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

Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

Embracing Change . . .

I’m settling in

and every minute can be

daunting.  Becoming

your nothing, I’ve met

with suggestions

on tweaks and additions.

One of the biggest developments

is a hope that you devour

what you love.

And what you don’t.

Masterful Interpreters of the Human Vibe

I thought everything was right

with the world.  I saw dark

eyes below the surface.  There were deep

days of secrets.  I thought I had everything

contained.  I soon learned betrayal

was a one-room efficiency

across the parking lot.  I have one foot

in a place I knew I could never leave

without dying.  I did not want to grow

up.  I did not want to learn

about wearing my sins like a blanket,

but I was in no position to change things.

The risk of chaos was always near,

and poison literally hung in the air. 

I saw it as the subtle difference

between hope and desire.  There was still

something pure about that.  Of course,

it helps to be able to breathe

in dirty air.

Ungusted Wind

Heavy silence

weighing on lungs,

waiting for another breath

of memory.  A tussled-hair anticipation.

A relief from smothering

heat that never comes.

A.J. Huffman has published twelve full-length poetry collections, thirteen solo poetry chapbooks and one joint poetry chapbook through various small presses.  Her most recent releases, Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink), A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press), and Familiar Illusions (Flutter Press) are now available from their respective publishers.  She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2500 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, The Bookends Review, Bone Orchard, Corvus Review, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com.

A Poem by John Pursch

Flytrap Knuckle Sawdust

Into hand and out of mind, the coldest of ancient time-lapse fusion generators peddles its wares to childhood memories of long-forgotten carousels of nameless visages gone to fallow graveyard icicles in soldered unknown pirouettes of bifurcated ovens, folding subterranean rivulets in periodic building creaks, settling boneyard catacombs for futuristic generations to dream about in wanton heat replay of slo-mo's levitating jungle.

Stumbling into memorized rotisserie of highfalutin crockery and tailings sifted hourly by time-reversal junkies stirring cream in partly cloudy skyline beach on lunging temporal islands, standing lunatic lobotic leaders in numbered turnstile overcoats of fleshy gabardine solution sets, frosting differential brainpan gears with choicest bits of drilling sturgeon sideways glance from hovering groupies bent on pants regard and buttoned flytrap knuckle sawdust, pent in pending pentagrams of sawed-off cocktail roundhouse blues, topless scurvy shopping lists, and catatonic spouse machines, left beached and frantic, unattended in the checkout eyes of cancelled kisses.

Down to final swallow of succulent drip-shoot coffee canteen cafeteria blintz eruption police evasion escargot, she laughs a lot in solid rewind perspiration, seated over caustic influx bellhop door of dourly diurnal dihedral detrimental daguerreotypes of dawn-smoke doppelganger decoupage, deftly daft in toffee-tapered topographical toboggan tense of crammed grammatical thunder, cashing year-long photographs of librarian heads in thuds from well beyond eternal stacks of spearfish periodicals from decades drummed with thumbing thigh-scan surgery of lost enabled duodecimal decisions dogs on skewered impetuosity to sweaty fever omnibus in cornered trimaran of basal hat collection crosstown catnap snips, ferociously entailed in governed mental squad rant volume population drift.

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona.  Twice nominated for Best of the Net, his work 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.

A Poem by Linda M. Crate

100% Cruel

there's a 1/16th
of me that's curious to see
where you went,
but the other 15th of me is just
glad you're gone;
i wouldn't want to live a life
catering on you
24/7
i could only imagine how exhausting that
would be--

                                                            i told them to tell me
                                                            when you fell flat on your face because
                                                            i wanted to see it
                                                            part of me still does while
                                                            the other 1th of me
                                                            says that's just plain cruel;

can't be any crueler than the 100%
of you.

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvania native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville.  Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print.  Recently her two chapbooks, A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press--June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon--January 2014) were published.  Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015.  Her novel Dragons & Magic was published in October 2015.

Three Poems by April Salzano

Spoke too, Gone too

soon.  Decubitus.  Succubus.
Fuck you, bitch.  Trapped
between two worlds, one all goddamnit &
other polite and subtle as a hemorroid.
Excuse me.  The disease
of powerful seething, driving
to distraction.
Phone on hold.
Hold the phone.
Stop the fingers
on screens they aren't really
touching.  A book
on Auschwitz.  Life
on fire.  Death at the door.



I Know Where My Hands Have Been

They find things in the dark,
proud tongues talking, taking
signs away from languages and cupboards,
cupping the moon and casting it
aside in favor of brighter light.
How bare their intention,
how wrinkled their skin.



Let Every Sound Be

anything but familiar, all excuses,
original as origami
animals and balloon breasts stuffed
high in shirts that are too
small.  Let anyone who can,
do, and those who can't, crawl
on fours across floors
made of water.
Let the sun go out.
Keep the moon on hold.
Dictate the way the cards will
fall, and sweep them under hand-
loomed rugs and quilts of clay.

April Salzano is the co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press and is currently working on a memoir about raising a child with autism, as well as several collections of poetry.  Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in journals such as The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle.  Her chapbook, The Girl of My Dreams, is available from Dancing Girl Press.  Her poetry collection, Future Perfect,  is forthcoming from Pink. Girl. Ink.  More of her work can be read at aprilsalzano.blogspot.com

Three Poems by Joanna M. Weston

The Depth of Cold

a wedge of rime on the sky
this glacial sheet of stars

where tossed paper napkins
and a footprint coin snow

pigeons lost in hoar-frost
are speared by fallen icicles

an apron of milk spilt
the gelid end of solstice

in a river of ice-floes
shards of arctic moons



Unfocused

     -- 1st line from Sylvia Plath's "Years"

they enter as animals from the outer
rim of countries stretched by hunger

stealing comfort from the night
fleshed bones gnawed to the pith

incoming nightmare spectres
spiders weave old catastrophes

each broken promise spells our past
these strained smiles glisten

a paralysis of searchlight fear
marooned in focused high beams

horror's welcome plastered on skin
time disables our emotional centres

faith blankets all uncertainty
disbelief burned at every stake



These Nights

     -- 1st line from Thomas James' Love Song

love, the gold mouth has broken open
silver tongues spill on creased sheets

an arm fingers cradle moonlit words
the night's shadows waver over skin

a movement of dream in curled limbs
whispers of sweat speak wild roses

what questions can be asked of love?
lips caress night's hand and breast

the tide falls and sleep moves in
mouths close on raptured speech

Joanna M. Weston is married, has two cats, multiple spiders, a herd of deer, and two derelict hen-houses.  She has a middle-reader, "Frame and the McGuire," published by Tradewind Books, and poetry, "A Summer Father," published by Frontenac House of Calgary.  Her eBooks found at her blog:  http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com/