poems by Joseph Farley

Joseph Farley

Heretic (3)

 

in andorra among the cathars

a soul waits to be collected

by the agents of the inquisition.

 

thumbscrews, hot pokers and the rack

wait in dungeons to redeem

this wayward heretic

 

so confession and redemption

can be stamped with a thumb print

on a canon's long parchment

 

before purification in cleansing flames

turns man into the purest ash.

Satori 12

wind and sky

blue oblivion

easy to get lost

like a bird

flying aimlessly

land and sky

and water and sun

river and mountain

all this to feed upon

and yet be

empty

hunger always

for the horizon

or just over

After The Conquest

We did not know

about the invasion

until after it

was over

and the new ruling

beings

had acquired

their mantles

of power

and taken up

residence

in the choicest

quarters.

As coups go

this was global.

Our new leaders

are inhuman,

but so far the change

has not been that bad.

They have sought

to clean up

the environment,

and end local feuds.

Sure, they do seize

and eat the occasional

citizen.

Neighbors

have disappeared,

but similar injustices

happened before

the alien's arrival..

Violence and

violation

have long been

the lot of the poor

and the chosen

who have fallen

out of favor.

I feel it is best

to give our masters

a chance,

the benefit

of the doubt.

Besides, what else

can we do?

Hold on.

I'll be right back.

There is someone

or some thing

knocking at my door.

guide line for submissions:

please send no more then 5 poems

your name in headline and your poems in the body of your Emil.

included a short bio. of yourself and publication history isn't as important

And thank you

Michael H. Brownstein (latest poems)

Michael H. Brownstein

A BET

Night a line of light going nowhere,

a patio of smoke, somewhere a sprig of water,

charcoal colored maize. Early spring

the sky, the moon, the Milky Way.

Early winter frost bitten, a leak of shadow,

laughter in drifting snow. 

                                           Even fire 

on the nearby hillside through an opening,

a flashlight, the person nearby with a lit helmet--

I cannot see my hand in front of my face--

imagines heat and daylight, a nurturing sun,

the winning of a bet we could stay warm

this midnight without the use of flames.

Later we will fish for fish in sand,

pan for gold in air, build a bridge on hard ground,

eat the fruit of the bird and the meat of the seed.

They will laugh at us and that will be OK.

We will win the first bet--remember always

how the judge ruled against the man selling smells.

OUR ARMY, OUR WEATHER

--Napoleon at Waterloo and the Russian interior, for example, Hitler trying to take Moscow and General Howe at Manhattan.
 

Weather our army in time of need,

clouds rolled wire, barbed and content,

until the swamp matches sky, moss and wood.

A wind from the south, December, 

snow melting, snow drifting, and still 

an edge in the cloud field gives way

to something grayer, unsteady and drunk,

and we know how weather changes, how it

will save us, how wind reverts to its nature,

how rain mist freezes, how fog disguises truth,

weather our savior in time of saving.

                       

THE PICNIC

When they sat down, they took everything out of their life--

rocks, moons, great white swans, whooping cranes,

the name of every flightless bird from Guatemala,

space debris and every tome on evolutionary design. 

Soon they had erased the nobody and the somebody.

Even the hard body with thick shoulders vanished in the rain.

Days later—or was it weeks—seconds into minutes perhaps?—

they moved to the thick grass by the swamp’s edge

and fed the alligators raw hamburger meat. This too

came from inside of them, their skin raw and dappled,

a filibuster of tarnish, turpentine and fragrance.

Did you ever eat a worm? No? Then put the pork chop down.

A POLITICAL POEM

The old men of the electrical utilities

share the hat, eat the pie, run over the pedestrian

and eat money until there is nothing left of the rest of us.

THIS POEM NEEDS A REFRAIN

  

This poem needs a refrain,

a homeland, a hat, a hand job.

This poem needs a vagina

muscled with teeth, 

venus fly trap lotion,

battery acid lubricant,

someone to set a tongue on fire.

This poem needs a water bed,

perfect teeth and perfect hair.

This poem is not a bottom feeder, 

a handhold, a hand to hold. 

This poem needs to refrain.

poetry by Ross Vassilev

rosaries 

by Ross Vassilev

afterschool 
we watched the 
Irish girls 
walking 
home in pairs 
from 
St. Mary’s. 
they were all 
blondes 
or redheads 
thin and pretty 
stone-faced 
mean-looking 
not saying a word 
not even to 
each other. 
pale white legs 
coming out of 
green plaid 
skirts 
they drove us nuts 
but we didn’t 
have the balls 
to go over 
and talk to them 
so they remained 
a green-clad 
mystery 
in the grey streets 
of Manhattan.

Poetry by Lauren Tivey

Harvesting

 

There is a way to open your body

to the land, like a lover.

 

There is a way to read the mood

of the soil, like a prophet.

 

Out here, crows are omens, and clouds

ambassadors of the August sky.

 

There is a way to synchronize

your pulse, to learn the cadence.

 

This is the only way

to fill your basket.

 

 

Isla Mujeres

 

Skinny as a stray

she roams the alleys

in a white communion dress

 

brown legs blooming

out of lace socks

and scuffed shoes

 

three pesos for gum

from her straw basket—

she likes my earring

 

jingles it with a sticky finger

and her black satin hair

sways as she skips away

 

all the girls work here

bringing back fistfuls

of greasy money to Mama

 

who is washing the clothes

in the yard, among the chickens

and broken glass.

 

 

Woman on a Blue Balcony

 

See her from the street

the chipped blue paint

white stucco wall

 

you think the sky

should be gray

a storm blowing in

 

that she needs a shawl

imagine a simmering

in the eyes, a bad lover

 

entire telenovas in your head

chest-thumping and weeping

because she is standing

 

on a blue balcony

and her hair is long

and her eyes are black

 

but an afternoon sun is stretching

its long fingers into this clutter

of alleys near the Plaza de Armas—

 

you see she is only surveying

her comfortable universe

the warmth of her satisfied

 

brown face, simple blessing

of her flowers drowsing in their pots.

Now turn, and leave her alone.

Bio:

Lauren Tivey has been busy traveling for the past two years, and is currently living in China, where she works as an English Literature teacher in the American Program at a Chinese high school.  She received a MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her work has appeared in Negative Suck, The Literary Burlesque, Blue Lake Review, The Legendary, Gutter Eloquence, andSnakeskin, among many other publications.  Her chapbook, The Breakdown Atlas & Other Poems, was released in July of 2011 from Big Table Publishing Co.  She lives for poetry, photography, travel, and adventure.

 

poetry by Ray Succre

Where the Air was Lithe as Teleost Fish

                                                                                                                                         

Where the air was lithe as teleost fish,                                                                                       

I was mercy, pity, peace, crushing on her, immediate,

a sessile flower rooted in the shoulder of a satellite,

and with hygienic disrepair, teeth the outside of an old mill. 

I looked to laugh,

I called up words

and on them was carried up into gelid rooms;

I was bruised by lights as from wrongness there

   (and niftiest inward where I’d cocked the springs,

    while under-swimming to pull down the sexies from hobs).

When her sweetheart worked, my neck split atop the pole,

head displumed and pegged, example to set off a cached wealth.

I looked to laugh,

I called up words,

and heard simply soft chuckles on every passing voice.

                                                                                                                           

Ray Succre

Ignited Fruit

His mouth speaks tirade but

the kaleidophone has split

all of his speech into slush.

“Are we starry sorry?”

I listen.  “No, no.  But I understand.”

This is the moment when I

get rid of him, though still

mention my urge to

sock his face back and look

for the candy

for forgetting to lift me

from a bar-den meet full of

meat still clinging to spun-out baboons.

His charm:  “Voila-  apology.”

My statement:  “I spent time with

one of the subtlest, then he

showed me his van.”

The earpiece fractures, then blooms.

Adam’s shrapnel enters my ear:

“Eve, you putrid stew of puke.”

I listen.  “Yes, yes.  And I understand.”

Ray Succre

Ovation

To live in a bottle of bay leaves, I lead a woman with morning hunger like yours

into sunrise.  On the leaves, drought to veins suffocated,

broken offshoots tortured for soup.

You say it is in a bowl, and raise your spoon to employ breakfast,

but it was at first a mule-bray flavor riding the water in a pot,

and it was first in measuring tins and spoons,

and it was first in bottles, a refrigerator, and behind the curtain in a skull.

She woke and was a swish of wet curtain for the shower.

Behind the hill the light eye lifted, dilating the library on 4^th street,

lilting the fluent shapes of bus-stops, alighting on apes and stairwells and elbows.

            “You’re still awake?”

            “Couldn’t sleep.”

            “You’re making me soup?”

            “The Sun is coming up.  This one’s yours.”

           

The air is porous and catches against the mood of moon and October.

I serve with a bowl, bread.  Activity.

I have seen you, the public, after ladles, your eyes ironed and nostrils looming

for the thing of it; she is the same.

She is a woman of yours like a reel of film rolled out to expose every frame

of the scene.  She is very public once the Sun has risen.

Then, the Sun explodes with ovation, from the highest, sparse-treed line.

Her clean spoon, as though nothing is beyond it,

dips through the steam

of the coliseum.

Ray Succre

Dinner Party and the Candor

Not inhuman   shim-fed pose   upright and the candor:  What a meal.

All truncated to a test   the nocturnal violence.

All moments wait out respiration 

The peck of hungry homages   growth of peat   the peek of your birth

Quick utterance    hello saber, spin   gestate  

hand in hand, doll in doll, matryoshka

The 8^th lady   lady Clairol   dumb lady eight

Mental bisque of cognition   stop yelling   pared body into hairy legs—

fiery   omen cyst in dementia— Picasso forest

Squander revoke your lot in Hell   the nocturnal tenors   saran toupees

harpies and gorgons spitfight and the get-out.

Epitaph:  You sat in a centaur’s hard dentures,

gnashed   white shrinking from nothing   incapacitating fucks

but orderly   posed   not inhuman.

Ray Succre

Bio:  Ray Succre is an undergraduate currently living on the southernOregon coast with his wife and son.  He has had poems published inAesthetica, Poets and Artists, and Pank, as well as in numerous others across as many countries.  His novels Tatterdemalion (2008)and Amphisbaena (2009), both through Cauliay, are widely available in print, and  Other Cruel Things (2009), an online collection of poetry, is available through Differentia Press. 

For inquiry, publication history, and information, visit me online:http://raysuccre.blogspot.com