James Diaz Brings Ferris Wheels, Thunderstorm Sex, Warehouse Eyes, and A Rust of Wounds

Toilet Romance

Gone
past the hills steel gray
ferris wheel
time when I was imbued with numb infinity
counting cars

since nowhere is still nowhere
I draw a map for you
consisting of my skin
and a collection of scars
this road is warped
I have dreamed of anatomy changing

nothing and no one
I am strapped to a bullet
pulled through a straw
into the record you keep
of time
and it's sleepy spiders
who love me like a god.


Tacky Stockings

one is for the strive
a person places
like bee stings
on horizon's cup

empty barricades
tooth alley
and I hate my streets
this urban over brick over ruined faces of devastated mornings

come through me
each parable
a burning turn
ferris wheels and thunderstorm sex in the back seat
I was pulled from Brooklyn
into New Jersey at 5 a. m.
blitzed out interstate
wrapped around stars
come to the point

I can't realize truth
from the distorted
elements
where time keeps building it's rust of wounds
to hound me down
for all of my artificial kisses.



Suicide As Travel


My death is like dark water
it toys with breaking points
asleep in the head
roach of severed dreams
I ahem in my suicide
after
always after
and flatter than a road
coughing
every lung is tied
to lampposts with cameras in their bones
dry and tired in the socket
where oceans grind their cocks
in a song
I licked
when I was sick
and radioactive
a bad omen
a month of pain
with warehouse eyes
life is good
when I'm stuffed in a car
with a candle light tail
that sheds its skin and shame
as it shoots for the most distant star
a bone in the asshole
which throws a fit
and is terrified of corners
where the staff can rape you
and eat your shoe laces
but they can't pin hope across your wrists
which are dying to be split
like the grin of a damaged God
for good
I am done
a tape loop
unspooled
with busted teeth drinking the wall
the truth is
you are only loved
when your nipples are as cold as gold
sleeping dog
yawn
for I am really ignorant
and know only how to do this one thing.



Bio: James Diaz lives in New York where he is currently trying to figure shit out. Other writings of his can be found in Cheap Pop Lit, Ditch, Pismire, Collective Exile and The Idiom.

Neil Fulwood Smiles the Caprophagous Grin at the Man Behind the Man

Peril

A much-loved cliché

from scratchy two-reelers

of the silent era:

the villain (moustache

extravagantly twirled)

ties the girl to the tracks,

gloats as the express

(gouts of smoke, cow-

catcher prominent) comes

hurtling nearer and nearer.

Fumes as the hero (clean

cut, good teeth) pulls off

the last minute appearance,

doles out the justified

smack in the mouth, gets

the girl and doesn’t even

delay the express. Now

imagine yourself

as the damsel in distress.

The railroad tracks

are your mortgage

and your student debt,

the length of rope

the job you’re told

you’re lucky to have;

the train is the bank

and its carriages are full

of the fat and odious cigars

of those who are fatter

and more odious still.

The villain? He’s president,

prime minister, royalty

and clergy; he’s there

in the bushes, lurking, excited,

his caprophagous grin

untroubled by a justified fist.

Snake Oil

     All governments are lying cocksuckers. – BILL HICKS

All governments are salesmen,

all governments have sample cases

full of snake oil and scotch mist.

All governments are telesales callers,

all governments want to keep you on the line

while they take your details, run a few checks.

All governments are door-knockers,

all governments shove their shiny shoes

between door and jamb. Or use a battering ram.

All governments are a red dot, a telescopic lens,

all governments are the man behind the man,

the voice in the earpiece that gives the order.

Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, UK, in 1972. He's the author of film studies book The Films of Sam Peckinpah. His poetry has appeared in The Morning Star, Art Decades, The Blue Hour, The Ofi Press, Section 8 and Rat's Ass Review. Neil is married, holds down a day job and subsidizes several real ale pubs. He enjoys cinema, a wide variety of music, and making abusive comments about the government on social media. 

Daniel Y. Harris' World of Cliched Mesmerism, Komodo-Dragon Bags, and Mutation Masses

Scheherazade 1001 

The logic of a base is misnomer and defamation.
Eddy overrehearses his punk-garage band, Libido
of Eunuch’s, antipop single “Brat Crud Harbinger,”
grafted as condemned stock and mutation mass,
itching to pierce the shape-shifters on a night
of tribunals in flash drives. Sequences of toxic
side-effects coaxed from pricked licks and one
octave chants, court triumphalists to mock-up
and bulk. Eddy Daemon sashays his effete bod
against the press and the bleak community who
seek his agony as black-purple lump strangled
beside a hacked-off head. They’re spoilsports
of an ancient peoplehood. We’re the bystanders.
Eddy’s the falsely accused executioner’s heir.



Nebuchadnezzar 587  

Fatigued with indolence, blunted by a clichéd
Mesmerism—haggard, stony, half-buried wreck
and autoclave of ambition, Eddy Daemon sports
a gigantic horn of spite and ushers in a minute
era of hyphenation and circumventing sleights:
nerve-gleamed, raw-seamed, witty-sullen-jowled,
ghost-crabbed, thorn-tattered, messiah-hived-sick,
god-castrated, sod-smutted, swivel-jerked and tasty
morseled feminazi as manbearpig in low mondaze.
How unjubilant and malice-yielded! Nothing stays
the course, gloss-throated and flaked in foaming
at the mouth. Cylinders and spires pass from sight.
There’s no chance to get a bearing. Even to scroll
back to Ezra’s Walt concession stigmatizes clarity.



Anthropoid 3761

It all comes down to the prophesied sedge:
achenes and solid stems, the blackthorned scag
skullcap and skinsuit of woody lobes with spikelets.
In the marsh, the worn down nub of concupiscent
curds ribs the mascary buggered one or another
as plunger-name of the raw crease. Today, Eddy’s
nosed, clutching his sachet of cosmetics in his gold
clipped komodo-dragon bag. No nostalgia. No edits.
No quiddity with its affected monism. It’s the last
season of day one. We’re on our way kthxbai! Omg
liek u wana c my fab nu jurnal? Dude, no, you make
me sick n00b. Something about searing sophistry
and prelapsarian catpiss. Incomplete, bottomline.
Eddy prostrates before the doorjamb in defeat.


Daniel Y. Harris is the author of Esophagus Writ (with Rupert M. Loydell, The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2014), Hyperlinks of Anxiety(Cervena Barva Press, 2013), The New Arcana (with John Amen, NYQ Books, 2012), Paul Celan and the Messiah’s Broken Levered Tongue (with Adam Shechter, Cervena Barva Press, 2010; picked by The Jewish Forward as one of the 5 most important Jewish poetry books of 2010) and Unio Mystica (Cross-Cultural Communications, 2009). Some of his poetry, experimental writing, art, and essays have been published inBlazeVOX, Denver Quarterly, European Judaism, Exquisite Corpse, The New York Quarterly, In Posse Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Magazine.com and Poetry Salzburg Review. He is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of The New York Quarterly Foundation. His website iswww.danielyharris.com.

Allison Grayhurst Knows That History Is A Hyena Locked In Spiraling Aberrations, Making Patterns On The Naked Land

Desires Traversed 

There are lines that frame me in negative expectations.
There are sweet tufts of weeds I would like to pet like a kitten. And
eyelashes that spark a gentle nostalgia. There are too many eras
walked through, never to be re-entered, and remnants of lore and legends
like pigeon droppings on pavement, washed away by storm.
I have grown too used to the drapes being closed,
to all mannerisms of my fugitive vitality being ignored. Saturn is a vacuum,
galactic in its weighty substance and in its cold temperature push -
condensing my liquid garden into impenetrable ice.
A tightening in my intestines. Shoelaces undone and left.
I eat the seeds I am supposed to discard. I am beyond knowing if
I am broken. And oh the circle of things! Up the escalator.
Colour-coded stars. A dermal abrasion.
Things conspire like sunken feet in the mire
unwinding of doom. Archaeology I cannot speak of,
guaranteeing a false result. Straining to sound a faith that will cleanse.
Distances crossed, to point to and witness
the handicap of being a single being
amongst a kaleidoscope of organic tapestry.
Shifting to let go, to imagine archangel
power and not have it substituted with
a neutralizing force. Force that immunizes
growth from the throes of artful transformation.
There are hills and hallways that draw me to their altars.
Little did I know that dreams too long waited on become waterlogged,
that suffering is not a stigma or a banner to flaunt, and love
is mostly about honouring inner limitations,
challenging them to consolidate, regain momentum then
unequivocally be breached or be immutably restored.
I am dissolved into this squeezing, into denying
the little that I know that quivers precise, deconstructing the intricate
solidity of greed and hard resilient walls.
Orbits are barb-wired.
Countdowns counting, dictating short spurt breaths. As my tendons stretch
only in my imagination. And these doorways become
sunsets I stand straddled across.
History is a hyena, grotesquely curved,
pulling down royal constellations. I have learned that peace can be a pyre
were loins burn exquisite, can also be a dishonest maturing,
where desires are reduced to fruit flies annoyances,
where coming to terms with reality is a step toward
entropy.
Little did I know that bodies melt with their spirits –
more than dead houses or gloves, defining one tick, one
conjoining of fibres, pulsing a fingerprint, pulsing one lifetime
possessed.

Yes

I will stay with you,
acknowledging the four factors that create warriors, faces
of ceramic gods. Taking in these four tides - erratic electrical fumes;
unarguable weight; ripe stiffening; charitable manoeuvring -
this potently controlled receiving, snapping us into a place
where we are never betrayed by our mutual craving for equal depth and ideals.
The way you look when my eyes are closed. I see a visceral chemistry
copulating in your vascular system, changing the consistency of your skin,
showering you with oil. These pressure points owned, wrapped in dark honey -
a sticky rich worship and weeping - myself, dripping against you, inside
a red whirlwind of our joined imaginations.
We have walked rooftops, looked down and felt at home.
We worked many nights on forgiveness, smashing snowglobe sceneries,
defusing any fantastical expectation just to be honest
when we finally awoke, to take each other blatantly,
communing as soulmates should - peeled of barriers, wrapped freely
in fundamental urges and a desperation
for speed.
Pliant movement - karma or coincidence? It matters little, for it is
gathering storm. It reminds me of an unkempt appearance, appearing
weak, watery, but is really like the hollow delicate bone of every bird
built for flight - an aimed and painted arrow, capable of penetrating a crust of sky.
This is our alchemy stripped of ethics. This is us as a curry powder-
and-turmeric mix, mixed, we enhance one another’s scent and tone. Yes,
I will stay with you, stay with our patterns locked
in perfect spiraling aberration, stay on side streets, on wet park floors,
under our green roof, stay with you, holding with solidarity our sunken joys,
precarious compulsions, dandelions or maggots, holding
a constant means of God-given restoration.


My Place

At one end are the setting shapes
of friendships left behind
like the breaking of a mug
or a foggy window.
I leave that end and hold no other.
I stand on the crust of a sandy shore.
Together I swam through the salty flavour
with a dolphin by my side. Alone,
I leave my companion and the waves that serve me no more.
There are things I wish for like
pineapple and starfish fruit. There are
times I believe in the hot sands, believe
in the beautiful face of loneliness. I wave
at the birds and they follow me. I lay still
and the air has filled my thirst. On the
grassy green beyond I know one day I will
move. I know of proud children smiling at the
stars. I know there is nothing that can kill
the large immaculate Love. I died with my flesh.
I am born a new way, cut off from last-year's persona.
I look to the water - its depths
no longer take me in, its blue is but a shallow tone. I close my eyes
and rains descend like an artist's stroke,
making patterns on the naked land.

Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has over 625 poems published in more than 300 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers in 1995. Since then she has published eleven other books of poetry and six collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press in December 2012. In 2014 her chapbook Surrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series in October 2014. More recently, she has a chapbook Currents pending publication this August with Pink.Girl.Ink. Press. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com

Some of places my work has appeared in include Parabola (Alone & Together print issue summer 2012); Literary Orphans; Blue Fifth Review; The American Aesthetic; Agave Magazine; South Florida Arts Journal; Gris-Gris; The Muse – An International Journal of Poetry, Storm Cellar, New Binary Press Anthology; The Brooklyn Voice; Straylight Literary Magazine (print); The Milo Review; Foliate Oak Literary Magazine; The Antigonish Review; Dalhousie Review; The New Quarterly; Wascana Review; Poetry Nottingham International; The Cape Rock; Ayris; Journal of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry; The Toronto Quarterly; Fogged Clarity, Boston Poetry Magazine; Decanto; White Wall Review. 

Scott Thomas Outlar and the Entropy of the Harbinger's Cackle

Bloody on Both Ends

I fell in love with a future
that didn’t quite make it out of the womb;

scissors went straight to the throat
like the dagger placed in my side.

She said it’d be easier this way
as I stumbled to the edge of the pier;

I fell deep into the clear blue
just looking for somewhere to come clean.


Private Viewing


They tied me here
and rode away
that I may waste alone
at the edge of world’s abyss
to watch the coming storm
as gray clouds ominously merge
to form a blackness as dark as the reaper’s cloak
Zigzag bolts of electric anger
singe the evening air
with crackling anticipation
of a flood, a fire, a tragedy, a miracle

My eyes close briefly
as exhaustion sets in –
my body worn down
my mind a puddle of mush –
but shots of roaring thunder
jerk me back awake
that I may serve my sentenced fate
and watch the approaching storm
as it gathers ghastly momentum
Rushing forward with swift precision
the hammer of karma is being delivered
with a shot, a shout, a scream,
a maniacal laugh, a harbinger’s cackle
The final respite draws near

The calm is eerie
in the eye of the storm
The devastation on the front end
left the world in bloody ruins
though I know
a fate much worse still lies ahead
With every agonizing breath
I’m forced to anticipate
the hellish violence
that will soon be unleashed
by the horsemen and angels of death
who tied me here
to force this wretched catastrophic viewing

If this is Revelation
then I don’t want any part of it
I witness the heavens crack open
but no savior rides in
to stop the carnage being wrought
It’s all the Devil’s due being taken this day
raped and torn and twisted
back to ash and dirt and dust
If this is the Second Coming
the picture is certainly not as pretty
as we’d been led to believe in the pews
No pearly gates, no gold paved streets,
no family reunion, no crown, no throne
It’s all brimstone charcoal chaos
from where I’m sitting

Finally let loose in the wasteland
as my binds are removed
by the same crows
that plucked my eyes out earlier
after they’d seen the final moments
of a once great creation fall in ruins
The arid earth is smoldering and sizzling
beneath my charred bare skin
My flesh melts in agony as I crawl
along toward nowhere and nothing
A nomad in the furnace with
no water, no well, not even a mirage
I’ve seen my last vision, it would seem


Mr. Rosy

Every clever turn of phrase,
every perfect point of view,
every lesson learned in time,
every hardship overcome through will,
every snapshot picture captured,
every first kiss goose bump fever,
every sweet dream lullaby,
every test aced,
every challenge bested,
every urge toward evolution,
every ancestral DNA passed forward,
every mountain scaled,
every ocean swam across,
every rise from the ashes,
every new vintage of wine bottled,
every cycle around the sun,
every burst womb with crying babe,
every close embrace on the dance floor,
every pillow talk session that heals a soul,
every sunrise,
every solar eclipse,
every full moon,
every flower that grows up from the soil…
will all one day wither and return to the same dirt,
to the same plot,
to the same grave,
to the same entropy,
to the same final resting place –


Scott Thomas Outlar survived both the fire and the flood...barely. Now he dances with celebratory fervor while waiting on the next round of chaos to commence, spending the hours flowing and fluxing with the tide of the Tao River while laughing at and/or weeping over the existential nature of life. Links to his chapbook and other published work can be found at 17numa.wordpress.com.

John Gartland Traverses the Suwintawong Highway Through A Minoan Maze of Lies Amongst Hypocrites And Madmen

from The Second Book of Inundations. 
              Bangkok De Profundis.


In a time of rising waters,
He has cried to thee oh Lord.
It was becoming hard to bear,
waking up each morning as a cockroach.
His junkie girlfriend stole the laptop,
the phone kept ringing at odd hours,
and insomniacs haunted him,
invading his rooms to smoke Old Delirium
in strange contraptions, fashioned
from detergent bottles and glass tubing.

False prophets network,
scares and admonitions,
“Seek shelter from the coming flood”
for markets fall, and pundits pall
like necromancers shocked by futures,
awed at stocks’ exposed positions.
More flashbacks of those corpses wrapped
in blood-stained sheets where Hades meets Suwintawong highway,
and demons dressed as strutting cops
play out satanic games with car wrecks
and six lanes of hurtling pick-ups,
loaded with the damned.
Nothing stops, apart from hoping,
in that darkness;
hoping, and the grand design of God.
                                                                           
Years of debris; a throwaway world
is gagging his high watermark.
The residue of empires, dismembered ideologies,
gangrenous  mullahs,
severed heads in doggie bags,
girls stoned to death by dumper truck
where high tech. serves Islamic rigour;
and women’s bodies, feared
and lashed with equal vigour,
float the septic tide to state,
that, rotting, raped and subjugate,
masked, or beauty acid-scarred,
this jealous hate redeems some family’s honour
and the keeping of a slave.
“Seek shelter from the coming flood!”.
More warnings from the networks
of disaster in plain sight.
Infected by the future
and recoiling from the light,
from the morning watch,
to subliminal night, Lord,
he channel-hops the ads. and lies,
awaits the blind inexorable wave.

Let thine ears be attentive
to the voice of his supplication.
Please take his urgent call oh Lord,
extend to him religion's consolation.                        

2

Icons of old wizard monks,
expensive relics in a locket,
the sacred, decorated trunks of
twisted, bent, revered old trees,
an idol, or a totem,
or the fetish of of a prophet,
an amulet of Vishnu,
or a string of merit-making beads
to finger in a pocket.
A road map of the Tree of Life,
a prayer mat, sacrificial knife,
a sacred stone they venerate,
a holy spring where they prostrate,
and, chanting loudly, flagellate;
some mutilation rituals they find,
somehow express their
tortured, ingrown toenail of a mind.
To these they bow, by these they wait,
for heaven’s ultimate blind date;
hypnosis by a holy book,
subservience to a priestly look.

Yea Lord, he drinks a bitter cup,
deliverance eludes him yet.
The creator, playing hard to get,
has, once more, frankly, stood him up.                    

3

Manipulation, thought correction,
machiavellian misdirection.
Digesting God's indifference,
inhaling insignificance,
in times of rising waters,
a Minoan maze of lies.
The sacred books, the king, the host,
those feet at which men grovel most;
the bloodstained flag,  the Holy Ghost,
the biggest fairy tales require
most pious genuflection,
and these the thinking cockroach
will contemptuously despise.

Insomniac transexuals
are texting, seeking parts again.
Awake within the whispering walls,
illumination swirls and falls
to fractals in a pipe bulb,
when, aware God’s not returning calls,
or dealing absolution,
he crawls out of the depths, not least
to shun the poisonous fix of priests,
and charter his own flight to dissolution.

 4

For, Lord, he’s turned his back upon
some name we may not utter
without slavish self-abasement,
the mediaeval violence policing laws of love;
a million milling zealots
trampling by their sacred monolith;
psychosis aping saintliness,
when push comes to fanatic shove.

And the globalised multiplex; virtual reality,
brand slaves on Prozac grazing the mall.
Where history simply is discarded fashion,
junk’s TV, rap culture, and soundbite celebrities,
mainlining cage fights, an armchair in hell.
In a time of rising waters,
He has cried to thee, oh Lord.

Last call for oblivion, welcome aboard.

Let thine ears be attentive... attentive oh Lord!

Last call for oblivion, we’ve darkness on board.


THE THIRD BOOK OF INUNDATIONS
STAND-UP.

At such a perfect moment, Death will come
and take me to the water. Still, I hear
his stripped-down opening drum.
At such a perfect moment…

Of course, you wouldn’t KNOW
you’re nuts, IF you WERE nuts.
They’re wailing at the hour of prayer.
Deejay Nemesis plays Old Wave,
with a bad rep,
hot licks from the dark side,
microwaves in lockstep.
No question, man; I’m fried.

I may need to take this further,
with a witch-doctor or shrink,
but,  the River and the Abyss;
always closer than  you  think:
will be
taking  you,
down.

“And what if your clear sanity’s their Crazy?”
This aphorism I extracted from a Christmas cracker,
Then another, more intriguing,
 “Hold the River, and the Abyss,
closer to you, always”.
Nobody laughed at my aphorism.
People fiddled with their party hats,
so I repeated it
“Hold the River, and the Abyss, closer to you, always”.
Squeezed it out, like Ahmed, in a passion,
comforting his favourite camel
from behind.
Special!
Ejaculated it again.
A lot of people left the party,
right away.
It was like the end of Christmas, in the West.
More fun than an exploding vest.
“Yes! How the cracker’s holy verses
Have dogged me, Moriarty!”
Sometimes I step into other scripts,
But, doesn’t everybody?

“You want to spread your
Prayer-mat mind for me?”
I said it again,
“You want to pull the holy cracker,
share these verses with me?”
And licked my open mouth;
Special!
No stopping it, then. The entire building
was evacuated by the government,
directly into the President’s face.
The whole, rotten, poxy, scat-trip, daily-life-load,
harlot politicians, with their asses up for  big oil,
mutilated children, auto-destructive muslims,
slaves and stonings, bombings and beheadings on TV,
sharia  shit, and PC lube, a rectal cocktail from the cosmic tube,
royally blown, and voided in the Chief’s visage.
Comparisons will fail to match the charnel reek
of this vast oil slick of GM demon seed,
enough to give a skunk a hard-on for a week!
Special!
Like I said, everybody drowns.
How good a fucking gig is that?

The Capital is  inundated,
and channels of communication
gagged over a large area.
And even the head-hangman
is choked with a real big one,
and the drones are down.
And phones,  and everyone
else in town, are dead,
FINITO!  And welcome;
your card got swiped,
the truth is halal overnight,
and all your deepest fears;
are realized;

No jury but fuckwit mullahs,
and no other judge but Dread.

Hey, only joking!  Why so serious?
Only joking!
I can’t stand-up any longer.
Time has surely come, to pause,

to  ask you,  for a hand-job…….
You know,   ……  I mean,  ……. your applause.


THE INSTITUTE OF MOCKERY

1 / The Flag Raising

Students stand in line at the flag raising.
The chosen, handle its folded cloth, much
as a priest reveres the Shroud.
“Today, class, as we raise the flag”…..

Whores and hitmen, billionaires and feudalists,
extortion, oppression, ignorance, and worse.
Religious shams, and corporate scams and cover-ups
ubiquitous corruption, rape, and slavery,
each government as a smash and grab
job, inflicted on the public purse.

“Today, class,  we unfurl the flag”….
cue martial music, and the staff’s respectful silence.

Hope’s buried in ten thousand secret places,
today, as we  salute the flag.

The students soak it in, with vacant faces.

2/   To  the Escapees from the Flag-Raising.

Don’t run this way, fugitives.
Poetry’s just the grappling
of language and confusion,
poetry’s  just a  groping for the light,
Sometimes it’s an act of love,
and sometimes absolution,
always,  it’s a state of exile,
often it’s a fight.
Don’t run this way, fugitives.

3/  Lost at Loco’s

I heard him laugh,
“Don’t talk value to me, you nut.
Where else on the planet can you
buy an iced beer and a joint
For less than five, U.S..?
Second round, you’re already trashed, then
looking out of this big window, and above the mess… “

Ramshackle carts and taxis thread the shabby condos and shacks along a narrow soi, straggling to the dusty temple, all lining a poisonous canal. Motor cycle taxis, occasional asian beauties negotiate the speed bumps,
and a motorized noodle vendor in a black tee shirt, marked End Game, skirts expertly round wheezing joggers and  two boys on weaving  tricycles. A woman in a four by four, letting her motor run,
doesn’t bat an eye, as a pickup with thirty men, standing, packed solidly as brooms on that brush vendor’s  cart, sweeps by.
And all the time, the deals are done.
Sudden wailings from some mosque…
“It’s a fucking madhouse out there. Between me and you,I mean, seriously ….”
Two cops, bulging from a motorcycle, scouting for some shakedown they can try, cruise through.
Security man across the street in Mao suit and a golf cap, casts his gimlet gaze our way, leans on the sliding  gate to a forbidden land,
tubular steel, chest height, tubular steel, in red and white….
Suddenly, it is hours later, and dark.
“We’re lodged between the cracks of tyranny”, he smiles,
….and doomed to lose. Personally,
I would choose to franchise Loco’s,
as an antidote to fear and loathing”.
The street outside of Loco’s now is quiet for the night
Tubular steel, chest height, tubular steel, in red and white.
It is six hours to flag-raising.



John Gartland is one of Bangkok’s more interesting expatriates. Born in Northern England, he graduated with honors in English from Newcastle University, and has a Master’s degree in Elizabethan and Shakespearian Drama. He spent time in the United States, worked in the government sector, in sales, in the telecommunications business, as a rock n’ roll writer-producer, and as college lecturer and professor in four countries. He’s travelled a lot. He recently returned to Bangkok after stints as visiting professor of English Writing at the Korea National University of Education, and as lecturer in English and Communications, in Oman. John thrives on live performance; at venues such as Night of Noir III, in Bangkok, and, with the noted band, Krom, at Meta House in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He reads at regular gigs in Bangkok. Also a published novelist, John has had two poetry collections published, “Gravity’s Fool” and “Poetry Without Frontiers”, the latter, with Irish poet and prominent Gaelic scholar, Tom Hodgins.

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).