Chris Butler is an illiterate poet shouting from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. 

Belly 

The earth will become the oceans, 

when it succumbs to the froth of the waves replacing cotton ball clouds, 

where one can only swim in all directions towards the slithering glimmers of light 

and submerged to plug the hole at the bottom of the sky, in a no fly ozone 

surrounded by dangling tentacles with suctioning barbs and incandescent monsters. 

Whales with mouths, the stomach and the appetite to swallow whole souls 

only for an eternity of digestive processes that is a fisherman’s purgatory, 

until I’m born again out of the propulsion of whipping fins and the waist high entrails  

that one must wade through, unable to doggy paddle or stroke over tidal waves, 

along with the noxious smog atmosphere of salt water and dry air, 

untethered from the belly to spill me up and wipe me down 

onto the salted seas of sand that stranded the last of us 

on an endless palm oasis of ice water cubed in the sinking of sacrificial glaciers, 

pulling us deeper away from every surface.   

  

Carbon’s Footprints 

The path of carbon’s footprints  

across the beach’s sand, 

still will not wash away  

despite the tide’s undulating  

tsunami of vengeance.    

I am my own black hole… 

…as an astrological waste of space, lackadaisically laying in an inflatable tube down a lazy river of darkness, making my way across an endless nothing, occasionally waving a helpless hello as the stream lures me further down the weightless torrent. But then I am pushed and pulled by forces with such gravitas that their gloriousness simply goes by “gravity”, stretching my inert inertia until my muscles suffer from the slightest strain of atrophy to rupture any rapture, until I am down-streamed up and away from one bobbing gaseous sphere and towards an impending one of dirt. All kinetic and spastic energy is then expunged and redacted, causing me to curl up into a fetal ball to collect all of the dust particles with static shock, until I snatch larger and denser objects in my porcelain drain, tightening them in my grasp until the last atom pops.   

 

Each tongue has individual truths… 

Never mind the words, 

mind the meaning hiding behind the words.   

And in the end… 

Everyone will steal a quote from someone famous, 

because they never believed in the legend of themselves.   

 
 the window of the shampoo ice
  
 the kaiser roll of the sky is the law of the lake
 to eat a burger on the open norse day
  
 your old chewy ticket is the radio rock of the talon
 eating a hungry hippo with a marble in my mouth
             
 lending a measure to the crow
 the breaking clone of the door
  
 sleep is the rule of the great apple
 the sleeping hum is the cloud of the wall
  
 that walknut of the ironed face
 the street puppet of the moth
 
  
 the song of the lower limbs and the paint of the freezing face
  
 this idea is the paint of the globe
 this is the number of the roses and that is certain 
  
 to lake a lark
 to win a letter of the working duck
  
 the sinking fish
 the lizard of the jumble
  
 care for a chair (mcdonald’s coffee)
 in the cave of the parrots
  
 that coffee was in the shape of a rose
 answering my skull when I’m in the rainbow shoes
  
 the losing brick sauce
 the navel orange is the bat of the produce
 
  
 the household of mars
  
 that apple plank is the standard of the forest
 the bat’s head was like milk in the furnace
  
 the winter seed is the diamond of the cacao
 losing a worm to look for a wheel
  
 that normal eye in the chair
 the coin and that seventh myriad
  
 my sleeping head swims
 we are in the stomach of the goat’s raspberry
  
 the shadow rabbit is the coil of the present
 winning at the battleship game
 

bio/graf J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poetry has appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Cinderella City (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). His first full-length collection, entitled In Ghostly Onehead, is slated for a 2021 release by mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press. His work has recently appeared in E·ratio, Otoliths, BlazeVOX, and Word For/Word. Visit www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Colorado

Division Street

This poem is for Autism Awareness month, which is in April each year.

Link to the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network with more information.

Division Street

A street divides her thoughts from her lips,

I see my reflection in the puddle of her eyes;

Still innocent to the decorated world around her,

Averting the sunshine of the faces in her skies.

Her smile shines on her colorful creations,

Her imagination holds the key to wonderland,

She cradles the many characters with care —

So please, imagine holding me in your hand.

Hush my sweet baby, I’ll sing you a lullaby,

Dream, I dream of the day we sing your song;

Hush my sweet baby, I’ll sing you a lullaby,

Dream, dream of the day we sing your song.

Her sweet, sweet hum echoes into my heart

As exploration takes her from dolls to doors,

From goldfish to gates, from swings to the stars,

Taking big, big steps gazing up from the floor.

The street which divides narrows each day

As moments of connection draw us closer,

And the song of our voices begin to harmonize,

So one day, we will cross that street together!

Istanbul Expat Women

Hold a match up to a thread from your carpet, does it smell like burnt hair?

The days when I lived in Turkey seem tinged with sepia now

We remember the same stories with different friends in the leading roles.

Expats being bad in the heat of summer.

Daytime “ladies’ lunches” behind closed curtains

bottles of Georgian wine, hidden in cloth shopping bags

Neatly wrapped to hide the clinking

To protect us from the dedekodu

Inside the cement walls, behind closed curtains

We drank, laughed, cried, told the same stories

With our own voices

Our magic carpet rides didn’t always end well

But at our ladies’ lunches we gave each other tips

About how to fall off gracefully

And how to tell if your carpet was silk or synthetic

Windows closed, aircon on, we hid our voices from the neighbors

Until the stroke of five, when we had to start collecting empty plates,

Water glasses stained with burgundy,

Pack up our imported Tupperware and go back to our husbands,

Head to our shift at the language school,

Mask back in place, magic carpet fired up,

Always silk or wool, never polyester.

Have to keep up appearances.

Here, take a piece of gum before you go, you don’t want to stink

Of alcohol on the bus or in the taksi.

Now, years later, I can only look back at the photos

And wonder how you all are…

Stephanie Johnson’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Witty Partition, Sink Hollow, Forum Literary Magazine, and others. She is an Associate Editor at Novel Slices, a new literary magazine based solely on novel excerpts, and has spent most of her adult life overseas teaching English literature, ESL and Spanish. Her writing usually focuses on the slightly uncomfortable space of the expatriation/ repatriation experience. She is currently based in San Francisco. Find her on Instagram at @stephaniejohnsonpoetry and Twitter at @stephan64833622 

dance of gods

A boy who smelled of fear and gore visited a grave of

mummified gods on the bay of the Nile in search for

 elixirs, doses of nostrums that could heal wounds of

sorrows and grief inflicted on his kind by ruins of war

and plagues

He had seen zygotes of dreams which formed in the

fertile womb of hope exhumed, served as victuals to

men who laugh and defecate bombs and missiles

on civilizations

He had watched as the python of healing on the aged

staff of Asclepius, the Greek god of health, got strangled

by an unnamed disease, he had also witnessed the

ruthless lynching of Eirene on the highest peak of the

pyramids, how her body was replaced by Medusa,

the magus of the east who turns forces of good and

great into stones

I heard him say quietly in his native language “i better find this”_

but after long hours of search, all he saw were craniums of

dead men throwing parties, some dreaming and hoping for a

time when splinters of their bones will metamorphose into

molecules of actualities.

TASTE OF WITS II

On a voyage to world’s end, we met a boy in the northern

pyramids of the Sahara cloaked in greyish rag of dust and dearth

His wits were a breed of Socrates nous, an annex of Solomon’s

connoisseur, unveiling to us several conundrums which dated

back to medieval climes.

We watched him dissect rusted cadavers of enigma, exhuming

secrets behind downfalls of puissant kings, the slight trueness

in Delilah’s facade of love, the tint of folly in Ahitophel’s wit and

several mercies hidden in Hitler’s armageddon.

He was a prodigy, a dexter in his profession, illustrating with

grandiose gestures how sagacity was exorcised from craniums

of celibate ghosts martyred on stakes by a noxious disease during

the great plagues.

Lastly he awed us with a display of magic, he turned snores of a

voyager who had been bored by his lecture into notes, f-majors,

similar to the noise engines make after long hours of work.

Short bio

Daniel Ezeokeke is a writer who hails from the

ancient city of Anambra State, Nigeria.

He sees poetry as a means of escapism from

a society undergoing decay and degradation.

He is currently a graduate from a Nigerian

university and loves philosophy, Jewish writings

and history.

Cocktails Served

Some find their way in to escape.

Others find solace in empty conversations and stale beers.

Most all of them have a reason and the best never needed one at all.

For me it’s a feel more than anything.

It is in the night itself.

For I am forever chasing what I can never regain.

A shared bit of mystery.

A simple release and nothing more.

A dark corner and a good laugh.

We gave up toys for vices and never truly grew up at all.

Maybe there is hope for tonight to be different from all the rest.

But at least the drinks are cold.

As the people that serve them.

Tip to all.

Don’t go blind looking into computer screens.

For purpose when a night’s escape is far more enticing.

I may go home alone.

But at least I gained a peace of mind, chasing something more than cyber bullshit and empty hours.

The dog walks itself and I never was intended for the leash.

The drinks are my escape because they fill a void, another never will.

They may come at a hell of a price.

News flash so do lawyers and divorces.

Keep that sunny side shit to yourself.

Nurse, refill please.