5/11/2016 0 Comments Four poems by Laura LeHew& A COUPLE OF WEAKNESSES there’s something satisfying about wild turkeys pillow talk & Doris Day the pancreas parsnips purses from WalMart platonic friends (though I am seeing this other girl) divination in your teacup—honey and clouds gluten free peanut butter cereal shooting musicians toddlers teetering down runways & baby cappuccinos broken down dolls the doll hospital filling with cigarette smoke sea salt caramels I have become accustomed to rejection AGAINST DECORUM I am not on the market & of course I am simply not dating Satan nor any of Them though their inner demons are rather quite rakish a paradox of peroxides, bald pates pesticides, sociopaths, math majors who have no real skills but still jab jab jab my tender scars what is appropriate AD (after divorce) there is so much more (to/in/about) me than just the facts AGNOSTICS protection | compliance non-persistent work space & secure by design as-a-service why are men so difficult non-disruptive benchmarkable performance data is available minimizing the risk the rush off a cliff scrying for the other wing Rapunzel let down her hair during a boot storm & before she put her lipstick on you are defeated GHOST RANCH walk the labyrinth between flagstone / river rock prickly pear / fluxweed’s pale petals mediations / compass points heartfelt truths with stones blue lace agate settles in the cup of coffee gusty winds may exist Bio: Laura LeHew’s collections include: Becoming (Another New Calligraphy), Willingly Would I Burn, (MoonPath Press), It’s Always Night, It Always Rains,(Winterhawk Press) and Beauty (Tiger’s Eye Press). Lana Hechtman Ayers says “As dark as the reality of Becoming is, the journey is redeemed by unflinching examination, moments of unwavering generosity, and the faithful testimony of survival.” In her other life Laura owns a computer forensics and network security consulting company. Laura received her MFA from the California College of Arts. She edits her small press Uttered Chaos www.utteredchaos.org. Laura always thought she’d be an astronaut lauralehew.com.
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5/9/2016 0 Comments Two poems by John GreyRite Of Passage New to the city, broke but too shame-faced to wire home for money, I strummed a few tunes for coins at a local coffee house. I crashed with my audience. They figured you can trust a guy with a six string and a heart to match. The kindness of strangers came down to two male English majors, a female lawyer wannabe with a taste for my accent and another male art student with a penchant for splashing bright colors on walls. I hung out there till I found a job cleaning dishes and a tiny room on the top floor of a tenement that looked out over alleys and dumpsters. And with squalor came fitful sleep thanks to a lumpy mattress, sirens and screams half the night. I was surviving, thriving as my more romantic notions would have it, I was Dylan in the Village, Hart Crane in London, Hemingway in Paris... now if only the heat worked. Two kinds of deprivation I reckon; the one you choose, the one that chooses you. Art has to hurt and sometimes self-immolation must do for real threats. At night, more coffee houses, more strumming, wearing my crummy digs like a badge. In the daytime, scribbling new songs in a notebook, protesting wrongly arrested black kids, listening to the bongo beaters in the park. It sure beats working in the hardware store. Pity about the health benefits. Six months of this and I'd lost twenty pounds, broken two guitar strings I couldn't afford to replace, got high on second hand marijuana smoke, was still washing dishes for a living, and my apartment may as well have had bars on the window, to clarify my position as the prisoner within. Now I was Edmond Dantes in the Chateau d'If, Prometheus bound to a rock, Napoleon on Elba. My choice then was either dream dead in New York City wasteland or dream deferred under parent’s watchful eye. I scrimped together bus fare and left, arrived home twenty pounds lighter and scratching my beard. Mother hugged me. Old man snarled, "I told you so." Younger brother asked a thousand questions, started making his own plans So my younger brother's me a year ago. And the old man could well be me, twenty, thirty years past. And I'm me at this very moment wondering what the hell do I do with my life. But my mother hugged me. And she must have someone in her arms. In Context With our pry bars and hacksaws and holsters loaded up with tools, we patrol the hills, the valleys of wrecks, to the sound of scurrying rats and mice, and gulls scouring this ocean of rust. We're gear heads, widget collectors, who have come to reclaim the likes of handles, cylinder heads, air springs, speakers, hubcaps and hood ornaments. These cars are bodiless graves. The corpses smell of grease not rotting flesh. And busted windshields, crushed driver side doors, tell gory tales that we don't wish to hear as we break off or unscrew our little treasures. There are no mourners here to stop us. No angels made of springs and airbags begging us to respect the dead. This could be the steering wheel that crushed a chest, busted a heart. But one more turn of the Phillips head, one more jerk of the pliers... how easily it comes out of the frame. Bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Gargoyle and Silkworm work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Main Street Rag and Spoon River Poetry Review. 5/7/2016 0 Comments Four poems by John Grochalskiwednesday morning anywhere edward hopper scenes from across the periwinkle street sad, slouching sacks of flesh illuminated in amber windows small mechanized moments between sips on coffee and the morning news d.j.’s with no wit selling air the hours that are never ours even when we have them at our fingertips barking dogs and booming bass car horns and boat horns scalding showers and unsatisfactory breakfasts conversations that pass into blandness or accusations a dead cockroach that needs to be flushed while searching for the hangover cure another mass this, another mass that politicians hanging freedoms like nooses around that old poplar tree blood on the leaves that latest infotainment rag glorious hollywood tits, glorious new york ass all sewn up and bought and sold rollicking commerce sailing down the river echoing merrily, merrily, merrily life is but the american dream. 03/06/2016 the people have perfected themselves into a wondrous monotony thin scarves and coffee cups smoothie sucking in the sun mechanical jubilations coming from out of sports bars dog walker methane blues a weekend repetition playing out on every block swinging the wine bottle i serpentine a row of american flags pass diners in an english pantry writing cell phone novels over their cold food look into the grocery store at the conveyors of junk food for conspicuous consumption watch the cashiers bag flavored potato chips tubs of ice cream soda by the case stealing debit card numbers from frowning fat customers so that they too can have a small slice of this plastic suffocating sunny american daydream we can’t go back --for kristofer collins but it’s tuesday morning sitting here over this coffee another ceaseless brooklyn morning shoulder pain and nose hairs thinking but if i could go back just once or a few times maybe a weekday afternoon with kris at the beehive over those cappuccinos that burned our hands each time we took them up the steps to that large room i remember being bathed in gray light from a sun that never quite got caught in the pittsburgh sky we’d sit somewhere where we could both watch coeds and see that oil painting of a southern preacher the one who looked like george jefferson and of course there’d be kerouac talk conversation about girls and family and plans to get out of pittsburgh for the summer the ones that never materialized once we received our first spring paychecks and i’m not saying things were better back then you see i’m done with that illusion and i’ve somewhat accepted the encroachment of time maybe they were just different or a touch less burdened or burdened in a way that was suitable for the age and i don’t go anywhere now where i can kill hours like that daydreaming away an afternoon without thinking about the time i’ve lost and most nights i can’t stay up any later than ten on the dot kris, we’ve talked kerouac to death but, man, it’s been a long time since i’ve had a cappuccino bathed in that gray home city light or really felt the sensation on my chapped hands as i let them burn. the scam artist looking out my kitchen window into the vodka night she passes dressed in a hoodie clutching a cell phone clutching herself sees stupid me in the window stops and spins turns doe-eyed and comes closer she says, since you’re looking out the window anyway i was wondering if i could ask you something shoot, i say because i still know how to talk to the young and doe-eyed female she says, you know 74th street and shore drive, right i nod intimately, i say well, she says, you see, my car…. i hold up my hand and stop her right there let me guess, i say your car broke down and you need some money she shakes her head huddles into herself on a sixty degree night for good measure tilts her head and lifts those eyes look, i tell her i’ve heard this scam at least five times in this neighborhood it’s always some poor girl clutching her dead phone at night huddled into herself in any kind of weather with a dead car just down the block. sometimes they cry, i tell her but have you heard it from me? she asks silent we stare at each other as the vodka night starts to turn sober i can’t help you, i finally say she shrugs, gives me the finger turns doe eyes and spins down the street like it ain’t no thing looking for the next idiot around the next block some money man who has yet to hear her pitiful tale of woe as i step away from the window close the blinds on this side of humanity and pour myself another stiff one. Bio: John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), the novel, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and the forthcoming novel, The Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the section that doesn’t have the bike sharing program. 5/4/2016 0 Comments Three poems by Donal MahoneyVeteran's Day Is Every Day for Him “Screw the Vernal Equinox” is all Cootie Kelly ever says sitting triumphant with his foaming glass of Guinness on the last stool at Maggie's Stag & Doe Inn. A stranger might walk in or a friend of many years and ask Cootie for the time or if he has a match or where a restaurant is and his answer never varies. “Screw the Vernal Equinox” is all Cootie Kelly ever says even before he went to Korea and came home with medals and a lovely bride, a nice lady who makes her own kimchee, a piquant dish of pickled cabbage. Cootie likes it so much he brings a jar with him every day to eat with Maggie’s grilled sausages and hard-boiled eggs, soaking yolks in hot sauce first. A lunch like this washed down with plenty of foaming Guinness has set Cootie Kelly up for life. No wonder all he ever says is “Screw the Vernal Equinox.” A Mountain on the Lawn You have the back rent and come home from work and find everything in a mountain out on the lawn with the kids sitting on the curb crying unable to get in after school. You spend the night in the car with your wife and the kids. They’re all scared and you wonder what to do in the morning. You can’t go to work with everything on the lawn. Neither can your wife. What about the kids and school? Storage costs money but that’s your back rent or maybe rent for a new place. How would you move all that stuff anyway? Who would help? You tell your wife everything will all work out, both of you knowing it’s all just begun. A Predictable Life He was predictable all those years going home after work doing odd jobs around the house getting ready for work the next day. He remained predictable after the divorce going home after work doing odd jobs getting ready for work the next day. He was still predictable after he lost his job applying for benefits and looking for work doing odd jobs around the house looking for work the next day. He wasn’t predictable after his benefits ran out and the bank foreclosed and he had to sell the car and move to the streets. He sleeps in hallways now washes dishes in a diner for breakfast and lunch and a few dollars to spend at McDonald’s for dinner. He’s predictable again but he has no home works harder for less and can't vote this year. He has no address. Bio: Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and Commonweal. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs= Bio: Christopher Lucka is a 26 year old photographer based in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Born in Los Angeles in 1989, he moved to New York in 2007. He began shooting in 2009, and immediately fell in love with photography. With roots as a street photographer with a passion for the surreal, he branched off into portraiture as well as focusing on architecture, dance, and social movements. Along with photography, he has an interest in writing, utilizing both mediums to evoke visceral emotions and ideas. His work is located at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sainthuck/ |
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