POETRY: Barbara Ann Meier – TORNADO

Tornado

When white sunlight

hits hail, scatters

the narrow beams

of light,

they plank the sky

in hues of eerie yellow.

Ping-

ponging

off each other-

a game of pinball,

igniting lights

with each slam.

In that engulfing gloom,

the bruised sky,

full of broken veins

of light,

pool

into violently spinning air.

The fat finger of death

curls its way to dirt-

wedging itself downward.

Mesmerized

by power flashes,

I strain to glimpse

the finger of God.

In that frozen

moment-

thoughts on internet

waves,

Doppler Radar

pinging velocity

across the plains,

I see where the blue turns to black,

and roars to silence.

The neutrality of Space,

inert,

a vacuum

that is you.

I am gravity,

spiraling earthward-

an ice ball,

burning up

in atmospheric divergence.

Face planted to fears,

grounded in a crater

of my own making.

In your silence I stand…

watching the approaching supercell.

It surges forward in darkness,

wrapped in rain,

cloaked

from sight.

I await the ending-

the surrender,

debris swirling

to the West,

my pieces-

scattered-

landing in someone’s front yard…

POETRY: Robin Wyatt Dunn – BEARING IN & MORNING

bearing in

my cut of the left
deft but poor, now slaughtered down my side
cut in and left
like scarring too subtle to see:

what mooring keeps me here extends around my city
like a strange weather pattern

I didn’t need that part
I needed you

beat me again

—-

morning

This is my life under the drum
ecstatic ruminative celebration of not a whole lot–

Everything’s a miracle but we’re designed to disregard it,
and a good thing too–

I can remember one thought
like God

coffee:

—-

Visit Robin Wyatt Dunn online.

POETRY: JESSI LAIL – ANTIQUE SHOP

Antique shop

Is that what he told you
     he said he would tear you apart
    bit by bit
    and piece you back together with scotch tape
    because your soul wasn’t broken enough to be beautiful?

Is that what he told you
as he pressed you into a corner
and covered your rejecting mouth with his?

Is that what he told you when he ripped your best skirt
    as he thrust himself upon and into you
    in the back of that musty, fear-stained
    2001 Toyota Camry.

Is that what he told you
that you were the best lay he’s ever had,
it’s a shame you couldn’t be prettier?

What did he tell you
when you walked away from that tragedy of a bed
and rejoined your friends inside?

Did they tell you they would kill to be with
    a guy like that?
Did they tell you how lucky you were to be with
    a man like him?
Did they ask what he smelled like?
    the smell that makes you wretch,
    the fragrant scent of violation,
    the musty 2001 Camry’s fear-stained upholstery.

Is that what we told you?
That you were an antique paper doll?

POETRY: A.J. HUFFMAN – THE SOUND OF A SKIRT

The Sound of a Skirt

falling is an earthquake
of anticipation, silence. Silk,
like an avalanche, consumes the room
in suffocating embrace. Words give way
to flesh. Touch becomes
language of stuttering
midnight. Motion ignites. Two bodies
whine as this fabricated flag
and all inhibitions hit the floor. Contact,
consumption, and eruption are inevitable
as dawn and the sex-
stained tendrils of smoke that temper its mood.

–

A.J Huffman is founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press: www.kindofahurricanepress.com

POETRY: KATIE GOETZ – THE JUDGE

THE JUDGE

I tried to wrap my words around you
too hard for too many weeks
with too little success.
The right ones found me
when I remembered a phrase
I heard an out-of-town judge turn
all those years ago
at the county fair.
In giving his reasons
to the crowd in the bleachers,
he explained why
he hadn’t placed my steer —
an athletic black baldie
with a mercurial temper —
any higher in the class.
The judge slowed his words
over the tinny old PA:
“He’s got some real nice parts…
He just dudn’t tie together
quite the way I need him to.”

POETRY: KYLE FLAK – CARNIVORE DOLLS

CARNIVORE DOLLS

After tuba practice, I went to the mall to look at Carnivore Dolls. I’ve got: The Bobcat, The Crab Eating Mongoose, The Eurasian Badger, The Ethiopian Wolf, and The Giant Panda. I ain’t got: The Bush Dog, The Aardwolf, The Spotted Hyena, and multiple various others. My Dad only lets me get one at a time, which is totally lame. Johnny Bronson just gets the whole damn Annual Set mailed to him year after year after year–the lucky bastard. One of these days, I’m just going to run away from home, become my own Carnivore Doll, eat whatever stuff gets in my way. Mailbox: chew, chew, chew. Ice Cream Truck: chew, chew, chew. Homework: chew, chew, chew.

Yeah. Chewing’s good. But now I’ve got to decide what I’m going to tell that crummy old man who sits behind the counter. The one who really controls my fate. The one who can either let me or not let me play with the European Pine Marten right in the store. That thing is fucking great. He’s feisty. He’s moody. He’s grouchy.

He eats rodents, birds, and beetles. Also: he’s an excellent tree climber. Whenever I get to play with him, I make him climb all over the fucking place. He gets on people’s sweaters. He gets on people’s heads. He taunts and flaunts. He coasts and boasts. His fur is brown and full and lush. You really wouldn’t want to get on his bad side because even his good side is basically a bad side.

Yup. He’s one rough dude.

I really hope that I will get to play with him today. Play with him for own particular purposes.

Which basically are: to harm.

To harm and to harm and to harm.

POETRY: Keith Landrum – My father’s prayer

My father’s prayer

It usually starts
with heavenly father
and then goes
into asking
him to make
the food do all
the things food
will do
on it’s own

like taste
good
and digest
in our guts

I stare
at my shoes
and am reminded
I need
new ones
that will do
all the things
they were designed
to do
as well

like be
durable
comfortable
stylish

and the prayer
continues without
asking for anyone
to be punished
by wealth
or blessed
with poverty
the way our lives
so often
are

like capitalism
or the way
we look at
ourselves
in the mirror

and it usually ends
with the same
simple word

amen

and we let it
be

as if
there were
no other
way

to get
through
this

POETRY: JACK FREEMAN – DECISION THEORY

Decision Theory

I understood its meaning
to the extent
required of conversation
in the cocktail pools
and heavy-air parlors,
but an explanation
would test the water
and prove me
thin.

And when a woman
in white silk
leaned over and breathed
vapor in my face,
asking for my opinion
on the very subject,
I answered in a cloud
with no edges.
She inhaled my words,
held them in,
and blew them out
in satisfaction.

And when we were done,
she lay on her stomach
and in misty breath
processed my words,
picking and pulling
them apart like
papier-mâché,
determining
just how full of shit
I really was.

And she clothed herself,
leaving without her
electric tobacco.
I lay on my back
exploring the pattern
of plaster in the ceiling.
There were truths
in that ceiling; how
the light from the street
drew disjointed, scraggly
shadows that faded
by dawn.

POETRY: LUCAS HERNDON – ODE TO CHUCK B.

Ode to Chuck B.

Bukowski you old devil
You got me through
The worst of times
And gave me the perfect thing to say
When I found the best of times
I sit here
Stuck to myself
The remnants of love
And lust
Adhering to each other
Seems for me the two are intertwined
Not so for others
Or maybe
More easily distinguishable?
Doesn’t matter about others though
I’m happy
So goddamn happy
To sleep in rumpled sheets
Sweat and and other solutions
A perfect damp nest to lay myself down tonight
I found something else that fills though
You were wrong about that
Well, probably you weren’t
But you were right to mark the good
More often than the bad
Tonight’s tryst was bumble bees
With budding flowers awaiting pollination
A late spring on an autumn night
My neglected manhood in both metaphor and noun
Rocked boldly once more into an upright and erect existence
And now dawn approaches I defy it with clouds of smoke
Bringing in that acrid stench
Sweet let down to my racing fevered mind
I’m shaking with post anticipation
Of history repeating itself.

POETRY: JEAN VALENTINE – Silences: A Dream of Governments

Silences: A Dream of Governments

From your eyes I thought
we could almost move almost speak
But the way your face
held there, in the yellow air,
And that hand, writing down our names–
And the way the sun
shone right through us
Down with us

Then
the plain astonishment–the air
broken open: just ourselves
sitting, talking; like always;
the kitchen window
propped open by the same
blue-gray dictionary.
August. Rain. A Tuesday.

Then, absence. The open room
suspended The long street
gone off quiet, dark.
The ocean floor. Slow
shapes glide by

Then, day
keeps beginning again: the same
stubborn pulse against the throat,
the same
listening for a human voice–
your name, my name

–
This poem originally appeared in Jean Valentine’s 1979 volume called The Messenger.

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