Joey Madia, Ornithomancer Masquerading as Playwright

Soul Sutra

Hunkered down
In the mid-winter clay
My soul aligns
With the fire-pit flame.


 A Poem for Proserpines

The ragged stone angel
patiently at prayer
looks homeward
and away
from the patiently prowling wolf
rabid at her feet.

Its psychic stare
no longer piercing
its slack-jawed patty-cake
within the sanctuary
of her plump
and plastered
thigh.

She moans in Heaven's rapture

Sighing.

sighing…

ever, ever sighing.

Then sighing
Nevermore.

She turns her marble gaze
to the Proserpines
of pomegranates.

To the Beatrices and Magadalens
to the Annabels and Helens
(only Goethe's—
never Faust's)

To the Lolitas and Lauras
nursing sanguine wounds.

She flutters her pitted, seeded wings
in the subtle motions of stone
and gazes onward
toward the temple of the Mystics
New and barely known.

Where Anastasia awakens
to the mind-locked remembrance
of a mad, en-trancing monk
tracing whispered mantras
upon her sanguine thighs.

Is she weeping for the child?
Will the child weep for her?



Alchemy IV 

Passage thru to yellow shores.
Coves resplendent. Irregular. Transcendent.
 
Descend.

A traveler on island plains awakes.
He will once again arise, un-nesting the new mystics—
a baptism in branches—
Elliptical. Concealed. Re-formed.

Borne on high, the eagled, ancient hawk-rite
dances a glittered shaman’s trance.
Icarus in a wax stance.
Constructing molten mantra magic for the meek ones,
Westward falling.

The candles which they lit.

Worlds within a carbon tip.

Clean to burn.

Immaculate.

Messengers carry the birth words on smoke wings
to the far-earth islands, seeking new rhythms,
tribal meanings.
Rituals elaborate. Convex. Tantric
in their bean/corn/cocoa symbologies.

The simplicity of birth
 is a breath    a wish      a death.

Kali, in her manner, lends the love blade to carve the optic wound—
(a thought     a bird      a groove).
Imbedded/emplaced remains embrace brain-game embolisms,
fraying in the air—
Wistful and Alone.

Fast, but eat the Logos.
There is no scent but cinnamon;
no fatted calf
but you, yourself, sacrificed.

The tangy sting we taste is winter ginger’s folly.

Gone at last are the sickly, whimsical wishes of elder enemy kings.
The Regent’s humble design is neatly knotted pine—

Resplendent. Irregular. Transcendent.

Ascend.

The stone road offers clues to sacral, yellow shores.

A crow’s mask guides the mast.

Soft, to pay for passage.

Time now to Embark.


Joey Madia is a teaching-artist, writer, director, and actor. His poetry, essays, and short stories have been widely published and have earned him several awards. He is the Artistic Director/Resident Playwright of Seven Stories Theatre Company, Inc. (which just celebrated its tenth anniversary) and Resident Playwright at Youth Stages, LLC. Although he has written several main stage musicals and dramas, he specializes in social justice theatre and participatory plays for youth. His 17 plays for young audiences have been produced across the United States and he has two plays in the Dramatic Publishing catalog. He is the author of four books on using theatre in the classroom (The Stage Learning Series, Accompany Publishing, 2007). He has written and performed pieces about Civil War captains Louis Emilio and Thomas Maulsby and is a Chautauqua Scholar for Voices from the Earth, which does symposia and performances on the African American experience in the Civil War.  As a teaching-artist he has taught and mentored thousands of students in both theatre and creative writing and has spoken at many schools and national conferences. He has worked with organizations including The Epilepsy Foundation of NJ and Camp NOVA to bring theatre to students with disabilities and has won three writing awards from Very Special Arts of NJ. He has appeared in or directed over 100 plays and in a dozen projects on camera, including the 2014 remake of White Zombie. His first novel, Jester-Knight, was published in February 2009 (New Mystics Enterprises). His second novel, Minor Confessions of an Angel Falling Upward was published in September 2012 (Burning Bulb Publishing). He is a book and music reviewer and the founding editor of www.newmystics.com, a literary site.

Ali Znaidi and The Blues of Anti-Destruction

The Creative Anarchy of X

Mallets awaken the xylophone.
Between the wooden bars the X sinks.
Only chaotic polyphonies are heard
through the horizontal crackle of the slats.
& the shepherd is only interested in x-raying
that recently dead scabietic goat.
& his fingers have just awakened the xylophones
(incorporated in her rib cage) before the worms do so
because he wants to listen to the melodies of the sinking X.
—Blueprints for a structural chaos of his blues.


Reverberating Nostalgia

Nostalgia reverberates back & forth
like the ebb & tide [input/output].

Aided by the might of a stylus [a palimpsest]
the tidal flow configures & reconfigures
that avalanche of coastal rocks, building
its integrity as the foe of destruction.




Ali Znaidi (b.1977) lives in Redeyef, Tunisia, where he teaches English. His work has appeared in various magazines and journals worldwide. He authored four poetry chapbooks including Experimental Ruminations (Fowlpox Press, 2012), Moon’s Cloth Embroidered with Poems (Origami Poems Project, 2012), Bye, Donna Summer! (Fowlpox Press, 2014), and Taste of the Edge (Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2014). He also authored a fiction book titled Green Cemetery (Moment Publications, 2014) which is in fact the first Tunisian flash fiction collection originally written & published in the English language. Some of his poems have been translated into German, Greek, Turkish and Italian. You can see more of his work on his blog at aliznaidi.blogspot.com.

Neil Ellman, Aficionado of Ekphrasis

Valium

(Damien Hirst, painting)

Folded like an origami bird

my mind unfolds

to count the spots—1, 2

yellow red and blue

3, 4 sparking

on a color wheel

5, 6 a hundred planets

in a hundred orbs

around the sun

I choose the ones

that put my mind

my universe

the passage of the stars

across my eyes

to rest.

Abelone Acetone Powder

(Damien Hirst, painting)

White dwarfs

luminous and blue

reds yellows greens

one by one by one

Rigel and Regulus

side by side

before the end

the stars await

aligned in even rows

equals at the last

in their silence know

the final coming

is at hand.

Botulinium Toxin A

(Damien Hirst, painting)

Biology dictates

chemistry directs

mathematics orders

our place in the chaos

of the universe

lined up one by one

never touching

equidistant from the sun

as obedient slaves

to the gods of evolution

entropy and decay

we march lock-step

shoulder to shoulder

never knowing when

but certain that the end

will come.

Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published more than 1,000 poems, many of which are ekphrastic and written in response to works of modern and contemporary art, in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world.

Leonard Gontarek: Sentinel On The Edges of Light and Shadow, Substance and Ethereal

Laundry                                                                    

1

All I know is each year

there were ducks on the iced tea of the lake.

All I know is I can reach God

as easily as a stone through stained

glass lit from inside at evening.

How long does it to return the dead from a crash?

How long does it take to make our way back?

All I know is idiots are trying to

steal the moonlight, and by idiots

I mean one or two, and that is

in the world of letters alone.                                                 

Windows, floating, shake like laundry on the water.

Terraces were never meant for this.

He was never meant to be a terrorist.

2

Sandy the fireworks are hailing over Little Eden tonight.

I like my fireworks filmed with a drone.

American Apparel issues

apology after posting picture

of Challenger explosion

as fireworks, apologizes

for posting Challenger

disaster as clouds.

Hey, Sandy, my, my, my.

Serenade                   

1

We buried my sister in secret.

We mourned in secret.

We mourned at night.

In nasty sunlight, too, we mourned.

We walked slow, but the slowest

was a stranger, and she was weeping, and lost.

My sister was just ashes in a beautiful box with two stone angels.

She was brought to church in a silver BMW.

We ate miniature cakes and coffee that was too hot,

and that was right.

We listened to Longfellow Serenade.

I don’t remember if it rained.

Someone asked if it rained because rain

is good luck at a funeral.

I don’t remember.

What kind of good luck can the dead have.                          

2

The relation to death

regardless of being and nothingness

is an exception,

seeing as in Plato,

toward as in Heidegger,                                

is not made up

of an uneasiness with regard

to the unknown.

Death is empirical.

I must answer.

The Other was a sign

one will never be even.

Today I draw from all this

that sadness must shy away from everything.

3

The source spoke on condition

of anonymity

because they were not authorized to discuss

the investigation publicly.

Place                                                  

1

The light spills from place to place.

The children ask why aren’t there any dinosaurs?

The children ask why are there so many languages?

The children ask why is that man homeless?

2

The light spills from place to place,

among flowers and stones.

What can be done?

Fences. Tall, gold, glittering, barbed.

3

The children ask why do people get sick?

The children ask why do grown-ups sometimes cry when they’re happy?

The children ask why do the kids next door have more toys than we do?                       

The children ask why do I have to invite that girl to my party?

4

The shadow of a cloud

passing like a plane

penned in the field.

Alive, light returns.

The light is hungry.

The light needs us.

Light is huge, an issue,

in the united hate of America.

Real                                                   

1

For the past hour,

war and peace for beginners, for you.

In the pane of late light, metal, pointillist,

if the book is called Predestination,

precede to the last page, lick your fingertip.

Everywhere, face in pool, clear, laconic.

Everyone died in this pond in the nineteenth century.

I accept that.

Out the window, wouldn’t you say in the middle of that

uncontestable joy, is sorrow? Makes you sad.

It is sad. I can’t explain. I follow the lovely wild horses

with my eyes. They become lost in the shadow of mountain and then, darkness.

I love the way that happens. But who can be certain, when it comes to imagery.

I have problems with everything and it is deep-seated, you say.

I have problems with you, you say. That has always hurt.

Afterwards, a mist comes off the body. A process we constantly interrupt.

Your mother sang spells.

The light – it was artificial and inappropriate – mixed with the powder in the limbs.

Your father put his head down on the sofa and wept.

You referred to truth as intel.

That seemed inappropriate, to reduce the findings of the world to slang.

For something like a second, cold sandwich.

My face in the mirror, strange and blue, fluorescent.

The reflected trees fill in with graffiti. What am I getting around to, loneliness.

For something like a second, of the passengers, faces.

I read the titles of the novels not the text.

No way, you said, not you of all people.

What makes you hyper? That makes me hyper.

The highway is for blurry trees and blurry stars, tonight.

Everything is out of reach. Everything is too high.

2

It is love and pain, baby, I would think, the shining within the mist today, that signals it will be

a good day, we understand, when we assess the figure in the mirror in the morning, who we concede,

has looked better, has possessed more contentment, the bones hidden in beauty and clothes demonstrate

taste, or a sense of it, is what we are given and it is enough, illumination, that is what it is about,

the feet glisten and become light, soon the body follows and with that the head which equals heart,

what we see in the glass may appear like a tree burning, this, I suggest, is joy, rushing to meet up with us,

whether at the end of a summer or an unforgettable snowfall, whether standing outside the fence of the

cemetery you passed every day on the way to school, the ghostly shape in the window of the closed

caretaker’s house, whether sitting in the square wading, like everyone, in six inches of shadow, waiting

for the dark birds to drift and spark, the coming evening tingeing the sculpture orange, low metal clouds,

it is all right, this is x, the beginning of wisdom or knowledge or something closely approximating it,

as close to our liking as we can expect, we conclude, everything from here has a chance to stand in the

soft light, or be moved into it.

3

I read about disappearing, a long time.

Notice, you don’t see passengers drop to their knees on the subway at 6 PM.

Notice Alaska’s republican senator wears an Incredible Hulk tie. I’m sure I don’t understand.

Sometimes they just make the hands of writers disappear.

Other times, a boy saves up his money to be with a prostitute.

Your poetry must not be greater than your doubt.

I hear the carnival music on the earth. Oh, lost, shiny objects.

Seconds on the chocolate cake. It’s like 452 degrees in here.

There’s nothing, the next morning, but holes where they drove in the pegs.

I thought they would thank me for writing about them.

I thought they’d be grateful for chronicling their terrible fortune.

Brings forth, next morning, a froth of scum and sweet leaves on the river.

The death of the novel and God suits me.

The ladder is too small. The post-modern art, too high.

The snow is blue acrylic, you may as well paint over this night.

Your car, never what has been hijacked. May not be stolen.

Which is the point. The dots reassemble.

You may initially experience resistance, this is normal.

If it persists, you should see someone.

You could see who I’m seeing, but I don’t know.

Light is a slave trade, clobbered with nightsticks.

Take this on faith, not mine. The earth is tiny demands.

Under the sycamores, under the burgundy Japanese trees.

The dogs in the garden and the statues don’t ask for peace.

What will it take to get you to hold me like a marble Madonna, like the wind holds my cats in summer?

The wind goes through like something invisible.

You can tell it really knows how to die, the wind.

A real God would understand.

Cosmos, snow-drop, wet tulip, broken film, time-lapse borealis. Colorful lumber fallen in the field.

This can’t be the world we wished for.

There is much I don’t know.

There is much I don’t know about myself.

Does that make me imprecise? Make this less true?

I am an incomplete idiot? Almost total failure?

Both wings never work at the same time. Of this I am pretty sure.

Longing is vague and it is long, almost a lifetime.

There is much I don’t know of how the world works, I am the first to admit.                                              

4

           

The ship is moored to August.

They are crowding the ship.

They have carried chests

of ice and cartons of bourbon

that tastes like southern dusks

leaked through leaves and branches

because that is what they

have been told.

The bourbon will make the tears

come easier and when they come,

it will make the sorrow of those tears

easier to bear. They will not

weep only. They will dance.

They are bad dancers, but they

are dancing with death so it doesn’t matter.

The trees will bleed. The future will appear empty.

It will be difficult to say if they are sad or happy

and they will have whiskey on their breath.

5

Do two things ever come together,

like the virtual joy and the real bourbon above?

Probably not,

but it is not a thing we can ever know.

Branches                   

1

When I looked out across the sea of death

against a littleness

myself.    Gilgamesh

2

Attention please.

3

When the soul lies down in the grass.

4

When the soul lies down in moon slide & Philadelphia,

eerie, lit paulowania, strange moths in lonely trees,

Iraq will be dark.

5

When the soul lies down,

a scythe fills the field.

It snows through the bars of the cell.

The cup I drink from tastes like zinc.                       

I rattle for the guard for I don’t know what.

I would not be alone if he were here.

What endures is explanations

& beauty, epitaphs on a scrabble board. My crown rusts.

In the world of trees, the birds squabble & make up,

I can only imagine.

Maybe War is not the answer.

A lumber truck, speeding downhill, overturns the Northern Lights.

God & dusk dismount.

When the soul lies down in the grass,

one taps a glass over & over on table top.

6

The Speaker obviously believes

the use of those words

was inappropriate,

as is trying to raise money

off the situation.

7

He's being absurd. But that's, you know,

an entertainer can be absurd.

8

Katy Perry, she’s kind of annoying, right?

Yeah, but I’m kind of in love with her.

9

It's not the language I would have used,

but I'm focusing on the issues

that I think are significant

in the country today.

10

Show a little faith.

11

Not to

tell lies

steal kill

not to

& so forth.

Try telling that to the woman you are pulling toward your body.

It is the perfume that is the appeal.

12

In God’s case, it is the perfume that is the appeal.

Light deranged in His branches.

The will of love is never empty, the call.

13

Show a little faith.

14

Evil can be scooped out like bacteria.

There is, of course, changing it.

Making a banner that flows, you can follow.

Ah, there is a reason to press your lips: her ring, her knuckles.

15

Show a little faith,

there’s magic in the night.

Leonard Gontarek’s recent books are He Looked Beyond My Faults and Saw My Needs

and Déjà vu Diner. His poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry,

Joyful Noise! An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry, The Working Poet,

American Poetry Review, Fence, Field, Verse, Poet Lore, Spinning Jenny, and as a tattoo.

He coordinates Peace/Works and hosts The Green Line Reading and Interview Series.

He was the 2011 Philadelphia Literary Death Match Champion and recipient of the

2014 Philadelphia Writers Conference Community Service Award. His poems have

been translated into Italian and Romanian.    www.leafscape.org/LeonardGontarek

Sally Mcrae--Sapphic Purveyor of Intrabeauty

No matter.

(All bets are off.)

I caught a glimpse of the future and you were expunged.

(Why is that?)

I was alarmed to find that you weren't there,

in the book of us.

Being knowing in the present sent me to the past.

The lights were off, a door was ajar and love had leaked out.

Who was last to leave?

Voile fluttered in the drafty corridor.

In the lab seedlings grew;

a few so well that they raised the roof.

Light streamed in.

Would it lead me back to you, to now?

Hillary's ascent was slicker

but he had Tenzing

and Kendal Mint Cake.

I just had an unconscionable thirst, unshakable faith

and light-dancing feet.

Pausing at a dizzying height,

to admire the view, assess my progress,

caused the whole lot to telescope back in.

Sending me hurtling through quasars,

reaching for

detached,

floating hands,

which no longer held wisdom —

clearly a silly construct, after all.

You weren’t There.

There, there, dear.

Always safe, Here.

Here, I AM.

**********

It is often a vacuum.

And they are wrong.

Constrained.

Distracted,

attracted by reflective ribbon.

Seeing only the millennial dust,

missing the abiding intrabeauty —

beyond Them & Us. 

A link to a video poem, PONTIFEX, by Sally:

http://youtu.be/bkSg8GjKfgc

Sally McRae originally hails from England and is presently living in Atlanta, USA. Having run wild across the globe (under the radar) for years, she has many interesting experiences to draw on for her poetry and prose writing; she’s played with royalty and sat with sages —perception is her constant toy. A former actress, television presenter, director, producer and executive producer of video and live events; she now enjoys a most interesting and diverse array of roles; mother, writer, yoga teacher, reflexologist, mentor, and creative director at One Creative Choice. Wit is her sword and savior, keeping her fully grounded in reality. Her simple, narrative poetry has a musicality and sincerity that reaches deep; it dances with duality and humor — an appropriate reflection of the author. Sally is currently working with the theme of love – in all its forms – and thinks that the ancient Greeks were onto a thing or two…

www.instagram.com/onecreativechoice

www.twitter.com/1creativechoice

www.facebook.com/onecreativechoice

www.onecreativechoice.com

Corey Mesler: An Engineer Making the Ominous Days Smaller

Transformation

My wife’s castoff pajama
bottoms lie curled
on the unmade bed like
some kind of sensuous
cat. Alone at home they
startle me as if I have
walked into a forbidden
room. I could pick them
up and smell the warm
goodness of her but I let
them lie. Later when I
return, determined to
clutch them this time, they
are gone, and the day
becomes one of reflection
and tough, spontaneous grace.


Wee one

Wee one,
voice so

shrill I
almost can-

not per-
ceive it,

nor can I
find the

words to
answer,

here in
the castle,

so far
from your
pinpoint eyes,

your mouth
an obelus.


The day is big

The day is big
and
I am small.
I find
myself after losing
so much
else. You are there
and you’re
holding out your
hand,
in your palm
an egg.
I want
to talk to you about
the change
but it is not
essential. You are
here. Even
when the day is so
big
I fall from its height.



COREY MESLER has published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Good Poems American Places, and Esquire/Narrative. He has published 8 novels, 4 short story collections, numerous chapbooks, and 4 full-length poetry collections. He’s been nominated for many Pushcarts, and 2 of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. With his wife he runs a bookstore in Memphis. He can be found at https://coreymesler.wordpress.com.

John Dorsey Is Your Woody Guthrie; Did You Know That?

Philadelphia Poem for David Snellbaker

You were the first real friend I ever made here

Telling me about your days with a Mexican religious cult

Where they tried to brainwash that man

right out of your hair.

You said, “They’d have to whitewash the streets with blood”

to make you feel clean again.

Bridget

You sang songs by Woody Guthrie

Not the originals

But covers by the Counting Crows

Placed your heart in a locket

Hidden under a pillow

On the third floor of a West Toledo mental ward.

You never learned how to dance

Just painted flowers on your toes

when it came time to bloom.

Drunk John

gave me $7 and a cigar snip

for my 25th birthday

the morning his girlfriend

kicked him out

of their spruce street apartment.

the year before

i’d watched as she passed him

love notes in hindi

across the bar

while he listened

to iggy pop

on the jukebox

as it rained outside.

i could swear he was crying  

when he sang happy birthday

under the busted street light.

John Dorsey is the author of several collections of poetry, including “Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw’s Prayer” (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), “Sodomy is a City in New Jersey” (American Mettle Books, 2010), “Tombstone Factory” (Epic Rites Press, 2013), and most recently, “Natural Selection: Early Poems” (Kilmog Press, 2014). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com