John M. Bennett

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***

Rae Desmond Jones

from the underside

earth tips slowly north,

            rising from her winter prayers.

she sneezes & a million roof tiles

            lift like dominoes as she breathes.

on a gust of antarctic wind

            yesterday’s news disintegrates in air.

across America long fields of corn

            are dying on the hot dry ground.

spinning along the cold edge of space

          a glass eye watches through a telescope

***

***

Márton Koppány

Arrival

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Mark Prudowsky

My Shining Moment

It's not the cornbread, the rudimentary salad, the fresh trout from the river 

not twenty steps from my door; 

nor the mid-autumn light on the face of the river as it fractures a million million times. 

It's the  several granite rocks which rear up and oppose the onslaught of water.

Nah, they’re not brave but just do what befalls them,

throwing up spouts to spit and sputter and expose to bright sun 

and crisp air, multitudes of water droplets 

before they rejoin the crowd headed for the next chute 

and the ones after that.

In this rudimentary cabin, absent radio, TV or  phone, my news, 

such as it is, is something heard on my truck's radio,

two hours before sunrise.It will not be news for long, it will in a few days, 

certainly in a few weeks, not be of any great consequence 

that the shapeshifter who wants to reside in the house which 

goes by White told several more lies and then promised 

should he be king, to enable so many vertical and horizontal drillings, 

that this country would be independent of foreign sources of oil. 

In the midst of this wet dream of unbounded energy, accompanied by promises of 

zero unemployment and the second coming of Christ, 

a lone voice spoke up to link  the devastation that goes by Sandy 

as it still goes, to climate change and the willful 

turning of heads from anything like sunlight and fresh air. 

The crowd began chanting 

U S A    U S A  

as if a home-crowd at the gridiron, or at a contest between two gladiators,

the one clothed in red white and blue, the other, either a black beast from Kenya 

without papers or, an alien from a faraway galaxy whose assignment is either to 

lead Father Knows Best and his believers into unconditional surrender 

to a one world government of socialist mongrels or else, 

disarmed, into the petri dishes of the far off galactic empire's labs.

Two years ago, in November of 2010, I went to Milwaukee to visit my then 86 year old mom 

who'd been rushed into surgery. After spending time at her beside, I went to her home, walked 

across the yard to the neighbor, a transplanted Arkansas single mother of three who had directed 

considerable kindness towards my mother for several years.Her mother, made some 

crude comments about a sign in my mothers lawn, a sign which  stood for someone opposed 

to the party that goes by Tea, if it goes at all, saying no to reason, common sense, science 

or anything the the other party proposed. 

Because my purpose was to thank her daughter, I held my tongue and what scares me 

a few days before the election, when the man who goes by the name of a glove 

as he leads those who fear sunshine and air, is not the crowd's mindless chant 

but how the many times in the intervening two years, beside my neighbors at the checkout line, 

when talk strays from the weather or what a sucker's game the commodities market is; 

at the contractor counter, in the empty spaces between placing the order for parts 

and having that order filled, counted up, taxed and tallied; 

when someone speaks mindlessly and hatefully, 

I have chosen not to stand against the flow, but have kept my counsel.

***

***

Michael Fleming

On the Stump

because I want it more because I earned
it because I built it because success
demands lavish tribute because I’ve learned
a thing or two because I won’t confess
because great wealth aside I’m just like you
because I’m humble to a fault because
I’m me because I’m looking for a few
good men because the prevailing tax laws
do not suit me because I look the part
because I say tomato and he says
tomahto because God because I heart
America because I don’t look gay
unlike you know because my wife is prettier
than his wife because frankly my dear
I do give a damn because I’m legit
on a stick because I once drank a beer
because Truth because of the book of more
money because I’m ready for my close-up
Mr. DeMille because God reigneth o’er
because my teeth because the shadow knows
because my hair is perfect because I
like to fire people because I’m for makers
he’s for takers because I can buy
people like you because he’s such a fake
because Free Enterprise because my cup
runneth over because I sold my soul
because now it’s my turn (They wind him up
and the sound comes out of a perfect hole.)

***
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Donna Kuhn

***
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Diana Magallón

Victim of fashion

***
***

Kit Robinson

What Time Is It?

Through windows of crisis a new freedom
Resolved beyond jangling
Vinyasa cycles up the yin yang
Instead of practicing we now request therapy and/or drugs
Strange panels request non-existent authorization codes
On verges of wireless radio
Sea serpents hide sutras in undersea mountain caves
The whole she-bang is one bright pool
It is as necessary as it is one
Two interrupted nights in a row

11:58 AM – Winds WNW at 25 MPH. Noon is The Time of the Horse
Extra legroom costs $260
I’m still trying to peel myself off the floor/ceiling
Four-hour round-robin with execs popping in and out
A series of imaginary girls, all nattily attired, each labeled with a number indicating
her age – 3, 6, 1, 3, 8, 6, 10, 31, 70 (granma), etc.
Manage to get her to brush her teeth (I help)
As we detach carefully from the mother ship and float silently off into space
Who is doing what? And where are they? And who will be there? Did I miss
anything? Is it happening now? In Chico? Choteau? Kyoto?
Sufficient unto the day is the funk thereof
As it is only ever now

***

Y’s Have a Way

Y’s have a way of cozying up to you
The plastic mid-century, the silicon earway
Don’t travel much in Amazonia anymore
In dreams we write the rules we were born to break
Voices signal the unseen other side of a dark fence
Push push, syntax is alive with urge, the human integer adding up to day
Air travel is all noise, the united flavors of time
You get it, you’ll do it tomorrow you say
All decked out in the air of another matter, with every place to go

***
***

Jim Wittenberg

***

***

Felino A. Soriano

from rhythm:s

in the frame of rhythm

                        picture:

the

                                                fingering of distance

                                    placed

positional

frictions

                                                                        heat from the forming of absolute

attraction:

                                                            noontime moon

awake in the experiment of haze’s

contradictory light

                                                                                    rolled

            in the internal

disposition of day’s

continuous

                                    ornate disposition

*** 

in the language of rhythm

connectivity                coined in the versus method of

in/out

                        ward

introspection

                                                post-(used in/as the easiness of attempting unclaimed

district)

-temporal reenactments follow the

fulfilling extractions of repetitious

modernity (the fooled believe in the culture of uncluttered exegesis)

modular though partial

            exacted as completed impulsion                     the yet encouraged percentages

unable to exist as the rendition of whole

mendacity

                                                                        gallant in the queried pardon of dim

denied in the rotational

back of

                                    culture’s analytical

                                                                                                            needing

*** 

in the witness of rhythm

            solved

            errors

                                    again against wooden angles

                        a

            neoteric version

                                                of onlooking engagements

altruistic

amendments

                                                            aimed into speech’s ascending

demonstration

                                                                                    watch

as with the child’s blurred becoming

eyed as though inflection

derives temporal temptation,

alive

*** 

in the idea of rhythm

replaced current

optimal clothing (worded sewn definitions, strewn…(arrives))

philosophy

created self in the object promotion of interactive

                                                            becoming

                        new

new

                                                pluralized accidents

freedom held whole fundamental being in the time of how’s

fulfilled achievement: interrelate

*** 

in the problem of rhythm

                                                                        as with/in/of

language

                                    tendency’s

            pragmatic

commonalities engage in the direct promissory premise of

diluted being                                       again the altered expectation of escaped

subjective connotations

unable to then reverberate

within the accidental following of unconscious                                 memories

***

***

Peter Ganick

fr. xylene pictures

***

***

Andrew Burke

Late Winter Night

The old dog is snoring. It’s a comforting sound late night in this empty house. The gas heater has warmed the furniture, walls, carpets and floorboards, and the dishwasher in the kitchen has filed away my sparse dishes for washing with tomorrow’s lot.

This poem has no birds in it, as Jack Spicer said some time off. I’ve been reading him, there’s nothing on TV. It is late in this dry winter and at last the earth here is wet with rain. Three ducks from the rising waters of the swamp across the road waddle for dinner across our overgrown and weed-filled lawn. They are silent and not in this poem.

I turn ABC Jazz off and the dog stops snoring. Is there any meaning in this? The day is interlaced with such relationships yet we drudge through our hours, aware of insignificance.  I often think of reality as a knitting pattern with multiple dimensions,  knit one, purl two. No pattern, just chaos and its resultant energy.

Her snoring returns as I rise to turn off the heater and go to bed. I stand beside her, looking down for a moment before she awakes, yawns, and looks at me questioningly. I don’t know, I tell her, I don’t know either.

***

***

Russ Golata

Persistence of Breeze

Living in a world without love
Is to arrive at a place with no sunshine
Where you are a stranger to yourself

Wind, freezing the sweat on your back

The one true wind knows your name
Feel it whispering in your ear
The music of future reassurances
Filling the night air with moon’s caress

When the wind calls you
There are no broken connections

A flash of lightening, dots the skyline
As kites of hope scatter like seagulls

Imagine this world without love
Surely, this is what limbo is like
On a cloud, in a waiting room
Sitting on an empty promise

Autumn breezes divine nirvana
Spraying the world with color...
Feeling it wash over your skin
A stream of fresh melted snow

Awaking the inner most wilderness
Contained in every breath of life
Wrapped in the solace of new ideas
Comfortably soaring into dreams

***

***

Laura Young

Structure V

***
***

rob mclennan

American Hybrid

          for Cole Swensen

               It’s intransitive and about space; or is space or shows
               itself to itself in it
                         --Susan Clark, as lit x: the syntax of adoration

1.

The mind, however weakened. States, foreclosure. Hurray, but for a single angle. Treasured.

Meant, to disturb. Thin balcony, stretch. To sound out, thinking. Misty. If I, prevented. A
great road, flats. It parcels. Beauty, as far out as a generation.

Radius, the highlands. What famous, cut.

Morning, unread. Some nights examined. Removed, forlorn. An island, crestfallen region.
Why is it, look. I dream. I paint a picture.

As if, writing. Sleek, and dark. Appending crystals. This dull, muddied stare.

2.

What a man can, do. Covers over, sex.

3.

Hungry, but. Look out, on horseback. Aesthetic, mountains. Higher, senses. Mottle.

Pedigree, view. A hand, assembled. Creates for me, a sphere. Better, domestic. Teeth. White
hair, and patch of, blue. Engaged. Within these, genealogies. Vary, stink. These disciplines.
Rule tens, all thumbs.

A latch-key shard. We dapple, days. Cranked-out.

Speaker, listener. Docile, in the heather. And your position, known. What happy, download.
Keen eye for effort. Unstable, sleep. Given. These words relate, themselves.

Can never, traverse. Only, sleeps on planes.

***
***