A Poem by Samantha Seto

Vodka

The dark green bottle

impairs my wasted mind.

Midnight in our lamplit kitchen,

nothing relieves aftertaste.

 

I wear a stained black dress,

memories of the dinner party scar me.

Run to extreme ways of life,

every moment counts.

The promises we made,

at the ache of an angel's breath,

mirror dead dancers in silence.

My heart embraces the night,

we race like raindrops in desert winds,

moments past in love,

trace of my imagination.

 

Blink, liquor burns my skin.

Awaken from nightmares,

drift between consciousness.

Chaotic resolve.

 

 

Samantha Seto is a writer. She have been published in various anthologies including Ceremony, Soul Fountain, Carcinogenic Poetry, and Black Magnolias Journal. She is a third prize poetry winner of the Whispering Prairie Press contest.

Two poems by Tamara Simpson

Sonnet 12: “Whispers In the Dark”

Traveling down the rosy briar track,

Snaring branches trip and thorns do pierce

The heart, and wound it so I can’t turn back

To brighter places, where my love burnt fierce.

And yet, I must continue to my fate

With ruined heart, where briars plant their seed;

Where laughing flowery spirits watch it bleed

Into the famished ground to satiate

The earthy realms from which desire springs;

From which the bell of persecution rings!

But when I sleep, I dream of other things,

And in this quiet depth, my conscience sings -

I catch a trace of music in the air;

Hear whispers that my soul still lingers there.

 

 

The Injury in the Orchard

I did not cry at the swift, final blow,

Though the full-force rocked my body and my soul,

And my heart stopped, and the red current flow

Obscured my vision and pillowed my fall.

As I lay, mute, staring at the ceiling,

I did not question if I deserved it;

I watched my floating thoughts, only feeling

Stillness. And the darkness - I yearned for it.

It never came. Lights danced before my eyes;

Tauntingly, my soul recognized beauty.

Your face hovers; the questioning word dries

In the air of your silence. The fruit tree

Was tended by my own beseeching hand;

The fall like nothing you could understand.

 

 

Tamara Simpson is a current student University of Western Australia who spends most of her time writing poetry and fiction when she should be studying. She has had previous work published in the Road Not Taken Journal of Formal Poetry, Every Day Poets Magazine, and Open Minds Quarterly. She is, by matter of course, a hopeless romantic.

A Poem by J.J. Campbell

after a glass of scotch

it's been over five

years since i have

fallen asleep in the

arms of a woman

i loved

loneliness has such

a cold detail to it

when it is attached

to time

and i simply need

to close my eyes to

welcome depression

to the fold

and pretty soon

after a glass of scotch

it's one of those nights

all over again

 

 

 

J.J. Campbell lives on a farm with his mother and a bunch of stray cats. He's been widely published over the years, most notably at Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Zygote in My Coffee, Underground Voices and Thunder Sandwich. His first full length collection of poetry is due out in 2012 from Interior Noise Press. You can find him most days on his blog, http://evildelights.blogspot.com.

A Poem by John Kross

Bicycle

The autumn sun slides low
against the hours,
peaking over the day
as if barely begun
and almost finished.
There is something familiar
here in the half light,
not quite vertical yet
bright enough to see
the path I ride is not as rough,
the wind is not as strong
and my heart is not as hard
nor encumbered
as days since passed
where in hind-sight
I peddled for sanctuary;
sanctuary from
a morbid kind of half-sight
held tight by a half-life of
loneliness and lies
now long lost
and finally made right.


John Kross is an aspiring poet living and working in Dallas Texas.
He has never been published. You can read John's work
and interact with him as himself at www.hellopoetry.com.

A Poem by Yani Perez

Rejected Organ

As I sit here working to erase the you that lies in the smell of your neck in brownies with ice cream in the shape of your big toe the constellations connect the dots with a child we started that never came we end with a child that is you can not be the father the biological bond outweighs the “love” that never existed in evenings spent under cover bunnies secret caves it was always incorrect to say lovers imply love friends friendly bond mistaken for life partner cannot say the words real it will become better this way in diet lose the weight the poundage of lovely lies wrapped in your impenetrable impossible impersonal heart surgery needed stubborn to implant cannot survive in hostile environment

 

 

Yani Perez is an Ecuadorian born; Brooklyn raised writer. She is currently an English instructor at Kingsborough Community College and Long Island University. Her work can be found in Brooklyn Paramount, By the Overpass, and Having A Whiskey Coke With You.

Three Poems by Devin McGuire

back office rendezvous

lips on lips on tongues
tied up real loose
so I can get away
swim to island bodega
become bohemian
bodhisattva bullshit artist
peddle ten cent stories
about escape and freedom


You didn’t think you’d miss her

yet weeks later you have a hard time
pulling her long blonde hair
tangled up from the brush
on the chest near
your toothpaste stained
bathroom sink

and just today
under your bed
you found a black bra
with a busted hook
that smells of cigarette, sweat,
and
her perfume


Heartburn
Is it her lips
or something about her heart
keeps my infatuation smoldering?

when it catches and blooms blazing
will I survive the furious dousing
be left shivering like a poor dirty drowned rat

scamper through a crack in the wall
skirt back alleys into streets
scurry over highway, fields to forest?

I keep watch like a sober fireman now
and I’d douse this smoking wreck of man
if I knew its source


Devin McGuire holds a BFA in Creative Writing with a minor in Philosophy from the University of Maine at Farmington. He works as a poetry editor with Encircle Publications, poetry publishers of journals the Aurorean and the Unrorean as well as various chapbooks. Devin's poetry has been published in various print and online venues.

A Poem by Marilyn Misky Braendeholm

PRODIGAL WISHES

My pleas dust cold stones,
smoothed flat from wishes.
Copper coins tossed
and drowned in water,
and yet I am a rudder
to hard hearts and cold
music. No tune can
carry this cut from my soul.
I’m waiting,
still hoping that you’ll return.

Marilyn“Misky” Braendeholmlives in the United Kingdom. Her interests include religious (gothic) architecture, gardening, recipe testing, baking yeasted and sourdough bread, photography, and writing. She has participated in four NaPoWriMo challenges, and has poems and fiction published/accepted with Mouse Tales Press, Sprouts Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Jellyfish Whispers, Napalm and Novocaine, and Pyrokinection. She has two grown sons and two grandchildren. You can find more of her poetry at http://miskmask.wordpress.com

A Poem by Seamas Carraher

THE CLOWN OF CONTRADICTION

From a drawing by ak

Exists a world

(yet its clocks are all silent)

a lost, lost world

("somewhere", "sometime", maria whispers)

- even the hands, the cruel hands of the clock

don't move anymore -

...a world, señora, cut from pain.

In this place, all the colours of your face!

In this place, the barricades are still singing

and the dead marching

their endless, restless march of the "rabble",

this is the place you see, clown,

in the eyes of the german girl.

But here i hold only a ghost between my arms,

i kiss the emptiness of lips,

i fall headlong into emptiness,

the wind scrapes the sadness from our bones.

This is the clown's embrace

a bitter embrace, the transience

of arms.

And the busy world goes spinning

in its webs

all the ache of angels

set in stone, in silence, in concrete!

this world, this lost lost world...

...at midnight, at one a.m.

This must be the place where

no one ever meets

this crowded place,

this market for our nothingness

only the singing of the barricades:

all the arms embraced, that embrace no more,

only the dead still dancing

that can dance no more

and summer, long ago,

summer no more.

And love, at streetcorners, and alleys,

love, with no refuge nor asylum.

O clown of contradictions, if only

it was home and i held you

as you hold me

in the mirror of my eyes!

Séamas Carraher was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1956. He lives on the Ballyogan estate, in south County Dublin, at present.

Recent publications include poems in The Camel Saloon, ditch, Bone Orchard Poetry, Istanbul Literary Review and Pemmican. Previously his work has been published in Left Curve (No. 13, 14 & 20), Compages, Poetry Ireland Review, & the Anthology of Irish Poetry.

A Poem by M.R. Phillips

Lies, Lies & Time

It's funny

the way a lie

can hide for years. Down

under all the easy passage of time.

Lies are eggs

gestating beneath

the skin of your life. Waiting

to crossover, unknown to known.

There are clocks

meant only to count

the duration of lies. Perfect

timepieces calibrated to the hearts of men.

The release

of the lie occurs

at a precise moment. Rendering

havoc and proving love the greatest lie of all.

 

 

 

M.R. Phillips is a student and independent newspaper editor in North Carolina. He enjoys bourbon, black and white films, and motorcycle rides. He blogs here: http://matthewrphillips.tumblr.com/