I SEEK A FORM . . .
(by Rubén Darío; translated by William Ruleman)
I seek a form my style cannot quite trace,
A bud of thought that seeks to be a rose;
A kiss upon my lips proclaims the throes
Of the Venus de Milo’s impossible embrace.
Green palms adorn the white peristyle like lace;
The stars have shown me a goddess in repose;
And in my soul, a sole light lingers—glows
Like the bird of the moon on a lake’s calm face.
And I find nothing but the word as it goes,
The flute’s initial note as it flows,
The bark of dreams that glides through infinity,
And under my Sleeping Beauty’s window sill,
The fountain jet that keeps on sobbing still,
The neck of the great white swan that questions me.
YO PERSIGO UNA FORMA . . .
(Rubén Darío)
Yo persigo una forma que no encuentra mi estilo,
botón de pensamiento que busca ser la rosa;
se anuncia con un beso que en mis labios se posa
el abrazo imposible de la Venus de Milo.
Adornan verdes palmas el blanco peristilo;
los astros me han predicho la visión de la Diosa;
y en mi alma reposa la luz como reposa
el ave de la luna sobre un lago tranquilo.
Y no hallo sino la palabra que huye,
la iniciación melódica que de la flauta fluye
y la barca del sueño que en el espacio boga;
y bajo la ventana de mi Bella-Durmiente,
el sollozo continuo del chorro de la fuente
y el cuello del gran cisne blanco que me interroga.
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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Poem
Rust. A Poem by E Darcy Trie
i.
once
we sat in a broken circle
while you rested on my knees
and i painted suns on your eyelids
because you were afraid
of the dark
and the lost people
inside you
and you believed in my brushes
and i believed in your excuses
and together we watched
that big ball of orange
sinking quietly below the trees
ii.
i unbutton you
and revealed little things
an opened mouth
the silk hiss of a shirt
sliding
these portents found
in the crossroads of
your clavicle
turned my hands kind and blue
our white spaces
fill with the jewel of our voices
rising like the smoke of spines
and line with the amethyst bursts
clustering above gray ceilings
iii.
this morning
the train tracks of your veins
lead both in and
out
while the platform of my chest
can only stay
hostage to the yellow
&
now
i touch the bone points
beating upon night’s black tissue
but once poked under
these fingertips
gather the carnations of
your breath and neck
rubbed red as my silence
i still feel
the pastels of the past
the ecru of knee
copper august skin
the gold token
of your throat
moving
the echo
of paper
tearing
iv.
i have only
these hues and salt water
as my weapons
and i no longer
believe in circles and dyes
but i know
i once seeped into your eyes
and may my colors
now rust within you
Darcy was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1975, E. Darcy Trie is a Scorpio, Rabbit and matriculated in Little Rock, Arkansas at the age of two. She graduated at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a B.A. in Psychology along with Minors in Drama and Asian Studies. Sensing that achieving her Masters would drive her to drink, she wisely opted to tour Asia in her early twenties (thanks to a grant provided by Bank Of Daddy), and in the year 2000, found herself in the heart of Beijing, China where she began writing due to the fact that crocheting was far too complicated and because the voices in her head would not shut up.
By 2004, she had completed two romances, one historical and one modern, and after viewing all nine seasons of the X-Files and three seasons of C.S.I, finished the first two series of the Snow novels and is currently writing the third installment. During this time, she has also had several pieces of her poetry published in various online poetry magazines.
Her passions and hobbies includes writing, reading (anything put out by Neil Gaiman), Disney movies, all divination tools such as Tarot, I-Ching, Runes and is an enthusiastic, although albeit amateur, astrologist/paranormal investigator. She is 5’10, weighs whatever she wrote on her driver’s license, owns a lot of black hoodies and is addicted to It’s A Grind’s Passion Fruit tea.
She is fluent in English, Mandarin Chinese, some French and once took a Zero Hour in Greek in high school. She hates mornings, coconuts, wire bras, and sincerely hopes that this is bio is long enough to fill up an entire page (doubled-space of course).
Ms. Trie currently lives in Las Vegas, NV because she adores $2.99 buffets, Paigow Poker, and that lovely 116 degree August weather. She dreams of writing best-selling novels that will delight and thrill her future fans and because she is tired of being a productive citizen and wants to go back to being a mooching hermit.
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Sappho Ode. The Moon Has Set The Pleiades. Translations Richard Vallance.
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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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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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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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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