Tricia Marcella Cimera- A Poem

Galaxy

 

My father is in his bed.

He has died and the Hospice

Nurse is washing him.

I stay close.

She tells me my father

was very sweet. I agree.

He was, but not always.

He was many, many things.

She doesn’t know.

She didn’t know him.

What he meant to me.

I help her move him so

she can bathe his back.

Then she washes

his hands, slowly.  Later

the funeral home people come

in a hearse, with a stretcher.

My mother, my sister, we say

goodbye to my father.

I follow the stretcher out the door,

down the walkway,

watch him slide into the hearse.

You see,

I was always the little planet

that circled him. He was the sun

of my world. I want to stay

near him. But he moves away,

headed towards a clean, new

galaxy.

Tricia Marcella Cimera is an obsessed reader and lover of words. Her work is, or will be, in these diverse places: the Buddhist Poetry Review, Foliate Oak, Hedgerow, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Mad Swirl, Prairie Light Review, Reverie Fair, Silver Birch Press, Stepping Stones and Yellow Chair Review.  Tricia volunteers locally, believes there's no place like her own backyard, and has traveled the world.  She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois/in a town called St. Charles/by a river named Fox.

 

 

Stefanie Bennett- A Poem

Stefanie Bennett has published several poetry books, a libretto & a novel & has poems appearing in The Fib Journal, The Kalyna Review, Illya’s Honey Journal, Message in a Bottle, Shot Glass Journal, The Provo Canyon Review, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Mad Swirl, Galway Review, The Camel Saloon & others. Of mixed ancestry [Irish/Italian/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Qld., Australia – & her latest poetry title “The Vanishing” [2015] was published by Walleah Press ... available at Walleah, Amazon & Fishpond Books.

 

 

 

LIFE STILLS       

 

Mistaking this love

Would mean

That the air has

No rhythm

 

To beat its wings

Upon...

Jennifer Juneau- A Photo

                                                         "Creatures in the Mist"

Sudeep Adhikari- Three Poems

Sudeep Adhikari, from Kathmandu Nepal, considers poetry to be an impersonal act, largely deriving its content from unconscious psychic undergrounds. His works have recently been featured in Verse-Virtual, Arlington Literary Journal and Zombie Logic Review. 

A Mountain is Never Quiet

The mountain is never quiet

it celebrates the solitude of noise

the ancient murmurs of life, death

and all the in-betweens

alternately overlapping

in the colors of quartz and sandstones

a mountain breathes the carbons of long bygones

and we breath her oxygen in return.

I remember that parable by D.T. Suzuki

"when I began to study zen, mountains are mountains;

when I thought I understand zen, mountains were not mountains;

but when I understand zen, mountains were again mountains"

But in my case, "mountains were me"

a noise mistaken

by society for silence.

I know you don't believe me

if I say mountains do speak

but if you can feel wearing

her canopy of junipers and pines;

a moment before, a piece of rock on her peak

touching the sky, the next moment

gravitates with all its might to the abyss

that "Plong !", if you can hear

and on a fine day, when she loses herself

to thousands of roaring landslides

you will know.

 watching the mountain,

all I can be is
a naked impossibility of death and silence.

Nothingness is Fractal

The garden of lovelorn mist

flowers the airy spaceships

made of stainless steel

and a pocketful of silver, 

mixed with few multiverses

of cobalt blue.

I saw UFOs

of weird shapes

hanging on the ether

like the wild wet berries

with the dimension

somewhere between 2 and 3,

fractal.

Elysium waitress
will you serve me today

the zen of gravity,

a diet coke

and a river for a serpent ?

when my head

is 1,000 non-thoughts

above the me-level.

Silence, sky, white-noise

the pregnant space

of formless many,

and their million shades

of dynamics and dance;

So is my soul

always tripping and pimping

on organized chaos,

strange attractors 

and few Jupitars

of butterfly-effect.

Cloud Nothingness

Solitary, stoic
silent and stoned
a god stands tall
with his fractal emptiness;
green, saffron and vermillion red
melting on his mighty chest
while the sleep-walking witch
sways in aqueous ecstasy
her silty mist of lust and love
pervades the effulgent infinity 
of absence
supreme and shy.

And I watch those flying saucers
of luminescent gold-fire
quietly babysitting the sons of silver silence;
I am the Schrödinger's cat
dead and alive
aware and amored
countless, yet one
I AM
virtuous-vicious.

I am the Godhead reinvented within 
a punk Buddha 
shitfaced in your cosmic disco;
A spectral shape of decay and dust
a psycho-sonic ripple
crafted out of your ocean noise.

Stefanie Bennett- A Poem

Stefanie Bennett’s poems appear in Dead Snakes, Haggard & Halloo, Agent Orange ‘poems

to empower all Agent Orange victims’, Communion, Snorkel, The Fib Review & others. Of

mixed ancestry [Irish/Italian/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Qld., Australia in 1945.

Stefanie’s latest poetry title ‘The Vanishing’ [2015] is published by Walleah Press & available

from Walleah Press, Amazon & Fishpond Books.

 

 

 

THE SOFT DOMESTIC ECONOMY    

 

Via the vending maelstrom

Machine

I get a blighted

Portfolio poultice –,

An art-deco

Electric toothbrush –,

Three cut-out

Culinary

Square meals –,

A jump-to-it

           ‘Confederacy

Of confidence’

           Madrigal

Where nothing

Is as it

           Seems –, and

The usual

Acidic glare

From

My bed-sit

Night nurse

Who has

 

Madam Blavatsky’s

... Eyes.

 

 

[First published in Boston

Poetry Magazine]

 

 

Michael Keshigian- Three Poems

FIRESTARTER

 

Carrying small flames

in asbestos pockets

of an insulated overcoat,

he clandestinely traverses

city streets,

tossing a spark here,

a smoldering cinder there

that temporarily ignites

then extinguishes

but serves as an admonition

to all to take heed

within their present comforts

and disingenuous deeds,

this phantom in his dark cloak,

hoping to go unnoticed

on his way toward the cemetery

to abscond the souls

of those that think

they may rest in peace.

SNEAK ATTACK

 

It might happen anywhere,

anytime, day or night,

in your bedroom, at work

or in the field where you casually stroll

to view the beauty of sunsets

against the tree-lined sky.

There will be no yearning,

no nostalgic provocation,

the sun, the moon, and the stars

will not tip their hands,

but suddenly, without warning,

she will materialize in your mind

and breathlessly you will stagger

at the impossible tangibility

of her appearance,

the meteoric rise of your pulse

as her phantom touch

sends your thoughts asunder,

your dizzying need,

reflecting, and magnifying

that unquenchable desire

the years long ago absconded.

SECRETS IN MOONLIGHT

 

He sat upon the boulder

not quite centered

in the middle of the field

and flipped the pages

of nighttime‘s novel

to the chapter where the moon

ascended above the white pines,

fir tips giving the massive face

shaded stubble

as clouds on either side

shaved the surface closely

then departed slowly enough

for the stars

to begin the following chapter,

enhancing glows that extended

the moonbeam’s pale path

which he followed

off this rock of familiarity

to the page where dreams

dared to be considered

amid the sandy mesh of light,

descriptive details in separate paragraphs

which he read

upon these ashen pages,

eventually lifting his eyes from the glow

to absorb the mystical message

he received from the luminosity

as he closed the book,

shifted homeward,

bolstered by an aura of reverie

the translucent light imparted.

 

 

Bruce Mundhenke- A Poem

Facing the Unknown

I do not know where it came from,
Or from where it may have been sent,
I know not if it carried sojourners,
When it left I know not where it went.

It hovered just above the house
Right across the street.
My mother and I raced to my sisters
And swept them off their feet.

With fear we carried them both inside,
And then I went back out,
To stand on the porch and watch the thing,
There was no one else about.

It moved about the neighborhood,
Place to place, like a hummingbird,
My mother afraid, stood in the door,
Speaking not a word.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up
As I watched like a statue of stone,
And the first time ever in my life
I stood facing the unknown.

A door on the bottom then opened,
And a shower of sparks came down,
When I searched the area later,
There was nothing to be found.

It departed in an instant,
Briefly looked like a star in the night,
Then rapidly it vanished,
Completely out of sight.

Even today, that experience,
Often comes to my mind,
And many times, I've wondered,
If maybe I lost some time.