The Bijou Poetry Review

The Ranch Cook

2012-01-28T17:26:00.000-08:00

Too many scars on her hands grasping
The paring knife tightly, chopping
Another pile of onions and carrots
Hired hands come in dirty, wash up
At the back door, she attends the cutting
Board, her apron yellowed but clean
A thin stew simmering on the back
Of the stove, one man pats her butt
Affectionately, she still smiles
To herself, waiting for the question
Even after these twenty years.

By Emily Strauss

Dragonfly

2012-01-25T15:49:00.000-08:00

Shh the dizzy hum,
Listen little one.
You flutter by, a glassy butterfly
And tiptoe
A blueish tune.

By Delaney Gibbs

The New

2012-01-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

Where now is the adventure?
Bounded horizon
Return of the goddess as it were

Elbow deep
Terse then tightening. If you were a pound heavier I’d fit you in this bottle

If the flowers die in Winter, will you?
Insects still mate, that cold stone still breaths

Toy in hand
That Yellow Chevy that poked your bones with fat.

By Mathew Lee Nelson

Happiness

2012-01-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

The dog isn’t happy
unless his head is
sticking out the car window.

The man isn’t happy
unless his head is
happy.

The man and the dog
have this in common,
thinks the man,

driving around with his dog
in the backseat, nose
in the wind, happiness

in the air.

By Paul Hostovsky

Makeshift Bookcase

2012-01-04T19:05:00.000-08:00

After lifting
cinder blocks,
how light
the poems.

By Paul Hostovsky

Violence

2012-01-03T08:03:00.000-08:00

She flicked her hand -
it was nothing to her
backhanding the innocent space.
There was
nothing
but the annoyed swirl of air
she made
at what she almost said.
I hated it.

By Piper Rasmussen

2012-01-01T17:35:00.000-08:00

We sat side by side, watching an uncomfortably raunchy Adult Swim program that he loved, until a storm rolled in. The skies darkened and rain beat oppressively over the house all at once. I felt apocalyptic black energy and a lack of safety, superstition, something. We got up without needing to say anything, gathered my belongings and ventured outside the very second the rain slowed.

Our drive was mostly silent, a normal and mutual status in our friendship, but even that was laced this time with uneasiness, as if some movie was about to roll the credits. I blurted something about being afraid, about change looming. I asked him if he knew what I meant and he reassured me in an emotionless tone that my new job wouldn’t be too hard, I would be trained sufficiently and patience would be administered as I learned.

I countered that the change felt bigger than that, and I didn’t know what would happen. I wondered what the new climate would mean for us as friends and as human beings. And then I finally asked, “What if I change?”

My greatest fear, and this time the silence that settled over us was suffocating.

By Kendra L. Saunders

To learn more about Kendra, click here!

Study in Green and White

2011-12-09T08:58:00.001-08:00

Monotone triptych to a soft horizon;
Hyperbolic green, stuck to the turned
Earth as our pre-picture of "work on the farm."

Far off, in the rain-dim light
One farmhouse changes the otherwise blank horizon —
Whiter still under the gray lid;
Lid that too has painted the fence, post
White.

An aspect of otherlife.
No bullets now of storm
Just unhungry green
And saint's white.

By William V. Ray

Young Guitarist Glimpses Mount Fuji in October

2011-12-07T15:04:00.001-08:00

Spotted from the teenager-crowded
Top of Tokyo Tower, it hovers in haze,
A digital white blip above autumnal
Countryside, while on the observation
Deck, a tallish Anglo manboy shuffles
(Red-eyed & sweaty & reeking of butter).
He speaks to reporters & hangers-on,
Says - I love the udon noodles, I love
The porcelain doll-like women, I love
The pachinko parlors, I love the dead

Leaves falling fast from your native
Maple trees, floating to wet grass in
Groups of five, then seven, then five.

By Harold Whit Williams

Oblivious

2011-11-30T16:25:00.001-08:00

I splinter through the door, mind shards
still scattered between qwerty, screen and space.
Time hangs suspended in the hourglass
unsure of which direction to flow.
Puddles avoid careless feet, birds pause flight,
stones roll down edges, leaves and flowers retract,
trees suck in waists, river reverses,
all roads hastily straighten curving spines.
Head an unpublished word press, body detached -
there are days the world needs to deflect me.

By Jane Olivier

West Redux

2011-10-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

a raven

the mighty Susquehanna
curling inward

caw caw caw.

a breach

the road was never there
was never mine. it was conceived as a ghost.

the earth is turning colder. invisible.
there is a bluster of blinding snow.

she'll insist that I smell like the west
like sun washed trees. like apples.

like a million little aftershocks.

later, she'll brush her teeth in the shower.

By A.g. Synclair

Politics

2011-09-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

"Everything is political," I informed him,
settling the matter once and for all;
"Everything."

He looked at me dumbly
fumbling with something in his pocket.
And after what must have seemed an eternity to him,
smiling in pain,
he finally withdrew his hand
and held up midway between his eyes and mine:

a sea-shell

By Richard Raskin
To learn more about Richard, click here!

mimesis

2011-09-08T20:37:00.000-07:00

the little girl

holds a pencil

between her fingers,

then brings it

to her mouth,

all the while

watching Mom

smoke.

By Debbi Antebi

The Deckhand

2011-09-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

Grunt of the rivers, the deckhand,

his world one of water and rust,

straddling

barges at winches working unseen like windings

of a clock twenty days on.

Twenty days off he dreams of currents,

knowing only two directions:

upstream and downstream.

By Robert E. Petras

Blackouts

2011-09-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

By this time the blood is too deprived of sweets.

He wakes without waking, hits the floor thrashing.

“You really gave her quite a scare.” Watching

her world fold up like that, crumpled

in the twisted fish that fell out of bed.

Suddenly another seizure, electricity snapping

everything sightless blind mice, where men slept.

Just light some candles and wait

the power will come back.

By Ramona Itule-Patigain

His Unroyal Lowness

2011-08-31T16:01:00.000-07:00

Quean Lutibelle

   proffers

   instant notoriety

   to all magnificent moguls

   willing to march

   in his parade.


   Cocktails afterwards in Gethsemane
   Informal, but wear taps.

   R.S.V.P.

By Louie Crew

To learn more about Louie Crew, click here!

Typhoid

2011-08-24T07:26:00.000-07:00

A brown crust covered my lips and tongue
like dirty words. When the rose spots
came out on my belly—that was the omen
the doctor told us—Mother cried.
All night the doctor sponged and sponged
with spring water. I shivered and moaned.
Days passed, and Father said, What
God damned luck, when the red spotted his side.

More days pass, weeks. A dry gust blows
the maple’s crown inside out, like Mother
throwing wet hair over her bowed head.
Thunder growls and rattles the windows.
I rise from bed, called by the banging door.
Stinging rain welcomes me from the dead.

By JS Absher

Blue

2011-08-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

There is the ample door
   to heaven
we believe we’ll pass through
   after a lifetime of good
and there is the blue heron
   that bathes and stalks
a secluded pond
   for sanctuary.

By Michael Keshigian

To learn more about Michael and his poetry, click here!

Where He Found Pluto

2011-08-12T16:15:00.000-07:00

Needles tucked away
like fading postcards of
South Dakota sunsets. He
fingered the syringe—
Not needing
to tie off, sky blue stars
tattooed on ready tracks.

By Rachel Marsom-Richmond

And It Was Autumn

2011-08-09T08:44:00.001-07:00

It rained while I slept.
I dreamed quiet ponies
grazing on a hill.

In the morning,
the orchard grass
smelled damp and fresh.

Red apples glistened, heavy
on low-hanging branches.

By Terry Martin

Harbor Portrait

2011-08-08T07:53:00.000-07:00

Daily the spring water fowl strike poses
that hold me entranced

The ivory white feathered Egret
walks a delicate elocution of phrased movement
that cajoles the shallows and gives signature to the mud

by Ruth Juris

Covered Fountains

2011-08-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

Loitering by the gardens

Watching tug of war between

The children of here and there

Is our umpteenth happiness

Walking through the streets

Of the covered fountains

With a smile by another

Tug of rope under our jaws.

By Matyas Sirokai

Elixer of Life

2011-08-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

Altitude sickness had begun creeping through Jeff since the ascent from Paloma Blanca. He’d had a pulseless, steady headache and starry vision since 8,000 feet. The night before, he’d taken the elixir. You will feel better afterward, the shaman had said. And tomorrow you will climb Santa Clara and look for a sign in the sky.

They looked out across the scalloped ridges of the mountain chain that ran north to south. Ryan grinned and squinted into the firmament.

The elixir was not working the way Jeff had hoped it would. The horrific visions from the night before seemed only to be pulling him closer to the knot that lay hidden in his groin, as if his entire being were contracting into the cancer, like a supernova collapsing into a dwarf star.

“Do you see anything?” Ryan asked. Ryan seemed younger then, like he had when Jeff had met him three years earlier. Ryan had been looking for a partner who knew the difference between love and the fear of dying alone. Jeff had said, I know. Now, every step in elevation provided Ryan a kind of physiological regression while Jeff sank deeper into the awareness that, in six months time, there would be no need for his sign.

Jeff’s face fell into his palms. A finger of sunlight broke through the clouds and ran across the ground and up his outstretched legs. Then the sky in the east turned plum and frenzied, and the patch of blue that had been the portal for the remaining sunlight squeezed shut. Rain came, and when it did, Ryan held Jeff’s head in his lap, and although he did not know why, Jeff turned his face to the sky and let the rainwater pool in his mouth, thinking, Now, I am actually drinking.

By Norah Charles

Hummingbird Feeder

2011-07-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

Trapped ants blacken nectar

Set out for hummingbirds:

For them, an exquisite way to go;

For us, a new approach to insect control;

For the hummingbirds, a feast for now deferred.

By Robert Demaree

To find out more about Robert and link to more of his poetry, click here!

South East 11

2011-07-19T08:04:00.000-07:00

plant a seed on a bark bench in

places of swing-sweats pooling in location

yards from dandelion murderers wishing for

clarified weeds

By Melissa N. Jones

Climate Change

2011-07-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

The corporate state plays
democracy while integrating fiefdoms.

The alarm numbs each subject
to fear while every charade
throughout the global prison
records weather on futile niches.

Using a canned laughter process
and a corkscrew, darker after-hours
drill inmates on buying a sunny day.

By Rich Murphy

Peace For Me Now

2011-07-15T08:05:00.000-07:00

after Baghdad

On the table by the window

balanced on its spine

this leaflet

butterfly open

and still as a

butterfly.

Peace for me now

zephyr through leaflet.

Peace for me soon

caribou and snow,

loping caribou

and caribou reclining.

By Donal Mahoney

Recluse at Coney

2011-07-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

how does one handle

nude on the beach

extremities starfished

almost asleep

how does one handle

the talons, the beaks

By Donal Mahoney

2011-07-11T09:15:00.001-07:00

The Bijou Poetry Review is back! To submit, send up to three short, original, unpublished poems (14 lines or fewer) in the body of an email to our new address: bijoupoetry@gmail.com

2010-10-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

Smoke Alarm

2010-09-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

Scanning the desert of a tabletop,

suave falsehood of wallpaper,

the smoke alarm hovers

austere as an eye,

reassuring as a phone number

memorized in childhood—

then numbers lose

their corpulent charm,

sirens their small-town blare,

rescue turning Prime Time

and fire, a living thing,

ready to thrive.

By Lynn McGee

Luxury

2010-09-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

Luxury.

A second cup of coffee

And morning turns to afternoon.

By Jeremy Jennings

Nymph

2010-09-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, I found stones in the river.

Yes, it rose to my shoulders.

Yes, the river took.

Can you blame me now if the shore has

its charm?

By Sabine Miller

Churning Dead Leaves

2010-08-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

Tailored night,

cut to fit her throat,

is the perfect pyre

for this garden’s end.

And as the wind finally groans,

her shoulders flutter.

A shade darker

than her toes.

To tap the urn

in synch

with the wafting clouds.

By A.J. Huffman

Eve Young and Alone

2010-07-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

No, I am not selfish;

I will live forever. Where

is Adam?

Who cares. Look,

Sunlight falls through the leaves

of that tree

like the wasps that swarm

the fruit.

What? Oh yes,

I suppose I am Beautiful.

What do you mean I can't sting?

Of course I can.

Watch this.

By Jessica Otto

Susan Showering

2010-07-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

Brilliant
May morning.

Upstairs
Susan
showering,

singing,
as the children
waken.

By Donal Mahoney

itchy noses

2010-07-25T16:25:00.000-07:00

ghostly steps move
through a
garden.

evening dew drenches
my paws.

hollowed footsteps paint
the driveway with
muddy outlines and

dirty hands trace the
lines of a rusted
fence with feathered
dandelions tickling my
nose.

I sneeze.

By Jessica Hamel-Akré

There is a crown of robins in your chest

2010-07-24T12:04:00.000-07:00

when you sleep i hear them weaving old papers
and dry grass, a tinderbox
your breath a ragged banner,
a standard at the head of infantry
the blankets a mountain range
where you spit out a reel of stars and swallow them again
and the small head of our baby
claims the space between your body and mine,
as it did when she grew,
when she was engendered there,
a hot spark in dry tinder
a flame in a bookstall,
a tiny open mouth in a nest

By Jacob Rakovan

Grown Up

2010-07-23T10:17:00.000-07:00

Too tall a tale

she said

with drink in her hand

through smoky bar air

with one hundred

Conversations

going round and round us

100 conversations

about little lives

and real estate

and watering lawns

so they don't go brown

By Nathan Schaffner

Slide Show

2010-06-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

shards of broken glass

frail white egg shells

a forgotten sock behind the dryer.

Strands of someone’s life unstrung.

fish in an empty pet store

old men in the park

the last piece of pizza, in the pizza box.

Puzzle pieces lost.

By Lauren Perez

To check out more of Lauren's poetry, click here!

Knots & Circles

2010-06-14T07:43:00.000-07:00

Any circle, society, family

must find children on one end

elders on the other

When these touch, the circle is complete

We have nuclear equivalents

some device of cloning

sex therapists, gender benders

neuters and foreskin groups

I see a lady and a small boy

She is teaching him knots

he is feeding her cat

She drops her ball of yarn; they

bump heads reaching, fall down laughing

By Tom Sterner

Brevity

2010-06-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

The black dogs run across the field,

apocalyptic streak of hunger

impending upon the tiny fawn

to jump, wobble-kneed and run

across the far field clumsily,

as stupidly as its wild heartbeat,

unable to know that this was all there was.

By Michael Burczynski

Glass

2010-06-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

the glass blower

enrobed

a rainbow,

a feminine rose bud-

glass canals

became aphrodisia.

By Luke Johnson

Untitled

2010-06-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

Girl singing to the trees outside,

and the perched, blooming birds

writing the branches...

By Magdalawit Makonnen

As He Waited for the Half and Half

2010-06-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

His meter was not running out

this time, he laughed, and to my left

a white-shirted fellow under forty told his

cropped silver haired woman companion

on the neighboring stool by the window about

“our children’s passion” at the Village Starbucks

on New Year’s day 2010.

By Janice Silverman Rebibo

The Death-graph

2010-06-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

I ignore your every call——. I bramble you——.
I covet your shadow. Bartender, another round, Friend lay out
another line——cocaine flocks the gingko-lined street.
Some things worry themselves smoky. Some things
never were heavy, still are: a shock of
cardinals——vamping for the wind
——anything for a sawback——everything for a prayer——
sky when there is no sky.

By Justin Dodd

The Water's Edge

2010-04-25T08:15:00.000-07:00

In the unlikely cadence of

noon live oaks slumbered

about the water's edge and

the inner applause of my

heart began, not caring to

cease while the world

seemed bathed in tenderness

in the warm, tempting hours

of spring.

By Bobbi Sinha-Morey

EROS

2010-04-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

First

he came for me

with a whip,

then an axe.

Now

he just sends me

postcards.

By Askold Skalsky

gambling with poetry

2010-04-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

dear editor

please consider my following poem

for your literary magazine

thanks so much

for putting up with me

and my incessant submissions

each time I cut and paste a poem

into the body of an email

and click SEND

I feel like a gambler

placing a bet on the roulette wheel

rubbing his hands together

closing his eyes

and thinking, ‘hell, maybe

this one will hit.’

then afterwards

I sit back in my chair and smile

imagining the day

when I finally take down the house

By Jackson Warfield

Question

2010-04-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

You lie lopsided

posing a question mark.

Next to you, I too lie askew.

Bodies of two old buddies

by now so well versed

in their positions.

Too close, yet not close enough -

My once prince charming

is fast asleep, and I,

his once sleeping beauty

lie wide awake pondering

an infinitesimal crack in

love’s seemingly tight wall

open as a question one dares not ask –

By Rena Lee

Reading Basho in Naches Heights

2010-03-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

When I smell the sage release green heat

Hear pheasants flutter on the rise

See the sun shine orange on Mt. Adams

Even in Yakima

I long for Yakima.

By Terry Martin

Valentine's Day

2010-03-02T07:10:00.000-08:00

Shards of vodka

bottle flower

in the dead middle

of the lawn, where

the Christmas tree, prone,

wreathed in burnt lights,

points, a compass needle,

past the curb, toward

the low brown hills.

By Mark Jackley

The Desert

2010-02-26T15:54:00.000-08:00

Soon. Soon.

Whenever won't be long.

***

Things are sad.

Sad like thrift store crowds

and the desert beyond

the Walmart lights.

Sad like fat hunger and

the smell of break rooms.

There's grass here, he says.

I haven't seen grass in a long time.

Her lips, like boiling clams, open.

***

Blood red veins of the cork

like the trails of ants.

Summer: we eat fat pears

and drink straight from the bottle.

By Jackelyn Hoy

Overbites and Understandings

2010-02-24T20:24:00.000-08:00

my friends go as far as nick-names go.

counting backwards one year from one thousand.

you've made a mess,

i've made ammends.

fourteen facial fractures in seething

yellows and resounding blues.

By Darren Hall

The Slow Walk Home

2010-02-23T08:17:00.000-08:00

An evening out,

A day at work,

Or is it the other way around?

Run wild on the front yard, Rover,

But beware of the electric fence.

Houses as far as the eye can see,

Each filled with people,

Fulfilling their duties.

Part of my brain sees the potential,

But another part prevails,

And reminds me,

Of the

Slow

Walk

Home.

By Kevin O'Sullivan

Bork Slow

2010-02-20T17:39:00.000-08:00

Standing northwest,

a helmet shiny with new paint.

Resolute, facing away

from the traffic on

the corner of a busy street.

Resilient in the morning sun.

Brown coat, military perhaps,

anticipating response

that may never (could never) come.

Above his head, held

like a standard bearer,

unwilling to let the message

be misread.

"Bork Slow".

By Brad M. Bucklin

Knit

2010-02-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

There it was: cast on, cast

off the botched rows.

The unstitch and pulled

needles soothe an extension

of the body and how

you hate taking up space.

It seemed the transformation

were to no end, as though

the scarf weren’t a scarf,

but a blanket you couldn’t stop knitting

until even the pattern began to change.

By Karen Alayna Thimell

Monday Night

2010-02-04T20:56:00.000-08:00

His sleeves

rolled up

giving his

young son

a bath;

the new

widower.

By C.A. Leibow

Bottle(s)

2010-02-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

Drunk on assembling the scattered shards

green beer and blue wine

and transparent water my fingers

work to have something to fill.

By John Sibley Williams

Salute

2010-01-01T13:31:00.000-08:00

The notion state traveled from room

to room before the public square

conquered within ear-shot.

From moods to zeitgeist the green patch

amassed an empire that colonized

the internet peoples, tearing down walls,

dissolving borders, hemispheres.

By Rich Murphy

King Of Beers

2009-12-29T08:55:00.000-08:00

Curled

up & tinted red

the sidewalk under the

again off again spell

an ancient neon curse

Flashing

in the dusty window

Big Al's Celebrity Lounge

faceless mass of matted hair

Blacked

out in the moonlight.

By Ed Markowski

Short-Pants Potentate

2009-12-07T16:14:00.000-08:00

Inferno of a summer day

Mother’s dozing

Tommy, tiny, three,

paring knife in hand

tiptoes out, flops

short-pants potentate

upon the sidewalk sunny,

operates on ants

By Donal Mahoney

Illegal Chickens

2009-12-05T19:53:00.001-08:00

Against city ordinances, a woman

keeps five chicks in her basement

until they grow large enough

to live in her backyard. No months

of red tape, no permits. The woman’s

protest against rising prices and urban

sprawl turns into omelets, an egg-hatching

science project for second graders, a pound

cake, a neighborhood reminder to catch

the sunrise. Eventually noodle soup

for the neighbor’s cold if she can

catch the darting old hen. Both beak

and chin stretch forward to gain speed.

By Jari Thymian

How the Red River Got Its Name

2009-12-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

Dank basement, axes, missing limbs.

The floor creaks above, slow ka-thunks,

something dragged. Sleeping bags,

dim flashlights, a flood of blood in Crookston.

Something burble-burbles in the rusty

plumbing pipes. Young cousins wait

for the story lines: Give me back my liver!

Give me back my liver! The river –

much, much too close to Grandma’s house –

waits for its name.

By Jari Thymian

Never Used Angel

2009-12-05T19:42:00.001-08:00

for sale, two dollars, plus shipping, on Craigslist.

Soul guardian, trumpet blower, summoner of heralds.

In excelsis deo, in electric neon, in a new box.

Lit up wings and wire, blinking bulbs, white

cord for snow camouflage, flightless wings,

holiday yard, hallowed art? Hollow art?

Shopping cart? Plus spiritual tax.

By Jari Thymian

Centennial Farm

2009-12-05T09:35:00.000-08:00

This field is the one field

on the whole place we’ve never

plowed and planted.

We walk around it,

pacing it off together.

By Jillena Rose

Best Painting I Imagine

2009-12-04T20:54:00.000-08:00

two pianos sit in the rain
laughing, in a white dress
you must be,
soaked, shivering, smiling —
as the rain still falls
you dance with eyes alight
your voice ringing
beautifully

By John Reay

Lemon Orchard

2009-12-04T20:50:00.001-08:00

All afternoon, the scent of lemons,

as the sun crawls along their backs.

Why bother with mystery when this nostril-light

cracks the rind and routs from hideouts of sweetness

the ghost-scent?

I smashed a lemon,

and billions of distinct particles

left in a haughty squirt.

By Cork Kyle

Tooth Fairy

2009-12-04T20:44:00.000-08:00

When I was five,
the tooth fairy got high,
and knocked out a pair
of my baby teeth.
I didn’t dare put them
under my pillow.

By Dennis J. Bernstein

Musician Wife

2009-12-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

on long drives

my neck tendons
become guitar strings

my wife
reaches over

places her
velvet palm

on the back
of my head

and strums
me

a love song

By Terry Miller

Cliché

2009-11-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

We were talking about cliché

the perfesser with the beard and glasses,

tweed jacket with the leather

patches,

and twelve men in blue and orange

jump suits, most with shaved heads,

wearing knit caps,

and tattoos on their arms and necks,

when there was a commotion

at the back, and we all got up

to look out the window

beyond the cinder block,

chain link and razor wire:

deer at the dark edge of the woods.

By Eric Gadzinski

Thoughts That Strike Me When I Least Expect Them

2009-10-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

Took the long way back out on Long Island, stopping
to see the Indian Chief. He took my fingers, all of them.
I could feel his poor circulation, his cold feet and hands.
Smelling of corn, of snow asleep. I believed he had a disease.
I just wanted him to think I was smart.

By Christine Reilly

Pine

2009-10-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

Say it’s the wind, if it makes you feel better.
As for me, the trees shiver
As if they remember a needless cruelty done to an old lover.
As if they feel again the wound of the dull blade
Gouging the outline of a stylized heart,
Then tremble anew at the slash that was the blunt arrow piercing it.
Inside it, I carved your initials, bold and angular,
Through the bark and the cambium,
All the way through to the tough fibers of the heartwood.
But when I was done, there was no room left for my own.
So I gashed them beneath the heart,
In the spot where the rot began.

by Ron Yazinski

Canon Fire

2009-10-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

Our poets land in the same soft valley,

brush themselves off and get back into line.

We strain to hear their words like whispers

that will not sustain them in air.

By Anthony Nannetti

Sucker Punch

2009-10-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

When the armored tank was hit, your buddy

went from slamming banging wolfwhistles

to take my pulse, take my breath

something fuzzy going on hey hey in your head

the desert lit up like a concession stand for Christmas

in the dust storm. Your sergeant talks

like a caveman’s professor, hell, everyone’s on pills,

waiting to soap up in Tehran, everyone’s safety-pinned

to the promise of home, maraschino cherries in Omaha,

snow, a twenty for every beggar in New York City:

baby, I’m sorry if I don’t write back but I lost the dog.

I just opened the car door and he ran into the night.

By B.J. Buhrow

The Flu

2009-10-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

Thermometer. Trash bucket

beside the bed. Coke syrup.

Dr. appointment. Plenty of

fluids. Tylenol. Chicken noodle

soup. Saltine crackers. Sodas.

Homework sent. Days go by.

Dew on the grass. Sun in

the window. Crystal clear starry

night. Army book satchel. Written

note. Friends. A yellow bus.

By Danny P. Barbare

Autumn Wind

2009-10-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

The sinking sunshine curled on the ball of a stern eye.
See how quickly the widow walks home.
Bleak, their favorite kissing place under an early moon.
And she trembles beneath the black-holed Milky Way.

By Robert C. J. Graves

Painters' Exhalations 370

2009-07-29T13:54:00.001-07:00

—after Lois Graham’s Yellow Triangle XII

Fingerprint curl,
U-turn deviation
fully clothed magnification
unveiling language of textured
grooves, talking toward access of
lyrical wonderment. Blur-tones,
a whitewash extract barely visible
vanish, northern lift upon wind’s
guiding kite string, maneuvering
monarch butterfly across tangled
dangles of yarn length light.

By Felino Soriano

Azaleas

2009-07-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

Fat azaleas red pink purple

azaleas shaking in morning sun

as children call children to play.

Oozing from thick bushes delicately

perfumed azaleas fat azaleas

bees spinning spinning spinning.

Children singing out names while

chameleons crawl in shining grass

lustrous azaleas bright satin.

Azaleas fat azaleas starlings slip

from branch to branch gliding to

bushes stretching red pink purple.

By Joan McNerney

War Fever

2009-07-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

on shaved skull, red
measles scrawl faces
in infected Arabic

the blood-blinded bird
in periphery hooks
eyes, swallows dry tongues

bloated carnivals of meat
blasted metal, sand-basted
desert birds, carnivorous spiders

feast on the dead and the living
and the street so quiet now
that its echoes explode in our ears

By Robert C.J. Graves

Rain

2009-07-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

does rain make a sound,
or is that just the sound when
the rain hits the earth?

By Max Reif

Weekend

2009-07-24T20:12:00.000-07:00

on your mark, set, go:
racetocatchupfromtheweek!
now start the next one

By Max Reif

Crab Apples

2009-07-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

Pity the crab apples.

They cannot

fall from

the crab apple tree

without

their cheeks

burning from

embarrassment.

By Joel Solonche

Rumors

2009-06-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

Where in the world would we be

without someone spreading rumors?

Like leaflets from the sky,

leaving something like a choice

for what we wear in our windows,

or where the answers come to lodge.

By Richard Spuler

Over

2009-05-31T19:50:00.000-07:00

was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

was it over when Custer slaughtered the Japanese?

meet me at the hot tub with your bottles of beer

and we’ll toast the farces that make up

our mutually falsified history

meet me where Gengis Kahn plundered the Hoover Dam

let’s make love where Alexander the Great tortured the Incas

but missed Macchu Picchu

By Dan Ames

When I Press a Stone

2009-05-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

it un-relents and un-relents--
stone understudying stone
for so long now, it knows
the slightest gesture—breath—
has the perfect pitch and intonation
curled up like a fist in its hand.

By Jenn Blair

SKIRTS

2009-05-25T19:29:00.000-07:00

I go into the city, I don’t

go into the city and when I get back

from not going, I don’t know I went.

Such is the nature of the urban landscape.

I drive through the countryside,

I walk through the countryside

and when I eventually stop both,

I enjoy my flat tire.

By Charles Springer

FEMA GALLERY

2009-05-25T19:22:00.000-07:00

what’s left

of the houses is

in children’s

crayon drawings

on brittle construction

paper still

buttoned down

by magnets

to unhinged refriger-

ator doors

By Charles Springer

The Walls

2009-05-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

They can’t help

but creak at night

as if a silverfish

just scurried across

and they shivered.

By Michael Keshigian

2009-04-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

Flood barks.

The delicate terrain

shifts to the

desert.

By Oritsegbemi Emmanuel Jakpa

Metaphors for Life

2009-03-18T12:26:00.000-07:00

We live in cracked houses

Paint peeling, floors squeaking

Ceilings leaking in the kitchen or the closet.

It's a metaphor, she said

For these bodies we live in -

Like how I hate my thighs or how she hates her hair.

And I never asked them over

Because the dishes are dirty

And the peeling tiles in the bathroom

Make me feel sick when I shower.

Which is why, she says, I will

Never ask you inside of me

Because my paint is peeling and

My floors squeak when you get close.

By Meredith Hilton

Anthology

2009-03-05T11:38:00.000-08:00

Rather, a withered

exocorpses collection,

a more practical tool,

no urge for needles

and pins to hold them

quiet and still.

By Cristiano Montanari

Pillowcase

2009-02-24T21:38:00.000-08:00

Its refuge was

removed

thrown away

and picked up by

a stranger

who then hung it on a wall.

By Kimberley Ruth

CARNIVAL

2009-02-18T20:02:00.001-08:00

Ferris wheel revolves

velocity and glow,

a kaleidoscopic adventure

and screams of glee

heard 'round the grounds

duets with the singing carousel

which spins to horse's gallop

toward the house of mirrors

reflecting shadowy silhouettes

of our clandestine embrace.

Dozens of you touching me

hundreds of times.

By Michael Keshigian

The New Sonnet

2009-02-17T18:31:00.000-08:00

I felt the hair of God brush lightly against my riot teeth

and I spit it out.

Nobody likes hair in their mouth.

Just think of the feeling.

By Austin Givens

Clock

2009-02-17T18:23:00.000-08:00

Face is the wrong word.

You are the round white ass

of time, mooning me from the desk.

By Joel Solonche

Mid Despair a Poem

2009-02-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

In the junkyard -

a proser's bribed essay inane,

a preacher's barbed broadcast asides.

among the jilted tires,

rusted weeds,

distilled diapers and accidental destiny -

a clutch of lilies surprises.

By Jamie Cavanagh

One of the Ha-Ha's from Staball Hill

2009-02-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

Ballyheigue

County Kerry

Ireland

That man over there with his head

in the well, each thumb

in a fob, and his arse in the air

like a zeppelin at moor, if he

can write poems the Ha-Ha's will read,

all of the Ha-Ha's, no matter the breed,

even the Ha-Ha's from Old Staball Hill, if he

can write poems, then poems he will.

By Donal Mahoney

Forgiven

2009-02-05T17:34:00.000-08:00

Tiny toes peeking out of oily plumage

tip-tap joyfully,

cautiously,

on sad silver fence poles.

Big beaks clamping closed in this cold,

waiting for hot, wet drips on the cement.

I've seen where your feathers fall.

By Lindsay Haslem

Arianna (V)

2009-02-03T19:34:00.000-08:00

Arianna, what did it mean to you when she called you a "hardened criminal?"

Dreams are soft, Cameron my uncle's

knuckles are vapor in dreams my throat

doesn't burn when I scream

even a falcon's talons can't hurt me but reality

is abrasive concrete pebble-izes knee skin

when we fall

in love it feels good or it hurts so I guess

she meant I don't dream enough?

by Cameron Conaway