Due to personal issues this project and all others associated with Kind of a Hurricane Press are closed indefinitely.  All work that has already been published will remain live on the site.  All work that was accepted but has not been published is now released back to the author.  All print copies and issues will remain available through their current sales channels.

A Poem by Daniel Slaten

Start the Panic

he dances backwards into the room
the moment everything explodes
a mushroom cloud of watermelon-scented
               anxiety
covers all but the only thing
the everything the anything
the absolutely nothing thing
               that matters
or doesn't does it
no of course it doesn't
it never will it never did
               it never should
and so it is
and so it isn't
a celebration of movement
               in that
moment
of utter panic
when the watermelon-scented
               anxiety
woke us all from our slumber




Daniel Slaten writes short stories and poetry in small notebooks and on sticky notes.

Three Poems by Angelica Fuse

Winged Poem

I saw a winged
poem today whose
name said he was
Lucifer
but he was no devil
just an arrangement
of friendly whiskey
verses offering opium
to children.


Monkey Business

I am from the tree
dangling, an ensemble
of animal parts, teeth
that rattle, this is my
territory, I beat my animal
chest, bray like an ass,
piss on the floor,
then climb back up to
survey my finer points.


Labyrinth

lathe and labyrinth
we drove deep into the night
looking for monsters
forgetting our swords at home
but at least we had our
smart phones so we did not
get too lost
then entered the open mouth
of the cave
[bad idea] now still turning
we are beating hearts
lost in the dark.



Angelica Fuse is an unquiet voice.  She enjoys reading by an imaginary fire.

A Poem by John McKernan

Go On

Mister Mayor
Call Prince Adam

Ask him
How to lick
Arsenic off vodka ice cubes

Then call up the Insurance Company
Ask if they pay
In the event of suicide
Listen close

Yes
If you're paid up after two years
We'll send you a feather bed
Of maggots
And have Hugh Hefner deliver it

John McKernan grew up in Omaha Nebraska and recently retired from herding commas after teaching for many years at Marshall University.  He lives in Florida and West Virginia.  His most recent books i s a selected poems Resurrection of the Dust.  His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, Field, and elsewhere.

A Poem by Marc Carver

Diamonds

I come to a river
there are three otters swimming in the river.
I put the diamonds on the bank and swim,
one of the otters comes to me and lays in my arms, like a baby.

His two fins at the back open out
and he becomes a small child resting in my arms.
He swims away
and I look at the banks, they are filled with bright green and red frogs bubbles all over their body
then I look for the diamonds
they are gone.

A Poem by Charles Eugene Anderson

Dine-In Communion

Eating is Freedom

The signs are everywhere.

I'm hungry.

Eating is Life

Drive.

Pass one.

Drive some more.

Pass another one.

Eating is Divine

Pull off the interstate.

See the right church.

Drive to parking lot.

Eating is Tranquil

The line is too long.

Decide to go in.

Get out of hoover-cruiser.

Adjust pants.

Belt on last notch.

Time for another belt.

God has blessed me.

I'm his faithful servant.

Eating is Girth

I'm ready.

The line inside is almost as long.

I will be forgiven for fasting too long.

Eating is Repentance

I'll stand in line as long as it takes.

Eating is McDonalds

This time my number is twelve.

There were twelve disciples.

I look at the priest behind the counter.

He'll deliver the sacraments if I'm patient a little longer.

He says to me, "What are you waiting for?"

I say, "The Happy Meal."

I take it with my hands open the way I've been taught so many years ago.

The priest speaks to the woman behind me, "May I help the next sinner in line?"

Charles Eugene Anderson lives in Colorado.  He's been lucky enough to be published in many publications for the past twenty.  When Charles isn't writing, he likes muscle cars, running, and baking.  Find out more at www.charlesandersonbooks.com  or amazon.com/author/charleseugeneanderson.

A Poem by Mark Niehus

Co-Op

Name Box
Date Box

Yes box
No box
go to question 37

Hi question 37
Yes box
Can you house me?
No box
go to Section E

Section E can you house me?
Yes box
with conditions, are you poor?
Yes box
are you lying to me?
No box
are you hiding zee moniez?
No box
please just house me!
Yes box
go to promise box

Promise me box
I Promise box

Sign me

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

Date me

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

Now fold me just so

Mark Niehus is a poet and artist who drives a cheese truck, between deliveries he explores the mechanics of human behavior.  Belief, need, ambition, self worth, inspiration and hope, occupy his mind while customers comment on the weather.  Finding a place for his writing has become important to him, though the reasons for this beyond the obvious are  unclear.  He likes to get close to instinct and invention to create unique combinations of poetry, street art, music and performance.

Three Poems by Natalie Crick

Love Me

Two friends.
Chalk and cheese, gelled with want.
The shy one with silver sticks
That clunked on wooden boards
Skipped to a secret song.

And him, a gauzy giant,
The bitter scat his excuse.
It shines for special occasions,
Shouting about life of biting tongues:
I am history reinvented.

Blink twice.  I am not out of the ordinary.
He tells me how I have a nervous laugh
And how nice
The mice looked, strung up in grey wire.
An easy spear through each socket.

Would I like to walk with them?
It would be like kissing the flute
With my eyes smoking and hissing,
Ash sinking in each pit.
Let me roll in icy pools.

The Other does that,
Hair wet and black,
Tossing acid.
Do you ever sleep?
He wants to be loved.

I do not react.
The sun lets them in,
The moon breaks in two.
Bell, once.
Bell, twice.

One is finished.



Sunday School

Madeline loves it
And sits as Mother would.
The priest is like her Father
Dressed all in grey,

Palms fluttering with
Paper clowns,
Legs and arms spinning anti-clockwise
Like the priest's eyes slide

From side to side.
We are his for an hour
But he cannot touch us,
For we are jewels to be watched,

And, one day taken.
Nobody has ever held his hand
But Grandmother, with rings like
Little girl's warnings.

This is my house of God,
Rain thundering as
Unanswered questions.
Their faces are taught and chilled with frost.

He is the bee of androgyny
Thrusting candelabras as tusks.
This drone of activity,
It is all too much for me.

Faces dumb as naked dolls.
He strips them, licking them with stars
Like potential girlfriends
Or meats to be weighed.



And We Are Hiding Now

For some time they sat in the cornfield
And spoke like dull mice
About what would be done.
When the sun, a ruined fruit

Ripped the dilute garden growth
And spread a red alarm over tall shears
The eldest was heard to say
"Bury them in the cellar."

Skins of lice lamented
Over the pulsing stalks,
Their drones blanched in the air
Curdled and hot.

The house was distant and brown
Weeping a creeping shadow from within,
That seemed to warn:  "Keep Out."
A blaze from the forgotten.

Old plastic swing swung over the perimeter,
A goodbye, flinch.

The sky was high and blue.
In the giant shoots
Lurking softly and surreal,
Two ducklings on the gilded shore.

The sea was swimming with flushed young men
Severing feathered heads
With long silver scissors.
Pointed thorns in a paper box.

The woman roared like the man.
"Stop," said the girls
With frilled socks.
Once the heavens were purple

Like a bruise, the corn
Grew cold and wet.
The house stood waiting, a deadened bulb
With a swift march

They advanced through the field,
Cutting stems.

Natalie Crick has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl.  Her poetry is influenced by melancholic confessional Women's poetry.  Her poetry has been published in a range of journals and magazines including Cannons Mouth, Cyphers, Ariadne's Thread, Carillon and National Poetry Anthology 2013.

A Poem by Jeff Grimshaw

Friday Morning with Ducks

There is no difference between
Ducks and mechanical ducks
From my vantage point
Or rather my
click*click*click*click*click*series
Of vantage points
As I negotiate the
Mesconetkong Creek Bridge
Although I have no reason
(Cough!) to believe that
Any of the ducks
Are mechanical ducks
Not even the one
Jerking his head back and forth
Watching the bread crumbs
Float by
Like a mechanical duck
Doing a bad imitation
Of a cartoon duck
At a cartoon
Tennis match

I am en route to
The post office
I should subscribe to more magazines
I will have to do some research
And see which ones make
The best paper airplanes

Meanwhile
My Sherpa assistant
Is in the vestibule of
The health food store
Eating a bag of healthy
Potato Chips
And wondering if the song
They are playing on the radio in there
Is a country song or not
Because it is what he
Always wonders.  "Jeff,"
He'll say, "Is this one a country song?"
"No, Pasang, this is 'Bohemian
Rhapsody' by Queen.  If you want to hear
A country song you have to listen
To a country station."
And then he'll make a notation on
A 7 Grain Bread label and five
Minutes later say, "What about
This one, Jeff?  Is this one
A country sond?"  And
I say, "No, Pasang, this is still
'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen," and
He makes another notation and
This goes on all goddamn night

But now he's eating his healthy blue
Potato chips and I am
Wiping the ducks off my retina
By checking out
A 17 year old girl with a
Pierced belly button
It is unseasonably warm
For January thank God although
The pierced lip I could
Do without

My cell phone bill!
A postcard announcing
Brookdale Community College is presenting Little
Shop of Horrors next month!  A mutual
Fund prospectus!  An envelope full of
Discount coupons I will never
Use!  My post office
Box is a Gateway to Exotic
Adventure  and Unsolicited
Advertisements!

Ducks and (perhaps) mechanical
Ducks and Pasang and the teenage girl
With the belly ring all bob
In my wake like flotsam

My God it is February 3rd and
I have not changed the calendar page!!

So I take care of that
The mad dash back home is frankly
A blur and the artist
Who lives next door
Is sweeping cat food
Misfired ice melt & elderly
French-fries from
The sidewalk
Wearing her smock so everybody
Knows she's an artist
I suspect sapphic tendencies as
Well but then of course
I always do she has a slightly
Unhealthy blue cast because
I am watching through the
Sheer blue curtains which
Sometimes when the sun
Floods through them makes
My gargoyle pencil holder
Look blue but not particularly
Unhealthy

AND

Someone is selling a PT Cruiser for
8K or Best Price
The UCC is having a pancake-and-sausage
Breakfast tomorrow.  Gene the
Town drunk is
Lurching down towards the
Delaware with a 24 pack of
Not particularly tasty beer
Earlier today I was stopped at
A red light and he asked me
How my daughter was doing
But did not pay
Overly much attention to
My reply and just now
The artist paused in her
Sweeping to consume
A bottle of Yoo Hoo
I like the way she
Smears the Yoo Hoo mustache off
Her upper lip and decides
This chick
Is no lesbian.

A delivery of French bread sticks
To the restaurant across
The street!  Zut alors!

And now out one more time before
Lunch (meatloaf on
Rye or failing that
Tuna salad) and the ducks take
Off, quacking or (could be)
Clanking, into the air,

And from up there
The car roofs
Are just so many
Blue and Red and especially
Silver potato chips

And even 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by
Queen is just barely audible
Enough to permit the ducks to smile
Although of course their bills
Will not.

Jeff Grimshaw has had poems and stories published (among other places) in New York Quarterly, Asimov's SF, Pyrokinection, and Chiron Review.  He's the co-writer of the screenplay for Michel Gondry's movie The We & the I (2013).  He generally makes his living as a baker, and lives in Milford, NJ.

Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

Watching and Listening To

I never discovered the identity of the highways
That were all mixed into one
And are now as cherished as stolen horses
As they have become happy memories
That are like paint drips and fantasies
That remove all the door knobs of back so long, long ago
When there were adventures of her own
In the tape hiss and the clipping
And the fold rock strums of the riverbank on which she was last seen
But all of that is metal to be refined on some other day
During the hollowness of some far away Sunday afternoon
Because this morning is a vacant lot full of tumbleweeds
Desperate to detach and hurry off toward the drained coffers
Of she who was always only a mirage
That evaporated in the harshening light of noon.



Blink and You'll Miss It

After a day whose big sky is like festive fabric scraps
My all night impatience became a house that was empty
And didn't even have enough ink left in it
To wake me up the next morning to the emptiness
Of those blessings whose shaggy hair was Welsh and fierce looking
As they rippled like wadded up sheets of aluminum foil
That sounded like a Russian orchestra as this was accomplished
And was something which was only usually hinted at
In the grimaces of the distorted twin guitars
That are but yet another transition
As time seems to warp into those intimate moments
That suddenly becomes aware of their own ragged blades
And which are nothing less than my complete resurgence
As they skim over these waves towards far from home again



Vanishing Seeds and Bonsai Trees

Peppermint vines creep through the ghost like snow
Velvety icy and bubbling phantasms made of penny candy
While the fragments of a harpsichord
To which the water colors of Diego Rivera dance
Become the egg yolk words to the chorus
Of the shallow waters of the reggae ice cream truck
That will always reside in her touch



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 Jeffrey Zable

Walking My Poem

I was walking my poem down the street
when a beautiful woman stopped and said,
"My, what a handsome poem.  Mind if I pet it?"
"The pleasure is all mine," I responded, "and
I'll even have my poem recite for you."

"Oh, to be a virile, young man again
who could catch the eye of beauties like you--
to sweep them off their feet,
and wind up beneath the sheet
for a night of unforgettable release."

And as she walked away
without the slightest appreciation,
I continued down the street,
dragging my poem behind me.

Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer who plays Afro-Cuban folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area.  His poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in hundreds of magazines and anthologies from the mid-70's to the present, most recently in Serving House Journal, The Vein, Weirderary, Futures Trading, Mocking Heart Review, Bookends Review, Unscooped Bagel, Grief Diaries, Houseboat (featured poet), 2015 Rhysling Anthology, Poetry Pacific, Third Wednesday, Flint Hills Review, and many others . . . 

Three Poems from Ken L. Jones

Where Can I Find Her Paintings?

TV was a highway of personal beliefs
That were tan all over
Card decks slipping open like rodeo clowns
And all of this still makes patterns
On the cloudy pumpkins in my backyard
As I dive into all that is mild and tender
And will always be a taco stand
That stands up to the elements
Even as it blossoms submerging the hours
As I slowly sip its white grape juice
Laced with rivers that lead to a frozen lake
That now has barbed wire all around



A Silence So Deep

Wow pumpkins are turning into gold tarnished TV shows
And yet this pilgrim afternoon o' the sea
Is my Lord Of Hell is Venus In Furs to me
And as the taper candles that are the stars
Vault my thoughts way beyond Mars
Causing my past and present to dance
Like elves down strings of memories
That are like the Appalachian Trail
Where they are raked up like fresh baked leaves
By Andy Warhol who is greasy from kicking it old school
And planting the seeds for dust and diesel trucks
Late for the multiple layers of the kid in you



Gifts From The Dark Edges

In the underbelly layers of a long time dream
That hardly softens all that is so long lost
But whose after school detention's airy melodies
Are more poignant than any Doors' song
And yet somehow all that has gone before
Makes my remembrances dive and soar
Until they devolve like whatever the dog
Turned into in John Carpenter's The Thing
Served with a creamy thought

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 Peter Magliocco

not a supernova supertrain

Star ether braids itself thru time
penetrating the gravity of sweet yearning
levitating a breath of multitudes
from trails of dying comets
where sin was born finally
just a bridge connecting humans

in a race to reach ultra-heaven
coloring my graphs of infinity
beyond the corner convenience stores
selling generic ambrosia as last meal
while I speed thru the stop sign
at the cul-de-sac of your heart-fall

there starlight still breathes us in
beyond a disinherited galaxy
of little earth stars we homed in
curious substitute for an afterlife
immersing ourselves in cyber ships
(modeled after "The Crystal Ship")

of classic Rock & Roll perhaps
we had little chance when the dry
cities closed up all around us
squeezing out the flesh of stardust
vampire aliens played with constantly
leaving us husks of forgotten desire

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he's been active for several years in the small presses as both editor and contributor.  His latest poetry book is Poems for the Downtrodden Millennium, from The Medulla Review Publishing.

Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

Good God Mother

I am a straightjacket girl in a ballroom world.  I have

forgotten how to follow the glitter-

brick road.  Mirrors come to paint me.  It tickles.

I laugh and break.  Their concentration

requires definition – mine.  I look myself up

and down seems to be the only probability.  I jump

on one foot in the middle of a rainstorm

hoping to strike right.  Wrong! 

Everything runs.  Back

to basic training I go.

Of Coffee

grounds

               meet

water

brew

         energized

morning

breath

drip     pools

cup carries

caffeinated

gold

Reverberations.  In Blue.

I am a broken hollow

filled with my own echo.  I haunt

myself with abandoned

desires designed to trick me

                                              out as “normal.”

It never works.  I am immune to the sound

of my own voice (not to mention

my truly pathetic sales pitch).  Still

I practice repeating retreating

repenting (occasionally)

even reinventing . . . harmony

is the definition

                          [of so much more than]

                                                                horrifying.

A.J. Huffman has published twelve solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her new poetry collections, Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press), A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing), Butchery of the Innocent (Scars Publications), Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink) and A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press) are now available from their respective publishers and amazon.com.  She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2400 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com.

Three Poems by John W. Sexton

All Aboard

electric jellywhales
pulse opera . . . their myths
of shallower times

          immortality card:
          go straight to hale
          do not pass gone

technology keeps
us grounded . . . the
ant subterranean railway

          the bodies
          black foliage . . . artichoke-seals
          snout the silt-seas

bond with local life . . .
in lichen cloak and hood
your mind deepens to stone

          tunnel cities of
          the fretted terrain . . . existential damp
          seals us

the astromaggots . . .
all aboard the giant plum
for the fall to earth

          Mrs. Eyes
          is an innovator with leftovers . . .
          candied fly wings



Full-Stops

her pubes of kelp
rich with nutrient . . . her larder full
of drowned seamen

          old granny ten-tits
          . . . the elepig
          squeals the sky in half

falls a paragraph of fog
. . . moon-silver
a dog barks in full-stops

          an innocent evil . . .
          the shadows slip
          from their puppets

three fine mice-men
the serval girls
purred you petrified

          oh that mad hairday . . .
          a lather befell
          the city

through a door
in your soul we entered . . .
we rifled your light

          from his cabinet
          of paralyzed faces . . . her lips creased
          for the everlasting time

my darling abalone
your mucous body slips
from its dress

          one kiss
          the frog prince turns
          into a glass summer



Those Innocent Days

his spine cracked . . .
Dick Shinnarry
is lost for words
 
          tethered to his winged goats
          . . . blue, the goatherd doesn't wake
          on the moon

travel by slime machine . . .
leave in disarray
arrive in a heap

          space krill
          were once called dark matter . . .
          those innocent days of science

the slush oceans a hint
of vanilla . . . narsharks
display their sweet tooth

          the mirror overcoat . . .
          we admire ourselves
          down his long back

the ant's chair . . .
yes, your arse
looks big in this

          expleting the crossword
          tussle . . . lost for swords
          nine down

all the truths
that ever were lost . . . and this is the ear
that Jack has

          violation a way of life . . .
          glove puppets
          accept the finger

Matryoshka fell
asunder . . . no custody
of her lesser selves

          a downpour of diamonds . . .
          the solid steel river
          rings

John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland and is the author of five poetry collections, the most recent being The Offspring of the Moon, (Salmon Poetry, 2013).  He also created and wrote The Ivory Tower for RTE radio, which ran to over one hundred half-hour episode from 1999 to 2002.  Two novels based on the characters from this series have been published by the O'Brien Press:  The Johnny Coffin Diaries and Johnny Coffin School-Dazed, which have been translated into both Italian and Serbian.  He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem "The Green Owl" won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007.  Also in 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.

A Poem by David Russell

Checkpoint

Lurching, they bluster--ghouls into the chasm.

Fierce lava, blowing, nullifies their fall
And dissipates harsh gravity's concussion,
Forces a seething screen of phoenix cowardice,
Leaping to swell
Into a fresh, mendacious crust,
Tripping and throttling the led
Into a smear upon pure metamorphic beauty.

The skeleton's jaws yawn apart;
A stranded mountaineer was frozen
At his prime pinnacle,
Denied warm, compromised decay;
A calcium landmark now, but broken loose;
A boulder never neutral
To those in fear.

One gouged and bored--
New Sisyphus, with ever-sinking aspiration
For no stress, no fall--
For him the indefatigable light
Breathes limbo silicosis.

Can they combine?  Eternity transcends the cheap ideal
Of mutual obliteration.

A mountaineer trapped in a submarine,
A miner in a satellite,
A megalomaniac performing his own precious lobotomy
Hoping the abolished question mark
Can keep things safe and solid.

Purgation's smudged when bound to fire,
Denied release from fizzy process,
And even air can clog and sludge
The ultimate suction of life's syllables
Into fatuous pinprick stars,

No line can break full circle.

A Poem by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Eyes to See

The flavor of carrots is generated by 36 genes;
29 of these genes,
inserted just so in the human genome,
confer near immortality--
works on 11% of us.

Folks don't react well, knowing
the people next door are going on without them.
Disaster on this scale is a cultural tsunami.

Not content with their brief
day in the sun, many of the 89%
               burn, rend, scream, kill:
               embrace death,
               if only they can take some
               immortals with them
               to the vanishing point.
It's over.  No one speaks of that time.

After the Mayfly Wars we begin the Live:
               artworks on a grand scale,
               literature refined to pellucidity,
               but creative breakthroughs, not so much,
               that's a game of youth
               and there is so little of that.

Carrots, carrot genes,
everything tastes like carrots
               broccoli, corn, potatoes, carrots
               tomatoes, peas, raspberries, carrots
               filet mignon, even human flesh:
               carrots, all.

Then folks get desperate, but
nothing works
the taste is in us
not the foot
not
               tires
               sand
               potting soil
               asphalt
you can run, but, you know . . .

So I'm trying to remember that genetics shtick
and it's hard, oh so hard, after unnumbered years
of purposeless satiation,
but I'm teaching this kid,
and she's getting it, and I've never prayed so hard
               for eggs, potatoes, rosemary,
               onions, chicken, pepper, apples,
               chocolate, artichokes, mango, mustard,
               ANYTHING,
but no carrots.

David C. Kopaska-Merkel lives in a hollowed-out gourd hanging from a red oak out behind a house occupied by a colony of artists far more accomplished than he is.  A leaf lacquerer by trade, he edits The Lacquered Leaf and dreams of a day when his gourd will be hung from a black walnut.

A Poem from Brendan McBreen

when life gives you lemons

the grass is greener
keeping the doctor away
the mice will
make mountains
out of the frying pan
into a gift horse's mouth
but don't cry over
all the tea in China
because the bigger they are
in glass houses
the harder they fly a kite
without a paddle
until the cows come home
in sheep's clothing

remember
measure twice
die by the sword

and when in doubt

panic

Brendan McBreen is a poet and workshop facilitator with Striped Water Poets in Auburn Washington.  He is a humorist, a haiku writer, a student of Zen and Taoist philosophy and psychology, a collage artist, a sometimes cartoonist, a Gemini, and an event coordinator with the Auburn Days festival in August.  He is a former coordinator of the August Poetry Postcard Fest and in 2009 was awarded a residency at the Whiteley Center in Friday Harbor.  Brendan has been featured at various local venues and is published in many journals including  Raven Chronicles, Bellowing Ark, Crab Creek Review, bottle rockets, Leading Edge, Origami Condom, Circle Show, in the anthology In Tahoma's Shadow, and in the UK journal:  The Delinquent.

A Poem by Bryan Damien Nichols

Desires and Dreams

     -- for Alexander Shacklebury

Your desires are seen through dreams,
And your dreams, through desires:

          your desires:  your dreams:

As patent as an etching in graphite,
The result somehow stained in
Aureolin, boysenberry, turquoise, and lime--

Like strange ferns thrusting through electrified water
At chimerical dusk--

Like a Christmas tree you've never seen adorned
With bulb and trinkets and tinsel

           but hanging upside down.

Bryan Damien Nichols was born in Houma, Louisiana, on August 30, 1978.  He earned a B.A. summa cum laude, in Philosophy from Baylor University, and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law.  He has practiced law both in Houston and in Texas' Rio Grande Valley.  Bryan currently lives in Los Fresnos, TX, with his loving wife, Michelle.  Bryan is best known for the poetry he writes through his two heteronyms:  (1) Kjell Nykvist:  and (2) Alexander Shacklebury.  These two heteronyms were featured in Bryan's debut poetry collection, Whispers From Within (Sarah Book Publishing).  In this new collection, by contrast, Bryan writes in his own name, and explores numerous themes and issues that are important to him personally.

Two Poems by Sheikha A.

Salt

from a pot of pestled roses;
the hour of midnight prints
labels on foreheads of walls
hiding behind dirty glue, dried
toilet smells and secret closets
of re-fleshed skeletons; scrape
back a few inches to see life
curl into a wrinkled death, skins
on bones peached pink/melba
desserts/laced torso/girdled
thighs/bedside candle-plumed/
carpet of glass/lotion and whip--



Invariability

Blue mountains on white snow
rest like gods returned from war;
chest armors scuffed with dust,
rectitude attacked with iron blades;
caves of victory like dug reticules--
worms once feasted on ripe roots
now travel towards a shortage
to harvest sleep under vapored
time; they will grow scorpion
claws, suck marrows dry,
tear out of sands,
be who they are,
wreckage--

Sheikha A. hails from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates.  With over 70 publications in various print/online publications such as Red Fez, Ygdrasil, a New Ulster, The Penmen Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Poetry Pacific, Mad Swirl to name a few, and many anthologies, she has also authored a short poetry collection titled Spaced (Hammer and Anvil Books, 2013) available on kindle.  Her poems have also been recited at two separate poetry reading events held in Greece.  She edits poetry for eFiction India.  She maintains all her publications on her blog sheikha82.wordpress.com