Dr. William Kilgore ~ The Scar

The Scar We relaxed on a couch in mild coolness of a thermostat registering 84 degrees. It was all the air I could afford on limited income, in the stale, dank oven of South Texas in the middle of a record August. Beads of sweat trickled down both of our foreheads, television on, (something comedic, […]

Ayesha Mansoor ~ Iron Forest

Iron Forest Copper trees scrape the heavens.Their origins are entwined among electrical circuits and cables.metallic leaf clinksWind humming a lullaby of electrons and rust.I wander under thinking branches,their shadows moving like real equations,and hear the whisper of bark remembering centuriesCopper veins preserve its memory.Steel and glass birdssinging in binary, pecking at wiresAnd for a moment […]

GEORGE YATCHISIN ~ MINI-FESTO

Mini-festo When one of my favorite teachers told the class, “Calling it art merely means, ‘I like it a whole bunch,’” you don’t know how much that freed me. I liked that class a whole bunch— so I damn well better call it art. Ditto that little dance you did just for me, the sun […]

RANDY STREU ~ mile of music

Mile of Music Standing downwind of a cityfilled with song and all I can smell is the ashof Canadian wildfire but can just make out the soundof alcohol beneath the traffic carried in from the Easton a railroad staccato of blues-soaked countryechoing from an open bar while a punk-rock woah-woah-woahwafts from the southern river bank– […]

F.I. Goldhaber ~ Boycott Bewilderment

Answer songs sell well ~ Patrick T. Reardon

Answer songs sell well From her cave, high in the Michigan Avenue cliff, Wendi plots the morning like a military campaign against many enemies, visions of the inside of the flat, brown stone. The trumpet shall sound. On the way up, Wendi sang country chants with GirlJane at the Immigrant Aid concert where the Obama […]

CACTI FUR COLLECTIVE VOLUME 2 AVAILABLE NOW

IT’S HERE!!!! IN THE WORLD!!! READY FOR YOU!!! CACTI FUR COLLECTIVE Volume 2: Alexandra Gilliam, Darren C. Demaree, Patrick Meeds New work by 3 modern American poets discovered on CACTI FUR and curated by Grandma Moses Press, your poetry high ground. READ A SAMPLE FROM THE BOOK HERE As Ada Limón says, “it’s impossible to […]

3 poems from Joey Nicoletti

Idiotpalooza My girlfriend wanted me to accept her influence as much as she accepted mine, even going so far as slam dancing with me in a muddy mosh pit, despite her belief that the best way to enjoy music was listening to it alone in the comfort of her home. Then a muscular woman with […]

2 poems by Erren Kelly

Treme, New Orleans ( Fish and Chips )

And a woman sits on her

Porch, and you could see

All of New Orleans from it

And all her life has been Psalm

91, and Mogen David wine and

And making wishes come true

On a Singer sewing machine

And she reaps what she sews

And James Brown reminds her

That we won’t quit, until we get our

Share; that life may deliver the left

Hook that brings up down, but Jesus

Will give us the courage to get up again

And keep going

Fish and chips and gumbo and

The sounds of Treme from a

Sewing Macinine

Always find a way to keep going…

~~~

Listening To Neil Young After A Snowstorm

the sound flows through my ears

like hot chocolate, baptizing

the back of my throat

i see visions of old hippies

sitting in a circle, lost on

waves of melody

a cinnamon girl is a

bell bottomed dream

i see her braless nipples

like bullets through her

t-shirt, i smile at her

and she reciprocates

“we only have one country left”

says the bearded man

“let’s save it, while we still can”

we get high on the 70s as the

joint is passed around

you can always find freedom

in the sound

Chris Daly ~ DANCER IN THE DARK

Dancer in the dark

It’s ten miles from my long beach apt

to the bros of st patrick in midway city.

On a bike there are two rough patches:

on Westminster a quarter mile sprint

from the market place in-road to the bridge

over the flood control near the power plant

(no bike lane by the curb, cars making the short

sprint to the freeway turn, old and

over-coffee’d citizens, me dialing long

distance to my legs without special

rates)

and the two open miles

further along the same easement

between parallel fences

of the naval station, exposed to

silos of eternity.

The childhood secret of peddling

is to take your time.

It’s also a good way to miss

the toe-dancing. The guinness

was gone, good thing I’d picked

up same at the viet liquor store.

The way back a zen coast or

walk under the influence

stepping out of headlights

casually as

a homeless fred astaire.

Cacti Fur

a poetry high ground

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