Two Poems by Kelli Allen

If Fairy Tales in Fall
It isn’t so much that the leaves are dizzy as it is they are lodged in confusion,
the same variety that persuades us to jump when the waters are on the rise. We
say, “look” as our feet reappear after tumbling over our shoulders on the way
down, we tremble and spill over. The repair work is universal
as the rake scratches our sides.

I contain so much thinning, yet lushness is my fresco when I stop at the bottom
of the well, climb back into the bucket and yell up “It matters! It matters!” until
only the rope tail hangs near the stone rim. Nothing whorls up in a shock
the way a name does, when its ours, all peacock and hiss, all vowel and cinnamon.

You have been told how to cut back the trestle, to light the lamp and fold your hands.
This way, we are advocates together for a splayed phrase and retelling. The only
stories we can give back are ones considerate of the moss digesting the ledge.

Suspending Delirious Limbs
Although I do not claw at my own chest, I recognize the desire as just that—
desire. It is a recitation of horrors, spoken in close iambic pentameter, which keeps
my hands, rounded fingers points against palms, close to my sides.  I say the cross
-hatched words in monotonous rounds, vowels slow, consonants exhausted,
becoming flat, and so calming.  Her wrists are the knotted tree where the rabbit sits,
eggs in its belly, waiting for Ivan.

Where my mother’s hands would have caught against pearlescent buttons when she
ripped through one blouse or another, trying to free breath, skin, small
cranberry-red streaks of rising flesh, mine stay this still. There are no legs long
enough to reach the branch where I was hatched.

So she has given me a house I am not to touch, its windows smaller than my
earlobes, its faces through the doors colder than expected. We stand on either side
of a roof peppered with mica, the pinks making me ache, the hues making her clutch
her peter-pan collar as I lean too close, too far inward.

There is no act of rebellion in remembering and I am trying not to hate this self
as compared to her self, compared to both selves one on either side of a dollhouse
made whole by attention, careful, careful attention.

About the Poet
Kelli Allen’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the US and internationally. She is currently a Professor of Humanities and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Allen gives readings and teaches workshops throughout the US. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, from John Gosslee Books (2012) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. See www.kelli-allen.com.

Ours Poetica by Franklin K.R. Cline

Ours Poetica
  a                            For Cole Swenson
When I stand close enough, it
peeks into my peripheral
vision. Step back and it provides
a smaller and smaller point
of emphasis. Look into me.
What we make becomes us.
Let me make a world around
you, to show you the world
around me, the shape of if.

***

It can’t be too big. This land is quiet, simple. No murders here. Not anymore. It should honor that. Flatter. Abstract. From bronze. Curved up a bit. Nonsense. Wavy, like the hills. Put it in the middle of the field. Something symbolic of what we believe about nature. Not about what we know. Put holes in it so when someone saunters up to it they can see the sky, the field. An amorphous shape. Humanity doesn’t really befit this land anymore. Holes and waves. Something to frame the view. Circular. Smooth, forgiving curves. Stolen land. Nothing jagged or cruel looking. Maternal. The suggestion of rolling.

***

Give me an atom the size of my head! You
become nature, lucky! If I name it,
they will come. If they come, we can
finally eat all the food that’s getting
cold. I don’t know about
me, but it
sure looks like I want you by the way
my hand involuntarily stretches your
way. I’m so bland compared to
yellow flowers, I’m hardly
geometry. The conveyor belt Earth
ain’t doing me any favors. I graffited
the stop signs in my neighborhood to
read DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’ and now
every intersection is an art museum. My
first inclination is to use
words. The trees all look the same. What
goes into our head is what we see. Easy
peasy, no? The tree grows right into me, and you,
as we look past each other. I love your head, how it can so easily become.

About the Poet
Franklin K.R. Cline’s poems have been featured in Banango Street, Matter, Oyez Review and Word Riot. He is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin. He lives in Milwaukee with three cats and his wife, Rachel Kincaid.

Two Poems by Richard Fein

Relaxing the Grammatical Rules of a Dying South American Language
The language is pronounced as trio. The spelling is uncertain.
The village is in Suriname.

Truth is a grammatical necessity in Trio.
The syntax of this language makes liars speak poorly,
for one must name the direct source for each quote.
So when a stranger entered the village and read
from the talking leaves wrapped in hides,
how the Great Shaman, Jesus,
commanded the tribe to follow the god of the strangers,
that stranger’s sentence was grammatically incomplete.
For if the stranger was never eye-to-eye or ear-to-ear with that Great Shaman
how could he know what words the Shaman actually spoke?
In Trio the outcome of each verb is also part of its conjugation.
There are a half-dozen ways to qualify “to hope”
and a dozen ways to modify “to despair,”
but in their vocabulary of truths “to love” has no meaning.
for that infinitive, to love, is like a wide palm leaf that blocks the sun
and casts a penumbra that muddles clear distinctions.
In their tongue no one loves another,
rather they proclaim shades of affection.
One must speak this language meticulously,
for in this tongue hearsay is defined, lies exposed, and truths heard
in the myriad nuances of inflections.
Once upon a time truth and Trio were linguistic twins.
But enter gasoline generators, radios, and so many other fast-talking strangers.
Now when their grandparents try to teach them the old truths,
the grandchildren reply, “We’re listening,” but without a trace of inflection.

Auditions for My Multiple Personalities
I’ve typed not one character on paper
and so my room is full of my usual characters.
The writer in me issued my casting call.
Variety magazine classifieds must dangle somewhere in my brain,
for how else could this crew so suddenly show up?
The activist demanding to be heard,
the old Chinese guy who mistakes meaningless platitudes for Buddhism,
the disillusioned priest, rabbi, minister, the playboy,
the lonely lover, the baseball homerun king, the woman scorned.
The woman scorned???
Among this casting call of wannabe masculine thespians
is there an actual drama-queen queen anxiously awaiting her cue?
And of course there’s always the penniless writer in his daytime waiter garb,
that generic misunderstood oh so tortured alcoholic soul.
For isn’t every writer a closet-alcoholic puking out Shakespearian drivel?
I tell them all, once again, I can’t pay. All they’ll get is exposure,
exposure for a cast of self-absorbed exhibitionists upstaging one another.
Suddenly the personalities dematerialize, except the one in the mirror.
He yells, “Exposure my ass.”
He rips off his clothes and curses me for wasting his time,
then demands carfare to go home.
But I’m broke, and besides he is home.
So now he’s running around naked in my living room
waving blank typing paper.
I’d tell him to leave but I’d be ordering myself around,
and I take orders from no one.

About the Poet
Richard Fein was a finalist in The 2004 New York Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition. A Chapbook of his poems was published by Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been published in many web and print journals such as Cordite, Cortland Review, Reed, Southern Review, Roanoke Review, Green Silk Journal, Birmingham Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, Paris/atlantic, Canadian Dimension, and others.

Year of the Goat by Ray Holmes

Year of the Goat
It doesn’t matter,
the tin foil thunder
rattling house and body,

shaking us rung by rung clear
out of our separate storms.

You are one thing
at the doorway,
another once fully entered,

boarded as the windows
we shy away from.

And me? I am battered
and bashing at the threshold,
newly antlered, my head

wired with bone and
the seeds of a flame

we thought hushed
when those gray winds boiled
over the edge of town.

The new year has risen.
Let’s forgive ourselves

the old ways of caring,
the bodily zodiac
of tacit glances,

breaths marking the skin
like steam burns.

Hands in their
separate wringings.
However the gray

ribbon of fortune falls,
however the days

crumple into dusk,
there will still be
shelter and arms

and the cool crust
of the earth below

as we lay and name
each dart of lightning
that slips into the house
like the stray cat it is.

About the Poet
Ray Holmes is a graduate of the MFA program at University of MO-St. Louis. He teaches writing in St. Louis, where he lives with his wife and two cats.  His work has appeared in Architrave Press, Chariton Review, Dialogist, Midwestern Gothic, Nat. Brut, Thin Air, and other journals.

Two Poems by Joe Balaz

Carcass in the Fields
The visual sermon went over everyone’s head.

Futility walked around in full daylight
holding a lamp and searched everywhere.
The only honest man in the village
ran and hid so he wouldn’t be found.

Concealment in this case was appropriate.
No need to consummate the quest of a sage
who filled his life with almost nothing.

A porous heart bled the intention
of that hidden man who was dressed in black.
Accustomed to burying philosophy
in the context of a final truth,
one could mistake him for a priest,
if he were not the undertaker.

Diogenes seeked some kind of answer
looking for honesty among humanity.
It must have been his mongrel spirit that moved him.
He stared into an empty bowl,
as a canine chorus whimpered and howled
to the minimal light of a shrouded moon.

Not that it even matters,
for any insight that ever was,
will always yield to a carcass in the fields.

Roadside Turnoff
A voodoo blast
slammed into the eardrums like a cyclone,
whipping and swirling paisley winds,
as the ghost of Jimi Hendrix exhaled.

Complimenting the psychedelic music,
a painting by Hieronymus Bosch hung up on the wall.
The Garden of Earthy Delights with a soundtrack.
I wondered who came up with the synergy.

At a roadside turnoff,
bikers and barflies
filled the watering hole next to a gas station.

Outside tumbleweeds rambled
into the far reaches of the desert,
like the slurred stories within,
from some of the patrons
hollowed out like dying cactus trees.

There was sand in my shoes,
but clarity in my head.
I just stopped to ask for directions.

The bartender laughed,
and cherry topped his answer
with a smirk,
even though it was a common cliché—

Just keep driving east
on the highway,” he said.
Until you reach somewhere.

About the Poet
Joe Balaz lives in Ohio.  His poems have appeared in Pittsburgh Quarterly, Wisconsin Review, and Hawai’i Review, among others. He edited Ho’omanoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature.

Issue 1 Exquisite Corpse Collaborative Poem Project

Tender Spoon the Shout Ordinary Windfall Toughtitty Cityscape DaCapo
by William Doreski, John Michael Flynn, Kathryn Hujda, Heikki Huotari, Allan Kaplan, Graam Liu, John Lowther, Mark J. Mitchell and Richard King Perkins II

Heretics of darkness surge into the verdict of a renaissance gleam
parallels and pigeons crash in treetops.
Sun rises, sets. It’s all the same
shots rang out so tech is done.
She says rising from sleep that these aren’t her socks either.
On a cold and sunny morning anything is possible including crows.
Born to die Earth wakes up unhappy
exercise machines prey behind frosted glass like French nuns.
The end is beginning but meaning is in-between…in bed.

Note: This is a different version of an exquisite corpse with no restrictions. Each poet contributed a word for the title and a line for the poem. Everything will be organized according to whoever responded first. The resulting poem can be a little chaotic, since each poet does not know what has been written or what will be written. 

Two Sonnets from 555 by John Lowther

[All that we are arises within our thoughts.]
All that we are arises within our thoughts.
Everything had to be done through my panties.
It’s great, it makes you feel really guilty.
On a cellular level, that’s what it wants.
Unless you don’t like fun.

Any boy can be opera.
Easy enough, when you’re a god.
In that case, just linger endlessly.
All that changes is the focus.
Under surveillance.
Outside, sky and no horizon.
Examples are not interchangeable.

It took me a while to work that one out.
Our moods do not believe in each other.
Unlike me.

[The old jury lived simply in a dumpster.]
The old jury lived simply in a dumpster.
Private property is a thing of the past.
Nothing joyous ever took place in that room.
There are individuals, and that is all.
The 20th century was here and gone.
It rolled off the tongue.
No glocka glocka.

Another boring week in the space business.
It’s already about a late-night moment.
Sometimes it was deliberate evasion.
We’re dedicated to our favorite shows.
Making sense is already delusional.
Let me explain.
No, says the sadist.

Note on the Text 
555 is a collection of sonnets whose construction is database-driven and relies on text analytic software. I crunched and analyzed Shakespeare’s sonnets to arrive at averages for word, syllable and character (inclusive of punctuation but not spaces). These averages (101 words, 129 syllables, 437 characters) became requirements for three groups of sonnets. I collected lines from anywhere and everywhere in the air or in print in a database. The lines are all found, their arrangement is mine. Values for word, syllable and character were recorded. Typos and grammatical oddities were preserved; only initial capitals and a closing period have been added as needed. The selection of lines isn’t rule-driven and inevitably reflects what I read, watch, and listen to, thus incorporating my slurs and my passions as well as what amuses and disturbs me. These sonnets were assembled using nonce patterns or number schemes; by ear, notion, or loose association; by tense, lexis, tone or alliteration. Every sonnet matches its targeted average exactly. Think of Pound’s “dance of the intellect among words” then sub sentences for words—it is amongst these I move. The dance in question traces out a knot (better yet, a gnot) that holds together what might otherwise fly apart. I espouse only the sonnets, not any one line.

About the Poet
John Lowther’s work appears in the anthologies, The Lattice Inside (UNO Press, 2012) and Another South: Experimental Writing in the South (U of Alabama, 2003). Held to the Letter, co-authored with Dana Lisa Young is forthcoming from Lavender Ink.

For the Nostalgic by Luther Hughes

For the Nostalgic

on midnight
you remember being six.
your cartoon fingers.
your hips playing.

your death:

sternum to floor.          pelvis made
a            wishbone. time turned
albino.              slid spine.        speckled chin.
a                                       palms pearled red.
a            shoulders stirred bow.
became moans. became moon. became marrow.
lungs forward. legs coiled into creek.

head to floor.
breathe.
blood to floor.
then

release.

About the Poet
Luther Hughes is an undergraduate poetry student at Columbia College Chicago. His works have appeared in Espial, The Voices Project, Howl and MUSED Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @lutherxhughes. He thinks you are beautiful.

End Papers #4 by Roger Williams

End Papers #4
If in murmurs’ apart
(chortles tea-cup)
so since best at either
witchity nog
or as it’s past swelling
crowds the leap out

lo the angle sped sap
but as hanging aground
could such bucolic
a yard charred past jitters
iterate?

smack of it?

belting how the ol’ per-
tain hands over grown eager
let fly super?

Can’t re:issue
Rounds are out

About the Poet
Roger Williams lives an hour north of San Francisco where he taught French at San Francisco State University until retirement in 1987. Before, he studied poetry with Roethke and Bogan and, for some forty years, set poems to music–Wilde, Patchen, Creeley, Merwin and others. Now he writes poems, but he does not set them to music. His poetry appears in: UDP 6×6 #25, and a broadside, Experiential-Experimental Literature, Counterexample Poetics, Otoliths #26, #31, #33, Ygdrasil, Eskimopi, Mu mu magazine, Ditch.

The Talking Force by Heikki Huotari

The Talking Force
My radius a play of chain, a turn of phrase, my thought balloon is red and round or red not
round or round not red or neither red nor round. My thought balloon, when rubbed and twisted,
is a poodle or a hat or both a poodle and a hat, a tag team, alternately one a bubbling tub
and one a prehistoric horse. Translucent cylinders of sloshing water, naturally occurring
Stirling engines, in their separated shaded lanes, as in concurrence, change their course.  

About the Poet
Heikki Huotari is a retired professor of mathematics. In a previous century, he attended a one-room country school, spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower and published poems in Poetry Northwest and Kayak. Recent poems have appeared in Crazyhorse and Berkeley Poetry Review.