Month: March 2014

Taking a break on the park bench

“Where are the goddamn poems?”

We’re closing up shop to submissions so we can get the Skinning Honesty anthology zipped and ready for publication.

If you’re seeking venues to submit your poetry, art, and writing to, our big brother Nostrovia! Poetry is open to passion.

Corpses under clouds

Sky Burial
by Michele Seminara

I look so unremarkable
but then I imagine
so do you.
And the secrets inside
that we like to hide
are probably boring too.
So listen
why don’t we share them?
Cut our guts open
and air them?
We can have a sky burial
and invite birds of carrion
to transform
our dark feelings to food.

(First published in The Blue Hour Magazine 2013)

Riding the Nightmare

Riding Dark Horse Nightmare
by Joan McNerney

to prison library
where sewer
backs up flooding
cages of books
my brains are washed
by a short scientist

detectives trail me
arrested by police
giving up to
handcuffs  ether

now on train
calendars peel
off cars
1942   1962   1982
2198   1892   1294
passengers screaming
screaming off track
burning 3rd rail

in swamp struggling
to reach green reeds
i   am   a
fixed target
paper duck
*pull trigger*fire pin*thru barrel*into muzzle*
b u l l e t                 s h o t
paper duck
mowed down.

And all that jazz

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.