Issue #13
Kristin Garth
The Lady Who Loved Lightning
The lady loved the lightning, how it tore
apart the sky. Graphic insurrection,
achromatic butterfly flutters for
a minute, frenetic vivisection,
projected homicide. The lady loved
the sound it made the second that it died.
She traced outlines, turquoise nitrile gloves;
a faded crime scene taped, glorified
what barely ever was. The lady shut her eyes.
The bolt cocooned inside her head. First flap
of wing in black iris revitalized
the dead. Her voice an echoed thunderclap
an evanescent synchronicity —
gifted the lightning her mortality.
Veruca Wants
She wants a ticket made of gold — to be
the first whose fingers hold what Daddy finds
with workers, poor, peanut shellers, weary,
a wrapper-littered warehouse floor. Confined
five days, unwrapping bars. Her hysterics
have them seeing stars. Smudges chocolate,
hundreds of hands all servants to esoteric
adolescent demands: a world in pocket,
a golden goose, pink macaroons, some trained
baboons, ten thousand tons of ice cream. Men
who’ll jump before she screams. Her Daddy’s drained,
depleted, nut tycoon, a shell worn thin.
He hears her — even in his dream she haunts;
nightmare: tomorrow, what Veruca wants.
Temple Drake
Girl gone wild, 1929, Ole Miss,
abyss, a debutante defiled. Desire,
female, a dangerous game. Temptress,
a southern flannel mouth aflame. Her pyre
Popeye, corncob, straw hat. Prohibition
on pleasure, pussycat. A fast girl from
the finest family, race towards sin;
her wealth is sanctuary. Succumbs
corn crib, his Temple torn — brothel, Memphis,
a proxy, porn. Rhinestones, thick makeup, sworn
perjury, Mississippi to Paris
with Daddy — a Pensacola gangster
mourned.
She runs from danger but never too fast.
A requiem for lust — it never lasts.
Elegy
Such slick, new sheen on keratin, what’s gone
is superficial, only skin, same heart
primeval, two horned tongue —- the same
poison that you tasted young. Lethal art
her venom makes, near stranglehold of veins
that breaks with antidote of ancient wounds —
resistance to a childhood tomb. Disdain
she deigns an elegy, absolution
in shameful sympathy. This deity
with diamond head who whispers venom wants
you dead. Proximity without pity.
A hiss in neon grass of dreams that haunts.
Remakes herself a dozen summers new,
still slithers somewhere contemplating you.
Kristin Garth is a poet from Pensacola and a sonnet stalker. In addition to Neologism Poetry Journal, her sonnets have stalked magazines like the Occulum, Drunk Monkeys, Luna Luna, TERSE. Journal, Rag Queen Periodical, Anti-Heroin Chic among others. Her chapbook Pink Plastic House is available from Maverick Duck Press, and she has another, Shakespeare For Sociopaths, forthcoming from The Hedgehog Poetry Press January 2019. Follow her sonnets, socks and secrets on Twitter: @lolaandjolie
Michael Estabrook
Clouds
Crossing a narrow bridge (Gephyrophobia) high over a swift
churning river (Potamophobia) he’s afraid of heights (Acrophobia)
nothing to hold onto so he drops down crawls on all fours
(Basophobia) (recalls a girl he knew who looked so wonderful on
all fours leaning over to kiss him) (Athazagoraphobia) but it gets
worse very windy up here feels the bridge swaying as it gets more
narrow (Claustrophobia) begins crawling on his belly dragging
himself over the concrete surface the end a long way off
(Atychiphobia) (like that girl on all fours who got away from him)
(Monophobia) narrowing even more closing into nothing as the
wind blows his hair and shoots up his sleeves causing him to
squeeze his eyes shut tight (Optophobia) to not look down or up
for the clouds seem awfully close and he doesn’t want them to
touch him (Haphephobia)
Retired now writing more poems and working more outside just noticed 2 Cooper’s hawks staked out in our yard or above it I should say which explains the disappearing chipmunks. Bouncy House is a recent collection edited by Larry Fagin (Green Zone Editions, 2014).
ed. note – if you missed the point of this one, go back up and click the links.
Sanjeev Sethi
Oboe
Ombre of orts
cast their flavors
to pulsations.
Souvenirs of session,
lint,
odd bead or button,
nevi of nightcap, crumbs,
scrunched contour sheets
and crud,
grip harmonies
in woodwinds
gliding ‘tween words
and wordlessness.
Semiosis is open to surmises.
By parol fixed
by intuit.
Silhouette
While at tautologies of tattle
I actually talk to myself.
Repetition is my ritornelle.
It is like an echo filling in
for a friend —
self-induced legerdemain.
My bad.
Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His poems are in venues around the world: Mad Swirl, Former People, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Synchronized Chaos, Chicago Record Magazine, The Piker Press, After The Pause, Horror Sleaze and Trash, Ink Sweat and Tears, M58, Bonnie’s Crew, Postcolonial Text, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.
Jacob Parsons
+8.5 GMT
When I remember that we are separated
not only by seas but also by hours
I find myself thinking:
If I could just sit
and wait for time to press past,
then maybe you would catch up to me.
Jacob Parsons is originally from Darwin though is currently residing in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. More of his words can be found, or are forthcoming, in Ariel Chart, Noble/Gas Qtrly, and Ink in Thirds.
DS Maolalaí
It’s easier, because all you need is bait
It’s easier, because all you need is bait.
I don’t fish;
I angle.
it’s easier
because all you need is bait
and a lashing of beer.
and I guess
you need to pay attention
but that seems secondary
when you’ve already got beer
and sun on the riverside.
hell, who even needs bait?
most of the time
I forget to bring my rod with me
if I remember to bring
my buddies.
just a guy,
drunk
with some friends,
lying on a riverbank
with fish popping the water,
feeling the grass in his fingers
and bait
crawling under the ground.
DS Maolalai recently returned to Ireland after four years away, now spending his days working maintenance dispatch for a bank and his nights looking out the window and wishing he had a view. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Anthony Nannetti
The Fault Line
You believe it still matters
Who was right or wrong,
Who sacrificed or demanded more,
Who stood firm or folded.
Look.
The devil grows impatient.
I’ll make this easy for you.
I’ll hold the gate open
And say, “Pearls before swine.”
Anthony’s poetry has appeared in several print and online publications, including Hamilton Stone Review, Zone Magazine, and Feathertale. He lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and two daughters.
Joe Balaz
Who Your Brain Says You Are
All da colors and figures
from da stimuli inside da pupil eye
stay moving on da highways
up and down and sideways
in da big membrane
on top of wun walking human penthouse.
It’s amazing
wat your legs and arms can do
wit all da signals dat are created by you.
Everyting expand
and inner space no moa any fence
cause taughts go wheahevah dey like
even wen you stay sleeping.
Information and interpretation
becomes wun inspiration
inside da vast organic configuration.
Dere’s wun flock of chattering birds
splitting in two
and flying into both ears
delivering nesting material
dat all da formative ideas going need
foa grow and den take flight.
Look at da wings
of dat incorporating ego
absorbing power
wit each confident stroke
to lift into da sky
and soar ovah vast kine canyons.
Nobody going say
no can do
if you only stay listening to you.
From kiddy street Big Bird
to wun aerial mastah of da expansive blue
in using
and flying wit all available means
you are
who your brain says you are.
Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai’i Creole English) and in American English. He edited Ho’omanoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature. Some of his recent Pidgin writing has appeared in Otoliths, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Angry Old Man, and The Lake, among others. Balaz is an avid supporter of Hawaiian Islands Pidgin writing in the expanding context of World Literature. He presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Tom Snarsky
Bright Planet Accident
When we hang up our knowing machines
and set off into the hills, we might forget
about the dead who taught us
which smells were warnings and which were
resting places — ways to spend liquory hours
breathing in feelings and breathing out
too quickly. Your hand is slippery in this
drizzle, but we’re moving down the mountainside
slowly, neither of us with enough faith
in sneaker traction to quicken. When
we get back to the car and the storm
transforms from catastrophic downpour
to nothingburger (just in time for us
to be inside, to miss missing it), I remember
looking at you and seeing the bright flash
at the center of my life, the illumination
bringing heaven to earth, so sudden
and so embedded in the smell of rain
it took me til April to realize what it meant.
Tom Snarsky teaches mathematics at Malden High School in Malden, Massachusetts, USA.
David Hanlon
Reaction into Response
I open my mouth
and without even
a moment’s thought,
in goes my booted foot
then the other one,
and I can feel
my face burning red.
Next time
I take a moment
to feel the leather rubbing
over my gums,
texture tough,
taste earthy.
Words climb up my throat
into the opening chamber
then put the boots on,
tie up the laces
and walk for miles
across the enamel of my teeth,
until they have traced all
the tissues underneath.
Then they take them off
and flow from my lips:
like laces through eyelets.
David Hanlon is from Cardiff, Wales, and currently living in Bristol, England. He has a BA in Film Studies & is training part-time as a counsellor/therapist. You can find his work online in or forthcoming with Calamus Journal, Occulum, Riggwelter Press, Dirty Paws Poetry Review, Into The Void, Impossible Archetype & The Rising Phoenix Review, among others.