Two Poems • Bruce McRae
This Word Has No Word For It
This word is unpronounceable.
Translated roughly,
it means a bluster of breath.
Spell it as you wish.
This is the first word in words.
It means love
in any language.
And rhymes with nothing.
This is a dirty word.
Nobody knows what it means.
Class, linguistics
is not an exact science.
The word for blood
actually tastes like blood,
a real jaw-breaker
better left unsaid.
And this word will get you killed.
You spit it at your enemies.
Repeat after me:
This is the word for silence.
[+]
Into A Bar
A man walks into a bar.
In his head are visions of amber.
A nail is hammered into his hair.
His hat is in splinters.
A man walks into a bar
and the planets change courses.
Slush and slurry head for the exits.
Gravity tugs on his nethers
while he washes his footsteps in beer.
And like the moon, he tips heavily.
A man walks into a bar.
Which isn’t a bar; it’s a temple
to the goddess of work and worry.
His coins are negatively charged.
His heels are sinking.
Then the waitress climbs from her sleeve.
In her eyes is the great outdoors.
In her heart is an alpine avalanche.
The man stares into his beer,
ignoring her curves and entrances,
his thoughts the size of Australia,
his mouth in drought.
In the time that it takes
to open his hand, nothing happens.
Over and over again, nothing happens.
Somewhere, wind in a meadow,
but the man is riddled with blank,
addled by light’s perspectives.
You can hear his life fading in and out.
He’s slowly coming to his senses.
[+]
This word is unpronounceable.
Translated roughly,
it means a bluster of breath.
Spell it as you wish.
This is the first word in words.
It means love
in any language.
And rhymes with nothing.
This is a dirty word.
Nobody knows what it means.
Class, linguistics
is not an exact science.
The word for blood
actually tastes like blood,
a real jaw-breaker
better left unsaid.
And this word will get you killed.
You spit it at your enemies.
Repeat after me:
This is the word for silence.
[+]
Into A Bar
A man walks into a bar.
In his head are visions of amber.
A nail is hammered into his hair.
His hat is in splinters.
A man walks into a bar
and the planets change courses.
Slush and slurry head for the exits.
Gravity tugs on his nethers
while he washes his footsteps in beer.
And like the moon, he tips heavily.
A man walks into a bar.
Which isn’t a bar; it’s a temple
to the goddess of work and worry.
His coins are negatively charged.
His heels are sinking.
Then the waitress climbs from her sleeve.
In her eyes is the great outdoors.
In her heart is an alpine avalanche.
The man stares into his beer,
ignoring her curves and entrances,
his thoughts the size of Australia,
his mouth in drought.
In the time that it takes
to open his hand, nothing happens.
Over and over again, nothing happens.
Somewhere, wind in a meadow,
but the man is riddled with blank,
addled by light’s perspectives.
You can hear his life fading in and out.
He’s slowly coming to his senses.
[+]
Originally from Niagara Falls Ontario, Pushcart-nominee Bruce McRae is a musician who has spent much of his life in London and British Columbia. He has been published in hundreds of periodicals and anthologies. His first book, ‘The So-Called Sonnets’ is available from the Silenced Press website or via Amazon books. To hear his music and view more poems visit his website.
The Fork in My Career Path • Howie Good
I was eligible for a full lifetime membership
in the disappearing middle class.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
the man at the computer asked.
The light from overhead seemed to flutter
as I formulated an answer.
Like a looted corpse’s,
my pockets had been turned inside out.
“Beautiful world,” I silently prayed,
“hold me while I’m naked.”
in the disappearing middle class.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
the man at the computer asked.
The light from overhead seemed to flutter
as I formulated an answer.
Like a looted corpse’s,
my pockets had been turned inside out.
“Beautiful world,” I silently prayed,
“hold me while I’m naked.”
[+]
Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has had numerous chapbooks, including A Special Gun for Elephant Hunting from Dog on a Chain Press, Strange Roads from Puddles of Sky Press, and Death of Me from Pig Ear Press.
Abandonment • Luka Fisher
[+]
Luka Fisher is a Los Angeles based painter known forhis collaborations, mixed media projects, and work with musicians. Hiswork has been shown in Los Angeles, Detroit, Phoenix and is held in private collections in the United States and Russia.More of Luka's work can be viewed here.
Mission & Ninth, 2012 • Charles Byrne.
[+]
Charles Byrne is a writer and photographer living in San Francisco.
Party At the End of the World • Howie Good
The man in the moon
was drinking wine
from a plastic cup.
Everyone was.
A girl group sang
during halftime.
Taser me, I said,
or maybe just thought.
Which would you
choose – you know,
if you had to – fire
or ice? I’d choose
something that gives
a reason to ooh in awe,
the involuntary return
of late spring tulips.
was drinking wine
from a plastic cup.
Everyone was.
A girl group sang
during halftime.
Taser me, I said,
or maybe just thought.
Which would you
choose – you know,
if you had to – fire
or ice? I’d choose
something that gives
a reason to ooh in awe,
the involuntary return
of late spring tulips.
[+]
Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has had numerous chapbooks, including A Special Gun for Elephant Hunting from Dog on a Chain Press, Strange Roads from Puddles of Sky Press, and Death of Me from Pig Ear Press. .
Two Poems • Savannah Grant
At A Glance
I.
The door ajar
seeping into darkness
through softly falling
leaves, fire-bright against
morning’s blue-grey mist
I liked this day until
too-cold rain
piercing
falling
II.
My bare legs are cold
against your midnight eyes
and I know that you too
write about the rain
[+]
Fall; Past Those Same Bare Trees
Falling like leaves in autumn,
petals from dying flowers:
thoughts of you leave
trails behind me,
hollowed.
I walk this cold road every day—
bare
as winter trees
suffocated by frost
(just stay)
maybe it will start to snow
and maybe
someone will watch it with me.
I.
The door ajar
seeping into darkness
through softly falling
leaves, fire-bright against
morning’s blue-grey mist
I liked this day until
too-cold rain
piercing
falling
II.
My bare legs are cold
against your midnight eyes
and I know that you too
write about the rain
[+]
Fall; Past Those Same Bare Trees
Falling like leaves in autumn,
petals from dying flowers:
thoughts of you leave
trails behind me,
hollowed.
I walk this cold road every day—
bare
as winter trees
suffocated by frost
(just stay)
maybe it will start to snow
and maybe
someone will watch it with me.
[+]
Savannah Grant is a student at Smith College studying English, Studio Art, and Poetry. Besides poetry, Savannah writes novels and short stories and hopes to published more work someday. She vastly prefers rain to sun and kittens to children.
Two Photos • Lucinda L. Flanary
[+]
For many years, Lucinda L. Flanary was a retail clerk aspiring to be an artist...the she realized that she was an artist aspiring NOT to be a retail clerk. She is a poet, a published short fiction writer, photographer, painter and crafter who believes in re-appropriating found objects and finding morbid beauty in the dilapidated and the abandoned.
Cane • Phillip Dacey
If the handle
is a U-turn curve,
you can use it
like a vaudeville hook
to pull yourself off
the stage of your life.
Morning, noon, and night;
four legs, two legs, three legs:
now you’re the answer
to a riddle though
you feel like a question.
And is a cane
not a question mark,
the black dot beneath it
the little rubber tip for security
in a slippery world?
Imagine the artisan
whose handmade personalized canes
tell the lie that
dependency is beautiful,
the kind of lie poems tell,
like this one you are reading.
Stop leaning on it now
and throw it away,
like a cane off a bridge.
is a U-turn curve,
you can use it
like a vaudeville hook
to pull yourself off
the stage of your life.
Morning, noon, and night;
four legs, two legs, three legs:
now you’re the answer
to a riddle though
you feel like a question.
And is a cane
not a question mark,
the black dot beneath it
the little rubber tip for security
in a slippery world?
Imagine the artisan
whose handmade personalized canes
tell the lie that
dependency is beautiful,
the kind of lie poems tell,
like this one you are reading.
Stop leaning on it now
and throw it away,
like a cane off a bridge.
[+]
Philip Dacey is the author of eleven full-length books of poems. Two books of his poems appeared in 1999, The Deathbed Playboy (East. Wash. U. Press) and The Paramour of the Moving Air (Quarterly Rev. of Lit.). Previous books of poetry include The Boy Under the Bed (Johns Hopkins, 1981), How I Escaped From the Labyrinth and Other Poems (Carnegie-Mellon, 1977), and Night Shift at the Crucifix Factory (Iowa , 1991). He has also published books of poems about the painter Thomas Eakins (2004) and the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1982).
The Sweater • Len Kuntz
I am the black
Sweater
You left behind
On the love seat
Love no longer an option
Love seat
Love
My yarn is tight
Fine Egyptian cotton
Mercerized
Top stitched and fully-fashioned.
Your skin
It used to sit or swish
Inside of me
Against my limbs and lengths
My sleeves and being
You took me places
Folded me
Kept me clean
Now I am a heap of yarn
Dead threads
Smelling of your perfume
But mostly
Reeking rust and
Regret
Sweater
You left behind
On the love seat
Love no longer an option
Love seat
Love
My yarn is tight
Fine Egyptian cotton
Mercerized
Top stitched and fully-fashioned.
Your skin
It used to sit or swish
Inside of me
Against my limbs and lengths
My sleeves and being
You took me places
Folded me
Kept me clean
Now I am a heap of yarn
Dead threads
Smelling of your perfume
But mostly
Reeking rust and
Regret
[+]
Len Kuntz has published his work in Pank, Boston Literary Magazine, Lower Eastside Review and elsewhere.
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