POETRY: ALLISON GRAYHURST – Exhumed

Exhumed Hello dead flower, for all time now you will be embedded inside of me. I will love you, dead as you are, withered like a left-out tomato. I will cherish you, your deadness, your smell and deep dead colour. There – the funny shadow on the upper wall – you killed my […]

POETRY: CATHERINE WOLF – WHERE ARE THE SIDEWALKS

Where Are the Sidewalks?

Blades of grass slashed my feet.

“No Trespassing” signs smacked my face, screamed,

“Go back to your city, we have no sidewalks here.” Sidewalks,

sidewalks, where are the sidewalks?

Limping, dripping bloody footprints on the macadamia road,

I edged toward the school bus stop,

where hyenas brayed, “We are the cool of the suburbs,

worship at our Gucci feet!” The school bus choked me

with a mix of diesel and fluffy yellow cake uranium,

crazy-glued me to the seat with chewed orange bubble gum.

The rambling, random brick walls of the school blocked my path,

spat at me, mockingly proclaimed,

“We have no use for you, little girl,

go back to your dingy drabby scumdummy school.”

The bell shrieked, “You’re late for your viral

algebra class! Your punishment: prove theological theorems

for all to see. Pray to the icon of iconoclasm!”

Blackboards surrounded me,

erasers clapped together, suffocating with clouds of cyanide chalk.

The gymnasium belligerently belittled my body,

bleachers ripped off my clothes,

chanting, “Boo, boo, no one will ever make love to you!”

I hid in the showers and cried for the sidewalks.

But the sidewalks shed crock pot tears and

not for me.

POETRY: Husain Abdulhay – Devoted Dad

Devoted dad

Nothing more I reveled in than seeing my little kid’s blithe face.
One day we were sitting round my daughter’s birthday cake,
Say, ‘‘what you want for your birthday gift?’’
I will do whatever you wish.
There were some red fish in the aqua tank.
She said, ‘‘Please gulp them down in a blink of an eye.’’
Since I didn’t want to make her sad,
I swallowed them all at once.
Now I’ve got stomachache for two days long.
But I made her at last burst into lusty laugh.

Husain Abdulhay, born on 26 August 1979, is from Iran.

POETRY: JACK D. HARVEY – Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas “In the white giant’s thigh,” he recited, berry-eyed, while the moon, or the spotlight, like melted silver, poured down over wondering flocks of girls and their fellows; the college library wasn’t big enough to hold the babbling poems and broken science he would write, so he said, booming big and drunk, windy and […]

POETRY: JOHN GREY – BRAIN MATTER

BRAIN MATTER The brain is more than a cerebral cortex connected by synapses to thousands of neurons. It stores an infinity of ideas ready, at any moment, to be introduced in a public setting by the tongue. Even something as simple as “Let’s go get Chinese tonight.” A neuron wouldn’t think of that. Nor would […]

POETRY: JAMES JACKSON – SPACE JUNK

SPACE JUNK

After the breakup, our phone conversations
become space debris, steel pieces hardly
discernible hurtling haphazardly at five miles

per second. Where do the scraps go?
The gold taste of summer will impact the brain
and puncture, enflame. We wish to assist

the start-ups who seek to construct
machines to eliminate wayward spares
of satellites trapped in the gravity of a body,

propel its dust into the atmosphere to burn.
We drift wary of small artifacts
from failed missions to emerge

in the distance of night to strike
and make split into fragments
we will never assemble again.

–

Find James Jackson Online.

poetry: catherine wolf -hack attack

Hack Attack
Finally! Obama shot back at the Russian hackers
who attacked our computers, the Democratic National Committee,
Hillary’s email, and just fun Vermont’s power grid.

But shot with a BB gun, it could shoot someone’s eye out,
leaving him dazed and bloody, not like a nuke
which could destroy a country or a world,
leaving the scent of smoke no creature could smell.
Obama, did you smell the flaming planet?

Trumpeter tweeted Putin putting off his own retaliation,
shining “very smart.” Treason is giving aid and comfort
to an enemy. Is the president-elect dipping
into treason like chocolate mousse?

Trumpeter sided with WikiLeaks founder
who said “Nyet, not a Russian hack.”
Does dumpy Trumpy want to build a golf course
in Siberia? It’s all about money.

With his glowing bare muscular chest,
Putin must have a dozen women
Trumpet can grope.

Bio
Catherine G. Wolf studied language development in graduate school, and was fascinated by this unique human ability. In 1997, when she was stricken with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, her ability to speak was taken away by this disease. She found poetry had a special capability to express her innermost feelings. By losing her physical voice, Catherine found her poetic voice. Catherine has published in the 2016 Rat’s Ass Review edition of Love & Ensuing Madness, Rat’s Ass Review, Front Porch Review, Verse-Virtual, Cacti Fur, and Bellevue Literary Review. She uses assistive technology to communicate, and raises her right eyebrow to type.
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