Archives

In Merciless Air

by on Jan 23, 2017

You shouldn’t venture into fog,
where a mountain’s head rises,

a face without eyes, arrowhead
jammed into the flesh of sky.

It may be, someday
that the world will flip to face

another sun, and you the fish
choking at the bottom

of a wooden-ribbed boat,
your eyes smoke and glass,

your desperate lips pouting
as you drown in the merciless air.

 

—
Steve Klepetar has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including four in 2016. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems. Family Reunion and A Landscape in Hell are forthcoming in 2017.

In the Feet of a Refugee

by on Jan 20, 2017

-At the Internally Displaced Persons Camp, Kuje, April, 2015.

I know where daffodils trade their yellows for crimsons;

I know where they are, too weary and weathered with war;

Yes, I know where their cornet-cast crowns are full of furrows:

The soles of a refugee’s feet—bloodied, broken into lines of latitude and longitude of longing;

Longing for home on whose pristine paths sprout earth’s most prickly plants:

Bombs, blades and crying kalashnikovs.

 

—
Frank Eze lives in, and writes from, Ibadan, Nigeria. He recently won the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize. His works have been published in online journals—Praxis, WritiVision, COAL and many others. Frank is working on his debut poetry collection, AMARANTHINE.

The Teenager Who Became My Mother

by on Jan 19, 2017

The teenager who became my mother had a way of feeling, seeing and hoping.
It was hope in particular rafted her through the war.
She was not one-eyed either were her hairs curly,
She had a body of one colour: black.
I remember when I asked her if she has ever seen anyone die.
She moved her head up and down: A kind of Yes.
She said she saw five and twenty and more;
That most of them drowned inside of her.

I looked her in the eyes after she had exhausted her dying tales before me.
I saw the teenager who became my mother
and was a graveyard for those drowned inside of her
to see us crawl through the war.

 

—
Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto is a Nigerian who likes reading and writing.

The Past Is Not Where I Left It

by on Jan 18, 2017

Last time I saw it, it was shivering in blackness
wrapped tight in layers of shame
squeezed small with no room to breathe
locked up as he never would be.

I searched that space, that hole, that valley.
And in its place, the compressed past
formed diamonds so hard and bright
I placed them in my eyes and faced forward.

 

—
Stephanie Hutton is a writer and clinical psychologist in the UK  who believes in the therapeutic value of short creative works. She has published flash fiction, short stories and poetry online and in print. In 2016 she was shortlisted for the Brighton Prize for flash fiction. She can be found at stephaniehutton.com

Positive Vibration

by on Nov 24, 2016

             East Hartford, Connecticut
                  1961

I threw bricks at the windows of the school,
and I stole a plastic skeleton from
the Prospect Drug just before Halloween.
I started smoking Kents when I was 12,
and when the Scout leaders had trusted me
to sort the uniforms in the basement
I thought it would be a good idea to
dress up like a Girl Scout and make Greg laugh.
Of course I got caught in my skirt and blouse
by Father Shanley, who called me a snake.
They finally tossed me out in the eighth grade.
The vibrations of the Beach Boys were good,
but years would pass before I really knew
what the positive ones were all about.

 

—
John L. Stanizzi is the author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, and Hallelujah Time!  His poems have appeared in American Life In Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Rust + Moth, The New York Quarterly, Rattle, and others.  He teaches literature at Manchester Community College.  Find him online at johnlstanizzi.com.

a new silk scarf

by on Nov 22, 2016

a-new-silk-scarf

 

—
Mary Kendall lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her husband and her dog. Mary is a retired teacher. Her poetry has appeared in many online and print journals and she is the author of Erasing the Doubt, published by Finishing Line Press in 2015. Mary is co-author of A Giving Garden published in 2009. Her poetry blog is A POET IN TIME.

The Animals Are Gone

by on Nov 18, 2016

They left in the night, taking with them
the scents of the world. First there was
disbelief. “This must be a joke,” we smiled

at each other, and we set out to find them
in forests and fields. But our dogs wouldn’t
come when we called, even when we offered

steak and bones, even when we whistled
in that pitch we ourselves could never hear.
The sky was empty of birds, leaf-heavy

trees silent on this late summer afternoon.
We ran to the park, but the peacock cages
stood empty. Even feathers had vanished

or blown away on rising wind. No geese
waddled by the river, no ducks bobbing
just beyond the shore. Cats were gone, milk

souring in their bowls. No midnight yowling
at the fence line, no swarms of gnats.
Suddenly we were alone with the empty seas.

We lay face down in mud, hoping to catch
a glimpse of frogs or toads, or hear a familiar
croak, or a clack of crickets disturbing the high grass.

 

—
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include 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.

License

by on Nov 17, 2016

I got a fishing license this morning. It’s good
for small game besides fish – coyote, beaver,
skunks, and groundhogs allowed year round.

A varmint is a problem beast, a nuisance
whose extermination is encouraged, an invasive
vermin offering potential guiltless pleasure hunting.

The last time I went hunting I killed a groundhog
with a .410 shotgun, perhaps the most inefficient
way to take a groundhog but I wanted a challenge.

I stalked the cow pasture then sat still spying
the quick starts and stops of attentive movement,
the rising heads, trying to estimate the stations

of den holes across the field, let them enter before
creeping a few feet closer, a statue when one would
pop up from another backdoor hole, freezing, then

moving again, closer. We danced like this for half
an hour until I was only fifteen feet from an entry,
sat cross-legged in green and brown, waiting

for the groundhog’s boredom to tempt it. I made
a noise. Why would anything be out here to hurt it?
A slow head popped up, then the torso half way

higher to see better, hindquarters stance of curiosity,
nose tilted up, I imagine smelling breakfast, cigarette
smoke on my breath as I exhaled partly and held,

offering the soft squeeze and explosion of shot
peppering up instant flecks of dirt and blood, no
movement then but the puff of dust vanishing.

I heard the whining belly full of babies before
pulling her out of her hole. I verged on a panic
threatening to rush me from the field with a cry

of absolute shame. But I forced myself to stand over
the body until all was finally quiet and the stretched
womb grew still. I turned and snapped the stock off

my shotgun with one strike on a stone and tossed
the weapon in the hole, toed the body in over my
surrendered gun and nudged the berm of dirt over it all.

 

—
Larry D. Thacker is a writer from Tennessee. His poetry can be found in journals and magazines such as The Still Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology: Tennessee, Mojave River Review, Broad River Review, Harpoon Review, Rappahannock Review, and Appalachian Heritage. He is presently taking his MFA in poetry and fiction at West Virginia Wesleyan College. He is the author of Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia, the poetry chapbooks, Voice Hunting and Memory Train and the forthcoming full collection Drifting in Awe.