Three Poems from your editor, April Salzano

Out of Thin Air

I must choose my words, carefully
and quietly, so they do not hear me coming
with a butterfly net and a straight jacket.
I am diving up/through loose threads of sleep.
Neither will not come willingly & Both/
is too heavy for me to lift//on my own, what
goes unhomogenized will settle at the top
to be skimmed/from another dream.

 

I Will Rise Above

Hallelujah cliché

I sing as I

rise

           to sky,

palm balls into fist,

          body into air

in my dance

of mending.

 

 

here i am inside

[jackpot]

of your mouth

(w)hole/home

dish liquid/dreams

lubricate/domesticated

fuckery//

 

obsolete breed (less

obscure) monkeys see

dildos do/the trick & quick

before anybody comes--

money shot//

 

faceful of miracle

(whip)

 

 

 

April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two sons. She recently finished her first collection of poetry, for which she is seeking a publisher and is working on a memoir on raising a child with autism. Her work has appeared in journals such as Poetry Salzburg, Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Montucky Review, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle. The author also serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press. 

Three Poems by Felino A. Soriano

from antiphonies & spectrums

 

 

 

research

 

through these trees’ splayed fingers

?frozen? loose, —(perhaps winter-causational)

disconnected windows

rename ability’s purview, the vertical body

bends in the slight slouch of the toddler’s

drawing s, the base, oldest, gnarled

or oil-brown, either within the parallel of

succinct connoted experiential language—

 

distance draws a disclaimer: notice-or

disdain a memory’s focal fixation into

rage or indifferent ambulation: understood . . .

 

I enjoy the light’s normal procedure: ongoing—

entertaining spectrums of engaged angular

syntax, in the aspect of serenade these whispers

introduce eventual echoes’ access to fade—

 

within this noon of reactive reading, this repeat

of days’ rituals and ongoing plagiarizing of

focus on maintaining balance, thought or

meander move within, within

wander-thinking, sketching

characteristics of light and

fragmentary tonalities

 

 

upon recognizing

 

when watching, glances open-though slim as empty

homes whose corporeal experience

rise

of/from wings and adolescent circumferences of

emotional

mishandlings ————

 

                                     ————errors sharpen, shape-arrow

wrong-timeframe

aim

purity of idea

wanders

lost-from identity misinterpretation, the centripetal moveme(a)nt

ranges, reddened flame compositional music

the centipede’s legs ignite among

a synonym toward unrecognized

scent-though

beautiful in the contextual

pattern of range and somewhat

subconscious

believability

 

 

parallel as fixation

 

a multiplying motive spans itself:

cannot its version, this/now

interpretation — the language’s

fulcrum invites, incites what

excels within a watching version of

motivated simplicity, exceeding

virtue as rest, or visitation as

corporeal manifestation, rejoice

then when time’s verbal praise

relaxes muscular tendencies, and

the purity of comprised permissions

persuades within the action of

particular interactions

 

 

 

 

Felino A. Soriano is a member of The Southern Collective Experience.  He is the founding editor of the online endeavors Counterexample Poetics and Differentia Press.   His writing finds foundation in created coöccurrences, predicated on his strong connection to various idioms of jazz music.  His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology, and appears in various online and print publications, with recent poetry collections including watching what invents perception (WISH Publications, 2013), Of these voices (whitesky ebooks, 2013) Pathos|particular invocation (Fowlpox Press, 2013), Extolment in the praising exhalation of jazz (Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2013), and Hinge Trio (La Alameda Press, 2012).  He lives in California with his wife and family and is the director of supported living and independent living programs providing supports to adults with developmental disabilities. Links to his published and forthcoming poems, books, interviews, images, etc. can be found at www.felinoasoriano.info.

Two Poems by Taylor Graham

LOCO-MOTIVE

 

This crazy puppy, electrified

energy, wild; even after all the systematic

training, official by-the-book –

 

it was brick-boring: sit stay down heel.

She lost the nova in her eye.

It broke my patience, keeping her close

 

as a bad secret.

I packed her in the truck,

headed away. End of pavement, wild-

 

flowers past their prime, faded

like ruined puppies; stems of wild carrot,

lupine gone to pod.

 

I unclipped her leash.

She leaped feet flying, rapturous.

I called, she circled back –

 

dashed off to scout the wind-blown

world. Free as spirit,

the dog I didn’t know I loved.

 

 

47 ZXX:

 

title of my latest draft, as typed

by the new kitten.

Compared to the sable bitch, his black-

sheen coat is satin. Not so the pin-

points of his claws. He

puts her in her place. Yesterday

from the shelter, six

months old – already he’s seasoned

seaman of shifting tides

and space, the diverse shores

of homelessness.

What does he wish?

He accepts our random clutter

after the shelter’s scrubbed floor

and fluorescent corners.

He’s found a dozen spots

to hide in ambush; clambers from

paper piles to computer table,

makes himself cozy on the keyboard,

bats at images on the screen;

revises my poems

into typos, and vice versa.

What I wrote on Saturday is dead.

 

 

 

 

Two Poems by Maureen Kingston

The Redline(r)

 

My lyric's

trolley tracks

transect,

smile,

needle

in subversive

cross-stitch,

hop the

segregated

sampler’s

electric fence,

to link,

to outthink

the gated

‘hoods

of poetry.

 

 

 

The Un-Found Poems

 

Duotrope’s® 0.00% : zero calorie journals living on air : with no

acceptances : do they really exist? : I mean : beyond the head

of a status pin : beyond family and friends? : why of course they

do : you say : but how can we know for sure? : the Pushcart®

tells us so : (winners not nominees)

 

 

 

Maureen Kingston’s poems are forthcoming in Gargoyle, Melancholy Hyperbole, and So to Speak.

 

A Poem by James Mirarchi

ZOOM

 

Move cursor over nose, mole, waistline,

stray grey hair, camel toe

CLICK

Make bigger

until they become familiar allies

Soothing strands

to weave with

into collective patch

Fall in love with pixels

Magnification joins us

Bigger is OBVIOUSLY better

Pull back

into romantic distance

A medium shot

Feel the bonds loosen

 

Get closer again

Print out x-rays

Infrared exposes us in inky shadows

Husks filled with floating dinosaur DNA

A few have pristine diamonds inside

 

Only frame rare x-rays

Hang them in abode

Bravely heed them about once a year

 

 

 

James Mirarchi grew up in Queens, New York. In addition to his poetry collections, Venison and Dervish, he has written and directed short films, which have played at festivals. His poems have appeared in Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Poydras Review, gobbet, Boyslut, Bluepepper, Orion headless, The Mind[less] Muse, Dead Snakes, egg, The Recusant, Subliminal Interiors Magazine, Bad Robot Poetry, and Clockwise Cat.

A Poem by Bill Jansen

Front Page

At the Bon Jour Cafe
a front page athlete
splashes into the Oregonian.
Plaster dust on my bagel
from a cupid shaped hole
in the ceiling.

The cafe is on 3rd Avenue.
A empty paper bag
floats across traffic like a single mom.

I ask the waitress for a new bagel.
Or a Lifeguard's whistle.

Then a bronze wet hand
rises out of page one
and steals the salt.

Bill Jansen lives in Forest Grove, Oregon.  Recent work as appeared or will soon appear in Gap Toothed Madness and Asinine Poetry.

Three Poems by John Pursch

Bardo

 

Drifting in pungent augury, 

clairvoyant waders eschew 

wombs of crescent greed, 

smooching till daylight gasps. 

 

High winds gust in coed gridlock,

hovering off to text peer scenery.

 

Urgency rescinds a flickering 

film of grainy features, 

mixing dawn with 

universal thighs. 

 

Who the Moon Is

It was so easy to finally die. The kettle had reached a quiet boil, the empty mug sat ready to be filled, the dimly lit kitchen peacefully receptive. The motive of Socrates had made itself abundantly clear only days before, in the flash of insight reserved for local hound dogs, foreign dignitaries, and the lithesome nubility of our seemingly arbitrary yet eminently rational preferences. Indeed, when the time came, the cup overflowed and steamed silently; the next in line woke easily and at peace, trudged off to the bathroom, lit the spare chamber in futile search for the unremembered, and returned in gratitude to splendid darkness. In the end the tea was hot, the overflow saturated a waiting towel, and something unobtrusive and omnipresent hummed on as the ink ran out, night fading ever so gently into the setting of the moon.

Cyclic Cellophane

Rags evolve, debaters fold, and swallows indemnify trepidation’s thermogenic martyrdom, colluding with equestrian jugglers in cathartic seasonal exploits. Feudal channels shunt hammerhead contraptions down mucilaginous pie lawns, schlepping doubtful carrion for orthopedists in jaundiced jai alai surge. Babies tee up origami pines, shirking polyester brawls, secreted at rawhide terminals. Goofballs emote in tensile oscillations of hallowed cilia beneath anachronistic drumstick cliques of doting operatic somnambulance, reading awkward stencils from boardroom stirrups. Orthodoxy camps in oar-lined mortuaries, winding anterior pleasure in towel clerk simpering, morphed to secluded shin depth. Shelled hooves break interred mumbling fossils, wispy bottles saturating warmly sallow pants, plucked through airless phyla. Forensic sheepskin nestles in elevated truck twangs, sealing sumptuous hues of cyclic cellophane in hiatus glue. Thawed offenders presage interior locust wheels, rubbed to lullaby infringement, leaning every watched whirl to pendular domicile subtraction pith. Moistened archers spark in tightly lectured stony hose retrieval putty, shearing tough loci for slackened cherubic walnuts. Overlooking the septic pallor of everyday greed, scalding itself repeatedly in showers of terminal flesh, polluted desire flops headlong from bridal canal to birthright’s flatulent incipience, swaddled in terrifying broth, gaping at the passing eye’s libidinous wink. Cougars shame peach trees with herd relief, park subsonic testimony in aisles of slanted fusion, and fizz within cephalic sanctuaries. Enhancements scroll by silently, flaunting obsequious extremities in cross-legged poodle sanctions, imbuing sloughed-off gubernatorial chandeliers with frottage. Plumes age till croutons pass customary goggles, inspecting levitation syndicates for soupy spanners, leaving nautical phonemes in charnel disarray. Barely flavored awareness clouds the steepest incendiary treadmills, shoving countless shuffling feeders into gargled waistline landfill, back to trusty blackened sinkhole determinism’s ruddy yelp, slashing down hillside demon rants of tulip flaunt and roaring iron bluster, testified in brooding thrusts of threadbare ideation. Extraction vows elucidate heedlessly sportive ellipses, doting on clover potables, segued into fine sand. A flair for comical inanity erodes to dusky penance, truthful discord, rancor unseen since dashed penumbrae embraced the lunar motifs of centuries spent in turgid shackles of unicellular ululation. Grazing coattail skew from cauterized duodenal emblems of nationwide distraction, there chimes a tomb of headwaiter virulence, flattened to the cry of flung fedoras and wartime somnambulance, grimacing to say “Cheese.”

 

 

 

 

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. Nominated for Best of the Net in 2012, his work has appeared in many literary journals. His most recent book, Intunesia, is available in paperback from White Sky Books at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks . He's @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.