for sale, much less
that my surname and the manufacturer's

would match! Yes, an
exclamation point. What's next? YouTube.
Angelo Di Pippo playing "La Vie En Rose"

on a French accordion, viewed as of today
614,267 times. I can tell his strap is definitely
not a Levy's. One viewer remarked (in broken

English) of Di Pippo "that old man
looks like my father. I am almost
start crying." Whereas Tomas Pressel commented:

"I am searching a known accordion song
i heard in the TV
but dont know the name. Its

a faster music with happy mood. It sounds:
Ta Ti Ti Ti Ti Ti Taa, (Ti) Ta Ti Ti Ti Ti Ti Taa;
Ta Ti Ti Ti Ti Ti Ti Taa, (Ti) Ta Ti Ti Ti Ti Ti Taa. . :)
Anyone Tips?"

Can't say I recognize it.

One more related search and I find this regarding
"Slav way of playing Accordion":

"Tracksuit, Hat, Chain, Accordion. Thats all you need.
A bit of vodka wont hurt."

After this detour I return to O'Brien's poem
a changed man.



Balneal


I look up this adjective: of, or relating
to, a bath, bathing or a bathroom. And I think
of Pierre Bonnard and how
often he painted his wife

stretched out in a bath-

tub (underwater). Balneary, an
alternate adjective, perhaps
works better, Bonnard's

nearness

to her
with just the water
between them. The water
she's
under, which

he
paints
as if it were her

attire. Colors

surround her and she, too, is

composed of so many
hues. She is at

rest

as he
works be-
holding her.



Copenhagen, Late July 2018



On our last day there I
took a train then bus out of the city to
Louisiana, the art museum while Nat

stayed and walked to the zoo, where he saw
hippos
fed by a man who threw

green apples into their mouths.

A crowd gathered to watch him pitch
the fruit so Nat couldn't get close
to take a photo with his cell phone.

I walked around a jammed
Gabriele Munter exhibition then
lingered in the less

crowded
Giacometti rooms.
Nat also saw fresh water

penguins. We joined each other at
the end of the day. The day before
we'd spent at Tivoli Gardens, where I took

hundreds of photos in the aquarium
while Nat wandered.
There were sparrows I wanted to photograph

as they landed in a delicate bush with small
deep red leaves, but I didn't want to disturb
the boy

feeding bits of a roll
to the peacock (which chased the sparrows
up into that bush).



Letter to Ken Bolton

Dear Ken,

There's a crow in your 
poem "Italian Chronicles--Birds of Rome"
(actually
more than one) and here's
your lines I recalled
in Copenhagen:

"A handsome kind of crow they have around here--
two-toned, black & a lighter chocolate-charcoal colour."

The two crows I happened
upon
near The Little Mermaid, at
a dock, were also two-
toned, but black and

silver. They walked
upon rounded rocks, dipped
beaks into water and
pecked
at squares the size of half
a postcard
made of what looked
to be asphalt that then they'd pick up
by their
beaks

as I snapped
photos. My son,
kind and at
a distance, sat at a picnic table on the other-
wise deserted dock since
it was early
and no one was there to
climb down into
boats. A swan
and cygnets

dipped heads into the
water through long green
thin ribbons (seaweed?) and

earlier I'd taken better
photos of them, which
was easy (that
is, getting "better"
photos) since
they floated inside or

near
the dark reflected and e-
longated
triangle of a boat's
hull

so visually there's more
going on
and off
and in. I kept
thinking of your two-toned
crow, wanting to show you these
two as they
leapt and flew
inches

above water-
smoothed
rocks
and I
crouched
and focused

while they held
trash
aloft
in silvery-
black beaks.

John Levy's most recent book of poetry is an e-book, On Its Edge, Tilted, published by otata's bookshelf in May 2018. Earlier books of poetry include Among the Consonants (The Elizabeth Press, 1980) and Oblivion, Tyrants, Crumbs (First Intensity Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in otoliths, Stride, NOON: journal of the short poem, Shearsman, Origin, CLWN WR, Plucked Chicken, and other magazines.

Howie Good in a Lost Country with a Sacred Kissing Stone, a Suicide River, a Saltmarsh Sparrow, and God as the TV with the Sound Off...

Journey without Maps

We must be lost. As the driver, I should really know where we are. We drive around to get a sense of place and pass payday loan shops, the bloated carcass of a dog, streets with holes. A teenage girl writhes on the sidewalk, her right leg splayed at a gruesome angle, her face contorted with pain. Huddled over her are a couple of friends whose idea of help is to just yell, “C’mon! Stand up!” I keep asking myself what is happening to my country. "If you see me,” the mass shooter says in the latest tweet, “weep.”

A Low-Hanging Heaven

What happens after you pass this border? After you enter this gate? There’s no police force to protect the city, no soldiers to defend it, no doctors to heal the sick. It’s a city that breathes nothing, just like heaven. This is the best place for us. You kind of get to escape. The inhabitants could be sleeping, could be dead, could be dreaming – I mean, drunk. Look at the stones. There was a stone that people would go and kiss. The stone melted. From kissing, melted!

Josef K

This part of the river is popular for suicide attempts. But if you go early, it’s not very busy. And, yes, Josef K lived somewhere in the area, debt-ridden, detested, abandoned by everyone, communicating only with pigeons in the park. Just up the street, I encounter a wild-eyed woman walking in circles. “Please help, please help, please help,” she keeps saying. The air around us swarms with particles of ash and smoke, as if bodies are constantly being fed into industrial-size ovens. In point of fact, modern homes burn 8x faster. There are so many fires you can’t even see the sky.

A Kind of Dream

And so there I am, wondering what the music of the spheres would look like from the perspective of a spy satellite, when I’m invited into the garish and absurd by a choir of young believers who want the God of rivers and streams restored, and why shouldn’t I be, as I’ve displayed more than once the misplaced confidence of a small bird – a saltmarsh sparrow or a piping plover – that crashes full speed into clear glass, and only to find myself in a kind of dream, where a few dozen of us aged children are getting off a tour bus to the dark corners of a cherry red dusk.

The Misery Index

Today I went looking for flowers for the funeral, but the shelves held only bottles, broken auto parts, a basket with plastic eggs. On the way home, I saw, bent beneath a cat’s cradle of clotheslines, a mom submerge her baby in a galvanized tub. Birds pecked at her face, her hands, making a noise like “Ha-ha-ha!” as if there was something in the situation that was screamingly funny. Maybe I’m a bad person – I just kept on walking. When I got to the corner, I happened to look back. It was like watching TV with the sound off, but you didn’t need sound to know if there was a God.

Howie Good is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize.  His latest collection is I'm Not a Robot from Tolsun Books. He co-edits the journals UnLost and Unbroken  with Dale Wisely.

Jeffrey Zable and His Request For Population Control, Tupperware and Bicycle Allowances, and His Appeal to the Presidency

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