Five Poems by Stark Hunter

 

Nightmare Again

 

Another loose grind from bedtime to flickering bedtime
The white pills on my bureau sit there like lactose bugs
Lurking silently as sad dogs would, waiting for the door to close
Life is the uneaten fish inside the garbage can out back
The maggots there drink champagne cocktails with their dim wives.
Another nightmare now with hordes of death nurses sucking on syringes 
Their black marble eyes enlarging like stoned puffer fish.

 

 

Les derniers vivants

The mad groaning cities burn with frankincense and fear
The violent defenestrations in Reseda are blacked out on TV
The last ones alive are getting saved inside their starving cadillacs
They carry fiery crosses inlaid with rebar rubies and pepper spray
Commiserating flower girls now embrace the feathered allegiances
Here they come with unfurled rosaries and bubonic nose inhalers.
The shaved zipper girls from Canoga Park ride the sky like fireflies
Zig-zagging through the stereophonic sewers on brooms of gold
They cup their shadow ears now to hear voices in the soft choirs
Children dancers strew cupcake flowers as they pass the day-glo plazas
They sing the muted music of stray sanity bullets and justice bombs 
Now the sleek ambulances rush in like squid demons from Van Nuys 
They screech the hot boulevards driven by the exhaust boys in drag
The mad groaning cities smolder now amidst the cool raining vespers

 

 

Blue Stone

Sagittarius piano fingers waltzing splendidly upon my laptop.
I can hear your nervous ticking heart clapping and tapping—
Collapsing there— as the meat philosophers send their brocades— 
You never told me your name— whether real or frequently imagined—
As you came through my back door with nyloned legs shaking,
Your virgin-scented pearls shining inside my blue-eyed machinations,
Your curious feeders seeking certain electric favors with lip gloves.
Now you give your blue stone to me as one would gift a rich beggar,
To regale the climes with thousand island cadenzas and madrigals.
Sagittarius piano fingers dancing like salad fire upon my laptop

 

 

Allow Them To Eat Your Brain

You are relaxed as you scroll there.
Watch the endless turning and spinning.
The never-ending parade of ideas and images.
Watch closely.
Keep your eyes open and concentrate.
Follow follow follow the magic memes…
Let them consume your mind’s eye.
Allow them to eat your brain with relish.
Your eyelids are now getting heavier.
Relax.
Relax.
See the absorbing blinding images.
See the moving shapes make their strange sounds.
Don’t blink as they pass by.
Watch watch watch the endless turning and spinning.
Be open to all suggestions from them.
Let them consume and eat and swallow you.
You are their wonderful meal under the yellow sun.
You are their reason for spasming.
Don’t forget to keep your eyes open.
Follow follow follow the magic memes…
Relax.
Relax.
Follow follow follow…
Let them.
Let them consume your mind’s eye.
Allow them to eat your brain with relish.

 

 

New Poem Old Poet

I stand again facing the eternal west.
I am an old dude now and,
I miss the western sunsets on Hoover Street.
Those bright orange never-ending endings,
Presenting themselves again like hovering waiters,
Carrying trays of bottled heart-quenchers.
Life is the hat check girl in little orange cap.
When the lights are low,
She steps away privately to dance.

Born in Whittier, California in 1952, Stark Hunter was a high school English teacher for 34 years before retiring from the classroom in 2017. He has written and published 12 books, which are available on Amazon.com. and Barnes & Noble.com. His latest anthology, Covid Gardens, was published in August, 2021. 

Mr. Hunter’s poetry has been included in the following Poetry Anthologies: Stars In Our Hearts, Visions, published 2012 (World Poetry Movement); In My Lifetime, Chronicles, published 2013 (Eber and Wein Publishing); PS: It’s Poetry, An Anthology Of Eclectic Contemporary Poems Written By Poets From Around the Globe, published 2020 (PoetrySoup.Com). 

Fourteen of Mr. Hunter’s poems from Voices From Clark Cemetery were adopted and set to music by Dr. George Mabry, composer and former conductor of the Nashville Symphony Chorus, for his work, Voices, a musical drama which was performed at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee in 2015.

Four of the author’s poems were read on Diverse TV with host, Alexandro Botelho, for his program, “Live Writings On The Wall” in 2021. 

Mr. Hunter’s poetry works can be perused at Poetrysoup.com. and Allpoetry.com. Mr. Hunter is married with two daughters, a granddaughter, and resides in Chino Hills, California.

 

Fish - Flash Fiction by Susan Tepper with Art by James Eret

Painting by James Eret: Rainbow Trout, pastel on Japanese rice paper.

Fish 

After Clarice I didn’t replace the missing tropical fish.  The dog ate most of them.  I didn’t have the heart.  It happens.  I deliberately cut my wrist the wrong way.  I tried telling that to one of the cops who arrived before the EMS.  He looked toward the window.  Finally he said: Your drapes have dry rot.  I scratched under my T-shirt with the good hand.  How do you know?  My wife, the cop said.  She instructs me.  I sat down on a spindly chair.  Some fake antique Clarice lugged back from Paris.  So.  This cop still has a wife.  Whoopie-do.  Probably does the cop-fuck-around.  Girls hidden all over the city.  His partner drinking coffee guarding the turf from the squad car.  Then they switch.  The last time they came back here, they took the dog.  He’ll be better off at the shelter, the one cop told me.  He’ll be better off here, I said.  There, he won’t get fish for supper.

Susan Tepper is a twenty year writer and the author of nine published books of fiction and poetry.  Her most recent  are a poetry chap  CONFESS  (Cervena Barva Press, 2020) and a funky road novel WHAT DRIVES MEN (Wilderness House Press, 2019).  Currently, she’s in pre-production of an Off-Broadway Play she wrote and titled ‘The Crooked Heart’ based on artist Jackson Pollock in his later years. www.susantepper.com

James Eret was born and raised in Hammond, Indiana. He spent four years in the US Navy and is a Vietnam Veteran. He graduated from the University of Illinois with a BFA in Art. James studied poetry with Paul Carroll and drawing with Irene Siegel. James Poems have been published in The Patterson Review, Serving House Journal, Avocet, Spillway, San Diego Poetry Annual, Iodine Review, DelSol Review, The Poetry Conspiracy, Blue Collar Review. He was the featured Poet at the 2000 NAMI Conference, advocating for those with mental disabilities. He was Writing Director of The Creative Arts Consortium in San Diego and environs and helped put up many Art shows for clients and held poetry readings for clients. He currently works in San Diego Unified School District.

One Poem by R. W. Stephens

Halloween

 

 

Beast within me

Terror under a full moon

The black night is mine

 

The lightening has struck.

Golem of flesh and bones rises.

Pyrophobia

 

Small, utter grotesque

Mischievous with your fears

Chaotic soul thrives

 

A shriek from the mound

A dark Queen wails despair, fear

Foreboding a death

 

Faint wisp of a shroud

Will haunt you to your demise

The dead don't care when

R. W. Stephens is a native of California, born in San Francisco. There was an extended sojourn to Wisconsin for university. He raised two special needs kids, part of an interesting life. He recently started writing again with a new perspective. He is the organizer and coordinator for a small writing group based in Hayward, California.

Three Poems by Zvi A. Sesling

 

A Knock In The Night     

 

A knock in the night and I wonder

if it is her returning

 

Returning from where, a lover, a bar

she has been somewhere

 

Since the moon’s dish rose over the city

and the dog howled in protest

 

her side of the bed has been abandoned

now refrigerator cold matching her affection

 

Can the knock in the night be her returning

or the police bringing bad news

 

Is the knock in the night in my head

the door is shut forever

 

She who has knocked my ego and self respect

knocks on the door

Beethoven At Night

 

The lonely street light

sifting through fog, echoes of the day

clinging to buildings, children

sleeping in dark rooms, parents

watching television, lovers making

love, an occasional truck rumbles

like a kettle drum, footsteps clopping

on pavement, the dark street where

the brave walk home listening to

Beethoven ignoring what night might bring

Ambush

 

The east coast beaches

are strewn with people

and trash as sea gulls

patrol the sand looking for edibles

then retreat to the water

 

Occasionally great white sharks

patrol the depths of the east coast

water looking for their favorite

morsel, seals

 

The unwary sea gull happily

bobbing on waves while digesting

purloined human leftover trash

is sometimes ambushed from

beneath, the eater becoming the eaten

Zvi A. Sesling was Poet Laureate of Brookline, MA. (2017-2020). He has published numerous poems and flash fiction. He edits Muddy River Poetry Review, He is author of War Zones, The Lynching of Leo Frank, Fire Tongue and King of the Jungle and three chapbooks Simple Game, Baseball Poems; Love Poems From Hell and Across Stones of Bad Dreams.  He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times and his books have been nominated for national and local awards. Sesling’s flash fiction/micro fiction book is due for release in fall 2021 from Cervena Barva Press. He lives in Brookline, MA with his wife Susan J. Dechter.

 

Four Poems by Donny Winter

 

Whispers in the Fog: A Tanka

 

The rain fell all night

and today, the garden seems lush again

beneath this dull dawn

as each saturated leaf 

is free of the raging sun.

 

With summer at rest,

chickadees gather their seeds

anxiety-free

while the pollinators flit

to flowers and sip the dew.

 

Today, the mist clings

to treetops, and a fog rolls

across swollen soil,

whispers respite to these bones,

wears this iron back to stone.

 

 

Chicory

 

This summer’s heat swelters more than ever before

until our spindle-stems harden to stave a desert-thirst.

As this globe heats, the trees grow heavy, dust-filled,

smoke-screened behind the fumes of a thousand flames far away.

Sometimes, everyone else blossoms first while we

peak our sprouts up through gravel beneath mailboxes, 

disguise ourselves along barren roadsides until the right time.

As the brutal summer tires, each morning becomes a new beginning

when dew condenses against our faces as breath.

 

 

Storms Over Mackinac

 

Thunderheads rise in the west

like mountain-titans drawing near,

preparing to go to war.

 

The straits are placid, inviting,

each ripple lapping at our feet

beckons us to stay a while longer.

 

Our phone flashlights burn like stars

against the twilight as camera shutters

snap an array of photos to capture this.

 

In the distance, the bridge stretches

like a dim-lit ribbon across the ashen sky,

a beacon warding away the oncoming storm.

 

As the freighters slice through the lake one last time

and the final island ferry docks, we take hold of this moment

and pay no heed to our ticking clocks. 

 

 

A Moment

 

Raindrops slink down stems until soil digests

nutrients, swelling into a saturated sod-sponge

 

while a robin sits high in a nearby ash tree,

singing in debate with the sky, “Let it rain”

 

and a young man types half-spelled novels

on his phone, listens to music behind a mobile prison

 

forgetting that the cages we build

become comfortable after a time,

 

after our bodies leave a skeletal imprint

in worn leather upholstery, outdated.

 

In our short time evolving, we’ve sacrificed

the abstract measurement of “moment”

 

for the hurried increment of time

as we pasteurize, sterilize, and cauterize

 

the world around us to fit our needs,

we, these avatars of industry.

 

Now, as raindrops slink into city-sewers

and pigeons excrete on our paved streets,

 

we exhaust ourselves with the chemicals

we’ve created, laboratory phantoms

 

devolving moments into increments,

shaping days into convenient puzzle-pieces

 

to quiet these unseen vacuous cycles

happening beyond and around these cityscapes

 

only to forget the encyclopedia of knowing

within each robin song, on each ponded leaf

Donny Winter is a LGBTQ+ poet, educator, and activist residing in Saginaw, Michigan. He currently teaches Creative Writing at Delta College and his first full-length collection of poems, Carbon Footprint, was recently released by Alien Buddha Press (2020). His forthcoming second collection of poems, Feats of Alchemy, will be released in October (2021). Winter is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee and has poems in Sonder Midwest, Awakened Voices, and CultureCult. To read more of Winter’s work, visit his website: http://www.donnywinter.com or subscribe to his poetry YouTube channel, DonnySpeaks.

 

One Poem by Margaret Kiernan

 

Forked Tongues-

Hazel nuts on Canal walkways.

 

You never said it was sacred, that you divined with its forked tongue

Searched out water veins in rocks and soil

From the gods of myth, lore, other ancient things .

                                                                                                                                                         

Self-seeded boughs thrive along the canal laneway

Perhaps from chewed feasts when travellers on their journey

ate their fill, dropped some for the un-seen?

 

From the season of buttercups, time has ripened

Sweetened hardened to ambered gold,

Shelled kernels tumble out.

 

The salmon ate the knowledge it is said

From Hazel nuts in the rivers, life, paths and

Seasons unfold, to return renewed.

Margaret Kiernan -    writes fiction, non-fiction essay, memoir, and poetry. She has had poetry and prose published in e-book, in anthology collections, and literary   journals and magazines - including, Black-lion Press, Pendemic.ie journal-C19 collection , archived at University College  Dublin, The Blue Nib Lit - Journal , The Write Life Magazine, Unity Global Festival,  Vox Galvia at the Galway Advertiser,  A New Ulster Literary Press, The Burrow Lit. Journal, Poet-Head.Wordpress.com,  Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Galway Review and The Irish Canadian Cultural Newsmagazine, New Brunswick.

She writes with Over the Edge, Thursday writing/reading group at Galway Arts Centre, and, Ox Mountain Poets, Sligo.

She is listed in the Index of Contemporary Women Poets in Ireland, 2020. 

She holds several Educational qualifications, Including a Degree in Arts in Humanities, from Sligo IT.

Her background is in Advocacy in Human and Social Rights.

Margaret has completed numerous courses and workshops in writing, for prose and poetry.

Margaret has four grown-up children. She lives in Westmeath with her dog Molly. She is a landscape painter. Is into Nature, walking, gardening, music, and heritage. She is working towards a First collection in Poetry.

Social Media-

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/margaretgibbonskiernan/@kiernanmargaret

Facebook: http://facebook.com/margaret.kiernan

Two Poems by Christian Garduno

 

The Starlite Motel

 

Why does so much of today seem like it happened yesterday-
like earlier today was a long, long time ago-
my reflection doesn’t recognize me
& I’m chasing my shadows in the dark
I look around my room like I’ve never even seen it before-
who lives here?
And who does all this stuff belong to??
pictures of me are a stranger in the frame
I can see myself in the screen-
but it’s someone I’ve never seen,
there is no ghost to blame,
like a child without a name,
it just suddenly, slowly seems so new again,
And it doesn’t really give me the creeps,
It’ll all come back to me tonight when I sleep



Yes, I did go on after you went,
through dark dusky hazy times,
living less and less each day,
I ended up moving down towards the Breakwater--
after you, seems like time went empty,
like someone turned off all the oxygen,
& the disco-ball returned into 100,000 broken mirror pieces…
Someone said on the radio that it’s the first day of Autumn--
And that must be it,
the first day after this brutal terrible beautiful magnificent Summer

 

Ms. Rainbow Around the Moon

Sunlights set the day on fire
feel the morning dew between the sands
butterfly in the willow you got me in your hands
nothing between us & our love
just the distance from the sun to the moon
living in numbered days stolen time
feel your whole body exhale
can’t stand up
can’t even think of the words
spinning twice my normal speed today
are you dead or just not dancing??
she never goes away she just goes around
I light six pages to keep us warm
nothing between us the heavens beneath us
ashes in our bed girl
lull me with your eyelashes
seven cents in the love jar
ocean beach write for days to keep us in touch
crawling across numbered pages stealing time
feel everybody breathing at once
think it's just yourself at first
clear across the ash we make our homes with our heads
initiate the dawn burn baby burn
my friend, the moon has gone down
sleeping on the oceans shoulder
dreaming within a halo over and over
awake the daybreak
the beautiful sun across your shining face

Christian Garduno’s work can be read in over 90 literary magazines. He is the recipient of the 2019 national Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry. Garduno is a Finalist in the 2020-2021 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Writing Contest. He lives and writes along the South Texas coast with his wonderful wife Nahemie and young son Dylan. 

Five Poems by Ben Douglass

 

BACKWARD THROUGH SPACETIME

 

In the long, long ago before there was spacetime…

In the closeness of the Here & Now,

Weaving through this rhyme-time-life called reality,

There exists a Word so pure, that

None can speak IT. A flow so sure, that

All souls seek IT. The Word is… Allah-HU!

All souls seek IT. This life-giving force,

No one can speak IT.

This primal eternal Word,

Weaving through this rhyme-time-life called reality,

Through the Hereness of Now,

Before spacetime was, IT IS! 

 

 

A SACRED BREEZE

 

A Sacred Breeze blows deep across

The edge of silent sleep and

Slips behind my mind.

    To what uncharted sea

        Do you carry me

            On this swirling ship?

“BEYOND ETERNITY,” whispers the Breeze,

      To unlimited Truth

      That lies unhidden

      To naked eyes

      To the Great Beyond

      That remains forbidden

      To clung-to lies.

Sacred Breeze that blows deep

Across these ancient ruins of time

And lifts these veils to see

      To what endless universe

      Do you carry me

      On this distant trip?

“BEYOND ETERNITY,” whispers the Breeze,

      Just be still and know I AM. 

 

 

SIDETRACKED

 

I fell through a crack in this world

On my way somewhere else,

And in the meantime

Forgot to climb back through.

 

Caught up in a spiral of spacetime

This place of pain and pleasure,

By some quirk of fate or fancy

Appears to be reality.

 

No distance too small

Nor infinity so great to measure,

I take it in at my leisure

As it swirls around me.

 

If by chance or design

I should ever find that crack again,

Without a doubt I would step back out

And free myself from this hideous coil. 

 

 

CHERRY BLOSSOM FALLS

 

A cherry blossom falls from the sky,

Floating downward, nearly lands

Ever so softly, kisses the ground.

A cherry tree grows there,

Green and sturdy, small buds reaching upward

To the sunlight, blossoms full in crimson array

Of velvet softness, amber sunsets,

Golden sunrises,

A cherry blossom falls from the sky. 

 

 

ECHOES IN THE VOID

 

The Poet’s eye is one that sees

Beyond the veil of the

Illusion of Life,

And reports back to humanity

What it has seen.

The Poet must be both mystic & pragmatist.

The Poet’s message should be ambiguous

And direct at the same time, like

The fragrance of a rose that lingers

Awhile. Though the rose is not seen,

It conjures up the image of a rose.

There should be no doubt what is meant

By the Poet’s words, and yet,

There should be an air of mystery,

As if some gemstone were still

Hidden within the lines.

Ben Douglass has been writing poems and short stories since his twenty-first birthday. The poems presented here are the result of his spiritual journey during the turbulent 1970’s. In 2014 he released a brief memoir, Confession of a Former Zombie. In 2017 he released his novella, This Ain’t the Waldorf Astoria, Honey! Most recently, in 2020, he released a collection of poetry about the Great Mojave Desert called, Beneath the Surface. The author currently lives with his partner, Ave Marie, five cats and two dogs, in the Concordia neighborhood of Northeast, Portland, Oregon. Mr. Douglass has held a wide variety of jobs during his life: tannery worker, health food store clerk, crisis line worker, social service worker, and most recently, grocery story worker. He is now retired.

Five Poems by Paul Ilechko

 

By Moonlight

 

A scream of moonlight           from

     a distant       darkness

dissolving                  into fragments

    of starlight          falling ash

            from a distant fire

 

the forests are burning         again

           as summer locks

     these colors          into place

and summer’s creatures   are visible

    reflecting gold        like water

 

           this breadth of water is

a breathing thing             striped

by saplings       and here is where

           they    congregate

       in flowering      clusters

 

a floral proliferation       beneath

          the nimble flight    of swallow

     beneath    the full-throated

   cry of hawk            that jettisons

the wind          to search for prey

 

and here       beneath the shrubbery

    and bushes        the delicate

          quietness of mice      or voles

that navigate from fire to lake   exposed

     within the silence   of the night.

 

Boy

 

Such a boy...         (the whisper said)

      so beautiful

                     as if            to kill            

                                                          the rain

 

his theory of redemption

             (we overheard)

     is a narrowing           within

                                   the limits     of a field

 

     is a pattern of     only     listening

     is the silence

                   of speech                     withheld

 

 

(seen once again                his excess

        of indifference

                   it shall not shake

                                            these memories)

 

 

these faded flowers                     from gold

   to paleness      the ocean drab...

as silent

                  as a memory           as gray

as circumvention

 

                                     where only

a crimson splash       can

      hold its color                                     into

the dimming                     of the light

 

such a boy            (the whisper said)

                         trapped

                                             inside the night.

 

From the Heart of Nature

 

Listen   everyone     the heart is cased

in metal bands              listen to me

 

I’m a crimson line    in the darkness

a slash of visible heat     I’m the water

 

that runs down the surface of a mirror

I’m a bouquet that merges    invisible   into

 

the pattern of your blouse     your cool cotton

silk   lace         your roses becoming lilac

 

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

 

but now     we no longer see each other

me in my darkness           and you    in

 

the overabundance of your garden     do you

know who I am talking to     or are you lost

 

in greenery     fastened by vines and pillowed

by Hostas             I’m returning back

 

to my metal box     away from your pollen

and scent     the ache of your jungle virtue.

 

When Music Conquered Space

 

After the porcelain days were over

   all of the songs were laid out

              end to end

 

it was an unsuccessful attempt

     to define the stain of melody

 

 

the time was one of probabilities

     but the technology

               was found to be insufficient

when notes peeled off

                                      as smoke

 

disappearing

                             into the lowest

     hanging clouds

where they impersonated

                     the payot of angels

 

 

there was a sense of innate vertigo

locked into a set of patterns

    that   intuitively   spaced themselves

along the parallel

 

                                    the major artery

     that connected every chord

sequenced     and chromatic

 

 

color flooded everything

     all directions     boxed and empirical

 

as haze encompassed

    the anti-linearity

                                   of the field

 

 

the atmosphere had lost its purchase

     on the inferior layers

 

senses     merging     into a stew

    of raw impressionism

 

 

it was glass from every angle

     a polished lucidity

 

          a tonal refraction

                          that shattered harmony

 

 

the songs were soon released

     winging their way

across

                                  the empty spaces

 

 

every chord a synthesis of pure emotion

 

emerging and re-merging as dimensionless

 

Liquid Breath

 

The glass enclosure that holds a flashing

brightness     aquatic     and aflame

 

she wanted a dog     but the fish provides

a certain happiness     this nascent

 

family that she learns to feed      and to love

this innocence     this helplessness

 

 

twelve years of age and wild as blood

ethereal within her darkness     still

 

holding a certain simplicity     she passes

unobserved     a certain ambiguity

 

that shows itself in the occasional smile

that hides inside her bravery

 

 

there is a hidden pain     that steels her

into a constant readiness     braced

 

against a lack of expectations     she watches

the curls and loops of the brilliant creature

 

its incomparable stripes of blue and crimson

as it silently sips the oxygen of life.

Poet and songwriter Paul Ilechko is the author of three chapbooks, most recently “Pain Sections” (Alien Buddha Press). His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including The Night Heron Barks, Rogue Agent, Ethel, San Pedro River Review, Lullwater Review, and Book of Matches. He lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ.