Donal Mahoney And The Flophouse Of The Circus Maximus

A Caseworker’s Nightmare

Two ancient men
named Ruben Kohn
by happenstance
had sleeping rooms
in the Ace Hotel for Men

a flophouse home
to mendicants and drunks,
the mentally impaired
and a few divorced men
paying child support.

When the government said
some mentally impaired folks
were well enough to live
among the general population,
the Ruben Kohns arrived

late one night and they
choked Thomas O’Leary,
divorced and drinking
in his room, who started
singing for all to hear,

“You Kohns are cuckoo!"
No one claimed O’Leary’s body,
and the Kohns were sent away
to different institutions
to live out their lives

far from the circus maximus
of the general population, never
again to hear a normal person
like tenor Thomas O’Leary sing
“You Kohns are cuckoo!”


Nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, Donal Mahoney has had work published in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/.

Thomas Zimmerman And The Monsters Of Our Backyards

Coyote

These woods behind the house are home
to a coyote
that I haven’t seen but heard.

It wakens sleepers in the brain,
that yip that’s not a dog’s.

The dusk is sifting down,
blue powder like a medicine,
or bane, that, either way, we take.
And I am out
with Scarlet on reconnaissance.

This turf is hers,
she thinks, but something feral’s in
the shadows, large and ratchet-
limbed. This world is mine,
I think, but something wild and dark’s
inside: it’s pulsing, burning, deeper
than my heart, a thing
that I will leave for now.

I pull the leash to get us safely home—
but know that I must circle back,
alone.


To the Absent

That big blue spruce that’s flailing in the breeze
is like a shaggy bear, like me drunk at
a wedding dance: the singer’s voice is flat,
the band is shot, and I’m down on my knees
to grab my glasses, which have fallen off.
Still learning how to write these poems alone.
Last song, when Dylan said the heat pipes cough,
I did believe him. Now I hear the groan
of water trying to boil. I’m making tea
for someone sick who’d rather have a beer.
And night is falling fast, no stars to see
in all this overcast, so bedtime’s near.
The book I’m reading, though, is dull and lined
with mirrors. Please come back. I loathe my mind.


Letting the Monster Get Us

You’re sliding down the mountainside, your pick
won’t help you grip. . . . the monster gets
you every time, and bites you into bits.
You can’t remember you forget you crave
it every time. You’re eaten. You’re inside.
You’re loved. Perspective shift is all it is.
A fish’s eye that’s drying on the beach.
A God’s eye that she made at camp for Mom.
A blind eye that they cannot turn. The weak
“I” that the author hides behind, the un-
reliable that none of us escapes
for long. I know he knows I lust for it.
Because he knows I know he knows, I’m his.

Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His chapbook In Stereo: Thirteen Sonnets and Some Fire Music appeared from The Camel Saloon Books on Blog in 2012. Tom's website: http://thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/

Kyle Hemmings And The Reverse Harvest Of The Night Sky

Heroes of War # I

The nights remind me of old x-rays

of grandmother's arthritis. It was about

as intimate as she got during the late phases

of the war. When it rained, we prayed

to the sea anemones reciting chants in our ears.

Vladimir, with one arm in a sling, tapped

my shoulder & said to look up at the night sky.

He said it was a kind of reverse harvest.

We opened our hands. What fell were the things taken from us.

Heroes of War #2

Her face in the low-key of mist.

The tattoo on her shoulder reads

"Ark Begin Again." Her gun jams

& I signal her that I'm past perfect.

We share a bottle of anyone's soda.

We are one mile from the railway,

but the trains are stalling underwater.

We can hitch a ride on a stone, I joke.

Her eyes devour me.

The post-landscape is a variety

of breadcrumbs. Her belly growls

that she is tired of long needles

to put her to sleep.

She's tired of stick-figured rapists.

Heroes of War #3

After we heard our fathers and brothers had lost,

we were naked to the comets. There was the sound

of wind chimes imitating ruined choir girls.

Mother tried to face herself in clear broth.

My sister fabricated stories about eagles landing

on her bare arm. At midnight, we held hands,

hoping in some way to peck the eyes out of the night.

After mother died by slipping in her sleep, we exhaled

the souls of our old toys. The soldiers of Ark came

knocking on our doors. They said "You have company."

Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. He has been published in Your Impossible Voice, Night Train, Toad, Matchbox and elsewhere.His latest ebook is Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys at amazon.com. He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/

Jeffrey Zable's Money Seeds Will Not Save You From The Winter

THE PLAN

     I took the money seeds and panted them in the ground.
Each day I watered them, and waited. To my surprise about
two weeks later I began to see the edges of bills coming up
from the soil. The first bill that was discernible was only a five,
but after that, tens, twenties, fifties. . . until finally hundreds
were sprouting everywhere.
     I knew I had to keep an eye on my crop in case the neighbors
found out, so I brought out a tent and slept beside my plants
day after day.
     When I was sure that the last bill had sprouted, I held my
revolver in one hand and did the picking with the other.
     All told, the crop was worth $14,780.
     I quickly went into the house and deposited the money into
my safe, picked up a handful of new seeds, and planted them,
all the while checking to see if anyone was watching.
     Returning to the safe I took out enough to buy a larger and
more powerful weapon, as I figured there was no such thing
as being too secure. . .
     I decided that once I amassed a fortune I would move some-
where else--maybe to an island where no one will find me—
which suits me just fine. . .


WHAT WINTER MEANS TO ME

The dogshit on the sidewalk looks sad and lonely,
and the faces in the supermarket have lost their luster.
When I think of my past I have no idea how I got this far,
only that my hands are always cold
and someone is trying to call me
whose words never quite reach my ears.
I want to say something positive, but the reaper is always there
in the back of my head,
so I walk to the window and say something to the outside air:
Would you please give me a thousand more chances?
Would you please forgive me for all the wasted time?
Would you please put me out of my misery?
One by one the faces appear in front of me
telling me I’m beyond redemption,
that my position is final.
What is my position? I finally ask, and then there is silence.
I go back to bed and pull the covers over my head,
stay that way for the rest of the season.





Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and percussionist who plays Afro-Cuban folkloric music
for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area. He's published
five chapbooks including Zable's Fables with an introduction by the late great Beat poet
Harold Norse. Present or upcoming writing in Clarion, Coe Review, Ishaan Literary Review,
Chaos Poetry Review (featured poet), Barbaric Yawp, Chrome Baby, Dreginald, Z-Composition,
Uppagus, On The Rusk, Snapping Twig, Purple Pig Lit, Pound Of Flash, and many others.

Richard King Perkins II: To Blur The Night And The Fear Of Number #13

Bloodstone

 I fall asleep in a wreath of pain.
 The ground is compressing like
 greedy hands, green-grey as
 a split avocado left overnight
 on the kitchen island. Disbelievers
 in my injury quickly become
 haters. I am miserable. Try not
 to notice my stammering. It is
 encoded with a message meant
 for someone else’s relief. The
 ground responds by ignoring me
 deeply.


Black Harvest

 I could be a philanthropist, a giving woman, a patron;
 if I released the poor children in my palms
 and freely gave the strychnine welling in my eyes
 should it ever left my purse string lids.
 Little Luke with glasses tried running from me at first,
 breaking all the rules
 of our cost/benefit arrangement.
 Starving in my three and a half car garage
 eating unaccounted ants creeping across the floor;
 an education beyond price and value.
 Crying in the thick dust—getting punched by bigger kids;
 doesn’t want to tangle with their cold lashes.
 And if he doesn’t watch the little ones,
 he won’t see that danger when it comes.
 Little Luke with glasses loses his easy personality.
 He’s a rich woman’s dying child; kind of mine,
 and he’s afraid of the music fluting through the air.
 He’s a poorly given thing
 and his will is almost gone.
 He’s the descendant of black cats and triskaidekaphobia
 trying so hard not to send his fourth mother
 deeper into the mire of a black harvest cornfield.



 Blur the Night

 Blur the night when I last forgot
 that I was imaginary.

 So what if I blurred the night
 when I first gave in to the certainty
 that dying was real but momentary?

 And the night old man Kenton
 gave me a toolbox of hasps and files
 and I laughed on the rooftops
 because it hurt so much either way.

 And that it made me sadder than
 a swan twisting its own neck to breaking.

 And when towheaded Sarah heard me
 strangling myself, she asked me to
 go away and took back her salutations
 and native song. Such cruelty.

 I still remember the greeting—
 her hazel eyes holding back
 six possible futures
 and the promise of a danse macabre.



Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL with his wife Vickie and daughter Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in hundreds of publications including The Louisiana Review, Bluestem, Emrys Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, Two Thirds North, The Red Cedar Review and The William and Mary Review. He has poems forthcoming in the Roanoke Review, The Alembic and Milkfist. His poem “Distillery of the Sun” was awarded second place in the 2014 Bacopa Literary Review poetry contest.

John Grey--Lucid Among Snow and Snakes--Do Not Ask If He Or She Still Loves You....

CHOP WOOD

Kitchen table. Mid-January.
Sugar dissolves in coffee.
Sweetens the bitterness.

Your face. Your mouth.
They aren't going to the same lengths any more.
They're content to occasionally toss out an opinion.

Snow smothers the yard and beyond.
It's day out but it creeps around like darkness.
It's as if we haven't woken yet.
As if life is one long delayed reaction to being born.

I will need to make tracks in that snow.
The perfect surface can't last forever.

I have a job to do.
Chop wood. Sweep up the shadows.
You will merely muse.
Spend the day basically philosophical.

I’ll be up to my knees in that white stuff.
It turns the simplest sprint into a marathon.
I will not ask myself
"Do you still love me?"
Not with the wind so bitter.
Not with the details buried,
the temperature imprudent.


RENTED APARTMENT

night of the roach invasion
brown army
your disgust yanked tight,
our sacred goods profaned -
my love of all living things giving ground
even before the first spray,
the volley of rolled-up newspaper -

kitchen tiles like living mosaics -
I stomped,
you swatted -
an hour's glimpse at what we're both prepared to do

we swept up the bodies -
you're all invited to our house-warming party -
just picture the battles behind all this -
imagine the brooms.

 
SNAKE IN THE GRASS

Faint hissing from an unknown path;
a snake - the hunger of the body
that never questions.

I close my eyes.
I listen. I hear.
Lucidity.
The snake moves its secret mass.
In tall grass, I hail shudder and glide.

Don't worry.
I won't give you away.
Besides, you grip me between your jaws.
You show me glimpses
of the long dark tunnel to your stomach,
I feel your breath,
the acids of down below.

So let our shared compassion on this night
relax the both of us.
Your slither is no dagger.
My long blue shadow bears no axe.


John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in Oyez Review, Rockhurst Review and Spindrift with work upcoming in New Plains Review, Big Muddy Review, Willow Review and Louisiana Literature.   

Anne Whitehouse--Loosening the Phylactery, But Keeping the Sanctity

PRESERVES             

Cooking berries with sugar,
I stand over a hot stove on a hot day.
Steam of summer’s sweet essence
curls up my nostrils.

I stir my jam,
and in the mind’s inner eye
I see a procession
of brightly-colored gliders
like human butterflies
climbing the thermals
over Brace Field,
soaring over Oblong Valley,

where the crickets deepen their song
as the morning advances,
and fields of corn and hay
are growing dark and ripening.
Vines tangle in the wetlands,
fireflies glimmer after twilight,
and the deer are watchful.

High in the Green Mountains,
surrounded by forest, open to the sky,
underground springs feed the crystal lake.
On the surface swims a loon.
We float on our backs,
gazing at the clouds and sky,
cradled by water caressing us like silk.

Here, where the forest keeps the secrets
of our younger selves.



REMEMBERING CORA

I remember how Cora said fiercely,
concerned for her daughter,
“Well, her mother has cancer,”
as if it were her failing
instead of affliction.
The family tragedy,
her brother’s malady,
was turning her bones
to cottage cheese.
Her skeleton self-destructed,
but her spirit soared far away
to the Rockies and the Sierras,
to Florence, Paris, and Rome.
“Cora was fun, and I was along
for the ride,” said her husband
of the only non-lawyer
who’d bested him in argument.
She knew how to respond
to a challenge,
ruthlessly rallying her forces
with chemotherapy’s
destructive weapons.
But God had other plans.
And her daughter sat at the shiva 
with bent head bearing her grief,
her long legs twisted around each other,
her feet huddled for comfort
in fuzzy slippers.


AFTER IRENE

After the storm passed,
and the rain stopped,
and the wind at last died down,
night fell, warm, velvety,
and moonless.
                        In the morning,
the sun gilded all it touched
in cleansed and glistening air,
and the plants of the earth
sprang back to life.
                        Lying about
were fallen trees and broken branches,
downed power lines and wrecked buildings.
The waters no longer raged,
the floods were receding.
We went about repairing the damage,
finding what was essential,
how to survive.




THE DECISIVE MOMENT

                                   
The decisive moment, it is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms, which gives that event its proper expression.
                                                                                    -Henri Cartier-Bresson

On a glorious June evening
after the retrospective exhibit
of Cartier-Bresson’s world-spanning art,
I strolled into Central Park,
and left the path to climb the rock.

Below me, a woman approached the arch under a bridge
trailing two leashes connected to twin beagles.
The heightened perspective, the swirls of motion
made a picture Henri might have taken.

Early summer light, bright but not blinding,
warm but not hot. It went through me,
tinting my mind like wine through water.

My vision created frames as I walked,
keeping violent emotions at bay,
where what seems threatening
can be studied from an inner distance,
like the way one walks around a sculpture
to view it from all angles.

No matter how tenuous I think are the ties
that bind me to the miserable past,
I am not deceived;
heartstrings can be played on,
and twist and tighten
at a moment’s notice,
like a devilish phylactery
strangling the life out of me.

Surprising the pain that endures
or perhaps not strange—
enmeshed in desperate, unequal trials
I had no chance of winning,
I buried my feelings so deep
I couldn’t find them
and turned my heart to stone,
that slowly is softening.

Anne Whitehouse is the author of five poetry collections—THE SURVEYOR’S HAND, BLESSINGS AND CURSES, BEAR IN MIND, ONE SUNDAY MORNING, and THE REFRAIN, as well as a novel, FALL LOVE. I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and live in New York City. My poetry, fiction, reviews, and articles are published widely. www.annewhitehouse.com