Super Moon

by on Aug 5, 2016

June 22, 2013

Because I don’t want my neighbors to think
that I am doing nothing except watch the moon

rise between the maple and the evergreens,
I place a book in my lap, put on headphones,

inch my chair a few degrees north just
to keep the moon positioned cleanly over

our little slice of suburbia. Soon a neighbor
will join me, place his lawn chair next to mine.

He sits down and begins to whittle, slicing pale
curls from a hickory branch which pool

around his feet. After the man in the moon
clears the telephone lines, misses the maples,

my neighbor asks, What are you listening to?
Nothing, I reply. Hmmmm…he says,

Maybe you should learn to whittle?
Are you going to teach me? I ask.

Sure, he says, you begin by looking
at the moon…

 

—
Cathryn Essinger is the author of three prize winning books of poetry:  A Desk in the Elephant House, My Dog Does Not Read Plato, and What I Know About Innocence.  Her work has appeared in a wide variety of journals, from Midwest Gothic to The Southern Review, The Antioch Review and Poetry. She is a retired Professor of English and a member of The Greenville Poets, from Greenville, Ohio.

Moon Kisses

by on Aug 4, 2016

I love the moon’s craters,
how they appear like bubbles in pancakes
or gaps in an alligator’s smile. The moon
does not know how to love,
but I’m content to blow kisses at its
slowly revolving merry-go-round face.
Moons don’t pulse for love,
but they do tuck snugly into orbit,
sighing pleasantries into our ears,
nuzzling against our bare skin
as we lay in bed awake, hoping
to learn how to spin.

 

—
Kelsey May’s poetry has recently appeared in The Maine Review and damselfly press and is forthcoming in Barking Sycamores, and Pine Hills Review. She has also received numerous grants and awards, including a nomination for a 2016 Pushcart Prize. She loves grilled cheese sandwiches and reading novels about Central America.

Daydream

by on Aug 3, 2016

Daydream

 

—
Olivier Schopfer lives in Geneva, Switzerland, the city with the huge lake water fountain. He likes capturing the moment in haiku and photography. His work has appeared in The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2014 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.

Sea Song

by on Aug 2, 2016

When my lover went blind,
He touched my stains, my teacup skin,
He took my thirst and drank it in.

When my lover went blind,
He followed the waves, nose to the wind,
We salted our toes by dipping them in.

When my lover went blind,
We cracked oysters, thick with sin
And fed on their liquor, dripping it in.

When my lover went blind,
His ears could see and his hands were finned
I climbed on his back, we dove in.

 

—
PJ Wren writes poems and very short fiction and has had work published in The Lake and After the Pause. More of PJ Wren’s writing, including non-fiction, poems, and stories, can be found at (or through) Inside the Glass Tunnel and PJWrenWriting.

Talking You to Sleep

by on Aug 1, 2016

   We are all midnight swimmers in a cosmic sea.
   – Robert Van der Cleave

I lie down on your bed and talk you to sleep.
It’s easy now.  Already your arm under your pillow
is pulling through brine shrimp by the billion.

Around you the jellies gently pout and pulse,
their umbrellas hauling along ghostly ribbons,
breathing and eating being the same ballet.

Soon I will slide down this continental shelf too,
past twilight blue mussels swaying with the waves
and oysters licking their pearly wounds.

I’ll meet you among the ships flying their kelp flags
through submarine canyons.  Down, down I go,
my nightgown a see-through swim-bladder,

the Pleiades twinkling in my wild hair.
I might be almost beautiful again, as I soar
among undersea peaks, my face free of its mask

of worry, my arms open wide as if to pour
the entire shimmering Andromeda galaxy
at your feet.  Who taught us to love like this?

To slip out of ourselves into this long current
breathing us so easily in and in and in,
then out again, imperceptibly new.

 

—
Margaret Holley’s fifth collection of poems is Walking Through the Horizon (University of Arkansas Press).  Her work has appeared in Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and many other journals.  Former director of Bryn Mawr College’s Creative Writing Program, she currently serves as a docent at Winterthur Museum.

Geography of the Dream

by on Jul 29, 2016

We seek our houses, we swim, we fly, we lose
Our keys, misplace the car, find our beloved dead
Wearing fedoras and hats with veils.

We ride horses, we arrive in class
Unprepared, our notes missing,
We appear on the avenue of the naked.

We make excuses, solve mysteries we are pursued
By spies, we climb scaffolds, panic in elevators.
We are not ourselves

Or we are young again and passionate.
The images dissolve in feelings so intense
We wake shuddering. We write down

What we can remember. The lover faceless and nameless
The university of discovery.
The boiler room where bad things happen.

 

—
Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, etc. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She has published 16 books including Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press which received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize and Ribcage from Glass Lyre Press which has been awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. She has two books forthcoming in 2016 and 2017. One of her poems is among the winners of the 2016 Atlantic Review International Poetry Contest. Colby is also a senior editor of FutureCycle Press and an associate editor of Kentucky Review.

After Ekphrasis

by on Jul 28, 2016

the net collapsed around us
fibers of rope burned our skin

where was that old stove
the one you wrote about
or was it me

the class clapped as you read
your long machine
would you call it automatic

the algorithm of your evenings
or do I misremember

the time we read Barthes
pages from Jabès

was that pleasure that you gave
the back of the neck a place to settle
or was it bliss

the paper cuts around us
fibers fixing on the pen

when did you write me out
the margins stretching
then folding over—

where do you keep
all our blood-red ink
made black

 

—
Marie Landau is an editor at the University of New Mexico Press and a member of Dirt City, an Albuquerque-based literary collective. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Red Paint Hill Poetry Journal, Yellow Chair Review, SOFTBLOW, Bird’s Thumb, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.

The Elephant in the Room

by on Jul 27, 2016

There’s little room to breathe in here

the elephant sucks out all the air
through its massive trunk
and presses the couple to the walls.

They stare into each other,
their eyes message
what their lips cannot say:

there’s an elephant in the room.

There’s little room for elephants here
where villages expand into the plains
and poachers gun down whole herds.

Dying elephants suck air
through flattened trunks
fading eyes hold a message

there’s something we need to talk about here.

 

—
Juliet Wilson is an adult education tutor and conservation volunteer based in Edinburgh, UK. She blogs at Crafty Green Poet and can be found on Twitter @craftygreenpoet. Her poetry and short stories appear in various places online.

Multilingual

by on Jul 26, 2016

I drink tea with spiders. There is never
enough milk. The spiders complain about
the heat, but I tell them to blow across
their cups or just have patience and wait.

On sunny days, birds glide overhead, apples
swell and hang heavy from trees. I can say
these truths in three languages,
the words inscribed on the inside of my skull.

This makes travel easier to many parts
of the world. Here’s what I’ve observed:
on rainy days, girls go to the movies.
They don’t go with boys or with their pets,

because they want to hear the film stars
snarl. The stars eat apples dropped from
the beaks of birds. They drink a tea brewed
from webs. They blow across their cups

to calm the howling pets. They have gold
flecked eyes and travel far, speaking tongues
of spice and flame. In darkness the girls spin
on their seats like small tornadoes in a glass jar.

 

—
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.

The Meeting Ran Long

by on Jul 25, 2016

(Watch Marie Craven’s video of “The Meeting Ran Long” on Vimeo)

Editor’s note: the text of the Eric Blanchard poem “The Meeting Ran Long” can be read at Literary Orphans.

—
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