A Poem by Paul Tristram

A Naive Trap for Love-Sick Souls

She unclasped the ornate
silver Celtic chain
from around her neck
and held up the little
coffin shaped locket
to my ear and I listened
at the little hinge upon the side
just like to the sea inside a shell
as she had instructed.

"It's faint but I can hear them.
It's like being in a back bedroom
of a terraced house late at night
when it's perfectly quiet outside
then hearing someone groaning
loudly in every consecutive house
all down the side of your road.
How fascinating and remarkable,
will you show me how it's done?"

"In its native tongue it is called
'a naive trap for love-sick souls'
Yes, I will show you soon enough
just be patient while I finish tiring
of our present moments together!"


Seven Severely Severed Sentiments

I was going to write an intricate essay,
bringing into play
both the weight of rumours
and the coldness of known fact.
Woven intelligently and skillfully
with outside influences; the weather,
the privatization of both
British Rain and Royal Mail,
morning hangovers and other general
irritabilities, curses and daily obstacles.
Interjected with sarcastic humour
and peppered with cold-blooded horror.
Segment the entire lot into seven meaty parts
to later psycho-analyse, point fingers at,
tar and feather, flog publically
and use as some form of insane evidence
for a horrible-yet to be decided-future date!
But what is the point, really?
When I simply just do not like you anymore
and it is all your fault not mine, sunshine.



Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.

A Poem by Ken L. Jones

Shared Memories

The warbling birds left plenty unsaid during the hours
That wilted in the winter sun on that icy beach
That cooed sweet nothings that were never meant for me
But unknown to the world of many sizes
I was born and raised in life on the moon
And even though my existence has been
Far from a pool of honey at least I always had you
You never exactly left
Even if you weren't always there for me
And if sometimes you filled me with regrets
Still you are here
Something you've always told me counts for everything in the end
And so for that I will have to take your work
I wanted all of this to be much more than that
But perhaps that's neither of our faults but is the very nature
Of this mortal world where little that's good or right ever gets done
And when it does it's at the highest of prices and is very little fun
Which explains why at the end of most people's lives
The smart ones always seek elsewhere than here when they search for paradise

For the past thirty-five plus 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 his poetry.  This volume held a great allure for him as he has long been an aficionado of such places of chance and fun.  His earliest memory almost six decades ago was of the well-known The Pike amusement park in Long Beach, California, which he lived very close to.  Later when he was in grade school his parents bought a house in Anaheim, California, that was only a skateboard's ride away from Disneyland where he often went and was lucky enough to become friendly with its creator Walt Disney which years later resulted in him being employed by Disney Studios doing various creative things there for a time.  Just prior to that when he was first married he worked full-time at Knott's Berry Farm where he met its founder Walter Knott.  To this day he remains fascinated by places like this and they often seep into both the poetry he writes and the many works of prose fiction that he has also concurrently published in the last decade.

A Poem by Susan Dale

Us

A barb wire
         hour
              around us
A ragged tear
   Beyond repair
             Arrow piercing
      this bloodless vein

Susan Dale's poems and fiction are on Kind of a Hurricane Press, Ken*Again, Penman Review, Inner Art Journal, Feathered Flounder, Garbanzo, and Linden Avenue.  In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.  She has two published chapbooks on the internet:  Spaces Among Spaces on languageandculture.org and Bending the Spaces of Time on Baromentric Pressures Authors Series.

A Poem by Theresa A. Cancro

Glower Scrapings

Your malcontent mixes
with ennui in the morning, just
watch it cast mortal slices among
minced words until we fall
into the basin under the sink,
bits of shaved lead, sexy-less
yet still druzy, sparks beneath
flannel, loose and shifty.

Shall we break the edges
of that wilted rose, never notice
where its soft petals land,
slink away while walls crumble
around us as a moth slips
off chipped piano keys, those
dirty teeth grinning at
our final demise?



Theresa A. Cancro (Wilmington, Delaware) writes poetry and fiction.  Many of her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print and online publications, including Jellyfish Whispers, Pyrokinection, Kind of a Hurricane Press anthologies, Dead Snakes, Kumquat Poetry, Leaves of Ink, The Artistic Muse, A Hundred Gourds, Cattails, Shamrock Haiku Journal, Chrysanthemum, and tinywords, among others.

Two Poems by Ken L. Jones

Aire for Cathy Mc

She was the loveliest shamrock in all of March
And will be as long as the pot is on the boil
China blue was her beauty
And her wonder graceful like a fiddle that
Had no name but the sugar of candy
And only three daylight wishes were her ransom
As she took from me all that she desired
Then left me like a ransacked beehive
A Spanish gallon shipwrecked on the coast of Ireland




All That Has Been Left Unsaid

I wait for sleep to cloud my sight
I seek oblivion in the night
Oh but then the morning comes
And when the wind warms cross my neck
I think in leaping hearted joy
That it is your perfumed breath
But then the realization comes upon me
Like a fishbone caught up in my throat
That I am alone in this ocean of men
A floating bottle without a note
Inside of it to explain myself
Or give a reason why
The city should not devour me whole
Why I should live when thousands die
And in the suicide of wind chimes
I remember looking into your eyes
Like flowing neon reflecting off of a
Brand new sports car's highly waxed hide
And all of this is monstrous to me now
A torn photograph whose negative long ago died
And so is our history chipping apart
One tiny piece at a time
Until all that I can recall
Is your smooth belly
Covered in sandy wine
Your hand clutching a giant
Chunk of sea ravaged coral
And you wore nothing more than that
And god have mercy were you adorable
My face has been ripped off from my head
But still I shamble through my unnatural routes
Refusing to go away like a bad disco tune
Or spent radioactive rods
In the debris of a shadowed moon
Once we obtained a passport of light
From a distant star
But unlike God who finger-paints
With volcanoes deserts and veldts
We only used it to fade out into gossamer threads
Heavy with the aroma of a single kiss
We were too busy tapping into
The primal instincts of a puppet show
That collapsed like a paper lantern
Infected with anthrax when touched by us
Not so very long ago

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 horro 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 Tejan Green Waszak

Distant Dreamers

 

This bridge crumbles behind me

as I race swiftly to the other side

No time to look back

though in my haste

I dare

to look down at the water

and imagine

a more

honorable battle

ending in the belly of a mammal

whose respect I’ve gained

for my tireless effort

though tragically

this will

in the body

of one with more might

may have a different

outcome

Obviously

I am no match for you

In this complicated game

there is no end

and you are receding

Further and further

some force pushes you out

into the dark

night on night skin

the air

intensifies

filled

with

salty suffocation

Mouth agape

requesting answers

there are none

You never dare ask

rejection is looming

You are slipping away

In the silence

your face shines brilliantly

for a moment

there is pleasure

a chance

to study you

In another city we could be strangers

pretend

we are innocent

Your noble face

could go quite far

in another place

Tendering

 

 

 

Tejan Green Waszak is a New York based writer, educator and doctoral student. She received an MFA in Creative  Writing from Long Island University and a BA in Journalism from Hunter College. She can often be found consulting with writers about their work in the writing center of Columbia University.

A Poem by Catherine Weiss

Deflation

 

I used to love the tides,

The taste of chilled salt air,

And the granite boulders scattered along the shoreline

Like dice cast in a glacial game of craps.

But there came a morning when

I looked for the ocean and I saw nothing but

Miles of seaweed shining in the sun,

Deflated.

I picked my way down the slope past the low tide mark

Where I swam the week before,

Now stepping carefully rock to rock.

A mackerel flapped at my feet,

The smacking sound too loud.

I stood with the fish

Until it was still.

 

“You disgust me,”

He said on the last night we spent together.

I sat on the floor and did not cry.

Later, the apology swooped in like a vaudeville hook,

But true things linger.

 

Tectonic plates drag apart

So slowly.

Solid rock splits unnoticed until

Continents are separated by an ocean

So vast the far coast is

Invisible.

 

The sun was hot and

The fish was dead.

Pebbles and silt underfoot

Warm and sharp,

Black grit between my toes.

I could hear the armored legs of a crab

Tottering towards the trench ahead.

It disappeared over the edge

And I followed.

Climbing down the cliffside,

Hand over hand,

The wall slick,

Damp algae underneath my fingernails.

The abyss was drained of sea-water and

The fall, when it came, was infinite.

 

 

 

Catherine Weiss is a poet and author living in Northampton, MA.  In her spare time she enjoys ping pong, monopoly, and audiobooks.  Her website with more info can be found at http://catherineweiss.com.