I hate to say it
but the mole on my nose
is only an architecture of disdain
pure contempt for Grecian looks
and ultra
violets have broken into unmusical
songs, I have a hand for blasphemy
for those in exile ( in oblivion)
but the mole gives intrepid warmth
to a less than humane heart
a heart that mocks at love
and sees in body lust
philanderer of hope, testimony
coming back to the mole, the nose itches
in radical protest against human faces
of dignity.revolt then, you reprobates
crush the sinner’s dying plea of resurrection.
the mole looks blacker, wilder and the body
warms.
Ananya S Guha has been born and brought up in Shillong, India and works in India’s National Open University, the Indira Gandhi National Open University. His poems in English have been published world wide. He also writes for newspapers and magazines/ web zines on matters ranging from society and politics to education. He holds a doctoral degree on the novels of William Golding. He edits the poetry column of The Thumb Print Magazine, and has published seven collections of poetry.
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Robin Ouzman Hislop
Japanese Spirit. A Poem by Tatjana Debeljački
Forest Spirit is the master of woods and beasts, the shepherd whose stock
consists of deer, roes and rabbits, which are looked after by wolves or lynxes.
His cheeks are blue, his eyes are green, and his beard is long and green.
Sometimes he covers himself with furs, and some of the legends depict him
as wearing a mask and having horns. His left shoe is always on his right foot,
he buckles his sheepskin on the wrong side. He does not have a shadow, his
blood is blue. He is looking at something else. I don’t know what. Maybe soul?
His look is blunt and his pupils are small. I kissed him in the neck, exactly the
place where the Adam’s Apple is.
* * *
If you were living just across and if I were a tree
In that yard,
I’d delight you with fruit,
I’ll be watered with your glimpse,
just look at me in ardor,
I’d bear the sweetest fruit for YOU.
Tatjana Debeljački, born on 23.04.1967 in Užice. Writes poetry, short stories, stories and haiku. Member of Association of Writers of Serbia – UKS since 2004 and Haiku Society of Serbia – HDS Serbia, HUSCG – Montenegro and HDPR, Croatia. A member of Writers’ Association Poeta, Belgrade since 2008, member of Croatian Writers’ Association- HKD Croatia since 2009 and a member of Poetry Society ‘Antun Ivanošić’ Osijek since 2011, and a member of “World Haiku Association“ – 2011, Japan. Union of Yugoslav Writers in Homeland and Immigration – Belgrade, Literary Club Yesenin Belgrade. Member of Writers’ Club “Miroslav – Mika Antić” – Inđija 2013, Writers’ Association “Branko Miljković“ – Niš 2014, and a member of Japan Universal Poets Association (JUNPA). 2013. “Poetic Bridge: AMA-HASHI (天橋） Up to now, she has published four collections of poetry: “A HOUSE MADE OF GLASS “, published by ART – Užice in 1996; collection of poems “YOURS“, published by Narodna knjiga Belgrade in 2003; collection of haiku poetry “VOLCANO”, published by Lotos from Valjevo in 2004. A CD book “A HOUSE MADE OF GLASS” published by ART in 2005, bilingual SR-EN with music, AH-EH-IH-OH-UH, published by Poeta, Belgrade in 2008.”HIŠA IZ STEKLA” was translated into Slovenian and published by Banatski kulturni centar – Malo Miloševo, in 2013 and also into English, “A House Made of Glass” published by »Hammer & Anvil Books» – American, in2013. Her poetry and haiku have been translated into several languages.
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In Bed. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop.
The homestead El Caserio i Bizkerre lodged upon the wall
-
has a large gable’s end symmetry, slightly
skew whiff in the canvass that encompasses it. I wonder if
-
she’s painted herself from within to without
Where she stands now, a cut out dark silhouette, on a patch
-
before the facade of splotches, daubs of windows
doors, heraldry shields, terraces, hatches. Two doors, right side
-
sharp, left a blur but can i enter, what will i see
-
She knows she’s concealed from me?
what will i find, dusty jars, a winding stairway, creaking
-
floorboards, a chest of drawers, which i will open
to secret treasures, but no, i am without with her dark silhouette.
-
What is that luminous blob suspended above
her head by almost invisible silvery strands of arms embedding it?
-
All in the foreground, the sharp, the blur, paths
to each door, blotches of rockery, smudged plants, dollops
Of green lawn. Overhead, a red angle roof, in the sharp, crows
-
swarm in a blue sky, where it blurs, branches
stretch to entangle, notch the gable corner in weird distortion.
-
Beside this painting is another, a naked Madonna
A faceless oval she kneels, arms clasped behind her sleek black
-
parted hair, her armpits bared to reveal the taut
of her breasts, her curves in orange & gold dust.
-
Is it she who waits behind these doors?
-
When night falls the sea is a distant death
is The Bed that is a Tree hewn from the stump
-
of an olive tree, drilled as a bed
post, as a mould for the rest, around which the chamber
-
Was built, waiting for us to enter?
She is more beautiful than her painter & we know it
-
but perhaps if we enter together
the splashes of paint will be softer than our creaking bones.
* In Bed. Italics. The Bed that is a Tree. Kim Lansky. Italics. The Odyssy. Book xxxiiv.
Robin Ouzman Hislop, born UK, a reader in philosophy & religions, has travelled extensively throughout his lifetime but now lives in semi- retirement as a TEFL teacher and translator in Spain & the UK.
Robin was editor of the 12 year running on-line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times. In 2013 he joined with Dave Jackson as co-editor at Artvilla.com, where he presently edits Poetry Life & Times, Artvilla.com, Motherbird.com.
He’s been previously published in a variety of international magazines, later publications including Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N. Carolina), The Poetic Bond Volumes (thepoeticbond.com) and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (a recently published international Anthology of Sonnets). His last publication is a volume of collected poems All the Babble of the Souk available at all main online tributaries
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Game Ball. A Poem by Miriam C. Jacobs
Above Hukte Ajaw’s court where the air stinks
of rotting flesh and rubber, darkest night of the year,
the sky is potent with cold.
Our astronomers fix the time of sacrifice,
time for the judge’s sharp whistles, the slam
as the ball, stuffed with the brains of the dead,
ricochets against sloping stone.
Once through the ring is all there is.
You’ve practiced your whole life for this loser’s joke –
costumed, absurdly masked, belt packed
with home-spun rags. Childless, you ape pregnancy,
waddling wide-legged, teasing your tongue
in the scent of sausages and fried maize, challenging
to laughter the chit-chat of families with no son or daughter
in the center, prattle of people with nothing,
in this moment, to lose. The regent is planted
on his dais, legs firm and upright like two pillars.
His flags wilt on the arms behind him
in the only world that matters, the only world
you know. And when his minions have cut
your heart from your body, the steam of it rising
in the mythic air as they pass it from mouth to mouth,
when your skull has rolled down the chiseled steps,
the crowd cheered and scuttled to their dim hovels, turned on television,
the forest stretches its vines to cover those who loved you,
who carved your name on a rock.
MIRIAM C. JACOBS is a alumnus of the University of Chicago and teaches college writing, literature and humanities. Jacobs is the editor of Eyedrum Periodically, the art/literature journal of Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery, Atlanta. Her poetry has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, The East Coast Literary Review, Record Magazine, The Camel Saloon, Bluestem: the Art and Literary Journal of Eastern Illinois University, The King’s English, and Oklahoma Today, among other publications. Her chapbook of poetry, The Naked Prince, was published by Fort!/Da? Books in September 2013.
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Shine on Me. A Poem by Judy Moskowitz.
I’m a reactionary woman
Wearing it in my jiggle
Hidden in the cleavage of my past
Misunderstood flow
Not recognized as 925 Sterling
If you’d shine on me just a little
I would never have to lower my eyes
Shrink inside
I’d climb a high wire with perfect balance
If you’d shine on me just a little
I’d read all the classics
Becoming my own intellectual property
Play Stravinsky
Sing Nesum Dorma
If you’d shine on my just a little
I’d never need
A polishing cloth
Judy started playing piano at the age of three, and studied at the Julliard School Of Music in New York City, her native city.
She became a jazz pianist and continues to play jazz. Now residing in Florida, she started writing poetry three years ago, and has been published in the Moonlight Dreamers Of The Yellow Haze anthology by Michael Lee Johnson, Thepoetcommunity, Whispersinthewind, Indiana Voice Journal. Poetry runs deep in her veins along with Music.
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POEM ON MY 33rd BIRTHDAY. A Poem by Robin Marchesi
When you look back on the pages,
Of some half completed book,
When you contemplate,
Its twist and change,
And the age its teller took.
To unravel countless cases,
To weave a central theme,
To bewitch you with its reverie,
To sniff its inner dream
And to wrap you up in a wisdom
That you don’t quite understand.
It’s not a lot to read half a book
And contemplate its style.
For the story is half woven,
The tale has made its due,
Like a life that’s found a meaning
You know what you’re going through.
And you lean your head out forward,
To taste what you’ve to come,
But the words already written
Chapter verse and song.
And you’ve ploughed a furrow on your brow,
You’ve planted a seed that points a way,
For you’ve heard it now,
Spoken clear,
In that first half of living
Such an inner sense beginning.
When you look back on the pages
Of a half completed book
When you contemplate its twists and change
And the age its teller took.
Robin Marchesi, born in 1951, began writing in his teens, much to the consternation of his mother, the sister of Eric Hobsbawm, the historian.
In 1992 Cosmic Books published his first book entitled “A B C Quest”.
In 1996 March Hare Press published “Kyoto Garden” and in 1999 “My Heart is As…”
ClockTowerBooks published his Poetic Novella, “A Small Journal of Heroin Addiction”, digitally, in 2000.
Charta Books published his latest work entitled “Poet of the Building Site”, about his time working with Barry Flanagan the Sculptor of Hares, in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
He is presently working on an upcoming novel entitled “A Story Made of Stone.”
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Miriam C Jacobs Reviews All the Babble of the Souk.
Poet Robin Ouzman Hislop’s first full-length collection, All the Babble of the Souk, is appropriately titled. With a remarkably consistent ear for the market’s noise, for “[t]he broken lights of the bazaar/spangled] with glistening promise/in the eyes of the dusky beggar …” (Laminations in Lacquer ) Hislop’s poems, many of them cinematic-style montages of sounds and images, show us the metaphoric souk of the world, on the beach or in the street, its glitter, its sadness, its ragtag glory:
“pets, flower pots framed captive in a moment
outside the house of the painter, a robot
in chains with an alms bowl” (“Departures”)
These impressions are not confined to the scenic. Individuals, too, flash like rich arcades:
“there is not time enough to love
before the tram whisks her away
a creature of the costume of the moment
in a parade of parts.” (“In the fish-eye window”)
So marked is Hislop’s interest in the external world, readers may long for a glimpse of the speaker. It comes rarely. There are one or two musings on the phenomenon and surprise of feeling oneself age, the odd disjointing of it, but otherwise these poems proclaim their perhaps unique impersonality. In “Laminations in Lacquer” we sight what is, perhaps, the poet, but in third person, one who rises, observes, and then folds in at last with the “throng”:
“Below the rift of its eye
the sealed beak that will open
gleams on the lee …
in a room that roams without corners
he must rise with a chalice of blood for lips of shades
where the vertigo edge of the flower distills the dish
together with the quantities of immeasurable throng
on watery groves billowing with ivy bowers
sprung over hidden lairs of concealed hoards.
Night begins and the dogs draw nigh
scavenging for scraps
yapping at the walker’s naked ankles
in the dust of unknown alleys.”
Among other reoccurring themes – shadows, mirrors, the moon – is Hislop’s interest in physics. In a variety of contexts he reflects on time and infinity, the imagination-daunting galaxies, quantum theory and space:
“Man cannot live on myth alone
he shall earn his soil somehow, between
the Big Bang, the Big Slam ….”
One admirable quality in this work is that souk places us firmly in the precariousness of the current moment in history. These poems are exactly right for the age, and who we are now, those of us born 1945-1960, with our particular view of past and present, our grasp of the sciences and technologies that have overtaken the known world in our lifetimes.
“The world is a patchwork quilt,” Hislop concludes in “Lucky hat day,”
‘stitched up to the hilt its seams/which we quarter in our dreams
on which our edifice is built …”
MIRIAM C. JACOBS is a alumnus of the University of Chicago and teaches college writing, literature and humanities. Jacobs is the editor of Eyedrum Periodically, the art/literature journal of Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery, Atlanta. Her poetry has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, The East Coast Literary Review, Record Magazine, The Camel Saloon, Bluestem: the Art and Literary Journal of Eastern Illinois University, The King’s English, and Oklahoma Today, among other publications. Her chapbook of poetry, The Naked Prince, was published by Fort!/Da? Books in September 2013.
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Humpback Nickerbroker. A Poem by Saira Viola
Slurping on oysters
Rat King grinned
‘The best time to invest – when there’s blood flowing in the streets.’
His face lit like up like a Roman candle
His heart tasted like cherry flava kerosene
Money spawn fisting the kitties
Jim slim tight wads
Bruising the night
With mechanical jizz
Get up offa the couch
And spunk your soul
With the seed of sedition
Or let your tears fold away the dawn
With fuck me now resignation.
Saira Viola ia a best selling crime writer , satirist, song lyricist and creator of innovative lit technique sonic scatterscript. Her work is infused with undercurrents of politics, pop philosophy and black comedy
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Saira Viola, Author at GonzoToday
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Saira Viola is a critically acclaimed poet , author, song lyricist , satirist and creator of innovative lit technique self labelled sonic scatterscript .
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