A Poem by JD DeHart

Pedestal

 

the danger of elevating others,

the angel now painfully

visible and laden with error,

the high place creating only

the possibility of fall,

shatter, damage,

now a porcelain figure

lies on the floor, cracked

and suffering, and I am no doctor

nor priest, uncertain of what to do.

 

 

 

JD DeHart is a writer and teacher.  His writing has appeared in Eye On Life Magazine and The Commonline Journal, among other publications.

Two Poems by Ken L. Jones

The Minotaur In The Dime Store

My thoughts they are a puppet show

Where sour apple paper dolls
Act out candlestick lit bedtime stories
As ashen as Emily Dickenson’s
Purple shadow songs
And in the sweet, sweet lilac
Of my afternoon nap
Where tumbleweeds like spinning wheels
Perform a rusted symphony
As I dream of the silver dust of your kiss
Now an apparition in the mist
A warm whisper of indigo
Because though we still live together
You left me long ago.

A Still Life

On this prize overcast almost raining morning in May

My papier-mâché heart breaks with sympathy
For the steam driven merry-go-round
Of our landscaped courtyard of nights and hours
Where in a vineyard that we planted long ago
But have lately let grow fallow
We bicker like beasts in a menagerie
About topics whose dim corridors appear endless
And when we are done for the day
And unspeaking and in separate rooms
All seems like hallucinations I cannot remember
In this my garden of quiet sadness 
Where I attempt somehow to live through all of this
While I paint what well maybe my last canvas



Ken L. Jones has written everything from Donald Duck comic books to dialogue for the Freddy Krueger movies for the past thirty plus years.  In the last three years he has gained great notice for his vast publication of horror poetry which has appeared in many anthology books, blogs, magazines and websites and especially in his first solo book of poetry Bad Harvest and Other Poems.  He is also publishing recently in the many fine anthology poetry books that Kind of A Hurricane Press is putting out.

A Poem by Amy Barry

Tomorrow Maybe Love

 

With long, powerful movements,

she covers one yard after another,

swimming the breaststroke,

raises her head above the

surface, draws air, then

lowers it back down.

 

Weightless, timeless in the water,

alone in the swimming pool,

thoughts of him haunt,

murmur and whisper.

Uncertainty plagues,

like a toothache.

 

 

 

Amy Barry writes poems and short stories. Her poems have been published in anthologies, journals, and e-zines, in Ireland and abroad. Her poems have been read and shared over the radio in Australia, Canada and Ireland. She loves traveling. Trips to India, Nepal, China, Bali, Paris, Berlin have all inspired her work. When not inspired she plays Table Tennis.

 

Two Poems by A.J. Huffman

Letting Logic Lie

quietly between us

I hold your secrets

of unfeeling
locked in the ebony sun
of my mind
as you play
at bending the barriers
that hold us in stalemate
waiting
certain I will break
             them
for you

My job is to mirror all you are not

You search me for the expected

what you know is there
finding only saddened serenity
and your surprise
when you realize you pushed
too hard
and
       I
          fell
                into your world
when I looked you in the eye

And swore we had never met

 

 

 

 

Desire

 

is a drop of blood permeating the ocean.

An infusion of color consuming initial point

of contact, slowly spreading in wash

of tendrils.  Temporary is the label

of their touch.  They tickle, tease with soft

hues that distort vision, but quickly grow

weak, dissolve until there is nothing

but the original body, flowing, untainted

by memory.

 

 

 

A.J. Huffman has published seven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her eighth solo chapbook, Drippings from a Painted Mind, won the 2013 Two Wolves Chapbook Contest.  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, haiku, and photography have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com

 

A Poem by J.J. Campbell

All the Damn Yesterdays

 

laying naked in

a casket of regret

 

wondering whose

lips are touching

your soul tonight

 

all the damn

yesterdays pile

together and are

quietly being set

on fire in my mind

 

some mistakes

are unforgivable

 

and no matter how

often the sun rises

the next day

 

the pain never

ceases to crush

me each damn

day

 

it's the stubborn

bastard that lights

the candle in the

window and refuses

to give up hope

 

old romantics

rarely die with

a smile on their

face

 

 

 

J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) lives and writes in Ohio. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Dead Snakes, ZYX, Nerve Cowboy, The Camel Saloon and Pyrokinection. His most recent collection, Sofisticated White Trash, is available wherever people buy books these days. You can find him most days on his highly entertaining blog, evil delights (http://evildelights.blogspot.com).

Three Poems by April Salzano

The Eyes That Consumed Me

were eating someone else.
I was collateral damage to her
tragedy.  His mouth spoke
words that buried me in ash,
burned me in place, still life,
photo-imperfect and forever
hungry.



Getting What I Deserve

You were a smokeless structure
fire that I should have extinguished
before the heat scarred me.  Forgetting
would be a blessing, a welcome breath
of amnesia where I suffocate on memory,
held down by regret.  Your body was
a false idol I worshipped blindly
at the temple of adulterers.  If mistakes
are letters, sew one to my chest.
Thread needle through skin to punish me
for what I did not do when I was forever
altered by your touch -- because I let it
remind me momentarily of someone else.



Pinned in the Past

I am held hostage
by curse with no antidote.
I do not want to remember
loving you.  I am pulling
arms out of faded blue
flannel shirt you never buttoned.
I've got one leg stuck
in the 90's, all grunge-love,
lost in feigned apathy and suicide
music.  Something's in the way
of happiness, then as much as now.

April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two sons.  Most recently, she was nominated for two Pushcart prizes and finished her first collection of poetry.  She is working on a memoir on raising a child with autism.  Her work has appeared in journals such as Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, 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 Allison Grayhurst

Myth

  

It is not the same as being limited

by loneliness, these feelings of broken fidelity,

abandonment. It is not enough to germinate

in this grief, pleading for a picture

of better times, appealing to

memory, sentiment, knowing

I could be wrong.

 

Those days, married

to your insatiable outpourings, ecstasy

just to listen, to share our minds - walking

on streetcar tracks at 4 a.m. and never sleeping.

I carried you like a book, wilting always in life, but never

when mingled with your stature. Between us,

nothing was spoiled, not soft either.

I was delivered by your high forehead and

by your crazed emotions. I was celebrating.

 

If it was only

paper flowers, a painted-on sunrise or

imagined completeness, in that time, I was

devoured by my own individuality, stripped

of my conditioning, a person to reckon with, lean on -

whole. I was so much better than I am here, as I am

salvaging a heartbeat from habit, marked by a used-up destiny,

just me with these crippled hands, bare feet, no mentor

to merge with, nothing

to follow.

 

 

Sanguine

  

    One small awakening to accept

acceptance - a lethargic arm on my shoulder

weighing down. Air that is security has never been my ocean.

I have never been able to trigger kinships in a field of sunlight. No light

has more volume.

I am content in places where my imagination can reign,

where definition is arbitrary, redundant, and not very useful.

    I tried to love you, dive into your trachea, show

you the substance that enriches my cells. But we have

different vocations: I make windows. And you stand outside

with your scales of distraction, participating, socially at ease.

    You have grown tall, wedded as you are

to the world’s expectations.

What once was lean, marvelously eccentric,

has become typical, robust

as an animated ideal.

    You gave up your awkward insecurities, replaced them

with suave affection and loveless sex. You are not warm,

though you feign warmth. You know how to act -

teeth set in alignment, and your apparel - clean of cat hairs,

with the appropriate amount of ingenuity,

just enough to generate interest but not alarm.           

    Old people are getting older and dying,

they can hardly believe

it has come down to this. They lose their lovers,

have appendages aching with weakness - fingers

that cannot move on cue to stroke a cheek,

fingers that want to flesh out, plump up,

become tantalizing again.

    I have taken you with my fingers,

awakening the soft space between

your naval and groin. I have laid across,

massaged every ounce of need

into the vulnerable region separating your hipbones.

And I would go further.

But you have no natural shade,

and it is too exhausting to keep toting around your wares.

    You supplied me with inspiration. The postage is paid.

I must move closer to the edge of the road for you.

I must make room,

walk past, surpass, enter

my Rosewood red front door, without.

 

 

You Would Not Have Me

  

I would have taken the whole of you

in one hand, guiding you

through the pressured caverns of

a multi-layered release, and not let go

until your anguish was exposed and then relieved.

But you would not have me,

immune to my inferno and my skin

electrified with desire

for you to hold me, tuning out a rhythm on

my clustered nerves. You would not have me,

not slice such intensity with your tongue, not offer ease,

just a little ease, to my rising frenzy. And you,

stoically contained, flirting with a superficial smile

and with those blind to your tall form. I could have

freed you into the depths

where ugly things wake to a surprising beauty,

glowing with rapture, like a last breath

before surrender. You could have

been mine.

 

 

 

Allison Grayhurst is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has over 370 poems published in more than 190 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers in 1995. Since then she has published ten other books of poetry and four collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press December 2012. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com