Who I Am
by Lennie Bezwik
I’m a writer
who keeps his writing
to himself,
a traveller
who avoids
other travellers,
a musician
who never
plays,
a worker
who doesn’t
wanna work,
a drinker
who wants
to give up,
an Englishman
who lives
overseas,
a leftie
who can’t stand
the left,
a joker
who rarely
laughs,
a lover
who expresses
hate more easily,
an opinionated man
who keeps
quiet,
drunk
when I need to be
sobre,
sobre
when I need to be
drunk.
My Ekphrasis Is A Fraud
by Michele Seminara
Hands
hard
on the head of the stick
shoved into his mouth
to choke violent eruptions
Eyes
crazed horses
restrained beneath
brows of extreme malcontent
She
with her handkerchief
twisting and twisting
a noose around the wrist
of despair’s swollen neck
This is the picture I used to mask our love’s lament
*Inspired by Scottish artist Thomas Faed’s painting of a miserable couple, entitled “Faults on Both Sides”.
(First published in Deep Water Literary Journal 2013)
Jazz
by Joan McNerney
the kitchen sits
in fruit soup…
steamed apricot
mango shadow
down thru spinning
smoke into hot light
blink beat
body ends dangle
lead eye skin cement
high on tongue
night pasted among
buildings Styrofoam clouds
moon hung beneath billboard
rolling pass wet
rocked streets
soul tramp
diamond panhandlers watch
paper birds slices of
the daily news drift in air
comes cool ether
whispers up door
climbing dusty corridor
tree windows lapping lisp
door slams again noise again
then none void nothing syncopates
noise again door slams tree bare frozen
caught in the image of 7 candles
within 7 candles flames of air
7 light bulbs growing out of each other
7 silver circles coined from 7 silver rings
clear as blazing sheets
of glass yet
vague as dust
an ice cube on wood table
in front of crushed velvet
melt
poured
peeled
when this sky now boiling with
stars is strapped black
in pinched air thru sucked mind
swimming pass spaced time
will be one silent
note up.
Poem & Bones
by David Garrett Izzo
A poem lasts; bones change into oil.
“One is a verbal artifact; the oil comes from dead things and turns all our cars into hearses:
“I see dead people.”
Dinosaur bones went into the ground really deep and the pressure turned them into fossil fuel.
Barney is your passenger today and every day.
Poems will last as long as trees grow
Poems on the internet will last as long as there is electricity
Which comes from (all at once now) fossil fuel
(Is there a pattern here?)
More like a circle that’s been expanding since the big bang.
What goes around comes around.
Watch careful now, the verbal artifacts are here.
Technology Is Not Advanced
by Nilofer Neubert
there is a comfort in knowing that if we were born in the eighteen century
we would have never survived the time difference, the physical distance.
there is a comfort in knowing that if our words never ventured the www
our IP addresses would have never crossed paths, and
we would never knew how the other tasted like.
there is a comfort in knowing that if no one had a flare for Math,
and never thought that studying Mechanical Engineering 101 or 202 was their poetry
planes would only appear in pages of stories instead of
being able to glide so elegantly
from Asia to Europe, Europe to Asia.
there is a comfort in knowing that someone saw the need for a programme
for people around the world to get closer;
he threw in free calls, video chat, instant messaging all into one
called it Skype;
Skype, the next best thing to human touch, or so she aims to be.
yet
despite the free calls and instant messages we seek solace in
no one has invented something that allows me
to split into my basic atomic form
to travel through invisible wires
defying the rules of time differences and the miles between us
to reach you within seconds
only for you to watch as I reform
atom by atom
till I am solid enough
to hug your cold body as
you lie on your carpeted floor,
floored by the lack of my presence
to keep you upright.