Il Faut Cultiver Notre Jardin

/ children climb up the stairs and dive
into the pool / a mirror or a photo booth / how
my scars are visible in the spotlight / my father’s
pictures / of women in his dead mother’s wardrobe
/ magazines may as well be cartridges /
/ a boy splashed into the water like a fish / and children
who are asthmatics cannot breathe
even in air / fertility / anaplerotic and aphrodite swam away
like a fish / sperm in a woman /
and how it somehow hits the spot / randle mcmurphy
and his fish and he made his way back
to the bay / i had to pay for them / at a back counter
of a fabric shop / she wrapped them like a gift /
where there were wooden tables and where material
was cut for new clothes /
/ for when i was two it was safer to do what i was told /
i had to find a way to push up against the banister /
and she fell and broke her neck / borderline / neurosis
or psychosis / two ends of a child’s shoelace / tied up
like a loop / noose of the track of his train / all the men
i knew were afraid of women / so i ascend / between
the steps and the floor / for a child should have
a love affair with the world / but when i was in school
and everyone else was leaving for camp / claws
in my mother’s belly / and my grandmother /
/ her lavender garden / my sachets hanging
in wardrobes / burn through my nostrils / nausea / make
my clothes smell so old / and i can’t breathe / but
biologically / i can’t even smell / who is my mother /
when i told my father i didn’t know who i was / he was good
at saying / pass the salt or where is mom /
/ so i ate and ate and / my eruptions / and i dressed for the next
trial / cleaned up the rug / toy train and its predictable path /
my mother’s reminiscences and diatribes / her mechanical
penis / roundabout and recrudescence / i can’t live
in compartments or pigeon holes like timetables /
/ for i always seem to cut my finger and make all my women
turn red / when i pledge an eternal friendship we cross
fingers like a bell where the trains cross / then a bow /
i retrieved my belongings and that of my son’s / our
detritus / looked like it all belonged to me /
for these tarred roads / billboards / the mask of all our scars /
but i’ve seen temples under
the ground / my mother used to call my father’s mother
a whore because she had so many children /
/ her mother had more /

Rahab

‘”You stock and stone!” exclaimed Miss Havisham. “You cold, cold heart!”
“You should know,” said Estella. “I am what you have made me.”’
⁓Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

/ i didn’t want to think about all the things i had lost /
so i counted money and interest in the bank / for my father
drank melancholy and gave us food and the belt /
and my mother cooked as she cursed / so i married a fitter and turner
of words / winter ruffled the cherry tree /
so i never used to show him the holes in my body / crossed
to the hilt when we sleep / a cross swinging
from his rear-view mirror / lacrimation / bleeding heart
yard / mater dolorosa / hypostasis / and i should
have known / hypostatic hypocrite /
/ he gave me a green card / took me to my father’s court
yard / and so we walked round and round / the walls
to high heaven / my mother’s marble mansion stairs /
post-modernism and post-mortem marbling /
/ but arborescent / for there is no absolute truth / but
a grey concrete cemetery / apoplēssein / then i returned
to plant the apple tree / where he tapped his foot / ants and
a subterranean source / shop mannequin / plaster arm /
pulled her legs through the crick stone / my mother leered
into the oven / i opened it and stirred our parts
in the tray /
/ his father prayed every time he sat in his car / burned down
the road and the spirit moved in him / his white comical
-conical hat / and with the whole crowd he burned
down the cross / so he lay his son under
his car / once he lost his gold watch
and we sat in his house / waited for the bomb
to tick off / so the front wheel skids when it rains /
for he wears black and the sun reds his skin / so a white shirt /
five dollars from the opportunity shop / to let his hair stare white /
for to steer the car / for steers are raised to feed the living /
/ army-ants marching in a bird’s nest / this summer our kitchen
got invaded by ants / formication / but fire ants make a raft
with their bodies and are waterproof when they float /
their bodies interlocked until they discover land / robots fueled
with warm blood / i put my cardigan on
and make my way into the kitchen / in the thicket / i feel seasick /
vertigo and vertumnus / because bull ants bite /
/ capote de brega / muleta / ant hills contain pine
needles / for relationships can build a knoll / protection
from rickets and from their heath bones the seeds
which sprout / i throw pine needles in the hearth /
/ so i built a canoe out of bark / because guilt
makes me wear black / so a fire to well blood / to collect
eggs and cook fish /
/ my child tells me to wet my finger / she blows
a bubble from soap and water / round as an apple / dionysus’
testicles / soft and milky as figs / i put in my finger
and it doesn’t burst / so my husband found the red
thread and i cut myself from my mother /
/ opening all the rooms can burn down the whole tower /
so i tied up my matador cloths / nailed it on the sill / poured out
the lamb’s tongue as long as a papyrus scroll / pulled
the string and raised the bell / to crank over /
/ ballerina box /


Annie Blake is an Australian writer and divergent thinker. She is currently focusing on in medias res and art house writing. She enjoys semiotics and exploring the phantasmagorical nature of unconscious material. Her work is best understood when interpreting them like dreams. You can visit her at her personal website and her facebook.

Allan Johnston

Anger

Thus I clung, animal mad,
dancing an angered body against
the chain link fence, one hand spasmodically
linking through diamonds of metal,

as over the water
the boat lurched in the brief waves
and out of the harbor, into foul weather.
Already the foul weather gear

clung on the crew members, yellow as part
of any rainbow or bitter, edible
fruit. The ocean was leaving
its rupture everywhere in blazes of water

that sprayed up and dripped down buildings,
pilings, and my face whispering
its own angry sea for people
now leaving, I thought, forever.


Allan Johnston has published two full-length poetry collections (Tasks of Survival, 1996, and In a Window, 2018) and three chapbooks (Northport, 2010; Departures, 2013; Contingencies, 2015). His poems have appeared in Rhino, Poetry, Rattle, Poetry East, and other journals.

Holly Salvatore

Just Before Dawn

I am a fish that breathes coffee
under hot liquid I soak
a sightless creature in a cave of caffeine
morning flows around me
I open my gills, they are hungry
for steam

I am a bird that sings coffee
from my beak it rains
hollow-boned bitch speak in the pre-dawn light
my feathers vibrate with potential energy
on a shaking limb
on a shaking hand

I am a woman that drinks coffee
in your bed I hold you
calluses to calluses
if the night never swallowed you, I would miss the sunrise
pink to the east
moving closer

Just before dawn, I finish my cup.
Just before dawn, you are finally sober.

Holly Salvatore is a farmer and poet in Colorado. Their work has appeared in Lockjaw Magazine, After the Pause, Honey & Lime, Barren, Nightingale & Sparrow, and Kissing Dynamite. They tweet @Queen_Compost and are excellent at naming chickens. Find them outside.

Bruce Dale “‘Wired Clues’ Abe” Wise

Checking petunias,
the green-throated hummingbird
darts rapidly off,
beneath the large, silver jet
sloaring straight for the tarmac.


“Wired Clues” Abe is a poet fond of uniting Japanese forms and technology. Sloaring is a neologism by Beau Lecsi Werd meaning slowing down yet still soaring fast, certainly much faster than a hummingbird.

Willam R. Stoddart

My Fifth Christmas

Roiling oil and evergreen
star-struck uncles plowing

grooves of virgin vinyl
the myrrh of hot electronics

protests by the Madonna
praying they return next year:

and the angels sang on high
glory, glory to our children
keep them safe from war
hide them in the rock’s cleft
until that day when we can forgive
the beer foam mustache

shortest day in our earthly reckoning
I surrender to the round jail of the clock.


William R. Stoddart is a poet and short fiction writer who lives in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Adirondack Review, Ruminate Magazine (issue #9), Pedestal Magazine, Every Day Fiction and other publications.

Barbara Daniels

Who Is Barbara Daniels

with thanks to Google Search

A tax evader guilty of fraudulent
invoices, bride of a bigamist, opera star.
Driver under the influence, third offense.
Woman who dies on Route 908.
An unstrung piano waits for scavengers
at her curb. She gets up in the night
to watch ice form like blown glass
on bare branches, tenebrous shining.
Donates papers, sells real estate, drinks
coffee, buys coins. Studies poverty.
Photographs the floating body.
Watches a house across the street burn.
Excessive speed plays a role in her car
veering into the eastbound lane.
Find-A-Grave offers her final address.


Barbara Daniels’ book Rose Fever was published by WordTech Press and chapbooks Black Sails, Quinn & Marie, and Moon Kitchen by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. She received three fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Kevin Stadt

A Man Comes to My Door

a man comes to my door
and asks me if I believe in God
trailing a heavy text
reports third-hand, translated, and filtered
brittle skeletons
the pages pug-eared
sounds and symbols
coded in linear ink and
flagged in jagged neon

he asks me if I believe in God
wearing a dark suit against the Midwestern summer sun
he points out passages
as sweat drips from his nose
no different from rain
he pumps breath into the forms and
chants the runes
wrong entirely, yet
slanted right
aching to find the key
he hid before his birth

he asks me if I believe in God
as we straddle a colossal celestial rock
careening voidwise
on invisible tethers
ourselves somehow sprung of it

he asks me if I believe in God
standing near the oak
my father planted when he built this house
with his own two hands
the tree that sometimes shades my sons and I playing catch
it reaches deep into solid blackness
it stretches skyward into blue breeze
through ancient alchemy, conjures sugar from water and light
familiar as a mother’s face
a being no less alien than a methane lake on Titan

he asks me if I believe in God
as thoughts sail over the smooth waters of centuries
beyond borders of body and time
bridging technology and thaumaturgy
atom to atom
spark to muscle to bone to air
and back

he asks me if I believe in God
as the blood of the Earth circulates
from ocean to cloud to rain to apple to brain
and back
as lego blocks of carbon and nitrogen and oxygen
re-cast from rock to soil to plant to animal
and back
choosing solid, liquid, gas, and plasma like a hat
mad eternal jig of matter and energy
the same bedrock hardware and software always
he asks, not noticing that we’ve been reborn
ten thousand times since he pulled into the driveway

he asks me if I believe in God


Kevin Stadt’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in anthologies and magazines such as Kzine, Lazarus Risen, Phantaxis, Stupefying Stories, and many more. His poems and essays have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry, Barren Magazine, Gravel Magazine, Jellyfish Whispers, and The Bookends Review. He lives in South Korea.