Deborah Kerner is a poet and a painter living in Ojai, California. Her poems have recently appeared in Bluepepper, Mad Swirl, Rabid Oak and Ariel Chart. Synthetic in the Skin stripped so that even in intervals nothing remains somewhere in a terrain sucked dry taking a train with windows like fluttering eyes much of the world slides by without intention. time is nowhere lost in seconds passing the edges of restless habitation people squatting shitting and fearless close to the anonymity of train tracks traveling offline and by the sweep of fields passing disintegrating remnants of shattered structures gray like misaligned cultural leftovers buildings fading in the offhanded rose orange light of raging fires jumping unraveling highways. the train is smoking over bridges encountering succulent forests glued on stamped listless deserts stripped beyond the fringe of dystopian recognition. skins absorb unevaluated toxicity we are left in a walking zone where wolves take over forgotten remote forbidden old ladies pass through tattered fences the barriers home is where the skin is in this now moment called synthetic determined by the ironies of language humans walk the floating earth not knowing where they are Night Dweller my feet are cold my heart somewhere feeling. it insists it is feeling moon sharp a white sharp disk thrown in the night sky night falls quickly on my head uncovered and filled with dread will I lie here frozen losing sleep in the late night’s chill? night dwelling awakens just as the sun first then the moon falls behind western mountains silhouette and shadows dense light becomes memory as pure darkness envelops stirring the noir nocturnal atmospheric molecular field of nothingness cave-like ink-jet black phantoms loom across a wall the night’s yearnings burnings achings limbs thrown about uncertain half-dreams as the sun travels the other side of earth sleep beckons me yet thwarted by dawn’s shaking anticipation and far off stars fading the night existence prevails sleepless becomes me. in the next moment the rosy tip of fractured dawn light appears begins to enforce a day night dweller exists waits until the shiver of night ignites its will to stay alive. I caught in the middle of its hardwired game Tree Woman I saw a woman talking to a tree yesterday we were filling up at a nearby gas station a busy road a time of day when everyone is returning home summer’s streaming late afternoon gold light she was animated gesticulating wildly the tree alert listening it bent towards her surely it knew her primeval voice springing from the pool of the blazing Dryads the tree nymphs shy though they were known to be turning as I sat back in the car thinking of her in the distance behind me before I closed the door she was there beside me like lightning pale blue sharp penetrating eyes a colorful bandana wrapped her head she asked me for a dollar wearing cut blue jean shorts a thin top covering her falling breasts her tanned mid torso and navel exposed muscular athletic strong legs she was earnest I looked into her myth-bound eyes what could I see but the long line of forgotten women the turbulent days the trajectory of our long collective sisterhood existences travesty of neglect shunned and restrained fiercely awaiting freedom beyond the restraints of our current earthbound cultures I saw it in the urgency of her desperation
Poetry from Chris Butler
"Anti" Chris Butler is an illiterate poet howling from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. His 11th book of poems, "DOOMER", has been published and released by Ethel. He is also the co-editor of The Beatnik Cowboy literary journal. Why Do the Bees Dream? Why do the bees dream, and not only sleep alone when the late day chills their exoskeletal shell? Why do the bees dream with restless legs pollinating colonies where their nesters are cradled in hexagonal combs, formed into homes of regurgitated honey? Why do the bees dream when their royalty is an engorged queen, conquering the flower with armies forced to feed the budding baby bee population? Why do the bees dream of low flying drones snorting pheromones, as their radar to drop a stinger cruise missile onto the nose of an incoming brown bear? Why do the bees dream when they’re smoked into peaceful unconsciousness like poppy Buddhists? Iceberg The rabbit, ensnared on a frozen artic block, set adrift to the blue skies and azure seas, begins burrowing a hole, incredulous in its desperate search for the safety of a warm, underground home, slowly slipping further down into the indigo deep, until breaking through into the endless dark abyss, silencing its death rattle by drowning. The Way Back Home The way back home isn’t on a cold road still shining with yesterday’s rain, when you’ve nowhere to go, alone, watching the tinted break lights cover you in a crimson costume, passing by your shivering thumb, for a hitchhike that will never come. My childhood bat cave basement was just a half finished rec room, with all the walls stripped nude of posters with bunnies in bikinis, all toys donated to salivating armies of dumpster divers’ deep sea expeditions. But within an hour of saying and waving goodbye, to leave my very first fortress with castle walls and moats for dirty pothole roads. The only way back home, into a warm bed with fabric softened clean sheets smelling of lavender detergent, awakened by that distant taste from the kitchen of flavors that momma used to make, was to walk into that road so the next driving passerby would hit and run. When insomnia has taken complete control of your restless legs and racing thoughts… you know it’s far too late when after constant commercials for bootleg erectile dysfunction pills and cures for balding heads, all of which feature the incentives of female models frolicking on sandy beaches, and you reach the end of the broadcasting day, watching a 4th of July fireworks spectacular in tandem with the national anthem. Trigger From today moving forward, Webster’s Dictionary, the grammar police and the unfree speech Nazis will begin deleting words from the dictionary, instead of adding new mouth sounds from the new Old English, in order to prevent our peers’ pressure from pulling my fingering of the world’s trigger.
Short story from Dennis Mann
Story Title: Cheers To Forever Written By : Dennis Mann It's precisely those nights when you feel the beginning of a new life when your heart beats at an uncontrollable speed, when you never get tired of flashing your perfect white set of teeth to the random guest that attends your wedding solemnization. She descended the stairways as a sea of eyes stared at her, but her focus was only on the man whom she would be spending the rest of her life with. Her champagne sleeveless gown caressed the floors as she made her way down like a slow train that never wanted to reach its destination. Her man in a blue-black Tux was radiating sparkles of shimmering light under the magnificent chandelier. The point came when they had contact, and it seemed the two would never want to separate for a minute: their hands bound by love. They walked closely while smiling guests all dressed fashionably in white for the Night Party. Just six hours ago, the couple said a big yes to each other and wore a wedding band to signify their long-lasting bond. The newlywed husband couldn't stop smiling as he danced with his wife. "Kobie, I love you," Adelaide uttered, her eyes in deepest sincerity and her voice in complete innocence. "You are my royal lady, and I love you so much, dear," Kobie said as he revealed a gap-toothed smile. The happy guest rushed on the circular dance floor and moved their waist to the live band by Kwabena Kwabena, 'Royal lady.' Adelaide dropped the hands of the man she loves and joined Kwabena Kwabena closely. Kwabena Kwabena seized the opportunity to be an excellent performer as he played the trumpets to only one valid guest—the bride. But clearly, someone wasn't happy that everyone was in a merry mood. "Ermm, thank you, thank you." Funny Face said. "The night is very young, and there is still plenty of time to dance." He coughed in a joking way. "This is a fantabulous wedding of my main man, Kobie. Ekom adi y3 a kye." Everybody laughed. "Kobie has been a friend in those times I thought I had no friend. You know people believe since you are a celebrity, you have lots of friends and have no problems. They lie. They lie baad!" The guest laughed again. "Kobie has been there for me countless times. I can't start counting. I love you, bro." Funny Face turned back and gazed at Kobie. "This is no gay love." The men in the crowd roared from behind. "I love you with the love of a mother. Your new wife shall bring you peace-" The crowd cheered, Amen. "—And beautiful children." "Amen," chorused the guest. Adelaide, seated close to her husband, gazed at him for a second, and they both got close like a magnet drawing them together, and they kissed. Funny Face managed the party very well. He cracked everyone up. Kobie was glad to have listened to his wife to make Funny Face the master of the ceremony. A burgundy Range Rover Evoque parked outside at the entrance of Villagio Heights. Smokes exhumed from the double steel exhaust pipes. The giant oaken doors opened, and Kobie stepped out with his wife in both arms, wrapped like a child as he descended. He dropped her carefully and opened the car door, and helped her into the car. Kobie turned back and waived the increasing number of guests at the entrance. Kobie kicked start the accelerator, and the sports car hummed slowly away with a 'Just Married' tag at the number plate. The growing guest waved at them as they faded in the pitch dark night. The newlywed couple drove on the H1N1 road leading to the Tema motorway. "Honey, do you think we should go to Holy Trinity Spa tonight? Considering the journey, let's sleep tonight and start our honeymoon tomorrow?" "No, dear, I want us to get there tonight so we can rest and begin a wonderful life ahead of us from tomorrow." "Okay. Anything you say, dear. I know your eyes are lazy in the evening; that's why I'm saying that." "You have nothing to worry about, dear. We shall be fine." Soon, not long, as they just passed the motorway roundabout, a long truck skidded terribly and crashed the sports car. The car was crushed instantly to a corner. Kobie and Adelaide lay unconscious with blood spilling from their head. It was not clear if they survived. Dennis Mann - Author Email: authordennismann@gmail.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/persiux5 Facebook : facebook.com/authordennismann Call/WhatsApp: +233247654113Wide Reading Among Kids (WRAK) is a children's literacy program in Ghana. We encourage readers to support this program. More information on WRAK here. Wide Reading Among Kids Instagram: @widereadingamongkids Facebook: www.facebook.com/widereadingamongkids Email: widereadingamongkids@gmail.com Call/WhatsApp: +233247654113 Website: widereadingamongkids.org
Poetry from John Thomas Allen
John Thomas Allen is 38, loves stained glass, and loves imagery for imagery's sake. He also enjoys giving single dollar bills to crack addicts at real carnivals, igniting charity balls for people who don't work, and entertaining strange strangers online. He admires the work of Peter O Leary, Bernadatte Meyer, and Mina Loy. The Carnival Tarot I was there the night the carnival tarot began In a glass mosque of magic satin flooded with fireflies winding the meditation boxes to a focus levels flooded without grounding To a focus level split in the screaming sonar whistles dew drops of dim deja vu, beads bodiless with worlds shed aflame echoes of billiard halls in their boozy spider glass echoes of hobo clown gangs split in galleys of long handed shadow echoes of orchestrated lightning in black boxes echoes of paint chips patterned after a decayed glass marquee in downtown LA The third eye all smoke and thus frying the Om… now with the dowsing snakes hushed buzz. The fleecing syncopation of All In All All At Once Before falling they’d seen ameythistine temples, rising tide of movie monsters eloped from the moving pictures in the singular monstrosity of self possession gravity’s cells swallowing each free breath of even air. In the EVP library’s soundscape, the voices freed the dead’s sound bytes inside holofoil crypts. The pale swan arms, bonding afterlives, braille echoes on the No. 5 pencil She sang the Hours with carnie ministers, crowned ghosts. The icons were flooded out with sound mirrors the body of a saw Refracting icons in the library’s reading room Howling and nude in caged specters of lightning, eyes smoked like a blue owl a dribbling decoy of light.
Poetry from Alan Britt
ODE TO MULES, CATBIRDS, INSECTS, AND GOD Interspecies friendships? They’re great, aren’t they? A bonding of pure affection sometimes unequaled in human civilization. A mule wearing a snorkel and goggles enters the high school convocation flopping rubber flippers against the smooth terracotta tiles. You gotta love that! [Yeah] *……* A catbird screeched high above a tulip poplar near the local middle school earlier today, then warbled hieroglyphs before entering our forsythia hedge and vaporizing inside its prickly branches. *……*……* I wonder if we pay enough attention to insects? We mostly complain about them, but they’re preoccupied day in day out with whatever’s required to evolve their DNA. Sounds a lot like us, eh? And what about lusty zebra mosquitos who just want to our be blood brothers? We shouldn’t overlook such things. ◄ ◄…..► ► What’s the last thing that goes through an existentialist’s mind when he smacks the windshield at 90 miles an hour? That’s right, God.
THE NIGHT JOE WATSON & I DOUBLE- DATED TWO BEAUTIES FROM THE THRIFTWAY SUPERMARKET I told Joe, pick whomever, but I prefer the Italian in a canary one-piece with poppy white collar. So, he picked Meg. I liked Meg. I liked Meg a lot with her tamarind arms, bronze legs, & eyelashes like dragonflies haunting my dreams, but, alas, I was mesmerized by the Italian Aphrodite broiled to perfection in a canary one-piece with poppy white collar. So, off the four of us cruised, two of us ending up below the spidery legs of the Lake Worth pier. That night kisses like wild bruises migrated from lips to necks to shoulders in the casual blink of a full moon’s penumbra tattooing hair, flesh, monkey blood, & bones. I told Joe, pick whomever, but I prefer the Italian in a canary one-piece with poppy white collar.
Alan Britt has been nominated for the 2021 International Janus Pannonius Prize awarded by the Hungarian Centre of PEN International for excellence in poetry from any part of the world. Previous nominated recipients include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bernstein and Yves Bonnefoy. Alan was interviewed at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem. He has published 20 books of poetry and served as Art Agent for Andy Warhol Superstar, the late great Ultra Violet, while often reading poetry at her Chelsea, New York studio. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.
Poetry from Ahmad Al-Khatat
Only Fragments Found I wonder how can I tell my child that we are humans? Everyone is pointing and shouting at The blacks, the Asians, and the Arabs. I don't understand who is inferior or superior. Am I lazy to remain silent? Like a warrior widow. Maybe I am insane to resist the awful travesty? Bush promised me that he is going to establish equal opportunity and peace for my country. Since the war started only fragments found Everyday is another kind of tragedy Nobody dreams of being a comedy Although, most of the soldiers are crazy. I learn about peace and not preferable race Undesirable faces must be wiped off the earth We are not corpses yet, we must record our existence The sadness and massacres must be in history books. If our stories are miserable then you can laugh at me If our memories are from the past then slaughter my life Those bullets holes on the wall of my grandparent's room, They will not be erased, hold my hand and let me breathe fresh air. 10/12/2021 Bleeding Heart Poet
Short story from Doug Hawley
Ageless Love The two teens were walking home along a forested country road. She looked at him and said “Duke, your fly is open.’ After looking around and not seeing anyone, he zipped up. “Sandra, you’ve got pine needles on your skirt butt. I’d be pleased to wipe them off.” They had made a slight detour on their way home to a place in the woods which they thought of as their spot. As they approached her place she asked “Do you suppose your parents know?” “They either expect or know, but I’m pretty sure they don’t mind. My mother made sure that I respected girls and very pointedly insisted I carry condoms after she heard some of my end of our phone calls. I don’t know what I said that clued her in – mothers are mysterious. My father saw us together once and said ‘That Sandra is a fine girl. You couldn’t do any better.’ What do your parents think?” “My mother gave me the talk too. I mentioned that you had been walking me home. She gave me a look, but didn’t get nosey.” As Duke dropped Sandra off at her place, the parents made a big deal of inviting him in for a coke. Despite the seeming innocence of the treat, he felt like he was under a microscope. An old man woke up in his sickbed from a beautiful dream mumbling “you are my sunshine, my only sunshine” and first looked over at the picture of a young couple on the headboard at the opposite side of the double bed, then at the medicines lined up on his end table. “Sandra, I had another one of those dreams. This time we were in high school a few years before we got married. People thought we were too young, but we raised two fine children and stayed together until death did us part. I should have been the one who parted, I miss you so much. It isn’t the only dream. Sometimes I dream about us watching one of Jeff’s baseball games, or Betty’s dance recital. I give you most of the credit for how they turned out. We must have been good models; they now have fine families of their own. The grandchildren don’t mind hanging out with granddad, or if they do they hide it well.” “Some of the dreams aren’t as good, but I always wake up from ones in which you start to show symptoms. That was hard enough to take the first time around.” “The kids try to fix me up with someone from time to time. I know they thought they were being kind to a lonely old man, but the memory of you is better than any woman. When I did go out a few times, the dates were driven off by my talking about you.” “The dreams have helped me survive. I took up painting and have gone to community college classes. I volunteer in the local park, run a wheel chair at the hospital and teach a class on writing so I don’t feel completely useless.” “The hospice people say we won’t be separated much longer. Expect me to join you in about a week.”