April Salzano With Absent Aura And The Color Of Silence

Because Laundry

isn’t something you do,

it’s something you wear, clean

clothes are easy to take for granted.

Because dinner isn’t something you make,

it’s something you eat, a full gut

is just another need fulfilled.

Because pleasure isn’t something you give,

it’s something you take, sex

has become a lot less frequent.

Because poetry isn’t something you write,

it’s something you read, value

isn’t borne of words.

Because respect isn’t something you earn,

it’s something you demand,

you stand tall enough to cast a shadow.

Because time isn’t something you make,

it’s something you lose, days

always end against your will.

Because angry isn’t something you get,

it’s something you are,

forgiveness is a word you do not understand.



To Cross or Not to Cross


fingers, bridges, boundaries.

The stillness is rhetorical. There

is no answer, no salvaging

punctuation to bottle. Neck

in hand, I begin to lose,

first sight, then sound, tunnel down

into a blue-blank that turns

white as absent aura.



legs, time, over.

The fall was inevitable. Here

is the answer, a saving. Grace

escapes me last, just before

anger and survival

instinct. I remember the dark

cavern of yesterday not as a time,

but as a place, a space occupied

by twins, conjoined at the soul.

I go black when I have travelled too far

into memory’s cave.



eyes, my heart, distance.

The infinite becomes reached

and realized, epiphanic in its vision.

Between is home, neutral

territory for words at war. Behind

my enemy’s lines, I wave

a white flag. Drowning, I

stop the futile flapping

of arms against a current

stronger than both of us.




Hearing Here

The color of silence is caramel,

a sticky nothingness dragged through

by repetition of sounds that have already passed,

a trick the brain plays to create stimulation.

A bird chirping, house settling as if breathing

a pause, a pipe, a floorboard, random tap. Repeat

sounds until I can no longer resurrect them

from memory and listen to noises from my own

body. Ears ring a high pitched tune, almost

an octave above capture. Eyelashes scrape

against pillow. Blood moves heavy to heart

and back. Cilia whistles in nasal cavity.

Circular sound of breath. The pattern

won’t hold. Saliva swallowed. Fridge hums.

I imagine traffic a mile away rolling

toward some irrelevant destination.

Woodpecker knocks on dead trunk.

Eyes open and it all disappears.


April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is currently working on a memoir on raising a child with autism along with several collections of poetry. Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Award and has appeared in journals such as The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle. Her first chapbook, The Girl of My Dreams, is forthcoming in spring 2015 from Dancing Girl Press. The author serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press (www.kindofahurricanepress.com).

Randy Brown Jr. Speaks of Writer's Block in Utopia

Fighting Writer’s Block in Google Chat

There’s never enough time.

Time: my ultimate enemy.

Enemy: a friend.

A friend told the red coats where I was hiding.

The red coats made me confess.

And so, here I am,

rotting in a cell made of three hands and numbers I know all too well.

Time is my enemy.

Who said anything about hell?

Fighting Writer’s Block on Sunday Night

She basked in a bevy of mist.

She was the first of her kind;

from Greece with hugs,

and those who accompanied her—

miles from the tail-end of a current gone south.

She was the best of mine,

even when she was out of her mind.

Ninety-Seconds for Life

Mural of the unscathed mind,

read me a line from my demise.

And if you could be so kind as to

write with red ink from the souls of

beings who have been reprimanded

for romanticism, skin color, or faith.

My faith has brought me here today,

in a way in which can only be written for

grand screens.

Utopian scenes haunt me in my sleep.

For the sake of humanity, in another life,

I write stories.

For the sake of a family,

I share experiences that would, otherwise,

be characterized as ‘not-real’ if not for

three letters: MFA

Fuck you.

For the sake of those who do not believe,

I walk the blocks of a concrete jungle,

heavy optimism in tote:

Someone else did it here;

written before the eyes of God.

True North

for Julia

It was our dream to be here,

yet I feel as though

I was the one who was extremely serious.

One must be nearly extreme,

desperate,

or borderline insane to

make life altering decisions for dreams.

Or maybe The Sparrow lied,

hiding behind beliefs that

I’d wait,

go away,

or further move mountains to remain within distances of the asylum.

If we’re all crazy,

but The Sparrow viewed me as the Only

then our cells float side by side in hurricanic tides,

and it is her misunderstanding of perspective

which voids her of truth.

It was our dream to be here.

The Sparrow now nests in a land far from thee.

It was our dream to dream here.

I wonder if she still dreams.

Randy Brown Jr. is a writer, visionary, and creator. He attends The New School's MFA in Creative Writing-Fiction program in New York City. His writing has been published in The Sting, the Student Lifestyle Magazine of Kennesaw State University. He served as a juror for the 2015 NYC Scholastic Writing Competition. He is currently working on his debut novel--a work of literary science fiction."

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.