Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

The Yellow Hills

Let’s meet in the yellow hills

near the sea.  Let’s picnic in

the yellow hills.  We could

look up to the sky and make

small talk.  We could tell each

other our hopes and dreams.

Stretched out on a blanket

under the warm sun.   We

could pretend we’re dead

or like some immovable

force.  Under a leafy tree

in the yellow hills we’ll rest.

In these hills black ants eat

the crumbs we leave behind.

Their tiny shadows could only

be observed under a microscope.

In the yellow hills we leave

our troubles behind.  Not far

from shore we feel the breeze

that comes from the sea.   We rest

here where the leafy tree’s shadow

seems to swallow us whole.

The yellow hills protect us from

the dark times of the world.

Akeith Walters

Waiting for Pete


Another iced whiskey wets my hand
as I linger in the bar’s twilight,
listening to a Dolly Parton crossover.


The sweet scented blend of a Marlboro
and reefer drifts by


and I turn to see Pete walk in,
his rose polo
and fat ass
hanging loose and untucked.


No one knows what he does when not sitting on his stool
with his back to the door,


with no more than beer or two to hold the world at bay.


Young drunks,
who sway in clusters,
listen to his stories,
the grainy black and white ones,
of stonewall chances taken in back alleys and secret bars,
in secluded parks and rusty boxcars,


before civil rights became the rights of everyone,


except for the few who wore loose rose polos
with a bangle or two
and cowboy boots
with high polished heels.

William Doreski

The Revolution Will Be Televised


Comrades, the time has come
to seize the means of production,
I wrote in my latest memo,
earning a crooked smile from the dean.
Dusk as drab as old sweat pants
crawls across the quad, dousing
my dream of overthrowing worlds.
You think I’m merely boyish
because like Dostoevsky

I want to face a firing squad
and let revolution enter me
like a swarm of killer bees. Laughing,
you share your iced coffee with me.
Why do you suppose the straws
have become alert as antenna,
quivering while the TV rants
of oil spills and massacres, and suits
explain why their public crimes

deserve praise instead of censure?
What does it mean to want to seize
the means of production when
the workers have long ago retired
and we academics produce
only a dreary and muffling fog?
As we drain the coffee our foreheads
bump like dueling elk, so we duck
shyly away from each other.

How often we’ve sorted headlines
by degrees of horror, sharing
our modest grief. The revolution
next time will surely be televised.
But when we stand like Dostoevsky
and the rifles nod but refuse
to fire we’ll feel belittled
by the books we’ve read and loved,
the iced coffee freezing our veins.

Travis Macdonald

Definite Article Anything

(worthless customs, rules, or regulations that forbid something to set a price of)

1.

Nominative Singular Pronoun keeps

watch or vigil at or to

a farther point or higher

place on or in

the present day or age

free from sound or noise

as a place or persons; silent.

2.

Any liquid that is swallowed

to quench thirst, for nourishment,

etc. beverage (a Boolean operator

that returns a positive result when both

operands are positive) free fruits, vegetables

from moisture for preservation; dry.

Stimulate sexually an added condition

stipulation, detail or particular

to utter suddenly and briefly; exclaim!

3.

Earth or matter in fine, dry particles

toward or in the direction of: going

each; every; per: spreading and imparting dirt

a hard blow (or a successful show)

Nominative Singular Pronoun has; or forms

in the mind as an idea,

conception etc. — to regard as specified

an auxiliary verb which belongs to you

Next in order of time or place to devise

or arrange, as in a plan at that point in an action

speech, etc. the state or condition

4.

Each; every; per: for a short time or period

having considerable linear extent in the space

of head or skull reaching well into the past

(of beverages) mixed against great odds

to be no longer subject, become in-

different.

Paul Handley

Style Conscious


The rain drops on my
Signature fedora that has
Become a kinky quirk
Lately, attests that my
Misfit flair became too popular
From a discernment of a norm
That did not remain on the fringes,
Thus keeping its cache.
Maybe next time.

Have you seen the white
Golf shoes? I hope it is only your
Subconscious that registered
It as a shadow echo, then
Stilled to a casual pulse
That warranted a glance of
Appreciation to an unprompted omit.
This is a goal.



Actual Event


The moon looks
Like a multi media

White egg pasted
In my panorama.

Who knows? Maybe in
My own miniature (to someone)
Crèche. The finishing

Applicant may have been
Overlooked by inspector
#3WL47^*.

I don’t mind being on a
Set, but a whimsical
Mindset for details is

Not welcome. Our
Scientists have observed
Fundamentals that have to adhere.

Contentment requires lunar tides, not
Schlock van guard.
Inconsistency breeds child

Abuse and grassy knolls.
Memo to “god” give me
A sun at 06:17 hours with

Shimmering streaks,
Appropriate warmth and
Precancerous skin.

Fire the inspector if need be
Or I will curse
You to a locked room of

Social scientists
Debating the nature
Of reality for a week (your time).

David McLean

tripping over brackets


we trip over the brackets
around the pure perception,
and, inside me,
all cats are gray

like flags over the castle
where nothing lives
innocent oblivion.
all cats are gray,

and time at night
is painless, where evening
has stroked away
twilight anxiety

and consecrated the cold
to being and absence,
that icy absolution
time brings, like nothing,

here where all cats are gray,
and so are most days

Phil Lane

Nine Ways of Looking at Dawn


I.
Dawn encroaches like doom
written on the sky,
a contract you never signed,
a painting without
a signature.


II
Dawn unfurls like a white flag,
you surrender to
a morning that looms
with idle hands,
itches for something
to complicate.


III
Dawn comes down
like a death sentence,
it’s there, it waits,
the sun rises
even on the gallows.


IV
Dawn is birds singing
in the squalor,
sun shining
through the spit
and scorn of judges.


V
Dawn is another
new sky
of blood
and plumbing
and minutiae.


VI
Dawn arrives
when you are trying
to be a man,
emasculates you
with its flat, white
sun.


VII
Dawn yields
neither marked gain
nor marked loss,
it breaks even,
it’s a wash.


VIII
Dawn forgets like rain:
as rain forgets the drought,
so dawn forgets the night.


IX
After the gloaming,
dawn is all there is

Peter Greene

Aquadynamics and the far dark boom of quarry rock

people do much larger things than I

a blast far away in the quarry con

firms it – big men, three hundred pounds and more,

who lose hands between boulders the size of houses, reaching

for the one rock out of place – com

posing vast poems whose subtle song

of a million million voices

expresses itself in the vast and perfect

           slight tilt

of a barge that will be three years

moving from here to far Dubai – attended

by helicopters, the machine train sighs

across the seas and these vast men merely man it – each, too

exhausted in his turn – the gulls cry screaming

in the wake of the tugs and chains – they, smaller than I

tend this great procession

with far greater knowledge and attention

than I, a poet not too far by

enchanted by booms

and the stories of large men

who do larger things , I reach

for that one detail out of place

that will fix the scene in place, in mind forever

but the rocks roll on today

and I pull back a stump.

Neil Ellman

Ghost Story


A shadow wanders
Through the dusty rooms
Between old chairs
Draped in white linen
Passing a portrait of itself
Almost recognizable
Slightly turned
As if to look away
Wondering why it's there
Where it is
And who the others are
Who sense
The silent wind of eyes.






Walk This Way


The sun walked this way
Peeked around the side of the old church
Turned the corner
And entered the empty square
The grey statue changed to fire
Alive again.


Walk this way, it said,
And I did, and in its place
I was transformed to stone.

Ricky Garni

The Fourth Stooge


I thought that surely I was missing something when I read Rumi talking about beating a man senseless with a club so that he could pull the stealthy snake out of his mouth, but it is true: that’s exactly what he wrote.

Sometimes you have to trust people when what they seem to be doing makes no sense, so that they may pull stealthy snakes out of your mouth which were they to explain their purpose might not work, as you would grow tense and inflamed and it would be quite impossible to do what needed to be done, i.e., snake removal.

Then again, some people are crazy. They like to beat you senseless for fun. Moe Howard had that. Bugs Bunny had a little bit of that. I like to think that Rumi was not crazy or one of the Three Stooges or Bugs Bunny. And I know in my heart he wasn’t. But sometimes it makes me smile to think that maybe he really was. Yes, he maybe he was.

Matt Galletta

Your name


Your name lives on my tongue.

Not in conversation,
not consciously,
but in the million
mindless moments
of a day,
it comes out.

Pouring coffee,
parking the car,
through all the countless
tiny tasks
that add up
to a life,

it's there:

a steady rhythm,
a gentle hum,
a one-word prayer
I keep repeating
under each breath.



Lately


It's like that night
when we drove home
from Boston
through all that fog.

No street lights
in sight,
we crawled with caution,

windshield wipers
thunking
at the moisture
beading up on the glass.

Barely able to see
the lane markings,
we couldn't tell
if there was a shoulder
to pull over onto.

Checking the rearview,
squinting into the gray
in front of us,
checking the rearview again,

we wondered when,
if ever,
things were going to clear up.



Matt Galletta lives with his wife, daughter, and cats in Troy, NY. His work has appeared in MediaVirus Magazine, PigeonBike, Red Fez, and elsewhere. Find out more at Matt Galletta.

Heller Levinson

mapping like industrial forge

hammering     (out)     a shape

fruition

bringing to fruition

shaping

tending to   (tenderizations pattern beating

finding

the shape of finding 

configuration

poured to/on anvil    pounding into position   into shape    pounding accruing shape   shape establishes position   grants position ... /administers

co-ordinates arrive at position, deliver a position, -- embarkation    accountings & establishment

co-ordinates = finders

the found tossed tenebrous in the incinerative convolute of perennial displacement

furnaces laboring

Map rebuffs Peril

M:   I provide a service.

P:   You imperil.

M:   I guide people.

P:   You only misdirect them further.

M:  Degrees of lostness?

P:   Levels of Perdition.

M:  I’m useful.

P:   So are caskets.

mapping tomb peril

encrustation coarctation astringency assembly syndrome

to get there → how?               not, ... why?

how -- the supracessional

mapping:  an options elimination operation

questing to arrive

maps   }       take you there

gps      }

              the quest is to find, locate ... identify

identity < > locatability

location < > definitionality

discover – uproots from the unknown

                                                         (larval spits

initiate search

the unidentified appears

Philip Byron Oakes

With Sauce

Flibberty giblet corn fed stories

of heroic binges of charity,

feeding the appetite

for having given it all away.

A dyslexic take on a zip code of behavior,

coming up lemons in the hands of the

postman. Ringing twice the normal

speed of light and fluffy words

from home. Commas

with saddles to ride the silence,

to a meaning between the

lines etched in faces making

the weathermen who they are.

Characters in an antagonist’s drawl

fleshing out an alibi for convalescence,

thinly veiled in the thick of a limp

through the Russian revolutions

of the door.

Sure Wood

A forest stumped for an answer

as to where to sit. From whom

to seek shelter, in houses gutted

by old flames, coming back to

haunt the furnace for the hearth.

Culling the herds of the listless

for the brightest of those eyes

lost in sleep. To separate the

wood from the wooden, when

asked to loosen a grip, on a

hand in the making it what it

is. Confounding the unmitigated

with alloys of discretion, in

fending off the queries from

those who might do some good.

Anchor the garden to the ground.

Meet the qualifications in the alley.

An one for all intents serving

as a purpose, for what might

have been, as well as for what

narrowly is. As good a reason

as any to plant a tree.

Ton van ‘t Hof

Untitled


-----

a love story well maybe not
to flow unobstructed through
but one that's still pretty cool while

some stitches without losing any density

haply purporting to kiss the holy moon

all over its length

-----

a next generation neurally based autonomous road

red reusable plastic fire hydrant

trees nature sound effects wind

clouds? well let's face it we googled some

lovely tibetan endless

-----

giving wisely what
they really want
to grow on happiness hope poems do

autism grass roots
fruit flies toolbox policy

its clean green fun be

a third degree polynomial always

a tic-tac-toe for instance

the tuscan risotto sun

standing rib roast or
going round some corners slower

would your lights dim

not love but then one
way of totally open blue sky thinking

----

Lyn Lifshin

All Night the Night Has Been

lightening with moths

white behind the walnuts

If a woman couldn’t sleep

and came to this window

in this light her skin

would glow like bones

Clouds over the full moon

even with the wind

What would have been

nuts looks like limes

on the white stones,

it sounds like some

one tapping on a glass

coffin. It sounds

like someone tapping

from within the tree

July 23

she lets dread

take the form of

tulips, bulbs

planted before

white camouflages

sky. It’s too late

to remember

forgotten

camisole, lace.

Only papers

torn from confetti

on the 2 by 4

floor, the abstraction

of terror, other

cities people left

at night, herbs

never picked,

running through

ephemera, writing

the footnotes

before the text

Music Hall

If there was a lover I could

imagine, his thighs would

take me over the brass. If

I could remember when the

bow or strings could have

been a tongue on the crevice

where a knee and hip join.

If I could touch what I feel in

the cat’s fur or re-reading

Ruffian’s last hours. I

think of the Cadbury in my

pocket book, the winter once

he held me. In a drawer,

the sales slip: 1921, sold to

my grandfather before

he changed his name, good

quality. German, 360 dollars,

so my mother could star.

It was the reason she named

me Rosalyn Diane, a name

for the stage. I try to remember

the feel of the strings. “Talented.”
”Never screeched.” I watch

the first violinist, rhinestones

in her hair, black velvet

skirt near the one with short

stubby legs in what looks like

shorts she shouldn’t be

wearing. . The singer is nice,

making her cooing sounds. Years

after I throw glass as if to get

it out of me when my husband

ran off, he’s at the box office

in line near me a friend says

and like this night, I don’t

feel anything

SJ Fowler

{Jus Primae Noctis}

He could’ve been a colonel in the army.

King of the moth squad,

with his great grandfathers name, easily he could.

But he was not born on sacred soil.

He looks the part, but only just.

She can shut her knees all she wants.

This memory of military degradation has returned

him to sense. He is no rapist!

He has never been a man who needed to take

anything by force.

Just because he has the stomach for it (who doesn’t?)

does not mean that he would.

She opens her legs in pain and he stabs the blade

into her inside thigh. He cannot hear her shout.

The spray is fine at first and he has to stand

away to not get doused in the blood.

She will loose consciousness and though they will not

be able to save her,

they might try beyond the blue still living,

which will look better on the news.

The artery has opened up now.

The blood is coming in ways he did not know it

could. The body is forceful & final.

It will soon pool about the entire toilet. His

distraction is theft.

SJ Fowler

{I am a dancing Cathar, married twice, looming incest}

he enters a double door that carries the face of a bookcase

                   & descends into that rare subbasement

                               to carry on with those who struggle in her name, Jus Primae Noctis!

                       I help them to place a bag under the Museum.

                                                 & the ghosts are welcome to me.

                                                 they are dead for a reason & jealous sweep

                                        I will return the place again to Montague’s fields

                         & raise the Uncle’d spectre that they have forgotten. Complaint

               I do not think they will speak Dutch, or Latin.

                           I think they will just come for everyone I have known.

                  so the incentive grows. A crutch

                           if it cannot roam it cannot be. It must return then,

                                                   to brack &  hood & cea

             it will not be the good half of me that’ll stick to their fingers when it goes

       not the lowerhalf

                            I will not be in sight when the tomb rises in fire.

                                    no notice will be given. That day is this day.

                       the colossal rat

               clearly beneath the white binds it is beginning to cry

          the words beneath the cloth are inquisitive

                                                  there are no apologies or exclamations.

                  it bites down trying to predict the blows.

  I                                       always chewing, trying to sever the gag.

                                                      it cannot save itself now.

                                                            more hitting, more irregular blows,

                                  always with the closed hand.

                               He does not put everything in.

{Nafkhae is the name of that particular form of air or vapour which the angel gabriel is said to have blown or caused to pass from his coat sleeve into the windpipe of Mary for the purpose of impregnation}

during the night, I need to be calmed.

She has bad news. Porphyria is dead.

.

The shape so different from the other girls.

The last time she saw me she was drunk and singing,

her bra sweated through, her arms lacerated, refusing to heal.

The bottle in her hand broken, and her still drinking from it,

wincing at the taste, mocking me, singing so loudly,

deafening the others and she liked me, loved me,

slept with me because I laughed over her falls,

laughed as she sung white power anthems

outside of the off-licences by night and pharmacies by day.

Shouting at the top of her lungs ‘six million lies’,

getting the elderly at bus stops to join in,

wiping billiard balls over my lips,

still warm like platypus eggs from where they had just recently rested.

Porphyriagena is dead. She lies dead.

I must go, lest they suspect it was me.

Clearly she died of cullagium, of poisoning,

but how terribly I would be beaten before they realised this

and confirmed it so.

She wasn’t even that old, she was twenty years old.

Her death cannot be in anyway related to me.

Just a coincidence. None the less…

I leave her undisturbed behind me and do not close the door in my wake.

I need a rest, I seek a massage.