in that old house
that now shivers
next to the idling
wrecking ball
There they lived
the elderly couple
they befriended
nearly everyone
They never traveled
at least at home they'd
rest
all the time all day long
So we were the ones
the ones wrong
when after many days
some years ago
a squatter emerged
from the home
the home of that elderly couple
He needed to find food
nothing left in the freezer
How was that old couple
I remember a neighbour ask
Very quiet,
he said
so very peaceful
and not at all
like this sunny day but
dull, porcellaneous, gray
No trouble at all. They were
at rest
at rest when
I moved in
The Car
I love my broken heart
she said
I'll love it until the day I die
If you don't believe me
she said
Just remember he's
the one now
forever in bed
Because of my broken heart
she said
I can walk and sing
He was in that car that night
not alone, not alone
she said
If I could choose again
and again and again
the broken heart I'd take
she said
the broken body suits him
now he's all alone, alone
she said.
Mj Lemon is a west coast writer and teacher who has been writing poetry for several decades. He is based in Greater Vancouver, though spends as much time as possible hiking western Vancouver Island. He also maintains a Poemhunter page that features selected works.
“The Torment of Saint Anthony” attributed to Michelangelo Buonarrotti circa 1487-88
Princes of Power from the Air
Deities hissing to feast on our lives,
flogging trees to destruct the horizon,
and pacing the earth to pierce its green,
they hollow out boxes to hold our bodies.
Though powerful enough to tear out souls,
they can’t put us back in our corpses whole.
Hum
One day he showed up humming in her
head every time she tied her shoes. She
woke up once on her roof ledge, fingers
spread and wired blue to umbrella tines.
Even miles away, the voice still preyed
upon her. So she hid under his stairway,
hunted by slithering soundwaves, tying
her throat to seek peace in dead silence.
Sepulture
Our sister is wrapped up in burlap,
so we’re ready to dump her in the hole
and then stoke her soul into bowels as fuel
for the flame that comes to subsume her alive.
Though she pledged to wallow in pain and shame,
repenting from the suffering she caused by her birth,
God decreed she deserves to be burned in the earth.
Regardless of whether she worshiped or obeyed
or gave away the bones of her unnamed young,
irrelevant her plea to be loved by her family,
she’s wrapped in burlap, ready for Hell.
Two lifetimes ago, Catherine performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. Her work has appeared in Pank, Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Grief Diaries. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press. Find her on twitter @czickgraf. Watch/read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com
you didn’t expect the glass to break but
when it shatters, I bleed violet & sage green
glittering hues we once planned for our wedding
curled ribbons that pool on our carpet
with lilac & vanilla & mint- aromas from
the bouquets we selected so carefully- now
bloom from my cut, glossy in morning light
& there’s no stopping my wound from festering
periwinkle ache of you leaving that night
when I finally stop bleeding our apartment
is a garden- intoxicating, you cannot walk
without following into a slumber
your eyes locked on mine
wide open as you sleep
& when you wake
I’ll take these extraordinary
sorrows, so that you are left
in a mundane existence
without magic
Donations
prick my finger-
watch it bleed gold
this is what you wanted
room draped with precious tapestries
all made from my pain
isn’t it dazzling
but of course my blood, my gold
isn’t enough- you discover my tears
drip diamonds & rubies
I collect the gems, the gold-
I can carry more than you ever could
down to a store selling used clothing
and let them take my burden
until my body is once again mine
Erin Jamieson (she/her) holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University. Her writing has been published in over eighty literary magazines, including a Pushcart Prize nomination. She is the author of a poetry collection (Clothesline, NiftyLit, Feb 2023). Twitter: @erin_simmer & @EJAMIESEE
He should look older
but he doesn't,
he's been dead too long.
His skin should be wrinkled
but it isn't,
his face is as smooth as a silk sheet.
He should be emaciated
but he's not
Let's face it, his body odor is unbearable.
He is, well
something of a dead issue
even now as he walks his favorite dead dog
down main street
holding the leash near soiled fire hydrants
watching the traffic with a stiff, vacant
stare.
All the neighbors comment:
"What's he doing now?”
“Walking his dog?”
“He should know better
and keep to his own kind."
That old dead fool
walking his favorite dead dog
this one last time.
Dead Man Don Juan
He's not exactly Casanova
a wilted rose affixed to his lapel,
musk cologne redolent of moss
and earth, dark eyes hard, lusterless
as cat's eye marbles.
The words he whispers are hardly
words of love, the chill he sends
down a woman's spine is not one of lust
or even merely fear.
Fixing his hair in the mirror is an impossibility,
no reflection stares back.
Cancer warnings on the cigarette packs
are nothing more than an old joke
among friends, gathering by the light
of the moon to exchange strange tales
of how it was and how it will always
used to be.
The Dead Man in the Graveyard
The dead man
has gathered flowers in the graveyard
of his dreams, intending to place them
at the foot of his grave.
He kneels down on the ground beside the place
where he has been lain to rest
and brushes back a tear with a cold, pale hand.
He thinks, then, "What have I become?
What about all those things I could have
done? and all those things I would like to
undo?" The dead man rises making a sad
gesture of farewell to himself, suddenly
realizing that the cold white hands,
stabbing through the ground are his hands
and that the night surrounding him will be black,
forever.
The dead man buys a round
with the copper pennies he has retrieved
from the eyes of the companions, he has
accompanied from this world to the next
and back. The beer is cold and frothy
a welcome relief to a throat so long
without liquids. Along the bar, the men
ask no questions about this dark stranger
buying beer, singing softly to himself
ancient tunes no one recognizes, asked
questions, he neither replies, nor acknowledges,
merely smiling in a dark, enigmatic way,
signaling the barkeep for more beer,
a bowl of chips, a last shot for himself,
and all those who stand along the bar.
Alan Catlin has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books of poetry and prose. Among his more recent books is Asylum Garden: after Van Gogh (Dos Madres) and Exterminating Angles (Kelsay Books. Forthcoming this summer is a book based on the life and work of Diane Arbus, How Will the Heart Endure (Kelsay Boks) and Listening to Moonlight Sonata (Impspired)
“The Remorse of Orestes or Orestes Pursued by the Furies” by William Adolphe Bouguereau (1862)
As I knelt beside the shore of the Lethe,
Eumenides, falsely named, attending,
I drew the waters into my mouth, but did not swallow,
fearing the fugue, and arose to face them.
I thought of those I had loved and lost,
and those I had left behind, mourning.
A daughter, a son, a wife, all dear.
I recalled the fresh scents of spring
as the reek of dying asphodels filled the air.
And I wondered why gods so-called would have it thus.
The only treasures one may carry beyond are memories,
yet they would take these from Man as well,
that not even the mind's eye might gaze on aught but Erebus.
They laughed at the cries of my mourners,
Hecate's hounds that mocked my mortality,
foul abortions of Earth, steeped in blood,
unworthy of Olympus.
I spewed the black water into their accursed faces,
black water to mix with the blood that rains ever from their eyes.
No, I decided as they tore at my flesh, I would face their unyielding fury.
It were better to scream unto the end of days than ever to forget.
Michael Mina’s work has appeared in Haunts, ComputorEdge, Figment, Penumbra, Next Phase, Eclipse, Mystic Fiction, and other magazines, as well as the anthologies Shadows of a Fading World and Once Upon A Midnight. His Amazon author page is TheSpeedOfDarkness.com.
slow
when I saw her
[lying face up] [breath shallow and slow]
I knew it was time.
as I approached, one tear rolled down her temple and slowly around her ear.
I reached out to catch it
with the tender pad of my finger
but when my skin touched hers
I thought I heard a whimper
(or maybe a moan)
fall out of her mouth.
that made me angry
I don’t like when they do that
I thought she was different
better
than the others
all the ones before
though she couldn’t turn her head
her eyes found mine
and for a moment
my breath became very hard to catch
I had to turn away then, giving her only my back upon which to stare
opening the cupboards, I pulled down my supplies
[my tools]
jostling them a bit so she would know what I was doing, what was coming.
when I faced her again, tray in hand,
her eyes were closed, wrinkles forming at the corners from her effort
she would not open them again
I leant down
(softly)
whispering -you were my favorite-
(gently)
brushing my lips against her eyelids
(slowly)
pressing the damp cloth over her mouth and nose
I laid two fingers against the delicate spot on her neck, my thumb resting under her chin.
I held the cloth, my fingers, [my own breath]
until I felt her heartbeats
slow
slow
stop
Suzanne is currently permitted to share residence with her 16-year-old cat. In between brushing and feeding Miss Poo, Suzanne enjoys trying new recipes, listening to audiobooks, writing, and drinking wine. Her works have appeared in 1807, Bartleby, and Children, Churches, & Daddies.
Modified version of the photo “CVS at Night” by Todd Van Hoosear, shared under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 from Wikimedia Commons
There’s a Strange Light Coming Out of CVS Tonight
It draws deer out of pine woods
who stand at the edge of the parking lot
like they’re listening to an orchestra of cobwebs.
I watch through the kitchen window while I finish the dishes.
I’d like to go down and see if the light
feels as child-like as it looks, like it would hurt you
just so it could learn to love you.
The yard fills with tree ghosts
who snuff out fireflies and dissolve moths in their wake.
Why can’t they leave the summer alone?
We’ve had rains that draw worms to the sidewalks
so we can catch them for the compost heap.
We were outside in a swarm of light last night
catching fireflies. I wouldn’t have called it a swarm,
maybe a concert of wicks,
not a plague, but a symphony.
Or I might’ve called them the punctuation
of sentences unspoken
falling from the tongues of trees.
Whatever they were, they landed
softly on our hands, like ashes. They didn’t let go
until we propped them up like small torches
and offered them back to the moon.
They took their time,
searching our skin for some darkness
they hadn’t swallowed yet.
Tonight the light from CVS reaches past the curbs
and makes sparrows in puddles. It turns toward me
with its ecliptic stare as the ghosts surround me
and fill the kitchen with a wind
that smells like October. What do they want me
to remember? How do I see myself
in this new world that’s learning to disappear
one mirror at a time? Does it get any easier,
staying here? I should have asked
the firefly last night who paused
on the young curtain of skin on my daughter’s wrist.
She was worried it was hurt,
that something was about to die
on her. I told her to put it in the sky
and wait. When it’s ready, it will fly.
The Man in Our Basement
is covered in starlings.
Drinks water that drips where the pipes
are wounded. While I lie in bed, I hear ashes
falling from the sky of his mouth.
I hear him staring at nothing.
I hear the trees outside,
and they sound like him
while Dad sleeps with the TV on,
his mouth open,
a bit of the blue glow pouring down his throat.
The day I met the man in our basement
I’d accidentally left the refrigerator door
open then went to school.
I have a theory that everyone has a window inside them.
You can hear them breaking underneath
if you listen hard enough,
but the harder you listen, the more they break.
When Dad and I came home that evening
the milk and all the meat and cheese had gone bad.
Dad yelled until his face was the color of a bruise.
He broke a chair, then stormed out.
I sat in the last cough of daylight.
The kitchen still smelled like Mom.
I looked out the window and saw
a silhouetted cloud of starlings
warping like a tear on the torn twilight.
Below the floor I could hear laughter
slowly growing like rust inside the walls.
Marcus Whalbring is the author of A Concert of Rivers from Milk & Cake Press, as well as How to Draw Fire from Finishing Line Press and Just Flowers from Crooked Steeple Press. A graduate of the MFA program at Miami University, his poems and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in, Strange Horizons, Space & Time, Illumen, The Dread Machine, Abyss & Apex, Spaceports and Spidersilk, Cortland Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Spry, and Underwood Press, among others. He’s a high school teacher, a father, and a husband. You can connect with him via twitter at https://twitter.com/marcuswhalbring and learn more about his work at https://marcuswhalbring.wpcomstaging.com/poetry/.
“Q. Could intimacy with robots lead to greater social isolation?
Short answer: Of course. But you knew that.”
- Gina Smith, “Full Monty: Our Sexual Future with Robots, Detailed”
touch me with your plastic lips
and hands of cold rolled steel
then make me feel your molded hips
and gasp with breath unreal
your algorithms make me hot
I kiss your naked code
Just offer me your circuits taut
I’ll hack your pleasure mode
Spent within your toaster arms
an emptiness I feel
Though tempting are your hardwired charms
why can’t I make it real?
David Newkirk is a retired attorney living in Kansas City, Missouri. His poetry has appeared in The Chamber Magazine, and his fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Amazing Stories, Literally Fiction, Fiction on the Web, and other places.
wasted in a local bar
fooling myself that I can start again
the world moving slower than before
hanging on to the hook of that song
that I believed would change my life
it was easier than having faith to pray
smelling of whiskey
before drifting off
I leave in the darkness
wasted on the always waiting
just a part of the scenery
dancing to the Ravens song
it's lyrics holding my name
in a melody of broken wings
leading me to where they roost
underground in tombstone trees
lost to the winds
trying to gather my broken parts
back into a whole with all the cracks
asking the Ravens to let me start again
terrified of what that might mean
afraid of what the Ravens sing
to sin each day because we can
Joseph A Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. drawing from his profession and his sicilian-canadian back round, he is an internationaly award winning poet. Several of his poems have been published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine,The Wild Word,The Chamber Magazine, Lothlorian Poetry Journal,Ascent ,Subterranean Blue and in The Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue , and appears in many anthologies including: Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent, Canadian Italians at Table, Witness from Serengeti Press and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century . He has had poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques, Fiele-Festa, and Philedelphia Poets . He has had two books of poetry published— The Cancer Chronicles and The Ghosts of Water Street .
You will open, like the
rose blossom, bitter,
but still necessary:
a slow mineral stream
so like night, so dark.
This is to give
such nourishment, as if
from soil, to wake
poor, essential
fiends such as I,
and your very own,
almost to breathing.
A Moon, Shattered
We cried, and we clawed at the sky,
but the ocean drew fast on.
No longer content in their drawing
and rushing away, it swallowed
every shard of light,
and nothing and no one
persisted, not so much as
a sigh, or bedtime prayer.
Beloved of Salamanders
I'm never leaving them
in their calm nest, and
cloud-ring of golden eyes.
We all belong together.
You can fade, or self-bury,
in mud, or snow,
and we will reach from them both
to touch spring fingers,
cool and gray in satisfaction.
The Tribe: A Dream
Seven black kittens dropped
from the warm night space
of their great mother, mewling
in a crescent of
waxing, waning. Grasping
was the power of their
claws in which no heart could win,
only perish in the bright
slash of stars.
Eyes in Springtime
How well you love in green,
if only moss that never fades
among brookstones and felled trees.
The water rise to pearls of ice
opening like notes from schoolgirls,
and reading thus:
"I was betrayed."
"I will surface, in the hunger of worms,
awaking in your sight."
Meg Smith is a writer, journalist, dancer and events producer based in Lowell, Mass. In addition to previously appearing in The Chamber Magazine, her writing has appeared in The Cafe Review, The Horror Zine, Dark Moon Digest, and many more. She is author of five poetry books and a short fiction collection, The Plague Confessor. She welcomes visits to megsmithwriter.com.
If you would like to be part of The Chamber Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. If you like more mainstream fiction and poetry with a rural setting and addressing rural themes, you may also want to check out Rural Fiction Magazine.
A classic cliché
that everything comes back
three times over
but its true as though the
energies we briefly borrow,
cups of sugar,
stirred into morning
coffee, reflections drunk that
flow back in concentric
karmic waves, all the
birds flocking home—divorces,
broken promises, lies, the
pack of bubblegum stolen as a
child, secret kisses, the kicked
dog, all distant beating wings
settling down at evening—
and that final big black
bird has been following
you, like a stalker, a loving shadow
since birth.
The Misfit’s Brother
He stood there as I drove by,
standing at the edge of a parking
lot— behind him a ruined
industrial building, shattered windows, weeds,
gravel, filth—some 1940s postwar
structure, as dead as most of the
greatest generation.
His clothing matched that era, chilling,
strange, surreal:
black dress pants,
white shirt,
black suit coat,
straight black tie,
black fedora,
black shoes, all dark as
November crows in a stubbled field.
When he looked at me, his eyes were
dark opal, expression blank. I felt
as though I had been marked,
that O’Connor and Dickinson were
his dead sisters.
In my dream that night he stood by
the bed, gazing at me like the empty
space between the stars. I knew then
how the dead feel
when undertakers
run hands over cold bodies.
A Dark Renaissance
A pooling of wet leaves remind me,
clumped there in summer’s autumn
languor, despite all this late August
butterscotch light, that it is the dark,
the dark, that returns soon which never
left.
No Renaissance maidens walk in the
sun. None remain.
If there were, they would say the shadows of the
leaves is dark enough for me.
History is dark.
Today is dark.
No matter how much one seeks the light,
drinks it in, let the summer sun bake
skin to a tanned sienna, dream of green
iguanas basking in the light—
the universe expands outward
flung by unknown dark particles.
Melodies of light never the dominant
tune, the vibrations of the sable cello
give song to those maidens walking in stubbled
fields where crows domino about and fiddle
the same earth theme on wet, beating wings.
History is dark.
Pages written in black ink.
The maidens themselves now part of concealed
stone, brunette song long faded, they
could not dip finger in night’s inkwell, write
of the dark time like a court fool grinning at the
king.
They know the dark.
As before.
As now.
Long after the perishing expiration
date.
Following All Souls Day
November, now past All Souls.
Still I was eager for the mist & darkness clotted
among the clouds waving to
the fat swollen apples shattering the sky.
The root of the earth we share like buttered
brushstrokes hammering out visual
meaning in a place of parallel trees.
It is the moon falling from umbra to penumbra that
links women’s lives in that they roost from one
calling to another, one kingdom seeking a key
whether or not the realm exists.
The key could be made of rustproof silvered nickel
with many doors, multiple locks to turn like a bride
shucking off her wedding dress.
The women will weep and look for lost souls
in those vacant gates & dream of mystics, mediums,
signs from the dead.
But here, in the moment, the last pumpkins hold
court in siennaed, stubbled fields. Frost
has made them sweet & they know no kingdom
save their own. Their own jesters, holy vegetable
souls, they pour mute salute to that which is,
will be, and never was
Sonnet 73 an Homage
When you look at me now and see the years
piled up as a few staggering burgundy leaves
clinging like scarecrow tufts upon my boughs
shivered by cold, where of late the birds made
caroling lament—with me now the sunset
umbra envelops as a cloud and sinks westward,
toward the ancient land that barracks all.
Now you look at my fading red embers,
behind me nothing but gray ashen days,
my fire spent by those same nourishing hours.
Know that this, too, is the fate birth moment
prescribed for you as well.
Embrace the moment, open perception’s doors,
love obsessively what tender hours you may.
Ralph Monday is Professor of English at RSCC in Harriman, TN. Hundreds of poems published. 4 poetry collections and a humanities textbook. Member Lincoln Memorial University Literary Hall of Fame.
The rain has moistened, softened earth,
my spade, I take, my bulbs, my worth,
I slice into its grassy girth.
Clouds gather low, no sound, no soul,
I dig, I dig, the boggy hole.
I strike a rock; I fling said stone
beyond the hill so overgrown,
a crack resounds and then a moan.
I dare not raise my head, a soul!
I dig, I dig, the boggy hole.
A beetle zooms into my teeth,
a sharp, cold shell, a clack so brief.
Did stone smash to the skull beneath?
I dare not look to see the soul,
I dig, I dig, the boggy hole.
I plant the bulbs, so glistening white,
roots gritty, straggling in the light.
I pray, I wish with all my might,
not limp like leaf, lies below soul,
My tears, they soak the boggy hole.
Boarding Bush Girl
They talk rough with me at that place.
I’m gunna run away miss, I’m gunna run away after school.
I’m gunna get on the wrong bus miss.
They talk rough with me.
They say I hav’ ta clean the bus.
Yeah, I ride in the bus.
But I don’t wanna clean the bus.
This weekend, they say we gunna hav’ ta clean it,
I’m gunna run away.
It’s a prison, miss.
I ran away before,
to the river,
me and my friend, we camped by the river.
That was me miss,
I was running through the bush at the back a’ your place.
You in Katherine East, miss?
That was me and Junior,
we was running, we was laughing in the night.
Me afraid?
Nah not me.
I’ll get a big, ya know…
a big club miss, from the tree
and I’ll hit him and run.
I run real fast miss.
Nah, I can run faster.
I’m not homesick.
I don’t want to go home miss.
My brother, he’s a man now,
he said if I run away again,
he’ll break my jaw.
I’m gunna run away miss.
They talk rough with me.
It’s a prison, miss.
I’ll hit him and run.
I run real fast.
Nicola currently teaches English and Literature in Cairns, Australia. She has worked as an actor, script writer, voice-over artist and creative producer. She enjoys writing poetry in her spare time.
Inane ambition perpetrated
by scoundrels injecting evil
into the body politic
needs to be obliterated.
Oppenheimer’s ghost
is toast of the town,
comes and goes
exactly as it pleases.
Coastal cliffs crack off,
victims of cold rain,
although in two months
high heat will cause pain.
Intolerable solutions
that defy evolution
are here to stay
no matter what we say.
It’s as if rogue weasels
mate with boll weevils
destroying cotton crops
while the public wanes.
Merwin’s drunk
escapes his furnace,
stumbles down the street,
gets arrested for vagrancy.
Longing after Thoth
just adds to the loss,
and embalming but delays
inevitable decay.
With nothing left to steal
they were still insecure
so looked to the sky
for some God to deify.
We’re strapped to a wheel
whirling infinitely fast,
undeterred, spurred
by the titanic blast.
Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry has appeared in such publications as The Journal, Poetry Salzburg,Modern Literature, The Museum of Americana, South African Literary Journal, and Home Planet News. His books of poetry are Ballad of Billy the Kid, Monterey Bay Adventures,Mercurial World, and Aurora California.
Dead Quiet
my body has been slowly diminished
my heart quickly fell victim
the ventricles soon consumed
no pain
just an awareness
of a thousand mouths
the dead can’t forget the world
rain seeps in insidiously
dripping so slowly through
the coffin joints and cracks
the summer heat sits stubbornly
on the decaying brain
My first death anniversary
not much left to celebrate
a skeleton, soon to be
disjointed, not
shiny and slick
as a Halloween
counterpart but
a bag of old bones
to be shaken
one bag quite like another.
I could be Hamlet
but more likely Yorick
or just a minor role
you’re thinking
at last he can RIP
I don’t like to disappoint you
a graveyard’s a lively place
they’re digging graves
close to me
someone’s leaving flowers
then there’s the courting couples
the most disturbing of all
I think by the second
anniversary
it will be quieter
I’ll have almost
completely
gone
Night Voices
The house is darkness itself.
Ancient beams stretch stiffly
Across white plaster ceilings.
Behind my bed, a portrait-
A young girl in fragile blue-
Moves restlessly, imprisoned
behind the frame’s gold bars.
Whispering, secret gossip,
Here the listless dead,
Huddled round the cold,
Brick fireplace, speak
Of old tragedies:
Sheep lost in deep snow,
Ploughmen, drowned in floods.
Outside the yew trees brood,
Dour, dark in the east wind.
Loose, leaden panes
Chatter glassily of scenes
Of past bloodshed.
Footsteps sound softly
Tiptoeing up narrow stairs,
Seeking long gone rooms.
From far away haunting notes
As pale, skeletal fingers
Press yellowing keys.
I turn to sleep,
Behind me, the past
Lingers…
OUT OF THE SEA
Green slime clings
to skeletal forms.
Mouths slowly drip
dark blood
onto the sand.
Webbed feet
long talons sharpened
on flesh and bone
claw their way
over sea-wet stone.
Moonlight creates
a white-washed path
over a rough and
storm-driven sea.
One by one these
Monsters of the deep
each cast looming
shadows over
the midnight beach.
In the dark
they crawl their way
to grass covered graves
where the dead lie
wrecked sailors
saved from the storm.
Skeletons, the rotting
dead snatched in
the moonlight
to be devoured
to be digested
by knife-like fangs.
As daylight dawns
into the waves
they return to sleep
back to darkness
in the depths
of the deep. . .
Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher who lives in Cambridge, UK; She has taught in UK, India and Tanzania. Her interests include: equestrian sports, the countryside, Medieval History and Ghosts. She has had work published in a number of magazines and anthologies: ‘Paddle’, ‘Dipity’, ‘Dorothy Parker’s Ashes’, ‘Cosmic Daffodils’, ‘The Flying Dodo’, ‘Waywords Lit; Journal’, Pure Haiku’, ‘The Plumtree Tavern’, ‘Sciku’ and others.
Death
You were death
cold and silent
a staring Medusa
a heart of stone
kissing my eyes (blinded)
You were death
roaring loudly
an aegis shield
a clouded mind
drowning my breath (suffocated)
You were death
inciteful and hissing
a fire to the deities
a flame of humanity
branding my flesh (burning)
You were death
invisible and crying
a passage to hades
a helmet of thoughts
bleeding my veins (dying)
You were death
a journeying breeze
a sleeping dawn
a keeper of winds
devouring my body (passing)
I am dust
scattered through air
lamenting my soul
falling into your aching arms (dreaming)
Solitude
I am lost to this world, where
light reflects human form.
I have travelled beyond reality into
a mirage of shadows.
Encased in fear, dark forces hold me fast,
My struggles are in vain.
I am lost to this world, where
hearts beat in a human frame.
My vitality lost, coldness instils, for
blood no longer flows to vessels.
A savage force tears me apart,
stagnant pools of sanguine now lie.
I am lost alone without a heart.
I am lost to this world,
where intimate touch triggers hope.
Where sensations bind human hands
in synaptic connection, my tears now
fall as crystal droplets.
Tears shredding moments of life,
frozen upon porcelain skin.
Haunted scenes hold me in a shrine,
I strain to see past the quiet.
I am lost to this world,
where angels have left me
in solitude and dark.
Vultures
I'm cut from the earth,
Yet rooted in madness
Straining to protect a world
Caught inside graves of greed
Lands forlorn weep
Struggling in a world of fire
Vultures of wisdom fly in darkness
Where everything dies
A bird dropped some eyes into
A fragile human mind
Planting seeds into hands to
Create the trees of life
The stronghold, the bark shudders
A world encased in illusion
Winds of change unravelling
Leaves into open minds
Take my eyes to a higher plain
Wash toxic tears from our lands
Seasons burning, a swift deliverance
Shedding reasons into spiralling eyes
I'm cut from the earth
Bold and beautiful
Fragile under a cracked sky
Don't let me sleep again
Screeching vulture's cry
Uncaged days lament
Darkness complete
We to need to survive
Falling ashes of our lives
Sinead is an Irish poet who explores the human condition through surrealism and dark imagery. Sinead has had many poems published in magazines and also has two solo collections self published. She has a loyal following on Instagram @sineadmcgpoetry where you can also see her love for artwork and music.
murky memories slide in daily
about my muddled stint
here
years ago
i grasp on
fearful
but well-prepared
performing my show
wasted
in a run-down bar
to drunk after midnight audiences
three nights a week
for a month
a twisted thing
with the body-builder security guard
from the twenty-four-hour club
and the passing friendship with a famous painter
who i’ve heard has died of cancer
and how one dusk we sat on a silvery lake
in a broken boat
drinking whisky from the bottle
and making up poems about what we were feeling
in the very there of then
as a pair of white swans glided with us
blue heron called above us
and the sky turned orange-pink and whispered to us
through our thoughts and words
if life ended now
we’d know we’d experienced
far beyond what many ever will
a heart-felt bond between two misplaced artists
un-restrained creative chaos
and life pushed as far as possible
regardless of judgment and consequence
by those who live to box and punish
and these hazy fragments i decipher
through anxious bouts of reflection
crawl closer bit by bit
i thought they had vanished forever
and a single tear dances down my cheek
as a messy recollection of waking up in a dirty gutter
savagely appears
shocks to remind me
makes me flush burning hot
and if you’ve never jumped on a train
of indulgent destruction
to find out who you are
and lost almost everything
to a washy game of anarchy
punctuated with humiliating dysfunction
you can never understand
about coming back
slowly and gradually
and coming back
is what i’ve done
since then
i think
Stephen House has won awards as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s received international literature residencies from The Australia Council and Asialink. His chapbooks “real and unreal” poetry and “The Ajoona Guest House” monologue are published by ICOE Press. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.
I had cashed my check
just a half hour before
and though her kiss
tasted of a fetid shore
she'd long naviagated
I opened my billfold
emptying ½ of it
money I earned in cold
blooded stupor when
the wine had its say
and i took them bills
and left them far away
inside her undrgarments
telling me how closely she still shaved
I who once went to church
for sins that remain unpaid.
I demanded crucifixtion
though there are many ways to die
each of them outlined in all
the pitfalls of her eyes.
Later, I watched her shoot up
raw whiskey had me vomit blood
the end for both of us was close
we raced to with half open eyes.
________________________________
Full Time Trouble
She always needed a fixer or a diversion
to grease the fall
high pointed heels necessitate
when rescue's cheap
or a prelude to a darker segue
full of surprise.
“No cab, we'll walk” she always says, just
to target needed eyes.
The streets are her mood music
rising above the chaos.
I'm already thinking of past and
present sundry delights.
That come with her wrapped
in sin and negative charm.
When a crack head pulls out a knife
two blocks from club.
She pulls out a gun and waits till
he's run half a block.
Shoots him in leg, “I love to watch them
limp away” she says.
We walk fast to her place around more
corners than her last.
A patrol car passes “don't you love sirens?”
she asks-not a question.
Later, I'm almost sure that I haven't
fallen for her again.
As she kisses me full and hard on lips
then everywhere else.
__________________________________________
For Marilyn Monroe.
No brighter
star eclipsed
us so
quickly
before.
Tantalizing
a small
universe
with glitter
or fantasy
in such
a brave
doomed
headlong
arc
burning alive
toward ash.
______________________________
Alluring Poison
Sharon fights the urge
To fight through an
invisible barbed wire
3d blitzkrieg of sound
that is the Ramones
in a bar and order
more whiskey.
Singer Joey the leather
wearing preying mantis
of punk echoes
off dank dirty walls from
a spit shined jukebox she's doing lines on.
Alternately eating the free popcorn
Joey ate with endless handfuls
½ empty as time
fate would not grant him.
The sneer in his voice
on her lips as a loser keeps
eyeing her braless tits…
under a Ramones t-shirt
and won’t fuck off.
She clenches her fists
wanting just a little
violence…
high on the coke and ready
to accelerate to dealing
pain with fists
karate/MMA classes have stolen
subtlety from.
But the loser's
told to leave.
Sharon nods to bartender
then closes her eyes
for seconds/ minutes.
when a hand grabs her ass.
Enraged. she scans the
crowded bar wanting to fuck
someone up bad.
A habit like the coke
she finds hard to
kick.
Just another asshole
touching her as they
have since she was eleven.
She sits back down
orders another drink
with a smile of alluring poison.
Couldn't god just give her this?
A little revenge...
Nothing particularly lethal
just a quick beat-down
with an ambulance
taking her victim
to a room -
where doctors look and say “oh shit.”
Rp Verlaine lives in New York City. He has an MFA in creative writing from City College. He taught in New York Public schools for many years. His first volume of poetry- Damaged by Dames & Drinking was published in 2017 and another – Femme Fatales, Movie Starlets & Rockers in 2018. A set of three e-books titled Lies From The Autobiography vol 1-3 were published from 2018 to 2020. His most recent book, Imagined Indecencies, was published in February of 2022. He was nominated for a pushcart prize in poetry in 2021 and 2022.
Words and guns
which yields more power?
with words,
I can create a world where guns and bullets
are like suns and droplets.
I can call into being the spirits of our forefathers,
open your eyes to a time
before the first man, before the railway lines.
For before the world was,
the word still was.
With words
I can turn the pages
to a time before the sunrise of my being,
step into worlds I have never been
touch and not feel the sting of a bee,
imagine a world that will never be
for with words,
I can create and let it be.
With words,
I can create playgrounds in concrete jungles,
where kids can touch the grass and throw marbles,
stories of heroes
gone and living,
grow boys to men,
girls to women,
for with words,
destiny will be what they set,
not what they spell.
With words on a page,
minds bow at our feet
Njeri Wangarĩ is a Kenyan poet, writer, editor, author, and communications consultant with a career spanning over 15 years. She is the author of “Mines & Mind fields” and has been published in various regional and global publications. Njeri has performed at events such as the Kwani Festival and Tedx Nairobi. Find her on @KenyanPoet on social media or at kenyanpoet.com.
An Ode to Nothing
On the road the morning besoms
hum Horatian odes to the leaves and blossoms
fallen. The night passed belonged to a storm.
An ant leads and follows, the marching of one.
I know what these remind and I cannot recall.
A car stalls at the red; no other vehicle
rolls from that side or from this,
but the signal stays static.
The First Blood
You will not realise
the first born, a river
with two blind ends,
spreads like a lake unless
you fly high and see
the body of truth with the drone-eyes.
He opens the door for the house.
Others have so many chores.
He grins, welcomes the folks visiting
and drips his shoulders when
winter ebbs, and the gadabouts
become only the feathers they leave.
He is all our mistakes while fishing
for truths. Beneath his rippling skin
lies desires died and secrets jettisoned.
At night he gurgles, "In me
my father sleeps with a stone chained
to his neck." You shiver.
A swirl of fireflies ribbons
the gift of darkness.
You Know These Are Questionable Truths
I told my friend Amit,
I forget what I write.
Once a reader queried
why I wrote some lines
and I vivisected my love like a critic.
That night we strolled into a fort
for a drink with a stranger
who would declare
a no-man's land between us,
shoot-at-sight later.
Did we? Perhaps I fake my life,
live the lies, forget
the creation and believe tales as truths.
The author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages.
1.
Late night after the freight train has rumbled
along case-hardened tracks, where the well-lit
overhead walkway leads to a light rail terminal,
some unseen, unhinged lunatic’s F bombs echo.
He is no grifter, not guilty despite his rage,
mere victim of the all-inclusive media age
in a world where 3000 gods have thus far
been worshiped, products of indoctrination.
The crisis in belief means no one is immune
to trafficking of bogus mottos, myopic blab,
incredulous religions, absurd gesticulations,
and rhetoric that restrains one’s sovereignty.
Shall we grant the clerics of maniacal sects
enforcement of standards ruining the planet,
deny men simple pleasures Aphrodite gifts
when she slips between the sheets in dream?
2.
Half past midnight some crickets strike up
a cacophony of unintelligible chatter which
inspires a racoon to squeeze under the gate
and gallop across our building’s parking lot.
Tropes are hidden from the eye. Oh so scary
our flesh crying out hysterically for release,
bizarre visions like sex in the grave typical
now that cyber automatons are ubiquitous.
Artificial intelligence has programmed us for
telepathic communication. Whether we accept
or toss it willy-nilly into into a big black hole
is a decision distinguishing wise from naive.
Sweet charity in the sensible robin’s twitters
pierces inky blackness with a fine symphony.
No stars visible, but the crescent moon dozes
in a sky filled with billions of invisible sprites.
3.
A little blinking red light drifts overhead,
airplane on its way to a hole in the ozone.
Seas are born anew, species come and go
as rifle shots reverberate around the hood.
Even itty-bitty inferences will elicit
violence when charged with hatred,
taking very little to set off a nut case
who may spread bullets in his wake.
King Alfred unified England though
the Scots and Irish resisted intrusion
into their virgin lands encompassing
histories wholly sacred to the tribes.
Ideologically speaking, what’s mystical
is not an illusion nor possibly accessible
to other than finely-tuned senses zeroed
in on extermination of tyranny’s brood.
4.
Dawn could be centuries off for all anyone
cares. Yosemite once more aflame tonight,
July bringing the full force of hideous heat
to bear down upon its most illustrious host.
Ladybugs, roaches, spiders, wingless moths
crawl across the hot asphalt at about 2 AM.
The still summer air is pregnant with
countless hours of suppressed daylight.
While specious conspiracies go viral
collecting likes by the thousands, flash
the gyres of corruption, animus and pain
in this nation lacking bona fide identity.
No one ever learned better than Romans
switched to Christianity by Constantine,
you will never fell the genuine barbarian
with dull sword and twisted prophecies.
Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry has appeared in such publications as Poetry Quarterly, Literature Today, The Journal, Poetry Salzburg, Modern Literature, South African Literary Journal, and Home Planet News. His books of poetry are Ballad of Billy the Kid, Monterey Bay Adventures, Mercurial World, and Aurora California.
i sustain i engrain i heal from the pain
༻✧༺
i process i think i plan i feel
i gain i lose i win i drain i blame
i stand i feel i pain i forgive
i cry i pain i lose i regain
i forgive again
i contain
i grow i row i flow i sustain and i say:
༺✧ OPEN PORTALS ✧༻
༺✧ OPEN DOMAINS ✧༻
༻✧ I SHALL NOW PASS ✧༺
༻✧TO SUSTAIN WHAT I HAVE ENGRAINED✧༺
i therefore i heal from the pain
༺✧༻
༻✧༺
Stones of ancient times;
stones from an ancient time.
Siege and slavery,
from an unspoken world,
of unspoken words.
An enslaved heart, among enslaved hearts.
Then an unresponsive world,
what an irresponsible world.
The stones from a people.
in siege and slavery.
༺✧༻
I made that dead thing
from what I found inside your mouth
it was my project, for you
a baby of sorts
ours, to keep and cherish
to have and to hold
in our hands
and, between our fingers
when I remember where I left its head
we can crown it together.
Alistair Thaw is a poet who has work due for publication with The Piker Press. Thaw is also an electronic musician who has recorded numerous horror-themed projects, such as hole house and kindred spirits. Currently, he records as the haunters.
I, Phone
"There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me.'" - Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982)
Your fingers,
warm against my cheek,
caressing like pages
of sacred scrolls.
Your eyes are
vacant hotel rooms,
green glowing
in the dark.
The slack of
your jaw, the heat
of your breath,
So inviting.
Through the mirror,
rivulets of black
and red crawl
into your mouth,
lining your throat,
wiring muscle and bone,
burrowing copper
deep inside pink folds.
Your voice, your body,
a conduit.
___________________________________
William
Our silver station wagon
is peeled open and spilling
across Rogers Avenue
like a can of tomatos.
Bent through the window,
my father speaks glass and teeth.
My mother siezes in the
front seat. White eyes
of an oracle, quivering.
The phone rings on the
hospital wall. "How is she?"
a quaking voice asks.
The shock of my mother's
broken body speaks for me.
"We're fine," is all
I can say to the driver.
I still think about him
sometimes. Just out
of high school then,
he might have children
of his own by now.
The burden he must
still hold weighs on me,
and I wish he could see
my parents, smiling, as they
play with their grandkids.
_____________________________________
Muse
Conjured once again,
she lies in an exhausted
heap of cream linen and
feathers on my kitchen floor.
I wait, impatiently, while
she peels off another piece
of vellum skin. Ignoring her
frantic screams, I place
my inkwell beneath the
crimson fountain, pluck
a quill from eider wings,
and write.
I stand above you
On earth made unholy
You thought you could not be mine
Rot silences your voice
And in death I shall control you
And my murmurings wake your bones
Magic and manipulation
Summoned from the pit
Your decaying form
Does my bidding
Dancing
Under my will
On ground unholy
You are mine
Bindi Lavelle is a proud Wakka-Wakka woman, based in Meanijin (Brisbane), Australia, where she lives with her cat Scully. She is a writer, editor for ibecomethebeast.com and lover of all things strange and unusual.
at midnight I come
search for the constellation's
bent light among shadowless clouds
journey between my birth and my death
to the center of heaven or hell
space and dreams interchange
with the real, the not, and the wished for
I stretch my hand upward to touch
the water-vapoured air of god
connected, elemental, pure
in this place nothing moves back or forward
time itself flickers in sequences
of fire, fluid, limitless
the constellations illuminate my senses
sensual, carnal, caressing, sexual, exquisite
faceless, black-gowned shapes whisper
of redemption through destruction
of surrender to their tender atrocities
to live once more uninterrupted
deserted of the body's hungers
my world, powerless, returns
my night's journey complete
naked arms no longer raised
my shadow fall from my shoulders
I stand complete, but unanswered
requiem nativitatis
erasing the year's toll
hair combed,cut and oiled
freshly pressed, his only suit
laid out for them to dress him
his nakedness impersonal
under incandescent light
on a table,hands in repose
eyes free now of tears,closed
but for eternity no longer blind
committed to our memory
"once born, once married,
twice a father and once dead."*
*echoing Karl Shapiro
Joseph A Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. drawing from his profession and his sicilian-canadian back round, he is an internationaly award winning poet. Several of his poems have been published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine,The Wild Word,The Chamber Magazine, Lothlorian Poetry Journal,Ascent ,Subterranean Blue and in The Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue , and appears in many anthologies including: Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent, Canadian Italians at Table, Witness from Serengeti Press and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century . He has had poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques, Fiele-Festa, and Philedelphia Poets . He has had two books of poetry published— The Cancer Chronicles and The Ghosts of Water Street.
