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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Brief Visions of Contemporary Life. A Poem by Ian Irvine Hobson
I
This gaudy tourist beach
retired scum of
exploit the poor
Australia. Playing
golf, faking orgasm, moved
to pornographic
cunt/cock fix.
Sea change?
Take me
back to the ghetto! Alive
and troubled.
II
If you work hard to
privatise your
testicles, lick
the cum of
‘benchmark’ and
‘quota’; you’ll
accumulate enough super to
retire here,
among the buggies
and boredom.
III
All those four wheel drive
pseudo - jeeps, with
with bobbed blonde narcissists
and three kids to
piano this, and soccer that
dancing this and tutoring
that —
such clumsy tanks on the roads
at twilight
crawling home to their
McMansion garages. She
eyes me like a
night in the swamp.
IV
A morning where I want to
XXXX the world, want
to belch and fart
fumes of bodily liberation
and laugh at the monkeys
red - assed with scrofula. The
monkeys off to their paper mausoleums
seeking adrenaline-junky highs
from contact sport, all
those sado - masochistic males
banging into each other
like painted fridges —
millions of them, aiming between
human goalposts. I
laugh at the monkeys, red - assed
with scrofula.
Ian Irvine is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, fiction writer and non-fiction writer:
His work has featured in many Australian and international publications, including Fire (UK) ‘Anthology of 20th Century and Contemporary Poets,’ (2008) which contained the work of poets from over 60 nations. His work has also appeared in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies, and he is the author of three books and co-editor of many more (including Scintillae 2012, an anthology of work by over 50 Victorian and international writers and poets). He currently teaches writing and literature at Bendigo TAFE and Victoria University (Melbourne) and lives with fellow writer Sue King-Smith and their children on a 5 acre block near Bendigo, Australia.
Links related to his work are as follows:
http://authorsden.com/ianirvine
http://www.scribd.com/IanHobson
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Housing. A Poem by Frederick Pollack
Dead poets wake in a tremendous castle,
all dark beams, fireplaces, stone stone stone.
Pop-era people flash on Middle-earth,
but older types (like Byron, deadly with boredom)
set them straight. They point out and explain
runes, the wolf and ouroboros
motifs, the giant scattered meadhorns
and outsized chairs – this is
Valhalla. Someone academic, peering
through a window-slit at a misty waste,
asks where the heroes are, who train by hacking
each other apart all day, then drink all night?
Not to mention the Valkyries …
And Coleridge, more than usually stoned,
laughs, Do you think someone would fight for us?
(At which Petőfi and D’Annunzio
frown.) But now the latest crop of dead
nag about dinner. Since most of the place is a freezer
and always full, they’re well-supplied
with venison and auroch, though Marianne Moore
says yet again she would kill for a salad.
Something possesses Ashbery, who tries
to pull an ornamental sword
from a wall, and collapses. Where –
someone asks inevitably – are the gods?
But not even the oldest inmate,
not Pound or the Beowulf-poet, knows
they are off forever trashing the Cabaret Voltaire.
Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press. A collection of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, forthcoming in 2015 from Prolific Press. Has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Representations, Magma (UK), Iota (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. Adjunct professor creative writing George Washington University.
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Mascot. A Poem by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois
The cheerleaders
raise a baby elephant over their heads
They are deceptively strong
from years of gymnastics, weightlifting
and cheering
Their cheering is so powerful
the other teams default in fear
The cheerleaders’ teams are the champions
without ever dribbling a ball
or giving or receiving a concussion on the gridiron
If opponents dare show up
they throw the baby elephant at them
mow them down like
bowling pins
The elephant hates this
hates his life
but he tolerates it
He knows it’s better than ‘growing up
to be killed for ivory
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois’ poems and fictions have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He is a regular contributor to The Prague Revue, and has been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for 99 cents from Kindle and Nook or as a Print Edition
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A Modest Operation of Exclusion. A Poem by R.W. Haynes
A modest operation of exclusion
Extracts the rain-frog from the desert sands,
The cornered mouse from his confusion,
The vaguely dreaming poet from drowsy lands,
And it even explains, eventually,
Why we do not know, even vaguely,
How we wish happiness to be.
And the operator standing by,
Whose merciful, providential hands
Make this story whole so that I
Throw such eloquence at the silent sky?
You see how it is. Ever since I fell
Into the Niagara from that hot-air balloon,
I dream of smiling crocodiles in Hell
Feeding me sherbet with a golden spoon.
R. W. Haynes has taught literature at Texas A&M International University since 1992. His recent interests include the early British sonnet, and he is completing a second book on the Texas playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote (1916-2009). In his poetry, Haynes seeks to celebrate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without sounding any more dissonant notes than he has to. In fiction, he works toward grasping that part of the past which made its mark on his generation. He enjoys teaching drama, especially the Greeks, Ibsen, and Shakespeare, and he devoutly hopes for a stunning literary Renaissance in South Texas.
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We Hiked West. A Poem by Bhuwan Thapaliya
We hiked west through the woods
to the tunes of an old Chinese FM radio.
Far away, far away from the anguish
of the malnourished children
scouring railway tracks for food
that may have fallen from passing trains.
Far away, far away from the smell
of the rot and sewage of an industrial charade.
Far away, far away from the massacre
in the Narayanhiti
and the Ceausescu’s celibacy tax.
Far away , very far away from the
echoes of those black churches in America
where worshipers are seized by the Holy Spirit.
We hiked west through the woods.
Anxious, exhausted, frail,
we sat around a log fire,
on the edge of the forests
chatting and visualizing a different
vision of the future.
But after a while,
the profusion
of sights and sounds
near the flower market
in the Ason Bazaar
invited us home yet again.
We can’t hike forever, can we?
Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections. Thapaliya’s books include the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), and Our Nepal, Our Pride (Cyberwit.net). Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry and Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, as well as in literary journals such as Urhalpool, MahMag, Kritya, FOLLY, The Vallance Review, Nuvein Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Life and Times, Poets Against the War, Voices in Wartime, Taj Mahal Review, and more.
Author
Amazon.com/Our Nepal Pride Bhuwan Thapaliya
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The Name of Cameron. A Poem by Sara L Russell
Posted by Poetry Life & Times on Sunday, 5 April 2015
What will they say of you in future times?
Were they duped by your duplicity
or did you fall on your double-edged sword?
Was the devil we knew any better than the unknown?
The future has a way of arriving early.
Are you ready now, for what it yet may bring?
Will you be knighted, or, benighted and beleaguered,
Fall fallow by the wayside of your ways?
Will the name of Cameron carry on,
Whatever else is lost or left behind?
Will David slay the apocolyptic giant of global warming,
yet terminate the service of National Health?
Was it wealth, or a poverty of emotional maturity
that led to such flotations and privatisations?
what sensations did you feel, did you reach referendum,
did you feel the earth move?
We never saw your manifesto made manifest.
We, the voters who voted not for you,
yet saw you rise, anticipate your fall.
Do promises count as any kind of plan?
And the future is arriving post-haste,
like a present waiting to be unwrapped.
Elections have a way of arriving early.
We are ready, with a big sharp X.
Sara Louise Russell, aka PinkyAndrexa, is a UK poet and poetry ezine editor, specialising particularly in sonnets, lyric-style poetry and occasionally writing in more modern styles. She founded Poetry Life & Times and edited it from 1998 to 2006, when she handed it over to Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arrospide; Robin now runs it as Editor from Poetry Life & Times. She is currently founder and Editor of the daily paper.li journal, Poetry Lifetimes ; which is a sister publication to Poetry Life & Times. Her poems and sonnets have been published in many paper and online publications including Sonnetto Poesia, Mindful of Poetry and Autumn Leaves a monthly Poetry ezine from the late Sondra Ball. Her sonnets also currently appear in the recently published anthology of sonnets Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. She is also one of the first poets ever to be published on multimedia CD ROMs, published by Kedco Studios Inc.; the first one being “Pinky’s Little Book of Shadows”, which was featured by the UK’s national newspaper The Daily Mirror, in October 1999. (Picture link for Mirror article)Angel Fire
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