The Boy by the River Told

by on Feb 2, 2017

The boy by the river told to await his father’s
return plays with pebbles, kicks at rocks
as the night rises through water,
drops from trees to fashion a statue
cast in grey then black when the last
spark of faith flickers, falters
and goes out, the night
rushing in, floating him upright,
stiff through the woods to lie in bed
listening to water spilling from
room to room, door to door,
the whole house shivering, shaking,
breaking down under water flashing,
flooding quietly down the stairs,
pooling, stopping, crawling
past the father unseen.

 

—
After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans, Matt Dennison’s work has appeared in Rattle, Bayou Magazine, Redivider, Natural Bridge, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Cider Press Review, among others. He has also made videos with poetry videographers Michael Dickes, Swoon, and Marie Craven.

Journey

by on Jan 31, 2017

 

—
Olivier Schopfer lives in Geneva, Switzerland. He likes to capture the moment in haiku and photography. His work has appeared in The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2014 & 2016, as well as in numerous online and print journals. He also writes articles in French about etymology and everyday expressions at Olivier Schopfer raconte les mots.

I Have Me Some Hobbies

by on Jan 30, 2017

I take advantage of everything—mostly people and of these people mostly friends. I have other hobbies. Yes, I consider taking advantage a hobby and “found” items I display in my modest ranch house near the beach but the lists and the taking advantage summaries I keep hidden away in my knotty pine den with two boards that open to a secret closet by a spring opener. My found things are scattered all around the house, including my stash closet. One day in the supermarket I spotted an open purse in the baby carrier of a cart.  After watching the lady shopper walk off a few aisles and no one else was in the ethnic foods aisle I snagged the wallet and hit a mother lode of cash, credit cards, even a debit card with the password written on it. I sold that for five hundred dollars to some degenerate at a bar. Outside the hardware store I took a wheel barrel on display and filled it with bags of potting soil and wheeled it to my car at the far end of the parking lot and asked some young guy with the hardware store logo on his apron if he’d help me unload the soil and get the wheel barrel in my car. He couldn’t have been nicer so I gave him a $2 tip. That’s how my collections go. My bookshelves have a bunch of library books that I was able to walk out with in my backpack and my walls have pictures I’ve taken off of doctors office walls. You’d be surprised how many doctors are good photographers and like to display their work. I list the “found objects” in a moleskin notebook and keep it in my hide-a-way along with my “taking advantage” of moleskin. Who can remember so many items? I have to make some changes because my house is filling up with things I no longer treasure, Yesterday; I started dropping my collected wallets randomly into open purses in the supermarket.

 

—
Paul Beckman’s story, “Healing Time” was one of the winners in the 2016 The Best Small Fictions and his 100 word story, “Mom’s Goodbye” was chosen as the winner of the 2016  Fiction Southeast Editor’s Prize. His stories are widely published in print and online. His published story website is paulbeckmanstories.com and his latest collection of flash stories, PEEK, is available on his site.

There was a river

by on Jan 27, 2017

at the farm of a girl my age.
We were maybe nine or ten.
The length of her hair
galloped like a mane
as she splashed ahead into the water.
Cows drank from shallow banks.
The current was fast from rain
and pulled at our legs as we moved
around branches and stones.
We swept and fell outside the hours.
I don’t remember hot or cold
or the wet afterward.
We laughed at weakness
as we climbed from the water.
Our steps sought buoyance
upon return.

 

—
Micki Blenkush lives in St. Cloud MN and works as a social worker. She is a 2015 recipient of an emerging artist grant awarded by the Central MN Arts Board, funded by the McKnight Foundation. Her writing has also appeared in: Sequestrum, Naugatuck River Review, *82 Review, and elsewhere.

kite festival

by on Jan 26, 2017

 

kite festival –
my whole crayon set
up in the sky

 

—
Anthony Q. Rabang finished his BS Biology at the University of the Philippines – Baguio in 2015. He started writing haiku, senryu, and haibun while soul-searching in January 2016. He has poems published in the Asahi Haikuist Network, Failed Haiku, World Haiku Review, Contemporary Haibun Online, Cattails, Wildplum, Akitsu Quarterly, Akisame, Makoto, Presence and Under the Basho. Website: Short Pauses

In the Clouds

by on Jan 25, 2017

out the porthole
a primordial sun
wears the colour it was born with
the stewardess keeps altering its flavor
sometimes it tastes like orange juice
other times, Chinese tea

I feel myself ascending
into the divine world
not far away, Zeus and the Jade Emperor
are comparing notes
about how to woo a lady
the gods’ lost chargers
hide in long sleeves of fairy maidens

night falls, moonless
stars are out
no other celebrations
in the firmament
except for a silent pair of wings
fashioned out of iron

 

///

Author’s note: The Jade Emperor in Chinese culture and traditional myth is one of the representations of the first god. In Taoist theology he is one of the three primordial emanations of the Tao.

 

—
Cui Yuwei is a bilingual poet and translator based in China. Her poems and translations are widely seen in Australia, the US, Canada, Vietnam and India. Her pocket poetry collection Fish Bones published by Flying Island Books is forthcoming soon in Macau. Currently, she works as an English lecturer in Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai Campus in China.

Sometimes the Water

by on Jan 24, 2017

(Watch Marie Craven’s video “Sometimes the Water” on Vimeo)

Editor’s note: Poem by Kallie Falandays was at the Poetry Storehouse but is no longer available to read online. Full credits at Vimeo.

 

—
Marie Craven is a media maker and musician from the Gold Coast, Australia. She has been engaged in online collaboration since 2007 and has contributed to works with artists in many different parts of the world. Website: pixieguts.com

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.