Robin Dunn- Three Poems

Visitor

I have arrived at Albemuth.
The sun is blue, and dreamy.
A man greets me:
“Hello!”
“Hello,” I say.
“What freedom did you want?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Did you want freedom?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, what kind?”
He shows me some of the offers at hand.
There is the hermitage,
And there the madhouse.
Between them are the oligarch,
And the poet.
“This wasn’t what I was looking for,” I say.
“It’s all we’ve got this century,” he says.
“Can I see the transmitter?” I ask.
“Sure, over here.”
It’s beautiful, old fashioned, looks like it’s made of wood.
“Wow,” I say.
“Don’t get too close.”
It feels so dark, suddenly, freedom.
And I huddle by the post, and watch its messages travel into distant darks,
Tempting men and aliens like me to break with their traditions,
And journey towards this strange center.
Why is it so dark?
Why so lonely?
“You should go,” the man tells me.
“Yes.”
“You come on back now, you here?” he calls after me.
Albemuth, O Albemuth.  Your ichor burns.



Transmitter

I know the locks;  I know the girders of your histories.
I have a map some man worked out about your face,
And its aegises wrought cold and solemn,
Shields designed to suffer aeons of bad luck,
The pain of human generations,
Cross statistical patterns of the movements of your upper lip.
I wield my key, my key of freedom,
Knowing it is horrifying and must remain unseen,
Must remain unwritten,
Must remain a sign you hear between stations,
A word you understand before it’s swallowed by static.
And now I find a man, a young man,
And whisper in his ear.
And the city is no longer asleep.
He hears the city think.
He watches it move,
And knows like I do that it watches him and worries him across its thighs,
Willing him to semi-blindness, an accommodating smile.
I have planted a seed.



Love at Albemuth

The final sleep, the tied knot,
And the untied chromosomes,
Its freedom of the promise of death following love,
Its knowledge of this strange waystation on the Mississippi or the Nile,
And its fear of the river,
For what lover wants to move too fast or too slow?
We must unhinge and flow,
If we’d embrace the slavery of a woman’s smile,
And all that follows.
We cannot claim uniqueness or surprise,
Not in this,
But we can define.
I can buy a gun,
And paint on placards,
Wave you nude across the street,
And photograph the crowds,
Tell a neighbor that the government is lying,
And count the pentameter of my hymnal march,
Planning exodus.
Where will I go, Albemuth?
I’ll always need a woman.
I’ll always know I failed to free myself from flesh,
Whatever dreamers may say.
What were your intentions?  How delimited and how surmised?
Was it only a half-joke, a warning shot, a simple coup d’etat?
What biology sunders your dreams?
Are you commingling even now in your last awareness of your battery’s power,
Fencing off your doubts and swallowing ‘em,
Knowing that your purpose can never be explained?
Perhaps it is a new flesh you dream of,
Some dystopia held beneath the table like a gun.
Perhaps it’s life itself you hate, the chains of flesh.
Liberation, conflagration, expiation, Albemuth,
Your sins are my sins.
Tell me, and we go blind to Betelgeuse or Arcturus,
To burn the lie out of the hand,
And break the bone that feels the glory of a long career,
The bone that keeps the student in their seats,
To while away their heresies.
We’ll break it to half-burn,
And take the charred remnant and attach it to your pole,
Whatever your ultimate designs.
I can feel your heart twitching.



Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park.  He is 33 years old.

Bradford Middleton- A Poem

I KNOW WHAT I SAW

I know what I saw I pleaded

I know it sounds weird but I know what it was

All the planets were aligned

And the moon was huge in the daytime sky

When there it was

I know what it was

But I don’t want to say

I’m sick of being ridiculed

And having my claims put down

I saw it from a long way off

It hurtled across the sky

At a velocity and direction I knew was strange

And then there it was

Hovering over the end of the pier

People stood, rubbing their eyes

Unsure of what to say or how to behave

But I know what I saw

Because I’d seen one before

That night many years ago

I had been a young schoolboy

Travelling through northern Italy

On a coach full of rowdy kids

Two bright lights translucent against a big black sky

But even then I knew what I’d seen

Aged ten years old it was clear to me

We’d been visited from beyond the stars

It was just the same on this fateful day

The non-believers stood aghast

Not sure of how to react or what they saw

I knew what it was and knew I had to stay

Watching the unbelievable

Whilst knowing it was only too real

A flying saucer had made its way

Across the universe and had landed

At the bottom of my street over the bloody pier

I know what I saw I’d seen one before



 

BIOGRAPHY

Bradford Middleton was born in 1971 and is a writer of poetry and short fiction who currently resides in Brighton after coming of age in London and then being somewhat transient for a while during which he lived in both Surrey and Staffordshire.  He has so far attained the status of Contributing Poet at the Mad Swirl, and has been published online in numerous places, including Word Riot, Foliate Oak, Dead Beats and Horror, Sleaze Trash as well as in print through the Poetry Quarterly journal. He has a novel near completion entitled Dive which someone will get to read soon.

 

Linda M. Crate- A Poem

edification by fire 

 

I am an autumn phoenix burning;

I will rise from the ashes of my

flame, whether or not you’re still

standing beside me; I burn away

at all the things that make flawed;

edifying the pieces of me that are

painted in inky black hands, You

tilt my head toward the sun; blue

flames encircle my body faster now —

but I will be revived a new person

with new lilts and new lilies in my

soul; cleansed white by Your hand.

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.