To Santa and Gary Busey by Guinotte Wise

I want things and will
outline just a few of them
together I think you can come
through for me don’t you?
Your talents are so different
that some law of blend
can make you a smoothie
of conjury overcoming
my diffidence which is
fading nicely as I go on
here to the both of you
notice that? You may not,
not knowing me and all but
that will also go the way
of any modesty because
the three of us together
would holler dirty words
like congruent and
wanker powerwashing
any falsely hesitant
behavior and getting
over ourselves as our
selves so now, before
all that pandemonic shit
takes hold let me just
mention that list of
wantables, things, like
a Vincent Black Shadow
(between the two of you
do-able, no?) I believe
this because you two
are fuse and match, I
the twixt that bring you
together, catalytic-like
and catechismic as well
as that old favorite
cataclysmic, know what
I’m sayin’? Two (one was
that V-twin with banshee
overtones) is an espresso
machine old, steaming,
glittering and domed
like St. Peters basilica, or,
and this is a king kong

OR

the basilica its own self.
I wanted the espresso
maker so I could avoid that
magisterial barista who is
so imperious, but with the
big ass church being mine
he would contain that don’t
you think? Three is for a
three-way you’ll never guess
who, not you! nunca nunca
but me and Francoise Hardy
and her lookalike or twin or
barring that, Bardot. Are they
alive? They’d have to be
alive as I draw the line at
that other. Okay I will
send this as I’m tired but
there will be a followup
wish list, an appendix if
you will, could be many
items in length but you two
as simultaneity are the Nick
and Gary AXIS of crave.

Guinotte Wise lives on a farm in Resume Speed, Kansas. His short story collection (Night Train, Cold Beer) won publication by a university press and not much acclaim. Two more books since. His wife has an honest job in the city and drives 100 miles a day to keep it. More books http://goo.gl/O9mBki Other stuff: http://www.wisesculpture.com

 

 

Bourbon Street Pirates by James D. Casey IV

Bloody Mary breakfast
At noon

Long night ahead
As the one behind

Big Jim’s eyes
Glazed
My father
Pop
Best friend

The Dungeon
The night before
It scared my brother’s old lady
I dug it
As always
Kissing some woman
In from Dallas
Her old man watched

Back from the memories
Vendors selling wares
Raw oysters
Masks
Trinkets
Jewelry
Music plays

This part of the city
I enjoy

Breakfast is over now
Time for a walk about

A hand rolled cigar
A little Voodoo
Pirates Alley

Hobos making love under a blanket
Brass band serenade
Things are getting strange

I like strange

Time to hit Turtle Bay
Medium rare cheeseburger
Fresh cheddar
Turbo Dog beer
Another one
My hand feels empty

Saint’s game
Losing score
Time for the next show

Johnny White’s
Pirate bar
End of the game
41-10
The answer to life
The universe
And everything
Is 42
We lost
HA
I still love ’em

Molly’s
Irish bar
Bloody Mary
Irish coffee
Run into an old friend

Poetry and art ensues
Minds meld
Smoking Indica
Minty flavor
Hidden in an Altoids can

Gives the flower
An even more
Enticing taste

Studio apartment
Starving artists
Working where we live

High now
A bit drunk
Time for another

Back to Molly’s
Across the street
Then White’s
Yes
Again

Some guy with a big gut
In a little dress
Saint’s colors

Shots
More Bloody Marys

Our tribe arrives
My little brother
Some Colorado cousins
Their women

Skirt guy
Mark
I think that was his name
Flashes his penis
Brother gets mad
A valid argument
We give him a pass
Just one

It is New Orleans after all

More drinks
Music
Stories
Tales
Lies
Exaggerations

Then the hand grenades
Powerful
But sweet
A combination of elixirs

Skirt guy
He can’t handle us
Bourbon Street Pirates
To the core

He grabs the wrong breast
A fight ensues

All sorts of deliberate debauchery
All hell breaks loose

Stools
Fists
Bottles

He did not realize
We were all family

People thrown
Faces bent against knuckle

We win
Of course
Grown men
Acting out animal aggression
s

Time for a retreat
Cops
Police state of mind
Setting in

They could not handle us
Bourbon Street Pirates
To the core

We showed Colorado a good time

Now it is time to eat again
Drink some more
Stumbling into Little Vick’s
Laughing
Bruised

Good times

Muffalettas
Gumbo
Jack Daniel’s

A friend emerges
From the back
In an apron
Asking how the food was

It is the old friend
From earlier on
I told you
We work where we live

Starving artists
Together again

Talking
Laughing
Drinking

Getting loud

Some desert
Cafe Du Monde
Coffee
Beignets
More whiskey
Another hand rolled cigar
Sleep
Repeat

A self proclaimed “Madman Philosopher,” James D. Casey IV is a published author of two poetry books: ‘Metaphorically Esoteric’ & ‘Dark Days Inside the Light While Drunk on Wine.’ Mr. Casey’s writings have also been featured on numerous websites, in online magazine publications, and printed in two poetry anthologies: ‘Pirate Poetry’ by Writing Knights Press, and ‘Where the Mind Dwells’ by Eber & Wein Publishing. Poetry Life & Times, Artvilla, and Realistic Poetry International all have him listed in their poet archives as well. http://louisianakingcasey.wixsite.com/big-skull-poetry

Education by Sudhanshu Chopra

I thought art was a
cosy sheet on a
rainy morning
anyone could get into
and feel at home

as they floated on
water-bed of dreams
sprawled, smiling,
journeying
subconsciously aware

towards the landscape they
painted with thread of
imagination on
glaze of
freedom, expression

away from self-proclaimed pedagogue
smeared with
money, monopoly
that killed the spirit
to a murmur

Sudhanshu Chopra draws inspiration to write from observation, memories, subconscious, books he reads, movies he watches, and music he listens to; sometimes a phrase or simply a word is enough. ‘He writes at sudhanshuchopra.wordpress.com

Glorious Land by JD DeHart

We took that ambling journey
not in a wagon but in our car
past the shining waters and
into the deep wooded hills, the
beauty and the quote unquote
majesty, and all that fine until
we noticed all the posted signs,
marks of buckshot, and the lone
dog scrambling along, starving,
its ribs visible in a way that only
the nightly news had shown us,
refusing even the kindest offering
(all we had to give it were stale
potato chips and soda), too afraid
to come near so that it could
grab a bite and extend its life
one moment.

JD DeHart is a writer and teacher. His chapbook, The Truth About Snails, is available on Red Dashboard.

In The Broken Places by Steven Storrie

Dancing stars with
Mud caked feet
And memories all their own
Lights hit their beams
Cameras breaking on her fragile frame
And nobody waits at home.

She’s in the place she loves most
When the air is upside down
And the faces all look the same
A tumbling of secrets fall from her eyes
As strangers cast callous judgement
In freezing cold rooms
On the darkest of winter nights

I wish that I could know her
Shield her
Kiss her soft lips
As she goes to speak my name

But wasting away in this arm chair
As the screen flickers spitefully away
I realise this could never be
The ride is almost over
I have insufficient balance and
She is far too delicate
For hands like these
To hold.

Steven Storrie has worked as a cable T.V repair man, dishwasher, choreographer, ice cream vendor and junk yard attendant. Tired of this he is currently locked in his basement working on his first full collection of poetry, bickering with his neighbours over nothing and storing the baseballs he keeps when they are hit into his yard. His first collection of short stories, We Are Not The Kids We Used To Be, will be released in November by DevilHouse Press. You can find him at the website he runs, ‘Black Coffee For Breakfast’, at http://renegadepriest11.wix.com/blackcoffeebreakfast

A Balanced Breakfast by Robert Wynne

You suspect something’s wrong
when you find a bloody talon
in your Corn Flakes.  Fire blooms
red and orange in the corner
like a robin’s nest exploding,
small blue eggs shattered
tiny maracas.  What do birds dream?
Glass apologizes in song
and a mockingbird echoes back
before crashing into a feathered heap
at the French doors.
Your nerves fray so thin
that locks pick themselves.
The kitchen is vibrating.
Why can’t everything fly?

Robert Wynne earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. A former co-editor of Cider Press Review, he has published 6 chapbooks, and 3 full-length books of poetry, the most recent being “Self-Portrait as Odysseus,” published in 2011 by Tebot Bach Press. He’s won numerous prizes, and his poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies throughout North America. He lives in Burleson, TX with his wife and 2 rambunctious dogs. His online home is http://www.rwynne.com.

He Loved All The Women In The World by Victor Henry

Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
                                                             Mark Twain

Like he loved his wife, a woman of exquisite beauty,
A woman of impressionable charm, a woman witty,
Seductive, and intelligent.

But when his dreams magnified into manifestations
Of heaven and hell, both in perpetual conflict,
He learns unconsciously

A new language only he understands.
It’s as if he’s been administered LSD,
Like a CIA test subject in their mind control program.

It’s as if he’s found
The ultimate truth. It’s as if
The tension of opposites such as

Love-hate, death-life, right-wrong
Are the intuitive answers
He’s been seeking all along.

He questions his interpretation
Of his creation story unfolding,
Discovers erect Homo sapiens, modern humans,

Taking their first steps as hunter gatherers.
Asks specifically what is his role
As the actor in this cosmic comic play?

My poetry and prose poems have appeared in Misfit Magazine, Dead Snakes, Homestead Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Red River Review, and Slipstream, among others. My book What They Wanted was published last November 11th, Veterans Day, by FutureCycle Press in Lexington, Kentucky. http://victor-henry.net/

Hundred Birds Flying Towards The Phoenix: A Political Call For Commonwealth by Changming Yuan

Come, come, you peng
From the Zhuangzian northern darkness
You swan from the Horacean meadows
You pheasant from under Li Bo’s cold moon
You oriole from Dufu’s green willow
You dove from the Dantean inferno
You phoenix from Shakespeare’s urn
You swallow from the Goethe oak or
The Nerudan dense blue air, you cuckoo
From the Wordsworthian vale, you albatross
From the Coleridgean fog, you nightingale
From the Keatsian plum tree, you skylark
Form the Shalleyean heaven, you owl
From under the Baudelairen overhanging years
You unnamed creature from the Pushkinian alien lands
You raven from near Poe’s chamber door
You parrot from the Tagorean topmost twig
And you crows from among my cawing words

Come, all of you, more than 100 kinds of
Birds from every time spot or spot moment

Come, with your light but strong skeletons
Come, with your hard but toothless beaks
Come, with your colored feathers, and flap your wings
Against Su dongpo’s painting brush strokes

Come, all you free spirits of nature
Let’s join one another and flock together
High, higher up towards mabakoola

Changming Yuan, 9-time Pushcart nominee and one-time Best of the Net nominee, started to learn English at age 19 and published monographs on translation before moving out of China. Currently, Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver, and has poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and 1249 others.

In Chinatown They’re Pulling the Heavy Shutters by William Taylor Jr.

The waning afternoon
like a hand to a fist around my heart,
like I’m twelve and it’s the last
day of summer.
In Chinatown they’re pulling the heavy
shutters down over the storefronts
as a man plays a sad saxophone at the corner
of Sutter and Stockton,
his suitcase full of pennies.
The sun drifts away with no real
promise to return
as the big dumb hand of whatever
wipes us off the board, one by one,
leaving me clinging to the last scraps
of anything that might still pass for beauty,
like a man fishing cigarette stubs
from sidewalk cracks
with the light
and everything dying,
consumed with the fear
of it all leaving me, even
the ghosts.

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. His work has been published widely in journals across the globe, including The New York Quarterly, The Chiron Review, and Catamaran Literary Reader. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a collection of short fiction. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award. To Break the Heart of the Sun is his latest collection of poetry.

Invoking a Deeper Sun by Dan Raphael

Open up your jaws of light
so that creamy thick saliva can transform my wind scabbed flesh.
all week the harder it blew the faster i ran
sandals made from salvaged dozer tread
self-inflicted aerodynamic holes all through, strategically missing

Organs and rivulets of blood, sweat and distillery
you never know what will come out of these faucets
hanging from my back, butt  and calves. Several times a day
i pray facing the wind—at rare calm moments i shudder
at the approaching evil i’m unprotected against—
when i try to draw it the paper turns to sand,
when i scratch images in the dirt i disturb the sleep
of ants and snakes, ill tempered  and thirsty.
The grass i slept under is todays cape, unlike supermans
its meant to keep me on earth,Of earth, a postman of seeds and larva,
never anything you ordered but something always arrives

The swallows were watching Top Gun last night, laughing their feathers off
at the stiff and slow maneuvers, revved today with snide jollity
as they weave & sudden among each other, starting and stopping
as if rungs in the air, a multi-floor grocery of insects, grit and wind-born news,
a pentagon drone recording til it almost crashes from dizziness,
its operator flashing back to the acid trip during training when he was a jet-swallow
with color vision and an I pod of slash metal and amphetamine guitar,
his heart in a circular, double kit—semi-automatic roto toms,
enough pedals to keep a tarantula occupied, stepping out of his skin
to sink his jaws into clouds and exchange his venom for visions

For a couple decades I’ve been active in the Northwest as poet, performer, editor and reading host. Everyone in This Movie Gets Paid, my most recent book, came out June 1st from Last Word Press. Current poems appear in Otoliths, Rasputin, Mad Swirl, Oddball & Unlikely Stories.