Month: January 2021

SORRY BUT… A Poem by John Grey

by

You wonder why I’m this way.
It’s not just because of the way you are.
It’s bad programming, flat tires,
my family, my job,
body hair, and boring sex,
cracked mirrors, plastic straws, Trump –
and there’s more –
lids that refuse to unscrew,
songs on the radio,
loud neon scenery,
the unsuspected sharpness of some blades,
spam and junk-mail,
the bus system, the crappy WiFi,
the pain I have to overcome,
Kardashians, heavy traffic,
tasteless fast food, aggressive panhandlers,
food coloring, superhero movies,
the siren eyes of alcohol,
busted guitar strings, empty ink cartridges,
lines of reasoning, rusty pipes.
humidity, bills, neighbors,
the borrowed book that’s never returned,
the never again good times,
Fox news, a friend’s divorce,
religions that kill,
that render their believers brain dead,
the cost of replenishing those ink cartridges,
dentists, big game hunters, Brad Pitt,
the worn-out soles of my shoes,
cigarette butts strewn across the lawn,
dog shit on the sidewalk,
some long ago incident that
occupies the space between us.
It won’t leave,
would rather stay,
be more annoying than the competition.

 
 

 
 
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Soundings East, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest book, “Leaves On Pages” is available through Amazon.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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Origami Sunset. A Poem by A.J.Huffman

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I fold like a flower when the wind blows
blood across a tired sky. My arms curl
in semblance of an infant, almost without
bones. My back bows in archaic pose,
not quite rose, yet so much more than weed.
This crumpling is automatic, permanent
imprints in my skin seem
to follow the pull of a moon yet to appear.
I breathe out a husky blue,
watch it circle, settle, dissolve beneath forbidden
waves as my eyes wait for ethereal tape
to force them to sleep.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
A.J. Huffman has published fourteen full-length poetry collections, fifteen solo poetry chapbooks and one joint poetry chapbook through various small presses. Her most recent releases, The Pyre On Which Tomorrow Burns (Scars Publications), Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink), A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press), and Familiar Illusions (Flutter Press) are now available from their respective publishers. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2600 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, The Bookends Review, Bone Orchard, Corvus Review, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. You can find more of her personal work here: https://ajhuffmanpoetryspot.blogspot.com/
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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KEEP DA FAITH PENELOPE. A Poem by Joe Balaz in Hawai’i Creole English

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Ovahnight success?!
 
In many cases wen you investigate
dats really not how it is.
 
Sometimes people
go on wun long Odyssey
 
just to get to wheah
dey eventually get to.
 
If your life isn’t short
it’s going to be filled
 
wit intensity and struggles
 
dat you could nevah have imagined
or even foreseen.
 
Flamethrowers will try to burn you
and bullets will try to pierce you
 
as exploding shrapnel
violently flies above your foxhole.
 
As foa me
I’m fixing my bayonet to my rifle
and getting ready
to advance my continuous charge.
 
It’s my “Battle of the Bulge”
 
but unlike da Germans
I’m going to break through.
 
It’s good to have
dat ancient warrior spirit
 
dat seeks to prevail
just like Odysseus traveling back home.
 
I’m about to cast off my hood
and beggar’s rags
 
to bend and string da bow
 
and send wun arrow
streaking through holes in upright axes.
 
Results and actions
 
will take care of my critics
and naysayers.
 
Keep da faith Penelope
 
cause any determined dynamo
certainly will.
 
 

 
Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai’i Creole English) and American English. He is the author of Pidgin Eye, a book of poetry.The book was featured in 2019 by NBC News for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, as one of the best new books to be written by a Pacific Islander.
 
In July, 2020, he was given the Elliot Cades Award for Literature as an Established Writer. It is the most prestigious literary award given in Hawai’i.
 
Balaz presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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Uptown & After the Funeral. 2 Poems by Holly Day

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(i.)
 
Uptown
 
The newspaper makes me angry and I prepare myself
for a day of punching Nazis. I read about the local museum
being infiltrated by white supremacists and so I plan my day
around a visit uptown. My daughter asks me where we’re going and I tell her
we’re going to fuck some shit up.
 
I keep my eyes peeled for guys with shaved heads and swastika pins
combat boots and iron crosses but I don’t see any. Someone says
something kind of racist on the bus next to me and I look at them
but then they shut up as if they know what’s in my head.
 
 
(ii.)
 
After the Funeral
 
it’s become a contest of who knew first
who first found out how and when he or she died
who was closest, who has the best story. we get ugly
in our nostalgia, tread a difficult balance between
preserving the subject’s sudden sainthood
while expunging our most pointed, painful, awful memories
find some way to say we should have seen it coming
express surprise that it took so long.
 
afterwards, we each retreat to our private musings
on how if things had been different
it could have been any one of us
it should have been someone else. there’s a dark, uncertain target
over everyone we know now, ready to move on
who will be next.
 
 
Short bio: Holly Day (hollylday.blogspot.com) has been a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review, and her newest poetry collections are Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), and Book of Beasts (Weasel Press).
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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