5/31/2018 Poetry By Patrick Jenkinson For Lisa What did you see in those houses? Those desperate pretenders clinging to some half overheard bar tale of suburbia while all around the seeds of hip-hop kleos bloom as lotuses in the puddles that filled our plungers when nobody had 50¢ for bodega water Did the silhouette of a little girl twirl about your psyche the way we we spun our crack stems at the tail end of a hit, not to make sure the last of the oil ran down into the blackened chore but for the simple joy of motion? I'm sorry I'm sorry that when you insisted we pull over and beg God for the cessation of the awful torment, I only half echoed your desperate pleas while wholly bent on how much time your diversion put between me and my elastic-wrapped divinity I'm sorry that when I heard about your death, I felt nothing save the mild satisfaction of having one more friend's name to throw upon an altar already sodden with the blood of all I cared about I'm sorry that the God you cried out to chose for his grace the one who joyfully hurled relapse statistics and barely understood French nihilism at every glimmer of sacred truth that cut through our endless fog, while the maggots devour your heroin soaked veins. Vipassanā Jon Jon The project on James St. Malformed streetlights reflecting off busted curbstones as I make my way to the gates of Dis Within, where worn soles have slid trails of filth into delicate arabesques in praise of that which is most high in the minds of all addicts Breathing in Breathing out Breathing in Breathing out Thinking The Nidānas Sense perception and vedanā birth craving, craving births clinging, and clinging births a demon whose karmic toll a lifetime of installment payments will not abate The Impala busted, lying to my dad about owing money to the wrong people Bound to the passenger seat of his Cadillac for that endless circuit Berlin to Hartford to Berlin to Hartford to Berlin to Hartford Passing the exits that still hurl rocks of fear, joy, and unattainable hope into my mind's turbulent waters, until high holy 46 lifts its monolithic boldface sigil above the incomprehensible blur of worktime commuters A left, a quick right, four blocks up then another left and a loop around the one way Will there ever come I time when I cannot recite those turns from memory? Gunshots, and the still night air trembles in fear I am unfazed I have my dope, but no hard This is unacceptable No regard for the terrors swirling about the Cadillac, parked close enough for the muzzle shocks to seep into ligament but far enough for the mass exodus of panicked souls to appear as ink dots on a spreadsheet of inner city gang violence Save his only son whose dukkha seeped, hyper-Machiavellian brain may have finally burst out the back of his skull, glistened in the dim streetlight and settled upon the filth encrusted pavement I walk through the panicked back alleys in search of someone with enough business sense to not let a body get in the way of an easy 20 bucks Months later, the visiting area of the Hartford Correctional Center Wap with his dreadlocks and molten granite eyes pounding and waving from the other side of the glass asking my father how the Caddy is doing Breathing in Breathing out Breathing in Breathing out Thinking The Saṃyutta Nikāya As a dog bound about a post runs the same circle again and again, so too do we bound in Saṃsāra run through an endless cycle of thoughts until they give birth to action and pull the chains of human misery into a taut spiral But I do not have to let my thoughts corporealize They are only thinking Thinking Thinking That parking space just far enough to avoid Jon Jon's ire Beneath the basketball hoop in it's motley coat of rust and scratched paint Always open. Always waiting for us Me and Kieth and Mark and Rob pulling out our stems to see which of them has the least grime and resin Then absolute bliss The Dhammapada, Verse 1 Manasā ce paduṭṭhena, tato naṃ dukkham anveti, chakkaṃ va vaḥato paddaṃ Having a mind with such corruption, suffering follows him as a yolked cart follows an ox Cakṣurvijñāna I saw him today Not on Flatbush or Bond or Ward But the meticulous groutwork of a suburban deli I don't recall his name But a year of vivitrol and therapy can't erase the visions of his ashen merchandise tumbling from the yellow Gucchi stamped waxpaper Cut sizzling on the periphory of black, bubbling oil He shows his teeth Not the pitbull clamped jaws of one whose 50 bucks is yet again a day away Nor the overdrawn greasepaint smile of a shark as microscopic rivulets of weakness filter through his spectrometer nostrils Today it is nothing more than a warm hello I stand within the outer darkness And I can feel the lion's fangs perforating the skin Severing the tension of taut muscles as my mind returns home To a subterranean world where souls claw out personal labyrinths to circle around the backs of friends and loved ones Where I ripped my nails from the beds as each pair of eyes reflected my own machinations Abused, assaulted, subdued, and broken Endless litanies met with Epictetian torpor But from the smile of an old connect Comes a quaking of the foundations With Dreams, with Drugs, with Waking Nightmares Another fucking dope dream last night Setting: Deformed offspring of the Chinese place where Maple meets Wethersfield and the Top Kat laundry near Sisson and Farm Ave Immigrant workers keep their faces in profile as the Minotaur, unwanted bastard offspring of institutionalized oppression and the bull of Wall St., roams freely through the maze of utopian menu item photos and Greek tragic chorus washers whirring out a commentary to my existence Devouring the GDP of a million drawn and quartered families alongside 35$ bodega pawn shop streetcorner transactions, and excreting pebbles not too different from sea salt and a soft brown powder that slides out of the wrapper as if craving union with spoon, foil, or paper My man slides through the cracked glass door with a wisp of frozen air, an aggregation of a hundred of similar faces, each eager to be the final stop in a Mussolini timetabled daily journey that, etched across a map, reveals a decade long criminal record He may be unreal, but his gestures are being acted out by thousands of pneumatic repo men at the very moment you read this: The coiled stride marking his station above the trap jawed bottom feeders lining every entrance to the outer darkness The smile purpose built to belie how every gift is really careful consideration regarding the fiscal returns brought to the city each day in a trembling Impala pockmarked with the blows of bats, tire irons, and C Town bags stuffed full of bolts and visions of ascension The shifting of hands and a tightly bound blue bundle is cradled within, that old jostling motion to stop the sweat of my palms from soaking through. I do not head for the nearest blinking light on an internal atlas that could, even a year out of the game, lead me unerringly to the closest unlocked and monitored bathroom from anywhere in Hartford I suppose that's some progress But neither do I follow the urging of my great retinue of therapists, doctors, probation officers and other such sting leavers and prison guards at the impenetrable gateway beyond this abyss, and dispose of my precious treasure I simply clutch my waxpaper aegis and mill about aimlessly until trumpets of warning announce the new waking day *Image: Flickr jesse hlebo CC ![]() Bio: Patrick Jenkinson has spent nearly half his life in active addiction, five years in the violent grip of heroin, getting thrown about from living in sober houses to his car to jail like the winds from Dante's second circle, and as of now has a little over a year sober. These poems are his means of coming to grips with what has transpired in his life. 5/30/2018 A Grammar of Want By Lisa SislerA Grammar of Want He wrote poems inside me Muscles, nerves contracting, a slow electric current. His fingers on the flesh of my letters, my thighs, sentences he’d form embracing the chaos held within. Moans, like questions raised, amplified among the heat and arch of my spine. Each story, twisting upon the other, setting tissue and sinew aflame. The ashes of him remain, slick along my lips. ![]() Bio: A New Jersey native, Lisa Sisler is the editor of Knocking at the Door: Approaching the Other, a poetry anthology from Write Bloody Books and the author of Creative Writing Workshop, a textbook for beginning writers. Her poetry has appeared in print and online at Connotations Press, Contemporary American Voices, The Writing Disorder, Adanna, among others. She teaches writing at Kean University. 5/29/2018 Images By Lydia FriedmanImages The sky, white as a bloodless heart Opaque as an uncracked symbol So many meanings contained in a heart Anyone can magic up a symbol Snake, apple, pocketwatch, skull, eyeball I take a beautiful face and mar it: behold a symbol A golden key hidden behind an eyeball A locked door of amethyst The mirror’s silver eyeball Fireflies preserved in amber, love immortalized in amethyst A golden leash for my stupid heart A pale wrist shackled in amethyst Hollow vault, devoid of gold, in my heart Silent as an ancient symbol So many eyes and only one heart ![]() Bio: Lydia Friedman once went on a blind date with a marble statue in Vienna. She lives in New England. www.crookedbutinteresting.wordpress.com 5/28/2018 Poetry By Frankie Springbitter dissipate lo-fi the rhythm of our footfalls in a dream bitter winter the warmest in human memory lo-fi the imaginings of a heart watching smoke- stack belches dissipate in the rain, lo-fi the same song of a heart in a world so quiet you could hear a needle drop breathe in, sweet succor of the seemingly happy death surround my cradled arms in a world defined by do no harm Kant recedes to a sour-tasting corner and bleeds longing for hierarchy into a plastic cup collect the essence of generation blood is left in the shelled land call the blood-letter solve leftover longing like clipping purple flowers --water their thirsty veins in a windowsill vase as the cold sets in, try to save them, do not let them die a good death at first freeze-- will you call the blood-letter with me? will you drown the last vestige of the flower in the freezing rain, will you strangle the spirit of a tiger doomed in his cage to misery? yes your answer melancholy: dilute this blue pumping unreachable vein with clear water, blood will dissipate it will no longer taste bitter to lick your open wounds everyone agrees wilting brown-tinged rotting stinking petals matted snow and shit-stained pens we cannot abide the stench we will not abide the stench as with a flurry of birds taking flight in the morning leaving the place of congregation for the sky, the enslaved will escape by edicts of nature from the crowd that calls them nigh unto death but isolation grows its own morphed and jagged leaves, though there is no freeze in the south, on the plain, flowers of perpetual summer float the subtle fragrance of submission, put the petals in a pot and brew up once again sweet succor of the seemingly happy death i pray the dirge begins while we yet have breath in our lungs, yet blood in our limbs, for nothing could be more beautiful, you said, nothing could be more beautiful than the glory of a lost cause and the lament of a tragic end epiphany and the endless march of time remember the cold of december has passed the worst is all behind us i grow older not smoothly but with tantrum i miss the plains, i miss the almost-desert-never-rains warm-in-winter, i miss one particular sinner i fear will never repent with the force of a whirlwind tearing through the silent cattle-fields at the turn of spring to summer this is to my warm young season coming to an end, i do not grow old gracefully but with a fury i learned in the lion's den of lances and tourniquets, medieval tournaments slap the crook of your arm can you feel life there can you feel it? rushing and floating danger. i am in danger, of growing backwards to this past will verse ever progress beyond slant rhyme now i see as in a mirror dimly will you clear away the grime accumulated in a million capitulated conversations will you, my queen and my mother let me fall formless into a mass grave dug for all those who chose and opposed of a generation while the old man sits by his hearth and his field which demeter will tend, and never fail, forever and ever. serious girl i danced and thought i was beautiful, i danced and thought it was beautiful silhouettes of skeletons underneath models’ skin in magazines-- depravity in everything, graffiti the flesh of young fresh people peeling away baring iniquity to the face of the blind world i danced and thought it was beautiful my body unfurled in ribbons, thwarted violently were the arms of all god’s guardian angels ![]() Bio: Frankie Spring is an undergraduate student at Indiana University South Bend majoring in English Writing. She has never understood a single joke, or the elusive art of social networking, but likes to think she's a nice person to hang out with anyway. So far, her poetry has appeared in her college's literary journal. It will also soon appear in Retirement Plan, a zine showcasing South Bend artists and writers. 5/27/2018 Bullets bibles blunts By Preach the PoetBullets bibles blunts Rents due 3600 hundred dollars out my pocket And I can’t Figure stress and struggle make twigs bend and don’t break Little nappy nazarite long locs Locked around love in the form of Delilah’s hand Demons whisper to trade bible for bullet 33 the full amount that pack chambers of sacrifice Little boys run through double mirrors Fighting the reflection of child staring at man What’s this Broken mirrors burst with pride Before falls I collapsed Trading bibles for blunts hoping to pack a swisher sweet with anthrax and anxiety Knowing that heaven lays at the end of my life’s sunset Trying to dream of home before long car rides The look undesirable I hate em The finger around a trigger is taking too long Make sure to pack the Bible bullets and the same blunt I bet my life on Koolaide packets Balogna sandwiches A picknick blanket Bases covered and I don’t know if I should steal home or wait for a base hit But felonies seem familiar as the confessionals I write in the darkness under a blind moon Listening to screams coming from walls that read county I’m not even from this real county I know the system is still counting 43 out of 100 of us will see these same walls But in these walls I fell in cover I found shelter Beating fist against brick I learned determination Animals backed into a corner have no choices And i fell in line with a destiny destined before I was born I was a statistic I fullfilled my obligation I don’t owe you nothing more but a nod to your worries and a prayer But your love will chill the air that wraps around my lifeless body I’ll let you be a judge I’ll play executioner ![]() Bio: Preach the Poet comes from Chicago. Utilizing religious text and pop culture to create stories to share. He’s performed in AL, TN, FL, and TX. He currently represents Lucha Dallas and you can find him some where in the community lending a helping hand. 5/26/2018 Poetry By Adam HughesFragment (VII) thrash against me, against the lies I tell you to keep you warm when there is no more kindling and the wind sweeps through our hiding places and turns them into turtle shells-- part protection part prison part anchor when we find ourselves on our backs Fragment (VIII) I’m counting on you like a rosary the beads all worn and my fingers indented like the first word of a new paragraph the roundness of sacred thoughts and the brokenness of sacred votives and the temple prostitutes who count to god in waves more holy than the tearing of skin and sundering-- all the found things are dull and used while the shiny things were never lost but wouldn’t have been missed anyway Fragment (XIII) The girl one table over in the café keeps laughing in great gasps that beg for air and I can’t remember the last time I needed anything the way she needs oxygen when she laughs and as her laughter echoes behind her, I feel the loneliness of needing everything so badly that I need nothing Bio: Adam Hughes is the author of four full-length poetry collections, most recently Allow the Stars to Catch Me When I Rise (Salmon Poetry, 2017) and Deep Cries Out to Deep (Aldrich Press, 2017). Born and raised in Central Ohio, he now resides in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains where he is pursuing an MFA at Randolph College. Should you google him, he is not the Adam Hughes who draws near-pornographic depictions of female superheroes. This particular Adam Hughes cannot draw. 5/25/2018 Poetry By Steve HennSeven Wonders Perambulating in the track one might’ve left on the side of the road If the road were not concrete but dirt and the shoes soft moccasin, not Horsehoof, un-animal, as if narrow deerpaths beside streets and sidewalks Through incandescent neighborhoods alive with children On bikes and sketchy motor scooter riders. I knew I’d changed when a blonde mother with her young children Saw me walking and said hello, some mask of illness lifted Or manifestation of brokenness unseen, shed like a jacket On a 70 degree day in February celebrating greatness and folly Two Saturdays ago at the morning meeting the Wise Man said we are all Of us Broken Toys, every one of us. As if God were a Child Who loved us recklessly, who mangled us with love I am confused about my place in all this and I don’t know If I’m meant to be awed or upset, frightened or mystified Or having an experience that once we called religious – is that what this is? It seems so self-congratulatory to suggest these things Were here for us all along to experience if only we’d say we wanted them And mean it. When young we used to pluck dandelions gone to seed Fashioning the stems and heads into a kind of gun and pop it off, Mama-had-a-baby-and-her-head-popped-off, right here In this neighborhood, in this backyard I’ve never left but circled And returned to, wide circles stretching to the coasts – I wasn’t born here But I have taken up residence like a Lion in a children’s book purported to represent The Way, The Truth, and The Light and don’t we know real lions Would just as soon bite your head off as save your ass from a white witch? And so now I can really start asking questions: Is God benevolent Like a dictator or benign like a tumor or malignant Like the thoughts leading my thoughtless legs to the bar on a Sunday afternoon? I am trying To make sense of things, I am trying for an acceptance That doesn’t feel like a submission – this happened once before, the world Felt as if it would surely go on beyond my puny self without asking my permission Or caring either way, unconcerned with reward or punishment Simply sloughed off the walkway like an insect with broken legs Is this the blessedly depressing gift Mind had in Mind? Is this my piss-poor Enlightenment? . . . we are Lightyears removed, we are Eons removed from the Center of the Universe. Ubiquitous In the 1990s in Indiana and probably across The Midwest a neverending cavalcade of Jeremy’s tromped the halls of high schools and middle schools, newly-minted alternative schools and juvie halls, they slung fast food in Arby’s and Wendy’s, they went out wakeboarding on Winona Lake with six Purple Passion beverages for their sexually inexperienced teenaged admirers, The Jeremy’s like an ooze, a blob, a Blob of Jeremy’s oozing from the painted cinder blocks that led from Math to Science to History to English, the Jeremy’s oozing and creeping and insinuating themselves into everything, the scuttling Jeremy’s like cockroaches gather and disperse, collect and scatter, some of them hoisting up three pointers under Friday Night Gymnasium Lights, some of them pissed off beating cheap drum heads in a rented parks department building playing a punk show, the righteous Jeremy’s, the angry Jeremy’s, the Jeremy’s of ubiquitous understated retort, the ever present Jeremy’s, the Jeremy’s of the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen, fumbling with the bra strap of their Saturday dates parked near the boat ramp at Carr Lake, the Jeremy’s sitting at home staring at the wall masturbating to full blast Danzig, the horrible Jeremy’s, the terrible Jeremy’s, the Jeremy’s like fascist soldiers goosestepping their way door to door in Student Council community service leaf raking, the Jeremy’s smoking marijuana seeds from a jerry-rigged pipe of assembled miscellaneous hardware parts, the Jeremy’s trying to stone themselves infertile on a spacetrip into light, the Jeremy’s escaping the basement via easement to climb into the night, the Jeremy’s walking the highway to Dad’s house high on half a box of Dramamine with a Robitussin chaser, the Jeremy’s with their never-stated questions, the Jeremy’s with their quiet rage, their misunderstood understanding, the Jeremy’s with their weary vows, the Jeremy’s with the girlfriends they try hard not to knock up, the useless Jeremy’s, the ugly Jeremy’s, the Jeremy’s waiting and waiting and waiting to get out. ![]() Bio: Steve Henn wrote Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year (Wolfson Press, 2017) and two other books of poetry. He teaches high school in northern Indiana. 5/24/2018 Poetry By Klae BainterWet Blue Baby Eyes. I wish, my friend, you could’ve seen the light, and the way it made the dazzling orange plastic shine. She said: “I never thought I’d bury my son.” Then wept the phone full of fuzz. Her eyes round and swollen. Stones in frozen earth. Shingle beach. I can see you throwing punches in the cinderblock corner of a basement. Taking what is called modern medicine down your throat. Where it all bubbles up. I’ve seen it, a dark cliché taking the top off. Makes it naked. Flat. The skin literally vibrates, and loosens the joints. It unhinges the knuckles. You pick it. You pluck it. Insects dance on pointed toes between the layers of your flesh-- Nerve endings swing like a tail, so you chase them with burned finger tips. An object in motion, stays in motion until it stops breathing. It just dies on the kitchen floor. With what looks like shame-- and the last thing you tried to do was cover your face with your hoodie. Wide nose blue. Drained. A Heart Huge. Bulbous. Muscle. Liquid pools. And Orchids. You could’ve tried tying off with guitar string pulled tight like tendons. Til the flesh moves. Til the chords pop. Until they glide to the bone. Crab walking with a shotgun, handcuffed, and coughing blood-- Pop Tarts, and tiny dogs. Should’ve found a piece of that. Wish I could’ve found the trail. The tiny dots mark the spot. ![]() Bio: Klae Bainter received his BA in creative writing from the University of Washington in 2015, and will begin master's studies in the NEOMFA program in Cleveland in the fall of 2018. He currently resides in Seattle, WA. 5/23/2018 Poetry By Kendall A. BellSimple math Lexi practices her times tables by the number of knuckle shaped bruises on her forearms: five times five is twenty five, plus two times sitting in the darkest corner of her room counting the number of teardrop stains on the scuffed carpet. one, two, three, four, five. She keeps her voice low, so that it never rises above the television, never interrupts any conversations over cellphones or social media. Lexi wears the same clothes for three days straight, and her teacher calls home to ask if everything is ok—Lexi gets one hard twist of the right arm, two backhands to her small mouth. After the lights are off, Lexi counts coins and dollar bills saved in an old jar that she hides underneath a pile of stuffed animals, subtracts the years left before she can leave on her slender fingers-- eighteen minus eight is ten. One hundred fifteen thousand two hundred heartbeats a day. Twenty times a day holding my breath, waiting for the pain to stop. ![]() Bio: Kendall A. Bell's poetry has been most recently published in Philosophical Idiot and Work to a calm. He was nominated for Sundress Publications' Best of the Net collection in 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015. He is the author of twenty four chapbooks. His next chapbook, "Chasing The Skyline", will be released in June 2018. He is the founder and co-editor of the online journal Chantarelle's Notebook and publisher/editor of Maverick Duck Press. His chapbooks are available through Maverick Duck Press. He lives in Southern New Jersey. 5/22/2018 Poetry By William R. Soldan wakingphotolife: CC
Riding Out #1 Never know when they’re coming for you but it’s always early still the dim-light hours (“lights out” is never really) before the brights pop fizzle hum remind you where you are on cold-rack mornings when some runaway dream has you back free fucking around where you shouldn’t be. Then the hard ratchet and clang metal doors banging open bootfalls and a leaving behind. A brown paper sack and greasy slab of government baloney white bread and orange drink half a dozen jump suited in a van body funk fuming rappin’ dudes and nappin’ dudes fields whipping past spring long sprung and jacked by summer sun and blue skies it never felt so untouchable as this. Cuffs cutting wrists that old bone groove. County lines and long ass roads the first of many fences. Fileoutfileinpackedlikecattle slapped by the noise of clapping jaws. Wait to become a number. Education Some things just come easy: Like thinking it could have been different this particular last stop, though just how much when there’s no telling the domino that caused the cascade? It’s easy to say it was the planets or the stars. To say, Maybe if I woulda stayed in school. Maybe if I woulda gone back. It’s easy to see the faces of ghosts when you close your eyes. In the hard surface of the world when they’re clear and wide open. By now, the ones who had a chance, the ones who had the right names, are out there living, and it’s easy to think, I coulda been a doctor or a lawyer by now. But there’s school and there’s learning, and it’s easy to light a cigarette with two batteries and a razor blade. It’s easy to make a tattoo machine from a CD player, a spring, and a ballpoint pen. Ink from ash. It’s easy to bust a lock. It’s easy to make a weapon from a toothbrush or a sock. In school, they never taught us to microwave a cup of baby oil and shaving gel to strip a man’s flesh off like wet paper. They never taught us how to survive with next to nothing. And sometimes it’s hard to accept. How easy it is. Bio: William R. Soldan lives in Youngstown, Ohio, with his wife and two children. He has work published or forthcoming in Bending Genres, Anomaly Literary Journal, EconoClash Review, Tough, and Open: Journal of Arts & Letters. You can find him on social media or at williamrsoldan.com if yu'd like to connect. |
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