A Poem by Sy Roth

Forsaken Man

I am a camera, panning and zooming in on me,
squat figure eaten by the heat of a midday sun,
knees forming an armadillo hollow
from which I ease into the world,
hunched-over mass of twitching muscles rippling lazily
at flies finding resting places to gnaw and regurgitate.
eyes glued to my hiking boots casting shadows on
wilted spaghetti laces cocooned in a neon glow.
arms wrap ever more tightly about my knees
flesh and bone held tenuously together --
a forsaken melting man
the best I could do that morning with trembling hands.


Sy Roth is retired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now resides in Mount Sinai , far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find words for solace. He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. He has published in Visceral Uterus, Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo, Misfits Miscellany, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre, Bitchin’ Kitch, Bong is Bard, Humber Pie, Poetry Super Highway, Penwood Review, Masque Publications, Foliate Oak, Miller’s Pond Poetry, The Artistic Muse, Word Riot, Samizdat Literary Journal, Right Hand Pointing, The Screech Owl, Epiphany, Red Poppy Review, Big River, Poehemians, Nostrovia Poetry’s Milk and Honey, Siren, Palimpsest, Dead Snakes, Euphemism, Humanimalz Literary Journal, Ascent Aspirations, Fowl Feathered Review, Vayavya and Kerouac’s Dog.

A Poem by Walter Ruhlmann

Late Epiphanies

MOTHER
shouted at MHR -- my very own sister
and cried -- she hardly does
that was yesterday after dinner -- the eve of leaving

What happened?
How come?
Y
?

Blows:  I hate to hear them banging in my head.
Epiphanies:  they often come too late.
Castaway:  I always feel alone in these long journeys.
Awful:  ET was drunk, raving again, fidgety, and restless.
Unnecessarily:  he started cleaning the kitchen at an undue time.
Sometimes I wish he could go away and leave
Eternally our tribe, go hunt for fresher flesh.

ASK ISIS
IS she only happy with him?
IS she scared when he shouts?
IS her hair raised when he looks wild?
IS she aware that no one has ever liked him?
IS there a way she could dumb him for good somehow?
IS their young son fitted with the same kind of neurotic chromosomes?

ASK WILL
WILL FATHER finally react?
WILL his own epiphany come too late too?
WILL he have passed away before anything good comes out?




Walter Ruhlmann works as an English teacher, edits mgversion2>datura and runs mgv2>publishing. Walter is the author of several poetry chapbooks and e-books in French and English and has published poems and fiction in various printed and electronic publications world wide. He is an associate editor at Poet & Geek journal. Nominated for Pushcart Prize once.

His blog http://thenightorchid.blogspot.fr/

A Poem by Alan Britt

Rhinoceros Cockroach

The rhinoceros cockroach weighs two sparrows
and lives over ten years.

Most nights he drags his coffee ground body
(one giant fingernail) across sandy darkness
and crumbling gum leaves, rummaging tasty
morsels of rotting eucalyptus.

The rhinoceros cockroach weighs two sparrows
and lives over ten years.

But, tonight, as I relax in my Scandinavian teal
recliner, the rhinoceros cockroach, older than
human civilization, rustles the humid floor
of my tropical poem.


  Alan Britt's interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem (http://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetpoem.html#alan-britt) will air on Pacifica Radio http://www.pacifica.org/index.php in January 2013. His interview with Minnesota Review is up at http://minnesotareview.wordpress.com/. He read poems at the World Trade Center/Tribute WTC Visitor Center in Manhattan/NYC, April 2012, at the We Are You Project (WeAreYouProject.Org) Wilmer Jennings Gallery, East Village/NYC, April 2012, and at New Jersey City University's Ten Year 9/11 Commemoration in Jersey City, NJ, September 2011. His poem, "September 11, 2001," appeared in International Gallerie: Poetry in Art/Art in Poetry Issue, v13 No.2 (India): 2011. His recent books are Alone with the Terrible Universe (2011), Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). The Poetry Library (www.poetrymagazines.org.uk) providing a free access digital library of 20th & 21st century English poetry magazines with the aim of preserving them for the future has included Britt’s work published in Fire (UK) in their project. Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies, The Robin Hood Book: Poets in Support of the Robin Hood Tax, by Caparison, United Kingdom, 2012, American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, Chicago/Athens/Dublin, 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008. Readings & Presentations: Panel Chair for Poetry Studies & Creative Poetry for the PCA/ACA Conference 2008 in Boston, Ramapo College in Mahwah, NJ (2009 & 2012), the WPA Gallery/Ward-Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River, NY (2008), Ultra Violet Studio, Chelsea/NYC (2008 & 2009), White Marsh Library, Baltimore (2011 & 2012), Enoch Pratt Free Library (Canton Branch) Baltimore (2011), Pedestal Magazine Reading at the Writers Center, Bethesda, MD (2012). Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formerly feral cats.


Links: Ragazine: http://ragazine.cc/2012/08/sohar-on-brittreview/ and http://ragazine.cc/2012/08/1wtc/

Two Poems by Bill Jansen

Tear Gas In The Tip Jar

Surrounded by appearances
by us
by saltines
and scalping knives.

Pony tracks on the cafe ceiling . . .

Waitresses load logical objects.

I pull the pin on a blueberry muffin.
WMD wired to maraconi.
Tear gas in the tip jar.

Yellow Formica tables
barricade the windows.
Obsidian arrows
break against them.

We should hold out
to the last burrito,
Jill said.




Curiosity

Per usual the people who know are dust
or preserved in honey,
tight-lipped in brass and marble monuments.

I have no time to wonder
about that jackass four hundred centerfolds from now
who wants to know what only I know.

I would say to that artificaly conceived man
to google they yellow pages for worm farms
and shove the rest up his memory hole.

I am just tired of being a sucker
in the subjective correlative audience
of this strip tease that ends in invisibility:

that white empty glove cooling on the dark stage.
That pale spot light about to turn out.



Bill Jansen lives in Forest Grove, Oregon.  His works have appeared in various ezines.

Three Poems by Raymond Keen

Scattered Angels




(\o/)
 /_\   (\o/)
         /_\      (\o/)
                    /_\     (\o/)
                              /_\      (\o/)
                                         /_\
                                                    (\o/)
                                                     /_\

                                                                              (\o/)
                                                                               /_\       (\o/)
                                                                                           /_\

(\o/)
 /_\        (\o/)
              /_\

(\o/)
 /_\

       (\o/)
        /_\               (\o/)
                            /_\
                               (\o/)
                                /_\    (\o/)
                                         /_\
                                                       (\o/)
                                                        /_\
                                                                     (\o/)
                                                                      /_\

  (\o/)
   /_\
       (\o/)
        /_\

(\o/)
 /_\

These are the Scattered Angels ---- DUH!





Fill-In-The-Blank Quiz-Poem on Modern Art


Francis Bacon
looked like
an angel
and painted like
a _____.

Francis Bacon
looked like
a devil
and painted like
an _____.




Do You Think (This Poem Is Too Long)?

Do you think it is fun being human?
Do you think it is distracting being human?
Do you think it is bourgeois being human?
Do you think it is nasty being human?
Do you think it is coincidental being human?
Do you think it is marginal being human?
Do you think it is parsimonious being human?
Do you think it is credible being human?
Do you think it is “a stretch” being human?
Do you think it is pathetic being human?
Do you think it is remarkable being human?
Do you think it is something being human?
Do you think it is anything being human?
Do you think it is nothing being human?
Do you think it is worthwhile being human?
Do you think it is exciting being human?
Do you think it is “goodbye, farewell, adieu” being human?
Do you think this poem is too long? Too short? Just right?
Do you think this is really a poem? The Socratic method
Out-of-control? A childish interrogation meant to demean
The human spirit? An homage to Donald Barthelme? An
Historic first attempt to allow the reader to complete a
Poetic work of art? What? You tell us. (Fill in the  blank… ………………………………………………………....
…………………………………………………............…………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………)





RAYMOND KEEN’s first volume of poetry, Love Poems for Cannibals, will be published in December 2012. His drama, The Private and Public Life of King Able, will be published in early 2013. Five of his poems appeared in the July/August 2005 Issue of The American Poetry Review. Since 2010, Raymond’s poems have been accepted for publication by 23 literary journals.

Raymond spent three years as a Navy Clinical Psychologist with a year in Vietnam (July 1967 – July 1968). Since that time he has worked as a School Psychologist in the USA and overseas, until his retirement in 2006. Raymond lives with his wife Kemme in Sahuarita, AZ. They have two grown children.

A Poem by James Mirarchi

piñata

voodoo janitors

blindfold each other

in boiler room

play piñata

with hanging yuppie

all oily & gucci

combo of steam, guffaws

& thick accents

synthesize into party music

they twirl each other around

(blood-thirsty ballerinas)

swinging sticks

(panting & stumbling)

oily gucci yuppie gets struck

releasing

waterfall of hershey shit kisses

voodoo janitor cries:

can’t you say thanks when i pick up your trash?

that’s all i ask

oily gucci yuppie cries

as he gathers all his crap

stuffing it back into himself:

can’t i remain cute & full of shit?

that’s all i ask

 

 

James Mirarchi grew up in Queens, New York.

In addition to his poetry collections, "Venison" and "Dervish," he has written and directed short films, which have played at festivals. His poems have appeared in Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Poydras Review, gobbet, Boyslut, Dead Snakes, Subliminal Interiors Magazine, and others.

 

Two Poems by Christopher Barnes

Bail-Out

 

Hullabalooing can tip you

A wrung throat.

The misfit scandal

Froths its venom,

Animated in the public spirit.

Clinching frowns of fortune

Main-springs indigestion,

Cranches teeth.

 

We did not self-govern

These disgraced clientships.

We’re meat in the web

Hissing dissent with daylight voices,

Bound

To make the seamless machine

A losing game.

 

 

 

 

Vote – Don’t Vote

 

A vinegar aspect gimcrack – The Murdoch’s fishiness

Grates to a prompt-memory hammer out

(Knock-to-atoms lives, a populous).

First-fruits we glimmer,

The prescription, divide-and-rule dogma.

 

Our soft hearts, trollops as they are,

Go up for tender cash. Ding-dong.

The hymn of hate echo – get off, corpse

On your own misjudgement.

In 1998 Christopher Barnes won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 he read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology 'Titles Are Bitches'. Christmas 2001 he debuted at Newcastle 's famous Morden Tower doing a reading of my poems. Each year he reads for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and he partakes in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of his collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.