Typoetic.us: Issue 2 by Typoetic.us

III | TY(POE:TIC)US ISSUE 2

Contents rooted in the poignant pauses Carrie Nassif

` Rebeca Lois Lucret Huracan The literary journal that explores poetry and all its faces. Spring/Summer 2014 Ty(poe:tic)us explores everything that is poetry. From featuring poems from emerging and experienced poets, to hearing stories and theories about poetry and the life of a poet, typoetic.us aims to show the world how important poetry is to not only its participants, but also its spectators. The idea of typoetic.us is messy, unintentional, and as beautiful as a flower. It stands out for its beauty and for the close relationship it has with the poet. It is everything that poetry is and isn’t (though the “isn’t” is not necessarily incorrect). It’s a typo waiting to happen. Editors Christina Rodriguez Christine Coonrod Ahmani DoDoo

The Pinned Pink Ribbon Stephanie Rodriguez suspension.org Peg Robarchek

Between Minutes Jacinta V. White

18.

When I Wake Up With Dread Jude Marr

the laboratory was a frightening place Erin Virgil

That Old Two Step Susan Tuz

35 Elizabeth Kate Switaj

20 21

Basil Hugh Lemma

. 23

Reflections upon an unmade bed Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr.

Wreckage Peg Robarchek

26. . 27

Carousel Hugh Lemma

Catalogue poems Yolaine St. Fort

30 31.

Intro to Zombie Art 101 Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. Is this grief? Jude Marr

15.

Pastel Hugh Lemma

COPYRIGHT © 2014 Ty(poe:tic)us. All Rights Reserved No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever (beyond copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the United States Copyright Law) without permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

. . 13

evolution of drowning Carrie Nassif

info@typoetic.us

. 11

Maggots Yolaine St Fort Still Dark Zev Torres

Abandoning Male Pedagogy: A Literary Criticism Susan Tuz Lokjar Sunday Elizabeth Kate Switaj

IV | TY(POE:TIC)US ISSUE 2

Language of Sharp Objects Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. Sandstorm Hugh Lemma

Wild Nights Jude Marr

38.

Aware Jacinta V. White

it’s a typo waiting to happen

Sing Hurricane Jeanne Yolaine St. Fort 42 Like A Chair Waiting Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. Reshuffling Erin Virgil

. 44

Equidity: a fictive folktale Carrie Nassif Summer ’s End Hugh Lemma

Aftermath Jude Marr

Black Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. Sutra of Clear Creek Erin Virgil

A Conversation between Us Yolaine St. Fort

Island Hotel & Apartments Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Revenge of the Imagist Socialist Poetry Serkan Ergin

Poet’s Corner

www.typoetic.us facebook.com/typoetic.us twitter.com/typoetic_us ty-poetic-us.tumblr.com

the night the stars whinnied in recognition Carrie Nassif

Photography Carrie Nassif

Spring/Summer 2014

La Journee ` Jude Marr

Issue 2

Couplets for a Saturday Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Snapshots Rebeca Lois Lucret

ty (poe:tic) us

57 59

Throughout 63 Design & Layout: Ahmani DoDoo

Dear Readers, Welcome to the long anticipated second issue of Typoetic.us! A lot has happened during the summer since we’ve brought you the first special edition of the journal. We have unfortunately lost an editor who had to leave due to personal issues (We miss you Laneice!). The editor-in-chief made a big move from New York to Chicago to go to graduate school. And as ladies who believe in higher education and fulfillment, we had the school year creep in all of us as literary mommas with babies in school and as students ourselves. But we weren’t going to stop until we read and answered all submissions taking our time to read, edit, and put together this wonderful issue. Some poets gave us too much goodness. We had to accept all of their pieces because they were fantastic! We got a little more variety with a literary criticism piece. We received a lovely set of photographs which are featured in the issue. And we are still astonished by the number of submissions we received from all around the world. It’s a blessing (whatever kind you believe in) for a literary journal to receive poems and art from everywhere and being able to showcase this work at such an early stage. We want to thank our current and past contributors for believing in US to showcase your work. You are the ones building Typoetic.us, letting it grow and enrich others. We’re just providing the platform. We hope you enjoy this issue and please share it with everyone you know. Encourage others to submit. With love and poetry, Christina Rodriguez Editor-in-Chief Ahmani Kay Associate Editor: Design/Editorial Christine Coonrod Associate Editor: Editorial

tails and twigs - Carrie Nassif

this labyrinth is a barnacled tortoise bare feet crunch into her peagraveled shell/soul/self switch-backing across helixes of time toe heel toe heel to heal among lavender shaded driftwood swimming in a cool lake of awareness heartbeat breaths and steps aligned and when the raven shortcuts to the living red wall of bouldering truths, air spare/still overhead her nearly silent flight tsip tsip tsip heart beat beating staccato sweeping of wings cleanses sky/mind like sage rhythmic sighs and strides alight

Nourishment of a people. Shhhh, do you hear her? Do you hear her as the hammock dances?

We know when the tempo of cyclonic beats Join the crescendo of percussion. We know when the whispers come haunting When the moisture on skin hints of Yemaya When the high pitch barrels Meet the pounding of raindrops When the scurry of tiny feet Run snapping branches Under the breeding of thunder and lightning But does he know us?

Father of wind, warmth and water The great Huracan ` Caribbean native Resident of the tropics God of the ancestors – We know you We respect you We give way to you. We know it is your time But it is also ours. You make the hammock dance But the grandchildren play here now And abuela’s fingers And my machete And we beg you Be merciful.

Does he know the grandchildren play here now? All five of them A blessing of skinned knees River drenched hair Mango stained fingers and laughter. Shhhh, can you hear them? Do you hear them as the hammock dances?

all I ever was is a swaying seaweed strand suspended in syncopated diagonals sunlight skittering through fractals of shells/selves/souls drowning in the beauty the electric synchronicity rooted in each other in our pulsing inhaling footfalls

Their music is a rolling pin Ironing out the growing yeast that is an old man. ~ They play among the still life of papayas and pinas Imagining them to be their grandfather’s congas. They sing, they pluck strings In tune to the waves crashing on San Felipe’s Fort walls. Shhhh, do you hear them? Do you hear them as the hammock dances?

in the poignant pauses between them all.

rooted in the poignant pauses by

We, abuela and I, we know We know when we witness the back porch – Empty hammock dancing.

Carrie Nassif

Abuela’s chair now faces east Where my machete, long retired Lays stored in exchange for leisure naps under the sun. Her arthritic fingers Her black harmonious hands Though they too withdrawn Continue to mold the dough of a family. Still out of her rocking chair she hacks the coconuts To the rhythm of coro and son. From her bosom she offers Fruits of elders past Milk of her flesh

Huracán

Rebeca Lois Lucret

It is still dark Even with our eyes open And the lights on. The show has ended. We’re not blind Only confused. And displaced. Hold on to me. This sensation may not pass Anytime soon.

Graceful girl cinches her body from straphangers their pores leak humidity like rain-pearls long denim skirt hugging her protectively from Trench Coat exhaling venom on her earlobes umbrella poking tender ribs, in denim-blue body recoiling, shifting attention on subtalk’s Train of Thought: to doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions (Henri Poincare) she doubts Trench Coat’s umbrella is morphing into living flesh, stroking blue denim her tongue triples in size like un-chopped liver, barricading the scream stuck in her parched lungs she imagines torrential acids drenching the live thing crawling on her denim withering to extinction her brimming eyes try to talk in a dialect Trench Coat can translate relief and shame churn her belly as Trench Coat tucks umbrella in a pouch of dead maggots and bloated centipedes before the conductor can announce: “next stop, Union Square.” by

Maggots

Yolaine St. Fort

Still Dark by

Zev Torres

46,433 photos and counting,

My father’s eyes go glossy with confusion.

documenting human

Please- someone tell him it is all an illusion.

beings girls with flaxen hair, rosebud

The chemicals in my mother’s delicate veins

breasts, science scholarships;

Leave black shadows tattooed as everyday reminders.

chiseled-chin boys prime to leap off a cliff into manhood;

She asks me to paint her nails vintage rose

all of them pierced with hooks

To disguise the violet blackness seeping under.

backs, chests, shoulders, thighs hanging from ceilings, trees

An ocean floods my obsidian eyes.

(suspension bridges, for all we know; the soul

Salt scorches my sight.

can’t view them all) the weight

For only Heaven knows My mother needs it as a lifesaver for the pink fight.

of bone and muscle stretching their skin taut, blood tracing patterns on pink flesh eyes flashing dim:

vacancy, beyond begging someone to gather them in and hold them up.

The Pinned Pink Ribbon by

Stephanie Rodriguez

suspension.org

Peg Robarchek

door within window - Carrie Nassif

She leans inside the doorway Light from the hallway window Pushes against her back Her foot rests against her Other unshaven leg

six a.m.

The cat brushes on his way to the kitchen

day clawing at the drapes

For evening milk and purrs All else is silent

and refrigerator grind is an empty mind dry-heaving acid aftertaste

She stands there slightly Loose curls relax on bare shoulders Her silhouette underneath the white nightgown

sometimes I forget to breathe—

That used to belong to her mother

you are not a tangled comforter and you are not

Is thick and dark She remembers What used to be and Rests in this time of day

soft blues still playing

Stands in the doorway between minutes Catching herself before becoming

and you are not a phone alarm

Someone else

no, dread you are a butterfly regressed to larval creep inside my sleep-stunned belly but here’s the thing I’m awake now I need you to be winged.

Between Minutes

Jacinta V. White

When I Wake Up With Dread by

Jude Marr

All over the walls: hanging white coats, safety posters, warnings. On the long black counters: test tubes, Bunson burners, flasks, bottles, coffee cups, sample jars (water, soil, acids), Petri dishes, microscopes. And in the corner there was an eye wash station which scared me most of all.

By the third one She was numb.

With a cup to put your scalded eyeball in, then flush it out for twenty minutes and hope you could still see.

Erotic arousal brings visions of dismemberment

Six stories underground: this secret place is where my father worked. We were allowed into his lab once a year, for the Health Department’s Christmas party.

little feet and hands that would never hold a mother’s heart.

In the threadbare lobby outside the laboratories (there were many, we could only go into our father’s) all the jowly old chemists sat in square brown chairs (it was 1985), ignoring the party, muttering about the bureaucrat currently making their lives miserable. We had to dress up but they just wore their lab coats like a pack of cartoon scientists, horn-rimmed glasses all around. My father wore these too, but he was younger: his hair was black where theirs was white.

Heart? What is heart? Eggs sizzle in the pan where once a soft, moist kiss bespoke of moments lost. “No, I did not love him.” Safer not to love ‘till dismembered babies enter the picture.

Before the party, the chemists’ assistants filled beakers with M & Ms; easy to pour them in your mouth if no grownups were looking (and they usually weren’t) and this was the only fun to be had, besides sneaking off, opening drawers, rearranging their contents.

A saxophone somewhere far off plays... Baby, take my heart. Baby, take my hand. take me to the arcade

After three painful hours in this windowless place, my sister and I complained the whole way home. My father—who spent eight hours a day at the lab, five days a week, fifty weeks a year—gripped the steering wheel and ignored us.

Baby make them eggs stop sizzlin’ -Make that pinball whirl end, the arcade lights go dim,

The laboratory was a frightening place by

Too many tangled, “no, I don’t really love you’s” caught up in her dreams.

Erin Virgil

Make this menstral trail fill once again with life, set aside the ache of life spent, life lost, Life -- that egg that sizzles, never hatched.

That Old Two Step

Susan Tuz

The family of mint, the hands of the dead, the mouths of the dying;

her bones play radio her marrow DJs a rhythm more calypso than katoush, katoush as she presses ear to slender bicep naked she can almost name the song

an earthenware vessel containing a head, watered with crying from poor Isabella;

her beach night hair across his belly and the twist of paler skin I said he should show a doctor he said his father had one too

Helena’s cross, altars in gardens, soil of Athens so claimed Theophrastus;

she’s twenty two my student, and his too it’s wrong to imagine her like this

boiling kettles, Materia Medica, anisette scented,

but he’s moved her in to his windowless back room where I could never quite open my eyes in his arms before noon

perennial, annual; crimson as blood, green as redemption, holy as love. 35 by

Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Basil by

Hugh Lemma

Again the morning finds the heart knotting In the throat, between the ears, on the tongue I used to wake up next to you – face beaming

the middle of the county once waded under a tropical sea, destined to ride tectonic forces, to collide \ co-victimed plates realigned to appease the myth of Pangea

With secret sacred joys; night’s velvet

each piece crusted with roiling resentment \ who knows why the pressure built or how it faded away not so much an equal and opposite ricochet, rather

Cloak still heating the hearth in your bosom

cold-shouldered boundaries borne of mutual indifference

Before jealous sun could wipe off

Moonshine, stardust, dreambeam

the Paleozoic era \ visible life \ when we first developed hard parts became fossilizable left remnants of self-preservation – proof of being

Left of visitations by undeclared

histories read from shells in chalky shale and fine white sands \ walled bluffs exhibit colonies of articulated tentacles lyrical and intertwining on the

Storied past each one seeking

murky bottomless bottoms \ dying traces of untethered laces forerunners of starfish and their distant cousins showering clusters of crinoid shooting stars floating in the primordial current

Civil punctuation, truces to outlast

what then, caused our carapace to dive internal – to articulate and spine for deeper meats? to vertebrate?

All longings as cooing of doves

Of a summer long gone...

and still there is this cretaceous seaway \ a brisk storm front spits and ripples the buckled plains hundreds of feet above my landlocked perch lowlying clouds as seen from below – the passive surface of my ocean overhead sun filtered and hazy barely warming

Well the heart nudges me on now

my pale jellied self

On the window sill, messengers

Another morning, what remains To unravel of a stubborn winter See this?

Reflections upon an unmade bed

I think sailors have no name for it yet

Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr.

evolution of drowning by

Carrie Nassif

I dreamt of autumn;

The oaks were sky blue,

We wandered back,

the sky green as rushes,

looking for what could be reclaimed,

and the grass, and the grass..

found cottages splintered, boats moored in upended pavement, the beaches a muddle

We chased after something,

of seaweed, battered

and it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t matter what-

dunes, crippled

running was no longer a novelty,

boardwalk fallen to its knees in the whitecaps.

you barefoot in a white dress, me lithe and animated.

We knew our cottage

We lived all those cliches`

only by a shard of turquoise cedar shake,

pirouettes, airplanes,

the yellow-trimmed back steps,

fields of wildflowers,

upright for now,

rolling down hills locked in a kiss..

and the pottery bowl of bread dough,

I awoke next to you,

covered neatly in grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pink-checked tea towel,

still rhythmic in your slumber,

still rising.

and wondered if you missed me

as my fingers raked a dry leaf

Wreckage

Peg Robarchek

from my hair and I stashed it

under the pillow.

Pastel

Hugh Lemma

biege building - Carrie Nassif

1. Soul burgeoning purple anemone unfurling i stretch my toes like a ballerina my hands to the cerulean sky

The same song loops

2. i think of Him againâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; He whose belly can mend the universe all you have to do is crawl in and be

behind the same center pole- same mirrors, same

3. to rest on a perch of hope girds me to Your spine i love you.

murals, same mad sequence of gaudy lights;

4. i hush the howling wind with my heart

the same motor propels

5. stitch my eyelids with your lips bid me to sleep a dreamless slumber tonight.

me- same circle, same basswood

6. jello spine knees malleable like grass I need the sturdiness of my bed

chariot, romance side out as

7. to bask in Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s glory to sing a melody to Him to close my eyes in surrender

I watch the

8. I pray:

same faces slowly change. Carousel

Hugh Lemma

Saturate me in this stream from my scalp to the arch of my feet let peace stir my lungs may my pores exude joy in closing

I bow, my face at Your ankles.

Catalogue poems by

Yolaine St. Fort

Deadening starts around photocopy corners, water stations, behind Pantry backdoor; about midway between the hour of mercy and sunset art

As dreamers engage in a game of shadow pingpong with one another Inside the ungraspable bubble of their making; and the dreamless yawning

Half-awaken amid the din of heady administrivia and nanotech stutter. While Silently the espresso machine, faucets, and glue jars wage a secret

War against the disease caused by coagulating substances – such as sugar

then—extrude facsimile emotion (salt crust on cracked skin) crocodile hide tenderized (lacerated not empathic) if I can—I will imagine (pain)—

Its all too crystallizing functional property that sticks to flesh as it sweetens...

i.e.

This undead is trapped between the algorithm of a staple wire jamming his fax machine

And the unshakable emotion of a bad poem writ on a Bukowskian napkin

cave(airless) stopped clock cacophony or— nails tearing (me)—

or hole where heart should be.

by some wayward love.

Intro to Zombie Art 101 by

when unexpected death or other sad-face news intrudes

Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr.

Is this grief? by

Jude Marr

For centuries, women poets sought to make the structure of male poetics their own. Dickinson took the sonnet and sought to carve out a feminine place within it. But a new breed of women poets have set out on their own, creating a poetics that ignores the structure of sonnet, quatrain, ode and all of the European male canonical framework. This is an important step in asserting a selfhood, if you will: A reality of poetics in which women abandon the need to identify their thoughts, their existence, their selves by male standards. This feminist poetics opens vistas of possiblities. Woman can stand separate, no need for a Freudian battle to overthrow the Oedipal and assert the -- the what? The Iphigenia? The Dido? The poet Rae Armantrout is a prime example with her poem “As We’re Told” “At the start, something must be arbitrarily excluded. The saline solution. Call it an apple. Call this a test or joke. From now on, apple will mean arbitrary choice or ‘at random.’ Any fence maintains the other side is ‘without form.’ When we’re thrown out, it’s onto the lap of our parent. Later, though, Mother puts the apple into Snow White’s hand, and then it’s poison.” Juliana Spahr and Claudia Rankine present this feminist poetics in “American Women Poets in the 21st Century.” The women whose work they present , along with critiques, use modernist techniques within lyric context. Whether working in the language school or imagist, these poets reject “ the fence” and assert their own existence. Spahr and Rankine’s book is published by Wesleyan University Press. It focuses on 10 major American women poets -- Rae Armantrout, Mei-mei Berseenbrugge, Lucie Brock Broido, Jorie Graham, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian, Brenda Hillman, Susan Howe, Ann Lauterbach and Harryette Mullen.

the heavy frankincense of burning palm sings over wind -weakened basslines, the tuna storm contuses sky the dogs have killed the rooster we didn’t wake ’til ten we applauded them

It is a must read for women poets. 13 If you use the universal in your discourse as you create a work, be it poetry or prose, you don’t have to use a construct of form -- like the sonnet, villanelle or pantoum -- as an emotional distancing device. These phallocentric devices are crutches. The universality of experience can be used as the restraint mechanism when talking about grief and other emotions. This classical challenge, of the need to emotionally distance oneself, need not be met with the classical solution and all it inherently carries as a male pedagogical construct.

Abandoning Male Pedagogy in Poetry:

A Literary Criticism

Susan Tuz

Lokjar Sunday by

Elizabeth Kate Switaj

The desert is a huge hourglass; outside my bay window

Languishing in desuetude

the valley succumbs

Scintilla of smooth, or youth, dulling.

as I notice the scent

Are you still right-handed? Because I can

of your blue sweatshirt

make the onion fall to the right...

is now too faint to bring you back.

There are shopping carts

The tv is out again

Whisked away in corners

but its pixelated mosaic looks better than the news;

Among stubborn standees, Shelf-talkers. These marketing geniuses

I wish I could save it, hold it, place it

Tongue-tied, stunned

by your picture,

By their own expectations

another memory

Language of Sharp Objects by

Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr.

like the mountains I know by name whose coral and slate

bleed into white.

Hugh Lemma

Sandstorm

You come back in my dreams though you told me less than a year after you died that you could no longer come see me.

I stand in the bathtub and listen to rain pounding my yard

Remember that time when we had lunch outside our favorite midday restaurant near my Southfield job?

lightning branches blossom thunder drums

We were sitting at the table under the tilted polka dot umbrella, no cloud in sight. You and your two foot-long hotdogs, loaded; me with thinly sliced turkey on wheat.

I am a trumpet vine my mouth upturned to the showerhead my petals shed I am

It was in that dream You took both my hands and politely leaned towards me, and whispered you could no longer come meet me here. I cried that night in my sleep.

unmoored.

It was the only place we had. And though itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been years since, when I need it most, I still see you in my dreams. Close enough for me to see your smile. You wave even, from a distance. And when I wake, in that space right before I am completely aware, I feel your embrace, smell your cologne, hear your laughter and you telling me, gently, I love you. So maybe you do not come to see me. Maybe, in my dreams, I fly to where you are, instead.

Wild Nights by

Jude Marr

Aware

Jacinta V. White

vines and pipes - Carrie Nassif

Worst case scenario – sudden like rain

I saw a woman with wrinkled fingers place a tulip in her daughter’s hair as she gathered the strength to sing. II.

of bones, stuttering after-thoughts of gouty winters up spiral staircases while at foyer counters bouquets of joy

She danced with laughter amid breadfruit trees; pirouetted in the wind on wet and sunlit days.

and tapping their heels on parquet floor old dogs preen coyly to visions, sillage of summer

III. If you go near the mausoleums, you will find Aunt Sirianne with glassy eyes waiting for the storm—telling passersby the only way to breathe is to stay awake.

in the afternoon at the park

This morning, I heard a song— a lullaby that can smother nightmares and I began to shake.

IV. I remember a woman with laugh-lines that made you smile and teeth you wanted to frame. At dawn, she holds a cinder block in each hand and throws them to the sky when the clouds betray her.

stopping before mirror panes then peeping to smile the smile of new rennaissance coquetry... Anyhow, in the long tedious mutterings of all these half-dead dreams at some point this then tongue of innocence as riverbed of sweet will just go dry, or split and this serpent tongue will be flicking for better

Sing for Hurricane Jeanne by

Yolaine St. Fort

rhetorics, or rhymes – no more

Like A Chair Waiting by

Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr.

Five years old: things made sense. When you lay in the sun and closed your eyes most of the way and saw tiny creatures swimming in a blazing blue sea, this was a map to other places. A shock from a blanket half out of the dryer was also proof of invisible worlds.

Once nebulaed pods, constellating whales surged from tinnitussive space

Or when your eyes got very hot and the walls of the room shrank in and out, the ceiling moved higher and lower. A chill was not a sustained state, just one motion then.

to span glittery black oceans, calling first waves into being, a

Shadows had expressions, hiding spaces issued invitations.

song unceasing. Their fleshy heart chambers birthed other four-leggeds

And then one balloon bread day (age nine, thirteen, or even fifteen somewhere) your cards are reshuffled and the magic is lost. More than half the bright colors go away, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s harder to look at the moon. Memorization, dictation, technology juice and bars over daylight drown out real voices, homogenization tests rise up to block the hidden information.

who walked from ferny baleenish mouths to sulky tumulting swamp lands.

Across decades it may resurface, through bottles and windowpanes, in street light haloes and certain pairs of eyes, rattling around abandoned houses. But the main dish is bland. Your childhood had bookends and its strongest potions never slipped through. Reshuffling by

Erin Virgil

These deerish browsers branched cousins from soft forest floors, made hooves of flint, unzipped their skins, stood upright and spun webbed orbits trekking game and sun. At the reunion, we swept until all of the kindred strays were claimed.

Equidity: a fictive folktale by

Carrie Nassif

In Picardy poppies stand for the fallen.

I have no grand statement todayI only wanted to mention

Wind-pinned against hedgerows rooted in ordure blooming blood-red cordite-eyed poppies—not flesh.

how the wind through desert palms sounds like our Atlantic at low tide;

and I have no summation to give-

My Grandpa Tom turned 41 in 1914. He spent his war in London— as a town planner at the Office of Works. He lived in love with his cousin Mollie. He wanted peace.

I just thought I would tell you that heaven is turquoise and mottled with cumuli, making it seem lower than usual;

In ’22, newly wed, Tom and Mollie fled to Northern France. He helped rebuild broken cities. She lost a child. Then my mother came. Barbara, her given name. But Tom called her his Rose.

but I do have a secret.. I delight to share a sky with you, and in the notion that maybe we were brushed by the same currents

In Picardy roses deep red as setting sun lie against white stone—row on row in bare-bone cities.

or hidden in the same shadows of clouds, slowly passing.

Summer’s End by

Hugh Lemma

Each name, known and unknown, cut. Each cut, pitiless.

Jude Marr

Aftermath

My mother once told me I am the token tear of a long-running silent epic.

big dipper’s dimmed by palm smoke the network can’t be reached the graveyard’s opened up its square nephews gather ‘round for peace I cannot call you by lagoon or by the oceanside the roads are flooded all my texts jostle in the queue to bleed across the bleaching reef and finally break me up from you

When a true love died she vowed to bury herself with him. At the funeral she did not weep because she said the dead just don’t. She just ate in secret the wreath of purple orchids and black nemophilas which the mourners had used to beautify the bier.When the hearsemen hammered the last nail in, they thought the coffin had gotten heavier. Smilingly she said, ‘must be all those silky flowers in my stomach.’ I was four when she got married again. I thought, ‘Some plants thrive in the deepest bowels, and even if they can’t see the sun they just keep growing; their flowers blooming in the misty elegance of long-suffering silent evenings.’ Last night, she came as I was potting, repotting my plants -‘Your poems,’ she said, ‘they scare me.’ ‘Mother, have you seen this new black carnation?’ ‘.....They have the voice of my true love.......’

Couplets for a Saturday by

Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Black by

Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr.

Rushing water makes it to our bed its voice anyway, through the roof hatch. We live ten feet from Clear Creek and before that we lived next to a reservoir across the RV park, not far. Both are a kind of sink for energy but the reservoir carries sound and the creek buries it. Every year Clear Creek ices up and that’s called a pattern. It flooded last October: Rocky mountain water hit Coors’ warm retaining ponds and cracked ice flew up, ten feet higher than usual and people had to leave the RV park or lose their aluminum homes. When the water retreated families squatted with mining pans. No one found any gold, but downstream near the library a giant swath of astroturf draped itself across a boulder like a cape.

I’ve always known your worth so sorry your face peeled off that summer did you know I stopped eating fish?

Their scales forced me to remember how you scattered skin to earth like breath You said Marie did not epitomize beauty and worth screw the neighbors and You gnashed your teeth sunbathe your face charcoal. at us (and them).

On the other side of the water is the stadium for the school of mines, which put a giant letter on a mountain above Clear Creek. M mountain. A few times a year the school of mines shoots off fireworks from the stadium, you can see from them from the RV park, especially if you sit on your roof and drink beer. Red, blue, green, gold light on the water in June, graduation lights.

They disintegrated flesh and bones soaked in creamy formaldehyde. and you grew tired. I muffled your ear cavities to silence distant echoes I was only twelve.

Farther downstream they found some bones sticking up and soon discovered the fragments belonged to a woman who parked her car under the overpass three years ago, then vanished. We see this overpass from our RV window, we’ve walked under it not knowing it’s where a young woman washed away.

but a miracle happened a decade later

Sutra of Clear Creek

You warned me against it ` kissed my choublak-petaled-skin radiant like Rivye Fon and rainbow trout bathing

Erin Virgil

I saw me— luminescent like only me could.

A Conversation between Us by

Yolaine St. Fort

building block buildings - Carrie Nassif

from the concrete stoop of the squat rented farmhouse I exhaled smoke and cold breath it seeped right up into mother milky way all spread-eagled purple and bruising across the pin-prickled star-spattered night

watch the ships: they pay us more : from China : the elevatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never worked

my tobacco offerings called out nine horses in scraggly winter coats, alfalfa filled leather, strangers who invited me to walk among their tribe nuzzling frosty grass stalks in the darkened lawn shadows in the shade of barreling breaths

: its shaft filled up with rusted air conditioning units : that never worked :

that night I lit the torches to warn the sitter lids clinking like cow bells as I meet her halfway tires churning graveled furrows along the path horses parting like rustling cornstalks whiskering creation stories as I drove away

as long as Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been : selling here

when they close the flaps in the sweat lodge steamy earthen magma floods my lungs. sage snapping on the scorched river-smoothed stones becomes ashen nebulae in the tarry heat, forms prayers the reverberating afterbirth of truth spiraling within us all

the night the stars whinnied in recognition

Carrie Nassif

Island Hotel & Apartments by

Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Cafe` au lait, sugarless, taken at a sidewalk table on the Rue des Dames. Tout le monde passes by as I dunk my last ginger cookie, smooth my flattop, part pinked lips—

We are the revenge of all oppressed, despised, ignored, exploited, beaten, insulted, neglected, abused, molested humans in the world, who are fighters for their rights, with our poems and essays. We are the revenge of the Poetry Art and we are fighting for poetry ethics against the decadent poets/poetesses who exploit Poetry for their own social rant seeking and for hunting young readers and aspiring poets/poetesses in lousy poetry concerts in bars to be able to fuck them.

Midday, Gare de Lyon. Body-clots slug into a southbound train. A snip in a spangled halter-top tugs on her Daddy’s sleeve. She points. Cest un gamin? she says. I grip my garment bag—

We are the revenge of Bulgarian revolutionary-poet Nikola Vaptsarov who had been fusilladed by fascists. We are the left hooks of him punching on the eye of the capitalism.

Dinner in Nice (escargots a` l’ail followed by bouillabaisse). A close-shaved purse-puppy, dwarfed by bows, shivers in Chanel at the bar. I read de Beauvoir while boys pose as sluts—

We are the revenge of socialist Spanish Poet Federico Garcia ` Lorca who had been

fusilladed by fascist Franco’s bastards. We are the continuing verses of him. Also, you can suppose all us to be gay like Lorca, because all we are against sexual racism. We are the revenge of all insulted LGBT persons around the world. You can ostracize all of us from all communities, but we will continue to write anti-racist poems fighting against sexual racism for putting them in the ass of your rotten morality.

Antibes. A nightcap. Absinthe, dash of Perrier. Salt-laden slap of waves, stars scattershot across a fustian sky. I shell pistachios. Under my skin, I’m in disguise—

We are the revenge of socialist Hungarian Poet Attila Jozsef ` who had been forced to live in HUNGER for 32 years, and forced to suicide by this damn capitalist system. We are the revenge of socialist Turkish Poet Nazim Hikmet who had been put in prison without any crime by the Fascist-Kemalist regime for 13 years and forced to escape from his own homeland because of death risk, and then died at abroad with deep pain of homeland longing. We are the revenge of socialist Turkish Poet Enver Gokce who had been left for dead with illness, solitary and big pains of his hard life.

Midnight. Bent elbows crease my silk tuxedo. Not some chic little number every Ms is meant to covet. My pants hang suspendered. Gendered. Zipper-flied. I stride—

La Grande Corniche. A mistral blow exposes crisp Egyptian cotton pierced by onyx-inlaid antique studs. My heart’s hard against a paisley-patterned vest. Ahead, an open road.

La Journée by

We are the ghosts of Turkish Poets Zafer Ekin Karabay and Ozge Dirik who died very young before seeing their published poetry books because of the fucking “vampire publication system” in Turkey which requests money from poets for publishing their books even they are very good poets.

Jude Marr

Revenge of the Imagist Socialist Poetry

Serkan Ergin

She won’t let me forget Children never do They don’t mean to hold you hostage They just look you in the face With them eyes, them different eyes Scanning for places still pumping Still beating human Scrutinizing for corners of safe harbor Where they can run, yell sanctuary Cop a squat on the floorboards of that mind. Deceased children never die.

We are the immortal spirit of our comrade, Armenian revolutionary and freedom fighter Matteos Sarkissian, one victim in 1.500.000 victims of Armenian Genocide, who had been hung in Beyazid Square, in Istanbul, in 1915, without any fear in his heart with his other comrades. We are the immortal spirit of Partisan “Sergeant” Eleni who fought for defending her people with honor and courage and murdered in Pontian Greek Genocide with 353.000 victims. We are the immortal spirits of thousands of Kurdish victims of murdered by FascistKemalist regime. We are the immortal spirits of 72.000 victims of Zazaki Genocide in Dersim perpetrated by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Zoom in A woman sits quietly starring at an antique radio Generations had, generations dark The knob, tired, stiff, stuck The station hasn’t changed in years Neither has the news Colt 45’s straight to the head. She snaps, she rocks Back and forth Back and forth Away, far away...... Away with the books Bury the books Burn the books Ship the books They are afraid we will rule the world with the power of Pi. They are afraid we will think Us silly girls of flower and shine Yet the Almighty they do not tread lightly for.

We are the immortal spirits of all innocent victims of all terrible genocides perpetrated by cruel humans of the world like Bosnia, Rwanda, Circassian, Assyrian, Nestorain, Chaldean, Holocaust, Darfur, Nanking, Ukraine, Cambodia, and all the other massacres. We are the immortal spirits of burned alive children, raped little children, brutally slaughtered millions of humans.

Snapshots by

Rebeca Lois Lucret

Look A young man saunters into a bar Trimmed, tucked and tux Hot off the press Both he and his degree Rolled and held in his mother-made hand. She is waiting Mother is waiting But housed on the right Is part rum, part rage on the rocks. His toast, elephantine Unpolished, pungent: To the questionably guilty To the never innocent To the wrongfully executed To the oranged, striped and shackled To my brothers, sons of Adam Who will always be under the uniform wearing Gravel pounding master With a point to make Who is weak without robe Who suffers from fear Who feeds off power Has hang ups Is a momma’s boy Is a racist Is a follower – This one’s for you!

One slam dunk One red ribbon scroll One golden seal Eight long years Tossed in two seconds of trash Mother is waiting.

A father frantically flips through pages of contacts. The digits escape him But the number of dead seventeen year old boys Is as clear as day. Their country is this country He calls, leaves a callused message: Be weary of the wolves child They infiltrate here too Claiming rap music to be reason enough Claiming garments shielding The crowns of our son’s heads Worthy of fear Suspect of sin Cause enough for the clipping of wings Cause enough for the halting of smiles to bloom. It is not God you should fear my child Death looms in the hands of your neighbors Death looms in the story of our kings.

4. She talks of all the young girls Of all the Trayvons and Jordans Of all the books and pistols Of all the children who dare to dream Of fairy tale triumphs. She sits high on the mount Mouthing rights wronged Telling wretched tales Of girls dodging minefields On the way to blackboards. She preaches of pigtails Pretending to be male, Of prophecies where boys Metamorph into magnificent butterflies Her brothers, And no shots she thinks No shots ever fired And she softens The chambers pump The chambers pump The chambers pump, human and she speaks:

Poets’ Corner

Oh it’s alright baby You can come out now Tell Trayvon and Jordan to come on out. I got some hip hop happy Some hoodie wearin’ Page turning feast waiting to happen. Oh it’s alright baby You can come out now They can’t get you here.

Carrie Nassif Carrie Nassif is a poet, photographer, and full-time clinical psychologist living in the rural Midwest. Regardless of her role-in-the-moment, she seeks to unearth connections between our external and internal environments. She’s had work in several print and online journals, zines, and anthologies and can be followed at her blog http://monstersofourowndestiny.wordpress.com/.

Peg Robarchek Peg Robarchek is a poet and novelist whose first collection of poetry, “Inventing Sex,” will be published by Main Street Rag in 2015. Her most recent novel is “In the Territory of Lies.” Read her blog at http://coachpegnow.com/, follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PegRobarchekAuthor or on Twitter @CoachPegR.

Jacinta V. White

Rebeca Lois Lucret

Jacinta V. White is a NC Arts Council Teaching Artist. Finishing Line Press published her first chapbook of poetry, broken ritual, in 2012, and Jacinta has work also published by The New Verse News, Prime Number Magazine, Jacar Press, and Press 53. Jacinta is the founder The Word Project.

Rebeca Lois Lucret is a native New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn, now residing in the Bronx. Rebeca is a poet, a former writer for Blacktino.net, a member of the NYC Latina Writer’s Group, an alumni of The School of Poetic Arts and performs at various NYC venues.

Yolaine St. Fort Yolaine St Fort, a writer of Haitian descent, is the recipient of a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony. Some of her poems and prose can be found in Torch, Calabash, The Caribbean Writer, Downtown Brooklyn, So Spoke The Earth and others. She is a founding member of Poets for Ayiti.

Jude Marr

Website: www.jacintawhite.com | Twitter: @JacintaVWhite

Jude Marr has an MFA from Georgia College. Her work has appeared in The Cortland Review, Black Heart Magazine, Cider Press Review and Cactus Heart, among others. Jude received an honorable mention for the 2014 Frankye Davis Mayes Prize sponsored by the Academy of American Poets.

Zev Torres Zev Torres’ poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line publications including, Estrellas En El Fuego, Rolling Thunder Quarterly, Maintenant 6 and ExFic. He has published three chapbooks: Revision (2010), In Celebration of Hope and Change (2009) and Percussion Suite (2008). In 2010, Zev Torres founded the Skewered Syntax Poetry Crawls and, since 2008, has hosted Make Music New York’s annual Spoken Word Spectacular.

Erin Virgil

Erin Virgil is a poet who lives in an RV. She has an MFA from Naropa University and her work has been published by Fast Forward Press, Indigo Ink, Wolverine Farm, and Colorado Life Magazine. Her first prose book, memory holes, was recently published by Monkey Puzzle Press.

Stephanie Rodriguez Susan Tuz

Stephanie Rodriguez is a university student from Tennessee studying Linguistics. She is a multilingual speaker with a fascination of written words. She began writing poetry in her late teen years to comprehend human emotions and the human mind. She continues to seek solace through the world of art.

Blog: http://emvlovely.wordpress.com.

Susan Tuz lives in western Connecticut. She is a staff writer for two Hearst Connecticut Media newspapers and holds a bachelor of arts in English Literature. At 65 she is a 70s feminist who has matured into a 21st Century humanist. A love of the written word has sustained her throughout her life.

Blog: http://www.larissasway.blogspot.com/

Elizabeth Kate Switaj Elizabeth Kate Switaj teaches literature, creative writing, and composition at the College of the Marshall Islands. She is the Social Media Editor of Poets’ Quarterly. Her first collection, Magdalene & the Mermaids, is published by Paper Kite Press. Website: www.elizabethkateswitaj.net

Hugh Lemma Hugh Lemma lived most of his life in Southern New Jersey before relocating to Arizona in 2005. His writing is informed by experiences in both places, as well as abiding interests in philosophy, religion, and pop culture. Blog: http://catalexy.wordpress.com/

Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. considers himself the official spiritual advisor of his roommates, Gordot and Dwight - the first a goldfish, the other a Turkish Van cat. His works have been Editor’s Choice in The Poetry Magazine, and featured in the Moria Poetry Journal, The Buddhist Poetry Review, Shot Glass Journal, The Philippines Free Press, and countless others. His first book, A Fistful of Moonbeams, was published by Kilmog Press in April 2010. This year, ‘Songs of My Mother’, a collection of 5 of his poems was published by WISH Publishing.

Serkan Ergin A socialist Laz poet-author from Turkey, Serkan Engin was born in 1975 in Izmit, Turkey. He is from “Art of Labour Collective” in Turkey (In Turkish: Emegin Sanati). His poems appear in more than fifty literary journals in Turkey. In 2004, he published a poem manifesto, entitled Imagist Socialist Poetry. His poems have been published in English in The Tower Journal, Poetry’z Own, Belleville Park Pages, Far Enough East, Spilt Infinitive Lit Magazine, Empty Mirror, and countless others. Some of his poems also appeared in the leading Japanese philosophy and poetry journal Shi to Shisou.

Zev Torres Yolaine St. Fort Susan Tuz Stephanie Rodriguez Serkan Ergin Rebeca Lois Lucret Peg Robarchek

Jude Marr Jacinta V. White Hugh Lemma Erin Virgil Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. Elizabeth Kate Switaj Carrie Nassif