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.