R.T. CASTLEBERRY – 2 POEMS

IMPRESSIONS OF THE SICK HOUSE

I watch in the world,
amused by massacre and gin,
homeland walls, holiday wars.
Viewed from the barred gate
darkened surveillance cars prowl,
aimless under winter afternoon skies.
Cold weather tramps straggle past
construction generators, pavement gaps,
work order water leaks.
I take into consideration
the symbolic and the sin.
I deny memories useless to me—
week-long binges, wives I’ve cheated with.
Unsettled by panic attack, I leave
a dark bedroom for couch and cable tv.
Lessons located in news video,
detention gangs scour migrant dives,
mercados, work warehouse.
I look away, watch the ceiling fan
swirl shadow circles on the blinds.
In jeans, a Steely Dan tour tee shirt,
almost ready for silence,
I allow days clear of music.

SLIVERS

After Creeley’s The Flower

I think I layer tensions

like bottles shattered

in ditches the thirsty

refugee hides.

Each faulting gesture

blocks breath,

catches in my chest,

cracks knees in a fall.

Tension is a wasting blade

It slices that one

and that one

and that one.

LANCE GAMBRELL – THERE IS STILL TIME

There Is Still Time

There is still time, to park at Marc and Vic’s.

I don’t care what they say, I love summer best, in Las Cruces. Better yet, stop the time machine at Tim and Suzanne‘s, in the summer of dub.

Half of my friends, work for a shitty local pizza chain. The others work for the dream machine called academia. Arguing about another Pablo Neruda poem. And the value of locally sourced Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I wake up due to declining levels of ABV.

Lucas is about to go to work because we’re done poking his Suzuki 50cc belly. But, I’ll be back, for dollar lunch, and my first class at 11:30, still AM.

LISA DAY – 6 POEMS

▪️

calmly i look down and see myself low as you could go slow as
light seeping under
a door

i bow to sleep and color
shapes enigmas frogsong
they scoop me into their center and together we live
not selfishly or excludingly
in the pagan arroyo
behind the house under the waxing mormon
tea bush

there was a time i wanted to be you
the lizards and jackrabbits keep this to themselves.

▪️

EVERY COIN WASHES CLEAN AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL
july twenty eight
you shattered all illusions

you jerked them off my face in a dry
riverbed tossed my rosy glasses
i kissed my minced
heartflesh twice
ground the
lenses
into fine desert sand
where i buried you

later i dug everything up
renamed it and stirred it
into my hot morning

tea
with honey

can you feel the passion of your indian summer staining every step?

i had my daughter take a picture of me that day
so i could feed the swollen-eyed ghosts
whenever i felt their hot current

struggling
beneath my breath.

▪️

this just surfaced in my heart a foreigner and recluse
so i vowed to write it down in my native
tongue

my last lover short-lived as he was
was neither short nor tall and left
when i had my hardest time
he rearranged his
priorities until
i wasn’t

this is how i understand love
after sixty star-pale mother flesh
years you
teach your eyes
to bless all they see
exchange water for air fire
for earth and never sit until time
tricks you into your own deep embrace

late seasons and all-surrounding grace coordinate as birdwings

i never meant to be alone forever i don’t know what i meant
thinking too much as a child alone in a cactus
garden
that belonged to someone else
about the lives of royalty
faraway places
ugly unfeathered things falling from the sky settling
on pitiless sidewalks
a tiny finger placed softly
upon each heart until
it stopped

when i heard the cry
of doves i knew
i was alone in a desert

nothing is more fully served
the impetuous heart
and nothing has changed
at all

▪️

i trace the rivers
because i am right
handed most of my tributaries
are on the left
hand dug
a brown recluse ran fangs through my middle finger 48 hours ago and i’m waiting for it to fall off

manual labor
true labor of love
the trail of water is white
upon my pale skin
this is what happens when you’re two
four
and sixty

my eyes won’t shut

i’ve known men who can hear the stories
but none who can live with the consequences
because there are some

one is i don’t know if i can still live
here
but it’s home
my body is
home to
me
the falling apart house though
the see through blinds
old cholla laid out
sexy on a bed
of sand to
rot

a forgotten neighborhood built
by elders now crumpled
under kmart quilts
in rest homes

jesus
my finger is throbbing and i cannot watch
another
telenovela tonight

▪️

rolled my window down
hollered is there still a cat under my car
the woman across the street just
stared as she pulled
a lighter from under
her belly and lit a cigarette
i never saw her lips move except to take a drag
as she said
just left

▪️

everything is nothing and god
is alone this way you hold more and feed
the magnetic parsing of the dialectic soul under
a triple eclipse’s simple moon mantra. cloud-water
obscures but it is also helpful. look deeply into it and you will
see no one is ahead nor are they behind. the myth is we all dream naked when everything silent begins
to whisper. the truth is we have
forgotten to listen.

JAMES P. ROBERTS – 3 POEMS

FLOW POETRY IN HUE, VIETNAM

                                                        for Adam

You speak to your ancestors
lying in shallow graves
mulched over by jungle.

You speak to alligators
and elephants, creatures
life spans longer than yours.

You speak to huddled mothers,
black-eyed babies who utter
never a word or cry.

You speak to bamboo winds,
hollow temples, dynasties fallen
and long forgotten.

You speak to fog-shrouded mountains,
roiling muddy Mekong River,
a black market dog tag.

You speak to rows of mildewed books
in a dozen languages, histories
yearning to be heard.

The raucous birds speak to you:
Go back home or we will use your dreads
to feather our lonely nests.

AND IF PAIN BECOMES A POEM . . .

I am full of poetry.
Poetry screams from every pore of my body.

My right ankle cracks poems so loudly
a microphone twenty feet away picks up the sound.

My left elbow tightens hard enough
I cannot bend it to write a poem without a rough

shake. Electric pings course through my chest,
irregular rhythms, like free verse, thrum inside a fat breast.

(man tits . . . the worst kind of poetic pain!)
Clumsy fingers struggle to write a refrain.

Dimming eyes spill tears, these inky words,
bright flashes of images vanish, go unheard.

Yes, I could continue this medical literary litany
and if pain becomes a true poem, I will die saintly.

COWARDS

I see them on the news.
The scary people.
The scared people.
The people who think of nothing
but themselves.
Who watch as the chaos mounts.
The people who have built
their survival tombs,
stocked with enough food and ammunition
to last as long as necessary . . . until
the last not-one-of-us has fallen
and they can come out again.
These are the cowards.
The true cowards,
for they have the means to change
the situation,
to take charge
and avert the damnation.
But they won’t.
Because they are hollow.
They are too selfish.
They are too scared.
It is their own fear
that will doom them.
They will become nothing
but shadows
wandering
a destroyed land.

CALLING ALL POETS BORN IN NEW MEXICO

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Grandma Moses Press will be publishing a poetry anthology containing only poets born in New Mexico. Lots of writers call New Mexico home, but for this project, we’re only interested in poets who were born here.

If you were born in New Mexico (you don’t have to show us your papers), and you would like a shot at being included in this unique chapbook, please send up to 5 poems to: grandmamosespress@gmail.com

Your poems don’t have to be related to New Mexico, but if they are it will help your poem’s chances of being included in this anthology.

Of course we can’t offer you any money for your poems. If you want money for your poems please contact Penguin Publishing and take it up with them. They can be reached at 1-800-733-3000 between the hours of 8:30 AM and 6:30 PM Eastern.

2 POEMS – RICKY WINTERS

“#24”
A single mind
Over crowded with different colored emotions
Divided by the even and odds of the feeling
For bravery can’t be without fear and sadness without happiness
But the fear and sadness have switched themselves into a pair
A pair that’s making you push that EMERGENCY EXIT

“Dysphoria”

mother, forgive me for i have sinned i am the monster who will slaughter your daughter and parade her corpse around

I will mutilate her skin, form her a new friend

i will poison her blood, with poisonous T

i will eliminate these lumps, flat chested dreams will someday come true

So open your mind before your mouth

It’s my time to shine, my imprisoning time has been done

I am your son.

IN THE DARK – SPIKE CARR

IN THE DARK

In a moment there’s the buzzing of my phone.
The screen lights up. I can see my tear-spotted cheeks and grass-high eyes lit up against the wall.
His name is glowing on the screen.
Not a thought runs through my rattled mind before I grab the device.
“What does he want?”
I snarl to no one. My hands are shaking. My head suddenly hurts. My eyes are tired.
It’s like my heart drops when what he says becomes clear through the tears.
‘I miss you.’
I could feel my heart snap.
My body trembles and a sob I can’t control echoes from my larynx.
The tears now burn.
Barely anything conscious forms when I start typing.
It’s all gibberish.
So many times I go back and retype the message.
‘Get lost.’
‘Go away.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘That’s your own fault.’
Go away, go away, go away.
I want him to leave, so this pain will stop.
So these tears will stop.
So everything falls back to normal.
I so badly want him back.
But my hands are moving on their own now.
‘You shouldn’t have left if you miss me. I don’t miss you.’

4 POEMS – DAVE SLAGLE

Forecast

Another rain prediction
while the alfalfa turns blue.
Hurricane moving toward Baja.
Fronts shifting.

I found more photos
showing what I missed.
But none of divorces
or the miscarriage
or the two bouts with lymphoma.
Just beautiful Marianna
with her smile owning
the light and everyone.

Albums arrayed as they were.
My worries now
from the future,
while I feel the tug
of an anchor’s rope.

Cardboard Box

I’m careful with the sides,
coming unglued,
and the warped shape,
water damaged and
no longer perfect.

It holds the twigs
that start my late fire
to which I add bigger wood
keeping the box well away
as flames absorb grief
venting into summer.

If only these feelings would
recycle back to those evenings
when we were teens in Tucson
smoking and talking
on the edge of change.

It was a time like this box,
in need of care.
And I left it out
in August rain.
Wet cardboard
never again smooth and virgin.

Shop Tree

A weather measure
comes from clouds
behind the big shop tree.
Where are they going?
Are they fast or heavy?

One has to stare
because today they are slow
and not going
yesterday’s way.
A soft mantras

calming and true.
Keep looking,
be patient,
and from distraction,
their new form

will carry you
into the future
the sweetness here now
the surprises
you’ll never guess.

Meteors

Would this meteor shower
make me cry?
Because it will be so beautiful
and really far away.

Finding some kleenex
in Marianna’s purse,
breathing in the closeness.
And remembering through decades

to a time, on my bicycle
riding home
after Marianna
and more than i deserved,
stunned by a celestial
streak that wouldn’t end.

Amazement light years away.
My bicycle noisy in desert dirt.
Elevating my heart
to an unfortunate level
I’d never forget.

JOHNNY HUERTA – 2 POEMS

THE RED HOT COILS

the fan sitting on

a window sill

was gently blowing

the curtains on to

a radiator heater

the phone rang and rang

water boiling in a kettle

steam whistling out as if

it were a toy locomotive

circling the red hot

coils on a portable

electric range

plugged in to a

bloodstained wall

water overflowing in

the old clawfoot bathtub

Randy Travis blaring on

a portable FM radio

from an empty living room

DRYING OUT

Drying out

An army cot

Above the Taos

Fire station

Is not an ideal spot

But the cool breeze

Coming through

The window

Sure feels

Nice

Purchase Jon Huerta’s debut collection of poetry and moonshine recipes HERE.

JOHN GREY – 2 POEMS

THE EDGE

So there I was

standing at the edge of the cliff with Angela

and we made this vow,

like a wedding vow almost

but with the land dropping away at our feet

and bitter sea-wind blowing in our faces.

It was a pledge to be faithful until death.

I’d known Angela since childhood.

She read books, even difficult ones.

She loved to listen to music.

Her taste extended to jazz.

And she was drawn to the sea.

Not so much to be splashing around in it.

But to observe from a distance,

to feel its power not its playfulness.

The vow was more her idea than mine.

In fact, I was a little uneasy

standing in such a precarious position

on a chilly Fall day.

But she had grown into such a cute teenage girl.

And I loved the touch of her fingers.

And, oh yes, her breath on the back of my neck.

But, after we had repeated our affection so solemnly,

I could detect a certain sadness in her eyes.

It was as if she was saying, “Now what.”

As if dreams end by coming true.

Or a cliff, like the one we peered down from,

offered no opportunities to go any higher.

Or the sea was so vast, so deep,

it could only be indifferent

to two fifteen-year-olds trying to act older.

It was a week later, and in a less perilous setting,

when, with a tear or two, she released me from that vow.

I would have done the same but she beat me to it.

We were not a couple bonded for all time.

But we’d been exposed to the perils of such bondage…

not only bone-shaking and blustery

but at the very edge.

A HOUSEFLY REVISITS SYLVIA PLATH

I press against

the curve of glass,

peer out at my world

of linoleum, formica

and stainless steel.

Will I never sip

on the sugar crumbs again

or trot across the good china.

nibbling food-scraps

as I go?

I’m in this bell-jar –

yes, that’s right,

just like Sylvia Plath,

beating my wings,

buzzing loudly.

Well we know

what good that did

for her.

Soon enough,

the oxygen in here

will dissipate

until there’s not enough

to support the likes of me.

Sylvia, I know how

it was for you.

Someone trapped

you in their grip,

popped you into a container,

screwed the lid tight,

left you to choke

on your own imprisonment.

Just like you,

I’ll fall to the bottom eventually.

And yet I’m curious to see

what you have written there.

Cacti Fur

a poetry high ground

nmtrue