Harpies!

 Positioned on my back, I lay upon the sofa and observed the world around me.   The first thing I saw was that the light fixture in the center of the ceiling had grown longer and was swinging pendulously, making me quite dizzy. The living room walls, it seemed to me, were now breathing, swelling and then contracting in turn.

I thought back blearily to the evening before, when I had, at least in my own mind's eye, been both a sexual athlete and a chaste Don Juan in service to vulnerable--and beautiful but very, very young--women.  To the best of my recollection I had dropped the acid, in the company of some hippy friends I'd net at the bar, at about ten thirty that evening.  They had told me that they always congregated at the same time every night.  They said they liked my company and would return. Then had followed a riotous, puerile bacchanalia with anyone and everyone.  I wondered briefly, blinking, if I were still a virgin in any sense of the word.  What a night!  I shook my head. Curiously, I couldn't remember a thing.  Just wisps and traces of memory.

I felt something, then peered down at my feet, where Baby, my cat, was nibbling on my big toe; it didn't hurt at all, but it was an unusual sensation.   I glanced at the windows at the east end of the house, where the morning sun was just breaking over the horizon, turning my white shades a golden hue.  I wondered if I should get up--I had to go to the bathroom--but that would have required standing.  I weighed the pros and cons of going to the toilet, decided against it.  I looked back down my body to Baby, who was sttill busy with my toe.

The room felt chilly.  I checked my forearms: gooseflesh had blossomed ever the surface of my skin.  I thought I detected a draft.  I looked at the windows again and the curtains were fluttering in a fresh breeze; had I forgotten to close them?  I felt a mild pain in my foot and saw that Baby had bitten clear through the flesh to the bone and was licking the white metatarsal or whatever they're called.  Still no pain, however. I grunted.

I heard footfalls over the carpeted floor and suddenly there was a man in my ;livmg room:  it was my dentist, Dr. Numbnuts.  He grinned down at me and proffered a huge, menacing pair of pliers and a cordless drill, probably a half inch device.

"You missed your appointment this morning," he scolded. "I'm concerned with your teeth and I wanted to make sure  they got the care they needed."  His black mustache twitched furiously. "The dentist is your friend, you know," he insisted.  With a sigh of resignation I opened my mouth in order for him to proceed.  The procedure was long and complicated and loud but again, I felt no pain.  When he had finished, I looked at him questioningly and he said, "Your teeth are fine, Mr. Tubs, but I'm afraid that the gums will have to come out!  I'll be back tomorrow," he added  My eyes must have opened wide, for he said reassuringly, "I'll just transplant your teeth onto your hard and soft palates; you'll never miss your gums!"  I nodded uncertainly. From where I lay I could see into the kitchen and the edge of the refrigerator.  Numbnuts walked briskly into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door and disappeared inside. Would he have enough air in there? I wondered.  I had plenty of beer in the fridge, so he wouldn't go thirsty.

Baby had by this time consumed fully half of my foot and was developing a little tummy from all she'd eaten.  She had rolled onto her back and was lying there with her paws in the air. 

I sighed. I was really tired.  The dental procedure had exhausted me. Not to mention the wild evening  I'd probably had.  I really needed to pee, but I wondered if my psychedelic experience would go away if I got up off the couch.  No, I decided I couldn't chance it.  I'd paid it no mind before, but the television was on.  On one of the 24/7 news channels the program host was talking.  I edged up onto an elbow and listened intently.

"Alien spaceships have landed in Edgewood, Washington," she announced briskly, referencing a city just outside Seattle.  "When law enforcement personnel investigated the craft, a portal was opened and the police officers were disintegrated by Harpies wielding a powerful space ray!"  Yikes!  I thought.  Harpies! But as I peered at the TV screen, I noticed a certain familiarity.  Those were the same young women who were at my apartment last night, dropping acid. "That's it!" I said aloud.  I was doped up by Harpies from the planet Exxon and now everyone's paying the price.  And  that wasn't really my dentist, Dr. Numbnuts, it was just another Harpy in disguise!  Everybody knew that Harpies were shapeshifters!

On the TV the Harpies seemed unstoppable! At one point they cornered a woman going through a dumpster and collecting cans of stewed tomatoes and they disintegrated her, tomatoes and all.  What if they started making demands of the federal government. The president might be forced to remove LSD from the National Strategic Reserve of Hallucinogens.  I forgot where they were stored, but I knew that Dr. Fauci was in charge of it.  I glanced at the clock: it was nine a.m., just a little over a dozen hours till the Harpies returned to party.  I made up my mind then:  I got up and went to pee.

Peonies of poesy


Peonies of poesy

acting as a parasol

from the scorching heat of reality.

Amaltas dreams peep through 

 gossamer veils. 

Emotional myalgia,

somnolent hours,

a sudden bazooka of rainbow syllables

shot through the syntax of memory.

Sunflower renditions,

The wind in her hair.

She wanted a bougainvillea 

I gave her dreams 

chiseled out of my bones,

Epitaphs of proclivity,

sands of time.

A glass window and 

Autumn sauntering on my lacerated bosom.

Ballistic oxymoron

Seeping through leaked rhymes.

The world is but a granule of sand

seeping fast through my fingers.

The mountains echoed luminous ballads

on starry nights.

Mist-wreathed hilltops hummed verdant dreams

As October bid goodbye

wrapped in a silken thread of memory.

Clouds waltzed in front of my window.

The turf is filled with leftover poems

that fell prey to the sands of time.

I bit the side of the moon and kept the rest for dinner.

My poems lay tired like the old armchair. 

They gave me a weary smile.

The smell of dreams percolated my senses;

gestured me with a happy articulation. 

Life is a conundrum

but we must move on

Shaking off problems like the little girl shaking off the sand from her sandal. 



October bids goodbye


October bids goodbye

Wrapped in the discarded moiré thread of memory.

The autumn leaves fall

humming a baritone

Of love and longing in tandem.

The golden tinge paints a carnival

like Van Gogh's acrylic landscapes.

It acts as a placebo for my tainted soul.

 Amidst the concrete jungle of monoliths

Autumn’s amber tincture renders an ebullient vista.

The gleaming sun shimmering through the azure sky

 reminds me of our clandestine tryst

on one such magnificent October afternoon.

Verdant dreams glitter on mist-wreathed hilltops.

 I jettisoned my fears into the darkness of the night

and waltzed with the wind's saccharine lullaby.

Parable of forsaken dreams heap once again at my study table

enchanted by an alchemy of reminiscence.

As autumn gradually drifts away

making way for the chilly Northern winds.

Dreams flutter in unison.

 October bids goodbye

wrapped in the discarded moiré thread of memory.






Debarati Sen works in Presidency University Kolkata as a Junior Assistant. Her debut poetry book called 'Blurred Musings' has recently been published. Recipient of the Tagore Award 2022 and the Sylvia Plath Women's Literary Award, Debarati finds emancipation in her poetry! She has also been the winner of the International Poetry Writing competition held by the Elite Book Awards in November 2021. She has also grabbed the third position in the National Poetry Writing Month 2022 contest hosted by the Elite Book Awards. Debarati features in the Council Year Book launched  on the occasion of Women's Day 2022 by Literoma in association with the Public Safety and Security Council of Bengal. 

She has also been declared as an Empalled Author in the International Author's Conclave held by Literoma in December 2021. She is one among the top ten poets of the Women;'s Day poetry contest organised by Delhi Poetry Slam. She has co-authored more than 15 anthologies and is recently compiling her first anthology as a compiler with the Quill House Publishers. Her poems have found shelter in prestigious websites like The Antonym, The Yugen Quest Review, The Kolkata Arts, Lapis Lazuli, The Das Literarisch, to name a few. 

The Terror of Tulips
By Chris Butler

The cock of the walk. The early Saturday morning's sun beamed through the gray overcast of night with the rays of golden gods. The college campus's freshly barbered lawns glistened. The acoustic melodies of an older generation echoed from the insomniac stoners' room, playing the soothing soundtrack for coming down. The birds chirped their harmonious courtships. A college junior, with his combed hair parted to perfection across his head and his brand new satin shirt hung across his plateaued shoulders without a wrinkle, had the stride with the pride of a royal lion as he smirked fondly across his kingdom.    

Leo strolled past the mailbox built within a block of individually selected bricks and up the winding driveway of his fraternity house. Alpha Beta Gamma was a century's old mansion that was formerly the home of the university's founder and first dean. His body swaggered with the fluid swing of each arm. He inhaled deep, free puffs that filled his bagpipe lungs to capacity. He skipped up each of the three concrete steps that led to the massive oak door. He paused for a moment, the sly smile of the recollection of satisfaction smeared across his face, lifting the corners of his lips just below his bloodshot, bright blue eyes. His sure hand gripped the iron doorknob as he took one last breath of fresh air.      

Leo reminisced of the evening before, and massive celebration at his friend's parent's house, who left their son in charge as the caretaker of their home as they flew south for a lavish vacation. His friend had decided that the Friday evening of that week was the opportunity of a young lifetime to throw the perfect keg party, along with a shapely array of plastic bottles of clear and brown alcohol. Since Leo the had the earliest date of birth of everyone in his class, he had been placed in charge of procuring the drinks for the epic celebration. Most of the girls who had arrived at the party with promises of free liquor and beer had already spent an evening with Leo, and were aware of his predatory ways. They were lionesses, and knew all too well that it was the female of the species who brought home the dead meat. They were more interested in spending their precious evenings with anyone else. 

But from across the room appeared a girl Leo had never seen before. She was as fully fulfilled and developed as a woman, yet naively younger than college age, she must be eighteen he thought to himself. But these numbers weren't of any concern to him on this evening. He seduced her with a special cocktail of his own concoction, mixed with his special secret ingredient of a little white pill. After she chugged his drink of choice as he whispered in her ear his favorite rehearsed lines to impress girls with a lower maturity level than their age, he offered to give her a refill. As her cup drained down her throat and below halfway mark of the plastic container, her body began to sway and she had to use his dominant body to help her equilibrium stay balanced. He had no intentions of carrying a passed out girl upstairs in front of the rest of the party's participants. He lifted the cup from her hand and placed it on a table. He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her towards the stairs that led to the second floor. She said something about her friend Lily, and Leo assured her that they would find her. And they should start their searching upstairs. With minimal resistance, he pulled her into the dark guest bedroom. He assured her that they would find her friend, just as he plopped onto the bed, pulling her down on top of him. Frenetically pulling off her sweater and jeans, he kept saying sweet nothings over her drifting voice. Flipping himself onto her, he pried open her legs. After the climax of his conquest, he pulled his underwear up and put back on his jeans, and as she squirmed in what he assumed to be as blissful dreams. He left, closing the door as quietly as a home invader behind him.
        
As Leo turned the iron knob to enter his fraternity home, a honeybee landed on his hand. His other hand went upward to callously swat it, when the bee's wings lifted it towards the bushes that grew around the exterior of the lavish house. He noticed that the annual tulips had spread open their closed petals for the spring season. The bee flew into the moist center of the flower. It crawled up and down and all around the sweet, sticky insides, fleeing with the bright yellow pollen clinging to its appendages. He nodded with approval towards the busy bee in its desire to master all the flowers in all the gardens around him. He removed his hands from the knob to smell the sweet, sticky insides that were still clinging to his fingers. He opened the massive door and disappeared from the daylight.  

-----

The walk of shame. The Saturday morning sun hid behind a tarp of gray cloud cover. The spring air was moist, leaving a foggy glaze on the car windows across the suburban neighborhood. The early birds chirped with the hunger of hunters. A young high school sophomore, with long, bedraggled hair, strands dangling from the ponytail barely held together by a scrunchie, and her brand-new turtleneck sweater with a tear across her shoulder, she shuffled her feet down the street, arms crossed, her eyes staring downward at the asphalt before her feet.

Rose almost walked past her home before she noticed the mailbox painted with an array of colorful floral arrangements at the end of the driveway. She hugged herself harder until she wasn't inhaling enough air to catch her breath. She stepped onto the brown, worn welcome mat with "Home Sweet Home" embroidered in black lettering laying before the front door. She paused for an eternal moment, taking prolonged, bottomless breaths, until her head felt like a helium-filled balloon. Her shaking hand clenched the doorknob to steady her body tremors.

Rose hesitated. She remembered through the hammering headache, the queasy nauseousness in her stomach and the thorny pain in her groin about the lie she had rehearsed the night before. She had convinced her parents that she was spending her Friday evening at a slumber party at her best friend Lily's house. They were going to binge watch the newest episodes of their favorite show about fashionable, quick-witted high school girls and their everyday high school girl problems that claimed complete control over their lives, record themselves jokingly following the latest social network trends and uploading the results online, and staying up until dawn talking about the clear-complexioned boys in class they thought were cute, the girls they thought were sluts or bitches and the homework assignment they had to finish before Monday's classes were back in session. 

The night before Rose's long, lonely walk home, the best friends had learned of a kegger hosted by college men at a house only a few short miles from Lily's house. Not boys, but men. The allure of leaving the same old high school boys that made juvenile jokes and always talked about subjects that made the girls' eyes roll around in their heads and instead spend their Friday night with a gathering of mature, intellectual men. It enticed their imagination of a party without lightweights who could not hold their alcohol inside their teenage tummies and by the end of the evening wouldn't spread sprinkles of vomit onto their shoes. But once Lily became separated from her friend, she met and conversed with her first college man. Tall, with golden hair perfectly parted to the left side of his handsome head, a man named Leo introduced himself to Rose. He offered her a drink, returning from the bottles of booze with a red solo cup full. The drink was cheek sucking sweet, but with a strange aftertaste. She noticed the college women staring in their direction, likely glares of jealously because they weren’t flirting with the hottest piece of man at the festivities. From then on, the rest of the night was a spinning blur, as the young virgin eventually found herself away from the crowd she was so interested in meeting, to a private room with a guest bed, the first time she had ever been alone with another man, or boy. She had tried to say no, more than once before and after she fell onto the bed, but she wasn't aware that her words slurred when they left her lips. But her refusals didn't slow him down, but instead sped his libido up by a thousand horses of power. Her pushes were too weak to express her displeasure. She thought of screaming, but his tongue was licking her tonsils as her lightened head spun out of her control.       

Rose remained still at the front door of her home. She released her grip on the knob. She collapsed on the mat with her back against the door. She saw the crotch of her jeans glimmered with a spot of fresh blood from her hymen that was busted by that man's battering ram. A buzzing began between her ears. A honeybee hovered over her head for a long moment, looking like it was ready to sting. It then flew around the flower bed next to the concrete path from the mailbox to the front door. It landed on a tulip next to her. The bee penetrated the unpeeled petals and burrowed its way inside onto the virginal anther. It began molesting the unadulterated stamens until it was caked in yellow pollen. The hairs covering its twiggy legs pillaged the pollen. Then the bee's wings fluttered as it flew away, hunting the next flower for a taste of nature's nectar.

AM NOT A POET

Don't call me a poet,
I cannot write the pain that flows through my veins
Nor draw the chains handcuffing my body

Don't call me a poet,
I'm afraid to use my blood as ink and my skin paper
Tangled in this life too
A slave to my emotions.
Afraid to let out my voice
which unwittingly quivers when I speak.

Don't call me a poet
Because I cannot make out words of letters
I therefore personify my sorrow
Though I pen my own story
I cannot give myself a happy ending

So, don't call me a poet.

Amirah Abdulrahman. (JAWAHIR'S PEN)

Tendril
By Sreya Sarkar

Decenniums descended, 
Brave women marched with men
Shoulder to shoulder
Azaadi looked within reach
Palace walls crumbled
But a turret grew there instead
Its snake head sissling
Keeping watch on all
Tightening its grip 
On men, women, children
Some escaped 
Into the folds of wealth
Sheltered in connections
Others had nowhere to hide 
They worked in the streets, and the fields
Exposed to the strict police gaze 
The masters needed the shroud of virtue
To veil their craving 
They made it law
Loose gowns,
Tight headscarves
A pretty young one 
botched the command
Her tendril escaped
The gaze weaponized it
Looped it to choke her
The zhins moaned in agony
Beat their breasts 
Lit a bonfire
Jumped in, one by one
A neo-futurist architect and AI 
Imagined a mane of hair in the wind 
Is the gust enough to place it in Azadi Square?
Can the snake be decimated,
the blood washed away?
Will the “flowing free” replace it, instead?

PASTORAL

Wild wind blowing the work you left half-completed,
as for climate change – anywhere to be seen,
to atone for the founding of the wash of the sea,
the stamp of Darwin -

blood clots swim like chop! chop!
owls cook in Alaskan skies,
curling smoke escapes Earth
from epoch to epoch -

faith in Armageddon floods the bayou,
frenzied spiders on the skin chant 
get up, old man, despite the hard pressing on your heart,
the toxic exhaust smell in your trembling farts –

leaking penis, legs less mobile than the midday sun,
moonstruck memories trail behind their mad mothers.
sun brings you up to date on the plague,
now merely the old man on the street corner of 7th and 7th –

in a past a charted obligation,
now, a cancer patient dons his American Gothic garb,
trudges across unplowed fields,
soil sings, soil sweats -

more shouting, that showcase of human condition,
sky closes its jaw on the steel confusion of cities,
tears fall, spark the interest of the grass,
Frankenstein is almost done making his monster –

a brand of human species born to a feral bitch,
standing here in the atheist line 
with the toadstool, the iguana and the hermit crab,
lightning in the clouds – wake up old man,

wave your white bandana, your tired hospital gown,
your well-earned stigmata, welcome to the 21st century, 
where even the nipples are made of clay,
where history bows beneath the onslaught.





A JUNE WALK

Trees flare,
green abundance,
white and pink and violet
frosting.

Birds nest in every fork.
Time moves on
but such a verdant struggle
to make it stay.

Welcome fullness, 
a return to immortality 
for lovers on a woodland walk.

Wildflower, fingers, 
skittering rabbits, legs - the trick is to tell us apart.


WE BOTH SAID "I LOVE YOU"

It's a major event surely.
It should be jack-hammered into marble
by poets on a metaphor bender.
What is civilization doing at the moment?
Shouldn't they be involved?
At the very least,
it demands a parade and streamers,
people hanging out of office buildings,
schoolgirls lining the route.
And where's the mayor? The governor?
And who's the president anyhow?
Fireworks have a reason for living.
Marching bands are hot to trot.
Shouldn't we pick and choose from
the Hollywood A list for our hosts?
This makes every other declaration of feelings
look like outtakes from The Little Rascals.
I'm expecting to be called up to the podium
any moment now.
Don't worry. We both can grip, hold up the statue,
thank everything from soul to heart to head.
I can just hear the critics.
"Made me think of summer days,
blue lakes, Schwinn bicycles and the
pretty blonde girl in the hip-hugging jeans."
I'm on stage. You're on stage.
And what an audience…
just the two of us.
Why don’t we keep it to ourselves.

YOUR IMPRESSION IN THE NIGHT SKY

You’re beautiful.
It’s written in the stars,
in the stares.

Men turn their heads
when you walk by.

Not just the usual wolves
in hard hats and orange jackets,
but the dignified,
the older gents,
stiff and proud-faced,
who look as if they’ve just come
from having their portraits painted.

I’m with the stares of course
but I also confer with the stars.

Aldebaran shines brighter than
anything else in the field of Hyades.
I wonder if you feel responsible.

MY APRIL 

April is on my side.
Alpine asters bloom.
Nuthatch slips down the oak trunk
in a blush of sun.
And is that a bee?
Listen close.
It’s a sound flower petals recognize.

Grass creeps up my ankle.
Narcissus glow yellow.
Boy fishermen drop their lines.
A fox slinks through the sumac.

The landscape is a living almanac.
It’s new and familiar.
Last summer’s heart beats
in the new year.
No more ice.
So the ground can be trusted.

Raccoons forage.
Sparrows move into the gutters.
Promises are revelations.
The lake glows horizon red.
Milkweed reasserts itself.

There’s still a shiver about.
But shining is a warmth in itself.
Just ask the primroses, the peach rose.
The sun is like a loving parent,
gripping my hand
and leading me out the door.

Where snow has long melted,
animal secrets emerge.
Life opens itself up to color.
Like a hint of violet
and drops of silver parachuting down.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Red Weather. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Rathalla Review and Open Ceilings.

 

 
 Never fulfilled
 always fulfilling 
Our tub overflows
    with oceans yet to fill
& my name
 doesn't Matter because 
    You already know me.

 As if a 
   shared mystery is
      a pleasant surprise,
           Enjoy the toss.
              It's new Today.

            Love, this look 
       around the other way,
     As sun lifts the shades 
   Beneath the living wood. 
 In quiet refrain,  Listen as if 
  Creation shares the thunder,
      in expectation beyond 
          the pulse of Light.

Pretending 
in the timeless beauty  
where want
 evaporates upon renewal,
      No-thing Waters The Rose. 
Yes, it's being quenched within 
Free to assist the solar polish 
whose warmth closes eyes to
the olfactory bloom
as appreciation soothing
 the receiver,  
Sightless Satisfaction.
   
Cut, the dethorned is confined
  to a kitchen window's grace.
   The rose looks out,
 behind the glass.

 Still you're rose.
Timeless named from the dark 
 To call us together 
  Warming from within 
Drawing the mystery sharing 
      Living the earth & 
        Tall boundless sky,
           Known for its winds.
 
       A Rose Appreciated, 
Opens a window in expectation
   Dreams its thorns
 And turn Wind to Sky 
where water forms.

Never fulfilled 
 Always fulfilling 



Drafted:
Saturday morning 
November 5, 2022
by John Edward Culp 
All Rights Reserved