Poet

Imitations in the Windows. A Poem by Samuel Strathman

by

 
Several childlike artworks
line the windows
of a bungalow.
 
The drawing that
stands out the most
is the one
of a dog eyed
octopus in a state
of repose.
 
Swimming in the deep
dark ocean must be
onerous for the little chum.
 
It’s a wonder
you don’t see more
of those tired heaps
tamped together.
 
*
 
My favourite shop
removes all the fish
from its counters, relocates
them to the frozen isle.
 
Display counters
make the transition
to imitation seafood.
 
There is a sudden
itch for me
to paint these replicants
right here, right now
before my hands
turn to hooks.
 
Perhaps these models
inspire some artists
more than others.
 
 
 

 

Author Bio
 

Samuel Strathman is a poet, author, educator, and co-editor at Cypress: A Poetry Journal. Some of his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rejection Letters, The Honey Mag, Ice Floe Press, and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, “In Flocks of Three to Five” was published by Anstruther Press (2020). His second chapbook, “The Incubus” will be in print this fall (Roaring Junior Press, 2020).
 
 
 
 
 
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)

When The Big Man Blows. A Poem by Phillip Henry Christopher

by

(for Ed)

 

When the Big Man blows,
relive those glory days
rockin’ and rollin’ in the back seat of
a beat up old Buick,
an Asbury Park tune,
a hemi-head
double-barrel bass guitar,
wild and innocent
shufflin’ down E Street,
when Adam first raised a Caine
dancin’ in the moonlight Rosie
low tide summer,
and the tilt-a-wheel
caught us by the collar
and we hung on
and went around and around,
when the Promised Land was
clandestine alleyways,
heavy breath moist
air-fogged window
gasp of a woman child
back street September sixteen,
rockin’ back beat crashin’
fifty ton plates,
furious splooshing
ladles plunging into
liquid steel,
skinny silky skin
long-haired boy
trying to flee
the future,
the mill waiting
to turn velvet hands
to sand paper,
skin to leather,
the quick nervous
wrapping of limbs,
bumping of bellies,
then a house filled with silence
and forty years
of punching in and punching out,
of hot molten slag
like hell fire.
No Jersey Shore fantasy,
just the short ride
down Main Street
to the flats.
No sandy beach ocean,
just the Brandywine Creek.
No neon spinning carnival rides,
or stroll down summer boardwalks.
Just plod along under
smoke stack steeples,
clock in and out forever,
but never forget summers
of desperate fumbling
on back street back seats,
of alleyway heat,
of the Big Man blowin’ righteous
saxophone songs of
Sandy, and Rosie
and Crazy Davey,
while you sang a
song of yourself.
 
“When the Big Man Blows” appeared in PiF Magazine, No. 188 (January, 2013)
 

https://www.facebook.com/philliphenrychristopher/
 

 
Poet, novelist and singer/songwriter Phillip Henry Christopher spent his early years in France, Germany and Greece. His nomadic family then took him to Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio and Vermont before settling in the steel mill town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in the smokestack shadows of blue collar America.Escaping high school, he made Philadelphia his home, alternating between Philly and cities across America, living for a time in Buffalo, New Orleans, Fort Worth, even remote Fairfield, Iowa, before settling in Indianapolis. While wandering America he has placed poems and stories in publications across the country and in Europe and Asia, including such noteworthy journals as The Caribbean Writer, Gargoyle, Lullwater Review, Hazmat Review, Blue Collar Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Blind Man’s Rainbow and New York Quarterly
 
 
 
 
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)

Floating. A Poem by Fabrice B. Poussin

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Strolling at noon on a precious day
when ghosts hover to a favorite dive
he bumped elbows with a girl in white.

The zenith stood guard above misery
throwing flames into his indecent gaze
for he must not dare to confront the heavens.

Black souls danced arm in arm
walking in a deathly cadence
until the bell again rang for order.

She did not belong in this ghastly crowd
her body smiling with the aura of ideals
a promise she vanished in a private realm.

The absent-minded saunterer attempted to follow her
beyond the glaring windows
a bright world in this indecent nightmare.

Her vision invited the stranger one last time
but he could only remain by the gate of horror
to see her disappear within the world she saved.
 
 

 
 
Fabrice B. Poussin is the advisor for The Chimes, the Shorter University award winning poetry and arts publication. His writing and photography have been published in print in the United States and abroad. He teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, La Pensee Universelle, Paris, and other art and literature magazines, where he has also featured here at Poetry Life and Times & Artvilla.com. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

The Poem. Audio Textual by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Tryst. Poem by Despy Boutris

by

TRYST
 

The secret to sin is to do it
in secret. We learned secrecy young—
 
two girls taught to swallow our hunger—
so we meet up at nightfall
 
once the last lights have gone out. We walk
down the roads, cursing this town
 
full of coal-miners and farmers and churches,
cursing the way we’ll likely never leave.
 
The air is petrichor-stained, and we’re led
only by the humming streetlights
 
and starlit sky. We find each other
at our meeting place, the lake south of me,
 
north of you, me scrambling over the wet rocks
toward the grove where you’ve lain down
 
the knit blanket. And as soon as we catch
each other’s eyes, we’re each saying Here
 
is my shirt, here is my hair, my hands,
my mouth, take it, take me, right
 
now. Your eyes glow like lightning bugs,
jaw sharp as my pocket knife. As we strip
 
our breaths turn to fog, the cool drizzle falling
onto your curls and half-shut eyelids.
 
Your thighs shear mine—
the seawater taste of skin, the scrape of teeth
 
against lip, fingertips meandering down spines,
tracing mandibles. Breaths a windstorm—
 
some desire to rub ourselves together
till we make some sort of fire. As your mouth
 
latches onto skin hardly anyone has seen,
rosy even in this low light, we gasp
 
like people drowning, and I try to think
of a word for the way I want you—wildly,
 
maybe. Like a monsoon. But what’s at first erotic
erodes: love collapsing like the hills
 
that gave way after so much rain and mud
last winter. And so much want
 
is sinful—I know—so we’re wary
of the fires and floods, lying together
 
only in darkness, water spattering our faces,
swallowing what we can of each other.

 
 
(first published in Prairie Schooner)
 
 

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BIO:
Despy Boutris is published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, The Adroit Journal, Prairie Schooner, Palette Poetry, Third Coast, Raleigh Review, Diode, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Currently, she teaches at the University of Houston and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast.

 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)