YOUR SHOULDER. A Poem by John Tustin

 
I woke up
In the complete darkness
Reaching out for you
Like I always do
But this time
You were there.
I touched your shoulder
And you grunted.
I don’t know if the grunt
Was anger or assent
But you were there,
Beside me,
Asleep.
Where you belong.
I kissed your shoulder,
You sighed,
Then began to breathe deeply
Again.
I fell asleep
Completely
Satisfied.

 
 
 
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John Tustin graduated from nowhere, edits nothing and has no awards. His poetry is forthcoming in Poetry Pacific, Leannan, Your One Phone Call, Bare Back Magazine and Newtown Literary Review. http://www.fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry/ is a link to his poetry online
 
 
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“The love of one woman” A poem by Franchot Ballinger

 
 

      “The love of one woman
            W.S. Merwin


         
        How can there be such singularity?
        All around us are multiplications,
        Exponential effusions of professions,
        Of declaration, of protestation, of procreation.
        All the lavish universe refuses a center,
        Denies a focus—galaxy, nebula, black hole,
        All teeming and sucking and wildly flung,
        All’s akimbo, flailing, flying,
        Even the million seeds of the white pine
        Like stars carried promiscuously afar.
         
        But look—she who is a wealth of caresses,
        Well-spring of kisses, creates with me a center,
        A holdfast root to flower…as if
        We were the only and last of our kind:
        Precious and prayerful, all stem and stalk,
        Leaf and flavor, bloom and blossom;
        Seed and husk, juice of fruit and pulp.
        Sunk in guttering light and
        Darkening sweep of cosmos,
        Of our days, our lives, there is only
        This one love–avant-garde acceptance,
        Cool conspicuousness (if puzzling principle),
        Remarkable reaping.

         
         
        In retirement after nearly 40 years teaching English at the University of Cincinnati, Franchot Ballinger has continued volunteering with the Cincinnati Nature Center in various capacities and is also a spiritual care volunteer with Hospice of Cincinnati. His poems have appeared in numerous poetry journals in print and on-line.
         
         
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Parkinson’s Lament. A Poem by Leland Jamieson

 

For G.K.J. (In her voice.)
 
What is this thing called Parkinson’s Disease?
The sickness robs me of my body’s grace,
and worse, it robs me of my mind’s trapeze
for agile thought. No longer do I ace
the mental tests I used to love to face.
Double vision’s dogged the play of my eyes —
so long, so much, I cry, “Is this life’s Prize?”
 
Reading — strong prizing bar to deeper thought
lifting the eyes above the self to see
what lies beyond the daily diddly-squat
of eating, sleeping, bathing, poops and pee —
is gone. Slow living death my apogee?
Can’t draw. Can’t paint. P.D.’s a heart-deep thorn.
I think it better were I never born.

 
 

Leland Jamieson
 
Leland Jamieson lives and writes in Monroe Township, New Jersey, USA. He has three collections of poetry — 21ST CENTURY BREAD (2007), IN VITRO (2009), — plus a handbook for self-taught poets-to-be and teachers-to-be, HOW TO RHYME YOUR WAY TO ‘METAPHOR POEMS’ (2012) also check out his latest book Sooner: A Crown of Sonnets & New Post-9/11 Poems.
 
 
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In Mornings. A Poem by Ananya S Guha

 

In mornings there is explosion
a certain humming, a certain resistance
to the sun or thunder
cars, frantic have rollicking time
school kids think that morning is cessation
but, soon there will be shadows
and lingering dust
dogs’ tails will wag
mornings are premeditated action
a liitle discernment
and mornings will take to paths
unscented.
 
In morning
she takes position near
the bus stand, vegetables she sells
may or may not ( sell)
but mornings are arcades of hope
and in this city, mornings have the luminous
mornings have smell of flowers
mornings are creepy mirages of another day.
In Mornings.

 
 
 
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Ananya S Guha has been born and brought up in Shillong, India and works in India’s National Open University, the Indira Gandhi National Open University. His poems in English have been published world wide. He also writes for newspapers and magazines/ web zines on matters ranging from society and politics to education. He holds a doctoral degree on the novels of William Golding. He edits the poetry column of The Thumb Print Magazine, and has published seven collections of poetry.
 
 
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The Tomb of Edgar Poe (2014) A Poem by R.W. Haynes

 

Looking for the conference hotel,
I drove by Poe’s grave. Tap tap…
One should definitely shudder a little
At a contact so nearly missed.
Later I walked back, passing by
The Everyman Theater, colder
Than I’m used to being, tap tap,
Down home on the Rio Grande,

    And on his stone a twisted wreath
    Of pasts and half-recalled regrets,
    A ribbon, a spoon, a ball-point pen,
    Declare our junkie solidarity again.
      Why wasn’t some demented witch
      Out front pouring green lemonade?
      A lean, blue owl on her shoulder perched,
      Staring as though I, too, were cursed.

Tapped out, forget that dark flower,
Return to harbor past the Bromo-Selzer Tower.

 

On the Savannah River 2013

 
 
R. W. Haynes has taught literature at Texas A&M International University since 1992. His recent interests include the early British sonnet, and he is completing a second book on the Texas playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote (1916-2009). In his poetry, Haynes seeks to celebrate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without sounding any more dissonant notes than he has to. In fiction, he works toward grasping that part of the past which made its mark on his generation. He enjoys teaching drama, especially the Greeks, Ibsen, and Shakespeare, and he devoutly hopes for a stunning literary Renaissance in South Texas.

 
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From Agassiz Peak. A Poem by David Chorlton

    photo Roberta Chortlon


 
 
From eleven thousand feet the shadows
cast by clouds rock
back and forth as they float down
through volcanic light
to the forests where they break
apart between the pines
and disappear into late summer grass.
 
Windgusts at that altitude
slide from a raptor’s wing
and dissolve in thin air
while the view from the treeline
runs sky-wide and frost-bright
to the point where Earth and rain
pale into each other.
 
A misplaced glance
would slip back a thousand years
to be swallowed by lava
and leave no foothold
on the crater’s edge.
 
Prairies tumble, edge over edge,
while forests tighten their grip
against winter, which begins
its descent from the first
aspen leaf to turn yellow.
 

 
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David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived for several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. Arizona’s landscapes and wildlife have become increasingly important to him and a significant part of his poetry. His Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press appeared in 2014. The shadow side of Vienna provides the core of The Taste of Fog, a work of fiction published by Rain Mountain Press. http://www.davidchorlton.mysite.com/
 
 
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The God of Biomechanics Won’t Let You In Heaven, Roy. A Poem by Amparo Arrospide

Roy, Aubrey Beardsly
The God Of Biomechanics Won’t Let You In Heaven, Roy

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on
fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the
darkness at Tan Hauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time
like tears in rain. Time to die.

//and so Roy breathed out his ghost

Nothing particularly interesting about ourselves.
Nothing particularly interesting about this here and now.
Nothing particularly interesting around the solar system //globular clusters
of meaning not centered here, no place significantly different

Then all of a sudden
When data corruption is the only generator of modern Physics
Not being significantly different to be discovered
                        By the scientific community

Not only where you are is not any more special than any other
But indeed whom you are is not any more special than whom you are not.

From the mediocrity principle // it follows
That no intelligent beings are particularly more beings than any other
Or more intelligent // life, it follows, 
Centers around conditional line of clusters
Through the evolution of any given universe
                        A process that can only happen at certain times!

See? The God Of Biomechanics Won’t Let You In Heaven, Roy
 
* Italics. Tears in Rain Monologue. Blade Runner(1982)
 

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Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a Spanish writer and translator. She has published four poetry collections Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and Presencia en el Misterio as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and both national and foreign magazines, such as Cuadernos del Matemático, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Linden Lane Magazine, Espéculo, Piedra del Molino, Nayagua. She has received awards. Together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, she worked as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, when it was a monthly webzine 2008-10, and coordinated in the Spanish sonnets section for the international anthology The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (ed. Richard Vallance, 2014).

 
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