Christopher Mulrooney and the Prismatic Waistcoat Scintillating by Still Life

Handel at the Hague

down watercourses the overture in F
which is the Thames in all its glory
and upon it the King’s party
making merry as the fashion is considered
all in cascading trills Boulez conducting


petunia

in a vase of some aspect reflecting the light
across its surface as a blot of daintiness
upon its flowered symbols and representations
marking time as it were for the bud to open
and cast its aroma amid gadgets and furnishings


defeat and failure

the 1st gentleman of all Europe
prismatic waistcoat white silken trousers
and an eyepiece yes it is the demm’d
elusive Pimpernel I swear it is true
rolling a barrel of monkeys for you



Christopher Mulrooney is the author of toy balloons (Another New Calligraphy), Rimbaud (Finishing Line Press), and alarm (Shirt Pocket Press). His work has recently appeared in San Francisco Salvo, riverbabble, Dink Mag, Clementine Poetry Journal, and Blue Lotus Review.

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

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. 

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.

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.