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R.T. Castleberry – BUILDING A SILENCE

BUILDING A SILENCE

Street empty as a healing heart,
I lean the patio wall,
Swisher Sweet packed with pot,
friends equally afraid.
Wednesday brings the chill,
hawks fleeing ahead.
They say it’s a west wind—
it carries the desert, it trails a fire.
A car scrapes a manhole cover,
the squall of a New Depression song
rackets from the apartment.
I sit beside you on the couch,
urging you to say
what’s wrong, what’s wrong.
Tell me a dream, you demand.
I can’t. I refuse them.
They’re not meant
for sunlight or the litmus pa
Bitching, bare-legged,
you leave for your car.
That cell phone photo joins a gallery:
you with a beer, you with a bourbon,
you with a Bonnie Parker tilt to your smoke.
Anarchist amid barred gates, builder’s stakes,
the furtive criminal on the corner
heats his alley dinner fire
with mattress flyers, garden scraps.
Seeing me, he waves a clenched fist.
I slam mine into the wall.

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RAVEN WINTERS – “PURPLE”

“Purple”

I’m 6 years old
I got a Barbie for Christmas
I guess pink’s a pretty color
My babysitter tried drowning me
What? Why?
I want a red mustang!
Mom and Dad beat me for spilling milk
I’m 8
My parents divorced
Mom beats all the time
A cop gave me a teddy bear
I burnt it
My doctor says I have severe depression and anxiety
What’s that? Is it bad?
She gave me meds
I’m 10
I was just told Savannah kissed Sam
What’s a kiss? I wonder
All I wanna do is play soccer
Dad keeps hitting me with his belt
I like blue but they say that’s for boys only
I’m 11
The teacher’s talking about sex
What’s a period? We have babies inside us?!
What?
The bruises arent fading
I’m 13
I got raped at a party
Why me?
I’m never drinking fruit punch again
I’ve started to cut myself
I’m 15
I got heartbroken by a soccer player
I stopped taking my meds
My mom beat me until i passed out
I’m 16
I’m Bisexual
I don’t want to see my parents anymore
I want to go far far way
Anywhere but here really
I’m not religious
Water still scares me
And no
I will not turn the other cheek
No I will not bend the knee
No I will not make myself miserable for your society’s pleasure
I will rise

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MICHAEL DWAYNE SMITH – THE SANITY PSALMS

The Sanity Psalms

Drunkenness should be supported more in public life.

I was just sitting around downing bottles of

Samuel L. Jackson’s Shithouse Porter

(with the occasional Fish House Stout),

and I was listening to Mickey & The Wifebeaters’ latest album,

Top Ten Suicidal Truck Driver Songs, when I realized

neither Jesus nor Pterodactyls are in the Constitution.

I heard a heavenly voice say,

“You have made drunkenness respectable, sir,” except no, no,

that voice was my drunk uncle, known to all his nieces as

Drunkula (for creeping around rooms at night in search of a kiss

and asking, “Mind if I pee in your hamper?”),

but this time instead of creeping my drunk uncle taught me

the fool-proof, guaranteed 100%, Three Step Formula for Success

passed down for generations in our clan. Step one, set a goal.

Step two, forget about it. Step three, do something else.

He had the evidence to back it up; he declared,

“I got a paycheck last week, I don’t know about you.”

This was late night stoner TV, without the pictures.

The guy became pretty annoyed and started rambling about his

brain being ripped apart by angels. That one I knew because

at school they taught us the Hall of Fame is in Franch, everybody’s

drunk uncle stumbling around the neighborhood. So, yeah,

if wrong were a country, he’d be the capitol.

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Karen Mandell – YARD SALE

Yard Sale

Useless, I could tell instantly.

Baby toys in plastic orange and red, grimy fry pans,

bent hollowware burning in the sun.

I walk in past the woman and the baby sitting on the concrete stoop.

I’m on my way out before I see the books piled on the grass,

their pages soft with age, the damp dried out of them.

The Sun Also Rises, the striped Scribner edition.

Do I have this one at home?

I crouch down and turn limp pages, not reading, brushing off dust,

unwinding a tendril of cobwebs from my finger.

The odor of paper stored in boxes too long.

This one’s not worth it, broken spine, even for a quarter.

I put fusty Hemingway down.

The baby cries, his voice quavering and scratchy.

The woman picks him up and says it’s time for a nap,

you’re ready aren’t you, you’ll lie down for a little while.

I stand up, the sun hot on my hair.

I want to lie down, a baby, in a darkened room with only a thin cover.

An opened window with a fan going somewhere.

I’d close my eyes even if I didn’t really want to

because there’s not much fight left in me right now.

The baby whimpers.

I forget what city I’m in,

whether it’s Minneapolis or Boston before that or

Chicago back even further.

I’m a burnished nub, everything rubbed out of me,

clarified. Even so, I have to get back to the car,

do the things that make it go,

add on to myself the crumbled pieces

that fell off and lie there, in the grass.

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Robert Allen Beckvall – MAYBE IT’S FREEDOM

Maybe It’s Freedom

 

Maybe we got souls that crave

The dream of the wild west

With saddlebags and campfires

Teepees and wigwams

Some say we are living a national nightmare

Maybe, just maybe the crazies and druggies and alkies,

Tent dwellers and unbathed, unloved, unlucky,

And the squeezed by technology/big brother/international conglomerates

Want to have fights in saloons

Want a girl from a brothel

Want to ride the plains after the Great White Buffalo

Maybe they want pistol packin’

Vest wearin’, neckerchief tyin’ sheriffs and outlaws

Maybe they want to tan hides and touch their enemies

Or, make love under the stars

While the spirits of the ancestors circle the night sky

Maybe that gal diggin’ bottles and cans from a trash can

Wants to ride with Wild Bill like Calamity Jane

Maybe the guy with oozing diabetes legs

Wants to catch and tame a wild mustang

Maybe they like to dream

That their stolen Safeway cart is a covered wagon

And you’re either driven’ it or attackin’ it

On the wide open plains

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Darren C. Demaree – 3 Poems

POEM FOR KATIE, QUEEN OF OHIO #37

I don’t know
what

your shoulders
crave,

what
your coral

flesh will
curl around,

but know
early spoon

you will lift
all of us.

~

POEM FOR KATIE, QUEEN OF OHIO #38

This population
is seconds.

You are one
whole second

to me. Hinge
the sign so

that the rest
of the shadow

can see you
as well.

The curtain
is yours.

~

POEM FOR KATIE, QUEEN OF OHIO #39

Lullaby, so broken
& full of the pieces

that could not be
lost, I am desperate

to have you here
amidst the mixture

as it presses
against the mixture.

The heat is coming.
You are the heat.

You could end
these small endings.

~

Find Darren C. Demaree  online.

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NATE ELIAS – LEVEL THREE EMERGENCY

Level Three Emergency

We’re snowed in
at a Motel 6
and I’ve still got it,
the gold chain we stole
from your mother
that rainy Easter.

Tell me to turn up the radio
and dance like we’ll die here,
frozen and hungry, naked.
There is no resisting fire.

I could last forever, a jewel
thief for you, searching
for enough amber
to fossilize our love.

Tell me to wear this gold
chain around my neck, a collar
or dog tag to show the new world
what you mean to me.

We’re snowed in;
I could last until the sun
thaws us from the past
and frees us from this room.

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Rajnish Mishra – Sunday Evening

Sunday evening

Sunday evening is worse than Monday morning,

The fear of death, says Sir Francis, is worse than death.

A sickly feeling rises and churns in my stomach,

even now, after I’ve lived through such seven hundred

and seventy non-workingSundays. It’s the same every time.

It starts rising from Saturday. In the morning

a panic reminder rings, a tightening in intestines.

Saturday evening warns me that the next

will be the last before death comes again.

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