Dan Denton

 

Things I Haven’t Yet Figured Out

 

why the feral stray cat
hesitates for a second
before running away
from a stranger
showing affection

why safety nets
that are supposed to protect
often become
spider’s webs
that make you
feel like waiting prey

how asphalt crumbles
bricks fall
sidewalks crack
bridges collapse
stock markets crash
but people
aren’t ever allowed
to break

how a rich man
can watch the morning news
and still be able
to sleep at night

how presidents can lie
how dictators and newscasters can lie
and governors can lie
how mayors and teachers can lie
how saints and preachers can lie
but we’re always
expected to know the truth

how cancer became
just another
billion dollar industry

how addiction treatment centers
are just another
billion dollar industry
how prisons and higher educations
are both
billion dollar industries
how guns and bullets
how pornography and alcohol
how YouTube and Facebook
are billion dollar industries

how pharmaceuticals
have become
a billion dollar industry
but the treatment of mental health
has not

how there are 44 million
hungry Americans
living amongst us
right now

how one in five
American children
grows up starving
and how
one third
of all the food
in all our grocery stores
is thrown away

how American restaurants
keep raising prices
and throwing away
30 billion pounds of food
every goddamned year

how there are
30 Americans
wealthy enough to
end American hunger forever
and why
we haven’t
eaten them yet

____________

 

You Can’t Ride The Fence Forever

 

when people argue
about the rich
and paying taxes
I never fight
because I know
which side I’m on

when the boys in blue
show up
with tear gas and handcuffs
and there’s no time for debate
which side are you on?

some people defend their governments
like loyal beaten dogs
others have given everything
working for a wage
and have never once
given thought
to biting the hand
that barely pays them

some people
stay inside the painted lines
of a designated crosswalk
their entire lives
some never know
the freedom
of a fast car
and a scofflaw spirit

when the protest parades
block your commute
do you cuss and swear?
or raise a fist
in passionate solidarity?

when the workers
march and picket
does your heart stutter
or does it’s beating
leap to synchronize
with the cadence
of their shouted demands?

some people get up
at the same time every morning
never straying
from their scheduled programming
some people
fall asleep
fast every night
like they think
they’ll be able to
ride the fence forever

until they come for
your neighbors
your friends
your family

which side are you

Sarah Russell

All that Remains

I rush upstairs when it starts, rain and wind
pummeling the old apple tree, branches cracking.

I had opened the windows wide this morning—
airing out, Mom called it—letting the stale of winter

escape into April. Now this—a storm threshing
the forsythia, shredding yellow blossoms on the lawn.

The landscape blurs through windows as I close them,
drops filling small pores in the screens, collecting dust

in muddy puddles on the sill. There’d been a storm like this
the day Mom was buried. It hurried the pastor’s homily,

made a mire of dirt, fresh-turned beside the grave. I thought
how Dad and I were like the gray, beading drops as we stood

bare-headed, not touching; how we evaporated that day
leaving only grime on the sill.

__________

 
Havana

Early morning on the wharf, sharing a thermos
with Juan Pablo. He’s brown and scuffed
as old boots, tough like that too, eyes squinted
with age and sun. He knows the ocean
like his woman’s face, reads stars, wind,
waves, like poems. He’s mending a net, hands
stiff and scarred, sorting gnarls and frays,
ash falling from a Camel held square
between his teeth. A tourist interrupts,
though no one’s talking, wants to hire
the boat to fish tarpon. Juan Pablo grunts
and nods toward a salt-soaked sign
with hourly rates. The guy says he’ll be back
with his wife and kid. Juan Pablo watches him
stride toward a hotel, New York cadence
out of step with the lap of water on pilings.
He snorts, then gathers up the net, half done,
stands with a stumble to favor his bum knee.
He jerks his head toward the seamless join
of sea and sky. C’mon, he says, taking the stub
of Camel and grinding it under his heel.
That cabrón can hire another boat.

__________

Harbor Woman

She takes them in — the peddler,
minstrel, gypsy. Townsfolk speak
in wanton whispers, how she beds
each one. They rebuke their budding
daughters who mime her loose-hipped
stroll. Addled by her lustered hair, full lips,
boys are whipped for where their hands go
in the night. But the same wives who beat
their sons, go in darkness for her herbs
so they will bleed again. Men, lured by musk
and breasts that push beneath her shawl,
dream her while astride those dowdy wives,
conjure her cries in their grinding. Beside
her hearth, sojourners tell of war and greed
and mutiny, of realms where she could dance
for kings, wear silks, call maids to brush her hair.
They tempt her to break free, but she knows
her place is here, knows she is the wellspring
of sweet water for parched village tongues.

__________

Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Third Wednesday, Poetry Breakfast, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons. Her novella The Ballerina Swan Lake Mobile Homes Country Club Motel was published by Running Wild Press. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

John Grey

 

FAME

When you were born,
you were no more
than one small child among many

and the only ones who heard news of you
believed nothing more than
your mother had a daughter
as so many mothers do.

No one could imagine
a woman dressed as a gorilla,
strumming a ukulele,
dancing a very hairy simian hula.

No one heard a voice declaring,
“Brought to you all the way
from a giant American metropolis,
at great expense,
the fabulous Brenda,
the performing ape.”

No bells rang.
No one cut their wrists either.
No fireworks burst above the towers.
But nobody said the likes of,
“The last thing this world needs
is another gorilla act.”

You merely smiled and cried
and did the usual “aww”-inspiring baby stuff.
You had your whole life ahead of you.
And even it barely knew you were there.

__________

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

Gwil James Thomas

The Wonderful World
of Poetry Readings

 

One way
or another,
it’s true –
I get on stage
thinking that
some fucker is going
to throw a chair at me
and if they do –
I’ll throw
it back,
twice as hard.

After one reading
another
incorrigible poet
agreed that
this would be
incredible
and judging by
recent events too –
it’ll only be
a matter of time.

__________

Gwil James Thomas is a poet, novelist and inept musician. He lives in his home town of Bristol, England but has also lived in London, Brighton and Spain. His fourteenth chapbook of poetry Love is a Burning Church, Cleansed by Welcomed Rain is forthcoming from Clair Obscur Zine. Other written work can be found widely in print and also online. He is part English, part Welsh and part wolf. Instagram: @gwiljamesthomas

Arvilla Fee

 

An Adage of Untruth

“All is fair in love and war”
~John Lyly

spoken as if there are no rules to break,
as if love and war are both a free-for-all,
padded with excuses, immune from regrets,
but that’s not the truth—not even a little;
all is not fair—not in love, not in war, both
have grave consequences, both have graves,
little white crosses scattered across fields,
across hearts cracked in dozens of places,
and it is upon these fallow grounds, where
people have fought, and bled, and died,
that we plant an adage of untruth, as a way
to placate ourselves, as a way to muster up
courage to reconstruct our lives into shapes
akin to hope.

__________

 

Crawdads and Bologna

 

to be little again
to think that catching crawdads
and wading in the creek
is as near to heaven
as any statued saint
to be skinny again
to eat bologna sandwiches
on bread so fresh
it sticks to the roof
of your mouth
to be free again
and run like antelope
across a field of wildflowers
with the sinking sun
your only clock
to be alive again
in spirit, in body
not a joint out of place
grinning with beautiful teeth,
hair tousled like a robin’s nest
to have dreams again
to imagine becoming anything
you want to be—
never considering impossible,
holding the world in your hands
____________

Counting Geese

Please excuse my poor excuses
for counting geese (or is it gooses)
while lying down upon the hill
instead of traveling to the mill;
I know the grain won’t grind itself,
and we’ll have no bread upon the shelf,
but I just had to stop and ponder,
do geese wonder when they wander?

__________

Arvilla Fee teaches English and edits for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, including Calliope, North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and many others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other. To learn more about her work, you can visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/

Jonathan S Baker

Habitual

I am not
my father,
he smoked
Kool(s).
My mother
was praying
daily.
I am not.

__________

 

Sunday Morning Breakfast

So quiet I can hear the bread sizzle
in the slots of the toaster.
sacred silence
I expect I might see
the face of Jesus
etched on the crisp surface.
Then, I would add strawberry jam stigmata
before eating of the body
and taking a pour from the pot
in the temple of the early dawn,
but unlike the tomb
vacant of Christ
the popping of the spring
reveals my toast
to be without miracle.

__________

 

Driving Home

from a long stretch
of world that only exists
in the bubble of your own headlights
framed by the dash console’s glow,
you merge into a strange hometown
populated by weary pedestrians,
young girls dressed like laundry day
turn to look for brake lights
and unmedicated men
practice a broken robot karate.
Stick to the roads leading
only to your own place here.
Try not to catch attention.
Best to slip past unnoticed.
Don’t stop to read their stories
written in your own imagination.
No astonishing tales there.
No more mystery and intrigue
than you’ll find under the sun
Only more of the same tired lines
you’re living out yourself.
__________

Dreams

A fish flops off the lid of my blue and white cooler,
out of the boat and back into the water
as I reach for my camera.
I wake up,
try to write it down,
but this is all I get.

__________

Jonathan S Baker lives and works in Evansville, Indiana where the Christmas trees are perfect.  They are the author of 13 collections of poetry including being co-author of the upcoming Centaur from Dark Heart Press.

LYNNE SAVITT

 

IF I HAVE NO VOICE CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?

 

i could be the star of Dateline or 48 Hours
six weeks since throat surgery scar across
my neck beaded rope thick & textured is
healing still no answer on second biopsy
looms like guillotine she takes you piece
by piece until you accept invitation to
last dance with me in ambulatory dreams
you stand on yr own no wheelchair hold
me yr arms only place i ever felt safe is
no where i can’t speak you can’t write
over 50 years ago we met through voice
now silence save voicemails keep me
partially sane i love yr broken body
yr brilliant mind robbed of our aged
intimacy we linger faded baby boomers
last sunset final SILENT waltz

Matt Borczon

The devil on your shoulder

 

Maybe it
starts in
back yards
playing army
cops and robbers
cowboys and Indians
maybe it was
burning ants
with a
magnifying glass
your first
time playing
God

it’s nurtured
through the
hurt of
first love
the ones
you cheated
on and
the ones
that cheat
on you

add in
the booze
you drink
the drugs
you take
the things
you steal
the lies
you tell
until you
believe them

add in
divorce a
war you
didn’t ask
to fight
but did
anyway

and maybe
you look
for the
comfort of
a confessional
pray to
Allah chant
to Buddha
sell flowers
in airports
for Krishna
do whatever
it takes
to get
through it
all as
a human
being

one who
sometimes let’s
the devil
sit on
his shoulder
but somehow
manages to
keep the
devil off
his back.

__________

What remains

vampire lovers

and dead
sex symbols
on a
half shell
made of
empty bullet
casings and
unrealized dreams

and maybe
we are all
just time
outside a
broken hourglass
just dust in
the wind
or scars
on the
hands of
God and
maybe we
are only
the memories
of our
grandparents
and the
expectations of
out mothers

in our
Sunday best
walking into
summer heat
sweating beneath
our neckties.
__________

 

Ghost ship

 

on the
radio an
8 year
old cancer
victim says
the worst
thing you
can do
is to try
not to
be sad

and I
think I
have learned
this lesson
over and
over in
my almost
60 years

learned that
grief is
a ghost
ship captained
by my
father dead
ten years
this summer

and crewed
by every
soldier civilian
and marine
who died
in Bastion
hospital in
Afghanistan

it is a
ship we
sail nightly
across a
sea of
childless whales
of grandparents
and gung fu
teachers gone
too soon

of old
friends who
hung themselves
before I
got to
say goodbye.

One Poet One Poem featuring Paul Corman-Roberts

ONE POET ONE POEM–Episode 1 featuring RICK CHRISTIANSEN