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Poetry from Mesfakus Salahin
Epic of Love The depth of your eyes is endless There is a vast sea I lost there in my every breath I touched the waves of the sea I want to be a boat of your sea I want to be a sailor of the ancient sea. My heart is a hut It is poor and tiny The space of your heart is great It is greater than hundred worlds It is full of dream and liquid love I want to be a dreamer I want to be a true lover I want to swim in your love sea. The flagrance of your breath is sweet It is sweeter than all the flowers of the world It is unconditional and true I wan to touch your breath I want to take a bath with your breath. The rhyme of your voice is pleasant It is more pleasant than the verses of my poetry It dances the air surrounding you I want to be a listener of your voice If you are mine forever. I want to stop writing poems As, you are the epic of my love. You have a soul that connects me When l saw you first but that was not first inside me I conquered you before your heart bit.
Poetry from Vernon Frazer
Threads Baring
new lapels disfigured mediation
busters harried to the tenth extreme
seek remedial disasters planned
under wedging banter associates
columnar when their vocable thread
transforms cased carrier remnants
to particle misgivings that hedge
the bettors shrubbing their green
with a nonchalance left unsuited
for the tidal remnant massage
dismembered as any catalogue
request impaneled many stairwells
casing the place for customer jars
buried as a threat of last return
to the clever parlor tricks turned
in Reno slot machines corporate
as any corporeal inflation suit
litigated under a fading gauntlet
or store a subterfuge in the pine
casket longing for a short return
on a retreat binding loose shrieks
to vacant cleanser armies trapped
in arrears or security bank lifts
its torrential rhetorical compendia
toward reactor bastions dancing
cradle riffs under moonshine wind
somatic upturn notwithstanding
the columnar implication dread
gradually shedding incumbents
of dormant centipede infraction
prints tracking lawns long gone
to granite vestibule packaging
arthritic numbers in stale heat
to lessen the platelet impact
consumed as a quadrant vocal
turning silent on a squeaky pivot
No Cigar Too Close
a Havana leak imploding
ratchets calcium in spite
a disconsolate liquidator
frying pawned banter
erased porcupine litanies
molting solar remuneration
developed darkening eyefuls
where headboards scattered
paradiddle femurs to daze
solar paperbacks with shock
the witch tonsil ache foiled
leaking punctuation reform
one bored seawater escape
released a subliminal jotting
and stapled scarves divulge
queasy octagons needle
rampant spitfires encompass
the disconsolate liquidators
harkening scripture grouches
recycle their pauper caravan
Kindling Ash
a conflagration mentor
firing up a passion lost
conical invitations rapt
in fashion
gear turned to spark
and catch
the lessening arc of the flare
as touched
by inspiration
inventing the fashion
of the passion come
much before
aspiration circuits
fence convention tents
along the downslide glow
the grin
in the dark
inspired
lightening the shouldered
incentive that fear turned
cynical the will untapped
despite
the endless recitation
a replay deployed
cylindrical
invective rations
a rhetorical spin
and out
no invitation needed
after dark
Vernon Frazer’s most recent poetry collection is MANTIC PANDEMIC, a C22 publication.
C22 will publish Frazer’s Voyage in Port in July 2024.
Poetry from Echezonachi Daniel
NOT FOR PLEASURE In the sun-lit beauty of the evening I watch as a flock of birds travel across And it hit my mind, like a sort of knowledge previously unknown That birds do not fly just for pleasure. These birds may, like man, have hustled the whole day In their own type of office and school And are returning to rest their aching feathers. They fly to get home, not for pleasure. Sometimes they fly to escape threatening danger To save their lives and slip away from death At this point they fly for safety Not for pleasure. They fly to find sustenance for their little ones Like man they too need something for their belly So as I watch them now fly past I know for certain that they do not fly for pleasure
Poetry from Mark Young
Dictum It is when words fall that they lose their im- pact. Must remain in the air for more than a second or two, cling- ing to clothing or twist- ing upwards in the way that cigarette smoke does. Articles I like using articles to end a line. Sometimes an article of faith, sometimes of clothing. & occasionally a particle of speech to give the space between lines that extra bit of frisson. It is a continuity, the way forward, not the end of the line that some flat-earthers seem to think it is. The Clearing Not how I re- remembered or would have left it. Too much foliage, as if no one has been here to tidy up since I last came by. Tradition always suffers when the oracles move into the marketplaces. A kind of census The mind’s mosaic has been taken in for intro- spection. Why learn for the sake of learning? Un- necessary facts might just as well be fiction for all the use we get from them. The fragments are taken out for sensual inspection. Left so the air can breathe on them. Those that acquire color are kept to form new pathways of the mind. The bland are used to pebble pathways in the garden. Another Sunflower Sutra In sunflower I find pistil & stamen, their output arranged in a Fibonacci spiral. & following on As the sun sets, the credits start to roll. This day was brought to you by the seven ayem garbage col- lectors, a poem that glistened just beyond the edges of the trawl- ing net, Sketches of Spain with Miles Davis & Gil Evans, four coldcall intrusions, all declined, The Last Samurai on cable, washing off the line. No special effects were provided by either Industrial Light & Ma- gic or Marvel Studios.
Art from Grzegorz Wroblewski
Poetry from John Grochalski
monday morning meeting my landlady on the street
it’s a week day
and i’ve skipped work
when we see each other like this
my head
is vodka/wine cloudy
i have not yet recovered from
last week’s six-day work week
we are tight smiles
and inane pleasantries
to her i’m a monthly check
copious booze bottles on recycling evenings
and little else
her eyes get wide
and she says, not working today?
but i smile and reassure her
that it’s just a scheduled day off
that seems to placate her
but i don’t know how
i’m going to sooth her soul tomorrow
when i’m fucking off from the place again
drowning myself
in a titanic of wine
and internet porn
pretending
that i own this whole
goddamned world
no matter whom
i write the rent check to.
mother of the year
one kid
standing on tables
one kid
playing in traffic
the third one
picking his ass
and sniffing his fingers
her dumb face
glued to a cell phone
streaming tv shows
as the village
burns
burns
burns
around her.
the love songs of joey ramone
all these years later
and i still remember the way
her tears soaked through the phone
the sound a heart breaks
when it breaks long distance
she wanted to be a child bride
but i wanted to be jack kerouac
only i was nothing to her now
but a punk
…gabba gabba hey.
bodyshaping
sculpted women in bikinis
on cable sports tv
when i was thirteen
six in the morning
fresh from my paper route
amazonian goddesses
doing legs lifts or lifting weights
stretching and pulling
sweating and touching each other
as they cheered one other on
while i watched them
with my hand down my pants
strangling that little monster
hoping to get to that great
and grand explosion
before the next
commercial break.
big wigs
the genius of their job
is to create a lifetime
of pointless work for us
but to make us think
that the whole idea
was ours in the first place.