Winter by M.P. Powers

The city’s gone quiet.
A crow is nailed to the door of the cathedral.
A trumpet lay dead
                among turnips and sparrowhawks.
The city’s gone quiet.
No longer can the love-arrows
remember the tango
                dancers along the Spree.
Sombre obsequies aggrieve the bed-springs.
                The Pierides has frozen over.
The elderly Turkish ladies
have taken cover under seaweed
                and Venetian lace.
And the pigeons keep vanishing.
And the poor keep appearing.
                And the moon’s tangled up in a fisherman’s net.
And the city’s gone quiet.
An accordion lay dead
                among hubcaps and butterflies.

M.P. Powers was born in Illinois, bred in Florida, and is now based in Berlin. More info here: http://poets.nyq.org/poet/mppowers

 

A New Leaf by James Babbs

I’ve probably spent too much time
sitting here and looking
through the window at things
things that were never too far away
I mean
all I would’ve had to do
was get up from my chair and
walk outside
in order to touch them
feel them with my own hands
instead of just sitting here and
imagining what they felt like and
maybe
I still have time
maybe
it’s not too late

James Babbs is a writer, a dreamer, a three-time loser and an all-around nice guy who just wants to be left alone. James is the author of Disturbing The Light(2013) & The Weight of Invisible Things(2013) and has hundreds of poems and a few short stories scattered all over the internet.

Montauk By Morning by Jake St. John

I walk
along Montauk
in the city
of New London
with love
in my heart
the early
morning sun
warms my back
trees line
the sidewalks
and drop shadows
at my feet
bicyclists and cars
dogs in the street
a train
blows its horn
like a thousand angels
the streets are alive
and so am I

Jake St. John writes out of New London, CT and is the author of several collections of poetry and pamphlet poems including, Rotations (Night Ballet Press 2015), Looking For Sunflowers (Good Cop/Bad Cop, 2012), and Change of Address (Unarmed 2010). His work has appeared in numerous literary and arts magazines such as, The Blue Collar Review, Big Hammer, and The People’s Tribune. Since 2007 he has served as the editor of Elephant and co-editor of Flying Fish.

Jumping On The Nub by Cole Bauer

She does him
So no one else has to

Like jumping on a bomb
She lands as he explodes

Maybe that’s the reason
For all the drinks and drugs
Whatever it takes, good one

A soldier saving women everywhere
Need the tools
And something stronger
Than an escape

My name is Cole Bauer. I’m an American screenwriter, author, and poet currently in the dirty south of the U.S.A.. I was born and partially raised in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. I was raised and lived for most of my life in San Diego, California. I’ve lived, off and on, in Texas for six years. Traveled around America as well. I am inspired and motivated by street-writers like Charles Bukowski, John Fante, and Dan Fante. I enjoy clearing out my brain on to blank sheets of paper and empty screens. I love writing random short stories, pilot scripts, and film screenplays also.

Speak My Name by Mark Antony Rossi

Library
Home of knowledge
Became my home
When I was kicked out
By my angry mother.

School
Was sealed shut
And summer beat down
Its pounding fists
On my unwashed body

Hydrant
Leaky but available
Wet my lips
Helped the night in a box
Where I slept

Library
Home of Brave New World
Become my second home
When no one cared
To speak my name.

Mark Antony Rossi’s poetry, criticism, fiction, creative nonfiction and photography have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Anak Sastra, Bareback Magazine, Black Heart Review, Brain of Forgetting, Deep Water Literary Journal, Dirty Chai, Enclave, Expound, Farther Stars Than, Flash Fiction, Gravel, In Between Hangovers, Indian Periodical, Japanophile, Journal of Microliterature, Kulchur Creative Journal, Mad Swirl, On The Rusk, Purple Patch, Scrivener Creative Review, Sentiment Literary Journal, Snapdragon, Syzygy Poetry Journal, The Sacrificial, Toad Suck Review, Transnational, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Wild Quarterly and Yellow Chair Review. http://ethical-stranger.webnode.com/

They Want Us To Obey by Rajnish Mishra

They want us to obey, you to obey, me to obey,
all to obey them, like children, asking no questions.
The very word has a sinister hollow sound:
O…B…E…Y.
Pronounce it loudly: obey. Repeat: obey.
Can you feel it? Obey!
Dog is not man’s best friend without any reason.

My only hope is in those I did not like earlier.
The face maniacs. Those who record themselves
in yogic mudras doing asanas to post on facebook
for an instant wow. I love them now.
They show me the glowing fire from dying embers.
They do not resist on principle. They resist by habit.
They are not Satan or other fallen angels.
It’s human to rebel without reason or purpose.
For what is rebellion but a different perspective
in action?

Rajnish Mishra is a poet, writer, translator and blogger born and brought up in Varanasi, India. He is the editor of PPP Ezine, a poetry ezine. He has a blog on poetry, poetics and aesthetic pleasure: https:/poetrypoeticspleasure. wordpress.com

 

Rilke by David J. Thompson

My new girlfriend allows
me to speak only German
during our lovemaking.
I usually yell out bits
from Rilke’s Der Panther.

God only knows what
our neighbors must think.

David J. Thompson lists John Prine, John Sayles, and Frank O’Hara among his list of heroes. He enjoys The Simpsons, and he loves Spain and the American West. Please visit his photo website at ninemilephoto.com

Necessary Growth by Linda M. Crate

there were only two voices
i could believe
yours or the woman glancing at me through
the looking glass,
and both terrified me;
they both promised me pain—
yet the woman seemed kinder for she did
not tell me that i was a monster
or i deserved this pain
she simply said
i had to shed this moment like snakeskin,
and that i would always be beautiful
no matter how much i was suffering;
i was almost afraid that it were a lie because
you seemed too good to be true too—
she was patient
as i struggled with the reality you gave me
where everything was my fault and i broke my own heart
and i was some monster that you just
couldn’t bring yourself to love,
but one day i realized that she was right and this wasn’t
the end of me;
i had to forget winter if i were every to have spring
so i took her hand—
pulling me through the looking glass
was hard
but remaining where you left me would have been worse
growth was necessary.

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has three published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press – June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon – January 2014), and If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016). Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015. The second novel of this series Dragons & Magic was published in October 2015. The third of the seven book series Centaurs & Magic was published November 2016. Her novel Corvids & Magic was published March 2017. Her novel Phoenix Tears is forthcoming.

Spilled Milk by Kyle Manning

I spilled milk
just to see
if I would cry
but instead I
watched childhood
pool on the floor
and poured a
stIff glass
of death with
a splash of
sweet indifference

Hi there! I’m Kyle Manning, sharing musings out of Portland, Oregon. I only wish to lend a hand through life’s madness by assisting an escape to the grey, where you can sit and read and rant and be loved even more for not knowing a damn thing but wholeheartedly getting it in some way. Cheers.

Where Have All The Pretty Poems Gone by Ann Christine Tabaka

When did poems stop rhyming
Now poems are a long laundry list of words
Some totally unrelated
Bouncing all over the page
Hard to follow
Harder to understand
Some ugly
Using unspeakable words
They make you question reality
Vague punctuated thoughts
Thrown against a wall
Spattered like paint
Dripping down in some abstract form
Unrecognizable
No more pastoral images
Only cold hard ideas
Laid out before us
Like a raw slab of meat
On a cold table
A sacrificial altar
Gone are the lyrical meters of a bygone era
Gone are all the pretty little poems

Ann Christine Tabaka was born and lives in Delaware.  She is a published poet, an artist, a chemist, and a personal trainer.  She loves gardening, the ocean, and her cats.  Her poems have been published in poetry journals, reviews, and anthologies.