Five Poems by Marc Darnell

 

The Distance We Inherit 

 

Inflicted with the shyness of my father,

I slipped into a life of still ennui,

staying unexposed, I didn't bother

to gather friends, that ilk was not for me.

 

I wonder how my father found a wife–

perhaps my mother trapped him like a spider.

To this day I've never seen her laugh

or excavate the ache that's deep inside her

 

that came the more with every child born.

She was the very best of moms, I know that–

bellies full, and clothes were never torn.

She'd sit upon the porch and watch the sunset,

 

waiting for my father to come home,

then turning down the bed to sleep alone. 

 

 

Ovarian 

 

My mother's voice– it rasps, crackles like

the leaves she burned in piles on the curb,

though that's illegal now, but getting sick

from cancer's not, each word a painful barb.

 

Our phone call isn't long, she will not last

the year, it's August, trees will soon turn brown.

She stopped the chemo, probably for the best,

since poison in the veins just tears one down

 

like flooding did her house some four years past

when waters broke the levy of her town

and gutted every room, her lawn was lost

to mud and fungus– all her zinnias drowned

 

as she does now.  The leaves will still fall down

when she is dead; I'll burn them on the ground. 

 

 

Orchid 

 

You've heard of it, that it has ponytails,

or jowls, depending on the angle viewed,

variety, or your particular mood.

If you've ever pinned one on a girl

 

or seen it in a painting in her curls

or covering breasts of supple Ruben nudes,

it doesn't strike the mind and never could--

its life too brief, so buy your love a pearl

 

or many in a loop around her neck

silken like the bloom, a husband would

pay highest price if skin would stay that way

 

without her growing freckles, powdered cracks

that wane his lust, he dares not say a word

and dreams of younger orchids far away. 

 

 

Gerber Daisies 

 

How dare you go and change your hues like that--

don't play that rainbow game with us and just

smile agape, fanged dolls that sit

in guise of pastel angels knowing you must

 

feed on bleached grubs, become more toxic

to our addictive eyes that burn and don't

accept your tints' intensities.  Your caustic

flesh orange and teal emits no scent--

 

beauty should require that, maybe a sniff

arousing kinder thoughts.  Your papa sun

will find your crib and burn you while you laugh

your last, smugness snuffed; then you will run

 

vampiric underground to build your power

and rise again to pose a different flower. 

 

 

Uncage 

 

He is scarred from sharpened things

that slowly occupied his life--

his wife who grabs a kitchen knife

and says that if he cheats, she stings.

 

First she'll cut his wandering wings

and then the fig beneath his leaf.

While his boss sleeps with his wife

ungrateful offspring pull his strings.

 

This man's defeated on all sides

but knows his heart is for another

bird beneath his crack of sky--

 

a sky he watches every night,

examining the stars for other

clipped wings that learned to fly.

 

 

Marc Darnell is an online tutor and lead custodian in Omaha NE.  He received his MFA from the University of Iowa, and has published poems in The Lyric, Rue Scribe, Verse, Skidrow Penthouse, Shot Glass Journal, The HyperTexts, Candelabrum, The Road Not Taken, Aries, Ship of Fools, Open Minds Quarterly, The Fib Review, Verse-Virtual, Blue Unicorn, Ragazine, The Literary Nest, The Pangolin Review, and elsewhere. His latest book is Forecast: Increasing Visibility from Kelsay Books.  He has 3 times been awarded the Academy of American Poets prize.

Three Poems by Anushna Biswas

 

FIREFLIES

 

Fireflies blink on mirror

Dusk rolls down the floor

Lizards puzzled on wall

See I the shadow unfurl

 

In solitude I live

Not my will

My life derailed long back

 

Day often looks black

Fate I believe not

It may sound to others hot.

 

 

NORWESTERS

 

Now is the time of big storm

As standard heat zooms high

We are in a climate we

Cannot defy

 

Land and sea locked in unity

Awaiting rude blast over homes

And forests

April is the cruelest month

In maxmal heat we display our wrath

 

We up our hands

Comes the huge blast

Huge storm fetches giant thrust

Our frail windows unhinge off

On rain-laden earth.

SEA-SIDE

 

Sun and moon

Goes out gloom

Earth and sky

Plays in soul joy

 

Sea and sand

Sea-gulls land

In midst of crowd

Ball rolls round

 

Dark drops lower

Fair is over.

Anushna Biswas is a Critic, poet and former Lecturer of Department of English at Tagore University Distance Education. She has written eight books of literary criticisms on fictions from different parts of the world and contributes to Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Fever of the Mind, OPA Poetry Journal and many other national and international online poetry Journals. Anushna has won awards for Poetry contests from different countries.

Four Poems by Nattie O'Sheggzy

 

PROGRESS IS A SEMINAL SHADE

Between colours and lackluster 

Laughter held in place by animated glue

Like time's tendons limping on tiptoes.

              My daughter's sculpted paper butterfly 

              A helpless helicopter without helium

Billows in her vast pewter sky burnishing bright

She grins and grinds away in innocent happiness 

A bumbling face unfurling in smile

              While the day ochres on to night 

              I laugh at the promise with awe 

Of manure planted in the roots of Iroko 

I listen to what I see in her big, brown eyes

A lass who says she wants to turn Einstein 

               Blossoms to an engineering giant

               Winging through the history's firmament 

A SILKEN CONNECTION

 

But the both of us can, if we can.

When you give me your hand, thunderstorm flares

Through the blood-red gulf that holds the distance 

Between the mountains and the valleys we

Cannot move. In the midsummer's dreams,

Memories have died, we say. And I know the sun

Baying for your breath. We know where the sound

Fades. Not a hundred words. Not a note of silence

Unfreezes your heart against the gathering ghosts.

Not a thousand moons bear the shafts 

To shine like these tiny scars in your quiet silk.

But when you give me your hand, breakable as calcium,

You remember to hide and seek me like the sun 

Sinks a hook into the snow, the storm and

All the strange stragglers prowling the pavements.

I cup your tears— this urn's brew spills over.

RIGHT TO BE REMEMBERED IN GLOSSOLALIA

 

In the end I am tired of words,

tussling down the cliff,

as they hit the sides of the ears 

with footsteps of Cat

wanting to nimble at the paws of Rat.

From the beginning of the earth,

before I break the velocity of sentences, 

or count the broken glasses left behind,

I pay my respects to ambulation. I give hope.

To the masticated sermon in the mouth

of the unfed I give all. Give a remembrace 

polished in imaginations, not machinations.

The way my mouth plucks into the scars,

in the end words are born to tender,

to scrub clean the wall where my wounds 

become the second flesh. The second skin.

When the curtains are rent apart

by the science of dying before my demons 

I learn to bind my mouth like the Chinese feet

pint-sized, pointedly carrying a thousand words

before the nighmare. I'm afraid of the last thing 

I will say to the recurrent laughter we shared.

But I keep forgetting to open the floodgates 

For I am tired of speaking in another's tongue.

WHEN I GROW OLD TO BECOME A PAPER IDOL

Paper kite is sailing,

pink wings fading, 

a speck in the torrid air

like my life's dream.

I jerk the tethers 

and the adamancy

is nothing forgettable. 

Paper plane lost in the trees, 

if you saunter back to me

or you lay on a midden,

let the shadow in the window 

whisper in my pillow 

the language of a child.

Now lean with flying,

kite, why did you endure 

the mooning of love?

Kite, why are you innocent

like a plastic doll

to a child's tears?

 

Nattie O'Sheggzy is a poet who, often accompanied by his loyal dog, Exhale, finds inspiration in the complexities of simple things. He is the author of two poetry collections: Random Imaginations and Sounds of the Wooden Gong. Nattie's work has been featured in various literary publications, including Literary Yard, Sandy River Review, Everscribe, Ultramarine Review, Heroin Love Song, Agape Review, SweetSmell Journal, Smoky Quartz, Feed The Holy, and LiteZine. He is currently working on publishing his third poetry collection.

One Poem by Ed Ahern

 

Midsummer Moment

There’s an unmeasured apogee in summer,

when a day holds without time or purpose,

when the sun’s insistence is given its due,

when the curved apex of living hovers

listless and redolent of the sensuous,

and for that poised, weightless moment

the absence of context exudes meaning.

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over 550 stories and poems published so far, and twelve books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he squats on the review board, and at Scribes Micro where he is the idle figurehead.