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Walking in Chinatown on Sunday, You Do Get Lonely

by on Aug 7, 2015

When the woman lounging in front of
Nu’uanu Pawn
waves a skeletal arm at me,
it seems churlish to refuse,
so I join her in the
stone doorway where she sleeps,
blanketless
in thick Honolulu night air.

People remember Ching’s Grocery,
they give me no stink-eye.

Clear back, back in time, I see
cats sleeping on prehistoric linoleum,
baskets stacked to the ceiling,
flowers, papayas, melons and cabbages in front,
a game of Go always in back.

I was the Queen of Go, she laughs.
but I’m still here.

 

—
Trish Saunders lives in Honolulu, Hawaii. She spent her childhood years in the pretty small town of Snohomish, Washington and credits excellent teachers (including her late mom) for her love of poetry.

Wabash & Balbo

by on Aug 6, 2015

A Chicagoan who sees Death on the way
may then and not an angstrom before
whisper their innermost Parking secrets
to an heir, their next of kin, to a lucky care-giver
on shift when the spectre appears. Locations,
special techniques. How to swipe the Mayor’s spot
for a week and avoid towing. Ten steps
to dismantle a metal parking boot,
and reassemble it, and so roll to drive
another day. Rumors about Big Johnny,
who can erase records when he wants to,
who can wipe those debts. The time you blocked
two lanes of Upper Wacker to get a haircut.
No spaces then, per se. When the offspring lean in,
one fader says, Wabash & Balbo—two bucks
for the long weekend. Three should you wish
valet service. He coughs half a lung out, croaks,
Ask for Murray, say I sent you,
say I told you before shoving off.

 

—
Todd Mercer won the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts Flash Fiction Award for 2015 and was runner-up in the Palm Beach Plein Air Poetry Awards. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance appeared at Right Hand Pointing. Mercer’s poetry and fiction appear in journals such as: Apocrypha & Abstractions, The Camel Saloon, Cheap Pop, The Lake, The Legendary, Main Street Rag, Midwestern Gothic and Spartan.

Elegy for Apologies I Will Never See

by on Aug 5, 2015

The summer I found my two pet goldfish belly up,
like a fistful of dignity falling to sand, my mother
prayed for the tomatoes. She spoke chaos in tongues,
each convulsion meaning, “red,” “plump,” “juicy.”

That summer’s harvest yielded tomatoes so perfect,
they looked as fake as a virtuoso’s uncalloused fingers.
The hands of someone who takes showers and not baths.

My mother explained our good fortune: “I asked and
the Lord delivered.” She said He blessed us with this fruit
for letting the wall-eyed woman, with a pack of gum
and National Enquirer, cut us in the check-out line.

It was my grandmother who let the truth slip as she
sucked on her dentures. “Your mom buried Lily and
Sunflower with the tomatoes. They sure worked.
This BLT is excellent.”  My mother meant “circle of

life” as a comfort, said we had made lemonade from
lemons. She buried my darlings like a tell-tale heart,
plagiarized an act of god from this domesticated rot.

 

—
Lauren Yates is a Pushcart-nominated poet who is currently based in Philadelphia. Her writing has appeared in Nerve, XOJane, FRiGG, Umbrella Factory, Softblow, and Melusine. Lauren is also a poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly and is currently a Poet in Residence with the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University. For more information, visit laurentyates.com.

twigs

by on Aug 4, 2015

this house i bought  in its fortieth year
has sheltered other lives
the people who sold
it to us                        for instance

my son’s room
belonged to the girlhood of a middle aged
woman because she dropped
in once to tell us how

she gazed through those levered windows
over the shed at the silver gum
that knew the paddock before the street
the bush before the paddock

and knows us all through turgor, touch and
light, currawong and native bee
flood upon flood       bark stripping
in September winds

sketching the inner shape
of things

 

—
Duncan Richardson is a writer of fiction, poetry, haiku, radio drama and educational texts. He teaches English as a Second Language, part time, in Brisbane, Australia.

searching

by on Aug 3, 2015

 

searching
the entire cupboard
for that shawl …
feels like I’ve lost my mother
even before her death

 

—
Neck deep in haiku, her face barely visible, Kala Ramesh, an award winning poet has been instrumental in bringing school kids and college youth into haiku. Her latest obsession: to paint city walls with haiku, to weave in a pause, a breather into our hectic lives!

Bystander

by on Jul 29, 2015

The radiance of evil
burns the world down
to a fine white ash.
It settles on your hair
and eyelashes. You
breathe it in, you
taste it on your tongue.
You don’t know who
has been burned
but you are part of it.
You walk in ashes,
you find them in your
pockets, you rub them
out of your eyes. The streets
are deep with ash.
Women weep
behind high walls
until the air is thick
with grief. You
have not lifted
a finger. You fear
you will never
be clean again.

 

—
Mary McCarthy grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, studied art and literature but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. She has always been a writer. She has great hopes for the future despite the horrors reported endlessly in the daily news.

Crooked Smiles

by on Jul 28, 2015

(For Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Jada Justice, and Shaniya Davis)

They wore crooked smiles—
Aiyana, Jada, and Shaniya.

Aiyana was shot in the skull
during a police raid; Jada

was killed by a cousin high on
drugs, and Shaniya was raped

and left for dead. If they had
looked like JonBenet Ramsey

their faces would’ve been on
placards and shirts and spilling

out the mouth of crusaders for
justice. Instead their pictures, like

bones—got buried six feet under
minds and forgotten. Aiyana’s

heart will never flutter holding a
boy’s hand nor will her eyes sparkle

being handed the keys to a new car.
Jada will never leave footprints on

a sandy beach or laughs in the wind
as her feet clap the shoulders of the

horse she’d begged to ride. Shaniya
will never again hear the sounds of

rain hitting her window or thunder
of a crowd when she slides into

home plate. Few tears were shed
when three white caskets were

lowered into the ground, but the
world still stops on its axis to dig

up Caylee Anthony. Let justice ring
from the rivers of Detroit. Let justice

ring from the banks of Lake George,
Indiana. Let justice ring from the

Sandhills of North Carolina. Let
justice and peace ring for the

unspoken tawny girls and all
their crooked smiles.

 

—
Arika Elizenberry is a native of Las Vegas, Nevada. She is currently an editor at Helen: A Literary Magazine and the President of UNLV’s Writing Rebels. Some of her favorite writers include James Baldwin, Dorothy Parker, Nikki Giovanni, and Lucille Clifton. Her work has appeared in journals such as 300 Days of Sun, Burningword Literary Journal, and Toasted Cheese. She is working on her bachelors in English.

Fragments

by on Jul 24, 2015

these little bits
fallen from the skies

these little inches
measured with the eyes

these fleeting cravings
nurtured
with lonesome ink
and the abandoned
hands of time

are remnants of love
of fallowed souls and
unconsummated thrones…

these feeble raindrops
ascending the forsaken
heights of your eyes

whose ingredients
God only knows

form rivers
of a heart
where drowned
fishes float

 

—
JK Anowe was born in Nigeria in 1994. He’s presently a degree student of the department of foreign languages in the University of Benin, Nigeria. He speaks English, Igbo and French fluently. He writes and edits poems and short stories for Parrot, a literary/lifestyle magazine run by the University of Benin.

A Reverence for Rust

by on Jul 22, 2015

rusted wheels
carrying us toward
the hymn of home

a haloed sun
beckons us beyond
the rusty gate

pressed prayers
these rusting memories
between our palms

rust-flecked silo
our songs still echo
hallelujah

 

—
Debbie Strange is a published tanka and haiku poet and an avid photographer. She enjoys creating haiga and tanshi (small poem) art. You are invited to see more of her work on Twitter @Debbie_Strange.