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.