Jonel Abellanosa Handles Snakes, Star Apples, Moon's Glow, And Venom

King Cobra

And where do I bring this smell

Of reticence, this O of olfactory

Greenness? The wind knows

How I linger, the ways I dwell

In what I might be forced to remember.

The wind always tosses the shapeliest

Fruit, most of the time mango or starapple,

Teasing my nose to inhale the circulars.

I bring my crudest ways

Of recall to the violets.

It sometimes disappoints,

But often makes me realize

I’m a monarch without a kingdom.

Coral Snake

And how do I keep myself hidden

In leaves when I smell the violets?

The rain lends its invitation

And I follow the smells of moss

And lichen. In the forest

Water, when it rises, often

Wears its royal robe of glimmers.

How convincing its argument

That if surfaces are glassy

Transparence is its depths.

I soak myself in the gurgling flow,

Out of my heart’s reticence

And into the moon’s glow.

Taipan

And if my reputation moves faster

Than the wind? You don’t know me.

I’m shyer than the bandicoot, living

Inland, invisible as the homeless man.

I prefer to be left alone, slithering

In abandoned moonlight. The floral

Wind balms my hunger, and I often

Spend the night hungry. Starlight

Is my nourishment, water my soothing

Prayer. They say my venom is the

Deadliest, but I don’t have to defend

Myself, until I’m driven into the corner

Where ignorance, prejudice and irrational,

Unfounded fear might mean

The end of my life.

Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines.  His poetry has appeared in close to two hundred journals and anthologies including, Rattle, Anglican Theological Review, Poetry Kanto, Filipino-American Artist Directory, The McNeese Review and Marsh Hawk Review. Early in 2017 Alien Buddha Press published his third chapbook, “Meditations,” His latest poetry collection, “Songs from My Mind’s Tree” is forthcoming (Clare Songbirds Publishing House). He is a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Dwarf Stars Award nominee.

Michael Lee Johnson Observes The Common Horse Fly As A Parisian Adventurer In The August Wind And No More Stepping On Him

Heaven is My Horse Fly

A common horse fly
peripatetic traveler
vacationing in my world
into my bathroom,
(ride me cowboy, fly)
it’s summer time-
lands on my toilet seat
pit stops at Nikki’s Bar & Grill,
kitty litter box, refuels.
Thirteen round trips
buzzing my skin and skull-
he calls them “short runs.”
Steady pilot, good mileage,
frequent flier credits.
I swat his war journey,
splat, downed, then, an abrupt end.

Alexandra David-Nee

She edits her life from a room made dark
against a desert dropping summer sun.
A daring traveling Parisian adventurer,
ultimate princess turning toad with age--
snow drops of white in her hair, tiny fingers
thumb joints osteoarthritis
she corrects proofs at 100, pours whiskey,
pours over what she wrote
scribbles notes directed to the future,
applies for a new passport.
With this amount of macular degeneration,
near, monster of writers' approaches,
she wears no spectacles.
Her mind teeters between Himalayas,
distant Gobi Desert.
Running reason through her head for a living,
yet dancing with the youthful world of Cinderella,
she plunges deeper near death into Tibetan mysticism,
trekking across snow covered mountains to Lhasa, Tibet.
Nighttime rest, sleepy face, peeking out that window crack
into the nest, those quiet villages below
tasting a reality beyond her years.

No Longer a Swinger

This painted cat
on my balcony
hangs in this sun,
bleaches out
it's wooden
survival kit,
cut short-
then rots
chips
paint
cracks
widen in joints,
no infant sparrow wings 
nestled in this hole
beneath its neck-
then falls down.
No longer a swinger
in latter days, August wind.

Oh Carol, Poem

You treat me like soiled underwear.
I work my way through.
I gave up jitterbug dancing, that cha-cha-chá,
all my eccentric moves, theatric acting, poetry slams.
I seek refuge away old films, nightmares
you jumping from my raspberry Geo Chevy Tracker
repeat you stunt from my black 2002 S-10 Chevy truck, Schaumburg, IL.
I toss tarnished photographs out windows of hell
seek new selfies, myself.
I’m a rock-in-roll Jesus, a damn good poetry man,
talent alone is not enough storage space to strip
you away from my skin, distant myself from your
ridicule, those harsh words you can’t take back
once they are out like Gorilla Glue, as Carl Sandburg spoke about.
I’m no John Lennon want to be;
body sculptured David Garrett, German violin masterpiece,
nor Ace Hardware, Midwest, CEO.
All I want to be respected in heart of my bright sun,
engaging these shadows endorsing these gray spots in my life.
Send me away from these drum beats that break me in half,
jungle thunder jolts dislodging my heart
popping my earlobes over the years,
scream out goodbye.
No more stepping on me cockroach style,
swatting me, a captured fly.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois.  Mr. Johnson published in more than 1016 publications, his poems have appeared in 35 countries, he edits, publishes 10 different poetry sites.  Michael Lee Johnson, Itasca, IL, nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry 2015/1 Best of the Net 2016/and 2 Best of the Net 2017.  He also has 154 poetry videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos.  He is the Editor-in-chief of the anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530456762 and Editor-in-chief of a second poetry anthology, Dandelion in a Vase of Roses which is now available here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1545352089

Michael Prihoda And A Whole Lotta Love On Shot-Gunned Stationary And An Ocean Muffled By Sawdust

whole lotta love

i. 
whatever

ii.
not today

iii. 
i thought we agreed
cruise ships
were
for sissies
&
the point
of Nasa
is the same as SSRIs
for those
unwilling
to notice

iv.
the sound
of
the garage door
opening
made auto
by wiring
i do not
understand

v.
are you going or coming?

vi. 
will you pick up some milk
on
the way
home?

vii.
just because
the seven
names
for children
i created survived
& we
lost
yours truly,

viii.
i thought we agreed

ix.
agreed

x. 
we

xi. 
i

 
everybody knows this is nowhere

the dog
ripples

his tongue
over teeth & lips

as a stream
across random stones.

a moment is only
as brief

as our disengagement
from imprinting

allows.
are we alone?

no, i am
looking at it.

are we
alone?


 
Proposal (a pineapple thrown into the Seine)

the meaning
of events

saving us
from a riot.

look to the hefted
mountains

in this thistled
spring

of showers
of malady &

the elegance
of just trying

to tell another
person they matter.

the day is ending.
the day is almost over.

i’m wide awake,
ready to introduce

a dragon
to these lands

of shot-gunned
stationary.
 
Proposal 6

of former
thoughts

in other
lives.

a mug cupped
to ear

sounds of
an Atlantic

muffled
by sawdust.

a taxonomic
defense

for haha,
the openness

in being
mortified

& feeling
alright

with the treatment
of animals.

you act in service
of a Byzantine panoply,

a simulacra
of gods.

our creations
tail us

through
dimensions,

invite a worry, a sorrow,
a cork

in bottles
untrapped by messages,

floating, briefly,
on the front porch.

dereliction hiding
rusted cutlery

& an insufficiency
of bandages


Michael Prihoda is a poet, editor, and teacher living in central Indiana. He is the editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. In addition, he is the author of five poetry collections, the most recent of which is The First Breath You Take After You Give Up (Weasel Press, 2016).

John Dorsey Returns Speaking of Stars Covered In Rust, Woody Guthrie, And A Heroin Needle Sun

Highway D 



here the sun is a hot spike

a needle in the arm

of some lonely field

grown over with stars

covered in rust



your stomach is always half full

& the car never starts 

before your first cup of coffee

it wouldn’t dare.





California Blood Money 

for david smith 

 

woody guthrie tasted its soil 

dancing in starlight 

he winked at the skyline 



what is it like   

to run your hands 

through so much regret?




John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017). He is the current Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com. 

Patrick Herron And The Hollow That Is The Only Part That Does Not Hurt

Wednesday from Light
for Booker

apples and onions        and violins and         pesticides                and when viewed from a bridge the horizon is only half-constructed                the knife an ape selects for gorging is the blade choosing its hand                various timbres of icy water sing across the bowed fibers of our skulls                and the smell of sewaged seaspray fogs as the roaches as we are now called        we the worthless        are swept down into               falling off       our legs now running upon the air between the steel and the water                and someone's just learning how to count us        the forty-seven percent        the ninety nine                who is it who counts              my beautiful boy he is learning as he goes        please don't push him off                the helicopters need trust between them before they can make music                and so if he is to fall        at least let his curls hear the quartet                       how about our sweet beginnings and chopped vegetable tears plucked from soil to lighten the load                the roman road                yes it's a load we load to unload and unload to load                it's a logic                and we share it with our peelings                        the lacrimal bone is absent from amphibians                or                maybe it's just tardy or       wants nothing to do with tears at all        maybe it's trying to get out of the water        or        maybe any more would be an unsophisticated superfluity                and you are similarly disinclined to travel beyond       the elegant sufficiency yet you made it this far       and so                let's exchange gratitudes        they sure scissor paper platitudes and stony attitudes                               what there is to say here that is never desired to say is that                it's not the bullet that kills        it's the hole        it swallows every moment before it              and when I say        I love you        I mean that I desire the chance to elaborate        and that is to say        that I wished you would never have to learn              that the hollow is the only part that doesn't hurt                        to cross the event line is a cold release from time              so I wonder is emptiness employed or unemployed       how are we to count that                so I wonder is love conflation or expansion                how are we to feel the sound as we count our way through the choppers to forge our horizons

"you're taut like a thriller, but how are you organized?" the rock asks the river


Patrick Herron is Senior Research Scientist and Lecturing Fellow at Duke University, Durham, NC, US. As a poet, Herron was an early adopter of copyleft for literary publishing, an inventor of retrieval-based poetics in the 1990s (later and more widely known as Flarf), and is also the author of several volumes of poetry, including Be Somebody (Effing 2008). Herron's poems and essays have appeared in a number of journals including Fulcrum, Jacket and Andrei Codrescu's Exquisite Corpse. Herron is the creator of  His 1999 new media art project, p r o x i m a t e . o r g (http://classic.rhizome.org/artbase/artwork/2219/), was the first poetics website added to the permanent collection of the New Museum, New York City, US. At Duke Herron has recently created the Text Mining Laboratory and is a member of the faculties of Information Science + Studies (ISS), Computational Media Arts & Culture (CMAC) and the Masters of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts (MFA|EDA).

Howie Good And Grandmothers Protecting Spiders, Days In Teardrop Shapes, The Shortage Of Coffins, And A Mountain Incident

Laugh and the World Laughs with You; Weep and You Are a Soft Pillow 



Different people come in and take turns beating us. Sometimes they’re trying to get information. Other times they’re just amusing themselves. They ask all sorts of questions: Where’s that ocean at? What happened to your ear? Do ants eat each other? Last month, I went a week without sleeping. It was bam-bam-bam, the sound when a dude keeps his finger on the trigger. Most men just like killing stuff. Babies were tossed onto a pile of burning rubbish. If the color of the fire was in a dress, it would have been beautiful.



&



“Holy cow!” I say. “Come over here guys.” The fireflies have brought me to water. And we all start laughing because it’s hard to believe. People, animals, birds, they all change. My grandmother when I was little would pick up a spider she found in the house and put it back outside. There's two places I want to go. They're the only two. It could be England, it could be France. It could be the moon. 



&



Bodies arrive in shreds. Some arrive in halves. There’s no place anymore where you can say that it’s safe. If you have a carefree attitude, you’ll be an easy target. One guy was like, ‘Oh, not a big deal, nothing will happen, sit down.’ So, obviously, he didn’t understand our circumstances. Try to notice the cold, wet sensation. It’s tomorrow in the shape of a teardrop.




All That Is Solid Melts into Air 



This could be a former crime scene anywhere. One room in particular has never gotten over its ferocious past. I like to see things that maybe I’m not supposed to see. The dog is a he, but the table is a she. I couldn't really make out what they were saying, it happened so quickly. People should be concerned over what will disappear next. Today there was even a shortage of coffins. I tell myself, “Breathe, just breathe. We’re here. We’re working. We exist.” But it’s all a bit of a blur. The last time I felt like this was probably when my mother died. Any minute now I might look up and see her in the window of a plane waving.






Cannibal Lunch 



I thought he was going to offer me a ride, but, as I approached the car, a mountain rose to confuse us. I said, “Hey, man, you all right?” It was a warm spring day, and the universe was presiding over its own prolonged rebirth. Birds that hadn’t learned to fly yet were about to be hauled away in trucks. The neighbors just stood there texting. “What does it mean?” the guy asked. He was lucky he had any teeth left. In general, people are beaten, hurt. I saw a black mass of smoke. I heard something that sounded like an orchestra of broken instruments. That was me trying to understand what a friend was.


Howie Good is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize and forthcoming from Thoughtcrime Press, and Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. 

Jeffrey Zable Joins A Bull(Shit) Company, Learns The Speechlessness Of Discovery, And Inherits A Wolf-Bitten Grandma

THE REALIZATION 

 I was running with the bulls when all of a sudden
I shouted out, “This is bullshit!” and turned to face
my assailants. With that, one of the bulls nearest to me,
responded, ‘What did I just hear you say?” And realizing
the peril of my situation I answered, “I said ‘this world
is run by bulls,’ animals who know how to take charge
and not feel guilty or remorseful when they trample over 
someone who’s in their way!” With that the bull told me 
to write my email address on one of his horns; that he 
was a CEO and could use me in his company. He said 
he’d be in touch soon and that he considered our meeting 
to be prophetic. He then told me to exit through the door 
on my left before they’d made another turn, because there 
was sometimes killing, and at the very least, several who 
got hurt and wound up spending considerable time recovering. 
Thanking him, I did exactly as he suggested but realized 
that I forgot to ask him which company he owned 
and how he planned to use me.



WHAT I DISCOVERED 

 is that it’s the down time that really matters.
What we do between the seconds of joy and the waiting 
for something to happen that turns out to be a dream 
in which the spider sucks the juice out of the fly
like the proverbial milkshake we used to enjoy
before our favorite hamburger joint went out of business. 
What else I discovered is that my 7th grade Spanish teacher 
put all the pretty girls in the front of the class
so he could look under their dresses, laugh with them,
and teach them the good stuff like Te quiero
and Tu casa es mi casa while us boys sat in the back
imagining violent birds flying through the window 
and pecking out our eyes for no other reason than they could.
And in the end I realized that each and every one of us
wants what we want for ourselves first, 
that only if we’ve grown tired of what we have
are we willing to share with the person who fell by the wayside,
who can hardly lift themselves up to take another breath 
between the fumes in the air 
and the putrid smell of excrement on the water. 
It’s all a discovery that leaves most of us speechless, 
wondering why we continue to live in such a condition, 
which is always conditional 
on the day, the time, and century in which we live. . .



ANOTHER STORY 


After Little Red and I were married we bought a cottage
near her Grandma so that we could keep an eye on her. 
At first, we visited Grandma every day, but as Red and 
I got busier and busier we were only able to stop by once
or twice per week. 
Knowing how vulnerable Grandma was to wolves in the area, 
we bought her an alarm system that sounded at our house 
if there was trouble.
Everything was fine for a few months until one night
the alarm went off at about 3 a.m. and Red and I rushed
to Grandma’s house as fast as we could. 
When we opened Grandma’s bedroom door we saw that she 
was half way down a wolf’s throat. 
Immediately, I picked up a chair and slammed it against the wolf’s 
back which made him cough up Grandma, who understandably 
was shaken and confused.
And before I had a chance to slam the chair over the wolf’s head, 
he fled through the open window. 
After this incident Red decided that Grandma should live with us, 
which turned out O.K. because most of the time she was never 
in our way. 
Eventually we sold Grandma’s house to a nice family of bears 
who soon became our friends and trusted neighbors.
Everything was fine until three depraved little pigs and their
sociopathic mother moved into the neighborhood. 
From there, things went from bad to worse, the specifics of which 
I’ll save for another story. . .






Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer who plays Afro Cuban Folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies. Recent writing in MockingHeart Review, Colloquial, Ordinary Madness, Third Wednesday, After The Pause, Tower Journal, Fear of Monkeys, Brickplight, Tigershark, Corvus, and many others. In 2017 he was nominated for both The Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.