judy 

 

L. Ward Abel 

 

Garland was forty-seven, my age, when she gave in
to the machine.  The same machine that would
wake her with uppers, work her for twenty hours,
then dull her with downers into short sleep, all
when she was still so young.  By the time CBS
cancelled her show, she was thin (despite feeling
obese), gaunt, worn out and fragile.  And
yet.
And yet, when she sang.
When she sang there was nothing short of electric.
True electric.
I can barely watch her films now;
she scares me,
whether it be in A Star is Born,
or those black and white images from the fifties and sixties,
as she seemed to me ready to jump out of her skin
as if no one was watching, shaking like
a Hollywood evangelist, raising her arms
looking up down into the eyes of God
shaking like there
was no tomorrow.  No today.
 

 

 

 

 

imprinted with something

 

L. Ward Abel 

 

“Sometimes the light / is not strong enough /
Sometimes the floor /  is too far away”  - Corey Mesler

Sometimes
while driving,
usually morning,
I’ll glance
to the edge of a wood.
The scene
will seem out of place
in its perfection,
like those dream settings
that flash and are gone
but the film is imprinted
with something.
Akin to many emotions,
like dread or
a siren’s pull or
love or
death itself or
a masterpiece in a
sun speckled clearing.
Pardon me if I can’t
put my finger on it,
but to do so
I feel
would be a
violation.

 

 

 

 

the architects of my loneliness

Corey Mesler 

 

The architects of my loneliness
are meeting behind closed doors.
They are deciding to build a new ell
onto my loneliness. I wait with
the rest though I know that when the
time comes my loneliness will just
be another empty project. Still, it’s
exciting, this anticipation. I am
almost pleased with their anxious delays.

 

 

 

 

we are wee

Corey Mesler 

 

Yet we are legion,
a wink, a shrug, a fidget, a smile.

 

 

 

 

a cark

Corey Mesler

 

The little worm, the barbed worm,
underneath my sternum:
I wake him with a cup of coffee.
There is something dark at the center
of my dreamspace. It may
take most of first light to recall
what it is. I will work on it though
until it shines, a burnished suffering.
That’s this morning, specifically,
one more bright, sharp daybreak.
 

 

 

 

 

 

why i started my literary magazine

Corey Mesler

 

You see there was this gap.
Our town may not be
the biggest or most sophisticated
but we have some real
swamis here.  Everyone looks
up to me.  I sit at my desk
and ideas pile up like water on water.
Then I thought why not a magazine.
I called it Fescue because
it sounds cool and will make
the boobouisie sit up and bark.
The only catch, and this is just between
you and me, is that I have to
read all these poems and things.
I mean some of it is so goddamn boring.

 

 

 

 

 

death is imminent and i'm still smiling

 

Alison Ross 

 

It's raining cats and clocks.

I drink an entire bottle of dreams (vintage 1919)

and drift down a road made of smoke.

The umbrella of my imagination 

flies away 

flies away.

I am in no hurry to die.

My smile blooms

like a cyst.

Further down the road

I meet the phantom of myself.

I say hello and she laughs.

I smother her with my raincoat.

She wilts like a wounded smile.

Sleep waves to me with its green hand.

I gulp down a flask of smoke, 

and fall toward the clouds 

erasing themselves from my memory.

I knock on the sky 

and no one answers

except for the stars

except for the stars

 

 

 

 

eternity found

Alison Ross 

 

My days have been infernal feasts of fire and delight; I have not censored myself but lived loudly and boldly, blazing through dim apathies and carving diamond paths through gruesome nights. I have invented enigmas and flattened paradigms; I have twisted through the labyrinth of myself and made my heart invisible. 

Now as my days wane, I float through the gardens that inflame my senses. I imagine flowers that wrap their blue arms around me, and suffocate me with their shrouded scents. 

My funeral will be an hallucination of hymns and poisons; wines will flow and hearts will sing. Guests will celebrate the sordid epiphanies of my life: the euphoria of my birth, the rapture of my death. 

I have offered myself to the world; I have sacrificed myself to the sun, and laughed heartily at the moon. The gods have loved me, and opened the heavens in my honor. 

I enter; the feast has begun again. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mind control

 

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

 

I left college

to join the Navy.

I had a love

for the sea and for

my country.  I

had my first breakdown

aboard a ship.

They sent me home.  They

said I was not

cut out for the seas

or the Navy.

They wanted men who

were not insane.

I was surprised by

my new found mind.

I heard voices and

believed I was an

Admiral on

a pirate ship.  I

saw visions of

sea monsters, which

frightened me.  I shot

my rifle in

the waters, at what

I was told was not

there.  I could not

return to college

because I was

afraid to step out

of my home.  I

became withdrawn and

anti-social.

I don’t know if I

was put on mind

control after I

joined the Navy.

There was nothing wrong

with me before

I enlisted.  I

did not have a

single headache.  Now

I have friends inside

my head I did

not invite.  They tell

me they are here

to stay.  I would much

rather put a

bullet in my head.

 

 

 

 

 

you should be in my dreams

 

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

 

You go on to your little group

I will stay in bed.

I can’t get in much trouble sleeping.

But you should be in

my dreams, child, I get in

loads of trouble there.

 

In one of my dreams I tried to

carve my ex-with a

butter-knife.  It was no ordinary

butter-knife either.

I filed that sucker and turned it

into a sharp sword.

 

I would have done it in real life.

But I don’t want to

end up in prison.  It’s worse than

being in this place.

Child, my dreams are worse than

anything you’ve seen.

 

 

 

 

 

eternity found

Alison Ross 

 

My days have been infernal feasts of fire and delight; I have not censored myself but lived loudly and boldly, blazing through dim apathies and carving diamond paths through gruesome nights. I have invented enigmas and flattened paradigms; I have twisted through the labyrinth of myself and made my heart invisible. 

Now as my days wane, I float through the gardens that inflame my senses. I imagine flowers that wrap their blue arms around me, and suffocate me with their shrouded scents. 

My funeral will be an hallucination of hymns and poisons; wines will flow and hearts will sing. Guests will celebrate the sordid epiphanies of my life: the euphoria of my birth, the rapture of my death. 

I have offered myself to the world; I have sacrificed myself to the sun, and laughed heartily at the moon. The gods have loved me, and opened the heavens in my honor. 

I enter; the feast has begun again. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

more glamorous than a mink coat 

 

Misti Rainwater-Lites 

 

much more satisfying to sink teeth into
than glossy airbrushed media darlings
and daddy’s princesses all grown up
and shining on bakers’ shelves in icky sweet
pink and yellow cupcake rows

girls gleaming subtle like topaz
girls not giving every piece away
satisfied girls
girls who read
girls who take notes
girls patient and watchful and purring like cats
ugly duckling girls
beautiful in their giggle
last call girls
shiny from gimlets
still not slurring
their words

true glamour hard to capture with digital camera
glamour you cannot see with naked eye
smell with curious nose
eat with greedy mouth
glamour that keeps and sustains
girls least likely to be suspected
don’t advertise the fact
that they got it
in spades

 

 

 

 

 

 

fishin' 4 elefants

 

Ven

 
Dali and I,
while fishing for elephants,
fell by mistake
on a swan covered lake
and drowned in
arrangements
of baritone
eloquence;
drawn through
the fine lines
impressionists make.
 
Through ripples,
reflections,
refractions and likewise
we floated like oil
on peripherals of blue
and danced
the last tango
in sepia dejection,
with him
looking inward
and me
seeing through.

 

 

 

 

 

thud

 

Ceris Dien

 

 

Thud
Like a cartoon
I swear the word
Was in the air
Flashing
And the cafe patron
Bristled
On the pavement
Where we sat
Quick as that
The young man
Slumped by the litter bin
Too stunned
To react

Another time
A hand
Cut to shreds
And a crimson dripping
Head
Dumbly pleading
Turned away
We did
He was
We fed

I asked the city
Was I to expect
By law of averages
So many bleeding wounds?
Ka-Pow
It said

 

 

 

 

april revisited

Ceris Dien

 

Back in the garden the pale-puddled sun
Reminds us of late afternoon -
Bless the spring, bless the young,
We reach for our fluting summer
And the clean air by the sea is wide awake
Waiting to trade
Salt-rub for euphoria

To the west of us a day is undone
Even as dusk brings an old moon -
Bless the day we have sung
With a keening haste, bless the young
When the white winds off the startled ocean break
From fledgling shade
Spring blooms to diaspora

 

 

 

don't
(On the discovery by astronomers of an Earth-like planet, Spring 2007)

 

Ceris Dien


They found a planet
that maybe we could live on
Is this a hope ?
Or am I writing schemes again ?
What if we are really looking at
an apple cart waiting to tip ?
Oh shit,
as if we will grow old enough
to see it,
babes in arms
are bawling in our dreams again, and some,
and we too stoned to warn them

Don't go near the apple cart,
don't even wave at it

 

 

 

 

manitaria
 
Ray Succre

 

At the precurse of the last night,
when fades of jasper came abreast the day-annulled sky,
the blocked murderer arrowed to his plate.
 
"Is it so sad the extremities snitch you of breath?
That you internal sun be snuffed in the lightning chair?"
said the cup, the coffee within too hot to drink.
 
"You're benighted.  They'll close over your grave
like a stitched wound." said the tray.
 
He grew naked and his knees badly weakened,
as he masturbated a last time:  The Greek woman who
cooked for him in Marysville, and after much vodka,
the one that was so angry, loving him to cinders.
 
So many times in the past and now-
manitaria with a plastic fork, coffee that only burned
his lips, his hands that shook sober, until he was done.

"Want me to heat that up?" the sentry asked,
returning from a break and indicating the manitaria,
the last meal.  It may as well have been air and water,
for the condemned's nerves were drowning out the senses.
 
"No," he responded, mind still in Marysville,
"It's better cold."

 

 

 

 

donkeywork and the going rate

Ray Succre

 

The rough shatter of stiff bread is my back,
with a scent of strain and the neck in a higher dale.
After I make commerce like love,
all momentum, crossed fingers, held breath,
"These boxes ought to be moved." they say to me.
"Near the far wall?"
"Good, that's the way."
"I can move and move."

I slide the large, locked deed-boxes, one after one,
and neatly against the far-off wall.

With last box, and up my spine's dilation,
a tinder snap and then cinder spot beneath my eye.
A falter on feet, a groan; I'm fractured somewhere.

"You should fall over now." my superiors state,
admiring clipboards.
I drop, my busted back agog and trumping nerves,
hotting the blood to my igneous larynx.

"Help me..." I mumble, hips cold, legs numb.

The superiors at the far wall open a box,
and another me climbs out.

"Are you eloquent?" they ask with narrowed orbits,
commercial eyes.
"Fee fie." the second me states.
"Yes yes, foe fum.  Good."

I lower my head drastic, as the new me
all day stevedores the shuddering, warm boxes.

 

 

 

 

 

untitled #1

 

Thomas DeJosia

 

 

INT. BROOKLYN APARTMENT - DAWN

Alcohol stains my breath.
I glance out the
bedroom window…

black sky evolving blue mo(u)rning.

There’s a sadness
in this room.
It eats at the
solar plexis
of the internal
universe.

TOMMY: (V.O.)
Too much of the same bullshit
keeps me stagnant.

 

The bags under my eyes
aren’t lonely anymore.
They now have the company
of sleep.

 

 

 

untitled #2 

 

Thomas DeJosia

 

 * *** * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * ** * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
* sno
* * w *
* angel **
* * ** * * *
* * * {)(}
* * * * *
*co m e
o u t
** *
** * * * * * *
*
****&
** * *
**
I’
LL
** *** * *
*
**** * * *
* *
k*ss
* y
o u
* * * * * *
* * *
* * *
g* *o
o
** *d*
*
* n * *
*i
g* h*
* t

 

 

 

 

norwich school of art and design 

 

Richard Wink 

 

Condemn me from the cut-through
open art gallery's ignored by an open minded man
with two shopping bags in his hands

girls sit on the door step
in the shade of the low flying sun
Stirling silver spoons glisten
in her well fed gums

pages of the guardian stick to my feet
in the only place the council never sweeps
the streets
fail to remove coffee breath
and footprints of faux decadence

 

 

 

 

asklepieion at epidaurus

 

Walt Burns

 

at
   the 
      ,a  tre at
         the
             a   >    tre^   
ask
lepios   at e       pid^
"R" us
if in   unific =  ation^              
 
     the n umb)i(lical
chord
of G wizz
dum
could rent the
pla 
       ce
           n ta
Xing
Dear,
Miss Pelled
give us auteurs
a uterus  

t' win
this double
feature
i'll knead
mo' men tum
ble ed
at their ack
illes heal
ing temple
and

look l a mazed
of sore dead ends
and eraser
blades

at first kis met
rock a fellers
world
but
through the years
it seems
eve is queen
of a dam nation
a
    e   u         owe me
      un  ch 
        arted  
is land
what
makes the man
 

 

 

 

 

skeletal romeo on the microphone

Opalina Salas

 

blow that blow that
potion
make the sky cry with envy and the earth shake beneath us
wild eyed throw and cigarette
shame them all for not
catching that beat.
sometime my mind is blind
sometimes i can only fall back on my own
thick shoulders
and smile
sometimes i want to be the man in the movie
the dungarees and tobacco
the dirty hands and two bit whisky shot glass rubbing my head
with its cool sweat
but i'm not,
not even a show girl or a mystic
im just watching
dead eyed wonder.
wonder how it happens
the planets collide
and for a minute we are supernova tidal waves
of expression,
is it ok that i feel so alone with your words?
so primitive and tribal
that i want to wrap you up as my own,
slam youbetweenpages and keep you on the shelves.
paperback romance embrace of us
but not us
us
but not us
cause i'm too old to have these feelings anymore
and i'm not sure if i remember what romance is for,
i just feign my way to reassignment
and secrets
that aren't secret anymore,
GOD GOD
is more than an word i scream when i cum
its the culmination of desire of what is encompassed in the idea of
you.
romeo
romeo
don't do your self in over that girl
or me
or anyone
keep that soothsaying mantra in your heart
and your loins
will surely
follow.


 

 

 

something lonely locked up in a bag of skin

Opalina Salas

 
i'm not.
i do not occupy this space
or mass of bones.
body fat and worn out
and voluntarily awake.
i wonder
who can be free
that really thinks
they
are.
 

 

 

 

i cannot accuse the world of anything today

 

Rob Plath

 

today i am plain grateful

the green trees are greener
as they stand highlighted
in the sky's gentle azure paint

and in making the green greener
the wind becomes visible
as it shakes the hearts of them

catching glimpse of the wind
is like eyeing your own whirling atoms

i have no complaints with existence
today
the sky tells me to forgive even death

we cannot ourselves
turn our eyeballs around
and look back inside
of our own heads

or get our mothers
back from the dead

but we have this ancient gift
the blue skies

i cannot accuse the world of
anything today
 

 

 

 

untitled

Johnny Olson

 

I am Love and Hate,
Heaven and Hell,
Creator and Destroyer.
A beautifully wicked dichotomy
inside of me.

I am invigorated and rejuvinated
by the streaming dreams I see.
Electricity flows thru me,
goes thru me,
shows thru me,
grows thru me
completely.

And just like that, the fantasy begins.

 

 

 

 …i cannot

 

Johnny Olson

 

i wish i can speak to you true & clear, loud enough so you can hear but…i cannot.

i wish i could paint the perfect picture, strokes so fine and colors so bright, make your eyes see the light but…i cannot.

i wish i could sing all the ranges of the scales where my voice doesn't fail & fall apart but…i cannot.

i wish i could dance like a ballerina's prance & walk on clouds, the beat my feet would pound but…i cannot.

i wish i could rhyme & keep time in your mind with these words of mine but…i cannot.

i wish i could snap pictures, a camera in my brain that would try to explain these things that i see but…i cannot.

i wish i could open my soul to the world, a hole that would spread all these things i just said but…i cannot.

all i can do is give my point of view & reach out to you & you & you over there & you in the air & you & you & you.

i got a few gifts but my wrapping's not perfect, the bow may be frazzled & the paper is torn & my technique is worn out but it's all i gotß & i hope it's enough to say what i feel when my soul starts to reel off rapid heart thoughts & i hope that my ink will sink into paper & you'll drown in the ocean of pages.

i hope that my strokes…although not the truest & the colors not the bluest…may paint on the canvas my soul's wishes.

i hope that you'll see me dancing along to my cracked voice's song & that you'll dance along like no one but god is watching.

i hope that you'll see this, i wish i could make you but i'm not the creator, just the curator & i wish that you'll feel this love in your heart from sunrise start 'til the sky turns to dark but as i said…i cannot.

 

 

 

 

11,770

Johnny Olson 

 

How many smokes have I burned
since I wrote my first rhyming words
and attempted to call them poetry?

They seem to burn down so quickly
when you get to getting on a roll.

Sitting abandoned...

...on my lips
...between my fingers
...smoldering in forgotten ashtrays
...and burning holes in my clothes

I’d venture to say
hundreds times thousands...
Eleven-thousand-seven-hundred & seventy

I tell ya’
there’s just nothing like it,
sitting back,
flickin’ my generic bic...

scratching my head
and taking a drag while
scratching a word
and taking a drag that’s
scratching the surface
and taking a drag it’s
scratching that itch
and taking a drag

Then I realize
as I squint thru smoky filmed eyes
that I am done writing
right on time with my smoke

and alas
another crappy poem is born
as the crumpled butt dies

crushed
in an overflowing
stolen hotel ashtray
 

 

 

23rd street psalms

Gianni Sacco

 

The hot blonde with a blue dress on
checking me checking her out
from over her vintage pink sunglasses
at 8:35pm, Saturday night, 23rd Street, Portland.

A walking sexpot
straight out of Bukowski’s sordid world.
She half turned that fuck-machine body
in that painted on baby blue dress
and caught me red-handed
checking those hips for grips
and fucking her hard in my mind…
...and she smiled as she walked away.

Walking feet strolling down 23rd Street at 10:15pm.
An out-of-towner looking for a friendly smile.
They don’t dole those out here
in Portland Oregon
like Big D does.
I walk in silence
thru Saturday night couples,
missing my woman,
my girl,
my friendly shadows...
my way back home.

To snatch a line from Mr. MoJoRison
“People are strange when you’re a stranger”.
‘Tis true Lizard King,
taking for instance this land-o-port,
no one seems pleased to smile at me.
Hippie chicks with hippie dicks
either not too hip or too hip, anti-hip if you will.
But such is the luck of the transplant walker,
such is the luck of me.

Seedy bar seat 23rd Street, 12:30 am, Saturday night
with cops in combat boots and motorcycle tights
looking for barroom fights to break up.
Don’t look my way officer.
You don’t got no trouble with me.
This stubble you see is a double of me
for the tough guy I was just trying to be.
There surely is somebody somewhere here on 23rd getting…

Robbed
Beaten
Raped
Stomped
Shot
Assaulted
Insulted
Abused
Invaded
Held-up
Held-down
Lying
Crying
Dying

Surely you should be tending to they
and look past me,
writing about you
in this corner seat,
23rd Street, Portland

 

 

 

 

gotham, oil on canvas

 

Michael Lee Johnson 

Chatty women at the dining table
in 19th century garb-
red hats and hair pins
caked with rubies,
ghostly faces acutely obscured,
hue blue matted hair stretching
down like dripping wax.
Menus open out white
as bleached sheets
with no black typeface.
Wine glasses filled with white
clouds, no red juice-
begging in silence to be
lifted up, to be touched
by the missing lips of strangers.
Three mirrors hanging from
frozen air behind the bar
away from the dining area-
circular globs of white reflecting
nothing but moon shapes.
At the dining table ladies
pointing fingers at each other,
ears filled with gobs of paint.
Dull lights in the corners
depicting form, faint
in near darkness.
Their pictured world,
frozen in time, is slapped on canvas.
As the evening wears toward midnight
the painting disappears, emerging
silent characters into madness.
 

 

der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes

David McLean 

 

you were the only one who made those shoes
smell, not of van Gogh but the labourer
who soiled them with his clumsy agile
body, worn as they by a day’s exertions
and exploitation. and they are still
there, on the frame, poised in absolute
positedness as missing position.

the babyish symbebekos that lies in pixels
and easels has become the essential
accidental for us; not just the laces
in the shoes, but the very souls
and heels of meaning, the soul
of aesthetics is a dummy today,
not a nipple

still the houses opposite me can erect
a world on the shoulders of the ghosts
of paintings, like your sun-speckled
temple, they rest this world on earth for us,
and through them i can feel and see
the trees and hares, hedgehogs and
nightmares, stepping into the opening where

the world always worlds. like your peasant woman,
her dust the weight of duty on her poor feet,
light as dreams and heavier than the massive
moon that towers over us its weighty nothing.
she weighs down all our nothings with her unforgiving
milk of mourning, her dreams are her tiny death
that already has forgotten us, as babies forget breasts.

and if his shoes were naked unconcealment
in aletheia’s clearing to lighten our forest
of confusion, then they are a discomfort
in the body, a remembered obligation -
how his hands pain to the plough
and memory that soon tomorrow’s loveless
labour is now

  
souls sweat

David McLean 

 

in death souls sweat
their stasis held in time's
broken fingers tight, they

are just the cadavers that
the angels all passed over,
and they irradiate their night

with panic's sticky solarium
that sodomises night
to graying day. today

bodies are left to
sunnily summarise their derelictions,
like failure to grow an immortal gross

soul, and self-knowledge
so Plato blushes beyond
his black sun, beyond Being,

and dreams that the Third Man
drinks poisoned tea with Aristotle
while we are not.

the roofs of these houses
will float slowly to sultry heaven
tonight drawn by the mad compulsive

moon, and they will
gesticulate like demons as they rise
with each meaning they

remember. we will die
then, and breakfast
at two

as usual,
like moons do

 
these trees

David McLean

these strange trees are graceless
easy meat, they do not look
where they are going

and the feckless fucks are
atrocious at planning and
investing,

wasting their winter's heritage
on a sumptuous coat every
spring

that they do not save
but throw away,
generously donating to a soil's

muddy recycling, as though
the worms were their children
they do not save for.

the trees are sun-junkies and reckless
whores who sell their seed to birds -
like memories, like words