Catherine Zickgraf Screams Every Time She Gets Ready For Church

Pills Don’t Hurtle Drawers/Roll Away

You are broomlike, stablest on your head, 

all toe hair and sawed nails, sold broken, 

an unarithmic puzzle, reasonless, lacking 

panic at your betrayal, a porcelain stomach 

spinning waves, an addict’s raw lips, ooze-

dripping veins like peeled plantains, antiqued 

in a sealed store front—oh, thinned liar, 

skinned open.

You are yourself alone, the lover you fondle, 

not cheek against untweeding cushions in 

some traphouse, squeezed instead between 

your own soul and my own sofa where you’ve

crashed, a houseguest where you found my

medicine you stole.  

Hotel

I don’t mind your ex-wife stretched out in your penthouse

or your girlfriend’s speakers in the suite down the hall—

as long as I can settle my cheek in your chest 

on a tiny cot closeted under your stairs.  

Hiding under the Bathroom Sink

I slid in through the under-sink door.  

There, behind the Lysol, were the crackers 

I hid the week before since I knew when they 

pounded the floor chasing their insolent child, 

I’d want to be safely gone. 

They searched the place out, 

looking under the beds—

then realized I could be headed to the creek.  

They swept the place out, 

scanning all the corners, 

like a matriarch scrubbing out her household’s sin—

then realized I could be past the creek 

and deep in the trails, out of reach.

But I was nine and hiding under a sink, 

blue smocked dress crushed in with the darkness, 

legs bent up, my head on my knees, 

and I really had to go to the bathroom.

In there in white tights and only one shoe—

a rubber-soled brown, strap buckling the foot.  

It frustrated my folks and slowed us down 

that the other one was simply gone.

So much screaming while getting ready for church.  

Scary words while getting ready for church.  

They looked for me till I chose to emerge 

and then didn't even try to make it to church 

that Sunday I’d prepared for the week before. 

Catherine Zickgraf has performed her poetry in Madrid, San Juan, and three dozen other cities, but now her main jobs are to hang out with her family and write poetry. Her work has appeared in Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press, and The Grief Diaries. Her new chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press and is available on Amazon.com. 

Read more and watch more of her poetry at http://caththegreat.blogspot.com

Joe Balaz With Aiplane Emogi Kabooms Pandas in Moa and Moa Revelations as Jive Scammers are like Sharks Under the Surface

HAPPY EMOJI IN DA DEEP FREEZE 

Happy emoji                                                                                                                                   stay in da deep freeze.
                                                                                                                                                        No moa confetti                                                                                                                                no moa champagne
no moa flying through da clouds                                                                                                    on wun carefree airplane.
                                                                                                                                                        Da engine stay all broke                                                                                                                  and no can achieve anykine lift
sitting on da runway in da dark                                                                                                     like wun dead pigeon in da park.
                                                                                                                                                    Doom and gloom                                                                                                                           wit wun big kaboom
dat no one else can hear
as dat insidious blues ting                                                                                                                                      wit da sad mood dat it brings
takes you down inside da mind’s ear.

No moa pretty colors                                                                                                                       no moa dancing bear in wun tutu
no moa radiant neon news                                                                                                            from wun cheerful laughing clown—
No wondah whiskey goes down so easy.
                                                                                                                                                      Dats why                                                                                                                                      moa bettah just lay low
while everyting is all no go
cause happy emoji                                                                                                                        stay in da deep freeze
like wun big tuna                                                                                                                             all stiff on da ice.


BAMBOO HARVESTER


                                                                                                                                                Bamboo Harvester
wuzn’t wun panda in China

or wun man in da Philippines

cutting stalks
to make wun house.


Growing in popularity
instead of growing in da jungle

he wuz certainly good
at creating wun splash

cause you can get
pretty well known

wen you make people laugh.


He wuz silly
and outrageous

and you knew him
wen he became famous

wit his big eyes
looking at you.


Funny hay and wild oats
wit wun occasional crazy apple

helped to feed da absurdity.


Just like Lady Gaga
and Bruno Mars

his name wuz changed too
so he could be moa cool.


Ask his friend Wilbur
cause he knows all about it.

Mister revelation
going give you Ed in da shed.


A horse is a horse
of course, of course—


You can now start singing                                                                                                               da  program’s catchy song

anytime you like.




BITE DA HEART OF DA ANGLER                                                      
                                                                                                                   
You gaddah stay alert in dis town
cause everybody                                                                                                                               is eidah trying to con you
or dey going take advantage                                                                                                             of any misstep.
                                                                                                                                                       It’s twenty-four-seven                                                                                                                    and crazy eight swings
every day of da week.
                                                                                                                                                        So heah comes                                                                                                                          anadah round of jive scammers
each of dem casting me wun pitch
and tinking                                                                                                                                      dat dey going reel me in
to flap helplessly at dere feet.
                                                                                                                                                        Da invisible hook is plain to see
and I going tactfully spit it into dere faces                                                                                before I draw blood
cause my fins glide                                                                                                                  through da watah
and undah da surface                                                                                                                      you no can see my teeth.
                                                                                                                                                   Sharks no take da snagging bait—
Dey just bite da heart of da angler.    


Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai'i Creole English) and in American-English. He edited Ho'omanoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature.  Some of his recent Pidgin writing has appeared in Rattle, Juked, and Unlikely Stories Mark V, among others. Balaz is an avid supporter of Hawaiian Islands Pidgin writing in the expanding context of World Literature.  He presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.                                                                                             

Sanjeev Sethi on the Ferris Wheel of Wuthers Above the Private Demons as the Jingoistic Spiels Whoa Nellie

US

You are itching to be opened
aching for tendresse to begin her twirl.
You’ve chosen to cache in cauldron
of uncertainities. That may well
be the way. Or is it?

Waiting for wuther will not help.
It is fighting its own fog.
Baby steps to ferris wheel of options
will bring you to the roster of results.

Paradox of preaching:
the schematizer
is trapped in his own snarl.

CONTRARIAN

(1)

Day opens her legs unlike my
love the previous night. Will
fog of failure seal the midmost?
In sublimation lies my savor.

(2)

Your murmurous paternoster
more fluent than the feints
stalking me. I sent myself
searching for certitudes, in
your thigh I met my moksha.


THE PATRIOT

When his portfolio actualized
he surmised some of his private
demons could never be exorcized.
He sensed he couldn’t alter the
mess his offspring was in. He
weaned his heart to ache only for
the nation. Ache in a drawing room
sort of way. He moved his guests
with   jingoistic spiels: politicos
would be happy to co-opt him.



PEEVERS

God knows me. Let this one know or
claim not to. Certes, rhythm of breath
realizes my innermore sarment is lit.
I dread no dusk. Carrier of catatonia
I know not your motive. Draw your
drapery: energize your environment.

(2)

Your weir is a whoopsie wave. Early at
sea one learns grief of gudgeon, quickly
one gathers when to yell, Whoa Nellie.


SANJEEV SETHI is the author of three well-received books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). His poems are in venues around the world: 3:AM Magazine, The Tower Journal, Peacock Journal, The Penmen Review, Red Fez, Indiana Voice Journal, The Penwood Review, Easy Street, Soul-Lit, Visual Verse, W.I.S.H. Press, Novelmasters, Poetry Pacific, Transnational Literature, Otoliths, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India. 

Michael Paul Hogan Observes the Marlin Hook Ray-Bans, the Girls of Green Parrot Bar, the Lobster Pots, the Jai Alai scores, and Everybody Wishin'

Sunday in Key West by Michael Paul Hogan


I / Morning

The captain buys gasoline and bait
and ice and the Sunday New York Times
and sits himself down on his fighting chair to wait
for a charter he knows damn well
will be good and late.

How do, Jim? He starts up and looks
like someone caught reading something obscene
but it’s only the Sunday Review of Books.
The rims of his Ray-Bans are silver
as 15-O marlin hooks.

No worries. He checks down the dock,
up it and down it, just Sunday morning,
nothing to go to church about, no shock
of an asteroid one day away,
just the tick of the clock.

He looks up again as a car
turns off Roosevelt towards him, real slow,
then drives past. So Fuck it he lights a cigar,
has a six-pack on ice in the galley
and a girl in the Green Parrot bar.


II / Afternoon

Along the street
Cubans in sea-green denim
lounge and sweat. A battered Ford
is slewed on the sidewalk
like a lobster pot; its radio

sparks the air with nylon static.
Petronia Street: the washing hangs
and rots. The stray cats hiss
and arch their backs and sniff
at wire-screened windows locked

against the heat. The lifers scratch
their balls and check
the jai alai scores. O Caro Mio
crackles in lace-trimmed lycra,
sweats and screams.




III / Evening

Miss Margharita turns her chair
to let the sunshine dry her hair.
The kids ain’t home but she don’t care
          - they probably gone fishin’.

What sunshine’s left is filtered through
the palm trees on the avenue,
but what ain’t much will have to do,
          and what’s the use of wishin’?

Wishin’s wished we owned a store,
a nothin’ fancy sawdust floor,
with flush-tight fly screens on the door
          and whitewash on the ceilin’.

Just take a look across the street:
Miguel’s as dumb as sugar’s sweet;
Consuela don’t know twit from tweet
- they don’t have paintwork peelin’.

Miss Margharita strips a can
and waves the ring-pull like a fan.
The sun’s gone down; the moon’s a man
          - but what’s the use of wishin’?


Born in London, Michael Paul Hogan is a poet, journalist and literary essayist whose work has appeared extensively in the USA, UK, India and China. His poetry has been featured in over thirty magazines and in six collections, the most recent of which, Chinese Bolero, with illustrations by the great contemporary painter Li Bin, was published in 2015.

Adam Levon Brown Wipes Away the Soot-Filled Sarcasm for the Whiplash of Solemn to See Better the Stare of Death

I live

I exist in the shadows
of an empty stomach
and broken dreams

I strive for the stars
while sitting amongst
the windswept clouds

I stare in the direction
of the soliloquy sun
while biding my time

I jump at the opportunity
to share a piece of myself
in the bleak December rains

I live for the unexpected
and the train-songs sung
by the unknown poet.



Syllables Never Suited Saints

Drenched in the solitude
Of a soliloquy

Soot-filled sarcasm
Serrates the edge.

A semblance of searing
Sardonic splendor

Separates synapses
In a whiplash of solemn Salivation

Stoic simplification
Saddens the seas

As the sailboat slacks
To a stop


Midnight Stroll

Graveyard bones
Juxtaposed
against a rotting
termite-infested two by four

The inhabitants
of Mausoleums
remain untouched
and withered

A lone stranger
walks the crypts
at midnight. hoping
to find solace in the dead

Reading black-drop
poetry at the graves in between
whistling Greensleeves
to the Crimson harvest moon

The Stranger kneels by
an open grave and imagines
themselves trapped for all eternity
under Oak and brass

What the stranger doesn't
know is that when you
look at death, death
stares back.

Adam Levon Brown is a published author, poet, amateur photographer, and cat lover. He is owner of Madness Muse Press; a micro-press that publishes dark poetry, editor of Madness Muse Magazine, and a book reviewer for Five 2 One Magazine. He has over 120 poems published in 9 different countries. He has been published in venues such as Burningword Literary Journal, Corvus Review, and Yellow Chair Review. Adam can be contacted via his website at www.AdamLevonBrown.org where he offers free poetry resources.

Donal Mahoney and the Xmas Big Bang by the Picketed Planned Parenthood and Willie, Tom, and Mabel

Big Bang for Little Billy

This was the first Christmas
Billy was old enough to speak
when he saw his gifts
under the sparkling tree.
His parents were waiting
to hear what he’d say.
Billy laughed and jumped
and clapped his hands.
With a big smile, he shouted
“Santa brought me these!”
Then Daddy picked Billy up,
bounced him on his knee
and whispered softly,
“There is no Santa, son.
There was a Big Bang
while you were asleep.
And all your gifts landed
under the tree.”


Ambulance Lights

Willie McKee works
second shift
gets home at midnight
makes hot cocoa
flops in his recliner

and counts the stars
through the blinds
nods to the moon
and every week or so
sees ambulance lights
pull up at Tom’s house
blink for an hour
while the crew goes in
and restarts him.

But on Christmas Eve
the ambulance lights
pull away in minutes
and a hearse pulls up
two men go in

bring out the gurney
as old Tom's wife
stands on the porch
and smokes
and Willie McKee
tells his wife
neighbors will never
hear Mabel curse
old Tom again.


Christmastime in America

You see the oddest things
at Christmastime in America.
The bigger the city,
the stranger the sights.
I was driving downtown
to buy gifts for the family
and enjoying bouquets
of beautiful people
bundled in big coats
and colorful scarves
clustered on corners,
shopping in good cheer
amid petals of snow
dancing in the sun.

One of them, however,
a beautiful young lady,
had stopped to take issue
with an old woman in a shawl
picketing Planned Parenthood.
The old woman was riding
on a motor scooter
designed for the elderly.
She held a sign bigger
than she was and kept
motoring back and forth
as resolute as my aunt
who had been renowned
for protesting any injustice.
Saving seals in the Antarctic
had been very important to her.

On this day, however,
the beautiful young lady
who had taken issue
with the old woman
was livid and screaming.
She marched behind
the motor scooter and
yelled at the old woman
who appeared oblivious
to all the commotion.
Maybe she was deaf,
I thought, like my aunt.
That can be an advantage
at a time like this.

The letters on the sign were huge
but I couldn't read them
so I drove around the block
and found a spot at the curb.

It turned out the sign said,
"What might have happened
if Mary of Nazareth
had been pro-choice?"
Now I understood
why the young lady
was ranting and raving
and why the old woman
kept motoring to and fro.
At Christmastime in America
people get excited,
more so than usual.

When I got home
I hid my packages
and told my wife at supper
what I had seen.
I also told her that if Mary
had chosen otherwise,
I wouldn't have had
to go shopping today.
That's obvious, she said.


Donal Mahoney has had work published in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html

Michael H. Brownstein Sighs Acid From Fingertips Knotting Chickenwire Barbs At The Foot of the Eroding Dolomite

A BULLY AND A LAMB

How many lives have you touched
acid sighing from your finger tips,
or is it instead sodium hydroxide?

You with the liquid nitrogen heart,
cotton mouthed tongue,
sharpened canine teeth of an asp.

Everything about you
small enough to cuddle,
and then the redesigning begins...


TENSION IS A FOOD SATISFYING A HUNGER

Stress lines are not the stretch marks of love
the way a man is more notable on the outside
and I who have seen guns used in violence,
lift a knife, yes, to cut blood wrinkles
across outstretched hands. Geography
comes in handy sometimes, a history
of place names, semantics of color.
Chicken wire can be knotted into barbs;
barbs can be thrust into tender parts of skin,
wrapped around scrotums, around wrists,
the one point arteries open like clothing,
passion an anger we do not need to know,

a simplicity of milk, a pot boiling over.


SUPERSTITION

the house facing the end of the road,
the pole dividing the path into fractions,
the thousand thousand crows clouding the sky,
the witch tree and the bewitched tree,
the time Sunday was the first day of the week,
the shadow of the suicide girl and the pickers
picking cans and other trash a week
before the first day of spring

and the line of light in the distance moved,
not the shadow,
not the twigs on the branches
perfect brown grass flaking green against the palisades,
sandy dolomite eroding in the heat of winter,
ice splinters: ice storms, a curvature of cloud,
the race against stain, thread, and conscienceless,

the way scar tissue feels against your tongue.


Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011), Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012), The Possibility of Sky and Hell: From My Suicide Book (White Knuckle Press, 2013) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100 Degrees Outside and Other Poems (Kind of Hurricane Press, 2013). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).