Poet

Kidney. A Poem by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

by

 
1.
In the Bessarabian night
I got knocked on the head
and my left kidney was stolen
but there was charity there—
the thugs could have taken both kidneys
They could have harvested all my organs
I wonder why they didn’t
 
2.
My grandfather hid in a basement
on the Bessarabian night in 1903
when the gentiles went mad
and killed Jews
 
3.
The thieves didn’t know that I’ve suffered terribly from kidney stones
mostly on the left side
I wonder if their doctor will discover
the many chunks of calcium oxalate lurking inside
and if he will clean them out
before he installs the kidney
in a new person
 
Perhaps the recipient will consequently suffer from kidney disease
and will curse the son of a bitch who donated that organ
not knowing that it was taken from him
involuntarily
after he was struck in the head with a blunt object
I’ve suffered blinding headaches ever since
I have terrible ringing in my ears
 
4.
My grandfather escaped Bessarabia
also known as Moldova
He escaped with all his organs
and what little money he could scrape together
and what little intelligence he had
His sons thought he was a stupid man
and hated him
hated him also because he was cruel to them
 
He was cruel because he was frightened
and depressed
but how could he ever explain those things
to his newly American sons
whose future was so bright
despite Anti-Semitism
which, fortunately for them, was waning?
 
 


 
 
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including quite a few in POETRY LIFE AND TIMES. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a Print Edition . To see more of his work, google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .

Soloist (on the soft glass edge). Poem by Richard Lloyd Cederberg

by

 
 
Ekphrasis
.
Calmly focused, attentive,
Poised, her flute gracefully held,
Nimble fingers begin to dance on
The soft glass edge of a player’s heart…
.
Adagio…
.
An elegant cavatina,
With airy passages building
Towards the larger exposition,
A pause – a breath…
.
Andante…
.
A stir of nuanced phrases
Ineffable, rife of melancholy,
An impromptu interlude wooing the
Listener into an atmosphere of longing…
.
Allegro….
.
In a crescendo of harmonic strings
The orchestra bursts forth…
In soaring synchronies
The exhaled notes
(Of a solo flute)
Begin to flow
Like a silver
Stream of dulcet pearls,
Gossamer harmonies enlaced,
Aureate lines transforming pinnacles,
The scherzo – an exaltation – penetrating – diffusing –
Vanishing – then, a short pause – a breath…
.
And when an
Empty Flute fills again
Subtle notes begin to stir…
Patiently centered,
Attentive,
Poised,
Her flute devotedly held,
The conductor cues the soloist, and
Nimble fingers (again) begin to dance
On the soft glass edge of a player’s heart…

.
© richard lloyd cederberg 2018
 
 

______________________________________________________________________________

BIOGRAPHY

Richard is the progeny of Swedish and Norwegian immigrants. He was born in Chicago Illinois. Richard began his journey into the arts at age six. For twelve years he played classical trumpet. The British incursion of music, however, influenced him to put down the trumpet and take-up acoustic and electric guitar, and, to write songs and lyrics. He toured professionally for ten years. In 1995 Richard was privileged to design and build his own Midi-centered Recording Studio ~ Taylor & Grace ~ where he worked diligently until 2002. During that time he composed, and multi-track recorded, over 500 compositions and has two CD’s (‘WHAT LOVE HAS DONE’ and ‘THE PATH’) to his personal credit.
.
Richard’s interest in writing continues. His poetic invention is integrative and employs various elements: nature, history, relationships (past and present), parlance, alliteration, metaphor, characterization, spirituality, faith, eschatology, art, and subtext. Avoiding the middle-road; he enjoys the challenge of poetic stylization: Rhythmical, Poetic/Prose, Triolets, Syllable formats, Story-Poems, Freeform, Haiku, Tanka, Haibun, and Acrostic. Richard’s work has been (and is) featured in a wide variety of anthologies, compendiums, and e-zines including: Poetry Life and Times, Artvilla, Motherbird, and The Path. Richard was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.
.
Books include: 1. A MONUMENTAL JOURNEY… 2. IN SEARCH OF THE FIRST TRIBE… 3. THE UNDERGROUND RIVER… 4. BEYOND UNDERSTANDING. The Monumental Journey Series is a confluence of adventure, mystery, and historical fiction. A new adventure/thriller, BETWEEN THE CRACKS has been published. Also, a new eschatological drama – AFTER WE WERE HUMAN – is being written. Follow the lives of several friends as a race of ageless multi-dimensional humans comes back to Earth with their Creator to rule and reign for 1000 years.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

Poems of Death & Incense by Alisa Velaj. Translated by Ukë Zenel Buçpapaj

by

 
WHEN DEATH PILES UP
 
They should not have piled those dry branches up here
It is midday and the crowd
Will soon pass by them
The forest ghost will terrify the Dead
With the marrow dried in his bones
Then he will convey the crowd’s death
Like an electrical conductor permits a flow of energy
They should have piled them up in the heart of the Bazaar square
But no, by no means
At midday
 
 
THE DEATH’S PAWS
 
Death has white paws
With the hare’s soft fur
And blinding whiteness
Like that of the tiger’s teeth
 
With the hare’s soft fur
We rub ourselves
On meadows
Growing narcissi flowers
But the lake in the middle of them
Never shows us
The tiger’s reflection…
 
 
INCENSE
 
I pray again after hushing or I hush right after praying
The lily of dreams has long ran away from the white colour
The whiteness of the snow, the whiteness of the petals, the whiteness of the egg
A raven black as death flies around the lily and fades away falling in the hands of the storm
 
The incense’s smell piercing through smelling…
 
 
DISTANCE
 
He is three hours away from the Swan’s Neck.
The screams of the bird have been staying frozen on those shores since the midnight of the last song.
He is three nights away from the songs and a life away from the screams.
 
 

 
 
Alisa Velaj has been shortlisted for the annual international Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in UK in June 2014. Her works have appeared in more than eighty print and online international magazines, including: FourW twentyfive Anthology (Australia), The Journal (UK), The Dallas Review (USA), The Linnet’s Wings (UK) The Seventh Quarry (UK), Envoi Magazine (UK) etc etc. Velaj’s digital chapbook “The Wind Foundations” translated by Ukë Zenel Buçpapaj is published by Zany Zygote Review (USA). Her poems are also translated in Hebrew, Swedish, Romanian, French and Portuguese. Alisa Velaj’s poetry book “With No Sweat At All” (trans by Ukë Zenel Buçpapaj) will be published by Cervena Barva Press in 2019.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

Like a Pea. A Poem by Fabrice B. Poussin

by

 



Some die of a heart frozen to ice,

broken in shatters on a marble tombstone,


others suffer a heart so enlarged,

it cannot find a home in its cage,


I hear many live to such excess,

it just gives up in disgust or disease,


a few leave it behind, abandoned,

to be trampled under the feet of masses;


on occasion the cherub with arrow and bow

smiles at the agony left by his piercing blow;


millions saw their last sunlight in a trench,

when their insides were sublimed by copper,


now I wonder is it possible also to expire,

from a shrunken heart the size of a pea?


I ask why in this land of dreams among us all,

there would be no nurturing to this one,


littler, shier, out of place among the giants;

its faint beat, unperceivably, becomes quieter,


pea among peas, soon a little it shrinks again until…

finally it vanishes, forgotten, invisible and alone… 


 

 

Fabrice B. Poussin

 




 

 

Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry,

his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines. 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 his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo  visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.  See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .


			


					
			





	

					

				
Goddess Summons the Nation. By Tony Martin Woods. Collected Poems. Press Release.
		

			 by  		

					

			

						
						
							
						
					

			

				
Our societies are in deep crisis. The latest strand of the capitalist-nationalist virus is particularly aggressive: Brexit, Trump and various other ethno-populist movements across the Globe, disguised under democratic wrappings, represent a great danger for Humanity and Nature. Wars, discriminations of all types and poverty will only get worse in the New World Dis-order. In this book, Goddess opens proceedings and summons culprits, victims and heroes to make their case in poetic form: irony, joy, bitterness and hope come together through rhythmic directness and daring metaphors. The first book of the Goddess Series, Los viajes de Diosa (The Travels of Goddess), was published in 2015 in Spain and came as a response to the Great Recession. Tony Martin-Woods is an artivist who lives in England since 1995. He runs Transforming with Poetry at Inkwell, Leeds, and contributes to 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Under his Spanish name, he directs the digitisation project Poesía Ártemis and is the UK Delegate for Crátera, where he publishes translations into Spanish. His work has appeared in various anthologies and in Poetry Life and Times. https://www.amazon.co.uk. Goddess Summons Nation Tony Martin Woods by Antonio Martínez Arboleda (Author)

 

Excerpt from Goodess Summons the Nation. Editors Note: A visit via the link allows you a Look Inside to see the Table of Contents, available also on Kindle:

 

THE NIGHT OF TRUMP

 

I woke up suffocated

by the mare of the night.

I held my heart,

my breath,

and grabbed

my iPad:

 

I looked through the screen

like an agonising wizard

who casts

his eyes

on the hidden

guts

of a crystal

ball.

 

How many emotions,

how much attention,

could the map

of the States

withstand?

 

Never,

never

red and blue,

the numbers of colleges,

the random borders

of arbitrary plots

meant to me

what they meant that night:

 

an evil that no soul

will ever forgive,

 

a twilight that our dawn

will have to redeem.

 

 

T I M E TO LEAVE B R E X I T

 

 

I’ve never been an island,

Nor a chunk of it.

I could never be one

Cause I’m a social being

made of flesh

And emotions.

And so are you.

 

 

Cake it or Leave it:

 

 

We never were an island,

In fact there is no We

That anyone speaks for.

The sea is mainly a friend

An open road for all.

Storms are exceptions,

But national hyperventilation does not help.

 

 

Cake it or Leave it:

 

 

Our hearts are big enough

To cherish complex loyalties

Like we love mothers and fathers

And brothers and sisters

We can love England,

Yorkshire,

Britain,

Leeds

Europe,

London,

Spain

In an equal

Non-conflicting manner.

 

 

Cake it or Leave it.

 

 

 

 



 

www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/people/Spanish Portuguese and_Latin American Studies/Antonio Martinez Arboleda

 

Antonio Martínez Arboleda:

Tony Martin-Woods started to write poetry for the public in 2012, at the age of 43, driven by his political indignation. That same year he also set in motion Poesía Indignada, an online publication of political poetry. He runs the poetry evening Transforming with Poetry at Inkwell, in Leeds, and collaborates with 100 Thousands Poets for Change. Tony is also known in the UK for his work as an academic and educator under his real-life name, Antonio Martínez Arboleda. His project of digitisation of poetry, Ártemis, compiles more than 100 high quality videos of Spanish poets and other Open Educational Resources. http://www.artemispoesia.com/. He is the delegate in the UK of Crátera Revista de Críticay Poesía Contemporánea , where he also publishes his work as translator from English into Spanish.  He published his first volume of poetry in Spanish, Los viajes de Diosa (The Travels of Goddess), in 2015, as a response to the Great Recession, particularly in Spain. His second book, Goddess Summons The Nation, is a critique of the ideas of nation and capitalism, mainly in the British Brexit context. It incorporates voices of culprits, victims and heroes with mordacity and rhythm. It consists of 21 poems, 18 of which are originally written in English. It is available in print and kindle in Amazon and other platforms.

 

 

 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo  visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.  See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)