Calliope Magazine November 2015 by Calliope Magazine

Cat and Chicken Detective Bureau

Night Patrol

Adel Hun

www.calliopemagazine.com 2

In This Issue 2. Cat and Chicken 4. Olivia Collins 6. Barry Yeoman 7. Jan Mason 8. Featured Artist Regina Werner 10. John Grey Lourdes A. Gautier 11. Book Review Rachel Bell 12. Gary Beck 14. Janele Johnson 15. Pijush Kanti Deb Lorette C. Luzajic 16. A. J. Huffman 17. Michael Clark David Armand 18. Chitra R Upadhyaya 19. Michael P. De Guzman 20. Adel Hun Robert Olson 21. Mary Schmidt Dixon Hearne 22. M Kaat Toy Miriam C. Jacobs 23. David M. Harris Front Cover - Soul dance Regina Werner

Back Cover - Convergence Regina Werner

Calliope Magazine November 2015 Founding Editor - Robert Olson Art Editor - Adel Baizhan Calliope Magazine is held by Baiterek Publishing Company A division of The Nest Studio Calliope Magazine is a steadfast advocate of the First Amendment; Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The expressed written comments and commentary are truly those of the artist and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors and staff of Calliope Magazine.

All content including poetry, prose and photographs are exclusive property of each contributor and hold their own copyright. Reprints or any other usage is violation of copyright without the express written permission of the publisher and or the contributing writer, visual artist or photographer. www.calliopemagazine.com

1. You must come up in the South and swear by all the things Southerners want to swear by (the Mason Dixon Line, your grandmother’s grave, the ghost of Robert E. Lee, whatever river lies closest to your town) that the answer to your life exists elsewhere. You must leave it. Completely, without a trace, as soon as the opportunity arises. You must leave cursing It. All of It. Curse the racial tension, the humidity, the Bible Belt and the sorority girls who are prettier than you. You must curse the way you were raised, you must deem everyone close-minded, and say that you’ve explored every corner of Here and Now and insist that there is nothing left. You must hate it in very specific ways, but you must not hate all of it. This is important and leaves room for inevitable nostalgia, which will make a nest somewhere dark and deep, and birth a new desire to go Back. When you leave, take a fearless and adaptable mindset. Nothing is beyond your willpower. Not the desert, not the below-zero temperatures. It’s an adventure, it’s new, it’s shiny, it’s an unmarked page. And when you arrive in your New Place, it is essential that all effort is poured into fluffing the nest in the new city, in the West. Because it belongs to you now. Put everything into your home. Down to the trinkets on the mantle, the picture frames you bought from a thrift store and they were all mismatched wood or cheap metal and they held horrible watercolors that looked more like wallpaper than portraits. But you paint the frames black and replace the pictures with your own because you recall your mother doing this in the house where you grew up.

In the making of your new home, you will emulate your mother because you are a woman and there is a necessary point in every woman’s life when she becomes coldly and bluntly aware of her likeness to her mother. Until this point, she has never allowed herself to believe it. Only a precious few are exceptions to this, but you are not, not matter how much you wish it to be so. And not only do you believe it, you accept it. You have a good mother. You will say things like “Don’t throw away that wood, I’ll make shelves of it.” Hate the beige walls of your New House not because beige is inherently bad, but because anything beige where you grew up would draw a gasp from anyone who claimed to have good taste. And you do have good taste. In the making of your new home, you will emulate your mother. It is important to realize this mimicking, but also to pretend that the New House where you now reside is your Real Home. You make friends who have real lives, you have a job, a dog that answers to you, and a man who would disrupt the earth’s orbit if that was your request. You make doctor’s appointments and pay water bills now. You have a fireplace and a woodshed with half a chord of mixed pine, cottonwood, cherry, walnut… You grumble about the state of your backyard. You’re living on your own. You get sick and he doesn’t know how to take care of your cramped, crying body and you don’t know how to explain that he can’t take care of you right now because you are alone. You are far. You don’t know why this was a good idea and how are you supposed to be a fiance anyway? You should feel surrounded by life, but you will feel alone despite your best efforts. 4

When enough time has passed, it is of the utmost importance that you return Home. It is important that your heart beats loudly as you board the plane, and you feel afraid for how much you’ve truly missed it. It is important that you are overwhelmed with the flatlands surrounding the Mississippi River, how green the vegetation seems. It is crucial to be impassioned, to love that Memphis is dirtier, the roads are bad, the trolleys are no longer running because they’ve been frequently catching on fire, the humidity traps in a consistent aroma of sewage and assorted fried foods and barbecue and asphalt. Sometimes horse urine, if you’re downtown at night when the carriage tours are out and about. To the bare bones, you must love and see with new eyes, all the things you hated. You will go on a motorcycle ride with your father through land you never found beautiful before, your neck heavy with the added weight of a helmet and the wet air. And when he asks where you want to go, you find yourself answering “Holly Springs” for no profound reason. This is because Holly Springs is merely a nesting ground for antebellum homes, a college everyone forgets about, a mostly deserted town square, the estate of a man who hoarded enough Elvis memorabilia to name his home “Graceland Too”, and a rolling, crumbling cemetery. It is here you request to stop. Once again, not for any outstanding reason, logic, or emotion. Other than maybe you, among other things, inherited your mother’s bizarre fascination with cemeteries. But simply, you realize that, buried here are people who fought in a war the West may never understand, and people who pour prestige into the names and crests of southern families.

The waxy magnolia leaves clack and shiver in a light breeze and your father is talking to a man with wrinkles so deep, they look like black fissures spreading across his face, and you’re standing in front a small, stone angel who is weeping. What makes you want to weep, too? The way time stands still and moves in tandem. Or maybe it creeps cruelly. Distorting your senses and toying with your memory. Freeze like the petrified angel. There is nothing beyond your willpower. Will time to stop. This is, perhaps, the most important step in the process—though arguably every step is dependent upon the others—but you must allow yourself to feel where you are in this moment, and understand where you are rooted and come to a deep knowing of what you have put yourself through. You must feel the verdant tree tunnels sweeping over the roads and sidewalks. The water that gathers in your lungs when you breathe in, and feel how the air is infused and steams with chlorophyll being released from what bloomed overnight because it rained the day before. You must feel the house where you grew up, and recognize that the sitting room is a different color or the rocking chair has been relocated or the flooring your parents laid years before is beginning to warp and bow. Your dog’s eyes are cloudy with age, and your youngest brother is so tall. Later, you go eat downtown and your car is stopped at a light and on the corner a small, wrinkling, black woman wields a megaphone and shouts, “Oh come to Jesus. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is not promised. Tomorrow is not promised.”

For some reason, this rings truer now than ever before because lately you’ve done things that have not guaranteed or reserved your spot in “tomorrow”. It’s a time card that doesn’t punch itself. Lately, life is a little risky. Maybe even a little sweeter. After dinner, the sun sinks into the Mississippi at dusk and it seems impossible— with land as marshy and muddy and flat as this—that the sun would not rise again simply because its path through the sky and into the horizon is so unobstructed. And it lowers itself effortlessly, perhaps taking deep breaths, marking the time as always. Again you are reminded of how time slips, a ill-shod foot trying to grip the edge of a void with weak toes. Then a lapse in balance, fouled-up posture, then the fast hard fall. All at once the greatest constant and the most fickle variable. And you’re standing in time, somehow between time zones. Seeing the markers of it at Home, but always searching for proof of it out West. You see the difference now. Timeless are the scars on a land pockmarked with monuments and cemeteries encasing great-great grandfathers of battle, men and women of yellow fever and war and movement and depressions. Timeless is the way the lawns and columns are ready for Scarlett to flounce down the steps wearing drapes. Timeless are the rivers and the old songs and angers for misdoings. Timeless is the cheerless question: how much of the past still lives here? Timeless is finding preservation, a capsule. A history of state, of self, of civilization, that breathed as recently as yesterday, and

is somehow breathing still before your eyes though you’ve been gone for so long. It’s the way the supermarkets in north Mississippi are abandoned to the weeds growing tall in rundown parking lots where children dart across the street on clattering bikes to race in circles on the cracked asphalt. Time is the too short plane ride back to your New Home. Time is how long it takes for you to get off the plane. You blink and you’re back at work. The dog who answers to you. The spaces you want to paint in a house that is somewhat yours. The man who will turn the universe in reverse, should you request it. The life you somehow, somewhere, decided to live and love. You do love it, and it hurts less than loving Home because it requires loving things that are close, and does not pick at a soul divided and secretly festering. The only beige left is in the hallway. The picture frames are painted and filled and placed on the wall. The time is passing and despite your sense of direction, you don’t know where it’s taking you. But you go. You go.

Olivia Collins

UNBALANCED NATURE I wake unrefreshed. A pall of December gray descends like a film, drapes my psyche with an undefined malaise.

It's ruminations that ruin my thoughts, twisting, turning, grasping for meaning, until only a blank stare remains.

Unlike nature, where abstractions need no defining, there is a hole in my heart the size of Chernobyl.

Red-tailed hawks grow huge wingspans from the nourishment of unlucky prey.

There is no symmetry in my mind, in the stick-figured trees.

The stream is holy water to the throngs, each tiny creature a living prayer for man.

Yet, crows flourish in the scant landscape.

The wind is hallowed, numbs the bones.

Their voices echo through the hills, perk the ears of white tailed deer standing silent in deep ravines.

These words are hollow, what expanse will let them go?

A fox trots a tree line arrogant yet shy. These creatures live without questions.

The tiny bluish speck of earth is a teardrop in the ocean of the universe.

I read Wallace Stevens and contemplate the sky.

Take my fingerprints to put on record.

Rabbits find little pockets of brush to block the breeze.

Beware of tsunamis, and look both ways before you cross the street.

Barry Yeoman Barry Yeoman was educated at Bowling Green State Univ., The Univ. of Cincinnati, and The McGregor School of Antioch Univ., in creative writing, world classics, and the humanities. He is originally from Springfield, Ohio and currently lives in London, Ohio. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming in Vagabonds Anthology, Futures Trading, Danse Macabre, Harbinger Asylum, Red Fez, Lost Coast Review, Crack the Spine, Burningword Literary Journal, Gravel, Broad River Review, Soundings Review and The Rusty Nail, among others. He was a finalist for the 2014 Rash Award in Poetry hosted by Broad River Review. You can read more of his published work at www.redfez.net/member/1168/artist

LOST AND FOUND Did you not find me a sweet precious gift? Was I not cute and innocent? Oh, I know you thought I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t very smart. What will we do with this child? As my Mother figure you chose daily beatings with your hairbrush. A beating for bringing home a B+ in music theory. As my Father figure you chose to sodomize me on a daily schedule. Molested in the church where we all gathered to pray on Sunday. Fifteen years of torture to my body and soul. Every strike to my buttocks imbedded my DNA with a New layer of determination. Penetrating every orifice of my body imbedded my DNA with a new layer of sickening disgust of myself. Lost. Lost. Lost. Thirty years of wild and disorderly days and nights. A precarious existence of alcohol, drugs, abusive relationships, abortions and attempted suicides. In an ocean of tears, nightmares that evoked anger. My own mental madness lived daily. Where to find peace in the everyday chaos? You are both gone now. Dead. Dead. Dead. Would someone open a new link to my soul? A desire to be found worthy, pretty and smart. You will have to be a patient person. It is difficult for me to be loveable. But there you were, and I rejected you at first. You were persistent. You were gentle, quiet and soft spoken. Hungry to be appreciated and loved, I left the door ajar. You entered. Finally I was no longer in the Lost Department. I had been found. Loved and put on a pedestal. At Forty years old, my new life began, protected and Adored by you. I am no longer Lost. You found me and made me whole. You found me worthy, loved and respected.

Jan Mason

Have you ever experienced that feeling? You’ll know if you have. The feeling you get when you’ve done a job and stepped back to take a look at your work. Viewing everything in its right place. The satisfaction of completion. The joy of cleanness. Strangely satisfying. Content. If you have felt this feeling, or on the day that you do, you will know how the Creator felt when, at the end of the creative process, he surveyed all of creation and said, “It is good.” Creation is powerful, life giving, and affirming. It is the breath that filled the lungs of man formed from the dust of the earth. As an artist, that is the feeling I have when mixing a new color of paint. Knowing that this color never existed before you made it, and you can have that feeling over, and over, and over again. Maybe that’s why God made a million different kinds of flowers. He was just having fun and enjoying the process. My creative process is not only a spiritual and meditative practice but it is part of my worship of God. It intimately connects me to who God is and who he made me to be. We all have within us the power that creates worlds. Every thought we think, word we speak, and action we take are the brushes and the paint on the canvas of our lives and the lives around us.

Looking Through

http://www.artistreginawerner.com/gallery/

The Bridge 8

The Road

Surrender

In Dios 9

IF A TREE SHOULD FALL IN THE FOREST I come upon a downed tree, surely toppled by the fierce winds that blew through here this past Wednesday. The cracks in its branches remind me of flesh wounds. Leaves, now tinged brown, curl up like mouths frozen in a scream. There are bare patches on all sides as if the impact violently swept away the dust and twigs. The roots have no chance to regain their footing in the earth as they twist snake-like skyward. The trunk is victim of its own massive weight and the dark doings of gravity, split as if it's felt the blade of Paul Banyan's axe.

PARALLELISM

No, I didn't hear the crash but the objects of my senses are about more than their immediacy. My imagination barely needs nudging to envision the struggle of this battle-hardened oak against the superior forces of air whipped up to fury.

Brown, soft, moist leaves fall onto ground saturated with rain. A baby bird, unprotected by nature rests quietly, dead, untouched, before time begins to pick at its perfect downy breast.

No vibration engaged my ear, was passed along to nerve centers. But standing beside the fallen giant, 1 tremble with shrieks and moans, cannonade and thunder.

Brown, soft, moist eyes closed I fall back onto cotton covers redolent with your smell. I lay exposed, unprotected by you, breath coming quickly, before tears start to flow, as the pain, like a hungry dog, gnaws my heart.

In these woods, outcome is prepared for any and all observation. It can also get by on none at all.

Lourdes A. Gautier

John Grey

Lourdes A. Gautier is a poet and writer of short fiction and non-fiction. Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and raised in New York City she earned a Masters degree in Theatre and post graduate credits in a doctoral program at the City University of New York (CUNY) focusing on Latin American Theatre. Taught courses in acting and theatre history and criticism at CUNY, Drew University, and Jersey City State University and language arts in a special grant funded program at Rutgers University. Most recently published a short story, , in the May issue of . Her poems have appeared in the Silver Birch Press All About My Name and My Perfect Vacation series. She has performed at the Inwood Local open mic night. Currently an administrator at Columbia University, she is working on a collection of poems and stories.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and Sanskrit with work upcoming in South Carolina Review, Gargoyle, Owen Wister Review and Louisiana Literature.

Book Review Getting ready for a poetry reading, this guy asked me, “Are you gonna wear the same thing you wore last night? That was cute.” I said, “Why would I do that? I have other clothes.” He said, “What about your brand? I said, “Wearing the same dirty clothes to every reading isn’t branding. I’m not Hey Arnold.” He said, It’s been so interesting getting to know you.” I said, “There’s more than corn in Indiana.” Rachel Bell

What I appreciate about Rachel Bell's writing is that she does not use honeyed words, she is raw and guttural yet there is nothing hidden in the mincing of words. She has a way of bringing humor to situations that display just how messed up this world is. Would I recommend reading "Welcome to your new life with you being happy"? YES! If you get the chance to hear her read, then you should take that opportunity, trust me, you will like it. Robert Olson, Editor, Calliope Magazine

You can pick up a copy today on the Pioneer Press website http://pioneerspress.com/catalog/zines/4851/

Gary Beck

Blunt Force

Combat Zone Bursts of fire, bodies duck for cover, hug the earth, hope they don't get hit, time seems to stop until the gunshots end and they resume play in a Bronx park.

Protest Economic conditions continue to get worse, while the privileged few wallow in indulgence as millions lose homes, jobs, abandoned by elected officials, unprotected by the system defended with the blood of our sons and daughters, indifferently ignored by candidates for office provoking some to gather and protest abuses, but are quickly confronted by forces of law and order greeting with clubs and arrests those risking themselves in the quest for justice.

Cacophony Urban noise conceals collisions, gunshots, screams for help, pleas for mercy, cries of suffering mostly unheard in the daily bustle of a consuming city.

Discharged Combat veterans return home where little has changed while they served in a hostile land of roadside bombs, ambushes, sniping, stubborn determination to drive out occupiers with implacable jihad, but the tour survived, welcomed by loved ones who don't understand why they miss their rifles.

What Dreams May Come I need to sleep, yet then I dream and it is never sweet. My mind wearies, my body tires from lack of rest. When I dare drowse I quickly submerge into dreadful torment, frightening pursuit by vicious brutes, terrifying sensations falling from great heights waking up before I hit, finding myself shaking on the floor, panting, covered with sweat, trembling head to foot, making me wonder for an awful moment if it is real, or nightmare.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways (Winter Goose Publishing). Perceptions, Displays, Fault Lines and Tremors will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response will be published by Nazar Look. His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City

Gary Beck

Blunt Force 13

He called me “love” once, his thumbs hooked --deliriously casual—

“Awaken the Dead” What might he have been had a spring day not brought him, reckless

into loosening loops of faded Levi’s, and I pouredthat liquid murmured word into a saucer

and un-shriven, to that quiet bend in the road he'd mastered

cup of memory whose sweetness I imagine I still

a full three years before this morning of his almost-manhood.

can taste today. But what would the years have made of that

But not this morning, after all. I’d loved him since the break of tremulous womanhood.

boy that the woes of the ages had not already left in his eyes?

Loved the way his hair curled at his (fashionably) frayed collar—fell uncombed

Something, I think. Some bright and daring work of noble note.

above eyes that seemed to me the marble blue of the weary revolutionary world.

Or maybe just a son to defy him with a gaze full of the blue-marbled sorrow of the world.

Janele Johnson

Janele is a lover of words. Mostly, she loves reading them, but in recent years, she has also loved writing them, particularly in poetry. Her work has so far been published in United States Represented, Kindred, and a western journal called In Other Words. She lives in Colorado with a few four-leggeds, her two wonderful sons, and lots and lots of books.

Lorette C. Luzajic A Synthetic Blossom of Peace My burnt lips are reluctant still I make room for a heart-soothing smile on them admitting its utility in making the best of a bad bargain. My hot heart is not a supporter yet I oil it for oiling my opponent to pull down his ghostly building standing between us presenting him a new skyscraper of friendship. My old soul is ever-interrupting nevertheless, I cover up the ever-germinating contradictions with a flush of green light signaling it for its safe and sound bed time for holding an uninterrupted meeting between my two favoritesthe God and the Devil for blooming at least a synthetic blossom of peace for us.

By Pijush Kanti Deb Pijush Kanti Deb is a new Indian poet with around 252 published or accepted poems and haiku in around 81national and international magazines and journals [print and online] like Down in the dirt, Tajmahal Review, Pennine Ink, Hollow Publishing, Creativica Magazine, Muse India, Teeth Dream Magazine, Hermes Poetry Journal, Grey Borders, Dagda Publishing, Blognostic Black Mirror Magazine, Dissident Voice Journal , Indiana Voice Journal and many more. His best achievement so far is the publication of his first poetry Collection,’’ Beneath The Shadow Of A White Pigeon’’ published by Hollow Publishing is available on AMAZON.

Left Unspoken We were the kiss that was never meant to be. Two mouths already claimed by others, we drifted, momentarily in midnight’s foggy possibility. Hesitating a touch too long and yet not long enough, we flared straight to ash, disappeared inside the ocean’s breath, a perfect wish left unspoken.

A. J. Huffman

The Candle Held No Flame Sitting in the middle of our table, its wick still waxed erect, I felt the absence like a misfired bullet to my brain. It connected absentee dots – mine and yours – divided our continents like a wall until all I could see was the crumbling, the lack of upkeep. I pursed my lips in mockery, blew what was left of us away.

A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her new poetry collection, Another Blood Jet, is now available from Eldritch Press. She has three more poetry collections forthcoming: A Few Bullets Short of Home from mgv2>publishing, Degeneration from Pink Girl Ink, and A Bizarre Burning of Bees from Transcendent Zero Press. She is a Multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, and has published over 2200 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com

A. J. Huffman

Implication

Refraction A cold front blew through last night bringing with it gusting swales of wind and rain which must’ve knocked the power out while we were still asleep in bed.

Resting on the framework, balanced precariously for sustenance Pulled inward in suggested growth, leaves with no stems wilting in their absense

The blinking red numbers on the digital clock said 3AM, though I don’t think that was right. Yet I got up from bed and stumbled into the dark kitchen for a glass of water.

Gazing upon grand pastures, thriving in the same air but separate soil Complacent greys embrace, this simple fact of similarities

Then I cut the alarm, let the dog out, and even though it’s over a mile away from here, I could hear a train howling and screeching across the tracks all the way from my front door.

Michael Clark

It must have been the colder, thinner air that helped the sound to make its way this far. Refraction, I think it’s called. It was the only thing I could think of as I stared at the spackling of stars overhead. I imagined those damp gray cars, could almost see them tattooed with their bright graffiti, barreling past, and that long, long trail of freighters and tanks, all of it sliding quickly through the dark. I heard the train’s loud horn bellowing, the metal on metal as it skirled over the tracks. And I’m imagining this, too: the wheels shooting up blue-white sparks as the train heads north into Mississippi.

David Armand

David Armand was born and raised in Louisiana. He has worked as a drywall hanger, a draftsman, and as a press operator in a flag printing factory. He now teaches at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he also serves as associate editor for Louisiana Literature Press. In 2010, he won the George Garrett Fiction Prize for his first novel, The Pugilist's Wife, which was published by Texas Review Press. His second novel, Harlow, was published by Texas Review Press in 2013. David's third novel, The Gorge, is forthcoming this fall from Southeast Missouri State University Press. He has a chapbook, The Deep Woods, coming out later this year from Blue Horse Press; and his memoir, My Mother's House, is forthcoming Spring 2016 from Texas Review Press. David lives with his wife and two children and is working on his sixth book, The Lord's Acre.

Light and Shadow I am surprised by the magic of Light and Shadow. I am here, this side of the river and my shadow reaches other side. I am surprised by the magic of Light and Shadow. I am walking on this golden grass and see the shadow following me I am surprised by the magic of Light and Shadow. I changed my path so the shadow now it is walking even before I I am surprised by the magic of Light and Shadow. Here I am at the top of the hills And shadow reaches at the bottom of the valley I am surprised by the magic of Light and Shadow. Dark clouds are approaching now Dazzling light is gone Now, Neither light nor the shadow I am surprised by the magic of Light and Shadow.

Chitra R Upadhyaya

Chitra R Upadhyaya is a freelance journalist/writer based in India. She has contributed stories, photographs and poems in different publications such as the Times of India, Indian Express, Lonely planet (India) and International journal â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The art of being humanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Vol 14

CHRYSALIS A work in progress. My eyes await The unfurling Thin, trembling Colorful wings--

BUTTERFLY

Then I wonder What goes on inside A change like that Has got to hurt--

Your nameâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sound: Silk on my mouth Honey on my tongue.

Is it worth it? The syllables seem Juxtaposed like images From something by

Michael P. De Guzman

Dali: discordant Harmonious, hard And soft at once, A delight to the senses.

Michael P. De Guzman

How long Has this been going on How long To this precise moment in time Coming so close As to see you in the moonlight Only to still be in the wrong place At the wrong time Repeating a sequence of events That first brought us to this point And these seconds of separation Flash back over a thousand years Where truth would set us free But fell to the darkness Of the fade How long still to come This heart lives on Held together only with dreams That our continuum Will finally arrive at the exact Same time And how long Can a soul live on With a hole torn in its very center As even now my crystals dim And her moonbeam Slowly fades off into the night Realizing that again Or even still that I am alone In the harsh reality Of a time eroded dream

Alas I can only see the memory Of her heart fire Making this last voyage Through hells trench Seem like a walk through An amusement park Where nightmares all came to life And the expectation of something better Became the disappointment of tonight There is then nothing left now to do but wait For in Sagittarius the full moon Finds sacred water twice on one night The minutes seemed like hours In the sluggishness of their passing Before the moon Once again touched the sacred waters Of Forevermore on her western setting And there in the moonbeam She appeared before him The flash forward projection Of a flashback obsession Hurrying him along As time and space wait for no man She disappears from his presence And Forevermore leaves him behind Now caught in the continuum of Abstracia

Robert Olson

Other Side

by Adel Hun

“Plainspeak” Flat and undulating wind-swept plains

Ethereal Beauty

drift in ecru tones—

She enters him slowly, her presence permeates every part of his existence. Her body drips into his world of perception. Bullets of lucid passion shoot thru his arms, trickles thru veins, penetrates his core.

steppe and grassland—

He absorbs the beauty of her exile. In reckless abandonment, they walk in the tranquility of surrender.

native voices, restless souls that

Thirst fills his mind. Arched response follows. She pours into him, her entire alliance.

carved its heart into

flowing westward, river to butte. The land still rings with trailed the buffalo, culled the herds, tribal homes— Apache, Crow, Lakota.

Consumed with euphoria her constant world of invasion is exactly just how he imagined her inside himself.

From timid trails to rutted tracks that

She pervades his subconscious sends exploring thoughts flooding into a galaxy of light.

scar and scab the sacred earth, encroachers roused the

Joined illumination exposes the naked revelation they always were, and will always be.

sands and dust of tireless, endless time.

Dixon Hearne

She fades. The permanence of her energy remains. Contentment is found knowing he will never be alone.

Mary Schmidt

Pending Further Notification As a precaution against noodley infusions from deregulated forces, we are experimenting with elevated frequencies produced by juxtaposed vibrations shifting you into the antimatter realm. For a suspended time you will lose all parameters with no sign I.D. determining which route you are on and nothing to measure your afflictions by. Upon relinquishing the illusion of questions and remembering the confinement you chose to forget, you can expand the myopic constraints binding together the material world and have whatever you emphasize. If you stop experiencing the headaches, nausea, anger, depression, paranoia, or mood swings that you curse and fondle to define your essence, you can complain in your dependable way. Your symptoms should reappear as you return to the discord plane, and you can contemplate your need for the problem of evil again, sinking deeper into darkness as your revelations extend further from self-mastery.

M Kaat Toy

Dispatch Late afternoon, dry leaves on the hustle, sky like newsprint bleached of language, clouds heavy as message bubbles from an unfinished conversation, its author dead, she who rang a bell for supper, wash on the line, home-sewn dresses gone stiff there among the diapers, rags that must be used and used again, if, indeed, we can say, with ourselves as less-hampered evidence, she – buried in the labor of house and field, child-rearing, petty dictates – perhaps well-intentioned, perhaps a hoof in the small of the back – one reading of the world and its meanings untried, in a workroom that never was, with pennies earned, but not remunerated, may or may not have owned, in silence, a construct.

Miriam C. Jacobs

Buckeye Burl With Inlaid Turquoise

David M. Harris

I always use fountain pens. And that means inks and notebooks, good ones, that wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feather the lines. Notebooks make easy gifts for a writer. They stack up on a shelf in the back of my office, waiting for the call to service. Pens, though, call me. I try to cycle through them all. New ones first, in test and admiration, each cheap Chinese pen in turn, then selections through the collection. Some nice ones there, Mont Blanc, Conklin, Pelikan, FranklinChristophe, presents from myself and Judy. But this one! Flecks of bright stone shaped into the hollows of the wood, turned by hand. Polished, coated, polished again, carried to, then from, the craft fair. An extravagant gift. A gift of love. With this pen, what could I not write? Now I am ready for that epic, the new Goethe, ink flowing out to promote new understandings, drain swamps, build cities, and invent spaceships to explore new universes.

pause before tai chi arms come up and snow comes down we swirl together

Until 2003, David M. Harris had never lived more than fifty miles from New York City. Since then he has moved to Tennessee, married, acquired a daughter and a classic MG, and gotten serious about poetry. All these projects seem to be working out pretty well. His work has appeared in Pirene's Fountain (and in First Water, the Best of Pirene's Fountain anthology), Gargoyle, The Labletter, The Pedestal, and other places. His first collection of poetry, The Review Mirror, was published by Unsolicited Press in September, 2013. On Sunday mornings, at 11 AM, he talks about poetry on WRFN-LP in Pasquo, TN (www.radiofreenashville.org).