Two Poems by Damien Healy

Tofu

 

The round protein-laden pearls of gold.

Slowly warmed and soaked in a brine of saltwater.

Ground into an off-white nourishing pulp.

Allowed to settle and treated to a sprinkling of yeast.

Packed into wooden boxes and held in place with wet gauze.

Heated till congealed and cooled in a bath of slight alkalinity.

Sliced into hand-sized blocks of smooth creaminess.

Served with a topping of spring onion and ginger.

Dipped in a salty condiment which was once its’ neighbor.

White gold for the price of a bus fare.

 

 

Judgment Day

 

Irrefutable damage,

Liaisons with Lucifer,

The deeds of the victim scrutinized.

What you bring to the table either makes or breaks it for eternity.

Dealing with the small print and all that entails.

Angels and demons hovering around ready to take you with them.

Locked in discussions over written laws and how to interpret them in this day and age.

Waiting and hoping for a bright outcome.

Regrets over what one did in that short time in that ugly little place.

Resigned to accept what will be, will be.

As quick as a flash one group grabs you and off you are whisked.

 

 

 

 

Damien Healy was born in Dublin, Ireland but has been living in Osaka, Japan for the past 20 years. He holds an MA in Applied Linguistics and teaches English language at a Japanese university. He has written three textbooks for Japanese university students and has published several papers on language teaching. He has recently found the time and energy to start writing poetry again. He has had poems published in "The Weekenders" and "Ofipress".

A Poem by Ali Znaidi

Exclamation Mark

a small black pond

filled w/ a horizontal twisted
exclamation mark
~~~~~~~.— a yellow worm in my coffee

Ali Znaidi lives in Redeyef, Tunisia. He graduated with a BA in Anglo-American Studies in 2002. He teaches English at Tunisian public secondary schools. He writes poetry and has an interest in literature, languages, and literary translations. His work has appeared in The Camel Saloon, Otoliths, The Tower Journal, streetcake, The Rusty Nail, Yes,Poetry, Shot Glass Journal, Ink Sweat and Tears, Mad Swirl, Unlikely Stories: Episode IV, Red Fez, Carcinogenic Poetry, and other ezines. His debut poetry chapbook Experimental Ruminations was published in September 2012 by Fowlpox Press (Canada). He also writes flash fiction for the Six Sentence Social Network—http://sixsentences.ning.com/profile/AliZnaidi.

A Poem by John Pursch

Popeye v. Plato

Moments undulate, currying avian foliage, seeping poultry embers into voices of the trampled queue, angling formal orderlies for bedpan shoes, sputtering lusty pallor, closing dormant scarlet hampers, timing hamlet egress, shopping infernal laser chimps for glowing capers, disinfecting snails, placating umpteen archers, popping endothermic date machines on next door brainers, sleeping sightless loin cigars beyond contaminated glue farms, spinning wharf wool from nectarines, plying follicle tirades in stymied cubes, itching estuaries, coming merely chaste to crossbow slams, mooching noodles, pushing lush beagles off ottoman arrestors, creasing false eateries in pasty estrogen loops, flushing one-way mirror lookout pleas, bagging bugged stoppers beforehand, plunging neck-deep into cesspool semantics, chafing horded mortal empties, screeching a mulish stevedore’s futile embrace, causing segues to chortle at beaned gawkers, lusting every udder’s cash-n-carrion bromine neurosis, coughing down phlegmatic droop, nixing noxious pennant flavors, leaving wardroom spirals half pleasant, scabbing over tonsure fuse measles, watching childhood hemlines flee to sundry chided pates, hoping floral petticoats endure salubrious penance, gushing under passed auctions, plotting riddance toes, seeming to sharpen lonely seals, hocking up crescent mornings, marching alluvial effluvia to crooked linotype pews, embracing humped solitude, clamoring for malodorous hidebound pucks, stating oblivious insignias in coarse moat flotillas, arming painful spawn with messy tomography, pumping paltry antlers from dearly bedraggled cauterizers, blathering untoward parkas at baleen waddlers, forming up for imbecilic toadies, scooting down silvered sideburns, tossing back insulting plain molasses, catching onto choice drubbings, bumbling leeward, stacking consolations, pulsing without heaven noticing, noticing mass slippage, stapling knotty splines to pineal goulash, fleeing countryside flu, farming for sealing stipends, dozing off salacious thigh-bone chimneys, diving into anthill soup, carving dirty mares from sodden dowsers, surging below ducks with trenchant corpsmen, mining for coffers of hasty boffins, lighting up brooms of hazy fees, sweeping omens off to fleeting heat, bumping ashcans, fossilizing before urine sighs, umpiring abject ingots of time, savoring recessed spaniels, bottling oxen for splintered porridge, cruising salivation’s easy runes for deadpan gorilla meals, clashing with thermal tigers in Death Valley crusades, jostling beneath effusive weeds, forking offensive neutered republics, scribbling alarming fetal mores, throbbing when noon looks awry, riding pensive lifers to rattled doe meadows, casting Asperger’s palindromic starch on stuttered seas, plucking lackadaisical gumption for hot spartan ghouls, meshing with closeted rolling pins, blowing off Popeye for alpha smocks, castling two hundred times pi, edging through paltry ossification, posing for statutory geese, sticking caissons where hostels blow, postulating undefined deference, referring to Plato, musing on botulism’s opposite facts, pickling wandering shambles in sod…

 

 

 

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has appeared in many literary journals and was recently nominated for the Sundress Best of the Net 2012 Anthology. His first book, Intunesia, is available in paperback from White Sky Books at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks . He's @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.

A Poem by Emily Strauss

Rusty Parts

 

'38 Studebaker sits in the field

wheels long gone, sunk waist-

deep into alfalfa and tumbleweeds

 

come on Kenny go faster

pa's gonna catch us

 

windows long broken, grasshoppers

fly through, land on shredded seats

the plastic knobs cracked and dried

 

I'm gettin' shipped to Europe

You kin drive it to town, ok?

 

Doors rusted open or shut

Metal peeling, coated rust-red,

Holes show through the roof

 

We coulda used it for haulin'

But I ran outa gas on the hill

 

Field plowed around it now

Unnoticed it sinks deeper

Every year, rotting by slow bits.

 

 

 

 

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry. More than 80 of her poems appear in public online and in anthologies. The natural world is her framework; she focuses on the tension between nature and humanity, using concrete images to illuminate the loss of meaning between them.

A Poem by Joshua Bocher

Getting Older, Learning Wisdom

"Set off upon the sea in a small raft"
                                -- Confucius

"Fear expresses itself in flight"
                               -- George Herbert Mead

A sense of shame
Friends strung together on a single thread
Discuss the loftiest matters
The essence of thinking
The prospect of minor gains
Overstepping the bounds
Wild and ambitious aspirations
Masquerading as wisdom
Harbor grudges
Take him to task
Petty man
Struggles to speak
When he had wept
The taste of medicinal herbs
And vinegar
A bird alighting on a branch
Before flying away
A rhinoceros has escaped his cage
Get to the bottom of it
Growling and snapping
Tone of voice
Take a walk
The glance of an eye
Deliberate
A source of sudden thunder
Impetuous
Thinks me cruel
Cherishes honesty in both word and action
Pushed to one side
Out of which springs
The intensity of this light
Arrogant, isolated mistake
Tendency to run away
Sidestepping the question
In a spiritual manner
A piece of beautiful jade
Left by the side of the road
No more than floating clouds
If not for this man
This wind bends the grass
Newly ripened grain
Giving a wicker basket to make amends
The warmth found at this house
As though gliding on wings
I'd like to learn wisdom
Forgive everything, forget nothing
Train myself not to mix my conflicts



Joshua Bocher is a graduate student at Harvard University, where he researches Chinese poetry. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in several journals, including Spinozablue, Illuminations, Counterexample Poetics, The 22 Blog, and Full of Crow Poetry.

A Poem by April Salzano

Allusion

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Do not take it to someone else this time.
There is no way to say this,
you look at me like I am an emergency.
All day, gluing my church
of burnt matchsticks.  Out here
I am more alone with you than without
you, not waving but drowning.  That blue,
uncertain, stumbling buzz, that certain
slant of light, the worst
laugh I have ever laughed, while I weep.
I have been her kind, passed
hand to hand like a bowl of fruit.  The black
phone is off at the root.  I wandered lonely
as a cloud, saw the best minds
of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving naked hysterical, asking why
for the love of god we did this to ourselves.



April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is working on her first (several) poetry collections and an autobiographical work on raising a child with Autsim.  Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Pyrokinection, Convergence, Ascent Aspiration, Deadsnakes, The Rainbow Rose and other online and print journals and is forthcoming in Inclement, Poetry Quarterly and Bluestem.

A Poem by Louis Marvin

Sandwich

         b          r                  e                 a           d

l                e                t        t           u            c           e

c             h               e              e                   s             e 
 
m       e         a            t          p       a       t        t          y

         p         i          c         k          l         e           s

c          o          n         d        i        m        e        n       t

         b          r                   e                 a           d 




Louis Marvin was Born in Burbank, Raised (hell) Phoenix, Living/Loving in Hawaii.     

Two Poems by Alan Britt

ZIG ZAG

Oh, no,

                    .

 

 

 

 

                                                    .
                                                    .
             .  . . . . . . . . .

                                    .

                                 .
                              .
                          .
                       .
                   .
               .
                   .
                        .
                             .
                                 .
                                     .
                                        not another.
                                                       .
                                                   .
                                               .
                                            .
                                         .
                                      .
                                   .
                                .
                             . . . . poem.
                                        .
                                     .
                                  .
                               .
                            .
                         .
                      .
                    with all those…
                                        .
                                        .
                                            .
                                                .
                                                   .stupid
                                                               .
                                                                   .
                                                                       .
                                                                          dots?

I’ve been on rollercoasters

like any fool
                       from Syracuse, Paris or Pensacola.

 But I’m tired of all this buzzing

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   .   .
                                           .   .   .
                                           .   .   .
                                               . to the other
                                                                 .
                                                                     .
                                                                         .
                                                                     .
                                                                 .

                                   side

                              .
                         .
                                     .
                            .
                      .
               .

         . with the simple flip
                  .
                      . of a fly
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

                              .

                                 .
                                    .swatter.

 Tired

        . of
                 .
                                    it
                          all,             .

                                     I

                          tell
                      .
                  .
              .
           .
       .
      . . . . .you. .
                    .
                .
            .
        .
    .
    just…
               .
                  .
                               .
                                     .plain. . . .
                                                  .
                                                .
                                              .
                                            . . . . . . .
                                                       .
                                                     .
                                                   .
                                                 .
                                                     .
                                                        tired! 

ST. PATRICK’S DAY

Let’s go.

              .
                 .
                     .
                        .slide forward
     in a polar.
                     .
                        .
                           bear.
                                       .
                                           .
                                               .suit
across the ice.
        Paws down.
                               .
                                  .
                                      .
                                 .
                             .
                         .
                     .
                 .
             .
          .
       .
     nobody expecting you, tonight.
Let’s go.

      Have
           you ever pondered
                                    Leonardo
engaging the Wright Brothers?

      What vintage cognac!

            Or Aristotle

                  covered
                             
                                   head
                                             to
                                                  toe
with the latest electronic gadgets?

                  Well…I guess

                                       blue
                                               .
                                                  .
                                                     .
                                                        .
                                                          .
                                                           sheep
                          might accidentally
                                 .
                                   .
                                     .
                                       .
                                       stumble
                                                across your
                                   blue
                                            forehead.

But that’s to be
               expected.

Remember

      those hours
              howling,
                     those hours
                               clawing
to get
           back
                       in?

     Those sleeting hours

                       .   .   .
                   .   .   .   .
               .   .   .   .   .
          .    .   .   .   .   .
     .    .    .   .   .   .   .
 .   .    .    .   .   .   .   .  
in an Atlanta Greyhound station
     unzipping.
                        .
                           .
                              .
                                 .
                                    .
                                     dreaming

 of an overripe Appaloosa

       nestled
              against
                       a
                           cloud?

    Those hours,

                          grey
                                      bearded,
          stained.

If we
          had
                  time,
                            we’d
                                  remember
             all
                  the
                        hours
                 spilled
                        from
                                   a pale
                                            green
                               bottle
                                               of
                                                      mel
                                                             a
                                                               n
                                                                 c
                                                                   h
                                                                     o
                                                                        l
                                                                          y
                 that’s
                           so
                         hard
                                     to
                                            swallow.

                 Flocks of
                      freshly-
                                  ground
                                           hours
                swarm the mythological maples
sheltering my neighborhood these past
                                                      50 years.

    That’s almost

                       enough
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                             time
                    don’t you think
              to plan
                                   the
                                              future?          

Alan Britt's interview with the Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem is up at (http://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetpoem.html#alan-britt) and will air on Pacifica Radio 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. His latest book is Alone with the Terrible Universe.  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 formally feral cats. He is the Book Review Editor for Ragazine: http://ragazine.cc/