A Poem by Shloka Shankar

Growing Up

i wonder
if i was birthed
as a cross-breed
between nostalgia
and oblivion;

fumbling thro
ugh childhood -
a rigmarole,
dis
jointed
happenings, iso
lated moments
of happ
iness that

jostle between
becoming an adult
or remaining
an adolescent;

my foolhar
diness wears off
along with my masks.



Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India.  A contributing poet in over two dozen international anthologies, she has also seen her poems published in The Literary Yard, VerseWrights, Emanations, Ofi Press Mexico, Wicked Banshee Press, Otoliths, Calliope Magazine, Poetry WTF?!, Visual Verse, and Jaggery among numerous others.  She is the founder & editor of the literary and arts journal, Sonic Boom.

Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

In Stillness

This winter which is built mostly of stone and brine melts away
Soon toucans and tikis will rule it all but for now they hide beneath the bowler caps
Of vineyards near where my true love bathes herself in a tub of masks
That is near the cheap little taco stand where I first met her
Under skies so like a red velvet cloak draped over clouds of jellyfish
Even as she gave unto me all that was left of her ruby slippers
In the secluded minutes that were like a blur whose name I did not catch
As we flew under the data beyond all time with a brain in a bottle's swagger
And there were no shove off points for such as we
Buttermilk birds who were created by Hieronymus Bosch with a winepress of a golden hue
Whose silhouette was descending a staircase at the time
Just two migrating sea turtles who with a sigh became luminous sleepwalkers by and by



The Pain of a Puppet

The peppermint snowflakes dream of Bond Girls
And are a blue fossilized time machine
There is sea salt in the moonlight's barrage of data
As I go to visit a Picasso goddess on a contorted beach
Where all that crushes grapes is encouraged
To hide its identity from several horses with skull painted faces
Sent forth by that which is know as Pennywise
As I took a vow of incredible shrinking down
Through all the ticking decades that can communicate with ants
And are feather light in their brandied candles
Even as they unleash the shadowed baptism of the reptile clock at long last



The Mad Tea Party is Like Keith Haring Hallucinating Chocolate

Sleeping alone in unwanted bygone thoughts
Something blurry and staccato retyped the meat
A handful of theme songs collected all the scissored paintings
While Edgar Allan Poe blossomed into the Red Queen
And all of this of course took place nowhere else
But in the footsteps of my brain
While the White Rabbit talking on a police call box
Torn to shreds about how someone shot a Mexico City library in the head
Then was sliced to ribbons on a technicality
That throbbed like a cobra on the Headless Horseman frequency



For the past thirty-five 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 poetry.  

A Poem by Joan McNerney

an executive

showed me in
i, shy
as an orphan

her charming face
thru sewing room
viewing beige cabinets
bolts of silk
tactical prints
her life in threads
swatches impressive
floral

discerning glances
make me hurry
out the rear
but she invited
me only to see
her material things
& feel them
unattainable

all handsome houses
have well guarded gardens
lush chrysanthemums
smothering me
dog-faced.

Joan McNerney's poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Camel Saloon, Seven Circles Press, Dinner with the Muse, Blueline, Spectrum, and included in Bright Hills Press, Kind of a Hurricane Press and Poppy Road anthologies.  She has been nominated three times for Best of the Net, Poet and Geek recognized her work as their best poem of 2013.  Four of her books have been published by fine small literary presses and she has four ebook titles.