Three Poems by Nicholas Abanavas

Mecca

in the bottle
in the bottle
in the bottle
in the bottle

How many are dead

now? How many
have I killed?
What genocide is this
the master lacks a choice?
What gives credence
to the dream?

Mama's little baby

loves shortenin' bread
onto the skillet
into the pan
Mama's little baby
ain't got no plan.

Rice and beans

are a full protein.
Dancing feet
for dessert.

Three gulls in the slip

dig their wings into black air
pull silently toward freighters
anchored in the mouth.

The old ways

are dead or lying
dead before our feet.
Look
how the eyes roll.
and always match.

The old ways

are lead or tying
lead around our feet.
Don't wade no mo'
Don't wade no mo'

At the bottom
the wind blows me upright
forcing me to search
the power's crescent.

Higher and higher

it climbs
till it spears
the false stars flashing
across a wedge of broken cloud
cut clear up the Ferry
to the Heights.

Talk Show Terror

Obliged continuously to indulge the reprehensible

market researched to elevate bitch-slapping as prehensile sensible:
Obligor de Obbligatto.
Ive reached the summit of the ice cube
basking in cool
tuxedo cake decorum mounted
master as fool.

Wild West

The snow
blankets rooftops
dwarfs and sleeping giants.
I see it clearly on the dwarfs
strain to see it on the giants
balding heads.

Out past Montauk

the rippled pool
strokes the sand in rhythm
to the wailing of the call.
I hear the crash
waves against the island shore
strain to hear the crash
waves against the dead sea wall.
Dwarfs and giants are dancing
neither knows the difference
of the step.
They shake their heads free of snow
chuckle at the moon.

Out past Montauk

the sun is good for growing sand;
Irrigate with salt.
The black crude crop
plowed under resounds
the trickling truth wont buy
umbrellas for the sun.

Out past Montauk

streets embrace
dancing desperadoes
brandishing their pistols
shooting up the town
stopping to bow and pray
lay the gun before the holy call.

My part is the wild west

isnt where we want to be.

Nicholas Abanavas received his M. Ed. in Teaching At-Risk Students in 2008.

He recently retired from a career in public education after twenty-one years.
He has written two books: Scissors, Cardboard & Paint-The Art of At-Risk
Teaching and Lemnos-An Artist and His Island. Mr. Abanavas is an avid fan of
jazz music. He has lived in Greenwich Village, NY, Hattiesburg, MS, Atlanta,
GA, Kansas City, MO, San Francisco and the San Joaquin Valley, CA. The
experiences that accompany these places form the foundation for the
subjects of his poems. He has been writing poetry for more than fifty years.
 TwoPoemsbyDevonBalwit

Fastidious

Saturday means house cleaning,

a cursory swipe of counter and toilet,
clothes of all colors tumbled grey,
a consolidation of looseness
while the yard riots, beds gone to grass,
clerodendron suckers sprouting a small forest.

I hurry through to my real work

of organizing words and tidying syntax.
This is the dedication my neighbors cant see.
To them, I fear, I just seem slovenly,
no way to show the hours I spend
ironing and ironing a single line.

Lesson

The refugee couple from Libya present me with acorns,

a basketful gathered from this land
where they find themselves strangers.
Surely, they think, their teacher knows
what to do with such a gift, knows
how to make the bitter sweet,
how to make the cast-off useful.

I know nothing about such alchemy.

Teach me.

Devon Balwit is a poet and educator from Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has
found many homes, among them: 3 elements, 13 Myna Birds, Anti-Heroin
Chic, Birds Piled Loosely, Bonk!, drylandlit, Dying Dahlia Review, Ink Sweat &
Tears, Journal of Applied Poetics, Leveler, MAW, Of(f) Course, Poetry
Breakfast, Rat's Ass Review, Rattle, txt objx, vox poetica, and Vanilla Sex
Magazine. (The names themselves read like a poem!) She welcomes
contact with her readers.
 ThreePoemsbyLanaBella

Smilla
- After Smillas Sense of Snow by Peter Heg

There is a kind of tight-rope walk

untouched by earthly weary load in which
one can almost hear god in the calm.
Like an exhale of breath, Smilla needs
a narrative that is varnished in snow,
that jangles with the rotten spoils of winter
while her numb fingers stretch beyond
the porcine clouds of Copenhagen.

On the causeway aping her past

as a ghost, her teal optics truss over
the frosted miles of this country
who still collect doubts and missteps
from her lithe figure as she lets in the cold
hard wind. It seems then she is here
again to taste the kinship of her surly host.

Silence where warmth has never been

in this city of ice and serpentine,
she is teeth without youth-filled tendrils of
cigarette smoke, a crocus blossom
folding in syllables of subversion and
her shadow shadowing its own shadow.

If she allows herself this moment

in the fog, for a split second,
she will be weariness itself, parched from
proverbial dark, with her mind's eye
bringing forth to front a chronology framed
in woolly threads of embittered want
so pure where all things known and unseen
splayed open to look like a sacrifice,
a punishment, a warning.

Dear Suki: Number Twenty-four

Dear Suki: North Carolina, May 3rd,
slippery motes of a memory effaced
your monarch flight into my waking
hours, where I remembered us ever
and always like this, insomniac with
you fluting over me, auspicious and
green. At some point, tiers of sunlight
sewed up the champagne sky, surren-
dering to a rockfest of unapologetic
swallows. Even as the world grew side-
ways while we grew life with curtains
on window panes and porcelain tiles
over bathroom floor, I arched toward
you for refuge, hand stripped malachite
off the mountains, slopes from rising
grounds, and lakes that freeze at winter.

Dot the Ts and Cross the Is

intoxication of the soon demiurgic,

you were a startling ear of the earth,
a paint stroke consigned in bright
of day through whom shadows hid
where there should have been light--
all consumed, you caressed the life
of simplicity, eluded the invitation
to arrange the cold long road back
hauling bones of crude, and how
the gnashing teeth of vanity tread
legless dotting the T's and crossing
the I's, chalking the names of every
effaced menagerie, closing the space
between a series of seafaring mirage
and the aches that were never there

A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Lana Bella is an author

of two chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016)
and Adagio (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming), has had poetry and fiction
featured with over 300 journals, 2River, California Quarterly, Chiron
Review, Columbia Journal, Poetry Salzburg Review, San Pedro River Review,
The Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, The Ilanot Review, The
Writing Disorder, Third Wednesday, Tipton Poetry Journal, Yes Poetry, and
elsewhere, among others. She resides in the US and the coastal town of Nha
Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps.
https://www.facebook.com/Lana-Bella-789916711141831/
 TwoPoemsbyKevinCasey

Christmas Cookies

We had forgotten the Christmas cookies

left entombed within their festive tin
atop the fridge--out of sight and mind,
and now March already upon us.

The round lid rolled away, the ginger snaps,

buckeyes, and pale flesh of sugar cookies
had remained whole, decors and nonpareils
left clinging where impatient children sowed them.

But none will risk this spritz cookie Eucharist,

the butter and sugar incarnations
of that season grown stale and suspect.
The children have since moved on to the feast

of chocolate and jellybeans, and the less young

among us are glad to set faith aside,
and to welcome the springs more certain
sacrament of reconciliation.

Snow Fence Sonnet

By a trick of your position,

it seems to pay out along
the landscape from the barn doors mouth
like a song of twisted wire
and rough-milled slats of aspen--
lonely notes on a listing staff.
Both the barn and fence stain the hill
above the pines with the same tone
of old blood, the same rose hue
of a near-spent coal releasing
its slow heat, and the snow whirls
and dances about the fences
boney knees as it marches across
these quiet drifts toward spring.

Kevin Caseys work has appeared recently in Rust+Moth, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Gulf Stream, Chiron
Review, and other publications. His chapbooks are The wind considers everything (Flutter Press) and For
the Sake of the Sun (Red Dashboard). The full-length collection And Waking... was published earlier this year
by Bottom Dog Press. For more, visit andwaking.com.
 TwoPoemsbyWandaMorrowClevenger

What Whit's End lacked in romance

A bar wall of red booths with a witty name sold

to a classmate born to green beer and cabbage-
filled menus with seating for eight more
on the corner colorblock dance floor;

after Bowlero broasted birds and Marvel movies

we always grabbed a booth at Whit's End
where one night my date didn't drop to one knee.

In 2001 we acquired from the new owner two sets

of Whit's booths, tabletops cracked from long
cold storage
to romance the date he didn't drop to one knee.

third girl

a second girl waited

her turn to flee
the church
supply closet
expecting a different
outcome than the first's
fume
at frisked by
two curious georges
laughing inside
the dark recess

I'd like to think

I wasn't pulled
in third
because the others
screamed foul
but nobody
was fooling nobody

Wanda Morrow Clevenger is a Carlinville, IL native. Over 392 pieces of her

work appear in 139 print and electronic publications. Her debut book is still
available This Same Small Town in Each of Us (Edgar & Lenores Publishing
House; 2011). PayPal
link: http://edgarallanpoet.com/This_Same_Small_Town.html
 ThreePoemsbyJoshuaCole

When will life begin again?

I lay and wait for spring,

wrapped in a cocoon of heavy linens
and blue steel shadows.

Fear spreads across my mind

like burning gout,
a fever suppressing my will.

I retreat further into

the mass of comfort
I have constructed.

Still I listen for

the hungry melody outside my window
which prophesizes the end
of this sour season.

I would give the weight of my soul

in gold
to see the green blades break through
the white concrete,
and smell the sweet lilacs
dangling from the bush.

A Quiet Introduction

Words like wick burn

and feelings coagulate
like white wax after
the smoky tail rises
from what was
bright, warm, inviting
now brittle, black, dead.

Love Song

This morning I heard a love song, it was you.

your hair tickles my nose like feathers
your arms are a warm scarf on a winter's day
your lips leave sweet morsels across my unshaven chin

this love song rings in my ears still

the melody, naked skin pressed to my collared shirt

the verse, hushed promises upon my ear lobe
the chorus, freckles guiding my hands down your smooth back

This morning I heard a love song, it was you.

Joshua lives in the beautiful seacoast of New Hampshire with his lovely wife,
and two amazing daughters. They enjoy picnics, hiking, and family fun days.
If you like his work, check out his website, https://authorjoshuacole.com/; like
his Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/authorjoshuacole; or follow
him on twitter, @authorjoshcole
 ThreePoemsbyAmitabhVikramDwivedi

Bat

Early September, it was bit dark,

I saw a bird flying in the sky.
It was really high and steady:
I thought it were a crow.
After a while, I realized it was a bat,
And soon they became many.

I told my wife, They are bats.

She didnt believe me.
How foolish-didnt know bats wings-
What a pity?

I again said, They are bats.

She resisted, they were not.
I thought for a while,
Whether with a mule I am talking to.

I looked at my baby in the pram.

Such a beauty!
Do bats drink babys blood?
A thought flashed through, and disappeared.
I lifted my baby and pressed near my heart.

I will protect you from everything.-

I said silently.

Aftermath

The mourning stopped, and

The murmuring started.
Though few mourned, and a few murmured;
Translated their symbols into words,
Into prophetic warnings and concerns.

Also came at a same time-

The falling and rising of tone,
The low meters of the dying.

All hopes vanished, and truth laughed-

When abruptly doctor announced that,
His life is not done.

Loop

It was a play,
A simple manipulation,
When your fingers ran parallel-
Crosswise
Or lengthwise,
And you created a loop.

But it was not a play,

Only a manipulation,
When your fingers ran parallel-
Crosswise
And lengthwise
And you suspended yourself
Into that loop.

As a child, I know mother that-

Now
you
Are Not

living.

Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi is assistant professor of linguistics at Shri Mata

Vaishno Devi University, India. His research interests include language
documentation, writing descriptive grammars, and the preservation of rare
and endangered languages in South Asia. He has contributed articles to
many Science Citation Index journals.

His most recent books are A Grammar of Hadoti (Lincom: Munich, 2012), A
Grammar of Bhadarwahi (Lincom: Munich, 2013), and a poetry collection
titled Chinaar kaa Sukhaa Pattaa (2015) in Hindi.

As a poet, he has published more than 100 poems in different anthologies,

journals, and magazines worldwide. Until recently, his poem Mother has
been published as a prologue to Motherhood and War: International
Perspectives (Eds.), Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2014.
 TwoPoemsbyElisabethJ.FerrellHoran

The Tallest Flower

A sunflower can stand upright

Seven feet tall all the way until fall.
Nothing can touch it - no flower can match
Its tensile strength nor
Its honest cheeks of ochre -
With its seedy black teeth falling out and
Martian green arms waving hello.

My Deer

The Hemlock stand is black and lovely

From what I can see from here
If I were a deer, I would bed down there
Tuck my tired nose and doze.

The morning mist lies mystic

A being of its own -
Under its covers, crickets dont sing
But sleep till noon in the down.

Its October here; death creeping near -

I can hear the neighbors practicing.
From my porch I hear the bullets singing -
Feel the volley in my womb.

I want to bring the deer inside

I want to keep them near me -
Why should they have to die
When there are aisles full of meat to buy?

Id like to hide them from

the angry ones
wholl try to take their lives -

They hang the tips above the fire

Crafted egos as cartilaginous antlers.

If I were I deer, Id be bad to eat

My head on the mantle disastrous;
For Id wear an expression of quizzical madness -
At the idea that Im now venison.

But here in the Hemlock stand,

So quiet, black and lovely.
The deer bed down without a sound
On mats of flat green needles.

Here my deer are safe from men,

safe from the ire and fire -

May they not need to flee nor bother

Whilst filling up on summers last treason -
Before they go on the run all season.

I have no idea if they know its October.

But they must sense the darkness is near
Men, consult calendars - not deer -
And I for one, won't make them any wiser.

Elisabeth J. Ferrell-Horan lives in Vermont with her husband Josh and two
young boys, Peter and Tommy. She finds happiness in the barn with her
horses and being surrounded by the sounds of nature in its raw form and
beauty. She is earning a second chance in life while finding her voice as a
poet: Writing poetry lets me express the darkness and light in my brain
which would otherwise be unacceptable to say out loud. Elisabeth is hoping
to publish a manuscript which addresses the struggle of postpartum
depression - that may serve to help other women who may be suffering in
pain and alone.
 TwoPoemsbyJohnGrey

The Father You Did Not Choose

Coffee in cup holder,

Doritos on the passenger seat,
he drives through snow
like a bronco buster.
swaying one way, then the other,
but ultimately holding to
the direction where he's headed.

He holds the local record

for most beef jerky swallowed in an hour,
is a regular at Wednesday's two-for-one burrito night,
can drink just about anybody under the table
and swears like a deck-swabbing sailor.

Not forgetting the size of his hands

and how he can quote
from years old copies of Hot Car magazine,
had to be coerced into finally
embracing a cell phone.
has a tattoo of a devil on his upper left shoulder,
plays Garth Brooks exclusively
on his car stereo
and has a thing for rhinestones.

And he's your old man.

This is what you have to accept
when it's time to bring
your first boyfriend home
or kiss those leather cheeks at bedtime.

You're the daughter

of fuzzy dice dangling from the rear view mirror,
a bumper sticker that reads,
Gas or Ass No One Rides For Free."
Somewhere in your DNA
are rodeos and monster truck shows.
shotguns and a bounce house
rented for your eighth birthday.

You're sensitive, articulate, curious,

well-read and ambitious.
And you really do love the man.
Must be for reasons I've not listed.

Rachel on the Beach

Rachel
does not consent
to explanation.

The rolling waves,

sandpipers
and the laughing gull
are more willing
to be defined.

Footprints in sand,
tossed hair.
are more resistant to meaning
than B natural
on a cor anglais.

And sea-wind
is the only music here.

Rachel just strolls

the shore-line
at the dipping of the sun.

And light lacks imagination.

The dark is pure guesswork.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New

Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Gargoyle and Big Muddy Review with
work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry
Review.
"SixColoursinBlack&White"byMichaelPaulHogan

a black square

a yellow circle

a red oblong

x ----------------------------------------

the moon is balanced

on a chimney pot

a bowler hat is balanced

on the moon

a white triangle

1 black line vertical

1 black line horizontal

1 black line diagonal

2 green circles
 x--------------------------------

a cocktail stick

with Luis Bunuels eyeballs

in a dry martini

a yellow triangle

a brown oval

2 brown circles

a brown triangle

Collage cut from tickets for the Ballets Russes

and a sheet of music paper

x ----------------------------------------------------------

naked

she plays the balalaika

wearing a Chinese coolie hat

 4

a yellow circle

a white triangle

a red crescent

a vertical black line

a blue trapezium

x -------------------------------------

a fishing boat

off the coast of Le Havre

midday August 1929

2 orange circles

2 green oblongs

a red square
 x -----------------------------------

Still life:
two oranges and

a bottle of St. Emilion

Assemblage of

an ironing board

a typewriter and,

suspended from above,

a bicycle wheel

x -----------------------------------------

A reply to Max Ernsts question:

What is Surrealism?

Paris, 1925

Born in London, Michael Paul Hogan is a poet and journalist whose work has
appeared extensively in the USA, UK, India and China. His latest
collection, Chinese Bolero, illustrated by the great contemporary painter Li
Bin, was published in 2015.
 FourPoemsbySteveKlepetar

Patience

Its the dead who are ever patient, waiting for us in dreams.
They stand across a black river, faces draped in shade.
Sometimes they emerge from a mirrored pane of glass,
a shop window, say, on a busy street in the autumn dusk.
They wait with hands empty, or cupped
and filled with rain. They never speak until we
are ready to hear. They are no longer crippled or bent
or desperately ill. Instead, they want to hike
or drink wine. Their shadows have disappeared,
burned off like morning mist over a mountain lake.
With them you may wander the shore, watch
the water quietly as frogs sing hoarse tunes among
lily pads. Then it becomes easy to believe in the bodys
return, new warmth radiating out into chilly air,
a cheerful voice, bones fleshed again, ashes
pulled from stubborn earth, reconfigured into teeth and bones.

Good Intentions

Im the seam that can go at any time,

the famous straw on the unfortunate
camels humpy back.
Im the owl in the tree outside
your bedroom window, the one who
endlessly calls your name. Im a pothole
on the road paved with good intentions.
I live in the lungs of the wind.
When you snuggle down in bed,
Im the pain that wakes you in the night,
the dream of your old friend
come back from the grave with news
of the rivers of hell. Im your cough,
the rough patch of skin by your anklebone,
the woodpecker thrumming on your house.
Im what you forgot, what you locked
in your car, what your lover whispered
to the lake on a night without stars.
Mine is the voice you cant ignore,
the chest of painful memories you buried
in the yard until flood waters tore them from the earth.

Rowboat

How we got here, in this small boat

Ill never know, rocking back and forth
on a dark sea. But now we row, backs
bending, then straightening with the pull
of oars, water a glorious weight against
the muscles of our arms. Forget blisters;
we are wind on the skin of the waves,
seabirds skimming along little crests
of foam. On the wide horizon, nothing
but a streak of rosy gold, and in our noses
a strong salt smell. We are making for
the sun as it curves west toward endless
sea, igniting a storm of flame as it touches
down. All night we toss beneath stars, our
waking postponed until we grasp the depths
we float above, silence roaring in our ears.

Werewolf Gets a Cell Phone

It used to be so easy, just howl

beneath the bath of moon,

pee in the high grass.

Tear out a few throats, wake

with shredded clothing bathed

in blood, a simple life. But

now hes in touch with friends

in many woods. Growls bounce

off satellites, spring earthward

faster than his fangs uncoil.

Music spills from his smart

phone, a wild Dionysian dance

that has him leaping tiptoe over

underbrush with sheepish joy.
Steve Klepetars work has appeared worldwide in such journals as Antiphon,
Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Expound, Red River Review,
Snakeskin, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been
nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections
include Return of the Bride of Frankenstein (Kind of a Hurricane Press); My
Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems (both from
Flutter Press); and Family Reunion (forthcoming from Big Table Publishing).
 TwoPoemsbyJoanMcNerney

Sleep Exercises

Encircled
with sheets
squared off
by blankets,
the radius
of self is
contained.

II

Is it possible
that I am bigger
than this bed, all
beds, upon beds? That I spread
too much all over the bed, falling
off the bed?

Or instead,
am I a small
speck
on the bed?
That could
never fall
off the bed
because
I'm just a
thread
on the
spread
of the bed?

III

Each image
floats by.
Dissolves
in shade of
black/white.

Find the
red ball,
trace night.
Awaken
to sleep.

IV

The glass eye

reflects the motion
picture of today.

Rememberless.
A film unsequenced,
characters without motive,
plot ran away.

Now
pointing
inward
this eye
a moon
of stone.

Each night
a vessel
of thought
as quick as
mercury
spills over.

Shimmering

That summer I wanted to

take off all my clothes.
Be naked under the sun.
Tango all over warm grass,
so warm, warm.

Noontime perfumed berries

and lush grass. Beneath honey
locust through hushed woods
We found this spring,
a secret susurrus disco.

My feet began two-stepping

over slippery pebbles.
Threading soft water
the sun dresses us in
golden sequins.

Your hand reaches for me.

Joan McNerneys poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines

such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Moonlight Dreamers of
Yellow Haze, Blueline, and Halcyon Days. Three Bright Hills Press
Anthologies, several Poppy Road Review Journals, and numerous Kind of A
Hurricane Press Publications have accepted her work. Her latest title
is Having Lunch with the Sky and she has four Best of the Net nominations.
 ThreePoemsbyStephenMead

Sky Fell

Fog was the first clue,

The sense of scattered jet streams,
White shred & the next
Fed to the black night.
I thought:
Thats what we are, dense
Vapor spirals so easily cut loose
You could trace the tree line
In my body & in yours, coursed
A road
The shade of charcoal,
Aquarium-green, water running over
Then the sky fell & we assumed light,
Having to assume something
For so suddenly everything

Changed

Fog II

Rolls on, an all over lint: rising.

Compared to exactness,
That terrible pall, this dullness
Blesses, makes gazes really look.
What every eye says is:
So were a bit of a mess,
Think of the potential!

How I love these funnels fanning,

This town of gowns flung about
Branches, with a half ocean coming
Spirituous.

Once at a dance club I passed out &

Coming round was something similar:
Vast space, whiteness, grey wisps swirling
For green blinking, magenta jet trails,
Neon yellow
At the bottom was height, depths of it,
The pulsating planet reborn or
Perhaps coming to an end,
Yet only the way orchids close.

Some thought it a bad trip, though time,

Time I experienced & one voice whispered:

Not to show, so hard, youve been trying

Though here it is, the world

Maybe yes no not sure but

The whispering face went back into the mist

Scratch the Surface

Being Nobodys though,

After weeks, showing up,
Glowing ghost from middle night,
Shadows, the essential zone
So lines wont be seen, the skin,
A wind, losing narrow streets,
An achievement here,
Earth-angry yet tender
With deep china-need
Should love admit the spirit
Who once & still

Could not stay

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, maker of short-

collage films, and sound-collage downloads. His latest P.O.D. Amazon release
is an art-text hybrid, "According to the Order of Nature (We too are Cosmos
Made)", a work which takes to task the words which have been used against
LGBT folks from time immemorial. In 2014 he began a webpage to gather
links of his poetry being published in such zines as Great Works, Unlikely
Stories, Quill & Parchment, etc., in one place: Poetry on the Line, Stephen
Mead
 Four Poems by Robert Okaji

Nights at the Magdalene Laundry

Waiting, as if it could
be foreseen, as if influence and love
and truth could ease into the conversation,

she pours water into the nights

mouth. A little longer, says the voice,
and the wind bends the grass,

reaching, without apprehension, a conclusion.

Which is not to claim verity, nor the patience of stone

crumbling along the ledge.

She leaves when nothing remains.

Odi et amo (zero)

How I fear what you contain.

Reaching through,

I find only more you,

but when I multiply your being,

the result limits me.

I add myself to your body and obtain

only myself. If nothing is something,

how, what, may I claim?

Your beginning and end, a line

become circle, become identity.

I enter, and entering, depart.

Bandera

I offer nothing in return, and in offering, receive.

My mouth is a river

whose current bears no words,

but the silence is not of my making.

Notice the streets and their grey

hunger, the rain and

the sun passing by much

as one passes an unopened door.

That question, unvoiced.

That shiver preceding the icy touch.

You may deny my motives.

You may deny my existence

and the very notion of shape unto form.

I offer nothing, and in offering, receive.

Icarus

Currents of breath, the slight curve and lift

within a single motion, once

poised then released as if to say

the wind is mine, or wait,
I am alone

the story we most fear,

not height nor gravitys

fist, but to exist apart, shadow and

mouth, rain and smile, feather
and sun, all denials reciprocal,

each tied fast and renewed.

 Two Poems by Sergio A. Ortiz

Wind Son

They arrived,
invaded blood
smelling like wet feathers.
You feed them fear
and loneliness
as if they were
two small animals
lost in the desert.
Theyre here to burn
the Age of Sleep.

Your life
is a constant goodbye.
You hold on
like a snake thats only itself
when theres nobody looking.

You cry, open the jewelry box

of your desires
and youre richer than night.
But theres so much isolation
that your words commit suicide.

Morning

Today I woke with purple eye.

The bed sheet covered with bitterness,
the horizon dyed your gaze with resentment.
It was my prison, my sticky algae refuge.

God I love you Gaby! Your hands

strange tentacles of islands.
Oysters open their eaten shells,
rock jellyfish and sirens have indigo lips.
So much oblivion, so much baseness!

A wounded wolf with hemlock penis

howled in your brain.
It hit the staghorn corals.
So much water lily perfume
in the swamp inside you.

The morning was intoxicating liquor,

menstrual delirium. Your sex
on top of my tumbling soul
defeated.
The froth of your mouth,
the epilepsy of sound screams:
God how I love you!

You were the vampire

of my night carriage, the dice
rolled in red brothels, the subtle
emanation of nipples.

Next morning
your teeth bit my forbidden fruit again,
walked with tousled hair, wandered
the streets of my chalices. You knew
how to unleash the envy of morning joggers.

Theres no answer to the torture

of your silence, you gave everything
you had in the rocks, the mosses,
the cliffs, the gelatin slits of my skin.
Your gaze fell victim to a deathly pecking.

Once eyeless, you destroyed gulls,

infected the solace of your prison cell.

Gaby
Gaby
Gaby

You are the first haggard hours of my morning.

Sergio A. Ortiz is the founding editor of Undertow Tanka Review. He is a two

time Pushcart nominee, a four time Best of the Web nominee, and a 2016
Best of the Net nominee. His poems have been published in hundreds
Journals and Anthologies. He is currently working on his first full length
collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard.
 Two Poems by Mark Roberts

outcomes

night voices dissolve

through brick & gyprock
drawing us to the half light
of an outer suburban night.

we live a half dream

passing through walls
staring down oncoming traffic.

on a river a duck glides

frantic web feet hidden
we see only grace.

disembodied voices hover

over polished laminate.
we are funnelled
to this point
left with possibilities
but only one outcome.

Cutting the grass

Once a week I would see the old man mowing the concrete at the front of the
building, pushing an old Victa mower slowly up and down the street.

He kept it in a small shed at the back of the flats. Every Thursday he would
take it out and clean and polish it until the paintwork sparkled, and every
Monday he would push it around to the front of the block and start it up. He
used an old leather strap wrapping it around the starter and pulling slowly
but firmly. It started first time every time blowing clouds of oily smoke across
the street.

One day somebody called the police complaining about the noise and the
futility of mowing concrete. The old man told them that he remembered
where the grass had been and he was doing his bit to keep the street neat.

The police took away his mower. Within days green shoots appeared through
cracks in the concrete.
Mark Roberts is a Sydney based writer and critic and is the founding editor
of Rochford Street Review (https://rochfordstreetreview.com/).His collection
of poetry, Concrete Flamingos, was published by Island Press in February
2016 and his latest book, Lacuna, is currently looking for a publisher. Mark
occasionally blogs at https://printedshadows.wordpress.com/
 A Poem by Daniel Sokoloff

Fracture

My body is made out of glass,

wings are tissue paper,
starlight goes right through me.
Every second penetrates,
rain twists and ruins my flight;
dizzy from the vertigo,
I anticipate the earth.
In every direction others like me
coast up or down,
some cast down by vindictive winds,
or shattered by glittering rains,
others saved by crackling black storms,
raptured out of the sky
like dirt swirling into a vacuum.

Fractured light is all around me,

the rays butchered by the rains knives.
Colors bleed through the heavens,
red of an archfiends malicious sneer,
orange of a blazing forest fire, unstoppable holocaust,
yellow of an acrid sea of urine,
green of a dreaming alligator,
blue of a fading, withering star,
indigo from the heart of a starving artists canvas
and the violet of discarded panties.

I floated there,
bathing in the frayed threads of daylight,
and my body acted as a prism,
refracting them, a loom
spinning back into form
the elegant curve of the rainbow,
and then
what little existence I had cracked,
shattering soundlessly in the dawn.

Daniel Sokoloff is a poet from Philadelphia, PA. When not writing poetry or
walking one of his two lizards, he enjoys stargazing or speeding down I-95.
He is currently working on his first chap-book, "Dream of the Ash," about his
connection to the Norse god, Odin, and can be found at his
website, Lokepoet.weebly.com
 Two Poems by Ojo Taiye

Ravines

widowhood is death

in toothless silence

if you doubt me,

ask my father

why he sits alone in the moonlight

underneath silhouette shadows

why he unwraps a box with scrapbook

filled with collages

ask my sister

why she holds a cracked star in her dream

why she recites a song at the foot

of a withered tree

ask my brother

why he folds affections with a name

why he builds a castle on the breast of driftwood's

ask! ask them.

they will tell you as in a fever

why a caged heart is blind in a world full of sight

Vagina Stories

inside a shanty that reeks of liquor

your name echoes on the lips

of retch dogs

who recount sordid- honeyed tales

- of their quarries hidden in dirty satchels

- of how you became a village stream

- of how you moan and wrestle when fire burns

- of how you moon for stolen breads on the lips of a bearded sun

- of how you became a nursery rhyme a mouth of darkness

drowning young boats.

Ojo Taiye is a young Nigerian who uses poetry as a handy tool to hide his
frustration with the society.