Poetry from Margarita Serafimova

We were on the beach, and then we weren‘t.

There is nothing more to say.

It is empty, seen from above.

 

In a Capsule of Close-up Infinity

 

When we look at one another,

and only our bodies are between us,

our tenderness is surgery of a star.

 

The whale before the horizon is serenely

and solemnly breathing.

And who are we?

 

The wild stones, in love with the sand,

with curls and quaint beauty,

they breathe too.

And I am breathing with them, mouth to mouth.

 

Leaves, my kings, your bright is dark,

and your dark is bright.

You are in the sky.

 

The stars are coming.

Time is racing asphalt.

 

Leaning on the window’s shutter, eyes closed,

I was inhaling deeply from the bunch of sage you’d hung up there.

“I am having sex with the Earth”, I told you.

“How so?”, you asked.

“Here, like that, with the scent – it enters me, and I give myself.”

 

Soaring is the hyacinth,

a crown of itself,

a crowning of the own,

and an I above the crown.

 

The permutations of love were taking place in a sunlit space.

Spring was maturing into summer,

death was evolving, it now involved planets and roots.

 

It was a circle.

Somewhere in it, I overflowed –

my eyes had mirrored themselves in the deep of yours.

Gray flecked, with lights.

 

 

Margarita Serafimova was shortlisted for the Montreal Poetry Prize 2017, Summer Literary Seminars 2018 and 2019, and Hammond House Prize 2018; long-listed for the Christopher Smart (Eyewear Publishing) Prize 2019, Erbacce Press Poetry Prize 2018 and Red Wheelbarrow 2018 Prize, and nominated for Best of the Net 2018. She has three collections in Bulgarian. Her work appears in Agenda Poetry, London Grip, Waxwing, Trafika Europe, Landfill, A-Minor, Poetry South, Great Weather for Media, Orbis, Nixes Mate, StepAway, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Leveler, Mookychick, HeadStuff, Minor Literatures, Writing Disorder, Birds We Piled Loosely, Chronogram, Noble/ Gas, Origins, The Journal, miller’s pond, Obra/ Artifact, Arteidolia/ Swifts&Slows, Memoir Mixtapes, glitterMOB, TAYO, Guttural, Punch, Tuck, Ginosko, etc. Visit: https://www.facebook.com/MargaritaISerafimova/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel.

Short story from Michael Robinson

One Night in the Shadow of Bliss

III 

Michael Robinson (right)and fellow contributor Joan Beebe

Lace bra and underpants covered her body, as she stood, in front of the mirror, her eyes were strong. Her pupils opened wide filling with moist tears. Her memories returned to the night when the moon was full when the stars were bright in the night skies, she saw a glimmer of life. The smell of sweetness remained in the air while there was darkness reflecting from her heart. She wanted to leave those thoughts behind and accept warmth of a man’s touch. It was more than his touch, it was her life she began to remember her past which was painful. The following morning her emotions would be raw. However, for now it would be safe to be a woman in love, to feel the sensations of womanhood. She would forget the painful past for those hours with him.

The gentleness between them was electrifying with foreplay. Holding her close to his body, kissing her from the top of body gently, and quietly moving his fingers across her lips. She laid there with her eyes closed enjoying the moment. He touched her breast with his fingers playing with her pierced nipples between his fingers. She knew what would be next because they had always made love with his lips replacing his fingers on the left nipple. The earring in her navel made his touch even more exciting to her.  

She began to moan, breathing deeply. Her skin was smooth, and his tongue covered her stomach the movement of his lips and tongue made her cry as she had several orgasms. She was in a state of total surrender to his every touch. Knowing that her pierced clitoris would be next. Her pubic hair was soft from the wetness of his tongue. He didn’t mind kissing her vagina. He loved the fluid of her body mixed with his saliva leaving a tart taste. It was always like this when they had intercourse. He would wrap his arms around her midsection holding her tight enough that the sweat between them united.  

She loved being this close to someone that made love feel love for herself in this manner. Certain that he would always be gentle and sensitive to her sexuality. It was not being fucked like with the others. It wasn’t that kind of relationship between them. He wanted to satisfy her to make her feel love and connected to him. He wanted her to feel like she and he was more than a one-night stand and each time he was determined to express his desire to be the only man she would ever want to be with. She loved him so she gave herself to him without hesitation.

Touching his eyelids slightly with her manicured red fingernails with her open palm she closed his eyes. Her lips were soft and full. She touched his nipples with her lips biting the hardened nipples of his. He would shake with excitement, as she moves down his body, slowly with intense she made him moan. She gentle climbed on top of him and for what was a moment of ecstasy both had an orgasm together. A quiet moan which gave her gratification knowing he was fulfilled by her.

He was the one man she gives herself totally and he knew it by the way she made him feel and respond to her gentleness. The street lights pierced through the closed curtains reflecting the soft powder blue color of the them. She saw his reflection as she stood with glazed eyes watching him. Her brown eyes did not reflect life but rather despair. She quietly put on her red skin-tight dress. Lying on the dresser was an envelope with payment for the night encounter. The light in the corridor was a shock to her eyes. Her red heels were lost in the thickness of the carpet in the hallway. She returned to the corner in which she worked and waited for her next customer knowing she was loved in a world of pain. 

Poetry from J.J. Campbell

Author J.J. Campbell

Author J.J. Campbell

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know where the bodies are buried. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at The Rye Whiskey Review, The Dope Fiend Daily, Fourth & Sycamore, Horror Sleaze Trash and Cajun Mutt Press. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
——————————————————————————————
long days of pain
 
there’s an old
black soul deep
inside me
these long days
of pain are nothing
new
the ache starts
in the small of
the back and
climbs the spine
until it rests in
my brain
on the good days
i’m only crazy
on the bad days
some motherfucker
is going to find out
how much evil is
inside me
———————————————————————————–
when the darkness takes over
 
laughter is the last
thing that leaves
a crazy mind
when the darkness
takes over every
nook and cranny
it can either be
the slow decline
or a rush of blood
to the head
there’s a shotgun
in the corner for
a reason
——————————————————————————-
sign language
 
my mother
is losing
her hearing
i let her know
the only sign
language i
remember is
how to sign
eat shit and
die
she laughs
and gives me
the sign that
i am number
one
———————————————————————————
the same year you were molested as a child
 
picture that
utopia you
fantasized
about as
a teenager
and then
remember
you realized
what death
was the same
year you were
molested as
a child
utopias never
have existed
at least not
without the
help of
chemical
substances
and a
repressed
society can
never reach
its full
potential
ever
———————————————————————————–
getting warmer
 
the weather is
finally getting
warmer
soon, it will
be short skirts
and a lonely
man seeking
an adventure

Poetry from Vijay Nair

Author Vijay Nair

Author Vijay Nair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Organized Crime

 

The very essence of organized crime is,

To constitute nothing less than

A gang war against any society

Yes, Communism is an organized crime!

It is the dirty side of a bootless ideology

In India, it is an abortive whorehouse

Provinces in, putas and ponces are

Proselytized mouth pieces

Of this uncivilized band

Marred agriculture everywhere

Environment who degraded?

Wrecked all industries but

Ferried refugees, narcotics,

Ruined communal harmony by

Endorsed terrorism,

Disesteemed work culture with

Crocodile tears of unemployment

They use to take from others

Without wilful, voluntary consent

But, with the crown and title

The outset of force to grip life is murder,

To lay hold of liberty is slavery,

And to seize property is theft

Intellectual property theft is one of many

Organized crime they constitute

From the very beginning

Organized crime on top creates

Individual violence at the bottom

Beware, all the faced off comrades

Amassed vexation drives

Any civilized animal to go crazy one day!!!

©-Vijay P Nair -2019    

 

 

Poem from Yusuf Baba Mohamed

NO MORE GIANT

Author Yusuf Baba Mohammed

 

Who has strangled you
That your voice no longer echo
In the four walls of the black room?
I thought you got no more shackles
I thought you live no more in bondage.
If your freedom is free
Why will your voice tremble
Like startled slave caught in chains?
To my pains
I see no dream of sliver spoon
In between your sadden lips
Neither did I foresee it in your rebirth
May the lyrics by the ancestral hands
Save you in their songs
That shall be sang by births
May your freedom be free
To let your voice be muscles
Of a giant again.
Yusuf BM (YBM) is a poet, writer, spoken word artist, motivational speaker and a photographer. Yusuf is a member of the Hilltop Art Center Minna, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) and SEVHAGE Publishers, as well as Founder/C.E.O of Teen Poetic Globe (TPG); a platform aimed at encouraging young artists around the globe and to promote poetry culture. He is also a blogger owning a blog known as Giant Tori-Tori Media Plus.

Poetry by John Grochalski

the movie ticket cashier has a window

into the deepest fears resting in my soul

 

the movie ticket cashier

sells me a senior citizen ticket

at the age of forty-four

 

this chipper grim reaper

senses the stench of death on me

 

and all it’s worth to him

 

is his cheap smile

and a six-dollar discount.

 

the bather

 

he flushes the toilet

in the public men’s room

more than a dozen times

 

he’s usually in there

a good forty minutes

 

there is generally a line by then

 

an angry-faced mob of men

checking their watches

and doing their pee-pee dance

 

when he finally comes out

his long hair is slicked back

and the beard is gleaming

 

a layer of new york city dirt

is gone from his chapped face

 

the crowd parts for him like the red sea

 

they let him walk back out

into the glare of the sun and the street

 

before turning back to each other

like red-faced idiots

 

with no clue

who was supposed

to get to use the restroom next.

 

the bottle collectors

 

the bottle collectors

are outside my window

riffling through the garbage

 

as i sit in this chair with a hangover

 

they rattle their treasures unmercifully

they’re loud enough to wake the dead

 

i think of all of the years of drinking

 

all of the bottles and cans that i emptied

and threw away like they were nothing

 

hangovers that have become

a goldmine for someone else

 

then i fart loudly into the void

 

and stumble off

to get my broke ass

ready for work.

 

from near the verrazzano-narrows bridge,

jogging, a complaint about the weather, etc.

 

i’m still doing this, why?

dragging myself out of the door at seven in the morning

 

to face the calamity of cars

and high school students

and parents and wailing babies

 

smiling, waxen fellow joggers who feel compelled to wave

 

and dogs who’d rip me apart like captured carrion

should i stumble before their wooly, jagged muzzles

 

what should i think?

that vanity must be the last refuge of a scoundrel

 

i feel scandalous

in an ill-fitting t-shirt

my booze belly hanging over ill-fitting shorts

sweat pouring off of me

 

sore knees and sore shoulder

dying unnaturally in the unnatural heat of april

 

for that matter

where has the spring gone?

 

it comes for a week now

spreads its allergic seeds

and then the summer chases it out of the house

as if it were a philandering prick

 

even the tulips bend under the burden of the sun

 

and the verrazzano-narrows bridge

looks molten in the blood-red haze

 

like it too wants

to give up the game

collapse into the cold belly of the atlantic ocean

 

and drift away as if a dried leaf

leftover from an autumn

that last winter was unable to swallow.

 

thinking about mt. washington (pittsburgh)

 

been a long time

since i thought about cruising mt. washington

 

young, blurry nights behind the wheel

with calvin and steve and colby

 

reckless with cheap beer and cigarettes

and the immortality of a fool

 

as pittsburgh glowed below us

spent from our revelry on humid summer nights

 

chasing women with stale inuendo

 

then going home alone to porn magazines

drunken, horny lotharios with nothing to show for it

but sore wrists and tissue paper

 

before passing out

 

then hours later

leaning over a toilet bowl

convulsing with the morning’s vomitous hangover

 

memory’s cheap regret

and the body’s rancor making us shiver

 

yet planning on calling all of the fellows later

to trade war stories over the evening’s first pint

 

and do it all again.


I am a published writer whose poetry has appeared your journal as well as in several online and print publications including:  Red Fez, Rusty Truck, Outsider Writers Collective, Underground Voices, The Lilliput Review, The Main Street Rag, Zygote In My Coffee, The Camel Saloon, and Bartleby Snopes.  I am the author four books of poetry The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch (Six Gallery Press, 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Press, 2014), and The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Press, 2018).  I am also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press, 2013) and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press, 2016).

Poetry from Denis Emorine

 

Author Denis Emorine

Author Denis Emorine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I beg your pardon Carmen

for crying more and more

remembering your pain

after his death.

 

22 y.o.

You were so young Carmen

and so pretty

I definitely love you Carmen

but you are dead

while I try to stay alive

with your ghosts

they  are mine now

forever and ever

till my death

but you are not guilty

please believe me

I would like to remain your

little boy

nestled in your arms

like a born kitten

covered in blood

your blood

*

 

Carmen

I am your motherless child

give me your sorrow one more time

Please try again

I (just?) want to be strong for you

only for you Carmen

don’t look at my face now

never

I want to be stronger

even if I am a weak person

as you probably know

Carmen

Carmen

give me your sorrow

nothing else

I beg you

on bended knee

*

 

 Beloved Carmen

life is  a black hole

without you

I would like to hear your voice again

closer to me

and your blow on my cheeks

and on my lips

I would like to forget your name

and my pain

I have loved you for a long time

in vain

today

I can’t reach you any more

with my tenderness

Beloved Carmen

the piano is dead

gone

definitely gone

*

 

Too often

the sky is grey inside me

closer to my heart

beating too fast

I was born on a windy day

the snow was falling in high flakes

inside my head

I always have a headache

thinking of the past

 

Time goes by

life is a clepsydra

*

 

Carmen

Thinking of you

is so difficult

but I can’t forget you

Facing your grave

makes me cry

Give me your arms again!

I don’t want to be a wise man

just follow your steps

right till the end

*I wish I were dead

could you understand

but

I don’t want to upset you

What to do?

*

Carmen

my sweet fairy

I remember your words in English

my mother’s tongue

the  music of my childhood

that I both hate and love

Sometimes I should love

to lose the French tongue

keeping  you closer to me

but this is an illusion

It’s so hard loving you now

crossing the beyond

*

 

Living with you

was a fairy tale sometimes

Now

I can’t reach you

my arms are too weak

and  evanescent

is your shadow

*

 

Carmen

so difficult

to find the rights words

to remember you

even in French

Doors are double-locked

Sweet Lady

I need your arms

to live a little bit

please don’t abandon me!

*

 

Words

only words

that’s all

Words

only words

nothing else

but

believe me

silence is better

silence

and your smile forever

*

 I would like

to have

a heart of gold

or

preferably

I would have liked

to have one

but it’s too late

I am now living

with  fear

with

fear

*

 

 Carmen

how deep

was your pain

how deep

is mine

thinking of you

Carmen

you are my love

but

you are dead

d

e

a

d

….

*

 Give me your arms again

to fight against death

your death

*

 

Carmen

sweet Carmen

give me your Cross again

I know it’s useless

but who cares?

this is a pact between

you and me

Sometimes

I feel misunderstood

since you’ve been gone

*

 

February, 28, 2018

 

Today

I’m 62 y.o.

Nothing else

White  my hair

and my heart

I try to live as well

oh yes

I would like

to be stronger

with death in my sights

*

 

 Hold me tight

sweet Lady

my life

is hanging into the balance

I’m always complaining

since you are dead

I am unable to

put one  foot in front of the other

my life sways

and sways

*

 

I stay

your dreamy boy

at least I try

in memory of you

but

it’s over

life fled

*

 

Carmen

What could I add to my pain?

I have nothing to say

I’m unable to shout

neither in French

nor in English

Sadness has no language

you probably know

Give me your own words

to fight again!

*

 

 I’m shivering

because I’m  coward

I beg your pardon

Mother

Is it enough?

Obviously not

I was expecting you

Maman

 

*

 Sweet Maman

my love remains the same

but

this is a song of death

how could I express

my pain?

 

Carmen

I want to forget your name

because I’m facing the past

but

whatever happens

I can’t

I can’t… 

Day is over

night is over

and

the world is closed

* 

 

Où es-tu Carmen

où te caches-tu?

Il y a si longtemps

que je suis à ta recherche

Il y a eu trop de sang dans ta vie

et trop  de douleur aussi

tu ne m’entends pas hurler

depuis que tu es morte

je ne retrouve plus

le chemin de ta tombe

je suis démembré

I don’t want to play hide and seek anymore

I miss you sweet Lady

*

 

Denis Emorine  is a French writer. He was born in 1956 in Paris. He has an emotional attachment to English because his mother was an English teacher. He is of Russian ancestry on his father’s side. Writing, for Emorine, is a way of harnessing time in its incessant flight. Themes that re-occur throughout his writing include the Doppelgänger, lost or shattered identity, and mythical Venice (a place that truly fascinates him). He also has a great interest for Eastern Europe.

His theatrical output has been staged in France, Canada (Quebec)  and Russia. Many of his books (short stories, plays, poetry) have been published in Greece, Hungary, Romania, South Africa, and the United States.

His first novel La mort en berne , 5 Sens éditions, was published in Switzerland, in 2017.

An English translation Death at Half-Mast is forhcoming in the USA https://www.experimentalfiction.com/

In 2015, Denis Emorine was awarded the Naji Naaman Literary Prize Lebanon (honor prize for complete work)

For more informations, go on his website  http://denis.emorine.free.fr/ul/english/accueil.htm