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.

When I was a kid I got invited, to my buddy Marty's Bar Mitzvah, it was for his thirteenth birthday, his parents were throwing him a big party, to celebrate a rite of passage, ya see Marty was a Jew.

I told my parents and was so excited, the Bar Mitzvah was at 
Shedd's Aquarium Downtown Chicago, my Old Man said he didn't care, if it was at fucking Disneyland, I wasn't going, and forget about being friends with Marty, he didn't want him hanging around, ya see Marty was a Jew. 

I was more than disappointed, I was righteously pissed off, the only reason he had for not letting me go was because of his religion, ya see Marty was a Jew.

His family didn't seem to mind that I was a Christian, you're telling me that's why I can't go, what's so bad about being a Jew, my mother put in her two cents worth, did you know Jews don't believe in Jesus, what does that have to do with anything, why does it matter, maybe Jews don't believe in Bigfoot, it's not a logical reason, 

I knew somehow in some way Jesus would get involved, why in the hell would Jesus care if Marty was a Jew, and there's more pressing world issues Jesus should be attending to,   

hold on here just one minute, you both have your facts mixed up, you don't want me to be friends with Marty or go to his Bar Mitzvah, just because of who he doesn't worship, Marty is a Jew

Yet we go to church every Sunday, except the Old Man, 

and pray to Jesus, who died on the cross for our sins, and both of you should be grateful he did, because what I'm about to say, you may find it hard to believe, I guess you forgot this Messiah named Jesus, or maybe you just never knew, I read it in the Bible, so I'm sure it must be true, ya see Jesus just like Marty,

was a Jew.

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)

Gladys always said, “Beware of what you dream. Ignore those visions if you must, but remember, these things have a habit of coming back to haunt you.” I don’t know what she based this kind of assessment on but, more often than not, she was right. Not long after this warning I had a dream that Gladys and I were in grave danger in some dark and threatening place. She died but I did not. Unfortunately, I ignored the dream. 

After she left, I began seeing all kinds of people I knew who were dead. She said this might happen. Most of them were illusions or cases of mistaken identity. I wondered about the others.

Once the rain began, it was impossible to see the path forward or back. After a while, even up and down were getting confused. I felt as if I was in the up-escalator dream where all the stairs had stopped moving and all the lights in the tunnel had gone out. The air was stifling.  It felt thick and smothering like a wool blanket that scratched the skin and burrowed its way into your throat. There was no point in trying to move. There was no place to go. Awake. Or dreaming.

Weathered stone.  The way is blocked by weathered stones. Not exactly like a wall. Like what? A path where stones grew instead of grass or weeds.  Stones that had sharp, ponied edges. Peaks sharp as knife blades, slippery with moss and mold that glowed in the incipient moonlight. These weathered stones. That moaned as they grew, aching as they cut through the gumline of the earth like teeth with nowhere else to go. 

The shy is septic. An open untreated, suppurating wound too long left to fester.  The fluids formerly trapped inside are leaking out like rain.  I’m sliding on the black ice that covers everything the rain has touched.  It’s like walking on sheets of motor oil, something that is both solid and frozen at the same time but impossible to move on.  If I don’t relocate, I will adhere to where I am. Become a misshapen ice sculpture in a greasy downpour. Waking up here is unthinkable.

Cento Derived from the Titles of ‘Erasure’ Poems by John Dorsey

Taken from the Work of Everette Maddox

I can see morning

Good things

Autumn trees

A row of lights

Railroad tracks

Oh world

For years you have noise

Frozen morning

A small yard

Dogs barking in some poor home

It’s all puddles

Neon bar

My boxers drink Gin

My sister dubbed the booze

Get drunk

Falling off a bar stool

Stay drunk

I can’t pour piss

Sweating comfort

I ain’t drinking orange juice

Everybody dies topless

I watched dog days

Hot Pearly Gates of the Confederacy

I threw the whole telephone book

Clouds brooding ah yes

My friend kissed my ass

I’m near an old radio

Murderous rock n roll

Heaven, hell, or Birmingham

The last day

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?

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.