Issue 3: Blue Vegetarian Lions

Issue 3: Blue Vegetarian Lions (Apr-May 2015) is an unthemed issue featuring poetry, prose, videos, and artwork from writers and artists around the world.

Penelopiad

by on Apr 24, 2015

(watch “Penelopiad” and read Jade’s process notes on Youtube)

Penelopiad

First 5 came, then 50, 120!
But what could I do? What could I say?
I am just one woman, I can’t make them go away.
It was love, or so the story goes.
Flattery disguised as unkindness, friends acting like foes.

Then another 5, another 50, an extra 380!
But I couldn’t stop them coming, I couldn’t make them not stay.
I’m just a fragile human being, I’ve got to live each day by day.
It was because of their desire, their passion, the supposed ‘force of nature’,
That made them behave like animals, like sickly beastly creatures.

A final 5? The last 50? A total 730?
But. No more buts, I’ll use my wit to succeed.
No more oppressed female victim.
I’ll use my will power to achieve.
To help me in this task I chose my four favourite maids.

Kerthia, Narcissa, Selene and Melantho of the Pretty Cheeks,
But though they promised me their faithfulness,
They deceived me like, whores, no less.
Then a mere man came and saved me, a hero concealed.
And killed all in sight just as I, the woman, had willed.

No more 50 or 380 or even maids to comfort me,
But this is what I wanted, to be an independent woman,
A mother and a wife, with just her husband and her son.
Who needs maids? Who needs the hundreds? Who needs anyone but herself?
Who wants love? Who wants comfort? Just shroud me with my wealth.

 

—
Jade Anouka is an actor and poet. Combining the two, she has a love for performing poetry and has featured at many venues across London and New York. These include Farrago, Apples & Snakes, Proud Camden and The Bowery NYC.
She has just been offered a poety book contract from Poetry Space and is looking forward to launching her first collection of poems.

Sisters

by on Apr 23, 2015

She was visiting for the first time. Over the next few days, our only not-so-hidden-agenda was to forget ourselves. The weather was brewed and just right for poetry. A haiku here, a tanka there, and a little free verse to drown in. Our faces beamed with happiness, and were also tinged with the temporality of it all. She would go back. I would be left all by myself again. I received a book of Gulzar’s poems as a gift from her. And a box of chocolates.

A month later, all that remains are a few wrappers in the drawer.

winter rain…
eavesdropping I listen
to nothing
but the sound of my breath
bounce off the walls

 

—
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India. Her work appears in over two dozen international anthologies including publications by Paragram, Silver Birch Press, Minor Arcana Press, Harbinger Asylum, Kind of a Hurricane Press and Writing Knights Press among others. Her poems, erasures, haiku & tanka have appeared in numerous print and online journals. She is also the editor of the literary and arts journal, Sonic Boom.

Mary at 60 Remembers 30

by on Apr 22, 2015

When I turned 30
my friends dumped me at a table
in a dark bar, ordered me a daiquiri.
I sat silently as they remembered
the old days—less than fifteen years ago.

When I got home, I broke
the bathroom mirror,
gathered the shards,
and watched a Dick Van Dyke Show rerun.
Laura Petrie would be cute
forever.  Joseph already preferred
PBS science specials to kissing.
Or did he?  I thought he did,
accused him of infidelity
which wasn’t true—

then.  Today I think about 30
and wonder why I got the glooms.
Life was good.  Or was it?
Memory has old scores to settle,
selects flavors that it craves,

leaves the rest.  I may make it to 90.
What will 60 feel like then?
The years speed up.  I’m walking
against traffic, no one slowing down.

 

—
Kenneth Pobo has a book forthcoming from Blue Light Press called Bend Of Quiet. His recent work has been in: Weber: The Contemporary West, Floating Bridge, The Queer South (anthology), and elsewhere.

Mary at 30 Thinks about 60

by on Apr 21, 2015

Maybe Elton will give me grandchildren,
cute as ten-cent Cokes.  I’ll take them uptown
where the purple martin houses decay,
the diner where I met Grandpa Joseph
now a gun shop.

I won’t wear make-up,
not even lipstick.
If I’m called a frump,
so what?  We’re all frumps
after a certain age, men too.

I’ll ride my bike to garage sales,
buy cookbooks and trellises,
take a train trip across country,
New York to Seattle, have an affair
somewhere around Omaha,
nothing life-changing.

Don’t ask about Death.
I’ll cling to life like a dahlia
tied to a flagpole.  Unless
I’m sick.  Morphine and bed sores.
Mom died at 62.  It came fast,
like a stone dropping from a bridge.

60 seems far away.  A twig
dropping into the bird bath.

 

—
Kenneth Pobo has a book forthcoming from Blue Light Press called Bend Of Quiet. His recent work has been in: Weber: The Contemporary West, Floating Bridge, The Queer South (anthology), and elsewhere.

Rendered

by on Apr 20, 2015

Because I am not the youngest
and older than the others

I will be the one who must remember
the greatest part
most accurately

the meaning of our parent’s secret glances
and the soft confessions
of guilt for being too often left alone.

I’m not allowed to forget
how our father
tried to put things back together
by literally putting things together

the pride of his rehab clock
knocked to the floor
just after completion

telling awkward time in crestfallen numbers.

 

—
Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL with his wife Vickie and daughter Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee. He was recently a finalist in The Rash Awards and a top ten finisher in the Writer’s Digest poetry competition. His poem “Distillery of the Sun” was awarded second place in the 2014 Bacopa Literary Review poetry contest.

The Trees in Buena

by on Apr 16, 2015

The trees in Buena carry
A degree of coldness in their fruit.
They are perishing now over the solemn
Vistas of the city,
Unreal blots of color
On an otherwise grey dominion.
Through the patios of lonely families
The moon is an orange in the bright fists
Of summer.
Its reflection fills with stars and wood smoke.
Through the streets, through the grey
Huddle of buildings,
We smoke camels and light fractions
Of the dark. We confess and absolve.
We disappear.

 

—
Seth Jani originates from rural Maine but currently resides in Seattle, WA. He is the founder of Seven CirclePress and his own work has been published widely in such journals as The Foundling Review, East Coast Literary Review, Red Ceilings Press and Hobo Camp Review. More about him and his work can be found at sethjani.com.

To: That Bird So Small I Mistook You For a Floater

by on Apr 15, 2015

in my eye. In the branches mirror-
silvered by an inch of ice, you
were a movement and a frigid little song,
a frozen hinge opening.

I never thought before
to wonder do avians have artifacts
of vision, too. Eye wall art
with no provenance as if graffito
ninjas swim the humors, spray can
stencil hawks primed
to vex the optic nerves.

How small those birds would be.

 

—
Barbara Young is a native of Nashville, Tennessee. She likes bluegrass, blues, jam cake, chess pie, cats, and small but roomy cars; and she wishes she’d paid more attention.

Solar Therapy

by on Apr 14, 2015

Endless days of dripping dark
spirals approaching singularity.

I stare in wonder at an odd glow as
fog and clouds burn away.

Blue is my new favorite color.
If you need me, I’ll be standing with my face to the sun.

 

—
Michele S. Cornelius lives in Southeast Alaska where she works on photographic art and fills notebooks with poems.

That Sinking Feeling

by on Apr 13, 2015

A river runs under the house.
It has always been there,
but the builders thought
they could make it go away
by throwing ash and stone
into the water.

The neighborhood is sinking.
Gradually it will disappear.
Hold onto the walls and furniture
as you start your journey
to the center of the Earth
or out to open sea.

 

—
Joseph Farley edited Axe Factory from 1986 to 2010. Farley writes poetry, fiction, plays and essays. He also performs with Improv on Rye. His books and chapbooks include Suckers, For the Birds, Longing for the Mother Tongue, Waltz of the Meatballs, Her Eyes, and Crow of Night. His work has appeared recently in Bellview Park Pages, Bewildering Tales, Beyond Imagination, BlazeVOX, Crack the Spine, Danse Macabre, Concrete Meat Sheets, Thunder Sandwich, Horror Sleaze Trash, Schlock, T. Gene Davis Speculative Blog, US 1 Worksheets, Verse Wisconsin, Visions and Voices, Whole Beast Rag, Ygdrasil, Literary Hatchet, and the anthologies One Hell of a Christmas (Thirteen O’Clock Press, 2014) and Night Walkers (Thirteen O’Clock Press, 2014).