A Poem by Harmony Hodges

Only the Earth

She lambasted her way to the depths of the pit

unwilling to face his essence.
Now in a hole
a circle of granite surrounded her
melting, cooling, weathering, eroding
she morphed, her breath metallic.
Reverberation of her retinas
as she closed her eyes
yielded liquid crystal
until arid.
Now finite
she was a free slave to a living death
but etched her new nom de plume
along the wall
with her black hills gold
before dropping it and grinding it with her heels.
Now the earth would know her name
and only the earth.

Harmony Hodges is an artist living in Portland Oregon. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found online in the journal With Painted Words.

A Poem by Michael H. Brownstein

Angel in the Doorway

From the doorway an angel in red
a fire of love, an entrance to hope.
All who enter here do not burn.

She stands behind the door
peering out, looks past the trees,
winter and her grass remains green.

How can this angel be sad?
I watch her from my window
and do not understand.

Wait a moment with me, please.
I have to tell her something.
I have to tell her she is loved.


Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses.  His work has appeared in The Cafe Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others.  In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), and I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011).  He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

Three Poems by Felix Maple

Grief

Dumbstruck.
I was blind.
(...)
Grief.
Anger.
Pain.

Silence.

You've gone.

Next to us,

an old manreads a newspaper.

Alone:

English boys

don't show
their feelings.

I'm cold, in August.

Grief.

Words have

been emptied
from my brain.

Fear.

Fine as wine

 

So you really are gone.
Anyone there?
The flight of steps
leads to a dark-lit
wasteland of
humid bedsheets.

The room where

I died is where
you exposed me.
Cold, cold bed…

Thinking of Langston Hughes.

Life is fine,
Fine as wine…

Hey, Langston,

just for me:sprout a
symphony of colours
out of the sound of blue

 

Dismantled

Here I sit, dismantled:

ice cold lips
where sweet whispers
once were.
Sealed in spite.

Felix Maple is a professional geographer living in Paris, France. He was a volunteer paramedic for a while. He is British but has been living in France most of his life which is confusing to him. He teaches geography at the University of Paris 8 (Vincennes – Saint Denis) and writes poetry whenever he can. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal, Red River Review, Visceral Uterus, Brevity Poetry Review and Eunoia Review. His blog is at: http://felix-maple.blogspot.fr/

A Poem by Afzal Moolla

The Dilution of Memory

Embers fade,
disappearing into hushed night.

Petals wither,
falling on soft grass.

Words pale,
obscured by anguish within.

Faces blur,
dimmed by galloping years.

Kisses lose,
the urgency of bygone furnaces.

Feelings recede,
lying dormant in shielded vaults.

Love loses,
fatigued after numberless skirmishes.

Pain flees,
seeking new wounds to inflict.

Scars remain,
sentinels against,

the dilution of memory.



Afzal Moolla lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.  He is an amateur writer and does so for pleasure.

A Poem by J.K. Durick

Leaving

Spur of the moment decisions
like these take years to make –

accumulated grief, slights,
some rights and wrongs,

petty differences piled high,
like dirty laundry,

unsorted, unfolded,
impossible to put away,

and arguments, endless
arguments, arguments

so vague they disappear
when we go to explain

who we are in all of this,
but it’s finally final, like

the front door, the three stairs,
the walkway, and the car

at the end of the drive
ready to act on what we decide.



J. K. Durick is presently a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Four and Twenty, Common Ground Review, and Literary Juice.

A Poem by Rukhaya MK

On Valentine's Day

They ask me
Am I in love
I had not
I wasI am not
Will not be.

The past seems now
pointless as the pictures
in my wedding album
where the bride and groom
were once caught in a race
with sealed promises
on the lips of the groom
and vagrant hopes
in the eyes of the bride-
Three two one…
the bride racing halfway
through the starting point
not seeing him tag along
ending her expectations half-way
waiting for him to catch up-
but-
he never came.

The album returns
now content to be where it is-
locked in a remote past.
Hurt so many times
she became accustomed to it
dressing it each time
Herself
And then the hurt began
to grow in her
Then it grew into her
Now she was the hurt
You couldn’t tell apart
from her and the hurt…
Hert.

The pain is not the misery now
It is the scary lack of feel
the unsounded numbness
the vacant heart
that lives but no longer feels.

Yes,love had once
knocked on my door
And the doors were wide open
frantically forcefully fanatically
The sounds have now fled
but the echoes are still there.

Rukhaya MK, literary critic, poet and academician, has published her works in anthologies and journals.  An award-winning writer, she has won accolades in writing at the university level, state level, national level and international level.  The prizes pertain to essay writing, film criticism, versification, story-writing, screenplay-writing and slogan writing.  She has also won prizes in painting, elocution and computer designing.  Rukhaya is also editor of a national collection of poems called Inklinks, and on the editorial board of the journal, Discourse.

Two Poems by Niall Rasputin

mourning walk

I bare-pad down

the zig-zag path

of broken laughter

and glowing-hot screams

 

breathe razorblades

cry buckshot

piss magma

 

stop by your plaintive grave

to remember why

and where I'm walking

 

this rancid world

without you

is not fit for maggot

nor man

 

just keep moving

toward the bastard sun

until he gets spooked

and swallows

me whole

 

then we'll dance victory

in that voluptuous molten belly

like ghost-dog gypsies

and start our dream

over again

 

love and meanness

are fireproof

 

 

sometimes

 

today

in the mucky midst

of your delicious deceit

your coy dog smile

was like a sack full of dead kittens

on a wood and feather altar

to the Lord of Futile Fuckery

who was worshipped

circa bone nose rings

by ancient hunchback assholes

who ball-busted their spouses

to make it rain.

 

and they really needed rain.

 

and you really slit me open

sometimes.

(my affection is bleeding out

like a bruised sunset)

 

 

 

Niall Rasputin lives on a houseboat in SE Louisiana.  He is in love with the swamp, but often has secret trysts with the stars.  He believes that laughter and song are the finest of all opiates.  He writes his madenesses and passions down as a form of daily exorcism.  He will never understand his own species, but will die trying.  He is never wrong, because he refuses to know anything.  He is 245 in dog years.