Two Poems by Stefanie Bennett

Myrrh and Misdemeanor

Outside the roadside chapel
The gaggle
Of constellations
In the lap
Of the chair
With three bowed legs
Is a hard-wired
On-the-money
Talking point for

The intrepid
Holy Ghost.

The wonky
Bi-focals.

The snowed upon
Newspapers

. . . And all.



Sharps -- Literalized

I call it my work!  Shelve your damnable
Generic compromise--
The shrinking metathesis
That morphs
The L.c.d.'s  *
WhatsAByte
Inauguration . . .

If there was a picket line
In think
I'd join it --

Wearing the boots of
A fisherwoman
I'd swear

The disposition of man
Is a god-fraught
                                     Killing maching
Aimed at
Machu Picchu.

I call it . . . my work.
This
          Aftershock.
This pale
Horse
Passing.



* lowest common denominator

Stefanie Bennett has published eighteen books of poetry and one novel.  Of mixed ancestry (Italian, Irish, Paugussett-Shawnee) she was born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia in 1945.  Stefanie's latest poetry title 'The Vanishing' is due at year's end.  Publisher, Walleah Press.

Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

Incomplete Trajectory

On this dream of an underwater morning
That stretches and squashes like a wooden puppet
Who turns into impossible things
Everything seems as if I was born to it
And was in proper alignment and put here by diamond beings
And as I creep down this stairway of its final hours
I realize that I am but pages waiting to be filled at the bottom of a river
While my love she dreams like the teacup ride at Disneyland
Until suddenly her visions become an illuminated caravan
That brings forth an autumn more potent than ever
And one that can bend steel in its bare hands



There Is Nothing Quite As Stirring As Because We Can

Once in a head shop that was projected in random order
Mickey Mouse became as tragic as Guernica to me
A Buddy Holly lullaby that had gone and got its crayons
So as to alter me into a minotaur
Who in every Zen coffeehouse that I entered into after that
Was able to consult with the guru Ernie Kovacs
Who suggested that I get nude in print
And so I did just that
During decades that got worn down like drift wood on a churning beach
As I experienced years of getting things out of dumpsters
Like limestone quarries when worked by me
And then out of nowhere Hollywood suddenly lat at my feet for a time
That is now nothing but faded photographs that can never be banished
From the sandblasted recollections of my nimble and darting mind
Where they will always creek away like a wizened song in a reoccurring dream
Where all my toy soldiers turn into ink blots
In this my own private subatomic universe
That exists all around me in my living room where all is locked in a formation
That delights even as it scampers away to where I will be following someday maybe even today



The Summer After

On this intertwining seaside of an August evening
That is like the dreamscape of a video game
The radiant colors are like a carnival masked
As dappled light as dreamy as emerging from the fog of a deep dive
Into fantasy worlds lost and beguiling
And though my memories have become a dance floor
My true love has secretly deleted
Still as I watch the spiders in my backyard climb all the way to Asgard
Way past where the stars swirl about in a night sky
Now like an old photo album
I look forward to my hard-won two hours of sleep
In the thornless rose bed of my relaxer lounger
Where nothing spoils the abracadabra
Of the renowned puppeteer who is in reality
Nothing but Sisyphus laid low long ago
By his own personal Scheherazade in a bedroom very far from here




For the past thirty-five plus years Ken L. Jones has been a professionally published author who has done everything from writing Donald Duck Comic books to creating things for Freddy Krueger to say in some of his movies.  In the last six years he has concentrated on his lifelong ambition of becoming a published poet and he has published widely in all genres of that discipline in books, online, in chapbooks and in several solo collections of his poetry.  This volume held a great allure for him as he has long been an aficionado of such places of chance and fun.  His earliest memory almost six decades ago was of the well-known The Pike amusement park in Long Beach, California, which he lived very close to.  Later when he was in grade school his parents bought a house in Anaheim, California, that was only a skateboard's ride away from Disneyland where he often went and was lucky enough to become friendly with its creator Walt Disney which years later resulted in him being employed by Disney Studios doing various creative things there for a time.  Just prior to that when he was first married he worked full-time at Knott's Berry Farm where he met its founder Walter Knott.  To this day he remains fascinated by places like this and they often seep into both the poetry he writes and the many works of prose fiction that he has also concurrently published in the last decade.

A Poem by ayaz daryl nielsen

Lost in Twilight

these ragged
   moments mid
      twilight

ebb and subtle
   flow as pastels
      loose essence

as earth colors
   shimmer and dim
      deepen into night

shadows seem
   ominous as their
      indecision fades

for a moment
   I-
    -i forget
   have forgotten-

      the way home



ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs), hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+years/120+ issues), homes include Lilliput Review, Jellyfish Whispers, Writing the Whirlwind, Shamrock, and bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre)

A Poem by John Pursch

Skinny Porch Kerplop

Signage loops to menthol hexagon retraction,
flitting football Corsicans to root pier prostitution specks
of poured Othello arias and aromatic favoritism's
nether dermal afro fiction why compendium mistake.

Coopers denote chancre hopping cobbler grottos
by an exiled exhalation's scarab, harrying wheeled arrowsmiths
with purchased proboscis scaffold census sensor dust,
polled several milliseconds into centigrade repulsion dreams.

Seven dregs decay in sparse entitlement
Rapunzel efforts gone frantically antique,
rubbing amphorae into sleepy sigh ballistic frenzy,
soiling prestidigitation's leitmotif with loincloth lotion legalese
and legerdemain's logistic porpoise whims.

Tinsel doves corrode in caustic flip card urges,
primping the paltry blitz incineration pool girl's
imitation sloth toupee with schoolhouse jail oregano coulisse,
delicious to the touch of sutured sober hammer gals
from fossil action college fee reduction igloo martyr gender photographs,
burnt yesterday for semi-swollen tundra deals gone virulent
in midway barn anthologies.

Covert rickshaws rise in scalding pawing fractions,
sobbing mental proctor staples of pedaling gas colonic pone,
elusive yet befriending pedometer guppies
in proud saline hosiery's ecstatic seamstress zoom.

Occasions orchestrate refracted flossing speech sagacity
within suburban mining stallion gall bone douche repair fee lossage twine,
imploring skeet petunia backers to berate anarchic logging thrivers
into maypole undulation rites and skinny porch disturbance pleas
of snowy loaf intent, her haystack's nebulous pomposity
turned quizzically to midnight pancake rescue gape
of turban flame from neutral fairies flown halfway
for drowning pleasure breech pad ballpark shamble
burping bleach kerplop extrusion mayhem.

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona.  His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals.  A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available in paperback at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks.  His experimental lit-rap video is at https:///www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUS7obVc.  He's @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.