The Cliche

The expectation
of praise
by an audience
who enjoys the smell
of their own assholes 
Is like expecting
them to feel 
something 
that supersedes 
the cliche 
of their own shadow

No need to behave
fortunately 
we're only on 
a first name basis 
first base is more
than enough 
already I feel 
as though I've struck out 
I'm calling a foul 
for that signifies
your taste  
common and complacent
words like fuck you 
flow outside my mouth

​Banality is suicide
I used the box cutter 
to step outside
the box 
salvaging thoughts
persevering
through the struggle
cliche minions 
speak from the 
same flat line 
I can't get 
this personality
in order 
normalcy 
has eluded me 
I'm dealing with 
an audience
who isn't on 
mood stabilizers



​

 Bio: Michael Marrotti is an author from Pittsburgh using words instead of violence to mitigate the suffering of life in a callous world of redundancy. His primary goal is to help other people. He considers poetry to be a form of philanthropy. When he's not writing, he's volunteering at the Light Of Life homeless shelter on a weekly basis. If you appreciate the man's work, please check out his blog:www.thoughtsofapoeticmind.blogspot.com for his latest poetry and short stories.

LYNX 30

Sit down in the drift and a pocket of night comes to you. 
It could be the heat. It could be this sentence 
turning to day. Turning today. Of black mirror. 
The camera lucida & Pepper's Ghost. 
The stand aside revenant.
You inhabit a room like a sail 
that swells and fills 
with a fluttering of white wings 
and eventually gives way.

To a visitation of seas. 
Then one sea. 
One blue desert and the sense of a ship. 
And the sun.
An endless burnished blade. 

Everything in clouds. The bus driver
wearing clouds in a long room of clouds. 

And the wings return.
Beating imperceptibly at first, 
gaining to the whump whump 

of rotors in the television of shadows.
The other television that yields 
the bombs uplifting, rising out of the desert,
flying backwards 
into planes flying backwards
to base.

And the wedding party reassembles.
The incinerated unburn.
Limbs and heads fly back, reattach to torsos. 
Blood seeps back into the dancers. 
Eyes blink open. Legs kick. The table resets. 
Goat cheese, olives & a kiss. 
The sun the only blade.




Part Of Myself Across The Splitting Night-Day

Today Everything comes through the window
Now my sensibilities strung like pearls
Waiting in the center

Outside the trees are misplaced 
The sea belongs to them like a scream…

Last night I watched a spiritual lesbian
Terrorizing the children of a crime
She cut their tongues out 
Asked each of us 
If we needed an extra tongue
But we didn’t

Another woman was trying 
To force herself to cry
I understood but I knew
she was alone in that

I’m learning to be like some of the weather
A lot of times I just happen now
Like a breeze that owes no allegiance

My house…is under temporal invasion
Most of my weaknesses are now
Forgivable…
And there’s a coolness 
Like a ribbon running through 
The approaching summer




One Is To Sleep And The Other Is To Travel At Dawn *

And there are others. The half-finished house says
see me I am changing. Even before dawn you ring yourself,
not unlike the bell that strikes open 
in the township's plaza. Deserted. 
All before the blue arrival. 

There are historical forces at play. The little ruins of living.
Accumulation. One measure of blessing is 
lack of interference. But that never lasts. 
In waiting there can be solace.

Mayfly being metaphor for _____________
what is the metaphor for mayfly? 

Now and then. They say the summers 
down here will fill you 
with permanence. 
The twilit preludes of rain. 

The city remains itself in distance 
its people living out. 
Self-propelled voices 
power the next breath
in soft asylum. 

Amidst erasure (only cypress saplings) 
you begin from somewhere, resemble 
the man on the street, a thud, toss out
the extraneous solutions 
and recount the crows anyway. 

*The Doors “The Soft Parade” 




Present Age 

Your hands beginning with ocean
Then foam ending on a displaced shore 
I go to you thinking through clouds

Of blankets and maps because 
My body only exists in another age 
Yet my fingers glow across these times 
As if a lamp had a voice 

And if once by accident I thought 
I could guide the sky in its journeys 
Through the wilderness of ancient city states

Where the sentries keep time with black robes
Over the fallen with wet tongues 
Smoothly bought and paid for 
With hordes of windswept eyes 

It comes to me now as a house 
Existing outside of houses in light allied 
Magnificent and only found
In the eyes of taller orphans 




Bio: Marc Lengfield lives in Florida where he teaches Mathematics at a local university. His work has appeared previously in Dogplotz.

A Sharp Dark

I have created some dreams 
And a prayed trench with sharp dark in hand
The combative mind in tune 
Exult with ancient light 
The lost love revives in indifferent behave.

Your smooth bed is yearning
Drunken bird in upcoming uncertainty of fire
Suddenly return in available beauty 
Wherein boundless recreation
And a magic body colored with water melon.

Oh dear, don’t give forbidden pain
With the name of Radha
Taking sharp vermilion in your forehead
Set free the balloon of fire that flames up slowly.
Perhaps, it will fly in as ash 
In the night of separation
To give a sharp dark.



The Gloomy Heaven

Dark gathers before sunset. I have thought what a corporate cataract comes
in my eyes! Rubbing eyes with hand, I have entered in the primal hole with
sun in armpit. Grown moon and Helium star are glimmering in hole. The
goddess of Binoy has been caught in strange art. A fairy put off her colorful
resources in love of dark. Drunken fairy with great wine said, why my body
collapse with your touch? Oh sunken man, don’t touch me dear, just drink.




South and West

My south cries restlessly, dreams call from west. A brave tune spread all
around, give her some from them. Beautify my hand with tiny colored
flower and sweet smell. Nights are lightening with glow-worm of inner pain.
Dam-breaking boundless waves swing a ship of mind. Mind said what
fragrance do you get from ear-drop of Karnafuly? I have a great empire in
sky but society. I find eternal haven exchanging your mind. I am innocent
hearing the south, Nights stay up after passing days and nothing comes in
fix. Months are floating away, years lost, increasing narcissism. The
sleeping bird opens her eyes, future is appeared. Pavement will be created
with dense smile if the love is true.



Bio: Shekhar Dev was born in 1985 at Chittagong  in Bangladesh, a South Asian country. Poet's language is Bengali. Two of his poetry collections have been published in Bangladesh. These are 'School of Ancient Practice' (2014) and 'Supreme Liberal Mind' (2016). He completed his degree in Mathematics and post graduation in Pure Mathematics from Chittagong University in Bangladesh. These three poems are from his 2nd poetry collection 'Supreme Liberal Mind.'

A fish who forgot what gills were for

Dreams float, a bird gliding
on its last breath.

I want to hear the way it sings
going down even though

I can not rescue it. An organ elegy
reaches my ears, a tornado of smoke.
it sits on my eyes, keys on a piano.

Some say this is an unknown room.
No one one says dreams created it.

Long ago, a fish forgot what gills were good for
and walked out of the stream.
It was not dreaming
It had no ambition but confusion.



Cat Candles

With eyes like two candles, her waist
with a night white glow.
a ceiling light now turned to low.

It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was the wrong idea ,
staring directly into the eyes of a
great hungry African cat.

But anything worth doing
is worth doing badly.
Being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of things while
the sun was fading out of sand

until this cigarette is finished,
A little moment at the end of it all.
While the quiet ashes fall.

​
​

Bio: Luke Skoza is a twenty seven year old poet, teacher and model.  He has been published in Retort Magazine and Bareknuckle poet along with numerous other journals. He has lived in three different states and two different countries in the last two years but feels at home in New Orleans. If you want to find out more about his life, his facebook is https://www.facebook.com/luke.skoza 

While they sleep
 
I am up sweet girl
mama can't sleep
after hours of watching you toss and turn
eyes transfixed to the monitor
I exhale softly as you finally locate dolly
running her ragged stitched body 
over your face 
 
her ponytails stiff
salty
from last night
her body limp
but still-you cling to her tightly
 
my heart swells
the way my stomach did while you were growing inside of it
 
I think of all the unborn
poor little Berkley
who would never forgive his mother
a screaming fetus
that was ripped away from my lean fifteen year old body
 
I couldn’t have understood then
the regret that I would feel
every time your sticky hands reached for my face
and pulled me in for a kiss
 
this love is so fierce
this mama love
 
 
 
 
 
playing house

her tiny fingers clasped a diaper wipe
and pressed it to my nose
she loudly instructed for me to “blow”
and waited inquisitively
 
she wiped my face delicately
the way mommy and daddy do it
and blotted my eyeliner
with a look of disdain
 
she didn’t know what to do with the ugliness
the long black streak of make-up
her eyes, wide and innocent
baffled
by imperfection
 
 


regret
 
I spent five years crafting perfectly written stanzas
about a boy who twirled his hair like my mother
the loss of him at fifteen
and the baby we would never speak about

I emptied my soul on those pieces of paper
and then folded them neatly
into tiny little squares
and tucked them away
like the judge who sealed our mistake

his final thesis at Kalamazoo was a satin heart
sewn together like a pillow
he hammered that delicate heart to a wooden board
and pierced every square inch with nails
 
we see each other occasionally at the bar,
there are no sideways glances
no talks of missed opportunities
 
he stares past me blankly and says hello to my husband
an awkward moment
stinging every inch of my skin
revealing my discomfort
my vulnerability
 
fifteen years later
a working mother, with a small child
I still feel his judgement
his disapproval
of every single word
I am writing in this poem

Bio: L D Diem is a high school English teacher, and a mother to a very active toddler. She survives by consuming large amounts of caffeine on a regular basis.

 Bio: A Pushcart nominee, Lana Bella is an author of two chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016) and Adagio (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press), has had her poetry and fiction featured with over 200 journals, including Columbia Journal, Gravel, elsewhere, among others. 

55 Stitches

​Fat Girl’s swollen fingers finally find a CD the glow of her song in the air
waking Catatonic Man who belts out the tune better than Mariah
eliciting joyful giggling glances pinging from one eye to another after his
serenade he lowers his head back to his knees his hands whispering
quivers there is no reaching him Elvis has left the building…

Normal Looking Girl who slashed her neck in a blackout rakes the
lounge with baby-blue reality-lost disbelief-fog eyes hangs tight to a
plastic cup full of Ginger Ale originally from a can wow no cans
shoelaces pens bras jewelry metal nail files stabbing tearing hanging
items its happened before gory violence red soon in restraints doctors
nurses whoever silently screaming at each other with big swoopy
hands outside the quiet room I am calm cool collected insane…

Screaming Man big guy throws himself at doors at walls imploring
demanding crying to go home defeated surrounded by orderlies and
men in black copish suits with copish radios a shot in his ass sleeping
calm cool collected suddenly awake shuffles into our realm invading
our snug clan a Russian spy eyeballing all around disappearing in the
couch in the wall he slowly enters our fucked-up version of a micro
society if he says the wrong thing or acts the wrong way banned gone
sayonara don’t act crazy on the psych ward where ravaged normality
is coveted…

55 Stitches Man vertically cut each palm half way up both arms the
bandages gone all kinds of pain written in tiny metal clamps holding all
of him together bloated hands gently holding fork cup suicide he says
to quickly eyes and feet dancing electronically in no real pattern not
looking at his arms not looking down…

Sick green walls that vomit the floor shiny white beige treaded slippers
scrape along the endless square around the unit can’t lift their fucking
feet that fucking sound follows me darting around the shadowed
corners evil cheating cat’s eyes creeping around toward me tail’s
twirling winding around the legs of the table in my room fear giant
fear…

​

 Bio: Catherine has her BA degree in Professional Writing in English from Carlow University. She has had numerous short stories and non-fiction published. In continuing to write vigorously, she puts all of herself into expression and words. Writing is her savior, experience her muse.