Poetry

Copy Right
I hope someone tries
to steal my words
and pass it off
as their own.
This poem is yours
if you grab first.
I don’t want
to be the only
crazy one.

About the Poet
E.T. Milkton writes from the clouds beyond the horizon. He enjoys hiking, fishing and eating meat.

Light Thinking
Think of light, that’s one move one
ought to be able to make,
for surely the thought

of light is light, a light thought,
say, of the lovely lift
of a blue balloon

slipping out of the grasp of a
small child’s hand,
the sudden puff

of a light breeze,
the loosely held string
slithering right on through,

nudged along by the thought
of winning a goldfish by
simply tossing a dime

out to a small glass plate, and
having it stick, why I
could certainly do that

and the goldfish will
be mine, a pleasing thought
to keep in mind, and thus

the balloon simply sailed off and away
into the blue, now gone, that blue
balloon, and the child

pondered his weighty loss,
until the goldfish, the dazzlingly
golden goldfish, came back to play.

A Jelly At The Pier

                                               For Barbara

1.
The drift of me so often hard to figure,
Me, a freely floating jellyfish,
Slopping around
As the current tends,
Permanently on vacation,
Luminous easy thing that I am.
I wonder why I sting on contact?

Hardly neighborly, but then
I sense that, I know that.

Settling down for me, maybe not an option.
Spurned and spurning, the natural me?

Yes, I am touchy, so don’t you touch me.

2.
I’ve been often asked this:
Why not simply shift to a let-down-all-defenses mode,
Open to experience,
A curious harmless companion?

Well, think about all that I don’t have:
No feet legs hands arms eyes, face,

None of it wired into
A unified and unifying
Control system,

I mean a viable me, a ready at hand self
To do as it wills and can, given its circumstances,

I could deal with being so, but not me as now, not me as a patsy.

3.
Do you think I like this free floating slavish
Rolling in and out water-bound life style?

You call this stylish, being swept into pilings?
Sharp mussels ripping me.
My jell, like your flesh, does rip.
Did you ever think of that?

Being pummeled by pilings!
It’s not much fun, pushed in, out, back, forth,
Helplessly adrift, then scorched by a rasping wharf.

An unintentional bumper into everything I’m not.
Listen, I’ve got big stress, my life is a mess.

4.
Would that I could shape up and have a say!
If I did, I’d scurry everything out of my way.
I’d hold real sway, I’d scuttle the kids, those brats
Who poke me with sticks, and giggle when I quiver,
Flip me like a pancake, but wary of my stingers.

5.
I oughta get in shape? I gotta get a shape.
I thought about doing push-ups,
But I’ve got no hands, how could I push?
And as for running, you see any feet?

Like I said, I’m poked by kids with sticks!
It makes me want to change, improve,
Makes me want to shape myself up,
To stand tall, erect, commanding, dangerous,

Able to defend myself, get my way, make use of
Newly formed fully functioning fists,
From Jelly to granite in one swift move,
Not cowering in my gooey field display
Of sloppy slurpiness, that would be over.

6.
Behold the prompting sweep of a rock hard left, a right,
Then a solid sock to the jaw, I’d lay them out flat,
Then let the tide wash those cads away while I stand firm.
Sure I’d stay around, be notable, not a washed-up has-been.
I’ll start right now on learning how to seed my jelly sag self
With legs feet toes hips a towering spine, everything.
That done, I’ll step out of the sea, I’ll stand tall,
They’ll all fall, and the loud crowd will quiet to a hush
As I bellow out of my newly freed mouth, my mouth
Finally rid of anus sharing- talk about a
Screwed up design! An automatic potty mouth!
And that was for openers!
That’s just part of what I’ve had to deal with,
And I have dealt with it! Moving on:
Into my now mostly clean mouth hole
I’d take in a breath and then
From that fine mouth I would shout out loud and clear:

This beach is mine!

7.
I’d be an astonishment,
Venders would gather around me ,
Offering up their trinkets,
Jewelry blankets t-shirts various ointments,
They’d freely give me most of it for nothing,
Asking only my protection in return.

I’d rule them, rule them all,
Beach beauties cooing at my many sides,
Celebrity volley ball tournaments held in my honor,
That would be so cool.

8.
But I might lift myself only to find myself
Still down, stranded by the tide,
A broken egg yolk,
Sand grit rough on my under belly,
New structures of limbs and laden spine,
Fallen back into formlessness,
Any efforts, any trials, quickly lost
To boat wakes,
Tide wash,
Moon shifts
Lifting me back to where I was, nowhere,
Alone, helpless but for my trailing tentacles.

But they do have their sharp stinging points.
Points? instruments of pain!
Even as I am, you better watch out.

9.
Beware, don’t you ever touch me.
And if you do,
Be ready to scream and jerk away.

And don’t you dare blame me,
Fault me for being what I am,
An unwilling formless left behind
Menacing lurk of a passive retributive violent
Attack mode innocent victim of the sea, but also

A bit of jelly fully formed beauteous flower too, so true,
But only if left isolate, statuesque stunningly
Elegant unworldly balanced design
By a god who knew beauty when he saw it,
And who said yes to me completely,
And in saying yes saw himself anew,

Basking in early light, a penetrative being,
Held beyond gloom or joy, saw and still
Sees an instantaneous wonder, wholly itself,
Forever unapproachable, so step back why don’t you,
Take a good look at me, I’m so far beyond you,
Really, what more could you ever possibly want to be, but me.

About the Poet
Ken McKeon is a retired teacher and active poet living in Berkeley. He has been writing verse for most of his life. published two books: Winter Man and Spring Equinox, studied with Thom Gunn and Josephine Miles at UC Berkeley, also served as Miss Miles’ T.A., and was a founding member of the Rhymer’s Club. He presently teach meditative inquiry at Berkeley’s Nyingma Institute.

Time Garden: A Sestina
With careful rake he manicures the sand
And sets the rocks just right within his work
And pine tree’s molded branches in the type
Of stage, almost a watercolor set
In shades of yellow, gray, and green which meet
In fragile scene that could be caught in time.
We stop and look, slow down and take our time
Amazed at artful nature made of only sand
Which laps on trees and rocks where sidewalks meet.
Such beauty, grace and spirit are the work
Of art expressed in simple strokes, the type
Against the silence of the ages set.
The promised quiet beauty now is set
The day is slowly running out of time
And garden as a work of art is type
Of symmetry that could be made of sand,
A simple frozen image of the work
Where light and stone and swirling sand now meet.
Now as the light is failing spirits meet
And hover on nature’s stage now set,
A simple statement that for now will work
And lift us out of body, out of time.
Eternity within the swirls of sand
With rocks and trees of just a single type.
No great award is given for this type
Nor any is expected. Now we meet
The frozen image of the swirls of sand
Within our spirits now so firmly set
As if the universe and all of time
Are pictured in this single simple work.
The artist was very skillful at his work
The garden is nearly perfect for its type
So fragile yet it will stand the test of time
Its purifying power we shall meet
It is more perfect than this attempt to set
Impressions of this art in lowly sand.

And so the work in earthly rock and sand
Is but a type of beauty that we set
Our time to savor the beauty that we meet.

About the Poet
Dr. Emory D. Jones is an English teacher who has taught in Cherokee Vocational High School in Cherokee, Alabama, for one year, Northeast Alabama State Junior College for three years, Snead State Junior College in Alabama for two years, and Northeast Mississippi Community College for thirty-five years.  He joined the Mississippi Poetry Society, Inc. in 1981 and has served as President of this society.  He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by this society in 2015.  He has over two hundred and thirty-five publishing credits.

Pacha*
We fell to the earth
in a reckless body of white fire
exploding in the dark
against the formless pale sediment.

We cut a bowl in its rock
loosing the water from its shut eyes,
carving rivers out of the land
and flooding the world with sound

Years later, we returned to the water to drink;
our fingers traced the tattooed rock, the swirling rainbow of ancient soil,
but we could not recognize the imprint of our body

Because we had become lost in the motion,
in the ceaseless beginning of everything everywhere:
perplexed, we called it time and left.

*In the Quechua language, the word “pacha” means both land and time.

About the Poet
Nick Hilbourn lives and works near Philadelphia.  He writes columns and articles for Defenestration, Pointsincase.com and headstuff.org.  He blogs at largethingslargerthings.tumblr.com.

Prosthetic
Overhead, the night geese search
the frozen surface

.              In lotus pose, marble Buddha,
.              left hand resting palm up in his lap,

below. A woman struggles
to remind herself

.              his right hand reaches downward,
.              fingers chipped off by vandals.

it could be
so much worse.

.              He sits intending
.              to touch the earth and call it to witness

Be mindful,
practice detachment,

.              in a winter garden overgrown with ivy.
.              As geese overhead continue

she struggles to remind herself—
unhooking her bra,

.              to seek, he can never
.              reach the ground.

she sets her new breast
on the nightstand.

Song of the Spores
Tabernacled deep within the forest, cloistered
in fern, I listen while two wrens
lob ontological proofs across the no-man’s land.

Loam is Lord

A half-hearted drizzle in half-light plays
patty-cake with maple leaves in rhythms
encrypting the oracle of chlorophyll.

Loam is Lord

The pond proclaims an epiphany—baby
wood ducks—no one explains why the wind riles
its perfect surface, rekindling our addiction to mirrors.

Loam is Lord

The trail serpentines through old growth fir, and the State
plantation, trunks ribbon-tied with empirical questions,
tagged graffiti orange, like boxcars.

Loam is Lord

I dare not speak the Latin name of the poseur,
the red columbine, pretending—“hey, look at me,
I hang like a Tang dynasty lamp.”

Loam is Lord

Yea, though I find no taste to snowmelt filtered
through volcanic rock, I still wonder who
first tickled the spores on the private underside of a fern.

Loam is Lord

About the Poet
David Hargreaves is a poet/linguist living in Oregon. Most recently, he translated a collection of poems, “The Blossoms of Sixty-Four Sunsets,” by Nepal Bhasa poet Durga Lal Shrestha, which was published in Kathmandu in the fall of 2014.

This Isn’t Just To Say
That I have envied Dr. Williams
His indulgent wife
Who tolerates his breakfast thefts
For the sake of art.
But a suspicion creeps in
On little cat feet
That those extra trips to the grocery
And wiping the rain
From the glazed, red wheelbarrow
Make her weary
When the lights go out,
Which might explain
Why the happy genius
Who couldn’t get his own plums,
No matter how sweet and cold,
Spends evenings dancing
By himself.

About the Poet
Mitch Earleywine was born in California, grew up in Missouri, and currently teaches at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His poetry has appeared in Columbia Review and his non-fiction has been published by Oxford University, Springer, and Hogrefe.

Pluviophilia
My corpse has awoken from its crusade
in the other world of myth and dream,
where I failed to subject gods and beings
to whatever tenuous totalidoxy

I thought I was seeking. To verify
You exist. I suppose this is all for the best.
Infallible ideas tend to lead to holy wars,
which would end poorly, me having no army.

I imagine I wouldn’t like it either
if You were so busy developing
more comprehensive Michaelologies
you withheld this delicate rain –

The world I journeyed toward returns,
the earth a cradle made of water.
Delight of the souleye the only knowledge.
If You aren’t present, neither is the cosmos.

Harbor Mandala

.                                             i have come to you harbor
.                                             this morning after a nightmare
.                                             has absconded only its anxious
.                                            wake still within me

beyond the shoreside minnows                       demanding I apprehend
below the gulls perched on buoys                   an amorphous dream
the small boat trolling depthward                   subject it to reason
to beg for what it cannot see                          force it to signify something

.                                             your surface a canvas
.                                             where the cloud muted sun
.                                             paints abstract patterns
.                                             of deep blues shaded with greys

whatever i thought i was                                 i could have come empty
going to see was not this                                 handed silently greeted
wind brushing across                                      an old friend opened
your skin creating visions                                my eyes invited you into my soul

.                                             ducks float napping silently
.                                             in the oak shade i wander by
.                                             my sandals quacking with
.                                             each step on my way home

Morning
The tiny harbor ripples            did not begin               when I happened

upon them.  The breeze           breezing them towards            me does not symbolize

any Spirit uniting        us.  Ducks cluster,       scatter, squawking      like ducks.  This is not

a performance                                     for my eyes; I’m a human                   being, taken

on a stroll by               his soul through his                 soul as each of these

souls lives its image                 solely for this tethered            pleasure: being.  I’ve finished

losing the world          I thought I controlled,                        and the tiny flecks

of light on wavelets,               where dawn and                     haven face one another,

remind me you speak              in visions, promising               prayers harmonize deeper

than soliloquies, even                          as the water-                sparks’ patternless dancing

duets its endpoints,                 lineless pictograms, strange                 succorous listening

to a language sung      in figures, one             I no longer have                      to master.

About the Poet
Michael Collins’ poems have received Pushcart Prize nominations and appeared in more than 40 journals and magazines, including Grist, Kenning Journal, Pank, and Smartish Pace. His first chapbook, How to Sing when People Cut off your Head and Leave it Floating in the Water, won the Exact Change Press Chapbook Contest in 2014. A full-length collection, Psalmandala, was published later that year. Another chapbook, Harbor Mandala, is forthcoming in July of 2015. Visit http://www.notthatmichaelcollins.com/ for more

Portland to Barcelona, Winter to Spring
I. Portland
The snow drifts block my view of the water.
Waves and waves of white, but no push and pull,
no give and take. Spring eludes, birds huddle.

II. Barcelona
The seagulls caw and wheel, while cold days linger
on, despite a clear blue sky. From the mountain,
the tramontana bares its teeth anew.

III. Barcelona
On a park bench, we sit as he unwraps
the old blue bottle, thick with a relief
of Catalans dancing the sardana.

IV. Portland
In front of City Hall, his mittened hand
reaches for a woolen purple hat, left
there by a neighbor, a knitter, a friend.

V. Portland
The smell of hops claws the air, fights for space,
rises above the wind. It is winter.
We drink Allagash Black and toast the sun.

VI. Barcelona
In front of the old stone masia,
a tree stands solid, fisted with white blooms,
a soft spectre against a concrete sky

VII. Barcelona
With the first rains, they petal down, pasting
themselves to the sidewalk, a sudden riot of spring,
while the scent of salt shakes out on the wind.

VIII. Portland
The days are getting longer, the sky pinks
early, lingers in the gloaming. Robins
alight, their red bellies promising spring.

About the Poets
Tasha Graff used to live in Barcelona, Spain but now she lives in Portland, Maine, where she teaches English. Her poetry has appeared in such places as Word Riot, Epigraph Magazine and From the Fishouse. Her latest projects include writing poems about wrens and learning the uke.

Melissa Leighty used to live in Portland, but now she lives in Barcelona, where she is a freelance writer. Her essays and poetry have appeared in Salt, Colloquium, and English Journal. Her latest projects include a book imprint and a cookbook about Catalan cuisine.

All Comets Welcome

Thoughts stream through the streets
with air on fire, ride neural networks,

streak by in a hurry, leave
tales fuzzy and images blurry.

(Cable is laid from here to Mars
but yesterday’s futures are expired.)

In another hub, messages queue
burning with importance, anxiously

ready to spin their quotes
in lasting anagrams good for the cryptic.

(Please do not ask What is Truth?
Our answers are unbelievable.)

Click the icon to send your comet
into the ether. It will fly

never to be seen or heard
in this lifetime. Roger, over, out, away …

Don’t wait up for a reply.
(Mail sent to important people

will be misplaced without a trace.)
Ever so happily, after

you pass, your star might cruise
the main drag again

and moon onlookers
while they stare into the space

devoid of a comma.
Your caesura will have caused

a longer pause
than you ever intended.

 

About the Poet
Cathryn Shea’s poetry is forthcoming in Absinthe and Permafrost, and has appeared in MARGIE, Gargoyle, Blue Fifth Review, Quiddity, Sierra Nevada Review, Soundings East, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. Cathryn’s chapbook, Snap Bean, was released in 2014 by CC.Marimbo of Berkeley. She was a merit finalist for the Atlanta Review 2013 International Poetry Competition. Cathryn is included in the 2012 anthology “Open to Interpretation: Intimate Landscape.” In 2004, she won the Marjorie J. Wilson Award judged by Charles Simic. Cathryn served as editor for Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and worked as a principal technical writer at Oracle.

 

Eco Echoes 83
Reproductions, cardboard, of Gauguin’s
Native sarong’s colors have become bleached
Blank by Patio Florida sunlight, and
Have grown longer to cover kneecaps.
Tahiti simulation has been maintained
By coconuts and tattoos. The tiles, white,
Have become mirrors that reflect the bottoms
Of protruding chins. Since most of the chins
Have white beards, the result is white on
White, and the floor is a collection
Of Malevitches. Pots that once had
Plants, now only dirt covered with
Crumbled-up scrapped lottery tickets.
All the tickets looked homesick, old, their faces
Wrinkled by fingernails. The enigma
And monument of their lives is the
Suitcase by the barbeque grill
With its mildewed charcoal.
Someone came to move in, and help
Pay the mortgage, but when he
Saw the life-style, the ping pong table,
Spoons used to flip jam on each other,
And the underclothes of baby sitters
Crowded in the bronze-wire garbage bin,
He left the suitcase with all his belongings
And ran away to find, if he could,
A forest. While running, he shouted
All the way, “Where are you, Pan?”

About the Poet
Duane Locke’s poem that appears in this issue is his 7000th poetry publication. He has 33 books of poems published including Visions and Terrestrial Illuminantions, Second Selection from Kind of Hurricane Press, forthcoming in 2015.  My main book publication is Duane Locke, The First Decade (Bitter Oleander Press, 1968-1978).