Crazy Quilt
Denim scraps weigh like certainty as they are sewn to bits of corduroy and flannel scavenged from old shirts and jeans collected over the years. My fingers are bare, the thread - cotton from a new spool. He is home early, stands at the threshold of our bedroom, hands drywall-chapped and knuckle-raw, arms sinewed, tough as ropes. I hear a log shift in the cast iron stove downstairs as he steps over the unfinished quilt spread across the unfinished floor of our unfinished house. He sits on the corner of the bed and lights another Pall Mall pulled from the crumpled pack nestled in the pocket of his Carhartt jacket. Tobacco smoke mingles with the scent of gypsum dust and the fragrance of Osage Orange, Bulleit bourbon preceding his breath like a prediction. Lisa Hase-Jackson Lisa Hase-Jackson's award winning poetry has appeared in such journals, as The Midwest Quarterly, Kansas City Voices, Fall Lines, I-70 Review, and The South Carolina Review. Born in Portland, Oregon and raised primarily in the Midwest, Lisa is a traveler at heart and has spent her adult years living and writing in such locations as Anyang, South Korea, Albuquerque, New Mexico and Spoleto, Italy. Lisa is editor of Zingara Poetry Review.
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Two Ekphrastic Poems for Edward Hopper's Steps in Paris Foot on the Step Carefully place one foot on the step then push up, your body rising to the beat of your heart. You will climb out of the darkness into the light smelling the air of forgiveness, the life of air, the steps to a future. Crooked Steps Crooked steps to a crooked street under a crooked ceiling of a crooked sky. My eyes implode in a circus of light on these crooked steps in my crooked city of stone and blight. Worlds of the sacred surround me as I climb. This is my place. I have found home. At last. After all this time. After all this searching. After all this being. I have found home. At last. At least, until tomorrow. R. Bremner R. Bremner of Northeast New Jersey, USA, writes of incense, peppermints, and the color of time in such venues as International Poetry Review,Anthem: a Leonard Cohen Tribute Anthology, Climate of Change: Sigmund Freud in Poetry, Paterson Literary Review, Journal of Formal Poetry,etc., etc. He has thrice won Honorable Mention in the Allen Ginsberg awards (2016, 2017, 2018). Ron invites you to visit his Instagram poetry at beat_poet1 and Absurdist_poet. Two Women on the Shore Don't let her white dress fool you, in her mind; in her body she burns just witness the flaming red hair feet on green grass – fertile ready to dive in save for the anchor, that black shadow - always that shadow - mother, grandma, society, norms - the time is 1898, Norway - these are shackles that won't set her free maybe, just maybe (let us hope) it is herself stepping out of self no longer blue but ready to be blue - standing at the edge, on edge willing to, wanting to, ready to dive in. Dan Franch Originally from Chicago, Dan now lives in the country of Estonia. He was a newspaper columnist in Luxembourg, a co-cartoonist in Luxembourg, and has published articles and poetry in a number of online magazines. He has had a variety of experiences through traveling and living abroad, now doing the best to settle down in the homeland of his wife and kids. The Red Dress
Pieter’s irascible personality bleeds through the oak panel as the vermilion struggles to break free from the binding oil. She wears it like alkaline hot springs do cinnabar & she is the loveliest proverb painted with pigments as the lingering scent of frankinscence floats through Pieter’s air. The skiff sailing in the sunlight is easier to manipulate with his wet oil than the red dress & all know it is she Pieter detests. Shayna Nenni Shayna Nenni is an English creative writing graduate student at the State University of New York at Brockport—her hometown. She has published short stories through several college literary magazines. In the meantime, she is devoted to her thirteen-year-old golden retriever, Roxy. The Hard Hours
maybe you lose a twenty-dollar bill on the street or an earring through a crack in the floorboards maybe you lose your sweetheart or your favorite sweatshirt or your son where do you look what do you do about loss it is futile to kneel in the mud praying you find only a few birch twigs cold soiled knees on your jeans it is futile to stand by the road in the hard hours and raise your arms howling like a wound into the night in Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son the father welcomes the lost son bends tenderly to caress his back the elder son seething in the shadows Thomas R. Moore Thomas R. Moore has published three books of poems: The Bolt-Cutters (2010), Chet Sawing (2012), and Saving Nails (2016). His work is represented in more than thirty literary journals and has been broadcast on Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. His poem, “How We Built Our House,” won a Pushcart Prize and is included in the 2018 Best of the Small Presses Anthology. He currently serves as Poet Laureate for Belfast, Maine. Reluctant Horse
Amazon rider in gown flowing and shadowed and emerald like a rainforest river sits astride steed marvels at the world-- waves of midnight soil flowers with undulating stems cold expanse between her and roseate hills raspberry sky two-faced moon-- a world now hers too while reluctant horse mopes head pulling against reins in her hand. Taunja Thomson Taunja Thomson’s work has most recently appeared in These Fragile Lilacs and Alcyone. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards: “Seahorse and Moon” in 2005, “I Walked Out in January” in 2016, and “Strum and Lull” in 2018. She has co-authored Frame and Mount the Sky, a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry (2017); her chapbook Strum and Lull placed in Golden Walkman’s 2017 chapbook competition; and her chapbook The Profusion is due out in January of 2019. She has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter/. Vincent at Auvers Shutupshutupshutup shut up about my ear you fools shut up and watch this blazing blazing yellow move towards me into me and out of me as me so so much of me I burst out with paint I keep it you know - the blazing yellow not like a pet, not tamed no no no not like that in chains and cages and on a rope not like that I love it and I let it roam wild and I let it grow wild and feed and love and fight with me in the wild and it grows and grows and grows, and grows wild so wild wild wild and it blazes so so brightly brightly brightly that one day one day it must must must turn on me must savage me must kill me when crows stick screaming to my newly painted, pulsing pulsing pulsing pulsing pulsing painted painted painted, painting pulsing painted pulsing painted pulsing dangerous dark blue sky. Tim Goldstone Tim Goldstone lives in rural Wales after having travelled widely - working and backpacking throughout the UK, Western and Eastern Europe, and North Africa. Poetry, prose, articles, published in print, online, and anthologies. Prose sequence read on stage at The Hay Festival. Material broadcast on TV, radio. Recipient of Welsh Arts Council scholarship. Twitter: @muddygold Fount Her crimson waistcoat converts to a boat in alchemy’s pleated waves, her bowler hat sprouts wings. Not the wings of a gossamer angel but wood— stagecraft’s sturdy matter. A sash unwinds, a rig for steering. Alone, unbound, she pulls fine cords to set her course, blackbirds watching undercover. Compass aligned between science and magic, she discovers the river’s source: a hollowed tree where a goblet rests on a round table, refills itself, pouring a river. Jennifer Markell Jennifer Markell’s first poetry collection, Samsara, was published in 2014 by Turning Point. It was named a “Must Read Book of Poetry” for 2015 by the Massachusetts Book Awards. It was also a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Markell won the Barbara Bradley award in 2015 and the Firman Houghton award in 2016 from the New England Poetry Club. Her work has appeared in publications including Ars Medica, Consequence, The Hawaii Pacific Review, Rhino, Tinderbox, and The Women’s Review of Books. Markell works as a psychotherapist with special interest in therapeutic uses of writing. http://jennifermarkell.com/ Apolo en la Fragua de Vulcano
I could not forge her heart. Apollo attested to it, index finger raised, heat blazing the words through my body-- my brother, sheathed in Vulcan armour, pressed against my wife’s naked body, like a pearl spooned against its half-shell. Apollo, radiant as an ember, brought irony to the term. To forge— to hammer out hardness, shape her as my own. For years, I thought love was the coal found burning on the shoreline. It rose from ashes, inextinguishable and strong as iron. Melissa Tyndall Melissa Tyndall's poems and award-winning articles have appeared in Number One, Prism international, Red Mud Review, Words + Images, Sixfold, Gamut, and various newspapers. She is also the former adviser of the award-winning student literary magazine, Squatter’s Rites. Melissa is currently an assistant professor of English in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her partner, Matt, their daughter, and two cats. Maid when i lived in my room it was necessary to turn it upside down. it had to be done i was told. i did not leave. i was there forever and now forever is gone. i would tell my maid what she wanted to fall out the room did not fall. there was no up and down when all was circular. one who has never been upside down does not know this. not my maid. she did not know this. she was a happy happy woman who looked at me when she thought i wasn't looking. i expected to see disgust on her face but she never looked at me with disgust. she hoped i would not fall and thought it her duty to watch me. i could not convince her i was incapable of falling just as i was incapable of flying. she did not understand this because she was a simple and happy maid. a person burdened with too much love. it pinned her to the floor. i think she had love for me. compassion anyway. i did not wish she visited more often. i shuddered when she knocked on the door and would take deep breaths before i told her to enter. she waited outside the thick door until i called for her to enter and she walked in with a smile. placed her necessary bag in the corner with the brooms and the winch she used to turn the room upside down. her work began. John Riley John Riley lives in North Carolina, where he works in educational publishing. His fiction and poetry have appeared in several print and electronic journals, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Connotation Press, Willows Wept Review, Loch Raven Review, Dead Mule, and Blue Five Notebook. He can be reached at riley27406@gmail.com. |
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