Two Poems by B.J. Jones

She Typed This Then Put It through the Shredder

                    ar

     Dad,

                                     wr

       sor                                                      I'm                                           ong.

                                     ry.

                                                                 was

dau               I

                                                    Yo

                             De

                                                                                                                                                            ghter

ur

Read This!

Hey!

You!

Guess what?

You don’t know?

I Gotcha!

Look here!                                                                                No, over here.

Over here.

                                                                  Hey!

                                                                                You are not going

anywhere.

               Till the end. You are here till the end.

Ha!                       Ha!

Actually, what I really wanted to say is that I really, really, really appreciate you taking the time to read this.

                                                                           Ha!

You’re here.

                                                                                                      It’s the end.

B.J. Jones lives and writes in Dubuque, IA with his wife. He edits poetry for Stymie: A Journal of Sport & Literature and reads fiction for Prick of the Spindle.

A Poem by Jeanpaul Ferro

 Donahue Society

Blue eyes in the dark: motion picture in flight,

catapults     X X        X X       X X     X X

                     X            X           X         X

                   X X        X X       X X     X X

over hills and valleys,

show me the:

Bling bling,

porthole for the devil,

ten times MORE:

Bling bling,

prophet and chronicler

—cathode ray in streams of high-speed electrons,

emissions from heated cathodes (vacuum tubes) \ rare earth—

we sit here and watch EVERY NIGHT

you’re no Jesus or Madonna, you’re not James Dean either;

desperate ploy to keep your name on top?

“you got two breasts? I got two breasts too!”

never looking back at the Red Sea behind you,

all that destruction in your wake,

down the hall of the archives of the BBC:

a hundred years of television gone to waste.

Jéanpaul Ferro is a novelist, short fiction author, and poet from Providence, Rhode Island. An 8-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Jéanpaul’s work has appeared on NPR, Contemporary American Voices, Columbia Review, Emerson Review, Connecticut Review, Portland Monthly, and others. He is the author of Essendo Morti – Being Dead (Goldfish Press, 2009), nominated for the 2010 Griffin Prize in Poetry; and Jazz (Honest Publishing, 2011) nominated for both the 2012 Griffin Prize in Poetry and the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Prize in Poetry. He is represented by the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency. He currently lives along the south coast of southern Rhode Island . Website: www.jeanpaulferro.com * E-mail: jeanpaulferro@netzero.net

A Poem Series by David B. McCoy

Persona Poems

Apple persona does its best work

through the acts of gods:

to Paris went Helen when he gave

Aphrodite the golden apple marked

for "the fairest and most beautiful;"

to Hercules went immortality when

he slew the dragon of 100 heads

guarding the apples of the nymphs’ garden;

and to Adam and Eve went guilt when

the serpent persuaded them to

take and eat the fruit of god’s forbidden tree.

Love, war, immortality, and guilt—

Oh, spirit of the apple, do your work on me.

--

Persona who comes to visit has no invitation--

sleeps until noon and never makes the bed—

raids the refrigerator then drinks all the booze—

ignores hints to leave, and after four days,

begins to smell of fish.

--

Orange persona gets pissed

at every college professor who sends

his freshmen off to write stupid essays

about rotting oranges.

--

A Taoist persona inhabits this house

– just look around –

ten thousand things all strewn about.

--

Glacier persona erodes the spirit by

gouging – scraping – and scouring

its victims – then leaves them as a

heap of terminal moraine.

--

Black hole persona grows fat

sucking the guilt of unspeakable acts

into it wide – swirling mouth.

--

Hypochondriac persona proudly wears

its latest ailment like

a colored ribbon on

a military uniform

--

Radiation persona explodes and

descends through space to enter the body

– changes the chemical structure of cells

– slowly replaces the soul with its own black ghost

--

Lettuce persona carries the cry of

dying Mexicans in every head

Two Poems by John Casquarelli

Hello, I’m a Mountain Oyster

 

for Jesse

 

suppose I threw a love affair

and nobody came?

not that life is inactive

both the cynic and the moralist offer equal opportunity

 

I know sharing the dark

doesn’t necessarily make me family

but it should guarantee not walking

into a relationship

with an executioner’s hood

 

perhaps it’s fate

perhaps it’s nature’s strange sense of humor

perhaps it’s a folder full of fragments

that leave my lips dry

amid black-inked comments

and electronic pixels

 

sometimes a room remembers

how to empty itself

 

this afternoon

it might feel good to be alive

laugh at the casual iambic oasis

imagine a woman

pressed against her window

each sign a rule

each sign a rule I want to break

 

sure

it’s selfish to believe my own angst

is exclusively my own

 

the crackle of the wood clock

in those brief intervals

when I try to convince myself

that I can’t overcome

 

I am grateful for double stairways

and the occasional changing traffic light

 

and when she wears her red linen dress

my ribcage rattles

my skin tells stories

of an amber pool

emerging from the bud

of a moonflower

Reruns of Electric Static

 

love is an old word

we forget every morning

amid mass machine

tendrils of granite

unconscious

 

red lights blink over

human tininess

iron brains tied to

overpriced university

 

we came for something

anything

nothing

then disappeared

as if to seal our silence

 

to haunt the editorial pages

the invisible Niagaras

whose scarred fingers

beg for cigarette

hotel room 4am

 

rejoice at the last syllables

of a Shakespearean sonnet

 

here in the face of war

here when the news greets us

with new health scares

here where Montreal

goes unreported

here where our taxes

fund our own prisons

here where visions lie scattered

across car graveyard

here amid the black bubbles

of refineries

here as we vanish in a cloud

of vague generalities

 

how easy trust can bleed

through acid sunsets

torn from stone tenements

that leave nostalgic aftertaste

 

wait for glass promise

under the harsh light

of yesterday

and write

on a sheet of paper

how each look resembles

a long absence

 

 

 

 

John Casquarelli is an English professor at Boricua College in New York. He received his M.F.A. in the Creative Writing program at Long Island University. He was awarded the 2010 Esther Hyneman Award for poetry. His work has appeared in several publications including Downtown Brooklyn, Kinship of Rivers, By The Overpass, Brooklyn Paramount, Pulp, The International Rebecca West Society, and Sun’s Skeleton. His first full-length book, On Equilibrium of Song, was published by Overpass Books (2011).

Three Poems by Duane Locke

TERRESTRAIL ILLUMINATION, NO 195

Wall paper, goldfinched,
But no song.

Brown streaks, roof leak, cross
Black cap on yellow head.

A previous anonymous renter
Scraped his intials, GB.

The leaves once bright green
Have curled, wilted.

In Venice, upstairs room,
Tintoretto angels fly through walls.

These angels wear costume standardly designed
For adolescent proms.

I am at the prom in my room,
Dancing with a cardboard replica of Daphne.

I feel against my shirt, her leaves
Pressing against my cloth-covered backbone.

Daphne, like a Tinteretto angel in a Venice upstairs
Is flying through my wall.

Daphne is flying through a paper goldfinch,
Going outside, leaving me. She left a leaf.



TERRESTRAIL ILLUMINATION, NO. 196

Montepulciano cobblestones speak
Through my shoe soles to my feet.

My feet communicate by feet mail the message
Throughout inner forest of my neutral trees.

The news is a memoir of the air that ruffles hair
Of those on the grasses around the cathedral in the valley.

The air recounts the lovers’ conversations as they talk
About they learned when schooled in the sciences.

Soon, the spoken words disappear, and the script projected
On the theatre of my mind is only commas, semi-colons, dashes.

The cream-colored rice paper seen in my mind contains no periods
No question marks. It is as no sentence wanted to end, or have a content.

I understand. I understand, although nothing is really understood,
Everything is only partially understood, sometimes completely misunderstood.



TERRESTRAIL ILLUMINATION, NO. 197

Warm, this room. More than warm, hot.
But no wood, no fire in old cast-iron heater.

The cast-iron heater has cast on its side, eagles.
When heated, the eagles’ wings turn red.

Eagles wing black, so it could not be the heater
Is what that is making this room hot.

So I started serious research to determine why so hot.
I discovered by a rare look at calendar it was summer.



Duane Locke lives in Tampa, Florida near anhinga,
gallinules, raccoons, alligators, etc.
He has published 6,661 poems, includes 29 books of poems. His latest
book publication, April 2012,
Is DUANE LOCKE, THE FIRST DECADE, 1968-1978, BITTER OLEANDER PRESS.
This book is a republication
Of his first eleven books, contains 333 pages. Order from
http://www.bitteroleander.com/releases.html,
Or Amazon.
[for more information on Duane Locke, search Google by clicking on
Duane Locke, or Duane Locke, books, or Duane Locke, arts,
or Duane Locke, The First Decade]

Three poems by Steve Kleptar

Jetlagged 

You haven’t burned your hands climbing rope since the eighth grade.

Even then it would have been easy to change your name.

Everything you wore had fringes or spangles or lace.

Someone you knew from the clinic might have lent you a pen.

Who gave you that ball tied to a wooden cup?

When you flipped your wrist, didn’t all the dogs curl up like dinner rolls?

Where had the fevered scarecrow been?

Jetlagged at the London zoo, your face might have slumped against glass

where boa constrictors wriggled in fragrant dark.

You could have etched tattoos on your shoulders, arms and thighs.

I for one would have striven forward to that mystery.

I would have offered my plastic bags.

I would have opened the latch on my atomic bike.

Everything you wore that day marked you out for love.

My nose would have itched, I would have believed anything to touch that road.

How my legs ached.

I had walked to the world’s edge.

I would have leapt into your bed, screaming like a kamikaze grave.

My fingertips would have dug explosive pink from pavement, just to make you smile.

It would have been hard to slog forward through this heat.

Everything melts or blurs or wishes the day would dissolve in rain.

Even now, when Olympic madness twists how we view this new terrain

and my trained eyes believe nothing but the ghosts of cells,

I can barely make out where your shadow opens onto this veranda of melted light.

Molecules

A certain misery in the genes:

shadow-drilled face

           and teeth the color

of rain.

How many branches

to reach this pebbly

fruit?

Your questions are ladders

vanished into clouds,

            a gambler’s desperate

shout.

Even when your hands

are full, smoke blackens the cave

of your fearful lungs.

Deepinsh

     Iteepin,

                               She-e-sh.        

City of Glass

Streets of water or liquid glass –

we steam along in an open boat, motor

purring and red sky blurry through

the arching dome far above our startled heads.

We’re encased in this womb of glass, colored light

reflecting off the sides and your hair

on fire with rainbow hues. My hands

have grown huge, wide as a tennis racquet’s

hypnotic face, and my fingers squirm

like gorgon’s hair.

I realize now I am made for ice.

I dive, slapping my finny feet,

driving toward cold bottom where ice mountains

glow frigid from their jagged peaks.

Your boat speeds away to the palace of glass

and I can see her wake spreading from below,

a green oil slick widening overhead.

I can only imagine your eyes, brilliant, flaming

from your golden face, those beacons

for creatures crowded in this bubbly surf

struggling to mold any form that makes them whole.

Steve Klepetar's work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recently his work has appeared inRed Poppy, Ygdrasil, The Electric Poet, and FIVE2ONE. His most recent chapbook, "My Father Teaches Me a Magic Word," was recently published by Flutter Press.

A Poem by Janet Rice Carnahan

MUSIC OF THE MUSE

 

Snow . . .

           Falling

                       Falling

                                   Falling

                                   Flying

                           Flying

                Flying

Birds . . .

Stream . . .

             Flowing

                          Flowing

                                       Flowing

                                       Growing

                           Growing

                Growing

Plants . . .

As life sings and breathes in the sweet balance of harmony,

The muse . . .

Has the chance

          To    s                     e

                   M             L

                         I 

 

                               And dance!

 

A twenty year career in early childhood education, taught Janet there is nothing more creative in this world than the mind of a five year old! Creativity is always a wonder in motion. Children understand free form in movement, motion and speech. Poetry offers a natural flow, enhancing that innate sense of freedom. Living in Laguna Beach, California, Janet is surrounded by artists, writers and photographers, all blending fresh creativity with the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. Her poems have been published in an anthology, “Prompted: An International Collection of Poems”, 2011, “Pyrokinection” and “Jellyfish Whispers”,both online poetry sites, June 2012. One of Janet’s favorite quotes is, “Creativity is just the intellect having fun.” (Author unknown) Indeed it is and may the joy of it never end!