Issue 3 of Of/with

Of/with: journal of immanent renditions

Issue 3

Of/with: journal of immanent renditions A biannual journal occurring in March/September ISSN 2373-3292 Editor, Felino A. Soriano All rights to the works within this issue remain with the respective artists and writers.

Cover art courtesy of Duane Locke, 2015. of-with.com of.witheditor@gmail.com

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Table of Contents Editor’s note……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………3 Ric Carfagna……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………7 J4……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….16 Linda King……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..18 Raymond Farr………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………19 Eric Hoffman………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..25 John Lowther……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….35 Poornima Laxmeshar……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….36 Steve Dalachinsky………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………37 Allison Grayhurst……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….40 Katerina Blackwood……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………41 David Greenslade……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….42 Michelle Greensblatt…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………43 Heath Brougher…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..48 Scott Thomas Outlar………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….54 Featured Artist: Regina Walker……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..56 Silvia Scheibli………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………68 Heller Levinson…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..75 Alison Ross…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..80 Mark Fleury………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….82 Marianne Szlyk……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………85 Jonathan Brooks…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………90 Featured Writer: Vernon Frazer…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..95 Yuan Changming……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..107 John Pursch………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..108 Duane Locke……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….111 Jeni Prater……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………123 María Castro Domínguez………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………124 Darren C. Demaree………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….125 MJ Duggan…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..128 John Reinhart…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….129 Grant Tarbard…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...130 3 | Of/with Issue 3

Table of Contents continued Michael Harmon……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….131 Sonja James………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..132 Sarah Frances Moran……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..137 Mark Young………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..139 Alan Britt……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..149 Danny P. Barbare………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………155 Debasis Mukhopadhyay…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………156 Rob Stuart……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………163 Bud R. Berkich……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………168 Tom Brami………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….169 Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..170 Christine Brandel………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………171 Shloka Shankar………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….174 Biography Notes………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..179

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Of/with:

journal of immanent renditions

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Editor’s Note Welcome to issue 3 of Of/with: journal of immanent renditions. This is the biggest issue thus far and I am pleased with, and thankful for, all the support both in comment and by the submissions I received. Issue 3 showcases Regina Walker as featured artist, as well as Vernon Frazer as featured writer.

I hope you enjoy this issue as I have, and thank you for the continued support.

Felino A. Soriano Editor/Publisher Of/with

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Ric Carfagna

Symphony No. 11 (the inner recesses)

1 Breath through reticence returning here to gravity’s demising wall down corridors of rain where feet of clay melt an ocean of flames

“and you have been here” have wandered the unfinished labyrinth have vanquished the ghosted minotaur have deconstructed this terrestrial clock’s privation and decay

“and you have seen”

a crow entering through an open transom the emissary of all things gelatinous and indeterminately grey an omen ushering in an apocalyptic fate to the hum of rusted engines and the beating heart of the celestial machine

“and have you seen”

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the measure of physicality with which to determine the spin of the electron residing at the galaxy’s core or the singular drop of rain possessing a sentience withheld from cognitive faculties locked within cages of flesh and steel

“and have you returned�

with a stilled reticence reincarnated from blood and sinews of myth from the womb of the once annihilated inner recesses to traverse the cyclical path laid out in angular swaths of shadow and sun a path to a wilderness of wolf-hunger and hyacinth bloom of furrowing heartbreak and framed tapestries gilded with gold of arcane eschatologies hidden within an intimate lament and of curvatures of time and space and light leaking through dimensional doorways

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14 How cathedrals and skyscrapers appear as hollowed geometries filled with hours of the forgotten (souls) breaking the seals of angelic scrolls too many and too few gulls circling the strand at low tide

”for it has been decided sentience appears a cosmic imperative”

closing the doors formerly left open in a rush to breathe the acrid factory air the sun filling the annular crevices by noon

“his song has faded through sparse oak stands into dense forested woods” unattached to the outcome and oblivious to myths of lions prowling urban alleyways

“thus the entangled atom must achieve fruition”

must observe the eyes of the indeterminate number of voiceless strangers crossing the threshold to inhabit this realm reluctant to entertain the bane of confusion or the finality representing the moth’s palsied flight through the doorway to the garden above the iron fence which rusts in winter and waits below the glittery constellations 9 | Of/with Issue 3

staring mutely into space

“and the distant architecture dissolves into a gauzy evening glow� in sapphire and crimson hues in the morphing girth of an indeterminate god in the cold steel sentience of a skeletal bridge in the candle-lit spaces forming from gravities of sound falling as hallowed solace into this darkened room

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54 Light arising from the inner recesses and the certainties of breath and blood returning to fill the void animated vessels of clay ephemeral continents existing within formations of clouds coalescing above desert plains … and what is transient returns from speculative dimensions a phoenix asleep within a clattering womb a flame masked in fleshly dissonance a heart engraved with chaos and the entropic bonds of the neutrino’s embrace … and where but within does the placid sea explode into tsunamic rage in cerebral confines of unfathomable depth wherein drowns the ghosts of pharaohs the ashen prayer to ancient deities and the fossilized veins of the pteranodon’s wing and where but within does the galaxy recede behind the eye of the sleeping lion behind the quantum monad’s veil of immaterial essence and behind negation’s flame which fills this void coalescing through matter 11 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

and time

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72 Shadow of the crow at mid-day or depth of a sea that is unfathomed by touch like tides receding from a dying body or a view from a room whose windows glaze with frost by night’s descent and here there are ghosts that wander endless corridors devoid of the breath of penitence and the heart of retribution whose bones are the hollow instruments of shamanic dances whose flesh is ash blown by cyclonic winds whose limbs cannot feel cellular constellations gestating in weightless cosmic sentience and whose eyes cannot see a fog encroaching at the sea’s edge or the shadow of the crow entering into humanity’s dream

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85 (suite no.9)

…aspects of illusion…

I Your shadow crosses the wall and in a room beyond voices of lives unraveling inanimate objects breathed into life flourishes of sun grazing the sill and out a window a garden an iris bent by the wind II And your words have returned with the centrifugal force of electrons in motion with the passion of flames arisen from embers to the silence of ashes blowing across a furrowed ground III And this light in your eye has not differentiated day from night the dead from the living of the unceasing flow of blood in the veins or the primordial timbre of the embryo’s heart IV This mirror before you is without substance 14 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

is without form a diffuse array of atoms hovering as in an illusion cast through an open doorway a bleak eidolon portending a fate seared on the pages of an arcane manuscript lost in a rising riptide surge V And does a formal synthesis exist returned to here to the density of assimilation to the current moment passing as a fatuous impression in a cubist collage rendered as a three dimensional frame or as one word without resonance a depth lost behind clouded eyelids and the iron-reality sky that lies above all substance and spirit form all matter gestating in pain all sense of the unreachable beatitude echoing as fate ending existence in shadow and disillusion

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j4

Invisible Hits

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Trouble with Autobiography

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Linda King Words 2 reality exists within perception cardboard paper-doll props waterfalling points of view spatial momentum barter a way of knowing your alibi this silent room

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Raymond Farr Tall Owl Credit Card Man Doing His Fives by the Thought of a Lake In hallowed ironic soft shoes The baby sitter eats himself His sublime rectum X-ray isn’t gloomy to touch openly Or else Lysol equals Love & across the aisle— The window of the plane!

The piano ragging mushroom clouds of sleep!

Just one cartoon petal Of a red velvet tear drop & the pages blacken like a frying pan Getting up & walking over Tall owl credit card man is doing his fives by the thought of a lake It’s like moving a can with a .22 rifle The illusion is a cupcake of summer warmth The very mention of his death Is an easel breaking down To fit in a Saab

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A Nude Descending a Staircase Is Not Always a Nude Descending a Staircase It is still light outside when I tell you A nude descending a staircase Is not always a nude descending a staircase & evening is a small dog walking along The concrete edges of a river embankment If we wait for dusk the water goes grey in our eyes & it’s like we’re just sitting around knitting electricity & because our brains have totally shut down Our life expectancy is 12:43 p. m. today & the room is a pressure cooker & we’re like braking to a halt wherever the bottom is & I’m like a somber twin to the joy of yr sunrise & like a human skeleton of small talk I bleed my way back into bed every morning & wrapped up in sky I see everything twice I dive into sleep facing a wall of double exposures & like a sound like a wish I go beyond any door It’s like I’m walking up the wall a wallflower & drowning inches from the sun On someone else’s perfect afternoon But the room in Cell III… I’d like it even darker at the edges now Not 10th Century darker exactly but that’s ok It seems I’m a man in a scene in a film & I’m someone looking for a subject to paint I call myself Thing One & Thing Two & it’s like I’m someone sitting next to you & you say you have plans & you can’t Change the future not even for me

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Angst of the Large Transparent Man 1: None of This Is True I loved being Modern, there was always Something or someone orange in the grass wearing flip flops Or this small insect droning disgorged from a tablet Everything could’ve been like music I guess But I saw these 2 interns from Apple I knew gas up at Sunoco & drive a Ford Fusion into the guessing game of a fountain 1 mile long I had just eaten the moon, you understand, out of a handful of cosmos & I felt I could lie about anything & make it feel real The city’s windows were opening & all over the place winter was dying People were shouting out down to the street Some of them in shirts sleeves were dancing with lions— 12 of them in crazy Ted Berrigan shoes

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2: The Grammar to Break Making War Simmering iambs Of pure glass Ezra plops the fish heads in Inventing a garden I dream he’ll rouse himself To tend one day Out of which shall sprout The 10 little shadows That will love him without fear & because this city curses its pigeons But loves them harshly Though just I strategize ubiquity!

The 10 fingers of Time dragging on Like a bad holiday Ipso facto—the grammar To break making war! & where “I” is a friend Not found in nature “I” is a good dead protagonist “I” celebrates existence On our ordinary street

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3: One Unforgiving Eye Blinded by Color In the poet’s philosophy of one unforgiving eye blinded by color the beautiful ants of Key West devour the ocean like a half eaten waffle. & everything is what it always already was—the heart of a dead parrot painted on the floor. & so we pedal up the glowing path to Nietzsche’s house, the sun punching our faces like a beautiful woman. & so we believe, wrongly, that nothing we write can make it all strange again, that nothing will be left but a thousand psychedelic feathers, a parrot’s corpse disguised as the ocean & 26 words for a girl scorching plantains.

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4: Laughing My Bronze Laughter At some point I’m laughing my bronze laughter So much depending upon what’s real On what there is just to say— The same seven cats entering Page after page a doll house in flames!

On tiny tiny end tables the poet is ink I tell you His voice is an echo sometimes dying laughing Is it possible to know him?

He’s taken his Paxil He is buzzing up strangers To many lip-reading doors

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Eric Hoffman 24 November 1832.

Died my sister Margaret Tucker.

Farewell, dear girl.

We anchor upon a few.

Teach me to make trifles, Trifles & work with consistency – Pass on, pure Soul!

To the opening of heaven.

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When we read we acquire A crystallization of ourselves, These books of science, How the mind can achieve communion.

It is only the body, the blood – A sentiment translated into symbol, A symbol transmuted into sentiment.

Is this a new life? Or a new failure?

A prophet warms Candles of ignorance.

Amongst his books The dim light Renders them illegible.

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Dr. Johnson rightly defends Conversation upon the weather.

With more reason we at sea Beat that topic thin.

We are pensioners of the wind.

The weathercock is the wisest man.

If the wind should forget to blow, We must eat our masts.

Now we all await a smoother sea To stand at our toilette, Pleased that there is a time For all things under the moon, So that no man need give A dinner party in a brig’s cabin Nor shave himself by gulf lightening.

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I am without skill As much at sea as on land.

My ignorance astonishes me.

How little I comprehend this world, Which seems to me a millstone.

Like this ship, I hope & drift, Yet this ship will, God willing, Reach shore, whereas I am a shipwreck continually sinking, Only to rise to the surface & sink once again.

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I know so little of history Or of metaphysics & must profess myself The poorest of philosophers.

I am pale from all my idle hours Spent staring at a book From which it is impossible to learn – Imagine if this captain had only A text to tell him of the sea, We’d never reach our destination.

The only benefit of my ignorance Is the affection it affords me Of the wise, who revel in displaying Superior knowledge.

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Another day as beautiful as ever Shines on the monotonous sea, & all the minstrelsy of nature rings, A capricious shell, sometimes mute as wood, A marine archetype That murmurs only when there is already noise.

The water is warm to the hands, & far below you see motes of light by day & streams of fire by night.

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The day is sad The night is careful The heart is leaded down That exact justice is done That the soul is immortal That the best is true That the mind discerns all & seeks itself in all things

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Well, blithe traveler, what cheer?

What have the sea & stars & mounting winds & discontented thoughts sung In your attentive ears?

The slumbering old giant Cannot bestir himself To loom up for the past time Of his upstart grandchildren As they come now, Shoal after shoal, To salute their old progenitor, The old Adam of all.

Sleep on, old sire, There is muscle & nerve & enterprise in us now, Your poor spawn Who have sucked the air & ripened in the sunshine Of the cold west, To steer our ships To your very ports & thrust Our inquisitive American eyes Into your towns & towers.

So be good now, old gentleman.

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England, this Gibraltar of propriety, A paradise of comfort & plenty, Is, like Spencer's Bower of Bliss, A false paradise, where art conquers nature, Where an ash-colored sky Confounds night & day, & smoke & soot Make all times & seasons one hue, Discolors saliva, poisons the air, Corrodes the monuments & buildings.

A terrible machine has possessed These women & men & hardly even thought is free.

All is false & forged – A cold, barren, almost arctic isle Made luxurious through artifice.

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To the English, a gesture upsets, As it is almost secret, a surprise, A newness, a kind of traveler.

They wear faded wardrobes of the past, They masquerade new lands On marble floors, where nothing grows.

Man's elasticity & hope Must remain on the Allegheny ranges Or nowhere at all.

In America, nature lies sleeping, Almost conscious, & so gives A certain tristesse, Like the swamp's rank vegetation, Or forests steeped in dew & rain.

In the sea-wide sky-skirted prairie, It lies, driven away From the trim hedge-rows Of this over-cultivated island Where everyone is on good behavior & must be dressed for dinner by six.

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John Lowther A Sonnet from 555 Not knowing what else to do I work from obsession.

And perhaps it is, and ought to be, insoluble.

But it is neither singular, nor anomalous.

It is the other's gaze that wins out and decides.

Decadence is the recognition of an emotional and intellectual need for depravity.

Anti love because there are cooler ways to cry.

Unfortunately, I cannot obtain electronic copies of the ocean.

I still could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.

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Poornima Laxmeshwar Live like a perfume 1.

Summer night fragrance Wrapped in your arms The thirst for my solitude 2.

The aroma of the incense sticks At the end of it We’re plain ash 3.

Smell of the spices The bazaar hides I can see the burning Stare of its mistress 4.

I become my own stink The rot of my thoughts Spreading faster than plague Touch me once You will be what I am 5.

The owl tries to sing The notes as free as a scent‌

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Steve Dalachinsky

Bird Watchers #2 37 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

tilling the air (eating dream) articulate complaints de party insults re: leaf tables alarm edibles edible muted sleep (others) exhaust (fumes) open multitudes din smoking lobby separate race flounders desisn <0> 1 (9) 2 other repeating count â&#x20AC;&#x201C; habit various shells squeezed young herbal gloss hard-of-seeing sour scowl while missed appetite brook goes strangely adlib unfamiliar yrarbil â&#x20AC;&#x201C; frequent stranger debunked away print smharb unique textiles text styles tiled mosaic against grave seriopus pen appalling thief transpires rickety br(other) m(other) - appear weak week collection glared hard furious uncover = take off recover = put on bathe re frain be tray s(tale) late e mit flush precise stub toward unnatural death within the parent mill vile nt e labor ate emit time immerse weight scowl sour scowl sour curly cropped miden bathing born astonished munching feline stew g(r)aze greys grZE grays confused lost scuttled curly cropped denim immersed weight mined wet up hold story upholstery sheets choice shower

alc dov tis 38 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

elom elom articulate and mol(e)ded peril formed too late u tu late born astonished.

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Allison Grayhurst Structures I pretend to own Organs flayed Nightmares understood God is a scientist, a retina with constricted veins, dictating an obituary with every birth.

Circular spots; ink-stains, light-stains . . . there are so many preconceptions I need to let go of.

I must grasp that rationality and chaos both are immature theories, primitive understandings.

Nothing can be drawn to scale. Inside the void, it is fizzing, being expelled then absorbed with a brief division and then a brief collision - beautiful osmosis.

I saw a strawberry swallowed, progress from being a fruit to being a taste-bud treasure. I was engulfed in vastness, cultivating a pattern.

But there is no pattern, though there is geometry, formula, and muscles functioning by invariable laws.

God loves most things with a sense of humour, with an unexpected discharge. Energy cannot be damaged, but it can pulse too quickly, get caught in a tachycardia loop, be confined to a fixed pathway like a spasm, repeating, stagnant in its activity. That is not love. It leads to heart failure, lacking arousal, inflammation, surprise. That is a condition where sludge is formed and purity is suffocated, and all and all it is not very crisp. The result is not creation, movement only, not breathing.

I know I am not meant to hear the angels flutter, but I hear them anyways. Some nights they enjoy a quick wing-shudder, jettisoning in and out of phase. On my sloping rooftop, near my bedroom window, they say to me: pregnancy demands a gentle cultivation, a willingness for a foreign inclusion. They say: do not look for equilibrium because exact balance would mean obliteration.

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Katerina Blackwood Late Mid-August Late mid-August reveries Speak of something unrequited As the cicadas chirp their final songs, Like a grand cadence, Ending the descant.

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David Greenslade

Chairs can be tremendous fun and here is a chair enjoying itself. Party horns roll out from the back-rest and sharp, mischievous arrows stamp the laminated floor. When the door opens and you-know-who looks in, these stunts immediately recoil deep into the chair. The names chairs call us behind our backs withdraw as well. Many of these names and games are harmless but it depends on the chair and whom they talk about. Take a look at the Chairs of Yalta â&#x20AC;&#x201C; clearly keeping a secret.

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Michelle Greenblatt 16/ Standing at the limen of the infinite one humid, heavy-leaded day, capacity for speech begins To flee her: her tongue ties, refuses to form common words: even the simplest syllables fall away.

Scarlett, who feels compelled to count the passage of seconds by grandfather Clock, wristwatch, and metronome is smashing every clockface she sees.

The absence of oxygen and other life / giving properties in this bleak, black-bitten mise en Scène is evidenced by Scarlett’s labored breathing and her mind’s slow, inevitable surrender.

Scorched settings evidence lack of rain; her body slowly gives way to the submergence of stale air.

Obsessive efforts at calibrating skywide mileage from within are another spectacular example of failure.

Reductive alkali fires beat percussive, flaming blue fists at her windowpanes.

His encircling space is round is flat is rigid is permissive: it needs no remaking.

Now that she’s discovered he loves her / complete lack of emotional affect, she searches for content In contextual chaos: he’ll keep rapping, rapping at her chamber door (quoth the sadist, evermore

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18/ The universe swerved when they met, shapes and songs transforming into Curses; her unspoken words went ghosting across the star-scarred onyx sky.

Eyes, body, and mind lend her asymmetrical Identities; each opens into the zeroes he closes.

He speaks in hemotoxic verse, splashing detailed flashes of randomized images across Meaningless vistas, vivid panoramic murals which (he informs her) symbolize nothing.

The dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shambles have scattered in shatterpieces around her, Lacerated by light. She sways in her senses, into and out of mattering.

Every photograph he snapped renders her absence In shadow. When she was alive, he filled her up with death.

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19/ Ever since he severed her / access to her brain1, wave after aching crimson wave Floods her / neural pathways as her blood goes viciously banging through her veins.

The fierce blaze of her black-furious eyelight shapes her face, its characteristic, deadlyShadowed darkness slashed through by the slim, wicked-smiling reflection of her silver blade.

Dreams of paradise decompose upon waking, depositing ache and emptiness in their place. MegaBytes of pain-data litter her nervous system, distributing packets of anguish with clockwork regularity.

He claims relocation does wonders for stilted, unruly emotions.

His is insinuated danger, woven into darkness, cloaked in snow.

Mirror-signals channeling sunlight obscure the shouts of DANGER Signs. Her triturating sanity goes unnoticed as they skip past grave after grave.

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21/ The glass has been falling all day long; the walking wind stalks overhead, transmuting bitter Afternoon into grim dusk, spreading the zone of cold unrest across the grey anesthetized sky.

Brilliant orbs of cobalt sky are sucked into the open mouth of the beckoning Black chasm, intent on expanding its endings in its ceaseless search for closure.

She watches as the cracked atoms of pleasure fly outward from his mind, His face is the fixed transparency branded into every blank space she creates.

Light is pulled inward by the currents of indiscernible places toward the polar Core of silent waiting. Blade-sharp, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s far from the reach any words of ours.

If she could only leave this place, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d step out of the pale rejected Garment of her flesh and walk into the waiting arms of emptiness.

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26/ Oblivion uproots daylit symphonies; despair sets itself down Heavily. She stacks her pills and chambers a round: spin. click.

Twilight is when dimensions slip: instincts and beliefs turn easily friable; She finds the right silence to muzzle every impurity, and Ophelia sleeps on.

This rented mental-life is shot / through with petty doubts And insecurities, multiplying unarguable uncertainties.

Networked currents (resonant, carnal, electric) carry a teeming abyss of fractured realities Through her bloodstream. Revenants hover at the edges of black holes and follow wherever she goes.

He is etched in every constellation (And the stars are eating themselves).

Nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a burning / up of questions. Dreams She belljarred long ago return now as obsessions.

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Heath Brougher Haphazardly Deliberate Mankind has built up like building-blocks itself into a state of established and set rulesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; shackles, constraining the individual to be morphed into the herd; different geometrical Earthly spots adorn themselves with varying customs to keep everyone on the same page so that a Manmade abstraction of thought will chain the populace together with any outsider being picked offâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; shunned and shushed and loudly pushed away so as to no longer interfere with the spurious structure the masses have built for themselves without thought and lied into existenceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

[insane asylums were founded upon this ideology]

always keeping the community well greased and running smoothly so they can cuddle within its warm untruth just like any pack animal, any herd animal, any extant communal thing, viruses of course included and considered.

Gravity pulling things together en masse 48 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

just as it states in the Rulebook of the Universe.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just usually those things are not sentient beings.

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The Vulture's Grandiosity Under the slime of sky, filthy things acrawl, american fangs drip with venom; the learning enemy slowly catching on thoughtwise; antagonist for hire—it won't be hard to find one, maybe the supra everyman in this land of resurgent malaria and silken guillotines; such chryselephantine thoughts cut down by the Patriot Axe halfswung by robotic religion across the neckless roads in the deadcold of night—the rose at midnight bleeding beneath the luminiferous ether; a nation suffering from McDonald's Syndrome, bloated, limped amuck, gone kindleburning, bookburning; it is like an assembly line— now the fleshen Patriot Axe cuts down again on our open-eyed thoughts, never hearing of a recent Buddhist battlefield not sparked by white men the supra hands, the mangled populace— hypocritical and imperialistic as all in nature, in evolution, sing out in unison “Hurrah for plastic flowers!” left to their profligate materialism, their favorite distraction, the new american pastime; they wash their brains in the cable news basin, receiving their opinions.

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A Pack of Matches from the Parasite Hotel Flying jelly-drenched flies nourished by a bounty of sticky household

bowling for luck the rigor evergreen mortis

turns off black sky

amphibian amplifier high with volume snapping always snapping

streetside air

silly insectivore tongue thrown at the bugs never-missing

fat dies off

the diving board waves displace glassy ripples

June weaves here her humid pint of happy

pyromaniac pulse flickers struck dim weak match bangs its head catching wick

over the rough blazing until

wax drinks it smothered.

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Alice in Etherland And lilylicked polyprose heretical newfangler of fingernails silentying the spacetalk phone [there is so much just not so much down here on this Earthly asphalt] liverlived silentdream occurs accursing robbingstole all the appleblades subwaying back to the Universe on Broadway St. coughing among the metaltrainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ricocheting speed passing other stations breezing byfaces.

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Spin Now Around

(As with all my poems, this is a found poem. I found it in my mind.)

A mark is made; one breath taken and the entire world changed; the constantly fluctuating structure shifted at its heel; even one babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breath tilts and pulls, teeters and pushes, all raveled in this rapture; feelings bleed-out across colonies, countries, invisible lines, arbitrary demarcations, the pained and happy ones all the same; that distant unmet girl blows away with dust; energies released.... everything shifted, that clear dust clogging, cloaking everything between what's perceivable and not.... ruffles, waves, gnarled for the good, the bad, the same. (and we dare not mutter anything about light, or insect eyes, because we already haveâ&#x20AC;Ś and paid for it in dead bodies).

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Scott Thomas Outlar Sponge Squeeze in a Twisted Terrain Suntan schizophrenia swallowing Ouroboros with a mixed shot of sweet sweat elixir Solar tonic eclipse blips across the radar as it rummages through the lungs pickpocketing the stomach lining of a swollen organ paradise Humming a bacterial singsong along to the backwash of acid dehydration mineral decomposition Disintegration through digestion whitewashing the interior with liquid alkaline plasma theory to send the parasites into a frenzy scurrying to the edge of oblivion kicked out of paradise no more free ride fallen hard from the garden exiled from the guts worms to the dust maggots to the ash mosquito blood splashed upon the canvass of healthy organism cellular regeneration

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Multiplying through Ancient Division Haphazard equations slice through equilibrium’s precarious balance shifting the tidal wave symmetry of free range anticipation as a blood bath lunar eclipse escalates over a muted horizon happily careening between meteor showers of isolated electrons exposed to the source of atom bomb belch vomiting forth a kaleidoscopic skyline symphony with amber neon hues of translucent transformative transgressions to tease against gravity’s fierce tug of war with heaven’s jealous forces No winners nor losers in the ageless struggle between the eternal poles of Order and Chaos entwined in the throes of passionate fervor loving each other with a violent hatred that knows no bounds playing their necessary roles to keep harmony and rhythm in perfect accord

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Featured Artist: Regina Walker

â&#x20AC;&#x153; I look to capture emotions and images and intangible elements in my photography that are both obvious and obscure. There are many ways of seeing and I seek to capture every day images and present them in a unique way. I believe the camera is a tool that can be used in many ways, including as a paintbrush, and I strive to expand the medium to be ever more inclusive.

â&#x20AC;?

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13th Street

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Bricks

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Broken

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Green Rose

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Speak in Silence

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The Bat Phone Where do memories go?

I still have the book of poetry you gave me.

Pablo Neruda.

You would send me quotes from poems that made you think of me and my heart would swell.

Where do feelings no longer felt go?

I can close my eyes and remember your breath.

Our breaths.

Breathing as one.

Where does the past go?

I can still hear the soundtrack of you, the music, but I don't remember your voice that well anymore.

The volume grows lower and lower and I strain to hear you.

The voice I heard almost daily and now still hear in my faded, long ago dreams.

How can desire be abolished?

Desire no longer shared.

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Silvia Scheibli Song of the Orange-fronted Parakeet Screeching bromeliads in forked branches of Primavera trees emphasize sleep The velvet crown of emerald primordial voices in my dream glistens like opals beneath the yellow eye ring of you feathered serpent

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Song of the Jaguar Lime-feathered jaguar conveys a message with neon syllables to my bones of eagles & serpents in tones of fire No power equals his - not the ocean beneath the surface of Jupiter nor the exquisite bromeliad jungle heat Only monsoon rains are devoted to sooth my quetzal-blistered tongue drums & trumpet claws

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Song of the Guitarron With emerald guitarron & three quarter moon pink neon humidity descends my wine glass Trumpets cascade in a circle of odalisque drums while you El cantante Mexicano in obsidian & silver dance unaware on my blue-throated lips of night

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Heller Levinson 0

moreover there was a baying abeyance braying a festival of wills brewing boiling catapult cochineal cluster formations unsurpassing hygiene replete fibrous delicacies improving kinesthetics abetting layover pains on a regular basis far removed from the tomatoes rinse pluralistic download the vines pietistic collusions overdue subscriptionism fancified tetherings weight merciless odors winds replete frost laden caring scant wing across the breast

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o moreover if hardly ever circumspection equipped with horsehair leads to conscriptionism â&#x20AC;&#x201C;

wilywillinggillygullygullying guttergollygallimaufry â&#x20AC;&#x201C; clutterglut --on the eve of lot considerations promotional reckless hardy pimples upgrade moat that is, demote, cluster in accordances concord girth & antebellum wrath lollipop pedals canoe patterns of nightfall tranquillize silence indebtedness takes a tank painkillers a bad rap across the withers of mare hare harried nostalgias reservations encumbrances wheat grows silly sultry silky slyly alluring skirts a-flutter transmogrification & the symbolism of haunch follow your hunch es make good bunches so juicy behind the wheel

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0

moreover exports are down which when you recalculate based upon current sums summaries & currencies cost earnest a privilege prioritized keepsake protective custody providing Camelot & then some so many ways to skin a foresail family names are remote often sound of bell to make mostly music from afar taxing not libelous Dr. Zizmor says you can look great today & take your time to pay

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Renascence: A Meditation on The Horned Underwater Panther

crawdads, mudpuppies, minnows, & the underwater panther can grow back dismembered limbs. legend has it that by suturing the bud of an underwater panther (the Native Americans called them Nempeshiu) to a human stump, limbs could regenerate.

Harvesting Blastema: Blastema: 1. Biol. The primary formative material of plants & animals; protoplasm. Now applied spec. to the initial matter or growth out of which any part is developed. OED ignition

stationary overruled

initial-izing to apply regenerative tissue to that which is moribund. restoration. a past fully retaliative. where does the conversation occur regeneration is not starting afresh. skin regrows but not human limbs. how not to regenerate the brain but to generate the brain where to lop off where does the missing go is disappearance a final act by what waterways. so much depends upon waterways. transportation. refreshment. the Encounter swings to the east disappearance dresses in tide as thoroughfares go the shortest way is the bribe 78 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

I come as Water Buffalo bearing the skull of wildebeest, I come as Goliath, I come to regenerate not limb but location how much of organ transplant is combinatorial combining color creates color color: the lusty migratory tales evanesce. it is the nature of tales to cement, to indemnify, to birth signification, to . . . limb-nify

* Source: THE LEGEND OF THE UNDERWATER PANTHER: LEG REGENERATION IN A TIME OF WAR, by Michael Duff.

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Alison Ross Nihilistic hedonist The nihilistic hedonist has a lot of time on her hands, so she eats time from her hands, and the world is sucked into her head. The nihilistic hedonist celebrates destruction in a grand fashion. She parties like it's B.C. 99, and crucifies the Roman prince with her eyes. The nihilistic hedonist luxuriates in the fire of baptismal fonts, and bathes in the bated breath of a hundred hail marys. The nihilist who's a hedonist smashes all realists and stuffs them into Campbell's soup cans, which feed Andy Warhol for a week.

The hedonistic nihilist loses all sense of time, and she loses her mind, and the world is drained from her head.

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William Shakespeare is trending His pipe was rife with dope, they wrote. To weed or not to weed, that was not the question as he sifted the seeds of his midsummer night's dream. Bill was nobody's fool: his sonnets were smoking and he was toking, the bong water roiling in iambic glory as he coughed up some couplets, because fuck it - the reefer upon Avon is the best on the Globe! Though to be perfectly blunt, Cannabis was villainous - but only in Act One.

Dope is not dope which falters when it's altering minds.

That's all he wroteth.

Bill was the dopest.

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Mark Fleury There Is also an Inner Moon When the Sun Takes on the shapes of things Earthly, the moon descends The Angel's eyes into mine.

The Sun's skin Is as thin as breath's division Between spirit and speech, Heart and beat, Where thought dies At the threshold of the living, Universe-sized syllable, Vibrating soul between The world's separations to Heal them into sentences.

Worldly things are sounds, soul Vibrations named from within an Angelic community of appleSeeded sunrises.

The Sun also Takes on the shapes of Angels, Who'll miss the moon Most of all Because it points the way home.

The Angel's eyes are a healed heart.

The faraway feeling trembles speech.

Halfway there, The Sun spreads its wings.

The tremble is in between Home and the world.

The tremble of speech shapes The apple that the breath of doubt Casts a shadow across.

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Home from bones of separateness.

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Lightning Waterfall It's the sound of the inner Sun's distance To its outer Moon.

It's the patterns Of tree bark.

It's the kaleidoscopes around The pupils of your eyes.

The Moon in my mind and I Share the same inner Sun's Music; each sound is a note Full of endless space, Each separation the dawn Of a fifth dimensional prison Cell whose only doorway out Is in the eyes of others.

Souls of worlds are carried there.

And I carry a Window in my mind From your eyes to your heart: it's an X-ray of the two sides Of your brain turning Into wings To fly to Spirit City. The last time You took your Light there it was Called Atlantis.

Earth has its Own eyes, too. It's Where our vision is shared.

The third eye, one chakra Higher than ego's intellect, Sees the music that heals All separations from now.

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Marianne Szlyk Listening to Robert Glasper’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” The last song escapes your laptop and rises just above your head.

A black man’s voice fuzzes, then disappears around the brilliant corners.

With a flick of a switch, the drum crisps.

The voice reappears.

Glasper remembers Nirvana’s song.

You don’t.

Other music blasted out of the clothing stores on Jamaica Ave. in Queens.

The hoop-earring girls in neon leggings and high-tops and lemon raspberry perfume danced down the sidewalks to “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless).”

They were singing along with her la da dee la dah dah.

Dressed for success at your temp job, you wanted to sing and dance with them.

Dressed to grade papers, you dance now.

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While Standing In Front of the Refrigerator Door On this refrigerator magnet, sugary, slushy ocean battles with raspberry sky at sunrise.

Trees and shrubs brandish lime green and lemon yellow leaves. Banana whipped cream islands melt in the sun.

Between them, a licorice-colored woman bears a mango basket of fruit – yellow and purple-tastes and scents you’ll never know.

The tropical ice cream contained in pints on the other side of the refrigerator door is but a pale reflection of this magnet.

You wonder if you should have bought fruit instead, but you remember the supermarket’s guava, its hard, pale flesh as tasteless as your neighbor’s roses are unscented.

The tropical ice cream’s brilliant mango, Irish moss, and soursop mediated by American milk and cream are enough for this stormy summer when the only light is inside the refrigerator.

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Midsummer It could still be spring in this neighborhood, suddenly warm after so much rain and chilliness.

Trees are in bloom, but they are pawlonia or stewartia, not spring’s cherries or dogwood.

The afternoon lingers on past spring’s sunset.

Men in khakis, women in bright shifts pass in pairs, leaving work, heading to dinner or drinks, wandering downtown, strolling home.

Conjured by vinyl, CD, Pandora, and YouTube, the ghost of Blossom Dearie hovers above.

This July afternoon we are already past the Fourth, marching on towards Labor Day, passing through other people’s vacations, being short-staffed at work, expecting thunderstorms, steaminess, Saturday afternoons spent indoors at the gym.

Still, in this neighborhood, on this Friday, it could be spring.

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After Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s Between Two Worlds (1939), Late afternoon hangs heavy with brown haze the color of water from rusty pipes; the ocean breeze does not cool.

Freed from Saturday at Woolworth’s, girls in high-waist khaki shorts walk to the beach nonetheless.

It is no cooler anywhere else, and they walk everywhere, thighs muscling, the color of the potatoes they do not eat .

Unwashed hair wrapped up in haze-colored cotton scarves, the girls stump through the sand past beach grass, rocks, a dead tree, and a bicycle tire.

Inch by inch, foot by foot in last year’s shoes, the girls make their way to the hidden water, cold ocean at low tide.

The sky blisters, dark clouds burning, about to burst into flame this summer of nineteen thirty-nine.

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Sophia, What Might Have Been She tends her lawn of rocks and cacti, the grass and flowers long since dead, the fruit and avocado trees brittle sticks cut down, bundled, and left at the curb.

On the other side of a magnifying glass, the sun scrutinizes her.

She sniffs. She coughs. She scans the mountains for smoke.

It is always creeping into her poems, her dreams, her hair, her clothes although she tells herself that what she sees is just haze.

She will not have to leave home.

She will not have to sleep among strangers.

Still she tastes her fears, the black that bitters, the hiss in the garden.

There is nothing more to burn, nothing more.

All of her writing hides in the cloud with the books and music she loves most.

She has long since lived alone.

There is nothing left to burn.

Sipping bottled water from Minnesota, a package a college friend has sent her, she remembers his letter, her house, herself.

There is always something left to burn.

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Jonathan Brooks

Colonadde Chandelier

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Royal Motel II

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Swinging from the Chandelier

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The Biltmore Hotel

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WE

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Featured Writer: Vernon Frazer

“ My approach to writing combines my knowledge of literature and jazz. Spontaneity is key. The element of surprise continually leads me to new discoveries. A poem often begins with a series of phrases which coalesce into a verbal stream that takes its own direction and fills the page in the manner most suitable to its expression. Some pieces anchor themselves to the left margin, while others seek their own regions of the page to fill. Some poems extend themselves into the realm of graphic elements, which blend with the language in a way that affects the readers perception of the poem’s linguistic elements. My work emphasizes sound and rhythm over literal meaning, creating a “sonic canvas” for the page. Each poem contains its own epiphany, but the reader’s participation shapes its nature.

”

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Past Histories Passing Along

a slide freak riding the monday chute:

“DON’T BUY ANY WOODEN PARAGRAMS”

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fixtures setting a platelet bent the messaging cordials the way they were driven

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“DON’T EAT ANY WOODEN PARADIGMS” an offshore warning given with no safe place to land

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Storied Bulls

pamplona rushes loading the timer sprocket gathered for a fool's disclaimer the bulls' thrown headings resonate stampeding hungry wattage clones whose reparations parked their way shocking footage repealed encomium flash-hook erasing dental tract tracing a blue denial cooling its coiled temper to flare at the weight of repealed standards left to savage the dry-rot whisper seeking heat where fashion drew polyp jumpers aching over naked fields no coal standard applied against the beat of a former dissuasion left curried in the field mix as the display that replayed the faces of pungent assassins blazing dreams and variations in every fit of motivic violence charging

the threat of the reddening scene

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Moving the Fish Tide Forward balming missives held in a prideful hand * wind chills to stillness a stasis as bricked emotion sloshing at gunwales an ache through a leaky transit * ominous eclectic shock filtered to scale, the gill breath electric transfusion shocks the tail fin through strands that break its passage before the creaky thrash bends against silence crashing the arc of sound * left calmly missing in the portly lane the ride sandwiched no quid pro quo to try thematic pacing * each slice takes its own measure charging to the post

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Anomic Neon Angst the ocular neon cavity shares a secret fluorescence of clam diced and halved under the shelling a gaining propensity mixed for spliced renewal no cordon left

attached to orchard

frenzy passage a crossfire alley spokes ensue in the cycling run a retreat beaten to score victory out of reruns scalpel penetration obsolete enticed its undoing whenever the eye can be third a distal bricolage quandary distilled to aviary enclosure brinks deleterious to the frozen edge flickering invitation detached from its osmotic pillar

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Delayed Uprising weasel detergent panoptic diaphragm removal aim your sturgeon forklift steadied as she maculates cortical reruns autonomy venture plasma bleeds the dark beat my plaster crate to the car despite your coptic syllogisms encrusted dilemma couches decline the smell of rank positioned thematic slouches cordially no matter the sunshine plasma dictates insurgents breathing calypso in arrears or on the late mike resurgent emergence vents caustic reprobation threats apocalypse deterrent rodent reruns cheesy to remember salted logic urban grease hat fanatic adorable fedora your thatch is showing backward trounce your own trouser soufflĂŠ easy on the soap deterrent no mongrels allow switch creeds when thrashing molecules desiccate viper breath hungers under gashes a snake in the graph pilates expert ration tastes the prequel silence a muzzled topping disturbance turns a somber yellow 105 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

dyspeptic mention precluded the essence of presence as diaphragm cache your stilted remorse optical dehydration returns project a victor in the anomaly future rehearsals were past

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Yuan Changming Greenish Wish You wish to be a Douglas fir Tall, straight, almost immortal But you stand like a Peking willow Prone to cankers, full of twisted twigs Worse still, you are not so resistant As the authentic willow that can bend gracefully Shake off all its unwanted leaves in autumn When there is a wind blowing even from nowhere No matter how much sunshine you receive During the summer, you have nothing but scars To show off against winter storms The scars that you can never shake off

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John Pursch Two Days Again Entering Two Days Again by parachute, Lola scans the high desert mesas for suitably perfidious environs, such as bobbled hair weave artisan rotation guild headwaters, blabbing casserole pollution bedwetters in ensemble reproductive nylon calving rituals, and porphyry on ductile parricide engorgement ceremonies, any of which wooden snatch aurally suffice for suspicion-laden bovine carriage peekers, tweaking their nightly futon pills from sectioned vantage points of gobbling beauty haircut counters gone awry in shin taxonomies of forelock pestilence and smothered jests of digital distress.

“Codger that, Aleph Naughty Swan, eyes seize supine glands in silky mooch inveiglement politeness bibs,” sack knowledge spills from Lola’s microscopic phoneme disintegration module, rendering blowgun English into steep lobotic jabber, parseable by antsy androidal life forms in any of a billion listening whirled coordinate systems, referential pontiffs nun withstanding fly swatter grace comportment pelicans.

“Sigh squared,” murmurs Kabuki Clem, clamming up instantly, soaping to glut back to wispy lobotic trysting trio of surely repetitively purloined numbnut trivia enfoldment specialists in sand job corgi-porgy puttin’ him high on the stygian hog rider’s perennial jet embargo deportment lust, known to merchants in shiny automated garden parietal pseudo-human abstractions from crammed Teutonic specimens of nevermind sunset adoration bleat to stormy sworn and ornery kitten cabs of oozing deli rapprochement ruminations after Rimjob Corsican’s fueled republican entendre.

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Ewes mired have taught yer focal alley mendicants that eyes could snapper climb black from sallow dig regression scurvy tours like toes above, spurting sleeves knot swell an oaf to smack canny federated segue from well wad hoot canoes chest swat to switch heifer thread of mottled and posse bleat besotted change of venue or Nubian tree hallowed tease what mightily crumb shaft her snow.

Pet ewers wood soporifically torpedo panning shares of Punic couriers in gory coverings of cloned sets in gripping topiary placement gargles, pompous fish betrayal deemed banned from natal lies in scintillating Tory grime elastic citations of dictionary youth.

Still pellucid Lola scans the faucet of approaching countryside, backlit by sidereal imitation phylum timeline picture, aging in reverse through lapped pavement particles of dangling leggy harpsichord induction thermostats, smatterings of timed descent flickering in filched retinal flee to neural stone encouragement of alibis and coddled garter smoke to bulbous peach pit bargains over guarded bongo shallot egress. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Flopping down in piddling shack hand turtle clods, stipulated monthly set of Days Again spar tinted cadmium bellow, stinging mined tires with siren weights of Terran Hoax remembrance lease of sold pyres, fusible glimmers, and coated moss to cancelled disease,â&#x20AC;? she drones in rote remission reply soot, dimpling mental cooling fans to smear the final landing into just-enabled variants to render plausible whirled histories in doubt.

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“Serried grout, Lola; startling to sluice tracking hove yer genital coordinates.

Spaced tumbling swill commonly ascend to sheep dip pie bleep suffrage intense, nein, sated, spavined, sex, hives, porn, trees, also, swan, heroic zed,” Kabuki presses a thousand steering croaks in blindly incubated speech, synchronized with Lola’s gantry port of sentience to Days Again in lazy concomitant free-for-all of drifting coincidence, rallied in mythical corroboration of surfeit blessing clover load, axe your alleyway from pasted salivation to planned expectoration’s abhorrent pendant, swapping sows for manhandled crow memes, deadening fanny choices of mangled pheromone choirs.

Kabuki smiles as signal fades into hypostatic coffee stains on Your Nuke diner counterparts, dusty green lapels and ladled soupy tirade spittle, shuffling into corner booth on grainy evening workday hunch of crowded flophouse denizens awaiting croaker fix mutation to materialize in format thrown to Lola’s sudden handlers (smeared lobotic stereotypes of crushed penumbral semaphores, steadily derailed for this her disembarkment, sans propellers, chute safely vaporized just seconds from impact, she tumbles deftly into take-out lineage display, seamlessly in parallel with frosted arch delirium of actual distributor; a routine past-life swap).

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Duane Locke DIARIST APPROXIMATON 1 Shadowed on wall of blond bricks, The unenigmatic twists, staged unawarely From a script written by west or east, North or south atmosphere of the collective, unApproval if directly, overtly looked upon, You are benched by youth imitations and an Argument between what is then known and false, And what is then unknown and true.

But at this early age these shadow twists, The twists zips with false teeth of simulated steel Closed the window on what could be real, Or recognized as apparitions due to figs in Eden.

The dark flutter of the shadowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cheek Touching your cheek as a tenor sung a love song Was as lyrical as the non-existent musical sound, but Migration compelled a flight to fly and perch On the window of a hospital corridor Where on a stretcher you were pushed By a Cyclops who wore over his one eye, Singular dark circle. Looking at the ceiling, I wandered what were pots and pans Like in the kitchens of Atlantis under the ocean.

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DIARISTIC APPROXIMATIONS 2 Mist becomes bright space, transparent, Apparently empty, between tree-tops And the temporary propositions of clouds: The aubade is the blue jay’s chatter As dark bills examines oak wood for food.

There is the chaotic echolalia of motors Fiercely forcing themselves by mechanical axioms To operate, be steered without their consent To a meaningless destination and statist Between straight white lines. I think first Of a morning at Stonehenge when I watched A skylark arise from ground and sing in Its ascent, and then the mind shifts To human echolalia I heard on a fishing pier In a Tampa public park. The generalization spoken By a man wearing a cap with an “NY” above brim: “We live in a time never before in history When everyone, no matter, his income, Has the freedom and opportunity for self-realization.”

Marx might have said, “Self-deception of personal opinions Is the opium of the people.” But it is still morning, Although morning by conventional time measures Is rapidly departing. When one arises from The commentary on his life by his dreams, he Re-invents the daily mental leash that he hooks To himself for guidance. He prepares to obey The pull and jerks that determine his direction.

The pull and jerks might be a reporter’s guess about echoes That he read in a newspapers, or heard on TV second hand news programs. It might be due to his Ancestors’’ unexamined lives, his boss’s ignorance, But he is comfortable and happy wearing his Self-invented leash, although he does not have the least Understanding who is the master that pulls and jerks.

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DIARISTIC APPROXIMATION 7 Oceans can only be known when alone.

When with someone, anyone, oceans change.

With her, the ocean becomes a salt shaker, Salt is spread, as if spilt, between arm hairs.

A salt taste shellacs lips and tongue tip.

But salt can be brought in a blue box.

When alone, sea-gull wind shadowed, Splashed by seaweed, still on white sand, Beyond waveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tips graying, time changes.

No longer time is the tick-tock of a clock, But a jungle roar of an irregular durations, An anti-logic consolation and contradictions.

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DIARISTIC APPROXIMATION 12 I would open my scarred hand, palm down, Fingers spread apart, Pressed The sand colored purple on the gulf shore.

The sand oozed against my flesh companionship.

My knuckles became the silver streaks of mountain tops On their tips, and beneath the tips dark valleys.

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DIARISTIC APPROXIMATION 13 Time passed becomes A coverless book, But with silver pages, dazzling so bright they blind.

These silver pages without print Turn rapidly, turn at a fast speed, Without ever being turned.

It was the minute moment when I saw the blue above Speak A bird misnamed, a bird named â&#x20AC;&#x153;Man-of-war bird.â&#x20AC;?

As I watched this transforming bird spoken by the blue of the sky, I begin to feel We have, as Adam did, misnamed everything.

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DIARISTIC APPROXIMATION 19 Walking, going nowhere.

Just walking, slowly walking.

Across the street I see in large bold black letter, “Gentlemen’s Club.”

I know there are no gentlemen in this club.

I walk faster.

The club is an allegory of the world I was thrown into.

I recalled childhood tantrums.

I started running.

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Jeni Prater Red Wednesday Two pendants divided distinct collar bones – an etched virgin, her namesake, fell in front; on the other, the name of the Prophet, for her culture – she rejected the constraint of both, rejected binaries We read Nafisi on the balcony – those afternoons when the rain came down in sheets and we shared an orange and a regrettable cigarette. Her smoke rose in streaks like ribbon Asan sounded in layers and an eight-pointed star was shaped into the wrought iron bars; etched white paint fell from their exterior How rare it was she said to find even numbers, to find transparent symmetry I couldn’t disagree The nights with her were heavy, the air sticky and skin full-blooded We ran together jumping barefooted over fire – Chahārshanbeh Suri to welcome in the Iranian New Year Afterward, we were silent, restless In Oklahoma City, Chihuly hung his glass ceiling – varying textures that wavered with composing breath, a vibrant coexistence between bursts of sapphire and violet and orange:

Oklahoma Persian Ceiling

A striking, bucolic beige against dynamic color Even then, I thought it an unlikely coalescence between two.

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María Castro Domínguez Homecoming The hat on the bed laid the last spoon of red words said spilling a door ajar stain of coffee cup and biscuits wasted tooth marks the dog wearily whining a phone suddenly stops a door chimes he said he´d be back ants pick up streaks of rust whilst a spider hurriedly constructs a whisper flickers the musty air coming here.

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Darren C. Demaree NUDE MALE WITH ECHO #313 On the occasion I breathe Alabama instead of Ohio I am instantly more dangerous. I could have brought rubble to Tuscaloosa, but I was too afraid that it might destroy me first.

I went back to Ohio where they knew how to deal with my act.

I went back to Ohio to live in a city that wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t punch back.

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NUDE MALE WITH ECHO #314 I know you want to miss the animal struggle against the idea that it is an animal. We accept the idea of elevation, because we do not know how to describe adrenaline without breaking whole tree limbs across our knee.

I am not in contest with these ideas.

I am an animal & I am not an animal.

I move like animal & I sing like an animal, but I cannot draw myself without these glasses.

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NUDE MALE WITH ECHO #315 I want to be coal & I will be coal.

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MJ Duggan THE DAY BEFORE THE DARKNESS FELL Yellow hound rushing the emerald bough breath dancing with stems of broken steam, white haired cloud darts the pallor skyway above silver headed tree-tops circling the tentative day, entangled complexion to our charlatan dreams.

Beats of the jaded night plough into insults the beers were drank with gleeful speed, I was woken by a chasm of the passengers daylight this horrid execution engulfing our dusting sight, an hour before the darkness would breathe.

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John Reinhart Tomorrow I mountains wake tell read I I

I

will

will

my

a

stop Again.

will I clean

love I will

poem. will

the I

flowers.

will

will

Tomorrow

coffee.

I

write will

I

to

him

I

walk those

I

dog.

write buy

her.

drinking a will

father I

tickets.

poem.

plant

bathroom.

will

the up

will climb

129 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

Grant Tarbard Coffee Futures It begins with a czeve brass pot buried In an old man’s beard of charcoal ashes.

Is it the full grind that makes fortunes so Easily consumed with each pixie cup Depleted? Beads of pilgrimage as black As melancholy, shapes trapped in the rich Thick gloop; turn over the cup, seal it tight As a coffin, shake it well. A wish is Made as the elfin saucer is placed on Top and a coin laid on top of that to Dispel bad omens, left to cool so the Low tide inky webbed fortune doesn’t mislead.

Prize open the tomb of granules to the Aromatic air in the purple steam Interpreting shapes for divination.

Cup held at chest level, swivelled counterClockwise, the drained cup speaks with a whisper Both of the tense thighs of the past and the Silk lamp breast of the future, hand in hand With a weeping joy of beasts and angels Both, falling together with sooty dew Of cheekbones melting with the pierced sky’s bell.

The cup is opened like a peacock’s tail, Psalms of brown eyed handsome planets gather In the sphere of your wounds and all the nights Come welling in your throat, soon to shed tears.

Swill with the tipped jus, wishes granted with A fortune that sticks with stained lungs singing.

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Michael Harmon A Day of Rain Makes a water snake.

Writhing the oily skin of an asphalt elephant.

A pachyderm’s lament.

Small bubbles wry the serpent’s back.

Ghastly, the mottled sky white. Springs Interrogations of another (sort).

What resonations drip this chill rapport?

How wind-blown mist hangs Overhead? Why search this pour cause?

Close the curtain on a downbeat note.

Snake goals. Elephant dreams of a dry night.

Corrugated, rooftops variegated applause.

Weathering the answer. Why. The pachyderm’s wish for oblivion.

The serpent’s one and only wan.

You have been gone four years already.

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Sonja James THE ESSENTIAL NUDE SERIES Standing Nude: Rae Armantrout

Eye

Head Eye

Mouth Shoulder Breast

Breast T O R S O

Hip

Leg

Foot

L e g Foot

“Because the ocean answers the moon, because the shirt is ready.”

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Standing Nude: Jean Valentine

Eye

Head Eye Mouth

Shoulder Breast

Breast T O R S O

Foot

Leg

Hip L e g Foot

“Because sugar heats the body, because water cools the tongue.”

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Seated Figure: Yusef Komunyakaa

Eye

Head

Mouth Shoulder S P I N E Thigh Chair

C H A I R Buttocks Chair

Knee L e g Foot “Because the tank is empty, because the song redeems.”

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Reclining Nude: W.S. Merwin

Shoulder

Torso Foot

Leg Leg

H E A D

Neck

Shoulder

Buttocks Hand

Foot

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Because one cloud slips behind another, because silence is holy.â&#x20AC;?

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Reclining Nude: Michael Collier H E A D

Shoulder Torso Foot

Leg

Buttocks

Shoulder

Leg Foot

Elbow Hand

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Because each word is fiction, because ochre walks the plank.â&#x20AC;?

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Sarah Frances Moran Scrawl In this child’s play word trial We’re spawning revolutions of cowards Gods on paper In a place where everyone just ooohs and ahhhs non-participants in show and tell only spectators intellectual dummies with supposed talents with imposed trends … and hipness Hughes’ Motto torn up and demonized redrafted into nothing more than a poetic nothing The crowd rolls by loving all the pretties and all the petites The marrow of those geniuses sucked dry and awaiting perfect moments for resurrection Stuck in a standstill of poetic indifference and literary apathy love apathy hurt apathy fear the myopia running deeper and deeper 137 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

with every ooh and ahh of this non-revolutionary, revolution

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Mark Young A line from Kurt Schwitters Even though the U.S. military paid millions for this retro classic frame fused with futuristic technology, there are disadvantages in having an equation in the form y = mx + b.

Chemical hazards are present; &, despite success in other mammals, it remains difficult to successfully intercept feral swamp buffalo in their continued invasion of adult stem cells. Nothing, in any material, can prevent an explosion of synonyms.

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Everybody's favorite shower Beneath snow lodged cattails the gerenuk head ends up having a short-lived symptom which is the mirror image of the Perseids.

The naked woman with four breasts that eat only the juiciest most nutritious plants is having difficulty passing urine.

I am working on tools that help me understand the texts of Guppy's analysis of the China Fund which is currently set as my default Bible version.

Forty horses & riders are going out to buy milk. They need that many since two rounds of psychological testing have demonstrated they all have a problem with short-term memory.

This cute girl is taking her top off in a sandwich shop just as the major meteor showers approach her weedy intersection.

(I really shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have added that last bit.)

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an index of thirst lines All-stars from the bar & cocktail world were present Boston 2014 came & went like rolling thunder contact with the vascular components increases does double duty here & in the last colon enough to call this the best weekend we've had in a while feeding lines of code into a computer file they keep secret greasing my vocal gears in case Frank never shows his thirst for varied information has evolved ill patients often have distressful episodes of severe thirst judge me by my size, do you? knee deep in a river (dying of thirst) lean face, blistered with sunburn, haggard with hunger & thirst. maiden song finally on youtube! normal amounts to ease thirst are fine, but not extra for pleasure on the wall beside the dresser she's attached a white sheet plenty of comedy fodder from the O.J. Simpson trial queer junkie & her endless cellular thirst recap: the thirst is not real SPECIAL CHAIN DRIVE 28TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION the abandonment of rail lines has limited job opportunities Union Mail Line in red letters down his face vexed & tormented, he asks why thirst is omitted we're going through this poem line-by-line X-Factor Gatorade was relabeled as Be Tough Yukon 12 bottle sampler thirst aid kit picked up by fate zygotes cry because they are thirsty.

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Nonet Dire Straits live from SĂŁo Paulo. Life in a carioca city. Illusion.

Painted geometrics over brocade. Vera Wang. Imitation.

Madame CĂŠzanne sits in a yellow chair.

Impressionism.

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Combinatorics I know nothing about anything, except perhaps the classification of butterfliesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; & even that restricted.

Sizes (two) & five colors: black, white, blue, green, & yellow. Still, ten combinations can be got from that. & then to flowers. The black left out & red replaces. But. Add short or long stemmed. Another factor, a doubled number.

Such learning is geometrically progressed & moves across the species, the areas of concern.

Now back to butterflies, & find, define the wing above, the wing below. Two colors sometimes, & shades of definition. Such possible variety. The birds.

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Berdaje

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Fraternity

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Hรถbel

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Lamplight

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Sodality

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Alan Britt TODAY IS A STRANGE DAY for me as it is for everyone.

I long to be someone else, someplace else, as does everyone.

I want to speak the language of seaweed, urchins, mollusks, entire oceans.

I want my words to stagger between a wild geranium’s lilac shoulder blades.

I want my thoughts to spiral like smoke inside this room adorned by Manet’s train station at Gare Saint-Lazare.

Today I want many things, only some of which appeal to others since others reassess the blush of their own words; I know that.

But thoughts like smoke, what can I say?

Life, as we know, is copious like a wasp trapped in an old poet’s soul one day & a rufous hummingbird sipping nectar from a fresh poem the next.

Today I want many things, only some of which appeal to others.

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DEATH FANDANGO I don’t believe we pay proper homage to death.

Though I should, I don’t.

Death whose eyes cling to the velvet thighs of a bumbler straight into a white carnation’s grieving mouth.

Death, naturally, is a part of life.

But some days death to me is a banker hiding my mortgage in the darkness of his worsted wool pocket.

The lining of his suit reminds me of satin wallpaper peeled from a coffin.

Ah, death, why should I worry today?

I couldn’t die if I stumbled beneath a train.

Today my body is twisted around the brass gears of a kitchen wall clock—this much I can tell you as I loiter the rat-infested alley of this poem— some days you just can’t die!

Certain days on the hour a vulture leaps from my clock, its ragged shoulders hunched, cape trailing the musty air, bruised light leaking through its squinty eyes.

When I sleep its scented buzz enters my snore, & it takes notice of my disenchanted brain.

Seems I’m late with another payment, & I’m always late with appointments for prayer.

I’m late for this & that; I disregard conventional judgement, bored as I am with protocol, which doesn’t place me in good stead with my intimate friend.

At this very moment, before the proper stroke of a pompous hour, in the middle of the tiny inhale of an unfinished second, unperturbed, casual as any scavenger & slightly stooped, death lifts its ashen wing to paint a pallid shadow 150 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

along the tired length of my repossessed soul.

Apparently, death has a sense of humor like when it tosses the unborn into the same wooden cart as old women who miscarried light-years ago, then upon them proceeds to dump software executives who hearts expired while vacationing in Bermuda.

Death sometimes expresses good nature, though, & even forgives the occasional mock, what with so many blasphemous words that orbit its hooked beak like rotten mango flies.

But, alas, how unfortunate it is for you & me that death also has the memory of an elephant & takes keen interest in the slightest vibration from each coiled brass spring inside every clock in our tightly wound universe.

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VOLUPTUOUS AIR PLANTS Voluptuous air plants devour the souls of barn owls.

Their velocity forces you to abandon your bones in an ebony chair.

A disembodied head races through a steel room.

Amazingly, even chaos invents escape routes.

Tonight Venus wears a blue silk robe embroidered with voluptuous air plants.

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SEESAW I ride a seesaw daily.

On the opposite end sits death.

We go up & down, up & down, up & down.

I gaze into death’s indigo eyes.

A clouded leopard sleeps inside each eye.

Leaning forward, death’s fur caresses my forehead.

Its hands resemble fish that flash like lightening.

We don’t talk much.

Steady grip on our seesaw, we fly up & down, up & down, up & down.

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DRAGON As I doze in my soft Scandinavian teal leather chair, a dragon enters my window & sniffs my forehead where a god has been nesting.

The flash of swords like fish in my brain.

Swordsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; jeweled handles encrusted with eyes reflecting the bottom of the sea.

From this dragon scales fall like fossilized leaves & petrified dust as it hisses laughter & seals my bones inside a corroded bronze bell.

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Danny P. Barbare The Swallowtail Butterfly The swallowtail butterfly flies all about. Here and there. Lands on the asphalt riddled with grass. Opening and shutting its wings.

Fast as a blur. It dances in air. As all beautiful things are lovelier when free. An encounter is like a moment of magic to make me forget my troubles of the day. Blue and black speckled wings. Dizzy as can be.

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Debasis Mukhopadhyay If nothingness was the beating heart of a frog After Franz Kafka's The Trial

- Tell me the last line, she says and lowers her lips to take a sip. The flavor of the double bergamot black tea descends into the pit of the book that lies between us.

- Like a dog! Like a dog! I say and open the page. The page ruffles a page within. I stand before it and pass through the white. A jumble of strands of spokes & spirals cling to my face. The dreams and wounds. But not a violet abloom. The years go beyond the age of my corpse. No bells calling out yesterdays. The blade comes and the long-lost moon. I finally recognize I'm allowed to die...

- O poor frog, your heart is still beating! What are you?

- Like a dog! Like a dog! I say and fold the page in a hundred folds to unfold a crease that never comes out.

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Hallelujah!

Shadows play game while one always hears a raspy laughter of sun in the background. Heart breathes faintly. Wings flying in the dusk. Home! Where? Walk & walk. Walk with a gilthead for a cliff of hope in the salt desert. Rub your body with the marinade. Make sure it goes inside the slit of your sunken eyes & wrinkled lips that the breeze's fading in & out. No songs, no dews. Sighing hues. Fingers claiming the flesh of bones, eyes claiming old dreams' dampness. Wait, wait, waiting. Night falls, leaves fall, fallen words in the skull. A star dazzles still the eyes of a dead frog in the afar night pond.

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For Cynthia in the lower vase

leaves savor the mouth in the lower vase voice is age sparrows cluster in the back of the throat before & after before & after echoes 're always meant to be because & yes into the eyes it all came true now a raw dew on your frontal lobe says a stay close note dead orchid thou shall sleep no more

ripples at heart bridge again the band's to play wait wait waiting a flow a flush a stall in the lower vase memories scroll 158 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

having to shine on Kandinsky's shimmering bath it all came true there ain't no endings that come to you before & after before & after

just the world has to pass like a raw dew on your frontal lobe a stay close note dead orchid beloved head thou shall sleep again in the lower vase

159 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

..no nothing

My mother lives seven thousand miles away from me and believes, one day, I will be rich beyond her dreams of a Caliph. Miles upon miles again, mother mine has been counting a thousand and one nights to see a crown of light.

My wife lives with me. We have been married for fifteen years or more and now at the edge of her eyes sits no hope. I'm, yes, run over. She keeps her mind busy traveling miles away. If she misses the train to Narnia, she does not mind to hop on the train to Russia to meet Anna Karenina. Everything has to be so afar.

My two and half years old son will have far bigger to grow. At the door of his smile, I'm jumping off a twig hello hello squirrel. The death note of a poet has become his favorite lullaby. In the evening, I have to sing it loud to put him to sleep away from any other imagination.

I have found a role as a dishwasher. I would be asking for too much, if I wanted to be a teacher again in this land. All these years, I asked for too much. All these years, I thought black coffee, broken words, looming clouds are my kind. And all these years, my ribs pressed through the thought I'm the other. And now, I'm so afar, I'm not the other.

Every day, my mother kneels to the earth to find me again amongst the sprouts. I'm not there, mom.

I won't ever be. She has erased my life book from her memory.

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Every day, songs whirl about my wife's head in the car and pulls a curtain. She senses no formaldehyde behind the sky. The suicide of her father does not creep up the stream. I'm there though.

Every day, my son likes to wear yellow. Yellow under the blue sky as summer sails. His hands like to reclaim sands. Come, draw a box around me.

And every day, I restart playing the poet. I just have to invent it out in the roots. They all wish me luck placing it elsewhere. Where?

That's when... No nothing no nothing ever happens.

No nothing, no nothing on x ray. No allergy, no asthma. no reflux. I have been coughing when I eat nowadays.

Hope it's not cancer, says my wife. My mother worries afar tracing the river of ripples circling around.

My son tells me to sit beside him and to look on the big idle sky. I sing I was no exception always thought life will make sense one of these days.

Doc says no nothing, just wait for the results. Meanwhile, all I've got to do is to wear a mask and respire normally.

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The maze where the poppies grow most densely Sweet bramble, hold still & don’t let anything move. My fallen words tinkle tinkle in the night of your eyes. What do you want of them? A breathing bath lily? Stopped catkins in a vase? Laminariales in the polar seas, a cold bed of algae? A blue dawn awash afar? A maze where the poppies grow most densely? An anvil corset holding your chocolate ribs? Ants' trail warming your bilious mouth? Worms of conscience that sleep to writhe and wither? An ovate moon watching its own cadaver floating in the backwaters? A jazz sky looming over a pool of bitter blood? Lifeless birds with live green flesh and beaks that bleed? An exquisite macaw that can’t rid of its own chain? Flooding daffodils of memory? A hero and an idiot at the same time in the same eyes? Alas, you have not given me your body but its bones of solitude. Alas, you have not given me your soul but its smoky cleft. Hold still & don’t ever move. My words will be everything you may want out of them in life. A yesterday that is not me.

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Rob Stuart

Ping Pong

n n p

i g

o

p g

163 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

A Concrete Dante I. I

N F

E R N O

II. O R I O T A P U R G III.

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Ghost (A ‘cast’ of the spaces in Rachel Whiteread’s name)

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Silent Letters

pscighleandte

166 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall

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Bud R. Berkich Snapshot Photoprojections of space inside, outside and what took place in the in-between: living sepia on daguerreotype filtered-in black and white, not forgotten; I dream your dream.

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Tom Brami Snapchat for Kennedy’s Holiday You’re not to know the lingo or Snapchat the caffeinated monkeys.

What if the sun tries to go on but blimps Like a stage play or some other harbour Of labour? What if tropical heat melts the hotel Or absorbs you like a cult?

This is us - aerobic techno On genocide ride Dripping feet In offshore bonanza.

We’re against casino decisions, We’re bellicose like the exchange rate Or London.

The sky (a black sponge) Dictates the rule.

Ex-pats in theory forge trajectory To rhino show.

Those without banter carve germ colony, Street meats and historical milkshakes.

Angkor Wat is a colony Where you can remove your eye, Insert fromage and other foodstuffs Or Mark Rothko.

What if it fell out of motorbike traffic?

Scapegoat perforating tarmac for ceramic coconut.

Take a photo.

169 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi Faithfulness We should learn faithfulness from a tree.

He sticks by his land throughout his lifeWhen the sun is hot, and winter storms out in a rage, When rain soaks the earthly canvas, and all colors fade.

He stands by the human progress without discrimination, And provides life and living for all.

His faith is larger than any creed and belief.

But he doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean to offend anyoneWhen people worship stones his leaves flap to cheer them up.

When enthusiasts propagate he donates his blood for their paperwork.

He is no saint as he offers fruits than empty sermons.

He is simply a tree who brings life to all.

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Christine Brandel ANGELA, A VASE, A BIRDHOUSE The red bowl emerges from behind my --the glass case! the glass case! bearing witness to the asp, the pear, the pit of it a queen was once returned, a soldier turned and Angela spilled paint on the floor, did more gold merging with white no brushes, just flowers falling gently down on the red (but instead) jars of blue beans yellow beans white liquid up, up across to where the little worm sleeps the price to pay is great, the price of tea in China.

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Bubble Alone

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Bubble and Friend

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Shloka Shankar Moot Point I would hide my head in a bag.

Expression, sure enough, is a freedom.

Just like pure applesauce.

Or chasing the wind like you would a naked judicial claim.

Expression, sure enough, is a freedom.

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve learned the jiggery-pokery ways of my mind.

Or chasing the wind like you would a naked judicial claim.

When was the last time we got together?

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve learned the jiggery-pokery ways of my mind.

Just like pure applesauce.

When was the last time we got together?

I would hide my head in a bag.

Note: This is a pantoum that uses some of the phrases by Justice Antonin Scalia.

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Epiphany

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Nada

176 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

Ravages of Time

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Shadows

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Biography Notes Ric Carfagna was born and educated in Boston Massachusetts.

He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently: Symphonies Nos. 5,& 9 published by White Sky Books-

https://archive.org/details/SymphonyNo.5_175 http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/ric-carfagna/symphony-no-9/paperback/product21128532.html His poetry has evolved from the early radical experiments of his first two books, Confluential Trajectories and Porchcat Nadir, to the unsettling existential mosaics of his multi-book project

Notes On NonExistence.

Ric lives in rural central Massachusetts with his wife, cellist Mary Carfagna and daughters, Emilia and Aria. j4 is a collective of four persons, all given names beginning with j, who are compelled to explore transindividual composition Linda King is the author of Dream Street Details and Reality Wayfarers - both from Shoe Music Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals in Canada and internationally Room, CV2, Existere, Gargoyle, Blazevox, E-ratio, Fourteen Hills.....

She lives and writes by the sea on The Sunshine Coast of British Columbia.

Raymond Farr is author of Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths 2011), & Writing What For? across the Mourning Sky (Blue & Yellow Dog 2012), a recent chapbook, Eating the Word NOISE! (White Knuckle Chaps 2015) & a full length collection of poems Poetry in the Age of Zero Grav (Blue & Yellow Dog 2015). He is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog http://blueyellowdog.weebly.com About Eric Hoffman: I am the author of eleven collections of poetry, the most recent being Forms of Life (Dos Madres, 2015). My critical biography of poet George Oppen, Oppen: A Narrative, was published by Shearsman in 2013. I have also edited three volumes of the University Press of Mississippi's celebrated Conversations with Comics Artists series, edited by M. Thomas Inge, Dave Sim: Conversations, Chester Brown: Conversations (both 2013) and Seth: Conversations (2015).

Poems, articles, essays and reviews have appeared worldwide, including Jacket2, Talisman, E-Ratio, Poetry Flash, Rain Taxi, Smartish Pace, otoliths, Big Bridge, Moriah, Indefinite Space, and many others.

John Lowtherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work appears in The Lattice Inside and Another South and Held to the Letter (with Dana Lisa Young) is forthcoming. He works in video, photography, paint and performance. His dissertation-in-progress tries to reimagine psychoanalysis with intersex and transgender lives as pointers toward our ever-expanding subjective potential.

Poornima Laxmeshwar has authored a small poetry collection named Anything But Poetry published by Writers Workshop. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in magazines such as Vayavya, The Aerogram, Northeast Review, Kitaab, Brown Critique, The Stockholm review to name a few. Her haiku has appeared in several magazines. She resides in Bangalore and works as content writer for a living.

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Poet/collagist STEVE DALACHINSKY was born in Brooklyn after the last big war and has managed to survive lots of little wars. His book The Final Nite (Ugly Duckling Presse) won the PEN Oakland National Book Award. His most recent books are Fools Gold (2014 feral press), a superintendent's eyes (revised and expanded 2013 - unbearable/ autonomedia) and flying home, a collaboration with German visual artist Sig Bang Schcmidt (Paris Lit Up Press 2015). His latest cd is The Fallout of Dreams with Dave Liebman and Richie Beirach (Roguart 2014). He is a 2014 recipient of a Chevalier D’ le Ordre des Artes et Lettres.

Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has over 500 poems published in more than 250 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers in 1995. Since then she has published eleven other books of poetry and six collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press in December 2012. More recently, her chapbook Surrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series in October 2014. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com Katerina Blackwood is a young college student working towards a degree in English. She began writing poetry and short fiction in 7th grade and writing has since been an ever-present part of her life. She draws much of her inspiration from classic poets, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Elinor Wylie, as well as from contemporary poetry. When she is not working on her next piece, one can find her playing video games, reading a good book, or watching an animation.

David Greenslade writes in Welsh and English and works closely with visual artists. Recent books include Rarely Pretty Reasonable and Y Gwiblu Brith, both from Dark Windows Press. more can be seen at: http://www.literaturewales.org/writers-of-wales/i/129918/desc/greenslade-david/ Michelle Greenblatt is the poetry and music editor for Unlikely Stories. A two-time Pushcart-Prize nominee, the poems in this issue are from her fifth full-length book, tentatively titled ShatterPatterns, a collection of themed ghazals that takes the reader into a haunted and enchanted alternate world. ShatterPatterns combines Michelle’s love of surrealist imagery with story-telling through avant-garde explorations into love, loss, isolation, insanity, and the possibility of redemption through resurrection. Greenblatt’s fourth full-length book, ASHES AND SEEDS, is a collection of prose poetry, free verse poems, and post-modern haibuns. Contact Michelle if you wish to purchase a copy. She can be reached at michelle@unlikelystories.org or find her on her Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/coldermoon Heath Brougher lives in York, PA and attended Temple University. He recently finished his first chapbook, with two more on the way, as well as a full-length book of poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Icebox Journal, BlazeVOX, Otoliths, Diverse Voices Quarterly, experiential-experimental-literature, MiPOesias, Main Street Rag, *Star 82 Review, Of/With, Five2One Magazine, Carnival, Inscape Literary Journal, and elsewhere.

Scott Thomas Outlar spends the hours flowing and fluxing with the ever changing currents of the Tao River while laughing at and/or weeping over life's existential nature. His words have appeared recently in venues such as Dissident Voice, Yellow Chair Review, Harbinger Asylum, Poetry Quarterly, and The Angry Manifesto. His chapbook "Songs of a Dissident" will be released in January 180 | O f / w i t h I s s u e 3

of 2016 through Transcendent Zero Press. Links to his published work can be found at 17numa.wordpress.com.

Regina Walker is a psychotherapist, photographer and writer in NYC. Her writing and artwork have appeared in numerous publications including Substance Abuse Newsletter, The Fix (regular contributing writer since 2014 http://www.thefix.com/content/regina-walker ), Honeysuckle Magazine, Cartier Street Review, The Bicycle Review, Hip Mama, Health and Wellness Magazine, Basement Magazine, Widdershins, Renew Magazine, Clockwise Cat, Forbes.com, The Philosophical Mother, and Spaces.

Silvia Scheibli lives in the Arizona/Mexico Borderlands on a migratory fly-way. An avid birder and photographer, she has published eight books of poems including - Silk Angels, The Moon Rises in

the Rattlesnakesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mouth, A Desert Storm, Under the Loquat Tree and Parabola Dreams in 2013 with Alan Britt, co-author.

In 2003 Silvia Scheibliâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poems were translated into Spanish and included in La Adelfa Amarga, an anthology edited by Miguel Angel Zapata and published in Lima, Peru. Other anthologies include: The Immanentist Anthology, Art of the Superconscious, published by The Smith; Mantras, an Anthology of Immanentist Poetry edited by Alan Britt; New Generation Poetry, edited by Fred Wolven.

Besides anthologies her poems consistently appear in magazines such as, The Bitter Oleander, Black

Moon: Poetry of Imagination, Ann Arbor Review and Of/with: Journal of Immanentist Renditions.

Heller Levinson's latest publication is WRACK LARIAT (Black Widow Press, 2015).

Clockwise Cat publisher and editor Alison Ross has been published here, there, elsewhere and

nowhere. She experienced rave-levels of ecstasy when she found out she was shortlisted for the 2014 Erbacce Prize among 20 others, down from 5,000 entries. She was also giddily bemused when was nominated for the Best of the Net a few years back, though she lost out to savvier scribes.

Alison's chapbook, Clockwise Cats, released by the venerable Fowlpox Press, will subvert your dissonant dystopia into a euphonious utopia of Zen-Surrealist bliss.

Mark Fleury lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He has recently had poems published in VEXT Magazine, Counterexample Poetics, Clockwise Cat, Of / With, Down in the Dirt, Altpoetics, and Experiential Experimental Literature. His most recent book of poems, The Precious Surreal Door Opened was published by The Medulla Review Publishing in 2014. Mark's first three books, published between 2010 and 2012 through Scars Publications and Design, are scheduled to be published in 2015 as a one book trilogy entitled Seeing Strangers.

Marianne Szlyk is the editor of The Song Is... , an associate poetry editor at Potomac Review, and a professor of English at Montgomery College. Recently, she published her first chapbook with Kind of a Hurricane Press: http://barometricpressures.blogspot.com/2014/10/listening-to-electriccambodia-looking.html. Her new chapbook, I Dream of Empathy (published by Flutter Press), can be found here: https://www.createspace.com/5713941. Her poems have appeared in a variety of online and print venues, including Long Exposure, Front Porch Review, Bottlec[r]ap, ken*again, Of/with, bird's thumb, Yellow Chair Review, Snapping Twig, Flutter Poetry Journal, and Black Poppy Review. She hopes that you will consider sending work to her magazine. For more information about it, see this link: http://thesongis.blogspot.com/.

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Jonathan Brooks is an award winning Photographer/Visual Artist, whose work has been exhibited in Miami, NYC, Amsterdam, France, Germany, and the UK. Brooks recently attended Creative Capital Foundation's Professional Development Program Workshop, a partnership with the Florida Department of Cultural Affairs and FSU. The foundation began as an initiative of the Andy Warhol Foundation and invests in artists who shape the future.

The workshop was funded by The National Endowment for the Arts.

His work was just displayed at The Louvre, is being used as decor in a Twentieth Century Fox film starring Anna Kendrick and Zac Efron, was featured on the CW Network's The Vampire Diaries, and is available at West Elm. In 2014, he was awarded Best In Show/Photo Of The Year at the inaugural Miami Photo Salon Festival during Miami's prestigious Art Week. The same week, his work was featured on a German TV popular primetime show 'Nur die Liebe zählt'.

In 2013, he was featured on one of the biggest billboards in Time Square, and was a Top Ten Finalist in Digital Photo Pro and HD Video Pro Magazine's 7th Annual Emerging Pro Still and Motion Competition, where he finished his first short film.

He also the author of The True Cuba.

WWW.JONATHANBROOKS.NET Vernon Frazer's Selected IMPROVISATIONS is the most recent publication of his many books of poetry and fiction. Frazer's work has appeared in Aught, Big Bridge, Drunken Boat, Exquisite Corpse, First Intensity, Golden Handcuffs Review, Jack Magazine, Lost and Found Times, Moria, Otoliths and many other literary magazines. His web site is http://vernonfrazer.net. Frazer is married.

Yuan Changming, 8-time Pushcart nominee and author of 5 chapbooks (including Kinship [2015] and The Origin of Letters [2015]), began to learn English at 19 and published monographs on translation before moving to Canada. Currently editing Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver, Changming has since mid-2005 had poetry appearing in 1059 literary publications across 36 countries, including Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Cincinnati Review and Threepenny Review.

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available in paperback at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks. His pi-related experimental lit-rap video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.

Duane Locke Jeni Prater is a recent graduate of Wellesley College, where she studied English lit and creative writing. She has spent her first year out of college teaching university writing skills and poetry classes in Malaysia and reading blissfully nonacademic books. She also has an unexplained fondness for elephants.

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Maria Castro Dominguez was born in London. Written books of poetry including “Four Hands” (A Cuatro Manos) with Jacobo Valcárcel. Published poems in “Blaze Vox”, “Retort”, “The Argotist” , “Message in a Bottle” "Bareknuckle Poet" and many more. Passionate about words and languages hence a poet, philologist and avid reader. Her blogs and newspaper are: http://poetryandwritingnow.blogspot.com.es/,https://writingmadenew.wordpress.com/ and https: //paper.li/marcasdom/1416316419#!headlines About Darren C. Demaree: My poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including the South Dakota Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Diagram, and the Colorado Review.

I am the author of "As We Refer To Our Bodies" (2013, 8th House), "Temporary Champions" (2014, Main Street Rag), "The Pony Governor" (2015, After the Pause Press), and "Not For Art Nor Prayer" (2015, 8th House). I am the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology.

I am currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with my wife and children.

Born 1971 Bristol UK MJ Duggan is a Bristol born poet who has had poems published in The Seventh Quarry, Lunar Poetry Magazine, Dwang 2, The Apogee Journal, The Cobalt Review, Carillon, The Dawntreader, Sarasvati, The Journal, Illumen, and many others. MJ had his first collection of poems published in 2014 he is the editor of a new political themed magazine 'The Angry Manifesto', and also hosts 'An Evening Of Spoken Indulgence' at Hydra Bookshop in Bristol UK. In 2015, he won the erbacce prize for poetry.

An arsonist by trade, eccentric by avocation, John Reinhart lives in Colorado with his wife and children, and beasts aplenty, including a dog, cat, duck, goats, chickens, pigeons, and probably mice.

His poetry has recently been published in Scifaikuest, Star*Line, Fleurs du Mal, and Grievous Angel.

More of his work is available at https://www.facebook.com/pages/John-ReinhartPoet/398029117023409 Grant Tarbard is the editor of The Screech Owl and co-founder of Resurgant Press. His first collection Yellow Wolf is out now from WK Press.

Michael Harmon: B.A. in English Literature from Long Island University. B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Arizona State University. From New York, but now resides in Arizona.

Work has appeared in Riverrun (Glenn Oaks Community College, Centreville, MI), The Raintown Review, The North American Review, The Adirondack Review, and The New Formalist.

Sonja James is the author of The White Spider in My Hand (New Academia Publishing/Scarith Books, 2015) and Calling Old Ghosts to Supper (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in FIELD, Of/With: Journal of Immanent Renditions, 32 Poems, Kestrel, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crab Creek Review, The South Carolina Review, and Poet Lore, among others. New work will be published in the Gettysburg Review, Lips, December, Gargoyle, and UCity Review. Among her honors are four Pushcart Prize nominations. She has two sons and resides in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

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Sarah Frances Moran is a stick-a-love-poem-in-your-back-pocket kind of poet. She thinks Chihuahuas should rule the world and prefers their company to people 90% of the time. Her work has most recently been published or is upcoming in Elephant Journal, Rust+Moth, Maudlin House, Blackheart Magazine, Red Fez and The Bitchin' Kitsch. She is Editor/Founder of Yellow Chair Review. You may reach her at www.sarahfrancesmoran.com Mark Young is the editor of Otoliths, lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry for more than fifty-five years. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. He is the author of over thirty books, primarily poetry but also including speculative fiction & art history. A new collection of poems, Bandicoot habitat, is due out from gradient books of Finland later this year.

In August 2015 Alan Britt was invited by the Ecuadorian House of Culture Benjamín Carrión in Quito, Ecuador as part of a cultural exchange of poets between Ecuador and the United States.

During his visit, he participated in the international literary conference sponsored by La hermandad de las palabras 2015 in Babahoyo, Ecuador. In 2013 he served as judge for the 2013 The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. Also in 2013 he read poetry and presented the “Modern Trends in U.S. Poetry” at the VII International Writers’ Festival in Val-David, Canada. (http://www.flaviacosma.com/Val_David.html). His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem (http://www.loc.gov/poetry/media/avfiles/poet-poem-alan-britt.mp3) aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. His latest books are Lost Among the Hours (2015), Parabola Dreams (with Silvia Scheibli…2014) and Alone with the Terrible Universe (2011).

Danny P. Barbare resides in the Upstate of the Carolinas.

He has recently published "Christmas Poems" on Kindle at amazon.com.

Debasis Mukhopadhyay grew up in Calcutta, India and now lives in Montreal, Canada. He has a PhD in literary studies from Université Laval and extensive experience in language teaching and translation. He writes poetry in both Bengali & English. His debut collection of poetry in Bengali was published in 2005. Debasis' recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Snapping Twig, Eunoia Review, Yellow Chair Review, With Painted Words, Silver Birch Press, Of/With, Fragments of Chiaroscuro, and elsewhere. debasis mukhopadhyay Rob Stuart is a college lecturer, filmmaker and writer from the UK. He has scripted a number of award-winning short films and contributed poems to a wide range of magazines and webzines including Eye to the Telescope, Ink Sweat and Tears, Light, Lighten Up Online, M58, Magma, New Statesman, The Oldie, Otoliths and The Spectator.

Bud R. Berkich was born in Somerville and raised in Bound Brook, New Jersey. He has been writing creatively since the age of eight. Bud has had poetry, short stories, plays and book reviews published at a number of different publications, including The Idiom, The Rockhurst Review, Exit Strata, Bareback Magazine, The Screech Owl (UK), Verse-Virtual and The American Aesthetic. From 2004-2008, Bud was the liaison for poets and booksellers at the Dodge Poetry Festival. He is the co-founder and director of the Somerset Poetry Group in Bridgewater, NJ. Bud currently resides in Manville, NJ. Tom Brami taught at Monash University last year. This year, he travels.

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AMITABH VIKRAM DWIVEDI is university faculty and assistant professor of linguistics at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, India; and author of two books on lesser known Indian languages: A Grammar of Hadoti and A Grammar of Bhadarwahi. .

His Hindi poetry collection titled Chinaar kaa Sukhaa Patta (means. Dried Leaves of Chinar) is a notable contribution to contemporary Hindi poetry. He has published around 100 poems in different anthologies, journals, and magazines worldwide. Until recently, his poem â&#x20AC;&#x153;Motherâ&#x20AC;? has included as a prologue to Motherhood and War: International Perspectives (Eds.), Palgrave Macmillan Press. 2014.

Christine Brandel is a writer and photographer. In 2013, she published the chapbook, Tell This To Girls: The Panic Annie Poems, which the IndieReader described as a "well-crafted, heartbreakingly vivid set of poems, well worth a read by anyone whose heart can bear it." To balance that, she also writes a column on comedy for PopMatters and rights the world's wrongs via her character Agatha Whitt-Wellington (Miss) at Everyone Needs An Algonquin. More of her work can be found at clbwrites.com.

Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer from India. She loves experimenting with all forms of the written word and has found her niche in Japanese short-forms and found poetry. Some of her poems have recently appeared in Eunoia Review, Infinity's Kitchen, The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, Oddball Magazine, ATOMIC Poetry Journal, and The Other Bunny. She is also the founding editor of the literary & arts journal, Sonic Boom.

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