Holly Day- A Poem

The Burning Sun

There is nowhere left to run. Behind you, smoke billows black and foul
Hot enough to melt lead, turn flesh to liquid, more smoke. The air itself glows red
Burns like the red eyes of a Hollywood-set tiki statute, moves in visible
Currents against the gray starless night, thin wisps of fire in the dark.
This is where even vampires come to die, to burn in agonizing freedom
The confines of flesh shaken, immortality sloughed, denied

In a single sunburst of pure nuclear flame, hot as the heart of a star
Burn shadows of Nosferatu silhouettes into concrete bunker walls
Claws curled and extended in frightening final black-caped profiles, specters
In a cemetery, never to be visited. Buildings loom, dark, glassless, baked
To diamond-hard perfection by the billowing clouds of fire, stand
In empty memoriam to
The final infantile thrashings, the last shadow dance
Of a doomed precocious race.




Short bio: Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis,
Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes in the Minneapolis school
district. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Worcester Review, Broken
Pencil, and Slipstream, and she is a recent recipient of the Sam Ragan
Poetry Prize from Barton College. Her book publications include Music
Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One for Dummies, Notenlesen für
Dummies Das Pocketbuch, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently
been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and
German. Her novel, "The Trouble With Clare," is due out from Hydra
Publications in 2013.
 

Korliss Sewer- A Poem

Day 37

It smells dead.  The room has the scent of a mouse that fell between the walls during the remodel.  It’s gone from a stench to a scent:  I guess that means it’s getting better?  Even on a Saturday, I hear the workers pounding boards above me; dislodging more mice to stink within the drywall.  With one piece of toast, one egg, and warm mint tea, I begin my day with a mouse carcass behind my breakfast nook. 

I read an article about future Martian colonies, and how it will take 1,000 years to cultivate the planet only to have the median equatorial temperature being 40 degrees.  As I smell the mouse and sip tea, deep down within the article I read the Earth is dying (in small print, mind you).  They say that life on Mars will be self-limiting: 

Korliss Sewer enjoys writing about off-beat topics while watching off-beat people doing off-beat things.

Publishing credits include:  BlazeVOX, SubtleTea, Orange Room Review, amongst a few others.

Anita McQueen- A Poem

END OF THE WORLD

Many here
crowded in collapsed rooms.

Mind cells.

My hair stringy and wet for the moment
before sighing.

Too many times.

I am too young to feel this old.
My name hidden between my eyes.

The young men gone.

That one loved me.
That one didn't.

All became soldiers.

Digging graves underneath buckled sidewalks.
An old man keeps me warm.

That is all he can do.  I don't want anymore....

 (Published in "Aphelion" March 2011)

Anita McQueen runs the streets at night, feeling the wind against her face, and long shadows on her back. 

Her poetry has appeared in A Handful Of Stones, Amaranthine Muses, Aphelion, blackdahlia, The Camel Saloon, Catapult To Mars, Deuce Coupe, Downer Magazine, Indigo Rising Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Literary Burlesque, Mad Swirl, MediaVirus Magazine, ppigpenn, Pond Ripples, The Rainbow Rose, Raven Images, The Scarlet Sound, The Second Hump, Subliminal Interiors, Visceral Uterus, and Yes, Poetry.

Ali Znaidi- A Poem

Martian Dream

 

Mars is that paradise sought to be regained.

Mars is that huge fathomless country where

people want to find themselves again.

Mars is that haven where they look for other

kinds of freedoms,

& walk away from earthly shackles.

Mars is a new red wild bloom—

a new water that quenches a new thirst.

Better a wanderer on Mars than an outlandish

stranger on earth.

Better an iron oxide dealer on Mars than a zombie on earth.

& Mars requires nothing but a pinch of smokeless fantasy.

Mars is that paradise sought to be regained.

Mars is that haven where people look for another

kind of democracy—a sophisticated democracy

that increases to the rhythm of the blinking eyes

to the rhythm of shuttles—

a purification of earthly sins—a catharsis,

& a cremation of sins atop  

                                           the Olympus Mons.

 

 

Ali Znaidi lives in Redeyef, Tunisia. He graduated with a BA in Anglo-American Studies in 2002. He teaches English at Tunisian public secondary schools. He writes poetry and has an interest in literature, languages, and literary translations. His work has appeared in The Bamboo Forest, The Camel Saloon, phantom kangaroo, BoySlut, fortunates. org, Otoliths, Dead Snakes, Speech Therapy Poetry Zine, streetcake magazine, The Rusty Nail, Yes,Poetry, The South Townsville micro poetry journal, Shot Glass Journal, the fib review, Ink Sweat and Tears, and Mad Swirl, and is upcoming in other ezines. He also writes flash fiction for the Six Sentence Social Network—http://sixsentences.ning.com/profile/AliZnaidi.

Ally Malinenko- A Poem

Planet Mars

It is that moment when your feet slide across the floorboard, destined for elsewhere

that you think of the men in space

the way the nothing comes from the bottom

and the top and then again

from each side boxing them tight in their suits,

holding them together before breaking them apart.

 

You slide.

It only takes a moment, like a light bulb winking on.

 

I want to know what time I can be awake

when no one else is,

what second of what hour can I find myself

the only thing fully aware in this world,

eyes open

in day

or dark

feeling the groaning push of this planet against the all of that emptiness.

 

It will be at that moment that you will hear a high ring.

The whistle

that victims of an air strike hear

seconds before

and then forever after.



Ally Malinenko is the author of The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press). Her second book of poems entitled Crashing to Earth is forthcoming from Tainted Coffee Press and her first novel for children, Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb is forthcoming from Antenna Press. She currently lives in the part of Brooklyn the tour buses don't come to and rambles on and on over at allymalinenko.com

Bryan Murphy- 3 Poems

Postmodern Technology

Happy cell phone users, smiling all,

in inverse ratio to their privacy.

Now we seek, not shun, the public ear,

to remind it how surely

our lives are elsewhere.

Elsewhere we shrink from human contact,

push buttons to interact with recorded messages,

fly to TV walls as though we were homeless,

dial our bets, electro-feed pets,

download Stan Getz.

A late gatecrasher at the info feast,

postmodern Mammon gnaws methodically

on internet backbone, sucks at the marrow

of the invisible giant that makes us free:

to shop without stores,

buy without money,

work with no colleagues,

surf without waves,

enjoy sex minus skin touch,

find homes for our multiple personalities,

enrich the word “virtual”

with a new meaning: false.

Our computers quicken their dumb calculations

each time we buy. Our four-wheeled friends,

informed by the upper echelons of satellite protection,

tell us where we are, while

nano-technocrats conserve the homeostasis

of our homes and bodies, minds and soil.

As postmodern slips

into something less comfortable,

technology’s cutting edges

slash all ways,

undermine our cloned beliefs,

diminish the self,

exalt the ego.

To avoid the fate of Tippoo Sahib,

let us study the tiger’s ways:

neither worship nor destroy it.

Instead, ride it masterfully.

Published in Mélange, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2000.

Recurrent Dream

A sea-washed flint front;

door hangs open, threshold beckons.

One small step out of the light:

a synapse-leap into the past.

This house is older than the USA,

its neighbours languish empty;

within, avatars of former flat-mates,

or strangers, extend a silent welcome.

“Brighthelmstone” cared for its fishermen

before waves of aristos, gamblers, criminals,

tourists, commuters and students

fleshed its skeleton with “Brighton”.

Its heart aged pricey with antique shops,

with ethnic eateries like “English’s”.

In its heart, Warwick Street held out

till developers moved in.

The project sounded good: sheltered housing

for the elderly, green lawns, room to swing.

An organised community that dispossessed

the natural chaos of human communality.

But it’s youth, first freedoms, deepest friends,

not history, that sucks me through the doorway

to feel who’s there,

which “I” I am tonight.

Published in Free Zone Quarterly, Issue 25, Spring/Summer 2002. Re-published in Poetry Kit Magazine, Nos. 12-13, May 2009.

Sorted

Once you had to follow television

to understand what to buy in the shops.

Often you forgot; that never happens

with the chips in our brains today.

People read so few books then,

derived strange ideas from them

till we taught technology to transmit

pleasure from paper to brain,

with messages between the lines

that have bestowed peace in our time

(the cigarette wars apart)

and undisturbed profits.

How weird when people

were allowed to write, and think

what they said. So divisive.

Now that’s sorted for us,

we are free to devote ourselves

to higher purchases and the cultivation

of an exemplary buying record

(except the poor Cantonese).

I look to the future, confident

the Board will install God™ in His glory

to suffer the children to work in His fields,

vent His wrath on the underclass

when they’re slow in His factories,

inspire virgins to lend wombs,

like Mary, our loving Mother,

and cut taxes to an all-time low.

Published in Eunoia Review, 8 April 2011

Linda M. Crate- A Poem

stranger in the room

 

there is a room outside with locked doors

I always stumble into its branches, thorns

have overtaken it and serve as master of

the keys when I reach for the silver keys I

am met with bloody palms; I see you within

happy without me and it aches my very soul

to know we that were once thick as thieves have

all this distance between us, you are the most

sophisticated and eloquent bloom and I am but

a wild rose overlooked by everyone even you it's

sad to know that this room will outlast us

but neither of us will be happy for you impaled

me with too many thorns and I invoked too few;

it's discouraging when two friends become strangers.

Neil Ellman- A Poem

Woman IV

(after the painting by Willem de Kooning)

Mother

vampiric bride

holiest of the holy

whore

let me suckle at your breasts

and feel your love

and you feel me

upon your lips

shivering between your thighs

and yours on mine

so much contempt

conceived in love

and born to loathe

what you desire

and have become.

Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey.  His poems, many of which are ekphrastic and based on works of modern art, appear in numerous print and online journals throughout the world, from Australia to Zimbabwe.  The latest of his eight chapbooks, Convergence & Conversion, is now available from The Knives Forks and Spoons Press.

Brian Rosenberger- A Poem

Out of the sky

From the heavens,

bringing hell

not so much fell

as targeted its prey

herald of nightmare

spawned some light years away.

Silent night

wrecked by the sound

of a shooting star downed

prelude to screams to come

as the saying goes

any landing you can undulate away from . . .

so much for one small step

so much for one giant leap

so much for humanity.

(Previously Published in "No One In Space Can Hear You Scream" (Print- March, 2011)

Russell Streur- A Poem

How we learned to talk on Mars

 

The hard thing was when we met the red ones was that their breath could go on a long time but none of their words were to us more than one sound at a time. Ya ka wa na ha was not like Ha ka wa na ya at all. It took years but then was not hard at all. One sound: one word: one joy. Cut out all of the noise and all of the do not know. Made sense once you slowed the pace and turned the sound down in your head. Like that and quick, tell you, fast. Then what we said we could hear. Like that, quick and tell you fast one side up in airs clear or one side in mud and knots. Whoo. Talk and hear at the same time, through ears and skin and eyes. We went to bed a lot and slept well and swam in lakes and stayed young and had fun and ate good food and made each one of us big and great and smooth and smart like ace of hearts come up all the time in hands yours and mine. Ka wa na ha, you know. Like that and more, lots, shine and shine with the moon and sun and one star of us all, tell you. Fast. And slow, when slow is best. Those red ones are hard to see for sure and true and tell great jokes and have tongues that know how to kiss. Whoo too, ka wa ha. So we learned ha, hard way one to ten and on and on to now, worth it all the time.

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