Phantastic
by Alexandra Leong
I long not to be a queen of your stupid dreams
where strange angels of subjectivated desire
struggle to fight their own inclinations
to pedestalize you –
butcher and shred you.
You make an angel in my image
She is holier and resembles you
more than she does me,
I make a monster out of you
he is decidedly meaner
and you are clearly the weaker
than either of you are real.
Your posture transmutes me to a psychosis
Creating such a vivid, comely story
out of stress, and nothing.
My systems attenuated by annihilation
I have to fight the impulse to invert our positions
only to find them mirrored in demonic clouds
that shroud primordial terror,
I hallucinated that we were equal.
I prefer a monstrosity to a pure bipolar,
false obverse.
Every time we warred or sparred
It was an act of building a joint alternate universe
Every timed I succumbed
in the event of loving you
instead of being a grand love,
a revolutionary love of two -
I spiraled down a classical scene
of hysteria, psychosis, desire –
You enthralled me.
Is it possible to subvert you? Overthrow or engage you?
Defeated and dissonant –
I rebuked you.
As long as you understand my reasons
for-itself in this alternative,
there is a space carved out of my thoughts
which give shape to a dark, cloudless universe
not so far removed from this anomaly
of the first world–
where everything was colloquial and frivolous.
But the difference is I am not yours
and,
you too are free of laboring
in vain.
*
Alexandra Leong is an MFA Graduate Writing student at California College of the Arts studying fiction, poetry, and recently, film. She studied Literature and Political Theory at the University of California Santa Cruz (2010), and is a lover of art and poetry.
photo by permacultured
Ode to Mist
by Samantha Seo
Free spirits soaring in the wind,
spiraling to end of the earth,
always invisible from night.
Autumn leaves flow in painted gust,
I move through fields of daffodils,
wander up prairies and down small hills
as if I was a melody that you created for me.
We race to our hidden spot
tall grasses wave in sunlight.
Prisoners held captive
at our tree fort for make-believe.
The sky buries sunlight, replaces clouds,
dome of air creates silent reflection in water,
to arise and unbuild phantom in dark relief.
With frames of rocks on the sandy shore,
the sunset brushes sandpaper against me.
I hear voices in the wind,
but rain clouds appear, vanished.
*
Samantha Seto is a writer. She has been published in various anthologies including Ceremony, The Screech Owl, Nostrovia Poetry, Soul Fountain, and Black Magnolias Journal.
photo by phil-roeder
The Last of Us
by Samantha Seo
So many decades have passed.
We grew apart between love into hate and sad letters.
Phone calls impossible for my paper flowers,
your face vanishes into crowds, escape inside our song.
I breathe into your lungs like the soprano in the opera,
my ghost will inhabit your soul.
The ground weighs beneath my feet in white hospital linen,
my headache burns past nightfall.
If our collective CPR stopped, lost charge,
our last breath would synchronize into one.
Despite every passing second alive
for all who breathed us in, a pair of doves.
Each set of lungs, colorful balloons, warm kisses,
they throw us into air and I watch you rise like rain.
*
Samantha Seto is a writer. She has been published in various anthologies including Ceremony, The Screech Owl, Nostrovia Poetry, Soul Fountain, and Black Magnolias Journal.
photo by he(art)geek
Where You From in Africa?
by Stephen Leeper
I’m from where the women’s heads are shaved and dreaded
Eyes open. Eyes closed
I’m from where old-fashioned sewing machines sit on wooden desks and dusty floors
Heads down. Legs crossed. Knees touching.
I’m from where criminals know where you keep your gun
Men walking, heads turning
I’m from where days are numbered across a sunsetting sky
Young silhouettes running along the beaches
I’m from where gazelles act shy before the camera
Tall grass unable to hide their shame
I’m from where kings play acoustic guitars
Eastern name. Western bling.
I’m from where white photographers take pictures of happy black boys
A group standing afar waiting for their close-up
*
Stephen Leeper began writing poetry when he was sixteen but he never identified himself as a poet. He began writing essays when he was eighteen but he never identified himself as an essayist. It was only this year that he started embracing his identity as a writer, applying to the MFA Writing program at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco over the summer. During his first semester he produced a chapbook of poetry with several experimental poems exploring psychological theories of ethnic identity formation. This poem is a selection from his book.
photo by futureatlas
St. Peter’s in the Loop
by Donal Mahoney
Two minutes more, Father Cal,
and you will hear another
of my strange confessions.
Right now, I’m outside
watching the rain on my glasses
running in rills.
Once inside I’ll confess
the usual stuff
with a few variations,
none essential,
all accidental,
the same plot,
the same ploys,
the same frenetic tale
I have always to tell.
Next week, I promise,
it will be different.
Next week, I promise
I’ll fall on the kneeler
and whisper
through the grille,
“Father Cal, it is I.
You know the rest.”
Next week, I won’t make
another list in the diner
across from St. Peter’s.
Next week I’ll swig
on a milkshake instead.
Father Cal, you and I
will both profit.
*
Donal Mahoney was nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. His work has been published in a variety of print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his earliest work can be found here.
photo by emilio labrador
The Unexploded Bomb
by John Grey
How to render a bomb harmless:
just say goodbye sweet, it’s over,
I’m tired of you, your family, your friends,
your dress sense, your habits,
even your voice, your smells,
the lines of your face, the feel of your hands.
Just imagine all these things,
so personal, so precious to you,
as shards scattered, splattered,
here there and everywhere.
That’s how you know it’s a bomb
and not just a balloon.
You don’t just let out the air.
You breathe it deep if anything.
*
John Grey is an Australian born poet, works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in Bryant Poetry Review, Tribeca Poetry Review and the horror anthology, “What Fears Become”with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Hurricane Review and Osiris.
photo by John Goode
Exhaustion
by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
Do I have a quickening pulse? You deserve it.
That’s quite a genius line.
And your finger, swirling, might rape a rose.
If you were a warrior, man up your game.
Plaster my forearms in milky white.
How lovely to have a glass eye.
I’d both be looking and not looking
when you put ice cubes and chilli in the bathtub.
I forget the art of squinting
but remember a tigress could dangle
a fawn by her front teeth.
So you said my heart is made of porcelain
but not my palms. They coarsen
the rustiest windowpanes and you.
I could be a wind-up doll keeps nodding her head,
despite losing her feet.
Two lovers accidentally
getting poisoned by carbon monoxide
might look better than us, today.
–
Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is a Hong Kong-born writer currently based in London, UK. She is a founding co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and the poetry editor of Fleeting Magazine. More at www.sighming.com.
photo by zaschischayuschiesia
The Last Date of Birth
by Julie Kovacs
At that turning of the season
evergreens emerald against the
first fallen snow spun sugar
on the plateau in the Rockies.
A marmot poked its head
out of the rocky ground
sat on its haunches
gazing over a herd of mountain goats
stand facing inward
their graceful horns
forming an elaborate bow
similar to the one
on the present you
gave me on my last birthday.
Suspended in disbelief
after unwrapping it
silver glitter cascaded to the floor
followed by tears of joy
carried out by the river
never to be seen
in their salty feelings again.
–
Julie Kovacs lives in Venice, Florida. Her poetry has been published in Children Churches and Daddies, Because We Write, Illogical Muse, Poems Niederngasse, Aquapolis, The Blotter, Danse Macabre, Silver Blade, The Camel Saloon, Falling Star, Blue and Yellow Dog, Veil, Moria, Nether, and Cherry Bleeds. She is the author of two poetry books: Silver Moonbeams, and The Emerald Grail. Visit her website.
photo by GaffkePhotography
Cinema Absurdity
by Sy Roth
Sitting in a darkened theater
hushed moments before the darkened screen
goes sun bright and the music wails and rattles ears
pulsating seats with their intensity,
the heart patters in anticipation
hungering for images
that come surfboarding in
on a wave of unbalancing sound
swatting the neurons in the brain awake to the other world
shackling them to the oversized lips and tongues of beings
whose words mold the storyline
actions their companion pieces.
Orgasmatronic inhalers of others’ performances
Seek escape-moments;
the movie their exoskeleton
Milk Duds and buttered popcorn finger-fuel.
Expulsion the final reward from their Garden of Eden
to the unreal streets that gobble them up
like another bag of popcorn.
–
Sy Roth is a retired school administrator and has finally found the sounds of silence and the time to think whole thoughts. This has led him to find words and the ability to shape them. He has published in Visceral Uterus, Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo, Misfits Miscellany, Mad Swirl, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre, Bitchin’ Kitch, Bong is Bard and The Eloquent Atheist. He won a poetry contest sponsored by Newsday.
photo by Sarah_Ackerman
Stinky Asphalt Machine
by Michael West
How do you find peace?
Look within.
Are you dealing with piles
Of dirty laundry, unwashed
Dishes and an unmade bed?
Or is life splashing
Like a Carribean wave
Pushing seawrack, shells
And sand between your toes,
As you sit sipping beer
Sunburnt and listless
In a canvas-covered
Wooden chair,
While the echoes of cars
Rushing over steel-girdered
Bridges crash against
Your kitchen window?
As soot settles into
Crevices you cannot wash
Clean, you cannot reach?
In foreign lands home and
Abroad, blood flows like
A cool wind over cracked stone
Walkways, and the flesh
Of children, young men
Women and old
Folks closing windows
With bony hands soon
Will rain like hailstones
Across their neighborhood
Gathering places.
Think all you can do
Is lift your drink and
Sip your powerless
Nirvana?
Think too much trouble
To get in the way
Of that stinky asphalt
Machine?
Look what happened
To the guy who laid
his legs across the tracks.
Forget the big symbol,
Forsake the passivity
Too easy to claim, give up
Thinking you have to do
Much more than care,
Than show love, than
Embody peace. Imagine
You could be true to
Yourself and not risk
A thing by just being
Peaceful, loving and
Reluctant to allow
That stinky asphalt
Machine to pave
Your life over.
Or pick up a spanner,
Toss it into the works
And hear the gears
Grind like a predator
That has bitten down
On something he
Cannot crush to dust.
–
Michael West is a poet.
photo by Clairity