TWO PIECES BY JOHN GROCHALSKI

contemplating my sugar bowl heart

that moment when she smiles and says
you remember, the good old days
when people used to borrow sugar
like in the 1980s or something
this young thing who can barely remember the 1980s
and me contemplating my sugar bowl heart
with that wintering decade of moves and parental arguments
three schools in three years and such loneliness
growing fat on hostess cakes, tv and lays potato chips
smiles back and says, yes, just like the good old days


pittsburgh like a postcard

full of wine and thai food
i ask you in november, 1997
what you’d like to do next
and you told me, whatever,
as long as it doesn’t involve you going one way
and me going the other
the instant when i knew loving you
would be a simple game of genius
played out in the first fall snow
that framed pittsburgh like a postcard.


About John Grochalski:
John Grochalski's poetry and prose has appeared in The Montucky Review, and several other online and print publications including: Red Fez, Rusty Truck, Outsider Writers Collective, Underground Voices, The Lilliput Review, The Main Street Rag, Zygote In My Coffee, The Camel Saloon, and Bartleby Snopes. John has published two books of poetry: The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch (Six Gallery Press) and Glass City (Low Ghost Press), and a novel, The Librarian is forthcoming. His chapbook In the Year of Everything Dying can be viewed via Camel Saloon’s Books on Blogs series (http://booksonblog26.blogspot.com/).

JESUS, YOU MISPLACED THE CROWN AGAIN

I do not find your crown,
joke about its imperfect thorns,
but everyone in this desert town
has them in person
somewhere.
They prick and puncture
and hold the dam's hole
so the blood
will not flood the familiar famine.

The swing of door freezes midway.
I swoon on to the road.
The posts of defunct lamps
crucifix and crisscross the trail.
I lost my crown,
You shout in bold.
The dilute blinks of some stars
pursue your voice,
shiver and then move afar.


About Kushal Poddar:

Kushal Poddar (1977- ) resides in the city of Kolkata , India . Apart from poetry, he has written fiction and scripts for television mini-series. His English poems have been published in various online and print magazines all over the world. He is the author of All Our Fictional Dreams, and been published in Poor Poet’s Pantry: Collaborative Poems. Forthcoming books are: Surviving Cyber Life and Five Poets: An Anthology.

UNDER MY FEET

i walk barefoot
over broken
lives
whenever possible
in back-alley
warrens
of sewage
and hope
hoping
that my scars
will open up again
stigmata
that say
save me
and that let
the rotten core of the world
mix
with my precious bodily fluids
in a vain effort
to tear down
the integumentary barriers
that condemn us all
to be
alone.


About Leeroy Berlin:
Leeroy Berlin lives on speck of coral and jungle in the middle of the Pacific where he writes poetry when the lizards keep him awake all night.

TASTING CATHARSIS

like a pearl
of salty roe, foreign.
My tongue tests
the boundaries of memory, posing
in postures of simulation.  It does not
understand banalities:  external
cost, the pressure of perceived
prestige.  Its instincts more base,
blindly balancing.  In an instant,
knowing the correct process
to proceed.  Automatically purging or
savoring.  An intuition
separate
from the forced act of swallowing
whole.


About A.J. Huffman:
A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has previously published six collections of poetry all available on Amazon.com. She has also published her work in numerous national and international literary journals. She has is the editor for six online poetry journals for Kind of a Hurricane Press ( www.kindofahurricanepress.com ). Find more about A.J. Huffman, including additional information and links to her work at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000191382454 and https://twitter.com/#!/poetess222. 

CORRESPONDENCE

You may have wanted me
differently, the feline averting
of twin golden planets,
sloughing of cold
off a mare’s shoulder,

but I am the orphan with his fingers
in fresh-tread corn stalks,
jealous of what his toes know.

I am the sail with wrinkled folds,
stubbornly refusing to open
and sing but for one
specific wind, calling it
by its own name
among the thousands
by the paint on my cloth.

And you, Hepburn, are a stamp,
returned to sender,
then sent out again
to appease the gods
of electricity—

but a wary postal worker
spotted the previous ink
above your eyes.


About J.M. Hall:
J.M. Hall has had poetry published in numerous literary journals internationally including: Crucible, Lilliput Review and Chiron Review. Having graduated this August with a Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University--with an area of specialization in aesthetics--Mr. Hall has already published philosophy articles in six professional, peer-reviewed journals including: Philosophy and Literature and Journal of Aesthetic Education. Mr. Hall also has eighteen years experience as a dancer, instructor and choreographer.

MUSEUM

He doesn’t love her, still
she makes it up
imagining dark locks, his kiss
like an authentic Vermeer
or a Georgia O Keefe flower opening
with his mouth wet on hers
and she has no confessional
but knows it’s not okay to love a friend
not that one
or he will never come to her again
but neither can she have pictureless walls
so she hangs
impure selections reflecting light
fiery colors, fugitive eyes
both terribly deep and wide
within the muted watercolors of ordinariness
a few delicious impressions in ivory halls
where she is growing old.


About Christine Tsen:
Christine Tsen is a musician who has found great joy in writing poetry. She attended Eastman School and the New England Conservatory of Music. A published cellist and poet, her poems can be found in THRUSH Poetry Journal, Requiem, The Legendary, and Cyclamens and Swords. In her experience so much of poetry feels like music, and music like poetry ~ and to her one lights up the other! More: www.ChristineThomasTsen.com.

The Way I'll Remember It

December comes,
calls out to us. 

I wake suddenly for work
and wash my hands
in the dark. 

Outside, the snow
lists through the air
and settles into
the long pause
of the Earth. 

5 a.m.
cold smells of sweet smoke,
exhaust, the wind turning
against the cab of the truck.

Before long,
the road will begin
to taper off then
disappear completely.


About Michael Marine:
Michael Marine is a freelance illustrator and writer living in Cleveland, Ohio.  His poems have appeared in a number of Columbus based zines that no longer exist.  He is currently working on a small collection of poetry and prose.  

RATTLE

She was one piece
Hanging together like
The skeleton in the closet.

Each bone attached with hooks
Rattling at the least breeze
When the door opens.

Words clatter around in her skull
The marrow eaten away
Flesh is a remembrance.

Each line put together
With bits of bone.


About Cynthia Eddy:
Cynthia Eddy lives and writes on the eastern shore of Virginia.  The quiet village sustains her sense of neighborhood and belonging.  She holds a BA in Art History. She has been published in Third Wednesday, Eunoia Review, Epiphany Magazine, Zombie Poetry, Deep South Magazine, Forge Journal, the Black Lantern Press, River Poets Journal, Rising Tide Review, and in Emerge Literary Journal. Poetry creates a chord between reader and poet.  That chord remains long after the reading. Every poem reaches into the reader and brings forth an understanding, a moment of ‘I’ve been there’.

POEM TO BE READ IN THE VOICE OF TOM WAITS

Let's all go out to lunch with this fifty dollar bill
I stole from my Mama's purse along with a skull ring
I took off her old man's finger passed out on the threadbare carpet

I know a place with coffee so strong bent spoons stand up straight after you're done stirring
and if there isn't a dead fly in the metal container for the creamer
they've been known to tear up your check at the register
and toss it over your head like confetti on New Year's Eve

We can ask for one of Bertha's tables she's the waitress with the best ass
but that might mean waiting because everyone has the same idea about Bertha's great ass
but it's cool because I brought along the pennysaver and we can read it
and laugh at people trying to sell plastic lawn furniture in the middle of January

Hey wait a second I could use a table just that size
to go next to my barcalounger i'll put my horseshoe ashtray on it
and still have room for a can of whatever beer's on sale that week at Foodtown
and the TV remote after I get the set out of hock


About Stephen Caratzas:
Stephen Caratzas is a writer, musician and visual artist currently living in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Excavation

and i wonder about all this talking
we do

we write these words in excavation

and bury our own hearing
who is really listening?

my son wants to know about the depths of ocean
and the expanse of water

                will there be enough?

and why didn't you have a dad?
he was just too mean

why is always the simplest answer


About Mikki Williams:
Michelle Williams is the author of Female (Alabaster and Mercury) and founder of Vocal INKorporated, an organization dedicated to the freedom of expression through poetry, music and art. She is the host of several poetry, art and performance events in the NW Ohio area, including Simply Poetry. She is the host of Vocality and Selections on BlogTalkRadio and also serves as the Ohio Senate Member for the international music and arts organization, Poetry Over Music. Michelle’s poetry and artwork has appeared in Bone Orchard Poetry, Knot Magazine, Red Fez, Calliope’s Closet and Poet’s Haven/Poetry for Change.