David J. Thompson- A Photo

                                           "Street Art, Detroit"

Alan Catlin- Three Poems

A Near Miss with Vincent's Ear

I figured he was

following a personal

torrent of spring

into the bar, a refugee

from a South Eastern

Asia range war he was

still fighting in his mind

as if he had been to

the real thing and in

homage to his ghost

buffalo soldier bros,

he had donned clean

camouflage fatigues,

a red hair covering

bandanna and a pair

of aviator glasses con-

veniently missing lens

for up close and personal

seeing the nitty gritty

of how his latest scam

was coming down,

"Check these out.

This is the kind of

alcohol you should be

stocking and drinking.

All the celebs are doing

it: Tom Jones, Barry White

Otis Redding, Jim Croce----"

"You forgot Ricky Nelson."

"What?" "Never mind.

Van Gogh Vodka, huh.

               What is this? Flavored

firewater to cut your ears

off to?""It's what the Brothers

drink, my man.  I don't see

no brothers here, now, do I?"

"You don't see anyone here.

Especially with those glasses on."

"Are you dissrespecting me?"

"Don't see anyone else

around to dissrespect so it

must be you."

"That's just what I would

expect from someone who

'wants to turn the country

of Yugoslavia into Otis

Redding'"

"The only country Otis is

turning into these days is

Atlantis, ten thousand leagues

under the dock of the bay."

It was a crappy, mixed metaphor,

but it seemed to strike a lot

closer to home base on Planet

Nine or wherever he was,

than the Vincent's ear one,

so I had to label it a successful

one, as these things go.

I didn't even have to

explain to him how much

better he would be able to

read his brochures by street

light, standing on the double

yellow lines of Western Avenue

then he could in here as

I usually did, just before

dialing 911.

The Other Side of Nowhere New York

She spent her time between

Long Island and Paradise and

he divided his between New York

and Never Never  Land, their primary

functions in life: clubbing, texting,

doping and screwing, often all at

the same time, like performers in

a new kind of Wild Wild West Show

on the Lower East Side of a depleted

ozone layer in their brains curdling like

milk left in the sun so long the smell

was just this side of Johnny Rotten three

days dead and unattended, a rankness

that went unnoticed by everyone that

they came in contact with, all suffering,

as they were, from the same kind of disease

of inattention and excess, all claiming

to know the real story of what happened

with Syd and Nancy, how the body double

died and the happy couple escaped upstate

to do time in the foothills of the Adirondacks

and the Twilight Zone.

They Came Back

The last few people that came into

the bar were like characters out of

a Hermann Broch novel, Sleepwalkers

and circus acts, side show performers

with their one trick ponies, their novelty

tricks learned at the feet of illustrated men,

bearded ladies, ten penny geeks nothing

was too degrading for.  After awhile it felt

as if someone had isolated the bar and

the drinkers, by drawing a kind of sheet

between them and the outside world to

show movies on, creating two dimensions

in one, overlapping realities almost

indistinguishable, one from the other.

Wee Gee’s off duty black and white

performers sipping cocktails at the bar,

images transposed on their faces of all

those people who had died now inexplicably

revived, legions of them parading in the street,

laconic, wan, non-threatening but intent

on resuming lives interrupted, lacking only

a vital animation that made them human once.

Their failure to interact, to readjust, finally

compelling them to seek their own kind,

the people sitting at the bar, drinking as

if there were no yesterday, no tomorrow,

all of them listening to music, in silence,

only they can hear.

Bruce Mundhenke- A Poem

Bats Out of Hell

They came forth from a darkness
No mortal ever knew.
They brought with them
A full grown rage
More intense as it grew.
It simmered for millennia
To perfect them for their time.
Energy unlimited,
Tireless in their cause,
They manifest onto the earth
To work their cruel dark will,
Punishing earth inhabitors,
As they torment, hurt, and kill.

John Pursch- A Poem

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. Twice nominated for Best of the Net, his work has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks. Check out his experimental lit-rap video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc. He’s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.

Admirable Chesty Numbnuts

Admirable Chesty Numbnuts, hermaphroditic sailor of the leavened seas, sashays through streams of finest seasick youth, from bulkhead bilge to boatswain’s bilious bicuspid, lisping nautical behind mildly concupiscent smile.

Eight bells are ringing, have rung, and now go silent. Vibratory haze, electric fragment of salt-conditioned life, immerses us in ambient noise, twelve feet above the rails. Rows of encapsulated thunder rumble along, speckling deadwood rodeos with our favorite memories, spilling lifeblood folios in headstrong impetus to varied circumstance unseen.

A dotted climb, parietal chain, holistic blend of spurning taint to crested chasm, filling gaunt fishermen with webby tracks of shipyard dusk and looted storefront glass. Sharks caress the ocean floor with dorsal avenue invention, peaking often silent there beneath the graying sea-green slide.

Slipping now before theatrics buried, glimpsed unconscious bravely stumps for everyday impulsive drift of snowbound bottled fiction, gated cataclysms, conchs in jubilee destruction, fine serrated pension hearings, flickered fractal lecture notes, and keynote chapel doorsteps.

Hatches open, closets ooze eternal choices, belles resell in periodic gaze to casual gazebo trance to bus stop bottom-numbing set to wicker basketball saloon to tourist dust frenetic whimsy, bubbled into threaded skew.

Cushioned cashew sings along with long-departed urchin feet, sipping cool unfrosted melodies in silent dignity of golden sweat on sun-soaked isles of carousel erosion meat to tawny beachfront bassinet in thunderhead exfoliation.

Ayaz Daryl Nielsen- Three Poems

floral offerings

pallbearers at their places

one eye, still open

six feet under

in my final resting place

worms come a’knocking

beside a burrow

on a wooded bluff

beside the Mississippi

singing hymns of well-being

for that which lives therein

perhaps even a goddess,

yes, the goddess of 

some small creatures

ayaz daryl nielsen, veteran, former hospice nurse, ex-roughneck (as on oil rigs) lives in Longmont, Colorado.  Editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/130+ issues) with poetry published worldwide, he also is online at:  bear creek haiku... poetry, poems and info 

Stefanie Bennett- Two Poems

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry & her poems appear

in Shot Glass Journal, The Provo Canyon Review, Dead Snakes, Ink, Sweat

& Tears, Pyrokinection & others. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-

Shawnee] she was born in Queensland, Australia. Stefanie’s latest poetry

title “The Vanishing” was published by Walleah Press & is available from

Walleah, Amazon & Fishpond Books.

 

 

 

REORIENTATION       

 

On the day the sun cried

An epicurean

Semiquaver hung

Above

The good red earth,

The cornflower-blue

Horizon,

The jasmin’s diminutive

Austerity and

The vanquished

Comings and goings

Of providence...

 

Words, overheard – as

A crop

Of ashes fell...

 

“It’s the Bee’s Knees

Of B-grade movies

In toto with

VX re-routed

Drone

        Escapees’

Hijacked

        Hearts.”

 

Now, did you... do you

From behind

Our cautionary

Catchment

                - See

What it is

                I see?

 

 

 

WHAT IT TAKES      

 

Back in the days

When ‘grief’

Was ‘good’

 

The dead-letter

Office

Was known

 

To rattle

Its

Chains...

 

 

Tricia Marcella Cimera- A Poem

Possessed

It hits me hard

like a fist.

How you walk away

after you say goodbye.

    Suddenly

your step is quick and light,

your feet rise

above the ground.

You lift towards the sky that

turns radiant blue

as you look up and smile.

    Then

objects begin to drop

through the air,

discarded

from your turned-out pockets:

Some of my teeth

tipped with flecks

of your skin/

A smooth fat stone I polished

nightly, my love;

a paperweight

to hold you

            down/

My fingernails; they always

grow back/

And a blood-colored

beating thing

the size of a fist

that screams out

as it

            falls

at my feet.

 

 

Sunil Sharma- A Poem

Embryos Geo-spatial

The night wanders solitary homeless unloved

Quietly waits for that warm hug

From the separated day, the other side,

Both pulled apart by the earth.

The darkness leaks out of her eyes, solid tears

Wind screams the barren terrain… like that mad woman in

The famous attic.

The witching hour!

Dreaded!

Attending shades- cold moon- stars

Low whispers bubbling out of an abyss

Heard by a Dante-figure.

It passes but slowly, the terrible stretch.

The welcome chirpings from a waking sky

Morning is here!

Fading night/ incipient day

Thus, the duo meets twice a day:

In a rosy dawn and

Again---in a brief pale-faced dusk.

Both the hours limited, fragile

Like a rose in a vase in a museum.

The trysts--- containing a fusion

Of gloom and brilliance

Night and day embracing/dissolving

Re-forming

In those tiny minutes

That borderline

That vulnerable state of being/un-being.

Scott Thomas Outlar- A Poem

Adorned as an Angel/Betrayed with a Bite

  

Careful with wishes…

make them with wisdom

else the genie let loose

from the bottle

might start sucking the juice

from your veins

like a snake in the grass…

waiting to attack

fangs laced with venom

of betrayal

serve as a knife

with a craving for your side

Stabbed by the woman

who said she’d adore you forever

(till death do us part)

Little whispers in your ear

come the evening

herald the harbinger

for her bloodlust once scorned

Adorned with the lips of an angel

but hidden underneath

are the teeth

of a vampire eager to feast

Careful where you lay your head to rest…

there are weapons in every word that she hisses

Bio:

Scott Thomas Outlar spends the hours flowing and fluxing with the ever-changing currents of the Tao River while laughing at and/or weeping over life's existential nature. He hosts the site 17Numa.wordpress.com where links to his published poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews can be found. His most recent chapbook "Songs of a Dissident" was released in 2015 through Transcendent Zero Press and is available on Amazon. 

David J. Thompson- A Photo

                                                "Snow White"

Douglas Polk- Three Poems

A Nightmare

words spoken,

absent of meaning,

questions asked,

only to entrap,

soul less,

heart less,

hypocrites,

and sluts,

lessons not taught to educate,

only to control,

and manipulate,

backdoors encripted,

to rip out the soul,

vulnerability,

and fear,

preached day after day,

society a cult,

lacking both sanity,

and reason,

truth,

once an open sore,

now pus filled,

and encrusted,

scab upon scab,

creating the hierarchy,

and the structure,

of the world today,

the present reality,

six degrees of separation,

from hell itself,

a place created by men,

not by Gods,

scared little men,

lacking both brains,

and vision,

consisting only of ego,

and greed,

from Adams to Obama,

traitors almost every one,

democracy once the reality,

soon to be a fairy tale,

told at bedtime,

so hopeless children,

can pretend to believe,

and attempt to dream,

but the nightmare already begun.

 

 

The Teenager

walking on eggs,

day after day,

unsure and unloved,

fear haunts her youthful eyes,

intent on being invisible,

she tries,

and tries,

while the old men laugh,

and shout her name.

 

 

An Attack

optic nerves revolt,

black spots,

fall like rain,

other senses heighten,

screams heard,

far,

far away,

her touch painful,

nerve endings howl,

the body under siege,

a massive storm,

of unkown origins,

stops as quickly as it began,

out of breath,

with head throbbing,

prayers said,

for sleep to come.