Poetry from J.D. DeHart

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Sucrose

Published at Poet Community

 

Sickly sweet

the swirl of today’s news

sitting on my empty

stomach. Syrupy

on my lips and on

the roof of my mouth.

An ideal that when tasted

does not blend so well,

overstaying its welcome.

Sucked through a straw,

then spat back out,

better left roadside alone.

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Poetry from Stella Pfahler

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God’s Square Mile

I imagined you struck by lightning, paralyzed and hanging in the air or above my bedside

isaiah 58:11 reading beneath you

I wanted to write you into verse psalm after psalm say it back to me echo like Presider: Congregation:

there is nothing like touch in electricity your hands

in water beneath a tall black sky

brushstrokes simmering beneath skin  draw me a riverside, blanketed in peaks considering the largeness on each side

and the smallness in the middle

you sheared the plastic off a car door handle with close­cut careful nails and murmured “cows” at every intersection whenever they appeared

 

 

 

 

Creative nonfiction from Doug Hawley

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I Won’t Take Manhattan

Not that Manhattan, the Big Apple, Bright Lights Big City, this is the little apple, dim lights, little city in Kansas.

I ended up there after my third year of a math Ph.D. program at the University of Oregon in Eugene.  I didn’t care for Eugene, and I was a poor Ph.D. candidate.   When not studying, I spent my time drinking, consuming a controlled substance, getting fat and hanging out with other unmarried male graduate students.  It was an unpleasant life of my own making.

My thesis advisor decided to take a job at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.  I didn’t think that anyone else in the department would take me as a student, so I decided to go with him despite the Kansas horror stories.  Oregon has mountains, trees, lakes and canyons, but Kansas not so much.  Another four of his students also followed him.

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Cristina Deptula interviews Italian and American filmmaker, actor and screenwriter Federico Wardal

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Federico Wardal is an Italian playwright, screenplay writer and director and acting instructor. He speaks widely on topics related to human rights and his artistic craft and currently lives in San Francisco.
Cristina:  
First off, please introduce yourself! We’ve got an audience from around the world, and not everyone may be familiar with the world of live theater or independent films. 
Wardal: 
It is not easy to introduce myself as Wardal, as I consider Wardal a “faceted character” due to the influences of the Nobel Prize-winner Pirandello, Einstein and my mentor Federico Fellini.
To be more clear, I could consider [my persona] Wardal an invented imaginary author, arising out of the ideas of the ancient authors from Greece, Pirandello, and his friend Einstein. I love Einstein’s theory of relativity and think Fellini was inspired by Pirandello and Einstein when he created his film “8 1/2.” 
From the first time I appeared on the stage as Wardal at the age of 14 years old, my aspect was (and is) an artifact, built up, never natural or simple, and sensational and amazing.

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Novel excerpt from Carol Smallwood

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Excerpt from In Hubble’s Shadow by Carol Smallwood.

*****

Midwestern Spring
     Spring is the season that brings Midwesterners the most anticipation: the brown to green, the burst of delicate pink and white blossoms on fruit trees, the low dare devil swooping of nesting birds while driving—a welcoming confirmation that we made it through. Even dandelions delight our eyes, scattered replicas of the Sun. The first grass mowing. A celebration as new leaves cover bare limbs to make changing patterns of shade. We open the car windows driving past lilacs.
Citation: Smallwood, Carol, In Hubble’s Shadow (Brunswick, Maine: Shanti Arts Publishing, 2017). Used with permission of the publisher; www.shantiarts.com

Essay from Donal Mahoney

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My Parents Were Illegal Irish Immigrants in the United States

Joseph Francis O'Mahony, first row, third from left, circa 1920, age 16, all dressed up and looking older than 16 as a prisoner of the English on Spike Island a few years before he emigrated to the United States. There he became a citizen and the judge told him to change his name to Mahoney, a decision he would bemoan like a banshee for years. Permission to use this photo has been obtained from the Waterford County Museum in Ireland.

Joseph Francis O’Mahony, first row, third from left, circa 1920, age 16, all dressed up and looking older than 16 as a prisoner of the English on Spike Island a few years before he emigrated to the United States. There he became a citizen and the judge told him to change his name to Mahoney, a decision he would bemoan like a banshee for years.
Permission to use this photo has been obtained from the Waterford County Museum in Ireland.

In 1920, my father, 16, was a guest of the British government. He was a prisoner of their forces occupying Ireland at the time, a group called the Black and Tans.
 
One day he and seven other prisoners were brought out of their makeshift cells to dig their own graves in a small walled compound. As tradition would have it, they would be shot into their graves and other prisoners would be brought out to bury them.
 
By prearranged signal, the eight men dropped their shovels and broke for the wall. Bullets stopped five of them but the other three climbed over the wall and made it through the rural Irish countryside to freedom. One of the escapees eventually went to Australia, another to Canada. My father made it to America. 
 
The story doesn’t end there, of course, and he only told it once. But even if you were only in eighth grade, as I was at the time, it’s not a story you forget.

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Poetry from Vijay Nair

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GAY HAMLET

Hi’story is a fiction false Wolf clothing in Sheep’s Run against the clock Closet in truth that coffin Wonder longer not nine that trumpet Everywhere all tricks of trade An old dog not to be taught A new Shakespeare chance upon Has greatness that Hamlet thrust upon Water no hold, a waterloo Hearing you not that whistle blow? Wicked flee not if Man pursuits it in soul Bacon a foster soul Blessed in disguise Shakespeare Some six fold six plays All sonnets a legacy Art lies in concealing art, irony What Ovid foreseen An answer, no Shakespeare is enigma Hamlet in heavenly procrastination Claudius not upon him avenge Annoyed that man delighted not him Truth untold a broken heart hubris His honest a hideous mirror debris Word play in he a Pete Sampras What a piece of work a man! Philosophy, brother double a mankind Dubbed verses of Denmark Prince Defenceless was he a pseudo Christ Ethos his passivism embodied inaction Pagan he an Achilles no Don Quixote Out of joint time was his revenge With wings as not with swift as meditation Daggers at her Cost a terrible dapper Malleable Mom she frailty not With rotten son adultery not His mother fixation a failed Psycho fancy

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