Early Evening Rush Hour
you’re driving home alone those thunderclouds turn green it’ll be dark before it’s time no rainbow dulls ahead the thunderclouds turn green your boss’s touch is light no rainbow dulls ahead he must admire your work you boss’s touch is light he said he likes your eye he must admire your work traffic’s more stop than go he said he likes your eye the news reports additional deaths traffic’s more stop than go peace talks have broken down the news reports additional deaths you won’t call home tonight peace talks have broken down your mother tends to pry you won’t call home tonight your dad complains he’s tired your mother tends to pry the drive-thru line is long your dad complains he’s tired it’s dark before it’s time the drive-thru line is long you’re driving home alone Jack Kristiansen Jack Kristiansen exists in the composition books and computer files of William Aarnes. Kristiansen’s poems have appeared in such places as FIELD, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Literary Review, Stone’s Throw Magazine, and Sunsets and Silencers, Main Street Rag.
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Monkey with a Gun (for Mike Mignola) The world ripples—not that palatinate squeeze of fig, but of mechanically-chill taupe, click-boom; you’re a special kind of ape in the hand. Smoke stills, artillery-feel of massive grapeshot rung-off distant cliff and skipping forward past boondock landscape, from tensed recoil. Sweet crani-relief for sit-and- thinks. What’s this mess? Grenade the brain—what can it all mean? It stings your cheek when you lean. What is opportunity? What is horror one can carelessly bring with malice, with such tool—the harmony and the chaos? You toss it down, prefer endlessly to be hit than the hitter. Dom Fonce Dom Fonce is an undergrad English major at Youngstown State University. He’s been published in fiction, poetry, comics, and journalism. Some of his work can be found at Calliope of the University of Mount Union, Penguin Review, the Jambar, and the upcoming summer 2017 issue of 3Elements Review. Bee & Comet, an ongoing comic book series that he is writing, will have a funding campaign on Kickstarter later this year. Ekphrasis of Untitled (1955) Brad Schmidt
Brad Schmidt has a B.A. in English with a specialization in Creative Writing from Southern Methodist University. He is slowly writing a novel and building a portfolio of poems and eventually hopes to pursue a MFA in Poetry and a Ph.D in English Literature. He lives in Houston and loves to paint and to look at paintings. Powhattan's Mantle--Pocahontas' Magic Cloak
Poet's Note: Powhattan's Mantle is on display in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford England. In this poem, I imagine how Pocahontas, daughter of Powhattan, (born Matoaka, known as Amonute, and later known as Rebecca Rolfe, b.circa. 1595 in Virginia – d. March 1617, London, England) felt about the cloak, her only tactile connection to her people once she sailed to England with her husband Wrapped in the regal softness of her hard homeland Amonute, Makatoa, Pocahontas reigned over all. The cloak was her father's. A bit of home that traveled with her to this harsh new place called England. This outer mantle matched her inner honour, touched the place in her that gave her the strength to save John Smith from the axe, to become John Rolfe's wife, to endure rough seas on the ship, to try to embrace the cold damp of London. I wonder, did she ever cry herself to sleep wrapped in that former finery? Did she lift it to her face amid the stink of London to recall the clean sweet smells of forest and the Bay? After the birth of her son, Tom, or doing the bidding of her spouse, caring for her babe did she quietly repair to cupboard to stroke this cloak, crying out to her father? Then, there she could save the lives of others, now could not save herself, from raging fevers, not even with the magic of her father's cloak. Swiftly, too swiftly she descended into the ground at Gravesend! We have her father's cloak but Pocahontas took its power with her. Joan Leotta This poem was first published in Algebra of Owls. Joan Leotta has been playing with words on page and stage since childhood in Pittsburgh. She is a writer and story performer. Her Legacy of Honor series feature strong Italian-American women. Her poetry and essays appear or are forthcoming in Gnarled Oak, the A-3 Review, Hobart Literary Review, Silver Birch, Peacock, and Postcard Poems and Prose among others. Her first poetry chapbook, Languid Lusciousness with Lemon, was just released by Finishing Line Press. Joan's picture books from Theaqllc, Whoosh!, Summer in a Bowl, Rosa and the Red Apron, and Rosa's Shell celebrate food and family. Her award-winning short stories are collected in Simply a Smile. You can find more about her work on her blog at www.joanleotta.wordpress.com Caravaggio’s St John the Baptist I walk through a darkened crypt past fading depictions of gospel scenes and suddenly there it is, not a prophet from the Judaean wilderness with fiery, uncompromising words but a slender youth rendered in exquisite truthfulness. He turns from his simple shepherd's task as if you've suddenly surprised him, a complex mixture of knowledge, amusement, confidence and shyness, a friendly, joyous gaze, as if the nuance of his mind in this single, fleeting moment has been caught in Caravaggio’s brush and effortlessly placed upon the canvas so we, who come to it after many centuries, can be transfixed by its beauty and truth and be privileged by the momentary glimpse into the mind of that boy and the transcendent power that captured it. Neil Creighton A longer, more narrative form of this poem appeared originally at Verse-Virtual. Neil Creighton is an Australian poet with a passion for social justice and a love of the natural world. Recent publications include "Poetry Quarterly", "Silver Birch Press", "Praxis Online", "South Florida Poetry Journal" and "Verse-Virtual", where he is a contributing editor. His poetry blog iswindofflowers.blogspot.com.au |
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