Elusive Accord

By Scott Thomas Outlar

Howling winds kiss my cold cheeks,
and I pretend that your fingers
are grazing against my skin.
 
Illusions shatter in Winter…
I am left with only ice
on this path.
 
Walking alone…toward something…
somewhere…maybe…perhaps
I’ll know it when I find it.
 
Across the distance,
hanging on the far horizon,
a siren sings her January melody.
 
A lullaby meant
to lull me to sleep…
but I’d freeze here all alone.
 
Trudging ahead with clear intentions…
focused on the future…
elusive though it might seem at times.
 
The clock strikes
a Midnight chime,
and I am the bell tolling.
 
I am the bird whistling
while working my way
back into the comfort of your warmth.





The Eternal Recurrence

 Another day
Another dollar
or so they say
 
Another year
Another death
Another birth
Another cycle
and so it goes
 
Not every poem
has to be profound
 
Sometimes it is enough
to simply say:
See you on the next go round…


​
​

 About the author: Scott Thomas Outlar hosts the site 17Numa.wordpress.com where links to his published poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews can be found. His words have appeared recently in venues such as The Literary Nest, Cavalcade of Stars, Inwood Indiana, Dark Matter Journal, and High Coupe. Scott's chapbook "Songs of a Dissident" was released in 2015 through Transcendent Zero Press and is available on Amazon. 

Branches

By Kenyatta JP Garcia

autumn is determined to become winter and steal peeks at a world where never is the fashion of the season. where growth questions itself and frost bites hand in hand trembling, too cold to leave one another to feed.

and baby’s breath dries up around the flowers it’s made to surround  and cribs curl in closer to infants as mobiles spin and lower.

and the stars speak to the moon of desertion. clouds conspire to mutiny.

heaven’s gate whines out opening up for all the tears of boys who were told not to cry. for all the girls abducted from their potential. for all the others forever denied. for zombies whiter than snow. for ghosts much the same. for corpses blackening in decay. for limbs much the same as gangrene sets in. for sun unable to melt the cities back to the bone of streets. for long winds sweeping out the corners of the neighborhoods. for the hillsides with a view of the comings and goings of paradise.

the golden rule wasn’t written for everyone.

and someday it’ll be impossible to see what was started. aggravations will fear memories of threats and the company they kept in exchange for a kiss where devils meet.

winter will keep its enemies closest to its heart. autumn will read palms and flip tarot cards. snow will be all the firepower the season has  but it’ll be enough to create some change from stingiest dollars.

voices will turn to hell and ask the inferno to be somewhat more tropical. wells will be full but so stiff they might as well be dry. the pacific will forget the advice of the atlantic. swirls will enter the coastal parentheses. a ruckus for certain.

sense will be made of favorite songs heard again in older age. in cabin fever. in bitterness of breezes attacking branches. 


​

 About the author: Kenyatta JP Garcia is the author of This Sentimental Education, ROBOT and Playing Dead. They have a fondness for peanut butter, lentils, squirrels and comic books but find gingerbread men to be the most frightening baked goods on the face of the earth. When they're not hiding out from anthropomorphic foodstuffs, they run Altpoetics and are an assistant editor at Horse Less Review. ​

About the artists: Jenny Fernald is a photographer and mixed media artist. She graduated from San Francisco State University with a Master's degree in Creative Arts. Jenny Fernald's artwork has been exhibited in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Marin County California and New Smyrna Beach Florida.


Carl Scharwath's work has appeared internationally with over eighty publications selecting his poetry, short stories, essays or art photography. He won the National Poetry Contest award on behalf of Writers One Flight Up. His first poetry book “Journey To Become Forgotten” was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press.

Lace up those boots!

Lace up those boots!
Avoid the puddles of united minds!

Dissolve and survive

The tyranny of  institutionalized rapport
As you creep numbly through the thought glue,
That kettle of emotionless emotion,
That requisite embrace of the nonreal,
That plunder of the soul!
Maybe, just maybe,
You can instigate a kludge
That might save us.
Do yu keep yore map in yore glovebox?



 For the widow of  Edward J. O’Connor, Jr., my dear friend and the best poet I have ever known

I join you in your dance of dissonance
as you tramp on, wearied, through a life.
A life of sorts, a machine off course,
a telling tale of woven woe, discordant splendor.
Till we meet again in this spoof of our swollen grief,
this wonder of wonders, this life that we live.




Jaffna revisited

Orange flares the night
Fire in the sky

Death, destruction
Burning bodies, flayed hands
What can be said
What can be saved
Except
Orange flowers for the dead




Roses in the closet

Like Ginsberg's roses in the closet
I will vacate the infinite,

reside in this page of time. 

Like a latent choirboy,
I will sing a faint shrill
caricature of your soul,
wandering about in this nowhere,
envious of your final
destination.


​

 About the author: R. Bremner, a former cab driver, truck unloader, computer programmer, and vice-president at Citibank, hails from Lyndhurst and Glen Ridge, NJ, USA. For the past 18 months he has been writing almost exclusively beat and Dada, often metrical. For biographical data and publication history, please visit him at http://www.pw.org/content/r_bremner 

Gettin’ to the Dock of the Bay

​first marriage 
South Augusta, Georgia
bright afternoon

at the laundry mat with a friend.
during the wash cycle
we were drinking at the bar next door

after the third round of drinks,
tipsy, I transferred wet clothes to the dryer
pushed in the quarters

turning around, I was surprised to find
a Krishna in a saffron robe
selling holographic pictures

I bought painted boats in a marina
a place I’d never seen, perhaps
a conjured premonition

back inside the dark bar singing,
“I left my home in Georgia
Headed for the Frisco Bay”

and the early afternoon drunk 
shouted, “and I never got there—”
my friend laughed. I didn’t.

I declared I would get there
and many other places too.
she regarded me cooly

over twenty years later, in San Francisco,
I found the colorful boats in the bay,
remembered how far I’d roamed.





​About the author: Susan Beall Summers is an over-educated, under-achiever who has traveled from the swamplands of South Georgia to the Pyramids of Egypt. She interviews poets for Texas Nafas, Channel Austin, is a member of Writer’s League of Texas, Austin Poetry Society, and Gulf Coast Poets. Publishing credits include Ilya’s Honey, Texas Poetry Calendar, Harbinger Asylum, Yellow Chair Review, Di-Verse-City, Cattails, Frog Pond and others. She has a full length collection and a recent chapbook. She has given feature performances across the country and remains unapologetic about her open mic addiction. www.tidalpoolpoet.com 

Awkwardness-es

should’ve known…
the directions
to that party
were complicated,
and we had heard there
would be a banquet,
but it was just appetizers.


plus, we stuck out
in our formalwear, with
everyone else in flip-flops;
never mind though,
“meet the host!”
we were told,


but he was preoccupied.
making the best of it,
ignoring broken promises,
and looking past
rescinded-directives,
we kept dancing,


until feet swollen
and music fading,
the air became stale
as we broke a sweat,
trying, unsuccessfully,
to be gracious guests


while onlookers
breathed down our necks,
making it plain
we were not welcome, and
the only question that remained:
why were we sent an invitation?





About the author: Samantha Lee Terrell is a published poet who lives near Springfield, Missouri. Her work can be found in such reputable publications as:  DoveTales by Writing for Peace (Colorado), the Ebola chapbook by West Chester University (Pennsylvania), Dissident Voice, Knot Magazine and others.

Hollow
Drifting along the sea
of the emptied glass of
the psyche
 
Adorned walls
with neanderthal merchandise
push the barriers
of what is real
and what is not
 
Separate from
philosophy
but in tune with
the sorrow of
orphaned
Infants;
 
Crying from the hole
that is within, 
the hole that is 
The  heart





Quest

Darkness
All around
 
Hope filled searching
leads to dead ends
 
Multiplying the
pain of division
from past lovers
 
Mind numbing
Icicles of truth
assail
 
Seething spasmodic
soliloquy suspends
 
Vision returns




Memory of Petals

I watched you wither away
like an autumn leaf
on a cold winter night
 
I would have held you
closer, if I had known
what would happen to you
in those final days
 
I live in regret of picking
the most beautiful rose,
only to watch it die
long before its time




​

 About the author: Adam Levon Brown is a poet residing in Eugene, Oregon.. He started writing in Winter of 2014 to express his thoughts and emotions as a way of finding catharsis. He has two collections of poetry published with the independent publishing group Creative Talents Unleashed. He has been published in several places including Section 8 Magazine, Leaves of Ink, and Bitchin’ Kitsch.

Good Morning To You Too

Father searches for tea leaves, 
rumbles, groans, empty cans 
after empty cans, and each of them 
holds good memories. I roll 
in the moaning of the outdoor cat, 
white one, that lost her first born. 
And the second. And the third. 
And the fourth. And a cloud 
moves winter around the block. 
I know this neighbourhood. 
I know nothing.




Whiskey morning

Whiskey morning.
Houses fly over 
the infertile clouds.

A knock on the door
tries to bootleg 
blue wind inside.

A shaft of light
dismantles a temple
at distance.

Nothing is sacred.
Everything is.
When I sip silence away 
the remnant screams and screams.


​

 About the author: ​Kushal Poddar, widely published in several countries, prestigious anthologies included Men In The Company of Women, Penn International MK etc, Van Gogh’s Ear, been featured amongst the poets for the month December by Tupelo Press, Vine Leaves Literary Journal's Best of 2014 and in various radio programs in Canada and USA presently lives at Kolkata and writing poetry, fictions and scripts for short films when not engaged in his day job as a lawyer in the High Court At Calcutta and an English Language Trainer in various universities. He is editor of the online magazine ‘Words Surfacing’ He authored ‘The Circus Came To My Island’ (Spare Change Press, Ohio) and “A Place For Your Ghost Animals” (Ripple Effect Publishing, Colorado Springs). The forthcoming book is  “Understanding The Neighborhood” (BRP, Australia).

Seeker
 
Life; part two.
A curtainless window seeps lamppost honey,
weak amber electricity
illuminated on a silent movie mirror.
 
He buttons the Salvation Army shirt.
He knots the university tie.
He folds the Red Cross map
which is circled with a destination bullseye
 
                and a scrawled bus timetable along the top,
                                foreign
                in any language.
 
Dystopian tenements loiter
at each street corner
where children’s chalked pavements
transform into outlines of murder victims.
 
Christmas puppy dog ribbons
become discarded rainbows in wheelie bins
and the prickly profile of the prison
sighs with kits of pigeons
orbiting the stark soup kitchens
relied on by many around these parts.
 
He walks the road unknown.
He is guided by the rising clement sun.
He memorises each tapering spire,
each vowel of the newsstand man’s tongue
 
               so that he may return
               to where he has come from.
 
Printed numbers engraved on glazed office doors
countdown like rocket launches;
spacemen’s prayers decoded into numeric form.
He gathers his tall shadow from the stone
and opening the door,
steps into his first job interview
 
where the bombs don’t fall and hope can rise.





Helicopters

Sent home from school, egg-yolk in hair
and bruises on cheek, I arrive
to a yelping sister, wounded creature,
mother and father clustered
into a curved archway; locked arms form a gate.
 
Aphonic, I am orthostatic, a slab
of teenage ignorance
programmed into automatic indifference,
inarticulate and inwardness.
 
My sibling, two years my senior, eighteen,
bemoans that her beloved’s body
has been recovered by helicopters from the River Leven.
News on the radio crackles, babbles a name,
location; choked on a Medium Wave station.
 
The teapot’s perfume strangles the air.
Dad is lost in a tabloid puzzle; a crossword clue.
A neighbour timidly chaps the door
to ask my mum if what she’s heard is true.
                                                The truth hurts.

Sister’s diary betrays itself
spilling hand-written letters and photo booth pictures
like glitter over her bedroom carpet.
 
A boy band heartlessly grins from the ceiling.




Shitehole

Spots of rich, crimson dog period blood
speckle the slaughtered flower heads
executed by swaggering drunken-dullards
staggering towards their slimy, fetid beds.
 
Spiders spin gob-webs on iron gates,
dream catchers for lout’s lubricated mucus
and invalid ice cream vans blaze like bonfires
courtesy of glass bottles pickled with rags,

                 doused with lighter fluids

Milky girls emerge from darkened lanes
like shell-shocked pearls inside open mouths
and stricken dead poets stitched onto tea towels
verify their trauma with perturbed pouts.
 
A sponged protective lies on the ground
like a funfair prize minus the goldfish.
Another boy racer dies at the perilous roundabout
before he’s even reached his twentieth.
 
Groundhog day gossip lip-reads in cafes
like rumour’s vocation on becoming cynical
and while local people bemoan their births an accident,
my mum taught me that I was a miracle.





Buddy Holly’s

Holiday skin begins with transatlantic hymns
for a drinks trolley to appear.
 
It is playful, hopeful, social and global
until the first doubtful quibbles
emanating from the shuttle bus driver
who mumbles something that resembles
your final destination. It is unintelligible, unclear.
 
At resorts, holiday skin inhales
a toxic blend of bratwurst hot dogs and splurges of sun cream.
There are tanks where miniscule fish gnaw dead skin from pensioners’ feet
and toddlers who float in the pool upon racing derby wreaths
and walls that are guarded by exploding firework-shaped palm trees

                 and flies that use cocktail straws like water flumes
                 and cockroach siestas in paving cracks of sweltering afternoons
                 and white socks with sandals and bellies like hot air balloons

that decry wish you were here upon the backs of postcards.

Holiday skin swims in glitzy oceans
where decapitating Frisbees are in whirling motion
and the sun sets  into the side of cappuccino machines.
Sand sculptures of Zeus or the mermaids
reminds holiday skin of phones in dark hallways
somewhere more northern,
                                 never ringing to say you’ve arrived safely.

Away from obscure club strips and wind-filled plastic footballs,
body-conscious belles drop their beach towels
by the rocks to embrace dusk’s cooling spray,
frolicking like ants inside the bedside glass of water
you guzzled when the air conditioning refused to play.
 
Holiday skin is anything with gin,
giving in to frizzy hair and double chins for every single photograph.
It is the ruby twinkle of Mars in morse code
exploding in every ripple of laughter;
every nipple uploaded to Instagram exposed beneath sticky plaster.
 
Holiday skin burns, bubbles,
makes homeward-bound clothes feel uncomfortable
against each roll of newly-singed fat.
Sharing an earphone each,
we watch the plane’s ‘No Smoking’ signs light up like a neon beach –
the shape of home sucking us in
towards layers of hoodies, jeans, washings,
                                                                   Coronation Street.

​

 About the author: Stephen Watt is a poet and performer from Glasgow whose debut collection "Spit" was published in 2012 after winning the Poetry Rivals slam in Peterborough. Since then, Stephen has had work published in various countries, won the StAnza Digital Poetry Slam, the Hughie Healy memorial trophy, and the Tartan Treasures award. A new pamphlet collection "Optograms" is being published by Wild Word Press in February 2016. https://www.facebook.com/StephenWattSpit/