Jeffrey Park- Three Poems

HYDROPHILIA

You talk about dry.

Can you even begin to imagine
what it’s like
to come from a really dry place,
seriously dry,
parched land, parched air, parched sky,
parched people
who can only dream (dream!) of
having cracked lips
and thick swollen tongues,

who would look upon your Gobi
and Mojave and Kalahari
as some kind of exotic waterpark,
who would gladly die
a thousand painful deaths
just to behold
a single blade of grass coated with
the faintest sheen of dew?

No. You cannot begin to imagine.

Nor, if you could, would you waste
a thought
for your desiccated fellow creatures,
you who have never once
known dry.
But we are here now,
watching you and smelling you
and wondering about
your precise chemical composition:
60% water, or so it’s said.

Let’s find out.


SLEEPERS

Velvet horizon
pre-dawning
to sparking comets,
celestial winks
to assorted philosophers,
stargazers
and omen readers,
flashes in an overturned
skillet,
etching retinas,
and disappearing in
a wisp of ash.

Except for a few
cunning imposters,
who come
gliding down into
the complicit
folds
of an undiscovered
world.

You suspect –
only you –
and watch for them
on the street,
in the bus, tram,
post office,
among your neighbors,
in your bed.
They’re easy enough
to spot.
They’re the ones
who look
like they’ve always
been here.


YOU ARE NOT WELCOME

Greasy space invaders,
bug-eyed splay-toed gooblies,
posers from some backwards gassy-giant’s
fourteenth moon
or twisted tunnel across dimensions –

they creep, creep into our neighborhoods
and back out again when they think
we’re not looking,
steal out thoughts, dreams, longings,
songs, plots from our most creative

and groundbreaking TV series,
touch our privates,
taste our sweat, and then have the nerve
to tell themselves they’ve done
the natives no harm at all.

And we should be – what?
Grateful?
Tickled by their filthy alien attentions?
The bastards.

They might at least have the decency
to mindwipe a guy’s nosy, holier-than-thou,
stuck-up, snooty a-hole of a neighbor
or eat a few goddamn stray cats
as long as they’re here.

 

 

 

Bio: Jeffrey Park's poetry has appeared most recently in Century 121, Snow Monkey, One Sentence Poems, and the anthology Tic Toc from Kind of a Hurricane Press. A native of Baltimore, Jeffrey currently lives in Munich, Germany, where he works at a private secondary school. Links to all of his published work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com

Rich Boucher- Three Poems

The McDonald's In Roswell Is Shaped Like A UFO

It was our fourth anniversary and I'd never been to Roswell,

a three-hour drive at night from the dark into the darker dark

while we listened to Pandora until there was no more Pandora,

as the black-and-white miles underneath our tires unspooled 

like a rough-to-the-touch filmstrip of the night

and then we listened to the radio until the only thing left on the radio was talk,

and then we listened to talk radio until everyone on the radio started whispering

as the map of the stars above us rotated and swirled in slow motion

and then we rolled down the windows and listened to whatever lived 

beyond the fences on the sides of the highway

and the mountains on either side of our anniversary loomed

and then slingshot past us, galloping black shadows, 

broad shoulders of the evening slinking away

and then when we got into Roswell; nothing about the town seemed special at all

and the town seemed fake, looked Hollywood, felt hollow

despite the charm of the schwa streetlamps in front of City Hall;

we'd saved up a hundred bucks for all the touristy allure of the town

and so had little to spend on an actual bite to eat,

but we had to eat partly because of our hunger and partly because of our Americaness;

that's when we pulled into the McDonald's off the main drag and we saw the thing;

the place was shaped, incredibly, unbelievably, like a UFO.

It's been a few years now since that sweet anniversary,

but my memories of that trip are still sharp enough to cut through paper,

and I remember it so well, that feeling I had on that strange starry night,

like the body's memory of a drop of summer rain cold on naked skin:

maybe it was because of what we were doing and where we were;

maybe it was because of the fatigue of so long behind a moonlit wheel;

maybe it was the excitement of being underneath whole new constellations with my love

but I could have sworn there was something suspicious about the taste of those McNuggets.

Star-Crossed

All of the stars in tonight's sky 

fall into an hourglass 

with the top taken off,

which before my eyes turns into

a wine glass with a long stem,

which before my eyes 

feels heavy in my hand;

all of the stars in tonight's sky

in that wine glass in my hand

glow in the dark like a bright wine

which I bring to my lips 

and taste every time we kiss,

and I wonder if you are from this world 

or from someplace else entirely.

How Were You Raised?

I don't mind if you're out there,

chittering in the tall corn at night;

I don't mind if you hide in the shadows

of our development; leaping behind toolsheds

with brainwashed heads in your backpack;

listen, I don't care if you're abducting

wild people and executive dogs in the quiet

of my neighborhood's starlit 2 AM;

I don't care where you're crawling;

I don't need to know what you're clambering under

and you can probe as many specimens

as you can find in my humble little town;

all I care about is my privacy, so please

stop looking into my bathroom window

when I'm taking my shower at night;

were you never taught manners

when you were young?

Bio:

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has published four chapbooks of poetry and once hosted a poetry slam series in Newark, Delaware. Since moving to Albuquerque in 2008, Rich has performed all over the Duke City, served two terms as a member of the Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program’s Selection Committee, and is currently a member of the 2014 Albuquerque City Slam Team. His poems have appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Apeiron Review, The Broadkill Review, Menacing Hedge and The Legendary, among others, and he has work forthcoming in the Write Bloody Publishing anthology MultiVerse, due out in the fall of 2014.

Denny E. Marshall- Art

                                                 Robot Man


Bio
Denny E. Marshall has had art and poetry published, some recently. He does have a website with previously published works. The web address is www.dennymarshall.com. He also has a “Guest Artist Page” on his dot net site if any artist would like to submit. (See Guidelines)

Alan Catlin- Three Poems

Alien Presence: Things Fall Apart

The who-knows-how-old-woman

on the bar stool next to him was

stuck in some self-perpetuating

talking binge that could drive a

man to violence.  She was somewhere

between thirty and ageless,

all of her body functions in cessation

except that center of speech,

rambling on without benefit

of human constraint, a kind of alien

possession making her an automaton

in human skin fueled by alcohol

and stuck in high gear no one could

down shift to neutral.  He considered

suggesting they go to her room, cell,

cloister, on the off-chance she might

have a pair of rolled up gym socks

he could use as gag to maybe muffle

the sound emanating from her like

a death ray or a Star Trek stun gun.

It was probably hopeless but maybe

worth a shot. Even considered trying

her on for size: she wasn’t half-bad

in a certain kind of light. Not here, in

various shades of neon, but in the dark

of a room with black out curtains pulled

tight.  Somehow, he just knew the inevitable

would happen in mid-whatever: one or

both of them would lapse into an alcoholic

coma and eventually she’d come to,

transform herself from whatever into

a migraine with tits.  Much as he was not

inclined to moving: a body at rest and

all that, he knew it was time to sail, said,

“Ship ahoy, mates. Ship ahoy.”

Staggered through the pub door into

a vast unknown as she talked on, oblivious

to his passing on.  In the dark, ripped out

of his gourd, in the confusion of all this

new, nebulous stimulation, nothing looked

familiar, He thought,” I’ve reached

the end of the world and I’m about to

fall off.”  Took one more step

Fell.

Space Junkies

If it were Halloween, these guys

would have fit right in or even

if it had been New Year’s Eve or

Mardi Gras and they had been on

the way to some end of the world

as we know it party, but it was none

of those, not the kind of place that

dressing like Gary Glitters, Ziggy

Stardust  clones on some kind of

Velvet Goldmine club quest,

ostentatiously pierced all about their

bodies, tacky make up and costume

clothes like stiff out of Harper’s Bizarre,

Warhol’s Pandora Box wardrobe, body

art by some demented freak on speed

with a butcher’s knife instead of a tattooist’s

tools, the only discernible images, death

cultist symbols and the leader of the pack’s

Gothic lettered phrase” PISS FACTORY,

forming a semi-circle around his navel,

all of them stoned to the gills and clearly

hostile, in need of sedatives to slow

the virtual China syndrome chemical mix

threatening to flatline their vital organs,

close their bodies down, the take-me-to-

your-leader gesturing at the barman,

pointing at the back bar high octane rocket fuel

bottles, waving fifty dollar bills as an attention

getting aid, trying to bridge a considerable

language gap with guttural noise making

and even more frantic waving, succeeding

only in creating an image of Euro trash on tour,

way lost on some highway to hell they were

building as they went, oblivious to their

surroundings and determined to stay that way.

Space Cowboy

like some kind of urbane cowpoke

in second hand store bought jeans

and shirts only worn on the range

for cooking dinners on electric

stove tops or for warming instant

coffee to pour in a Trailblazers mug

he mistakes for the emblem of some

Wild West Show. Even after hours,

Perfecting his image and stride in

full length mirror, he’s spotted as a

dude walking into a bar, singled out

for some major attitude adjustment

by unspoken agreement among regulars

he asks about the real Area 51, they’d

send him looking for by shortcuts and

made up state highways that would lead

him all the way up to Wyoming once

he’d recovered from all the mind altering

stuff they’d put in hi shots and beers,

telling him it was the local custom,

and he’d gleefully agreed without pausing

to ask what the special ingredients were,

not that they would have told him; these

recipes were a carefully guarded secret

as these things should be.

Nancy May- Three Poems

alien autopsy

eight fingers, two thumbs

on this strange creature

trophy on the wall

human eyes in awe of

new surroundings

flames chase the clouds

through the treetops

alien crash site below

Nancy May has haiku published in Haiku Journal, Three Line Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Inclement Poetry, Twisted Dreams Magazine, Vox Poetica, Eskimo Pie, Icebox, Dark Pens, Daily Love, Leaves of Ink, The Blue Hour Magazine, Kernels, Mused – The BellaOnline Literary Review, Danse Macabre – An online literary Magazine, High Coupe, A Handful of Stones, Lyrical Passion Poetry E-Zine, Dead Snakes, 50 Haikus, The Germ, Boston Literary Review, Be happy Zone, Every Day Poets, Cattails, Ppigpenn, Creatrix Journal and Artvilla. Haiku will soon appear in M58.
She is a monthly contributor at The Camel Saloon and Poems and Poetry. She has reached The Heron’s Nest consideration stage twice and the Chrysanthemum consideration stage once. She is working on her first haiku collection.​

David S. Pointer- Three Poems

UFO repair

drop yard mechanics

greasing the unknown

vampire sweat shop

dental extraction room

for low achievers

beached whale

rebuilt with double sonar

sub soon washes ashore

Ayaz Daryl Nielsen- Two Poems

terrorku

her sewing basket

a collection of

orphan eyeballs

early morning coffee

and the usual 

emailed death curse

ant antennae

feeling for missing

back legs

locked ward

hides my shadow

hides my claws

full moon

blood cousins and I

hunt as a pack

this time,

tired of the same old

she lets me live

Contemplating an Unknown

Our computers have no records of your

shattered starship’s design nor where

it was built.  We have no data about 

your species.  Dying alone on an 

uncharted moon...acidic mists

from surface craters were a

sudden death, even if you 

survived an obviously 

brutal crash landing  

Your remote home...

you may have been

their hero, perhaps

even their savior...

there is sadness.

There is this sorrow.

I’ll never know your name

ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/120+ issues), homes include Lilliput Review, Jellyfish Whispers, Eye On Life, Shamrock, UFO Gigoglo, and! bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre)