7/14/2016 2 Comments Five poems by Kofi Fosu ForsonCarter and Maria in the Desert My heart is a broken flower. Fuck me. Don't do that. Do it this way That is how The West was won. Hollywood cowboys cutting into film In screening rooms they cuss, cut create what we know as blue noir Belle Fleur was her nom du plume. She envisioned The Golden Age L'Age d'or, Bunuel hysteria. Suicidal chefs making chocolate roux She had a room with a view overlooking an archway within a garden Where she snail-tapped her way thinking male gender emasculation Mundo civilizado. Long drives along lonely Los Angeles highways In bloom, face like lilac, she listens to Cage the Elephant remixes What is this the press to play gee whiz affectations of entitlement? Must clouds creep so low - not while in our bathing suits we vent Cram disposable logic inside hot breezy quips that qualify as gizz Jazz. Thelonious Monk's Epistrophy. We zoom in and out of scenes Roles heartthrobs play man-sizing. Their star-lit lovers fib and faint Young Warren Beatty would do it differently. So would Paul Newman Perhaps the wife beater exposing his American flesh. Jack Lalanne No, a young Paul Newman wouldn't walk the floor porno pathetic He'd play her down like a boss man with a bow and an upright bass Watch him grip the fold of hair, tilt her head back lightly, breathe on With these words he'd say to her commands from a Southern beau Looking at a Ruscha painting and knowing where you came from This is Hollywood. North by Northwest. Mann's Chinese Theatre We fight among the cinematographers, grapple with our posture Maelstrom Bluest eye. Comment c'est. Pence to plus. I am a Muybridge Human heck silhouette figure sprinting from white euphoria In the arms of Bangladeshi woman I recall Marjorie Christie How else do Black Europeans dissimulate their whiteness? I murder roses place them ceremoniously over Brian's grave Jonestown Massacre. Blood red lips murmuring "Rosebud" Bonanza. Caribbean cowboys incognito emulate Roy Rogers Becoming Buscemi. There were once Rastafarian cavalcades. We now worship Wiz Khalifa. Long live King Jeru the Damaja! Aburi Hills, the night sky as Nina Simone glamorizing meth Music is a whore named Telula! She reads aloud The Bell Jar How the girls at Cal Arts cut into their skin the word "Awula" Ghanaian wunderkinds paint themselves dressed as Napoleon Lady Days at Bellevue Psyche with smells like cooked snails Mad men impersonate Emperor Selassies and Indira Gandhis In this world a black goth girl is considered bipolar case number Give me your industrial disease! Trade you for my hypothesis! Where the punks on dope smash guitars I inherit my ubiquity Of a Lesbian Body in an Episcopalian Church of stone. that bronzed element yet lily at heart fluttering. as if his feathers were of rooster at fight. king no less mirroring me, a pugilist shambling. poet collecting words like geese possessing the sky. he opens dictionary page words starting with letter "d" fixates on the word "diphthong". an example of which "oi". (oy) is it a punk as pig or does the word "pig" make you think of pig Latin? prospectus erectus "rospectuspay erectusway". opening paragraph Nabakov's Lolita. have you ever undressed a word to find its cult or key? have you ever heard of Throbbing Gristle? there's a great noise coming from the interim. I read Portnoy's Complaint as an alternative to shafting. bestowed upon me is the question of thus - am I an incorrigible thing? perceived as jaundice, nearly putting in verse dialogue for our conquest. much of what is said is unretractable. I am of this. it is my sermonology. you speak words hot in happenstance. we are not lovers. in this I possess you. taste of Camembert on the tongue. your phraseology, unnurtured, carries with it murmuring of a submissive interlocutor. in this our wrong-doing the reflective "I" purports a feminist stance. is it the "she" I sense in the ever-governing me? what I usurped from her spirit, her lesbian body as she stood before me, an Episcopalian in the church of God questioning my chi. Bird Man's Bronzed Coq Out Sir! Come out you he-body bruvva man! Resurrection from bones of this American Horror Story White Heads of Southern California claim your pigs Punk these gasoline thirsty barbarians with lead pipes Surf water serenading life guard - An Albino Dennis Hopper Auf wiedersehen - blue boys and gigolos on Venice Beach A demain - body builders and hustlers in bell bottoms To you I preach Easton Ellis monologues, Basketball Diaries We are at a breach between what is god and what is gutless The librarian claims our conversations are lovemaking actions A poet-thief who dreams Mastroianni's dialogue in La Dolce Vita Marcello! Marcello! Come si fa?! Come si diventa una celebrita?! Bird man from the Bronx speaks the part of Brando in Godfather He soliloquy's early morning as a police car circles the courtyard At night gang warfare erupts stressing Abuelitas walking Nietas King Felix tonight paint the corners like Georges Rouault Hank's men answer to me wearing pinstripes and baseball caps I call them ceremoniously one after another to the batter's box Standing smitten if I were woman I would flash my Double D's Ambrosia! Ambrosia! I the masculine feast on the femur The feminine at her post pubescent erotic grotesquely mature Haves at mon coq voluptuous grind bounces the buttocks beat Heart palpitating breathing strong breaths aroused hallucinating Virtual Misogyny At Martha's Vineyard love lives in trees. Come let us go We are acquiescing tempestuousness of middle-age coitus With neuroticism we seduce clit-lit bimbos in fuck and kill cafes Virtual misogyny where ghost like funk captures our imagination This is Ibiza by the sea navigating news feeds and timelines posts Where imago suicidal Dorothy Parkers cut blow as poetic verses Sanguine sun-night scintillating luminescence lifts my conscience Arabethic sexo-disciplinarian. God is country I claim citizenship Inside blue rooms I house corporate-cuntus fantasy girls meditating I was projectionist of these NC-17 brain wave art documentaries Colors of Vermeer paintings brought to life becoming faux nudism Narcissistic up and over I sensed cataclysmic voyeuristic terrorism Her caterpillar cat eyes under black hair ferociously piercing screen Catch and catapult I made muse-sense of her Warholian profile pic Fleshed out her Freudian body within mental pornographic celluloid Hunger for carnal knowledge envisioning us approximating intimacy Like Grade B movie actress modeling for a photograph by Weegee Come alive during sex scene of a Margaret Thatcher era British film She posed an American Anais Nin looking into me province of He Aromatic essence beauty captured by the face lamenting desire Red hues encompass each frame brilliantly and painterly evocative "Who would be magistrate of our mutual harassment kinky torture"? Potentially psycho in its inception we met death one shot at a time Bio: Kofi Fosu Forson is originally from Ghana, West Africa. He has written and directed plays for the Riant Theater. His collaborations include Gender, Space, Art and Architecture, a video project with Transvoyeur, Liverpool, England and Dismember the Night, thread poetry and photography project with New York City artist, Dianne Bowen at Tribes Gallery. As writer and poet he has published with Three Rooms Press and Great Weather for Media. As performer he has participated in productions of What the Hell is Love? And The Loser Project at Cornelia Street Café. He currently writes for Armseye and Whitehot Magazine, respectively.
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7/14/2016 0 Comments Three poems by Ace BoggessHair Dye She bought a box of hair dye, so I know she didn’t kill herself: the thought kicks up dirt in my head. It’s sort of awful, & I sort of regret it, but don’t know where I might find coolant for the doubt engine. She plays hopscotch amongst abysses: each day a new look at old horrors. I take her to her visits with the doc, try to keep her occupied, & I feel like a ghost in the garden. I latch onto whatever sounds like hope, & what’s more hopeful than hair dye? Brown Six-A, I think: closer to her natural than the various shades of low self-esteem she’s worn for months. Better a dye job than a die job: another unpleasant thought. So’s do-it-yourself-- a phrase I’m glad is missing from the box as if a sign inside a casket that avers, If you can read this, you’re too close. Motion Picture Attention, please! Silence your cellphones or set them to a muffled buzz Before the show begins—an epic film: romantic, action/adventure, scary story Called Your Life from the Beginning. You should expect a fair amount of sex Despite the protagonist’s blemishes, awkward manner, anxieties like a stew Eerily oozing with tension like old, embittered soldiers on stools at the V FW as they relive their wars. Wouldn’t watch if it all went smoothly, would you? Great stretches might drag on a bit, so you’ll beg for the excitement, However dark, when the hero suffers enough, stops crying, & finally kisses Insecurities goodbye. Oh, how glorious as you see him (or her) Just wing it, damn the torpedoes, etc., etc., disarming fears like bombs in Iraq. Keep seated for the good parts. If you need to use the restroom, don’t get up Lest you miss a major plot point: childhood fistfight, high school, clarinet solo, Malicious words to a lover on the phone that leave him (or her) alone again. Now the hero faces obstacles like doing laundry & paying rent, an encomium Of day-to-day drudgeries more awful than ax-wielding psychos. You will Plead for pause from the carnage, yet suspect that heroes at first lack Quick enough wits, sometimes more than half. One might goof like a hapless DJ Rocking out on his first day to a song in his head he doesn’t play. I Swear, it’s better as scenes get faster & tough-goings tougher. Oh, The star wises up amidst jobs, marriage, kids, divorce, a cold-nosed dog Under blankets prodding her skin on a winter night, then a countdown of Violent outbursts: parents dying, uncles, siblings, cousins (one, two, three). Where the story finally falls apart—you should anticipate—is near the end: Xing out the last days with too many epilogues, a climax anticlimactic. You will witness the fade-to-black as it mostly grays, drains the tub, Zaps all life from the cinema with its, Que sera sera. When Worlds Collide Paramount Pictures, 1951 Remember when the world ended? Remember when most people died because they weren’t engineers, smart enough, or lucky? Yes, tsunami or two, a little shake, rattle & roll, & bye-bye kids with their semiautomatic rifles, dim- & slick-witted politicians, cowboys, cornfields & portraits of carpenters. Sayonara outspoken actors, church steeples, bourbon, & Collected Poems of Pablo Neruda. We never saw any intimate details, although the cover on the DVD swore Academy Award, Best Special Effects. Must have been the panoramic shots of corpseless devastation, or else that alien landscape briefly glimpsed by those pragmatic sons of bitches after you & I & everyone were toast. Bio: Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire Press, 2003). His novel, A Song Without a Melody, is forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia. 7/13/2016 0 Comments Two poems by Gareth Writer-DaviesSKATING I have always preferred the surface Of things On which one may cut A fine figure In winter (Carving lines of beautiful precision) I would rather sink Than barter my dance For the frog-ish talent of suspension On the temporary element I loop and dip My blades Curve and curlicue Skating Upon the icy flow of what lies beneath TRANSPARENT if I could see through your skin would the rouse of examination soon pall the secrets of the pubic bone the brain balanced upon a narrow stem automatic cogs satisfy sense and with an odour of medicine we make co-habitation with what lies close upon the heart the communion between bedfellows (too little or too much) is a praecox procedure but would the sleep from which you may not wake bless you or would needles poke you through the fragile yoke of your gown if I could see through your skin I would not there are some things we should not know Bio: Gareth Writer-Davies was Commended in the Prole Laureate Competition in 2015, Specially Commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition and Highly Commended in the Sherborne Open Poetry Competition. Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Erbacce Prize in 2014. His pamphlet "Bodies", was published in 2015 through Indigo Dreams. 7/12/2016 0 Comments Art work by Carlie Sherry#1 Internal Wish #2 Worried Burden #3 Lost in Plain Sight Carlie Sherry's art practice is positioned in the realm of introspection, where self-reflection reveals issues of identity and shared humanness. In her paintings she deals with the unmasking of self, which is buried under the weight of social constructs. Her processes of unmasking involve the breakdown and build up of the inner and outer self, in the pursuit of discovering her own truths. Carlie is a working artist in Clinton NY, and has her Masters of Fine Arts Degree from Syracuse University. 7/11/2016 0 Comments Three poems by Ben NardolilliIsochronism She came to the city in order to identify a mind. The body was no longer a problem for her, a source of comfort whenever she rubbed her skin. Her boosting mother gave her all the right books and dolls that were far from figurines. She told her girl to think for herself, hence the journey She aimed to turn her head before any other, yet the boys still peered at her from between their bangs, looking up and down the spine of the book resting in her hands at the coffee shop or wine bar. One afternoon she displayed a cycle of dust jackets and realized their reading was just a proxy for her skin. Next stop, the rack, bringing growing pains to clothes and shoes, as she searched for the perfect fit and contrast over what she could not change. From ripped jeans and t-shirts to sashes and sundresses the faces on the streets watched her cycle through advertisements for herself, whoever that was. Wine and Dark Chocolate No, we won't develop a written plan To plot out the financial health We hope to have in twenty or thirty years' time, This is the way to really plan, without a plan, Go round in circles, digging and cursing, Wine and dark chocolate all around, Because who knows might happen tomorrow? Yellowstone could blow up, Plain accidents might cripple us out of life, Or the whole capitalist system might collapse At the hands of a proletarian revolution, The only thing we can do? Not get too used to wine and dark chocolate. Intellectual Affinities and Recurring Themes A dialog with Europe, oh man here it comes! Can’t you just feel the pounding hard surface of marble Coming at you right now at five thousand years an hour? From the Age of Bronze to the post-modern Paleolithic So much opens up to us about the slavery behind it Confessions and bashful recollections of tasteless nudes None of the artists can be reached, typical chauvinism Or nationalism, I forget which, the galleries don’t like me talking to them Bio: Ben Nardolilli currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, Inwood Indiana, Pear Noir, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel. 7/10/2016 0 Comments Three poems by Leah MuellerFRACTURE You dabbled in sentiment and it felt good while it lasted. For years, you kept the glass ball suspended on your fingertips. You held the sphere aloft, and it rotated slowly in the sunlight, while you stared at it, hypnotized. I was that ball, until the light grew dull and shattered: or maybe you were that ball, I no longer remember. Now someone sweeps the pieces from the floor, but neither of us recognizes him. He refuses to look us in the eye. The shards disappear into the dustpan and the floor is clear. but the gray air is filled with the drooping weight of all the rain that will never fall. FREE-RANGE TEENS I worried about promiscuity when I was seventeen, and its alignment with moral character. I felt certain I had sacrificed my own values without much resistance, and I feared this would go on a permanent record that would reflect badly on me, later. In secret locations, I furtively opened medical pamphlets, library books, and paperbacks I'd bought at yard sales. I read everything I could about penises and vaginas, eagerly devoured details about their angles and dimensions. I gorged myself with gaudy images, but felt sick afterward, as if I'd eaten too many hamburgers. My boyfriend and I had an elaborate ritual that summer- I spread out my body on his basement couch like a cheap buffet. While my head nestled in his lap, my boyfriend probed the inside of my vagina one furtive digit at a time, until he was finally able to place his entire hand inside me, at least as far as his knuckles. His parents never came downstairs, and never asked what we were doing: it was 1970s America, and they couldn't have been less interested. We ate hot dogs in bright red baskets at the drive-in afterward, and my boyfriend talked about planets and where he was going to college in the fall. None of my moral pronouncements made a goddamn bit of difference, because our parents and geography would shove us so far apart that we would never find each other again. Milkshakes and sex were all we had at the moment- the viscous sweetness of cream, and rapid metabolisms that would make it much easier to forget everything. CAFE ROKA A desert dessert of green sorbet in a small glass cup while outside the mountains disappear, and the turrets vanish into black. Unlearning noise takes time, and you have less of it than ever. The Pluto line of death and mines runs underneath the soil, buried yet moving. You perch above the fault line, spoon poised in mid-air, try not to fall off your chair. Some day you will die here like your ancestors, or make a clean getaway, and be instantly forgotten like the dust of bones. Meanwhile the sorbet rolls down your throat and keeps you alive for a while longer, until the check finally arrives. Bio: Leah Mueller is an independent writer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of one chapbook, “Queen of Dorksville” (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2012), and two full-length books, “Allergic to Everything” (Writing Knights Press, 2015) and “The Underside of the Snake” (Red Ferret Press, 2015). Her work has been published in Blunderbuss, Sadie Girl Press, Origins Journal, Talking Soup, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, Cultured Vultures, and many other publications. She is a regular contributor to Quail Bell magazine, and was a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival. She was a runner-up in the 2012 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest. Harvest Time A Métis lady, drunk- hands folded, blanketed as in prayer over a large brown fruit basket naked of fruit, no vine, no vineyard inside-approaches the Edmonton, Alberta adoption agency. There are only spirit gods inside her empty purse. Inside the basket, an infant, restrained from life, with a fruity winesap apple wedged like a teaspoon of autumn sun inside its mouth. A shallow pool of tears mounts in his native baby blue eyes. Snuffling, the mother offers a slim smile, turns away. She slithers voyeuristically through near slum streets and alleyways, looking for drinking buddies to share a hefty pint of applejack wine. Bio: Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He is a Canadian and USA citizen. Today he is a poet, editor, publisher, freelance writer, amateur photographer, small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. He has been published in more than 880 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites. Author's website http://poetryman.mysite.com/. Michael is the author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom (136 page book) ISBN: 978-0-595-46091-5, several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems. He also has over 91 poetry videos on YouTube as of 2015: https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos Michael Lee Johnson, Itasca, IL. nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry 2015. Visit his Facebook Poetry Group and joinhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/807679459328998/ He is also the editor/publisher of anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530456762 https://www.createspace.com/6126977. This Is The Bad Part This is the bad part Bad part Of the neighborhood’s reach Empty building Hidden within many empty buildings A forgotten horror zone of passing through homeless And those of us too young to leave An economic battlefield of now and years ago Yesterday’s continuing fall of a country’s greed Trash on the floor Plugs of hair Dried blood Cigarette butts Crap in the corner Curl of turds petrified Beneath a dirty window for staring out Eyes half opened and closing Newspapers and torn magazines smeared Shit and snot and ecstasy Images branded in the brain This is the bad part Bad part Of where they took me That back room In the darkness near evening A used pizza box They knelt me on Hole in the ceiling Where everyone watched Flashlights shining down through the quiet dust My long neck exposed Sweating Shivering Waiting for the explosion or the guillotine This is the bad part Bad part I enjoyed it. Barefoot We played games Little gangs of us not yet men In the deserted warehouse by the tracks A skull painted over the front door Shoes and socks lined against the back wall Placing bets and pointing fingers Across a sea of broken glass Every window smashed out Laid out like a carpet puzzle of razor veins First one to the other side Was the bloody winner…. After Everyone Went Home I stayed Climbing the stairs of suicide tower Stories told that someone had jumped The whole abandoned block fenced off We played and partied in the adjacent buildings No one went up the tower stairs Cement steps crumbling Railings loose and dangling At the top a platform and circular roof Dead birds and bones on the floor The wind whistling The whole city lit at night Getting back down in the darkness would be very hard Or very easy…. I dream Of Her Often She moved away last summer Her father taking her out of this slum We were a secret even to our friends I was the poet of doom She was the churchgoer We were experts of sneakiness Meeting at night in the church basement Where we loved pure and lustfully beautiful. Bio: Not so long ago, Stephen Jarrell Williams was called by some, the Great Poet of Doom… Now, he writes at night, enthused, and waiting for the Coming Good Dawn. He is the founder and editor of Dead Snakes atdeadsnakes.blogspot.com 7/7/2016 0 Comments Photography by Daniel FariasBio: Daniel Farias is a writer and filmmaker from Garden Grove, California. He mainly works as a freelance videographer/editor for different organizations around the Orange County and LA area. He has also written a couple short stories, most of them published in various volumes of the Barrio Writers Anthology. He currently studies film at Cal State Long Beach, where he also works as an internet content creator. 7/6/2016 7 Comments Two poems by Nicole SurginerSilence I’ve grown restless Peace evades my solitude My madness wore the tread Emptiness lies in her tracks Deranging the apathy My mind escapes me Falling into the pits Rummaging through the graveyard Stumbling through the skeletons Riffling through the ashes She awakens the ghosts They ensue me now through the sludge of my brokenness’ I scatter the shattering’s Piercing screams echo through the hollows Yet I am numb to their terror compared to the still that follows They are innocuous Chaos screeches to a grinding halt Stillness invades the darkness The most horrific cacophony Is complete silence Loneliness is the loudest sound Sorrow As the early morning light ravishes my eyes in the wake of another dreaded dawn I am brutally awakened, torn from the splendor of my dreams where you abide with me still. Reality jabs her crushing dagger deep within my chest Sorrow pulses through my veins Frigid emptiness takes her seat upon the throne of my heart Merciless force draws me into this living nightmare Another hot tear escapes my eye Endlessly will I face dismay To once again feel you in the night Bio: Nicole Surginer grew up in the small country town of Bastrop Texas. Writing is her passion. She is inspired by the beauty of nature and enjoys writing from the dark side of love and passion. |
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