Insides of mausoleums i Shapes shifted blue (turquoise endeavored) to the favorite bar our constant devotion what stumbles across them the distant voices once heard if hereafter recollected, existents of a higher plane every body talks of— this no man’s land a graveyard sought for if retrogressive.
ii Type doors to faded sepulchers spectraled silhouettes align with, bundle what light makes (ancestral, important) in tombs windows encase them, cutting the distance to climb of their paradise eternal a squared room contorts it.
iii Sky’s throw the distance that covers closed sets of harvest (once and for all) if consequents of choices stand tall to accuse of some Other’s vision this room stocks it while perennial graces alabaster herein triumphs.
Andrew Cyril Macdonald considers the role of inter-subjectivity in poetic encounter. He celebrates the confrontations between self and Other and the challenges that occur in moments of injustice. He is founding editor of Version (9) Magazine, a poetry journal that implicates all things theoretic. You can find his words in such places as A Long Story Short, Blaze VOX, Cavity Magazine, Don’t Submit, Experiential-Experimental Literature, Fevers of the Mind, Green Ink Poetry, Lothlorien, Nauseated Drive, Otoliths, Synchronized Chaos, Unlikely Stories and more. When not writing he is busy caring for seven rescued cats and teaching a next generation of poets.
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.
The Comeback
The big trucks roll in and out
all day and the gulls on the dump
don’t know them any more from St. Francis.
There are hundreds of them
fluttery and imperturbable
orgying on the donations
of 400,000 citizens.
Ugly on the ground
they look like overfed pigeons
with skinnier legs if that’ possible
& with heads like Edward Everett Norton
but when they spread those long wings
there is a grace the eye does not resist.
There are so many
that it’s scary at first
but they don’t give a shit
(hopefully) about visitors,
another truck comes in
they swirl about
in their somewhat flipped out fashion
this set up being too easy
and maybe you start
feeling a little flippy too.
The garbage men get two holidays
a year which they make up
the following saturdays.
The birds have been there
for years.
Archimedes at the Wedge
two sumo size guys sitting with
the great stillness of the huge
another somewhat noisy somewhat
sizable guy with ugly hair & no definition
big lower lip many years at the beach
one other large mostly muscled
guy with the best hung-over drawl
about the tangle of the last few
days’ parties and these gentlemen
misshapen to various degrees are
deferred to by the trim and the
less seriously physical.
off at a distance families demolish
boxes of donuts. a dreamy woman
almost gets sucked to her death,
a guy with stitches shows up. one of
the sumos has disappeared but one
shoots across a short high left face
half his body out of the water
holding up the world.
Terminal Island
(a fond look back)
The sailors come from off the sea
The porno movies for to see
I take them there for a small fee
Because I am a cabbie, a cabbie.
They also go dive-hopping
And on suitcase-buying sprees.
$4.10 into town, or if you have
5 horny greeks, $4.50,
or 3 insane Bostonians,
their wives with season tickets
to arthur fiedler (whose dead,
I think), $4.30.
But I like it out there.
The driving is fast and reckless,
The air feels good.
The ships are platonic,
The ship’s whores doubly so.
The company supplies the tires,
The sea provides rumor
And inference.
Nude beach
When you come over the bluff
And look down into the cove
It looks like sand
When you get there
It turns out to be millions
Of small rocks
Which leave red marks on your ass
Which look like sunburn
From a distance
Loudmouths and quiet lookers
With salty dried-out hair
Girls with stones for eyes
& tits that are pointy
guys dive off rocks
and try to keep from being
sucked by the current
into the cave
flesh everywhere
but not a stiff prick in sight
people stand on the side and shout
to the divers
“stay on the surface”
beach at trouville 1873
the sand is behaving itself
the smoke is beautiful in the clear air dress is formal, boater for the men buss & parasol for the ladies no one is lonely or trying to get picked up
marriages have reached the here-we-are stage, the hair is dark, not grey the beach socially is just being discovered and the feeling is somewhat like a movie set
la mer is vaguely paid attention to less than say boats on it
we are all fairly fucking cool thank you later our teeth will be pulled and freudian psychology revealed with a national twist and a slight yawn
but now it’s the morning of light the sand is being so good the heels are clicked together hard to tell shape of ass under those large skirts but the waist is a general guide the weather is perfect and it’s the most perfect day of a fairly perfect year
tahiti in tails a cole porter level of charm
there is no food and the wine is not in sight the wind is excellent
there are no numbers or letters visible (being in the picture they cannot see the artist’s signature
but if they could they wouldn’t change a thing)
of course everywhere is a seminal dream as we existing prove we’ve only lost the charm the style the clothes the light and control of the sand
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
INTERPRETATION
Of course,
We all could condone any vitriol
Spilt on the rifts of the long hibernation.
The flesh seems fresh than conjoined
For those who want to believe it.
You see it banal from the space
Between your index and thumb.
The night is blank sentence,
Projected perfectly onto the medulla oblongata
Where
The vector of light pokes the horizon
To trace the core of the cross.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
The top layer swanks creamy
Decorated with an arty-farty cut lemon body
Ornated and candied,
More aesthetic than functional.
Nobody knows and wouldn’t ask
If some hours ago
The acid juice splashed its hangman’s pink skin,
Innocent,
Seeking dormant wounds
To nip.
ADVENT
I try to imagine my curbed ego,
The marking commas, the restrictive brackets.
I knew the coin’s been already thrown
For a voice which grammar has many cogent rules.
The new beginning would be inky,
Far from all those pastel-painted frames
With empty rooms fostering pastorali
In stuffed poultry hearts.
The real blood never puts artless colors on its pride.
From the chandelier fell too much of words
Keeping silence about the profit of being mortal.
I tried to discern the salt in the wound, bugs on the face
Worn promises, Holly knowledge.
I regret losing my taboos in remission of sins
But the new me still has time to slip into my old
Long haired coat
Because the snappish winter is coming close.
REVIVAL
Morning is tiptoeing over to the window
Like a cat
Descending the tree of wishes
Head first
To see all ghosts off
Too modest in their self-knitted hats
And backs heavy with the weight of the tenderness.
Interjections wait woven into the soggy day.
Lungs implore more oxygen.
Movements set a Morse code rhythm
Flirt with coffee steam
Dance under the wind’s baton
On the garnished with fine mica flakes pavement.
From the crowd’s sleepy orbits
Protrude huge, perplexed, yesterday‘s question- marks.
CORROSION IS IN FASHION
We are charming in ochre, scarf-styled,
Radiating that exceptional dress sense
While fall is parading its paradigms.
The warmth of gold is already proven
Out of time arguments
When the taste for art mimics the lack of logic
In the global language.
Sometimes we wonder
If the closed societies undergo attitudinal changes.
In fact, silk on wool presents fond delusion in rainy days.
That world’s hurly-burly,
A storage of nonsense we use to feed scraggy wars
Pretending that they’re somewhere far
In order to satiate our nonchalance
And quell any inner disturbances.
Happy hypocrites we are
If believe in the grace of the swan neck
Garlanded with luxurious plumage.
Beneath the camouflage— the wormy throat.
Black Fire Matters
Many people both inside and outside his home 'hood thought of Jimmy as a firebrand, his style as long as anyone could remember. At fifteen he organized demonstrations and led protest marches. The police picked Jimmy up several times, charged him with disorderly conduct and creating a public nuisance once each, but never convicted him of anything. Unlike many of his peers, he kept his nose clean—Jimmy never messed with drugs or with selling them. He was a thorn in the side of the authorities, but he was not a criminal—and more thoughtful observers thought of him more and more as a peacemaker.
Jimmy spent two years at the local community college and two more at the state university to end up with a bachelor's degree in social work. Instead of going to work for a government agency, Jimmy had worked with a community-based social services provider in the neighborhood where he grew up. Seeing many of the community's problems deriving from politics, he decided to return to the university for a master's degree in political science and enrolled for the next academic year.
In the meantime, a series of deaths-in-custody and other suspicious deaths of unarmed black teenagers at the hands of police led to a wave of angry protests. The law enforcement community didn't seem to get the message, though, and the deaths continued. Predictably, that eventually led to some people taking the law into their own hands and exacting vengeance upon police. Jimmy could see the situation easily spiralling out of control, so he contacted several influential community personalities and organized a series of meetings.
At first, Jimmy tried to persuade each group that the best strategy involved negotiation and well-disciplined peaceful demonstrations, but he soon saw he risked being totally ignored and becoming irrelevant. Many of those who attended his meetings said, “We've already tried that, and we know it doesn't work,” or words to that effect. A few had already begun organizing groups of armed black vigilantes. In an effort to prevent the spreading conflicts from escalating into an all-out war, Jimmy chose to accommodate those groups.
“You don't just go out and start blowin' honkies away. We don't want to kill honkies—or even white cops—just because they're white. That's jes’ as bad as them killin' us because we're black. Is that OK?”
“Hell, no!” his small audience roared.
“Exactly! So we don't want to do that either. We're talkin' self-defence. We only go after people who are killin' our bros.”
“How about the head of Standard Oil?” came a voice from the crowd.
“That'll have to wait 'til later,” Jimmy replied.
“But they're killin' us.”
“True dat, but right now we want only clear responses to direct threats. What we want to do is take out those cops that are killin' our bros—and nobody else!” Jimmy paused for a moment, then asked, “Does anybody not understand that?”
Amid nodding and head shaking, a chorus of “Nah,” “Yeah,” “All good, bro,” “You go, Jimmy!” bade him proceed.
“If the man is just doin' his job, even if we don't like it, we don't touch 'im. Everybody got dat?”
“But, Jimmy,” said a large man in the middle of the room, a man Jimmy had known in high school, “this is our city. It's ours as much as it is theirs. We ain't gonna let them kill us off or drive us out of here.”
“Of course we're not,” Jimmy replied. “I'm jes' sayin' we don't need to kill all of them off either. We defend ourselves. Anybody not OK wi' that?”
“Right, bro,” and other sounds of assent encouraged Jimmy to continue discussing plans to defend the demonstration in front of the city hall the next day. His friends and neighbors trusted him and knew he was on their side. Even though many wanted to take more direct and comprehensive action, they allowed Jimmy to persuade them to try his way.
Another half hour of discussion and an hour of organizing teams left Jimmy and the rest feeling well prepared for the next day's protest. The meeting ended with a positive vibe, and Jimmy went home feeling they might even achieve a breakthrough in their relations with the authorities the next day.
The morning dawned grey and gloomy, with a light drizzle falling. “That'll keep our numbers down,” said Jimmy's friend and sometime lover Crystal, who had helped organize the day's actions. To the surprise of both of them, more than three thousand people had crowded onto the sidewalk (and into the street) in front of City Hall by the time the rain stopped at quarter to eight that morning.
Unlike the rain, the stream of people showed no sign of stopping. Buses arrived, delivering supporters from other communities. One of Jimmy's three cellphones signalled an incoming text message just as the other one rang for a 'phone call. He answered the call and learned that the state police had begun stopping buses on the outskirts of the city. The text, from a different bus, conveyed the same news. He told Crystal and showed her the text, and she quickly arranged press coverage of the interceptions.
By 9:30 the sky had turned blue and nearly ten thousand people, mostly black but with many white supporters, had packed the space in front of City Hall. By 10:30 buses succeeded again in getting to the city center, swelling the numbers to well over twelve thousand as the day grew comfortably warm—and still people kept pouring into the street. Official police estimates of the crowd claimed nine thousand demonstrators, but photographs showed the number approached twenty thousand.
Surprisingly, considering the numbers, the first real trouble didn't occur until almost noon, when two policemen began using their nightsticks on a black teenager who had been standing quietly on the edge of the crowd. Several people intervened and were clubbed to the ground for their trouble.
At the other end of the block, Jimmy stood relaying information to the vigilante teams in windows and on rooftops of buildings up and down the block. In particular, he told his teams where police snipers had been spotted. “Yeah, right in City Hall itself—sixth floor, fourth window from the left,” he told each of his teams in turn, then, “The roof of that big glass and steel building at the end of the block.”
Across the teeming multitude, the black teenager lay unconscious but unmolested, as two large white policemen vented their fury on a middle-aged man who had tried to intervene. The man lay inert, clearly unconscious, but still the cops hit him. Suddenly, the face of one of the cops exploded forward onto their unconscious victim. The other cop straightened to look around him, and the back of his head spattered over several witnesses.
Jimmy moved through the crowd toward the commotion surrounding the two dead policemen. He took a call and heard, “We movin' out. They comin' dis way.” That told him the team that had taken at least one of the cops was vacating the room they had used and were leaving it booby-trapped for the SWAT team that planned to apprehend them.
Another commotion at the back of the crowd rose from a circle of angry demonstrators surrounding four white policemen using their sticks on a twenty-something black male, who was curled into a ball on the ground. As one of the cops straightened to swing a full-force blow at the man's head, a bullet through the cop's neck dropped his body onto his cringing victim. The other three cops looked wildly around and one spoke into his walkie-talkie, as the crowd began to close in on them.
In response to a short 'phone call, Jimmy changed direction toward that new disturbance, hoping to calm the crowd and defuse the tension. He spoke into one of his 'phones as he weaved through the crowd. “No, bro, we don't want them tearin' these cops apart. That'd just be their excuse for more violence against us. I think I can quieten 'em down. You jus—” Jimmy's instructions were interrupted by a police sniper's bullet that entered his heart through his left atrium and exited through—and mostly removed—the wall of his left ventricle.
Educated as a scientist, graduated as a mathematician, Cora Tate has earned her living as a full-time professional entertainer most of her life. She attempted to escape the entertainment industry through work as a librarian, physics teacher, syndicated newspaper columnist, and city planner, among other occupations. Cora has written five novels, three novellas (two published), six novelettes (two published, one forthcoming), and ninety short stories, of which fifty-nine have appeared in sixty-seven literary journals in ten countries.
We Rushed
to the sound of broken
water and crashing streams.
A thundering knock
at the door, early morning. These
are the pools we stepped in.
For too long I’ve spent too much
time puttering on things that just don’t
matter, trying to peddle my goods.
Time to stop applying a metric
to my faith – good, better, best –
Just be.
It’s enough.
Really.
Gaming the System
Forget the trees
Outside my door a moment.
I was seeing the bright colors
Of future worlds by the time
I was ten. In the films I watched, I met
Cities and skyscrapers.
Batman saved my reading life.
In the video games I played, I found
The ability to hop into new worlds, and leap
Over unfamiliar obstacles.
In those days, we had to level up,
You started back at the home screen if you
Stopped the game. No re-spawning.
So, my days were spent trying to beat
A boss – then starting back at square one,
Over and over.
How many days, wrapped in blizzards,
Did I spend navigating a digital character
Through a video snow.
There is Space
where space should be.
This poem is not about
rockets, I assure you.
There is a wondering
absence where there really
is not absence. Am I
an arm, a mind, an interconnected set
of thoughts and instruments
moving ensemble
what is my motion
my e motion
what is my work
life, work life
the continuation, the
meaning.
I Have Tried
too long to brace verdant reality,
bunching up worries into an
easy-to-follow guide,
warnings whispered on websites,
and more time, time
to linger longer in the quiet,
stillness of the waters that pass,
decorated with litter.
Now, I linger again in the
stillness of this time, unsure
of where the world goes from
here. Hopeful. Realistic.
Almost a year ago, I lay
on my back as I do today,
different purposes, new reasons,
lack of reason.
I thought of what would
be ahead, framing moments
of trust
in unseen figures. A constant
hope.
Weeks earlier, I accepted
a new path that would
come to reality.
I try to know myself,
thinking, reading, believing
in bright promises ahead.
I sought connecting
as I wait for warmer
weather.
Others See Me As
warrior
mentor
soul friend
collaborative writer
Appalachian scholar
supportive
attentive leader
one with kind eyes
dependable
covenant partner
educator
sincere
one who invited
healing.
I am only one person
making a way
in the world,
mindful of footprints,
seeking
true words and actions.
New Pathway
beginning of a forest,
dogs trotting ahead in the path,
fresh air adjusting leaves
like ornaments around me,
warmth of summer
years ago, remembered again
point of a branch, and I know
I’ll return here soon
again and again, and never leave
as I once did.
Preserving the silent world.
There is
a space where
space should be,
there is a wondering
absence where they really
is no absence. A hollow
that is filled but still echoes.
Am I an arm,
a mind, an interconnected set
of thoughts and instruments
for making syllables and other
sounds.
What is my motion
my emotion
what is my work
life, work-life,
where are those boundaries
now?
the continuation, the meaning,
as days stack up.
I want to be a better
teacher, a voice that’s honest
a clear teacher of teachers.
