Joe Balaz Sings of the Caracal, What's Beneath the Waves, and a Kite on the Moon

SLOW DOWNFALL


Dere’s da lynx and da caracal
by da cheetah and da cougar

standing next to da margay
and da leopard

along wit da serval and da jaguar

while da lion and da tiger
play tag wit da ocelot—


You get da idea
I like big cats

da moa wild da bettah.


Da key word heah dough
 is “wild”

cause I no like look at da buggahs
in wun cage.


Turn da prisoners loose
if you ask me.


Dose setups in city zoos
are just scientific circuses

witout da whips
and flaming hoops.


Dats why I no mind
da nature programs

filming da huge felines
in dere own habitats.


Even dough dey stay endangered
dey are bettah off

being wheah dey supposed to be.


If da buggahs go extinct
den dats da way it is.


It’s not like dis planet
nevah see radical changes before.

Go ask da saber-toothed tiger
about dat.


As da world is squeezed

in da face of development
and technology

some wonderful  tings
are gonna be lost.


While all of dis happens

I rather be wun neutral observer
to da slow downfall

rather den wun animal keeper
holding nature against its will

so dat its creatures
can exist as side shows

in pay to see jail cells.




CHALLENGING AS IS

Christine no can do it anymoa

visiting and trying to help out
wen she’s not even wun relative.

She feels kinnah bad
and hates to sound distant

but she knows
she gaddah tink about herself.


It must be wun very confusing
state of being

wen da sun is blotted
out of da sky

and all da familiar faces
no longer have any names.


Sitting deah
wit her ailing acquaintance

and observing da restless sea
from da surface

Christine fully realizes

dat she has no idea
wat is going on beneath da waves.


She’s struggling wit her compassion

and by no means can she imagine
wun halo above her head

cause lately she feels
as if she’s drawing inward.


Her world is hectic
and is challenging as is.

Dere’s no silver spoon
in her purse

dat she can fling at da clouds
to induce wun rainfall of plenty.


Christine has given everyting she can.


Wen she gets back to her own place
and accesses da  new reality

she rationalizes and lets go
like many people eventually do.


Opening her refrigerator
Christine finds

dat wit all of her recent running around

she needs to get some fast food again

cause da only ting worth eating
is wun box of uncooked chicken

but da pieces are frozen solid
harder den her newly changed heart.




LIKE LOTS OF TINGS

Like Buddha
taking wun selfie.

Like hunters
eating vegetable soup.

Like eternal peace
aftah da bomb explodes.

Like Santa and Satan
wit da same letters.

Like ants
in wun birdcage.

Like wun priest
in wun whorehouse.

Like wun kite
on da moon.

Like wun refrigerator
in wun igloo.

Like virgins
wit experience.

Like feelings
to wun robot.

Like wun monk
wit wun Mercedes.

Like convictions
made of vapors.

Like silver spoons
in wun orphanage.

Like wun praying mantis
witout claws.

Like dyslexia
to wun blind man.

Like light
to wun black hole.

Like concentric ripples
reversing.

Like mirrors
in wun parallel universe.

Like wun elephant’s trunk
searching through papers.

Like lots of tings 
dat keep you blinking and tinking.




Joe Balaz has created works in American English and Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai'i Creole English).

He presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and he is the author of Pidgin Eye.

James Diaz Tells Of The Boy Who Threw His Words At A Train, A Negligence of Bandages, And The Warp Of Trauma

Shiver n' Shakedown

Put your ragged heart

in the red dirt

some boy threw

his words against a train

outta town

never made it

calls you sometimes

says; iowa, portland,

mexican border,

i still love you

probation officer

at the door again

late on rent again

had a using dream again

again again

torpedo heart

listen to the town go dead

at night

against the chain link fence

wrapped around

motel six

blue sky kids kicking dreams up in their veins

feel this god make or break you

down into laughter

why,

you don't ask why

anymore

you let the world have at you

take; liver, gut, limb

take what you're gonna take

and shout about all the rest

I need to sleep

dear god, I need to remember

where it is I come from

but never mind that now

I see the lights

I hear the heat

it's all over except it's not

ever

over.

I've Got You, Hold on

what it's like

and no one has stopped

My, that's quite a wound you've got

I know

I really do

to help you

all evening

it's been like this

people pretending no one is bleeding

no one human

can you lift your leg for me

does this hurt, here, try this way

lean into my hand, I've got you

fuck is wrong with these people

I'll go get bandages, hold on

I'll be back

and you tell me it's been ten years since you've been home

and what happened was...

and it still haunts you

and sometimes this feels better

out here, all alone

better that the wounds are now only accidents

and I know, I really do

what it's been like

I see you bleeding

no safe place and so completely human

you're not foreign to me -I've got you, hold on.

It

Is No Act, To Love You Here

Trauma

warp

round

the root

I

rot, you call-

I

come running

feel

the furrow

the

shakes

scan

my insides

all

rut and ribbon

say

this life

will

not escape us

will

turn into

a

porch light

in

the deep

mountains

and

when you cry

an

angel loans its wings

we

beat the earth

we

drink deeply

from

that ground

open

up- something is coming

through,

bigger

than light

higher

than dope

come

drop these chains

come

hold this wheel

steady,

scarred

and

beautiful

wishing

well

belly

whispers

break

the night

and

our hearts wide

open.

More

than

father's

return

this

time,

our

instinct for love

and

deserving-

the

retching along the highway

spilling

its own light,

and

such hands as these to catch it.

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and editor (along with Elisabeth Horan & Amy Alexander) of the anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma (Anti-Heroin Chic Press, 2019). In 2016 he founded the online literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic to provide a platform for often unheard voices, including those struggling with addiction, mental illness and Prison/confinement. His most recent work can be found in Moonchild Magazine, Occulum, Drunk Monkeys and Thimble Literary Magazine. He resides in upstate New York, in between balanced rocks and horse farms. He has never believed in anything as strongly as he does the power of poetry to help heal a shattered life.   

Andrew Shields as a Human Bench, as a Witness to a Tom Waits' Homicide, and as Thunder in the Sun

Bench

Most of the time, nobody sits on me
or even notices I'm offering
everyone a chance to take a break
on their way from someplace to someplace.

I'm used to it by now. I take what comes:
two teenagers who scratch their names on my back.
An overweight old man with a tiny dog.
A Dad who sits to watch his children playing

in the cul de sac. The sunshine of
the early spring that warmed my slats last week.
And now more snow than I have ever had
weighing me down after a late-winter storm.

Like everyone else, it, too, will leave me soon.
Even that Dad has stopped coming by for a rest,
his children now older and playing other games.
Like I said, I'm used to it by now.
 
I Dreamed Tom Waits Killed His Brother

accompanied by
a walking bass
and a little high hat

Took him out in a canoe to the lake's center
and there under the full moon
offered him the choice of death
or murder and in the drowning
shooting knifing or strangling
one of them died and the other
the other rowed back to shore
climbed in the car but the keys
were at the bottom of the lake
he had to hotwire the car which
fortunately he knew how to do

and while he was driving home
a cop pulled him over for going
a bit too fast down the road
cop didn't like the look of this guy
noticed he didn't have any keys
took him out of the car and cuffed him
he's doing time for stealing his own car
after killing his brother

but nobody ever found out about this
until I had this dream one night
wrote it down Tom Waits
killed his brother and is doing time
for stealing his own car
stealing his own car
stealing his own car
 
Thunder

The thunder rolls from clouds on the horizon,
although the sky above is hazy blue.
No rain is falling, but the wind is rising;
the leaves are talking, but not to me and you.

Let's sit down and listen to the thunder.
We cannot see the lightning for the sun.
But now a flash begins to make me wonder
whether we'll be dry when this is done.

Let's leave the yard and make our way inside.
The weather's good to watch behind the glass.
The branches sure are bending in this gale!
Twigs and leaves are blowing across the grass.
Pity those without a place to hide
from the torrent and the pounding of the hail!


Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland. His collection of poems "Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong" was published by Eyewear in 2015. His band Human Shields released the album "Somebody's Hometown" in 2015 and the EP "Défense de jouer" in 2016.

Twitter: @ShieldsAndrew
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrewshieldspoems/

Matt Borczon's Dropped Quarter, Heaven-Neglected Animals, and Smiles Like Spiderwebs

Hope

Hope is

a prayer

said out

loud in

an empty

house

it's the

sound of

a quarter

dropped in

a Catholic

church

It's a

dog wearing

a muzzle

and a

gun without

bullets

it is

love with

no expectations

beyond the

way it

makes you

feel

right here

right now.

Animals have no souls

Beyond

the gates

of Eden

an elephant

sits alone

in a

room

a wolf

howls in

a shopping

mall

as crows

scatter across

neon lit

cities

we are

all just

dreams

waiting to

be born

just thoughts

unexplained

then lost

in the

glow of

everything

we are

all just

animals

who are

not allowed

in heaven

destined

to obey

a master

we never

asked for.

Lover

your

kiss

is

a

wolf's

howl

an

ocean

wave

and

your

touch

is

a

spider's

web

big

enough

to

encase

me

like

a

mummy

smiling

into

the

face

of

death

Matthew Borczon is a nurse and Navy Corpsman from Erie Pa. He served in the busiest combat hospital in Afghanistan from 2010-2011; he writes about his experiences on Camp Bastion and about the difficulties he has had since coming home. 

Aakriti Kuntal Walks Into The Ocean And Never Returns With An Insect Strapped Into the Day's Chest And The Carnival Of A Clockwork World

Abduction


White salt out there,
your whitewashed twigs scowling,
set into motions unfamiliar

The night is growing thick
Like a matchstick,
the finger is aflame

It has sworn to shimmer
The teeth abandon the jaw
and float into the sea

A jawbone into the sea's eternity
A poet stood before the ocean

and never returned
Return he did not

and in my cupped eyelid,
a quarter of the moon, the man's weakening
steps, a half-knee dipped in water green

Arms swinging like ropes,
their jolly, an unfathomable absurdity

A poet walked into the sea
and never returned

Every day the sea washes
his stench from shells and crab skins

Every day the sea washes the sand's antenna feet

A poet walked into the sea
and never returned




Evening


Evening,
a marble plateau,
sliced breath of the day

Red pomegranate seeds splutter,
turning the mouth’s estranged sky
into a velvet sienna

Stillness—
Lack of movement?
Lack of thought?

An elongation of emotion
A requiem for the living

The air
it seems
is suffused with a flat, ochre light,
static around the bark of all trees

A consolation,
A lullaby,
A long, long pause
Everything in the goddamn world
bending down
to stare at its very own miracle

Twilight’s veil flutters,
an insect strapped to the day’s chest

She moves

Slowly
Carefully
There are no mistakes made here
The day falls in precise moments,
just as it began

A cold shudder

A celestial beast
salivates over life’s porous face

and the horizon grins

Evening,
the sly tongue of light



Artery



I.

The peninsula of the feverish hand, the upturned hand, dwelling like a conundrum above stripes of skinned air. Throbbing needlessly, desperately, throbbing in blue and lavender dots, a circus, a forest, an entire landscape of paleness. Winter's old confidante, grey and ancient, flowing steadily, rapidly, ravaging all in its path, coursing through the giant tributaries of veins, their sputtering valleys, their saline consonance.
What is it that has been spoken? What have you learned that you cannot forget? What is this disease that you have caught from the warm belly of the night that you cannot let go of? What is this desire that you conceal in your grand stutter? Why must you run in ambiguities, make of this fragile clockwork a carnival? What is it that holds your tongue and makes your limbs, your tiny feet run wild in me, day and night, night and night? What is this, what is this ugliness that you have sworn to be?

II.

In madness reigns the eccentric song of the heart. The dreadful rose heart, almost terrified, almost smitten with its own severe palpitation. Its unquenchable need to be, its admirable desire to not. Suffering in its own arms, it gathers, it steals all the songs of the world from all the curious corners, the brightened edges, the bizarre waterfalls, the ever-wading roundness of things, a pervading haze. It is its own demise, rotting behind the schizophrenic eye of the mind, quivering behind thistles and needles. It is own demise and its own solitary reed, fluttering through the atmosphere, the blind sky, the all-pervading grey lake; hiding, then flinging itself in desperation, into a bush of orange feathers, the armpits of unknown birds, into raven eyes and abhorrent beauty; burning in innocence, the unendurable truth in its vascular scream.


III.

Spring forth, arms, from the remains of the day. Spread, seed by seed, knuckle by knuckle, eat the dust that glares from the edge. The wide-eyed sphere of air that watches with an unmistakable gaze, a hollow stare, the only one, the carcass of a large God, the aftermath of all truth and untruth. Spring forth, arms; arms of restless ache, restless lisp, incurable restlessness, seek in the white fade of emptiness the echo of your being, your calamitous birth, your undying being.

Aakriti Kuntal, aged 26, is a poet and writer from Gurugram, India. Her work has been featured in various national and international literary journals. She was awarded the Reuel International Prize 2017 for poetry and was a finalist for the RL Poetry Award 2018.

Charlie Farmer Among The Coroners, Honoring The Dead, Disdainful Lunch Box, The Needle On The Record, Belaying Hell As Well, And The Floral Prints Of Timeless Youth

 “Pride Care Cleaners”

I was 18 and bought my first suit and tie,
so I could go to Grady Memorial
and say,” This is Emily.”


Handshakes with coroners.


My attempt at dignity.
To be well dressed and say,
“This is Emily.”


To identify you.


You were 32, heroin chic.
Front page cheeks.


I found you in your bathroom.
Your hair matted, mascara a mess.


I did my best to clean you
before the ambulances.


I dressed you in my favorite sundress.


Floral print.


It was important
that ambulance drivers
found you important.


Men made fun of you
on bathroom walls,
but I still dry-cleaned that suit,
The best I could do at 18.




“the first funeral”


did you throw
your lunchbox
against the wall
as i did
when a car
crushed your
first dog?

learn how
to use a shovel,
dig, bury?

learn loss lessons?

if not, understand.
this is why everything
is so important to me.



 “Simple Machines”

Some of us want
To be in love every day.
It is demanding to those
Who can pack a bag,
Close a book,
Remove the needle
From a record,
Underline phrases
That moved the world
And walk away.
I can’t walk away.
I need those books, records.
Like I need you,
You in the dark, getting
Dressed for work,
Trying not to wake me,
But I am always awake,
And I will ask,
“Two more minutes?”
And you oblige.
A short cuddle.

My favorite days
Are when you
Show up
With your hair
In tangles
After work.
You are all underlines,
Everything important.
I have given up
Finding synonyms
For your grace.





“Drinking in Parking Lots”

Some spring days there are
girls checking out library books,
And they may not be my girls, but
There is such charm in sundresses,
A book in hand.
Let's delay hell,
and worship girls
who underline sentences
and bite us
where there are no bruises
but want them.
Let's delay hell.


“Whatever Happened to Sara Shaw?”

Friday nights we boys waited for the grind of the gravel
As the girls' car, borrowed from a parent, steered up the driveway
To a friend's lean-to

The girls blew in wearing tie-dye that fit like a mistake,
Unpracticed make-up,
Pleated jeans, their schoolgirl figures obscured, unrecognizable
But she would arrive in private school chic—
Sundresses, more often than not in a floral print
But sometimes, my favorite, a navy number with fine, white dot print

Youth expires, and ghost towns last so long


Charlie Farmer is a Georgia poet and professor who loves his wife, Erin, his friends, his cats, his students, his books, his LP's, and everything else a poet should love in life. He is a lefty on the guitar but two-fisted everywhere else otherwise. 

Mark Young Returns With A Kestrel Attack In A Nordic Novel, Antarctican Kites, And A Bad Case Of Flood Denial

Nordic Noir

The kestrel in the churchyard keeps crying out for lingonberries.

"This is not a Nordic crime novel," I remind it. "I can give you jackfruit, or mangoes, or even those rotten-smelling durian whose popularity in China is rivalled only by the iPhone, but the lingonberry is beyond my reach."

I turn away, miss the kestrel flying to attack me, eyes first, & then that critical vein in the neck. My last thought just before I pass: "Lars Kepler might get a novel out of this."


 
Drag & Drop

An exhausted pair of pranksters needed police help to drag a giant metal cockroach they had moved six meters along Rundle Mall early this morning.

Domenic Esposito dropped a 10-foot, 800-pound sculpture of a heroin spoon on the sidewalk in front of a Coventry Pharmaceutical company.

Businesswoman dragging a giant heavy weight on chain, Guilt written on the ball. Cartoon vector flat-style concept illustration.

Hogan drops an elbow on the prone Giant, & another, & another.

Two German painters are dragging a giant pen through Utah, Colorado, & Wyoming.

Man uses bulldozer to drop giant boulder on a pickup truck & destroys its suspension.

Wilson will be traveling alone, using only skis & kites, dragging a giant pair of pink breasts full of enough survival supplies for 80 days across Antarctica.

Wilderness hill giants used to be an active place for F2P pking. Double the drop rate of Giant Key from hill giants in the wilderness. Hopefully this could add some interesting incentive to F2P players to enter the wilderness.


 
for Joe Zawinul, a weather report

Rising rivers vomit glossy
coffee table books on Brutalist
edifices of the 1930s. Sane adults

narrow down a list of options
for substance use. I'm camped
out here in the middle of a flood

reciting supposedly helpful
mantras for making the water
recede. I think I'm in denial.





Mark Young's most recent books are les échiquiers effrontés, a collection of surrealist visual poems laid out on chessboard grids, published by Luna Bisonte Prods; The Word Factory: a miscellany, from gradient books of Finland; & The Perfume of The Abyss from Moria Books.