BEHIND THE VEIL
I want to tell you
that even your magic veil
cannot hide your secret smile.
And despite its red color,
it cannot hide the radiance
of your glowing cheeks.
I feel your racing heartbeat
and sense your burning longing
behind the veil.
On the shores of your wishes,
I see the smile on my face
that joy left years ago.
Anwer Ghani
A poet and physician
Iraq
Spits
1
Little girl from my school
Beating a teddy bear with a belt
The toys are bashfully silent
The sun is still shining through the window
Parents will come home from work soon
2
He says that sperm must be swallowed
His cum tastes as dirty as his armpits
He likes to call his dick big and shove it in my mouth
His wife probably doesn’t know that I’m blowing her husband
His dick is as dirty as his words
He likes to call gays fagots, it’s supposedly sexy
He can’t even imagine how much sperm his wife tried
I can’t even imagine how often a husband kisses his wife on the lips after adultery
Love is a raw chop seasoned with pepper
But like a madman I still believe that someone in this world truly knows how to love
3
Greenery does not ask the night whether it is worth growing
The baby wants to sleep in a green carpet of grass
But the baby falls asleep in the green glass of time
The future is spit and we are drowned
CREATIVE VOICES FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
They are eager to create a good impression at work.
They are eager to create what you see, what you look, what you spark.
It is important to create from experience, from the mind of creative person.
They may have a scattered cognition.
They may seem like weirdos but the sacrifice makes it a real and accurate.
They create the television we watch and enjoy.
They never abnegate themselves.
They use their strategies to create something purposes.
They have effulgence lighting the way they create.
They perfect work with courage and forte
Their strength, their patience and their determination to see they accomplish and attain their work.
Their strength help them to appear self-important and self brain work.
They have determination to create something on the earth.
We leave some of our culture to follow someone trails for seeking refuge to achieve our dreams.
Our culture is the key to success and creativity adds something to it.
They change the world with what they create.
Their ideas bring light where there was no light.
They inspire others to dream on act from their courage.
New hope is freshness.
And follow culture and creatives is the life.
“Ummusalma Nasir Mukhtar is a Nigerian poet with a passion for words that transcend pages. Born to Nasir Mukhtar and Rahma Muhammad, she’s nurtured a dream of becoming an English literature professor, inspiring others with the power of language. With siblings Hauwa’u (Jidda) and Zainab (Inteeser) – a budding computer professional – Ummusalma’s journey is a tapestry of creativity and ambition. Her published works, ‘Ink Beneath My Skin’, ‘Shadows of My Voice’, and ‘Sun Rise’, echo her voice, weaving tales of experiences and emotions. With each line, she steps closer to sharing her unique perspective with the world.”
A Third
Fate banned opposition
accounted human
resignation famine
hesitated losses
tragedy parking lot fortune
an indeed appointment to
railroad obscurity
figured rabid
talkative feted boom
association prickly conduction
ambidextrous ironic
plight lackluster
serial complexity industrial
pit stomach
diplomatic user
preventative causing in
bureaucracy courts
indignation pipes
views
generalist competence
cited
domino geologist period
featured salacious
incognito flame
network calling card
fortune teller average
profile breaking pinch
discontinuity memoir
no actual pepper
pillage offer of little capacity
corpse of desolation
an impeachment
sweeping plunder
boom prince racked
confused epilogue
tracking hangover
recognized credit
tangle handguns
nestling ink
and social scale
quill gravely half-timbered
downriver twenty minutes
worth ermine trace spires
feathery measured stovepipe
goatee hatred golden chain reaction
cross,pit,currant,earlier,
haberdasher,docks,notaries,
penny,euphemism,clutch,
voyages,gums,unilateral
baffled,isolated,profits,flames
globe suffers navigational cargo
fraught astrolabe raids enthusiasm
viable endeavors plant icebergs
bone-jarring celebrity dully exact
shipmate grotesque jumping deck
reach back
looted event
Ongoing perpetuated concrete battlegrounds
Tape MACHINE wings
ballet elementary
denial
>>> sessions
, contents
, rescinded
creditors influence
an influx of
constructivist
disCOURSES<<<
………………..
AS A
matter of
fluently
theoretical vigor
CrashinG
& revising
likewise
eradication
[.][.][.][.][.]
Deep proactive
assumptions
caught
glued to
the portrait
of the embedded
sculptures
.
.
.
Oriented surface
napping ON
TOUR
to floor
an invisibility collective
collaborating
dissonant
shingles assembled
fluorescent
clusters
permeating
END
notes
, zeroed
out ,
left to flounder
in
unstoppable
elsewhere
a medium
simplistic
preexisting
generational
habit
ineffective
, day
dreaming
,
associated
detailed
medium
cool dalliance
,
variable ,
artless ,
struggling
to possess
a
curated
reserve.
Still fluid notion
Rude keeps guessing thumb imprint
suddenly spared sword allowances
no bazaar turning flair gold record
formerly airport research material.
Activation cosmopolitan funnel
gliding voracious quartet
expanded self-regard amended
start vandalism
a piece whining
recorded barrel
ball of defection
scaling palace.
Splendid
telescopic fountain
: ToMb ToWeR , unlikely
diverting Rome,Istanbul,
Cairo,selfhood.
Groaning overgrown
might reoccupied
thousand-pillared mosque
shapeless shrine pilfered
eccentric heaps of
figurines contradict
wrecked courtly litter.
“What they saw has gone native.”
“Very few words report friction.”
“Distant assistants four later editions.”
Invisible or living
Weekly incidence welded to caution
: manure feigned membership :
acute collarbone identity
,cosmic instigation,
an overreaction.
Critiques
THUS = however futile
separated caricature,
verbose cartons of
ridicule.
Feral outlook
judges syntax.
[humane dystopian
madness (horizon)
,supper club
destined
film still ,
turmoil of
effective
drives].
Maxims aren’t full-contact programs.
Atmospheric nihilism [collage
one another ,
subjected to
membership
dues & don’ts].
Underground segments
critical hysteria
hostile
center=
stage.
Cacophonously burping
,mainstream contribution,
hack,heck,hack,heck,hack.
Geriatric sponge
kicking backside /
slide discourse
features excerpts /
satire renews an activation /
themed civil wars /
public replicated self-definitions.
Unconscious ethos broader guilt
: exacting imaginary citizens :
“Knotted ties apply
triumphant lust to
outstretch physiques.”
Musical rather than coherent.
[ideas campaigns
first person
, judges harsh flasks]
Impaling begins.
Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is a member of C22, an experimental writing collective. He is the author most recently of the books punctuated avalanche (Stone Corpse Press) and en=raptur=ed [riverrun] & mingle (Ranger Press) He has had numerous pieces published in various journals. You can find links to his published work at joshuamartinwriting.blogspot.com
Holy Grail
Each afternoon, between Gomer Pyle and Big Ten Theater, the pantry door opened to a small altar and a humble gray amphora, the cookie jar Grail of my Oreo eucharist. My arm disappeared into the dark, wide mouth womb eagerly to the elbow. My small fingers fished for six. There was a compulsive comfort in the number, and with blackened teeth I’d sit before the TV transfixed in ritual, gulping a glass of Nestle’s Quick.
After Mom stopped cooking, cleaning and comforting, after Dad lost the house, the business and confidence, after thrown curses, clothes and coffee, a hysterectomy, psych wards, divorce, therapy and thirty years, my mother sent the forgotten vessel on some well-intentioned birthday errand. She’d glued the broken lid to contain the cargo of my childhood pain. For a while it was on exhibition, an empty antique sitting upon a shelf. I brushed my teeth obsessively after each occasional cookie.
Today I’ll reap and rejoice in a quiet little catharsis. With hammer and shovel, I break and bury the jar in my backyard. Today, I can see my wounds as a sliver slices a finger. What I once thought brought solace, now appears brittle and sharp. Blood fills my hand and drips wet, warm and sticky into the earth. This new grave is moist, fertile and sweet.
Saint Francis
I was canonized, or nearly so, in Ogunquit, Maine last summer on vacation. At dawn, along a granite edge, a collision of continent and ocean, gazing at the Atlantic’s implacable crush upon the shore, I sat in a deck chair cupping a croissant and five-dollar latte (no vow of poverty quite yet).
However presumptuous, a passing fantasy, I thought of myself as Saint Francis. Ridiculous. (On my pilgrimage, a tourist charter to Assisi, I only recall the charming Giotto frescos there; no birds congregated in the basilica; however, I wasn’t paying attention.)
I wasn’t blessed with a martyr’s beatific vision, no celestial seraphim. I was more attuned to inconsequential sparrows flitting about my feet in unassuming feathers, in browns, grays, the drab shades of friars’ habits. Unlike the brash gulls, sparrows, humble, timid and admittedly and prudently so, were terrified of the sea.
My Fioretti: I’d like to believe they gathered for my sermon, my wisdom, my eloquence. Surely, I would allay all fears; so, I mimicked their small chirps, but they cocked heads skeptically.
Graciously indifferent, they skittered, too busy with pecking and scratching, a miracle they listened at all.
Weapons
When Vietnam took all the boys and splayed them on the evening news, a boy, like most boys emulating most men, but especially in uniform, I was smitten with TV shows on World War Two, diluted versions without the gore, without the complications of falling red dominoes.
After failing at catch, Dad tried again in a trifecta to win my affection. Dad fashioned a wooden machine gun (my deadly 30 cal.) to mow down Nazis in Normandy. Keenly, I provided the “rat-a-tat-tat.” However, screams and morphine were not included.
Dad built a cannon from a board and a pipe, artillery on wheels pulled behind my tricycle, a barrage devasting for the Hun. However, my little howitzer was mothballed, rusting when I began riding a real bike. Undeterred, Dad bought more lumber.
Dad spent hours (I was not around) on the envy of all the other boys. An ace over France, I sat in the cockpit of my Spitfire shooting Messerschmitts from the sky. However, trouble was, it lacked altitude. I never left the driveway, never wore my parachute.
Dad was on yet another sales call and I was home alone when I took a hammer to my grounded fighter. After the crash, it never flew again.
Before I Die
An artillery shell stirs my flesh with mud and soldiers divide my limbs among dogs. Just before I die, I’ll taste the softness of my beloved’s lips and a ripe, sweet, summer peach, not bitter plastic tubes or pain-killing pills. I’ll listen to the house finch and the wren but not the television getting in a final commercial, nor one last bit of Mozart’s brilliance.
My body glides in perfect, choreographed grace over steering wheel, dash, through windshield glass, my blood painting car hood and pavement in sweeping, expressionistic gestures. Just before I die, I’ll gaze upon a pale blue sky filled with the warm light of morning. I’ll not look up to a clean, white ceiling and harsh fluorescents flickering; I’ll inhale the humid breath of Spring or the pungent decay of October; I’ll not smell disinfectant on cold stainless steel.
I’ve lost my speech; my right side hangs as limp as a nursing home prick, but I manage half a smile when I’m told my heart has worn too thin. Just before I die, I must hold something in my hands: my grandchild’s face or my son’s graying head; I’ll dance one last time upon the forest floor amidst Mayapples and sassafras; my feet will never reach the clean tile beneath an iron bed.
children die and we buy phones
children work in mines in africa
to mine cobalt for mobile phones.
do you have a nice mobile phone?
i do and will update it soon.
children work in mines in africa
and are forced to slave for pittance.
as a kid did you have to work in a mine?
i never had to either.
children die while mining cobalt
for nice new mobile phones:
children die and we buy phones.
Buy. Phones.
Children. Die.
(repeat).
a petrol and planet hypocrisy
fill it up again and again
places to go and roads to drive on.
full tank in and exhaust spews out
into the air it goes and blows.
and yes we go to fossil fuel rallies
for we care about our environment.
we limit plastic use and love the trees
and always recycle our rubbish.
but again and again we fill up our car
as we have all those places to go.
so is care for the planet and fill it up
a petrol and planet hypocrisy?
you tell me as i know nothing
(but i do know what i’m feeling).
Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely. Stephen had a play run in Spain for 4 years.
G. Bragolin’s The Crying Boy
His hair was tousled dark brown,
his lips downturned.
All houses burned to the ground,
these mass-produced prints of a painting remained.
He was weeping as he ran from his home;
his papa was on fire holding a weapon.
The heated argument sparked when she
told him to take the exam for the nth time;
he said he was a loggerhead.
Diablo or DJ is the crying boy,
a tear streaming down his orange cheek.
NOTE
On September 5, 1985, The Sun reported an Essex firefighter claiming that copies of The Crying Boy survived house fires unscathed. By November’s end, the paper’s readers were burning the prints en masse fueled by the painting’s growing curse reputation. David Clarke, a journalist, says the claim that the boy was Diablo didn’t emerge until 2000 in Tom Slemen’s book.
SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Fhen M. studied Writing in the Discipline, The Literature of the Philippines, and The Literature of the World at Eastern Visayas State University. His work has been featured in various publications, including the Waray poem “Uyasan” in Pinili: 15 Years of Lamiraw, and English poems like “Lighthouse,” “Seaport,” “Barbeque Stalls along Boulevard,” and “Tetrapod” in Poetica anthology by Clarendon House. Other publications include “Outside the Block Universe” in About Time: A Coming-of-Age Poetry Anthology by Red Penguin Books, and a poem in Flora/Fauna Anthology by Open Shutter Press. He also submitted Waray verses, including “Duha nga mga pagtug-an” (“Two Confessions”), to the 5th Lamiraw Creative Writing Workshop in 2008, with notable panelists like David Genotiva, Merlie Alunan, and Victor Sugbo.