mother
i thought your death
easy
your voice rising
like unmolested bamboo
18 centimeters a day
towards a friday god
eager to pluck you
for his september buffet
and though you protested
through the log of lungs
the brick of ribs
that the wooden tips of your fingers
would not burn
within an autumn night
you were so gentle
in your surrender
that your cries
would not disturb
a sleeping buddha
and here
i tremble
that i will lack your grace
my last hour
gritted and gnarled
robed in rage and stinking
of sour lament
yet again
unworthy of being called
your daughter
o guanyin pusa:
embrace me
with your thousand arms
and pour your porcelain mercy
over me
may my end be of
her same lattice of pearls
white callouses of courage
rattling within the heart of a lotus
the saga of my final sigh rising
past the calm incense of our tongue
the cool smoke of teeth
until it is sweeter
than the echo of honey
on the breath of
a hummingbird
Darcy was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1975, E. Darcy Trie is a Scorpio, Rabbit and matriculated in Little Rock, Arkansas at the age of two. She graduated at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a B.A. in Psychology along with Minors in Drama and Asian Studies. Sensing that achieving her Masters would drive her to drink, she wisely opted to tour Asia in her early twenties (thanks to a grant provided by Bank Of Daddy), and in the year 2000, found herself in the heart of Beijing, China where she began writing due to the fact that crocheting was far too complicated and because the voices in her head would not shut up.
By 2004, she had completed two romances, one historical and one modern, and after viewing all nine seasons of the X-Files and three seasons of C.S.I, finished the first two series of the Snow novels and is currently writing the third installment. During this time, she has also had several pieces of her poetry published in various online poetry magazines.
Her passions and hobbies includes writing, reading (anything put out by Neil Gaiman), Disney movies, all divination tools such as Tarot, I-Ching, Runes and is an enthusiastic, although albeit amateur, astrologist/paranormal investigator. She is 5’10, weighs whatever she wrote on her driver’s license, owns a lot of black hoodies and is addicted to It’s A Grind’s Passion Fruit tea.
She is fluent in English, Mandarin Chinese, some French and once took a Zero Hour in Greek in high school. She hates mornings, coconuts, wire bras, and sincerely hopes that this is bio is long enough to fill up an entire page (doubled-space of course).
Ms. Trie currently lives in Las Vegas, NV because she adores $2.99 buffets, Paigow Poker, and that lovely 116 degree August weather. She dreams of writing best-selling novels that will delight and thrill her future fans and because she is tired of being a productive citizen and wants to go back to being a mooching hermit.
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Waiting for Its Turn. A Poem by Scott Thomas Outlar
It might be dirty, bloody and wounded,
but at least its honest
at the end of the day
after working in the graveyard
to bury all the bones
that the others so quickly forget.
It might be scarred, numb and broken,
but at least it sleeps soundly
for a few hours after midnight
once the dirt is piled back
atop the six foot hole
that the worms will soon be swarming.
It might never have a lover,
it might never smile at a sunset,
it might never taste of passion,
but at least it gets the job done
no matter the conditions,
doing what no one else is willing,
it’s only reward the ash and dust.
Scott Thomas Outlar lives a simple life in the suburbs, spending the days flowing and fluxing with the tide of the Tao River, marveling at the intricacies of life’s existential nature, and writing prose-fusion poetry dedicated to the Phoenix Generation. His words have appeared recently in venues such as Siren, Section 8, Midnight Lane Boutique, Dead Snakes, Mad Swirl, and Dissident Voice. His debut chapbook “A Black Wave Cometh” is forthcoming from Dink Press. More of Scott’s writing can be found at 17numa.wordpress.com.
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A Poem is a Useless Thing. A Poem by Ian Irvine (Hobson)
A poem is a fragile thing like a life — so ephemeral, so moved by the random laws of the cosmos the elements, gravity ... A poem is a useless thing, like a wasted life — all its meaning in the living, the rending, the interpreting. Begins and ends with the blinkers of the observer. A poem is but a small fragment of a larger thing, obscured in the making (like tonight’s mountain moon) by clouds and drizzle. Writing a poem may seem pointless Who will read it? Who will understand it? It disperses to the elements even in the writing even in the sounding We do it regardless — a gesture in search of a purpose.
Ian Irvine is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, fiction writer and non-fiction writer:
His work has featured in many Australian and international publications, including Fire (UK) ‘Anthology of 20th Century and Contemporary Poets,’ (2008) which contained the work of poets from over 60 nations. His work has also appeared in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies, and he is the author of three books and co-editor of many more (including Scintillae 2012, an anthology of work by over 50 Victorian and international writers and poets). He currently teaches writing and literature at Bendigo TAFE and Victoria University (Melbourne) and lives with fellow writer Sue King-Smith and their children on a 5 acre block near Bendigo, Australia.
Links related to his work are as follows:
http://authorsden.com/ianirvine
http://www.scribd.com/IanHobson
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Lament of Maria Maresciallo at the funeral of Veronica Franco. A Poem By Marie Marshall
I recall our hand-signs in carnival,
the silver rings on your white gloves,
your fingers making to me –
you are daytime, Wooden Mary,
these are evening and small hours.
That was your name for me, and with it
you hurled stones and rotten fruit
when our friendship became tedious;
but at other times you rested your head
against my shoulder and sighed,
often a lover’s name, a Saint’s name,
but still it was I who felt your sacred breath,
its scented play on my cheek.
Tintoretto and Titian worshipped you, you know,
and your lover the Saint, he adored you;
but I was your sister, the only initiate of Berenice,
I wandered your depth and breadth, nave and aisle,
danced in your wake, walking on water by your magic,
swam in your subtle flow, submerged, miraculous;
I traced the letters of A M O R E in the air
while you were lost and looking away, inspired,
made kisses inside my mask, daydreamed of you.
A single balotina, a single mourner,
her hand resting on your coffin
where the wreck of your beauty is caught,
I look around, above – the planes still fly,
the vaporetto is full of Japanese,
the world somehow has not stopped,
and under my breath I say:
Ite, pensier fallaci e vana spene… *
Your house has fallen, the Ca’ Franco overthrown,
in secret it has crumbled away, it is dust,
forgotten, your pages have been torn from you,
ripped from your gold-chased spine,
the book of your life is defaced;
be written on me still, Veronica –
while I live let them read you in my plain face,
all the words of love, the true looks,
the eyes behind the mask, verità;
and when a flourish sets the fine to me,
let me close and lie beside you,
book to neglected book, closer in this finality
than we have been in life.
* Editor’s Note: Leave me, foolish ideas and useless hopes
attributed to the sonnet of Veronica Franco/or Veronica Gambara.
Marie Marshall is an Anglo-Scottish author, poet and editor. Her first collection of poems, Naked in the Sea, was published in 2010 and reviewed in Sonnetto Poesia that same year, and her second collection, I am not a fish, in 2013. Since 2005 she has published over two hundred poems, mainly in magazines and anthologies, but the most extraordinary places in which a poem of hers has appeared include on the wall of a café in Wales, and etched into an African drum at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Her first novel, Lupa, was published in 2012. She is well-known in Scotland for her macabre short stories. Her web site can be found at mairibheag.com. Of writing poetry and sonnets she says, “I did not start writing until 2004, so I am very much a twenty-first century writer. I write anything, any kind of poetry that I feel the urge to tackle ― sonnets included.”
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Light Somewhere. A Poem by Ben Nardolilli.
Beauty is unfortunately beauty
And beauty is unfortunately everywhere,
In the marches, the parades,
The uniforms, and the way flags blow,
In the barbs of wire set out
Against mountain landscapes,
The orderly rows of stone crosses,
But worse is beauty and the sublime mixing
To show up together wearing horrors
Stitched into their skins,
Hiding under the gunfire music,
Or the impressionist clouds,
It can emerge in the delicate hands
Of concentration camp children,
Frail palms combined in black and white
To form the shape of a heart,
The mix will not come here so easily,
Out to these belts in and around the cities,
It will not settle on top of the stores
Blocked together in neon and cement,
Here everything is practical,
Efficiently wasted and exhausted,
No song comes out the car horn,
No poetry comes out the nearby speakers,
But sometimes the pair can thrive here,
And not just framed in a gallery,
They might settle down beside the corpse
Of a suicide completed after a fall
From an observation deck to a car roof,
Leaving a face at rest in a sea of twisted metal.
Ben Nardolilli currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine,Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, THEMA, Pear Noir, The MinettaReview, and Yes Poetry. He has a chapbook Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained, from Folded Word Press. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel. Thanks for reading,
Adventures of the Dialectic. A Poem by Frederick Pollack
While you sit at a blank page or screen
for hours, brain-dead, something
madly inspired is filling
that whiteness and more. You may be
its hero, your impasse its theme
or only mentioned in acknowledgements;
but rest assured, its work
is brilliant. While you’re dancing
(in one of those scenes I don’t believe in,
having only seen them on television:
flared armpits, flying sweat, the desire
to be a machine and break),
the dialectic is lying
on an unwholesome couch
that subtly fills the sky, your whole era
trying by any means to stop it moaning.
A peasant girl favored,
migrating to the city, by employment
in sex or electronics may perceive,
handling parts, a fine curve linking
them with earlier dung, her secret
sigh a word the future mispronounces.
(Meanwhile the hobbits reveal
their secret plan, their true malignancy,
riding orcs into battle.)
Cleverness grows with time. Now
I’m clever enough not to buy
“the individual” from discount racks,
or anywhere. After several bad hours
you walk out
into context. But context leaves a void,
around which it disposes
cars, humidity,
disordered passing kids, other props and prompts,
the rising seas, fractured storyline.
One only fails into some greater triumph.
You might end there. Not.
Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press. A collection of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, forthcoming in 2015 from Prolific Press. Has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Representations, Magma (UK), Iota (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. Adjunct professor creative writing George Washington University.
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Adobe Motel. A Poem by Mitchel Krockmalnik Grabois
Each room number
in this adobe motel
has a symbol
Our room number
107
has a yellow quarter-moon beside it
and some black stars
Next door
the number106
is pierced by lightning bolts
My wife and I spend a quiet night
snuggling
and watching evangelical TV for its comedic value
It is far funnier than Comedy Central
Many of the jokes are stale
but not as stale as Leno and Letterman
while the neighbors in
106
scream at each other
as if there was never anything in the world that they hated more
than each other
The next night they begin again
My wife and I look at each other
Without saying anything
we nod in agreement
I knock on their door
at first quietly
then more vehemently
as if I were a cop
and had the right
The husband comes to the door
wearing a wife-beater
a tattoo of a marijuana leaf on his left shoulder
Who the fuck are you? he asks
I motion with my head. I’m next door, I say
TV too loud for ya, he asks, in a threatening voice
I can hear perfectly well—there’s no TV, only him and his wife
I hear her grumbling
as if angry at their being interrupted
My wife and I, I say,
were wondering if you’d like to change rooms
He looks at me, suspicious. Do you have a fridge, he asks
A little one. A hotel fridge
Does it work?
Yeah.
I know because my wife had put some cuties—little tangerines—in there to keep cool
Ours is broke, he says, I hate warm beer
So we switch rooms
As soon as we get in, my wife and I
feel our tempers rise
It’s not a Stephen King thing
a cursed car, a cursed hotel
we’re just ready to let go
to get in the spirit of
America
the intersection of madness and violence
The previous couple
had left an old metal cowbell on the bed
I’m thinking, a cowbell?
as my wife picks it up and hurls it at me
I don’t know if she’s trying to hit me
or is just performing a symbolic act
but in any case I duck
and it misses
and smashes into the wall
the wall our room shares with 107
our former room
We hear the couple stop making love
They’re noisy fuckers and when they suddenly stop
I hear the Sounds of Silence
as Paul Simon put it
I was trained in the Israeli martial art Krav Maga
the deadliest fighting form ever invented
The last time I used it was when I was in the Israeli army
when I was eighteen though twenty
I killed two Palestinians
When I got out of the army I decided not to immigrate to Israel after all
even though I had been so enthusiastic after the 1967 War
which occurred when I was still in high school
Facing my wife, her hands free of cowbells or other weapons
I feel the old Krav Maga training churning through my muscles
My wife looks around for something else to throw
She decides on the TV but it’s bolted to the table
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois’ poems and fictions have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He is a regular contributor to The Prague Revue, and has been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for 99 cents from Kindle and Nook or as a Print Edition
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When You Were There. An Audio Video Poem by Sara L Russell
Sara Louise Russell, aka PinkyAndrexa, is a UK poet and poetry ezine editor, specialising particularly in sonnets, lyric-style poetry and occasionally writing in more modern styles. She founded Poetry Life & Times and edited it from 1998 to 2006, when she handed it over to Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arrospide; Robin now runs it as Editor from Poetry Life & Times. She is currently founder and Editor of the daily paper.li journal, Poetry Lifetimes ; which is a sister publication to Poetry Life & Times. Her poems and sonnets have been published in many paper and online publications including Sonnetto Poesia, Mindful of Poetry and Autumn Leaves a monthly Poetry ezine from the late Sondra Ball. Her sonnets also currently appear in the recently published anthology of sonnets Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. She is also one of the first poets ever to be published on multimedia CD ROMs, published by Kedco Studios Inc.; the first one being “Pinky’s Little Book of Shadows”, which was featured by the UK’s national newspaper The Daily Mirror, in October 1999. (Picture link for Mirror article)Angel Fire
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