I'm still on the road, guided by Grandma's prayers, wandering in patched paths with images of green pastures in mind, worried and sad as I complete one more revolution around the sun still wondering when this vivid imagination would become a reality.
Category Archives: CHAOS
Poetry from Yike Zhang
Unsung Serenade In realms ethereal, we ascend the stair, Our fleeting gazes intertwined in air, Transcendent and evanescent, this tender plight, Yet within our hearts, an ineffable knowing takes flight. Butterflies pirouette, seraphic and amorphous, Whispering esoteric secrets, shrouded in a luminal chorus, Oh, how I yearn for them to linger, their presence sublime, In this ephemeral expanse, where fear finds no place and time. Through the verdant meadow, our path unfurls, A gentle zephyr carries your essence, as I behold, Transient is the nature, whispering in the breeze, Yet I'm aware, your soul's truth it does seize. Palpitations, unspoken, within us stir, An uncharted symphony, our souls concur, In this poetic silence, a tale unfolds, With nuances untamed, where desire molds. Unsaid infatuation, profound and elusive, Within this labyrinth, our bond tightly fused, With artistry and grace, our souls serendipitously entwined, In this unuttered sanctuary, love's testament transcends.
Yike is a 16-year-old sophomore from China with a passion for international relations, creative writing, and debating. Her work can be found in Blue Marble Review, The Trailblazer Review, The Teen Magazine, among others. She edits for multiple academic journals and literary magazines, and she genuinely loves it.
Poetry from Steven Bruce
Bottled Laughter It has been almost seven years since that forgotten day in the hobby shop. Browsing paint brushes to blush a miniature dragon’s scales. Overhearing the cashier’s gripe about the height of his new chair, I approached the counter. He sat there, spectacles, rosy smile, weighing over three hundred pounds. When I gave him the brushes, he said something humorous. For the life of me, I can’t recall what it was. As he chuckled at his own joke, he tilted back, and the stool gave out from underneath him. By some divine miracle, I held a straight face while saying the only thing you can say in a situation such as this, Are you alright, mate? He clambered to his feet, cursed and scowled at the stool with his hands on his hips. I purchased the brushes, fled the shop, and continued to hold in laughter. On the way home, I recalled the time I tripped in the rain, slapped my chin and hands off the road. How I shot up like some kind of lightning bolt in reverse. And it is tonight, while stargazing, while trying to find the words, while accepting absurdity, that this memory chooses to flash my mind’s eye. I swear, my lips almost tear as I laugh so hard tears roll from my eyes. And it’s not at his misfortune, the inelegant tumble or the wild, goat-like cry he gave. It is the memory of his little black boots punting air as he flailed on his back like an overturned beetle.
Steven Bruce is a poet, writer, and award-winning author. His poetry and short stories have appeared in magazines, webzines, and anthologies worldwide. In 2018, he graduated from Teesside University with a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. He is the recipient of the Literary Titan Golden Book Award, the Firebird Book Award, and the Indies Today Five-star Recommendation Badge. Born in the North of England, he now lives and writes full-time out of an apartment in Barcelona.
Stories from Mark Young
The bats in blackness I like to find what’s not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct. I have always liked those lines from Denise Levertov’s "Pleasures." Have used them before as an epigraph, to an essay written around an exhibition of works by the great New Zealand painter Ralph Hotere, an exhibition that I remember as consisting of a number of black paintings, but within the black were shades, & shapes. Am reminded of the lines tonight. & the context in which I used them. There is a rugby game being played on the park below the house. The floodlights are on, but because they’re angled downwards, onto the field, the light is focused inwards, not outwardly diffused. Six banks of lights, one at each corner & at the mid-point of the two longer sides. There is a blanket of light beneath the top of the stanchions, but above them, on this moonless night, the black rests. Stars can be seen. The lights attract moths. They show like sparks, but moving towards the source, a movie of a fire run backwards, the broken vase made whole again. Large moths, have to be to be seen at this distance. In the line of the lights they are all you can see. But, step aside a bit, hold up your hand or use a branch to conceal that concentrated bright-light patch. Let your eyes adjust. & at the edges of the seepage you see the bats, shapes within the blackness, come to feast on the moths, to pick them off as their arc goes beyond the lights’ arc. An overlap, a Venn diagram, a feeding zone. Because of my Anglophile education in New Zealand, there are vast chunks of U.S. writing that I have never explored. Unlike Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones, I don't think I have read any of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books; Faulkner I cannot read — which aligns him with Australia's Patrick White & Greece's Nikos Kazantzakis; Thomas Wolfe I tried after reading Kerouac's The Town & The City but couldn't get (in to) him. I have never read — which might make me unique on the planet — To Kill a Mockingbird. Perhaps it has to do with the absence of prescribed cultural antecedents (though much of it has been shown to me as Hollywood movie) & so I have no reference points. There are exceptions, most of them self-subscribed. Moby Dick led me to Melville. Poe & Hawthorne I came to through a liking for fantasy. I've read all the great U.S. crime writers & still love the genre. Whitman's two great poems to Lincoln opened up the marvellous Leaves of Grass. The New American Poetry led me backwards to Williams & Rexroth as well as forwards. So, confessional time. In my seventh decade I am reading Thoreau for the first time, Cape Cod, picked up — along with a number of other books — at the recent second-hand proceeds-to-charity Bookfest. & I'm liking it.
Poetry from Alan Catlin
730- Jesus Lizard Jesus Wept Jesus’ Son Judas Hole Judas Tree Jesus H Christ Attorney at Law Judas Priest Judas Door Jesus Saves Jesus Christ Foretopman Jesus Christ and Jerry Cruncher Resurrection Man at Large Jesus Christ Superstar Jesus Camp Jesus of Montreal Judas Kiss 732- 100 word review challenge to Howie Good’s Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems. Imagine word salads made of image clusters leaking from holes in a canvas by Dali. And one by Cocteau. With a side of Bacon. Or shotgun art made by someone like Burroughs at ten paces with a pump action, shooting five-gallon paint cans, resulting impact something like forensic evidence. Like blood splatters. With a side of fileted Pollock. Like Dada at the MAMA. I mean the MOMA. Opening night Patrons of the arts dancing a Lobster Quadrille to a Resurrection Jazz Band. Dressed in top hats with pink boas and Robante gowns. That’s a Stick Figure Opera: 100 words exactly. 733- The Eggplant That Ate Chicago or The Ham Sandwich That Killed Mama Cass. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or It Came from Schenectady. The Grilled Cheese Sandwich with the Profile of Jesus Christ or The Block That God Forgot. The Thigh Bone Connected to the Hip Bone or Zen Bones, Zen Bones. 734- Exploding Trees Frost Quakes Arctic Sea Smoke Fog Freeze 109 below Climate Change Weather events or rock groups 740- “When I make a film, it is a sleep. I am dreaming.” “Realism in unreality is a constant pitfall.” “He or she exists only if introduced with events in a dream.” “I have always liked the no man’s land of twilight.” “What are you trying to say? I was trying to say what I said.” Jean Cocteau, “On Orpheus 743- Memory is what happens next. “a memory is nothing/nothing is a memory.” Bernadette Mayer. “Just because something has never happened before doesn’t mean it can’t happen again.” (unknown) (Sports Center? ESPN?) “I seem to remember my future works although I don’t even know what they will be.” V. Nabokov, The Gift. “Shove a slogan down the throat enough times I becomes an acquired taste.” Jenny Xie. “I confess I don’t believe in time.” V.N. “an image of the dead or the fingernail/ of a new born child.” John Berryman 748- You don’t know Jack(s) Jack(ie) Kennedy Jack(ie) Robinson Jack(ie) Jensen Jack Shit (e) Jack Off Jack Rabbit Jack Tar Jack Johnson Jack Spicer Jack beanstalk Jack Kerouac Jack Giant Killer Jack(son) Polloc Jack(b) Nimble Jack (b) Quick Jack Dempsey Jack Micheline Jack (a) Lope
Poetry from Jonathan Butcher
Relatively Relative In those gardens, tucked away from the city, one of the main attractions when visiting you; the affluence that laced this air with distorted tendrils, a world away from my usual backdrop, and somewhat strangely more exciting. After we left that council funded attempt at tranquility, we crossed the tree lined roads, that living room now just a fragmented memory, brandy snaps and whiskey in decorated glasses, your grin just slightly terrifying, overseeing everything. Those stairs to steep for comfort, complimenting the vertigo that was often caused by your presence, which left us all way too early, your wisdom expanded over three decades, only spoken in half drunk conversation, your echo only ever intended to be a memory. No Chance of Rest Together we gather, encapsulated in this web, that hangs heavy with grit smeared rain drops between broken branches of yew, still not ripe enough yet to carve into arrows. This snare trap of time, with inheritance we never wished to accept. Our recreation once again cut short; only the higher echelons have parks that remain open all evening. We retain strength in thimble sized vails, the same tasks repeating like decreasing circles in puddles of oil. The same days, weeks and hours shuffled like wine-stained playing cards. This handed down grind, which somehow evolved into gratefulness, embraced with broken arms, which we still manage to retain a grip on for long enough, and to eventually suggest a change. Failed Excuse It doesn't seem so quaint and fine, once it's crawling across your doorstep, interfering with the breakfast tables; residing in cupboards and meterboxes, rifling through handbags and trouser pockets. Eyes, however, suddenly begin to remove their glaze, once fabrics and prescriptions beguin to burn at the edges and crumble at the slightest touch. The excuses now run painfully thin, like water pouring through crumbling dam cracks. And now they claim protest, but only with trepidation, a spare hour amongst hypocrisy, that still fails to convince them. they now stir tea in broken cups, "it will soon pass", they all promise. The Same Plan In this equal space, the clash of church bells and car speakers, screams and barks entwined like daisy chains around the neck of this city, Washing hung with decomposing pegs, casting secrets over ancient brick walls smudged with soot like ash stained tables, steam from gutters creating a convenient fog. The buildings scraped empty and regenerated, a crude taxidermy, as cracks widen within windows, telephone wires like buntin, decorated with flags of this disposition. Another promised plan, a plaster over gangrenous wounds, dangles mid-air but never reaches the ground; our mouths remain open, but it never passes our throat. - Jonathan Butcher has had poetry appear in various publications including The Morning Star, Popshot, Picaroon Poetry, The Transnational, Cajun Mutt Press, Mad Swirl, and others. His fourth chapbook 'Turpentine' was published by Alien Buddha Press.
Poetry from Richard LeDue
“What Has Passed” An empty wine bottle (reincarnated as a vase for a dead rose) tries its damnedest to believe in ghosts, but regardless if that flower is loved enough to let rot, it's best to let what has passed haunt or rest (both a leap of faith that leaves one grounded) in our yesterdays. “Love Shaped Death” It's there like an urban legend spider crawling down your throat as you sleep, or is it a mosquito one kills with a dramatic clap, only to be revulsed at realizing the blood on your hands is your own? Perhaps this is the reason for guns under pillows, or long looks at grocery store bouquets that force you to remember a name you forgot you forgot, but giving you something to talk about with yourself when you get home.