Press to Enlarge. Editor PLT
Richard Vallance, meta-linguist, ancient Greek & Mycenaean Linear B, home page: Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae, http://linearbknossosmycenae.wordpress.com/
https://linearbknossosmycenae.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/sublime-sappho-the-moon-has-set-the-pleiades-in-aeolic-greek-linear-b-linear-c-english-french/
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Month: May 2015
Rumination…A Poem By Anca Mihaela
No more…
proclamation for
a key salvation…
with gravitational truths
and hypodermic memories,
measured against
a polystyrene
heaven…
No more…
inner conflicts
under a solar eclipse,
orbiting inside my eyes…
Outside-inside Me,
rippling rhythms
write a new stanza
of Rebirth!…
No more…
clandestine voices
lost in the paths
of Mundanity,
in this delirious tangibility,
with alternative endings
of a Babylonian Love saga…
Anca Mihaela Bruma – Short Bio
My name is Anca Mihaela Bruma, I am Romanian living in Dubai/UAE. My love for poetry started when I was just 9 years old, when I registered myself to some creative poetry writing group. It was a turning point for me as I started to discover the mysteries of the written word and its impact on the readers. Since that early age, I have always viewed writing poetry as the perfect medium which is able to depict profound unfathomable complexities of someone’s life or life itself, to render into words that which is unsayable, that ineffable, which can be truly deeper than the language itself. Through my writings, as well years of readings, I always looked to seek something beyond that which was apparent to others! I was fascinated to see how different aspects of truth were transfigured by different emotions, how experiences were poetized. I pursued seeing beauty expressed in all forms of art, not just poetry; creating a “thirst” within me to explore more and more for the knowledge of the mystery beneath and beyond it, as a symbol of something greater and higher with its own power to immortalize the expressions over the years.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Anca-Mihaela/317866078233812
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MARGUERITE (by Rubén Darío; translated by William Ruleman)
MARGUERITE
(by Rubén Darío; translated by William Ruleman)
Remember how you longed to be a Marguerite
Gautier? Burned on my brain, the strangeness of your face
On that first date when we went out to eat:
Light-hearted night with none thereafter to take its place.
Your lips, smeared scarlet with a crude lipstick replete
With purple, sipped champagne with exquisite grace
From finest crystal while you plucked a . . . yes, marguerite:
“He loves me, he loves me not . . .” You knew quite well the case.
And then, hysterical flower, how you laughed and cried:
Those laughs, your scents, your moans—ah, they were all for me!
Your kisses and your tears seemed on my mouth to stay.
And one sad afternoon when days were sweet, you died.
To see if you loved me, Death, in his jealousy,
Plucked you, like a marguerite of love, away!
MARGARITA
(Rubén Darío)
¿Recuerdas que querías ser una Margarita
Gautier? Fijo en mi mente tu extraño rostro está,
cuando cenamos juntos, en la primera cita,
en una noche alegre que nunca volverá.
Tus labios escarlatas de púrpura maldita
sorbían el champaña del fino baccarat;
tus dedos deshojaban la blanca margarita,
«Sí… no… sí… no…» ¡y sabías que te adoraba ya!
Después, ¡oh flor de Histeria! llorabas y reías;
tus besos y tus lágrimas tuve en mi boca yo;
tus risas, tus fragancias, tus quejas, eran mías.
Y en una tarde triste de los más dulces días,
la Muerte, la celosa, por ver si me querías,
¡como a una margarita de amor, te deshojó!
BIO: William Ruleman’s poems and translations have appeared in many journals, including AALitra Review, Ezra, The Galway Review, The New English Review, The Pennsylvania Review, The Recusant, Rubies in the Darkness, The Sonnet Scroll, and Trinacria. His books include two collections of his own poems (A Palpable Presence and Sacred and Profane Loves, both from Feather Books), as well as translations of poems from Rilke’s Neue Gedichte (WillHall Books, 2003), of Stefan Zweig’s fiction in Vienna Spring: Early Novellas and Stories (Ariadne Press, 2010), of prose and poems by Zweig in A Girl and the Weather (Cedar Springs Books, 2014), and of poems by the German Romantics in Verse for the Journey: Poems on the Wandering Life (also from Cedar Springs Books). He is Professor of English at Tennessee Wesleyan College.LINK to William Ruleman’s Blog: http://williamruleman.tumblr.com/
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Because Of The Deep Notes. Audio Poems by Stephen Philip Druce
Because Of The Deep Notes by Stephen Philip Druce
I saw poker faced monsters in shuffling cars plot,
i saw the misshapen grins of arching fountains,
the pulsing hounds in shadowed gunshot.
In lost ships i saw ghosts within coats of forgotten stitch,
under the strips of desert skin i saw the old bones twitch.
I saw giants big as churches juggle fire in the alleys
where the fleeing fox sat, among the cracked walls
were the manacled cat calls and pouring fibre rat.
I saw the broken spine of stopped clock as the scattered stars wept,
without the midnight chimes the great conductor in the sky slept.
I saw misbehaving angels in chariots clad in gazelle breeze run,
i saw the roll of a hurricane bowl of palm trees glad of a golden peach sun.
I saw flesh crawl upon deserted beach floors in the name of contorted sin,
i saw the ocean contours rock in tender velvet skin.
I saw horses gallop under backstreet tunnels that curved in graffiti art,
of a rainbow arc illuminating in the dark and our names penned in a love heart –
because of the deep notes.
Stephen Philip Druce is a fifty year old poet from Shrewsbury ( birthplace of Charles Darwin) in England. At college his literary tutors referred to him as ‘The Real Fantasist’, such was the rich imagery he would display in his fantasy based poetry.
Stephen is published with Pulsar, Century 121, The Right Place At The Right Time, Bad Scents Of Humour, Muse Literary Journal, The Screech Owl, Hermes, Bareback Literature, Fade, and The Inconsequential.
Stephen enjoys reading William Carlos Williams, WH Auden, Philip Larkin, Charles Bukowski, John Keats, and Dylan Thomas.
Key of Mist. Guadalupe Grande.Translated.Amparo Arróspide.Robin Ouzman Hislop
goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
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Adam, Where Are You? A Poem by Franchot Ballinger
I wasn’t long for that world.
I was treated like dirt.
OK, so I didn’t get to choose my
Name, but I’m my own man, I’ll tell you.
I got to name the filthy beasts,
Who were already there when I
Woke from that dreamless, selfless sleep
I’d been in. What a greeting they gave me—
Their snarling bared teeth, claws and hooves
Mauling the air before me.
They were something else, and I
Was more than glad to say what they were.
It was like the names kept them off.
Then she happened, sudden.
I woke from a nap (This one a dreaming-of-me
Sleep). And there she was. Now, where’d she come from?
Not something I could (or would have) dreamt up.
I got to name her too: Eve.
Prophetic, eh?
If such things as beasts and she must be,
There’s comfort in giving a name.
Still, the orders were to take her
As my flesh and bone. One,
We were supposed to be—like lichen or pondlight,
I guess—as if there were no edges to us.
What a puzzle. But, you know,
Sometimes that being one stuff wasn’t bad.
I’d wake in the morning from my dreams,
Her head on my chest,
And the light would be like a lilt in the air—
A choral radiance greeting us—and we
Smiled a lot in a certain dim-witted way.
But most often we’d stand staring at each other,
Dull as dirt, stunned as deer caught in torchlight.
She clearly wasn’t me and I wasn’t her,
Not that I cared to be. So, all in all, I for one
Was only too glad to get out. Never mind the rumors…
I chose.
During all the “he said, she said” after the trouble,
I felt something crack inside, like a flawed pot
Over-heated in all the hiss and boil of the tiff.
From then on, it was all careless looks and words
Flicked like snot from fingertips.
The light in her eyes flew off
Like a puff of milkweed down across an empty field at dusk.
I saw there was nothing
Between us but echoing air. I
Couldn’t stay, had to be free, and left in dark of night.
Damned if she didn’t follow. I
Could sense her skulking out behind me. I
Didn’t look for fear I’d get yanked back. Maybe
I should have; maybe the old evil eye
Would have sent her back. But She
Caught up, and we stumbled dumbly along.
As we still do.
Now, most days and in the long, long
Nights, we scarcely converse.
When we do our voices seem to caress themselves,
And something in them spills and spills
Like rain down denuded hills.
Is this karma, or what?
In retirement after nearly 40 years teaching English at the University of Cincinnati, Franchot Ballinger has continued volunteering with the Cincinnati Nature Center in various capacities and is also a spiritual care volunteer with Hospice of Cincinnati. His poems have appeared in numerous poetry journals in print and on-line.
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“Jus primae noctis” A Poem by Christine Stoddard
You call this bed your splendor; I call it my cemetery.
This pillow is my tombstone. This sheet, death’s veil.
Your prick has made a ghost of me, yet glaistig I am not.
If I could sing, I might lure you and drink your blood
but voice have I none. No, Monseigneur, none.
As soon as my husband slipped the ring on my finger,
you whisked me away to your dark, mossy castle.
The fog filled my lungs and I fainted on your steed.
Open any book and you’ll know how the story goes,
‘The funeral follows the wedding.’
When the servant slumbering in the trundle bed
bolts up at your bellowing, we shall have a witness
to the death of my honor.
I had hoped the priest would deflower me instead.
He is soft and white like a maggot, hardly fearful.
But you are big, as big as a hairy highland coo,
so fearful and yet still so soft, still so white.
I had hoped you would’ve been wearing chainmail–
perhaps my silence would seem less pitiful.
Perhaps my husband could forgive me then.
Do not call me ‘bonny’ as I writhe beneath you.
Bone the sorrowful lass and be done, bassa.
Be done, be done, be done, be done, be done.
Christine Stoddard is a wordsmith and visual storyteller originally from Virginia. While an undergrad at VCUarts, she founded Quail Bell Magazine , which has been featured in Time Out New York, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and Washington Post Express. Her words and images have appeared in The New York Transit Museum, The Feminist Wire, Thought Catalog, The Poe Museum, The Brooklyn Quarterly, Bustle, Figment D.C., the Annapolis Fringe Festival, and elsewhere. Check out more of Christine’s work at
WordsmithChristine.com and WorldOfChristineStoddard.com.
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