"After Jack"
Dorothy Mienko
Barry Seiler
Lisa Gordon
Stephen Mead
Michael P. Workman
T. Lewis
Olga Lalić-Krowicka
Joel Fry
Dave Ruslander
Anna Kaye Forsyth
Keith Nunes
Friday, March 02, 2007
Issue 22
"After Jack"
Dorothy Mienko
Barry Seiler
Lisa Gordon
Stephen Mead
Michael P. Workman
T. Lewis
Olga Lalić-Krowicka
Joel Fry
Dave Ruslander
Anna Kaye Forsyth
Keith Nunes
Dorothy Mienko
Rowing
You call it a walk in sun
I call it frightful rowing
But I do it anyway
in spite of my ghosts
I row twenty foot-
steps away from home
keeping pace with skeletons
past the gently-graying mums
beyond the hot pink whirligig
twenty steps closer to the terrible
horizon and just barely breathing
with my hands worrying the chaplet's bead
and in my chest like a nightmare --
one trillion banging dark birds
Party Shoes
She can wear red stilettos
With rhinestone straps
So perfectly
That you might never notice at all
How stark
The white of her dress is
How she inwardly trembles
Ghosts and buried stones
The crash in her fear
Of being held down
Openly
By hands too tight
But isn't it beautiful
And don't you think it's amazing --
How perfectly she wears them
Dorothy Mienko's poetry is published online and in print. She has received four pushcart prize nominations and has written two books of poetry; What I Notice Now and Quiet Illuminations. Dorothy is the editor of Beside the White Chickens and of the anthology Women of the Web.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
You call it a walk in sun
I call it frightful rowing
But I do it anyway
in spite of my ghosts
I row twenty foot-
steps away from home
keeping pace with skeletons
past the gently-graying mums
beyond the hot pink whirligig
twenty steps closer to the terrible
horizon and just barely breathing
with my hands worrying the chaplet's bead
and in my chest like a nightmare --
one trillion banging dark birds
Party Shoes
She can wear red stilettos
With rhinestone straps
So perfectly
That you might never notice at all
How stark
The white of her dress is
How she inwardly trembles
Ghosts and buried stones
The crash in her fear
Of being held down
Openly
By hands too tight
But isn't it beautiful
And don't you think it's amazing --
How perfectly she wears them
Dorothy Mienko's poetry is published online and in print. She has received four pushcart prize nominations and has written two books of poetry; What I Notice Now and Quiet Illuminations. Dorothy is the editor of Beside the White Chickens and of the anthology Women of the Web.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
Barry Seiler
Days on End
When it comes to me or I go to it
Meeting it halfway or more, as it prefers.
When I arrange myself horizontally,
Head hooked on one end, legs dangling over
The other side, kicking, as a child might
Into the chemical blue of a pool.
When I think this is me, is all, swimming,
Stroke by stroke toward dinner.
When I’m there, just there, on the comforter.
In my crib, so to speak.
When out the back window the airplanes
Ascend from Liberty Airport
And the sun sets behind the thin vapor streaks,
And the light stretches from here back to
Its large mouth, and drones on
Its long apology.
Barry Seiler's most recent book is "Frozen Falls," published by University of Akron Press.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
When it comes to me or I go to it
Meeting it halfway or more, as it prefers.
When I arrange myself horizontally,
Head hooked on one end, legs dangling over
The other side, kicking, as a child might
Into the chemical blue of a pool.
When I think this is me, is all, swimming,
Stroke by stroke toward dinner.
When I’m there, just there, on the comforter.
In my crib, so to speak.
When out the back window the airplanes
Ascend from Liberty Airport
And the sun sets behind the thin vapor streaks,
And the light stretches from here back to
Its large mouth, and drones on
Its long apology.
Barry Seiler's most recent book is "Frozen Falls," published by University of Akron Press.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
Lisa Gordon
Keeping Whole
(for Sam Silva)
Can I rest in your vision for a moment,
bathe some of my favourite things
in the light of the moon you champion,
a full globe where weather is
the rambling heart of the matter.
Sky turns black, stars come out -
the east & west hemispheres dipping
into the well of what's never lost -
feelings of coming home in all shapes & sizes,
your name your name your name.
After a night of the kind of sadness
everyone has felt, the pinning up of
drying roses, deep in the basement
of the soul looking once, & once again:
I stay round here listening for echo.
I am in a state of shedding, yet not quite.
Innocence in the form of stern nature
reorganizes everything I've ever thought.
Love digs in.
Lisa Gordon has had work published in a variety of online & print journals. She resides in Montreal with her husband, & is currently working on a booklength manuscript.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
(for Sam Silva)
Can I rest in your vision for a moment,
bathe some of my favourite things
in the light of the moon you champion,
a full globe where weather is
the rambling heart of the matter.
Sky turns black, stars come out -
the east & west hemispheres dipping
into the well of what's never lost -
feelings of coming home in all shapes & sizes,
your name your name your name.
After a night of the kind of sadness
everyone has felt, the pinning up of
drying roses, deep in the basement
of the soul looking once, & once again:
I stay round here listening for echo.
I am in a state of shedding, yet not quite.
Innocence in the form of stern nature
reorganizes everything I've ever thought.
Love digs in.
Lisa Gordon has had work published in a variety of online & print journals. She resides in Montreal with her husband, & is currently working on a booklength manuscript.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
Stephen Mead
Blithe Spirits
"If we reorganize lost noises,
maybe we can create music."
Cheng-Chong Yao
It takes, admittedly, a little arrogance,
desperation, this arduous task:
to siphon pain, veins of nicotine,
those death gnats, that lead,
& become an astral kite.
Afterwards, space is egalitarian,
the earth a postcard depicting weather scapes,
countries blotted by mere one gloved thumb.
Now breath is better, meaningful,
air, an intention light redesigns.
Shadows track sound,
celestial pitches, invisible, conducive
to entire sky chords.
Here,
use noise. Channel a vacuum. Let arms
intertwine, fly, forming flutes. First disbelief
must be suspended, next, energy, finally, anguish:
a sling shot to shoot from, foolishly faithful.
Oh harmonic dharma all ridicule sneers upon,
we have no more interest in pettiness or evil,
those jaded snares, while here we rise widening,
spirituous fifes amid seraphim:
what an astronaut hears.
Ninety
It's rather a shocker, to nature & even myself,
the fact that I've survived.
Most figured, & I don't mind saying it,
that I'd die young, one of those frail
neurotic types for whom, to be borne,
the world is too much.
The thought could make one nauseous,
but all I can do now is laugh & laugh,
wondering just who in hell is left
for me to celebrate this with.
The cats, I suppose, Duchess, Periwinkle,
& old slant-eyed Redcoat with his left ear
half missing.
I've nineteen altogether,
their life spans a collective karma
for the incarnations I've gone
through, who I was during this decade, that,
each, more or less, a bit of a scrap pile.
Fingering the tatters, everything floods
back, the chain smoked years waking up
to stumble over bottles
or into arms—-—
Ricardo's, Jack's,
those throwing down lifelines while, in actuality,
searching for their own, the mattress going, "Dao! Dao!",
'til I decided friendships were the best intimacy.
Then, as you know, I fell into leaf-letting,
demonstrations, & the lot, even 24 hours
in some cold piss-stenched jail.
In between there were letters, books, the cinema,
wash days, picnics,& every odd job imaginable.
I remember feeding Suicide Bernie
coffee one long night for hours.
I remember C.C's cancer ravishing flesh the way famine does.
"Oh good." I think Izzy said on the death of McCarthy.
"Where's the mercy?", asked Shirl
on whatever occasion, the 3rd world, our own street,
she came up against the cruel.
But, as I've alluded, they're gone,
gone except to me, cradling,
crinkling, smoothing such lace
mentioned now 'n then to the curious
visitors who trickle in.
"What was it like?" or "What should I do?"
Questions like that.
Once in awhile, as if at a river, I see a bright
thread, a flash of this unattainable masterpiece
where their reflection is mine, rippling superimposed,
first puzzled, then, placid, but, come on,
at ninety, once in awhile is still pretty fair odds.
Stephen Mead is an artist and writer living in northeastern NY. His work has been presented extensively online and in print. His merchandise can be found via http://www.lulu.com/stephenmead
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
"If we reorganize lost noises,
maybe we can create music."
Cheng-Chong Yao
It takes, admittedly, a little arrogance,
desperation, this arduous task:
to siphon pain, veins of nicotine,
those death gnats, that lead,
& become an astral kite.
Afterwards, space is egalitarian,
the earth a postcard depicting weather scapes,
countries blotted by mere one gloved thumb.
Now breath is better, meaningful,
air, an intention light redesigns.
Shadows track sound,
celestial pitches, invisible, conducive
to entire sky chords.
Here,
use noise. Channel a vacuum. Let arms
intertwine, fly, forming flutes. First disbelief
must be suspended, next, energy, finally, anguish:
a sling shot to shoot from, foolishly faithful.
Oh harmonic dharma all ridicule sneers upon,
we have no more interest in pettiness or evil,
those jaded snares, while here we rise widening,
spirituous fifes amid seraphim:
what an astronaut hears.
Ninety
It's rather a shocker, to nature & even myself,
the fact that I've survived.
Most figured, & I don't mind saying it,
that I'd die young, one of those frail
neurotic types for whom, to be borne,
the world is too much.
The thought could make one nauseous,
but all I can do now is laugh & laugh,
wondering just who in hell is left
for me to celebrate this with.
The cats, I suppose, Duchess, Periwinkle,
& old slant-eyed Redcoat with his left ear
half missing.
I've nineteen altogether,
their life spans a collective karma
for the incarnations I've gone
through, who I was during this decade, that,
each, more or less, a bit of a scrap pile.
Fingering the tatters, everything floods
back, the chain smoked years waking up
to stumble over bottles
or into arms—-—
Ricardo's, Jack's,
those throwing down lifelines while, in actuality,
searching for their own, the mattress going, "Dao! Dao!",
'til I decided friendships were the best intimacy.
Then, as you know, I fell into leaf-letting,
demonstrations, & the lot, even 24 hours
in some cold piss-stenched jail.
In between there were letters, books, the cinema,
wash days, picnics,& every odd job imaginable.
I remember feeding Suicide Bernie
coffee one long night for hours.
I remember C.C's cancer ravishing flesh the way famine does.
"Oh good." I think Izzy said on the death of McCarthy.
"Where's the mercy?", asked Shirl
on whatever occasion, the 3rd world, our own street,
she came up against the cruel.
But, as I've alluded, they're gone,
gone except to me, cradling,
crinkling, smoothing such lace
mentioned now 'n then to the curious
visitors who trickle in.
"What was it like?" or "What should I do?"
Questions like that.
Once in awhile, as if at a river, I see a bright
thread, a flash of this unattainable masterpiece
where their reflection is mine, rippling superimposed,
first puzzled, then, placid, but, come on,
at ninety, once in awhile is still pretty fair odds.
Stephen Mead is an artist and writer living in northeastern NY. His work has been presented extensively online and in print. His merchandise can be found via http://www.lulu.com/stephenmead
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
Michael P. Workman
If, By Your Own, Then
Or I am a poem without a person,
Or I am un poisson,
Or I am The Mothman,
Or I am the light of a hidden arc,
Or I am a causeway,
Or a bauhau
Or a lemon tick beagle with jubilant movements like a mote of simple
dust in
the eyeliner of a Virgin with a steel sombrero and day-glo pantynose
Or I am Father of Thee, oh strange sons, oh beard and Shams, oh leaden
weight protect me from Pluto,
This the ungulate wrought of iron specks cast by Promethian odes and
tempered with the tonguelettes of Nubian gorge and Sphinxing
Isis by some somber curve of desert dune like the breasts of Spring and
Apples
APPLES! Have you seen the apple? Or the oubliette? Either are our lost
or
hidden advance-way.
Apples! Apples by the cistern that some man or woman grew from the
hillside
by white pine trees when I was a dizzy dancing boy!
Apples and the delicious adventure of chaos, apples and Erisian
splendour,
Apples and the cascaded shadow of Seneca and the lonely wing of
Pocahontas,
Apples and the basketball that resembles an APPLE AN APPLE
AN APPLE that befell old King Newton in his sleepdream reverential
torrent
apples and the math that HINTS merely or parallels the truth which
systems
must shake off of themselves, of themselves, if these truths are
self-referential it is because you have not TASTED THESE APPLES
it is because the poem of truth is a stream,
and a stream is divine eternal advancing and until you JUMP
oh until you SWIM
until you by your OWN grace
by your OWN sanity
by your OWN compassion
by your OWN equanimity
by your OWN Walt Whitman
by your OWN Kerouac
BY your Own Christ and Diogenes,
Nietzsche, King, Comrade, Buddha, Lennon,
by your OWN sweet bootstraps gravitate into this fathomless, golden and
unending creek
if by your own fall into,
or jump,
or simply pass perspiring by on a hot summer's night,
and screaming like a falling star into our Cosmos, require some cool
impossible
dip,
by your own you must learn then to swim.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
T. Lewis
Hunting rounds
My hairs get crossed when there’s too much light in the sky.
Hard to aim your rifle if you’ve got nothing to look at.
Toward that end, I propose that we remove ourselves and
count on starting over at the crack of dawn tomorrow.
And count on starting where my eyes get crossed outside.
There’s a calmness to the outdoor landscape I can’t tell in words,
but it’s hard to aim your rifle if you’ve got nothing to look at.
So let’s get out of this rain and get back -- the others are waiting.
I can’t aim too good when there’s so much light in the sky.
There’s a calm that makes it awful hard to get out of this rain.
Toward that end, the outdoor view is calling me to disappear.
At the crack of dawn the others will have nothing to look at.
Get crossed at the crack of dawn, calmness of the outdoors.
We remove your rifle and start all over when we get back.
Let’s get out of the light in the sky, it’s awful hard to disappear.
I can’t tell, but count on starting at the end and going backward.
The others are waiting. so let’s aim awful hard and call outside.
There’s an outdoor landscape that’s nothing to look at, get out.
Go backward from the rain and aim your rifle with the crossed hairs.
Tomorrow you can count on me starting at the crack of landscape.
T. Lewis enjoys graphomania in the warmer months of the year, and slows down when the leaves start to die on the trees. He maintains two poetry blogs -- http://anchovyorchestra.blogspot.com/ and http://minnesotan-ice.blogspot.com/ -- and has been published in Listenlight and the 2007 St. Paul Almanac. "At a reading, whatever you say in between your poems is often more interesting than the poems
themselves."
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
My hairs get crossed when there’s too much light in the sky.
Hard to aim your rifle if you’ve got nothing to look at.
Toward that end, I propose that we remove ourselves and
count on starting over at the crack of dawn tomorrow.
And count on starting where my eyes get crossed outside.
There’s a calmness to the outdoor landscape I can’t tell in words,
but it’s hard to aim your rifle if you’ve got nothing to look at.
So let’s get out of this rain and get back -- the others are waiting.
I can’t aim too good when there’s so much light in the sky.
There’s a calm that makes it awful hard to get out of this rain.
Toward that end, the outdoor view is calling me to disappear.
At the crack of dawn the others will have nothing to look at.
Get crossed at the crack of dawn, calmness of the outdoors.
We remove your rifle and start all over when we get back.
Let’s get out of the light in the sky, it’s awful hard to disappear.
I can’t tell, but count on starting at the end and going backward.
The others are waiting. so let’s aim awful hard and call outside.
There’s an outdoor landscape that’s nothing to look at, get out.
Go backward from the rain and aim your rifle with the crossed hairs.
Tomorrow you can count on me starting at the crack of landscape.
T. Lewis enjoys graphomania in the warmer months of the year, and slows down when the leaves start to die on the trees. He maintains two poetry blogs -- http://anchovyorchestra.blogspot.com/ and http://minnesotan-ice.blogspot.com/ -- and has been published in Listenlight and the 2007 St. Paul Almanac. "At a reading, whatever you say in between your poems is often more interesting than the poems
themselves."
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
Olga Lalić-Krowicka
translated from the Polish by Sarah Luczaj
I Handed Over To You
I handed over to you the spark of my own conscience,
the gift of a name and a cosmetics bag.
I handed over the tree from the Van Gogh painting.
You screamed that it wasn’t mine. It is. Oh, how could it not be!
We divide the paintbrush in half, the soul too, and the ear.
I gave over to you the power of my hands,
the stream in the quietening of my mind.
One thing I did not hand over.
The sculpture from the emptied
square of power
with its eyes wrapped in sheets.
She fell asleep while I was thinking.
Pain
I love that pain. I’m his mother.
I’ve carried him from birth. Nine months
is a drop in the ocean. My first cry
with blood still fresh... his first
dusk. I treat his skin with a burgundy sky.
I bathe him in my face. I dress him
in comfort – tomorrow you’ll be older, more
mature, more distinct...oh God, how,
how not to leave him now. He exists, after all,
out of sheer innocence. Who else will I hold
when my last autumn rustles the tree...
Olga Lalić–Krowicka is a poet and translator from Croatia, half Serbian and half Polish. She moved to Poland during the war and now lives there and writes in Polish. She has been widely published in Poland, Croatia and Serbia. She uses schizophrenic experiences in her work.
Sarah Luczaj is a poet and translator from Britain, living and working in Poland since 1997. Her poems and translations are widely published in US journals e.g. the APR. She works as a psychotherapist.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
I Handed Over To You
I handed over to you the spark of my own conscience,
the gift of a name and a cosmetics bag.
I handed over the tree from the Van Gogh painting.
You screamed that it wasn’t mine. It is. Oh, how could it not be!
We divide the paintbrush in half, the soul too, and the ear.
I gave over to you the power of my hands,
the stream in the quietening of my mind.
One thing I did not hand over.
The sculpture from the emptied
square of power
with its eyes wrapped in sheets.
She fell asleep while I was thinking.
Pain
I love that pain. I’m his mother.
I’ve carried him from birth. Nine months
is a drop in the ocean. My first cry
with blood still fresh... his first
dusk. I treat his skin with a burgundy sky.
I bathe him in my face. I dress him
in comfort – tomorrow you’ll be older, more
mature, more distinct...oh God, how,
how not to leave him now. He exists, after all,
out of sheer innocence. Who else will I hold
when my last autumn rustles the tree...
Olga Lalić–Krowicka is a poet and translator from Croatia, half Serbian and half Polish. She moved to Poland during the war and now lives there and writes in Polish. She has been widely published in Poland, Croatia and Serbia. She uses schizophrenic experiences in her work.
Sarah Luczaj is a poet and translator from Britain, living and working in Poland since 1997. Her poems and translations are widely published in US journals e.g. the APR. She works as a psychotherapist.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
Joel Fry
A Widower
Your comfort educated me
for ten years. I understood all
you supposed from the first
month we dated until I understood
your death. You kept me loving
the life we endured.
I am old now at thirty, always
after the funeral and the flowers,
older than most of what I see, older
than the wealth bound in my bones,
older than I imagine when I sleep
in the whispering of my wishes.
My desire to see you approaches
a spacious center, a warm room filled,
a secret overheard.
Still, in all I know of the green
world expanding, fading into the
forest that becomes memory after
the day's movement ends and a pause
surrounds the winter retreats of my den
and bedroom, I understand.
I will always peer into the flickers
of this vanishing life, into the fleeting feet
still naked, the strangers that survive acquaintance,
the livelihood abandoned in the pursuit of living.
Joel Fry: I live in Athens, Alabama, and I work as a mental health worker in Decatur, Alabama. In my work I try to improve the lives of the mentally ill and mentally retarded. I have had work published in the Melic Review, Stirring and Eclectica.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
Your comfort educated me
for ten years. I understood all
you supposed from the first
month we dated until I understood
your death. You kept me loving
the life we endured.
I am old now at thirty, always
after the funeral and the flowers,
older than most of what I see, older
than the wealth bound in my bones,
older than I imagine when I sleep
in the whispering of my wishes.
My desire to see you approaches
a spacious center, a warm room filled,
a secret overheard.
Still, in all I know of the green
world expanding, fading into the
forest that becomes memory after
the day's movement ends and a pause
surrounds the winter retreats of my den
and bedroom, I understand.
I will always peer into the flickers
of this vanishing life, into the fleeting feet
still naked, the strangers that survive acquaintance,
the livelihood abandoned in the pursuit of living.
Joel Fry: I live in Athens, Alabama, and I work as a mental health worker in Decatur, Alabama. In my work I try to improve the lives of the mentally ill and mentally retarded. I have had work published in the Melic Review, Stirring and Eclectica.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
Dave Ruslander
Ice Queen
You’ve proved your tenacity.
Why must you continue to struggle
through this whiteout?
Each step saps your strength.
Look at my cerulean kimono and long black hair;
floating on this breeze of diamond dust.
Come, Itchi-san, sit by me for a moment
my breath will warm you.
I’ll make fire from ice to still
your shivering bones.
Don’t fear my obliquity.
Give yourself to me, everything will become clear,
you will be powdery and pure.
As my curls unfurl eternally,
your eyelids grow heavier.
Rest your head in my lap and relax.
Don't fiddle with your watch
for I have all the time in the world.
Dave Ruslander suffers from Mixed State Bipolar Disorder. He has been writing poetry for about seven years and has published a book of poetry and original artwork that attempts to describe the nonverbal language of emotion associated with mental illness. For more info on his book send an email to daveruslander@hughes.net
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
You’ve proved your tenacity.
Why must you continue to struggle
through this whiteout?
Each step saps your strength.
Look at my cerulean kimono and long black hair;
floating on this breeze of diamond dust.
Come, Itchi-san, sit by me for a moment
my breath will warm you.
I’ll make fire from ice to still
your shivering bones.
Don’t fear my obliquity.
Give yourself to me, everything will become clear,
you will be powdery and pure.
As my curls unfurl eternally,
your eyelids grow heavier.
Rest your head in my lap and relax.
Don't fiddle with your watch
for I have all the time in the world.
Dave Ruslander suffers from Mixed State Bipolar Disorder. He has been writing poetry for about seven years and has published a book of poetry and original artwork that attempts to describe the nonverbal language of emotion associated with mental illness. For more info on his book send an email to daveruslander@hughes.net
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
Anna Forsyth
Chai
I sip slowly on warm chai.
Feel an inner glow.
The day before, my blood had gone cold.
Diagnosis?
Spiritual anemia.
My soul leeched of its iron.
But between then and now,
I have remembered.
I have chosen chai.
I drink deep of the antidote.
Warm life
seeps through the protective fabric
around my heart muscle,
as I sit entwined in a lover's knot.
Feel the unbroken protection of arms.
I can see the reaper's shadow
out of the corner of my eye,
but it brings no terror.
Because I know that valleys have ends.
And I cannot forget
the shepherd's crook.
Anna Forsythis a freelance writer and editor, specialising in education. She has a keen interest in consuming poetry and producing it.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
I sip slowly on warm chai.
Feel an inner glow.
The day before, my blood had gone cold.
Diagnosis?
Spiritual anemia.
My soul leeched of its iron.
But between then and now,
I have remembered.
I have chosen chai.
I drink deep of the antidote.
Warm life
seeps through the protective fabric
around my heart muscle,
as I sit entwined in a lover's knot.
Feel the unbroken protection of arms.
I can see the reaper's shadow
out of the corner of my eye,
but it brings no terror.
Because I know that valleys have ends.
And I cannot forget
the shepherd's crook.
Anna Forsythis a freelance writer and editor, specialising in education. She has a keen interest in consuming poetry and producing it.
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
Keith Nunes
I grew up disturbing the equilibrium
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes
I grew up with a penchant for disturbing the equilibrium
In peace I saw confusion – uncertainty, ambiguity
It was torture to watch the eager side with the ineffectual and
Bruise those who sought to testify against the flow
You can’t be at one with a universe that
Wants to chisel you down to a coffee table
So fuck them - I’ll be who I want to be!
I’m standing for this – and that - and whatever I want to
Fire off about
It matters little – they’ll butcher you baby, take your socks off and burn you
I’ve been left with a translucent soul and backward steps
Running off the rear of my house
In bitter northern winters people like me die in crystal cold rooms
We are treasured statistics – we extract the once-in-a-while sorrowful shake of the head
We are mourned collectively, not individually
So I sidle in the dark away from the disingenuous
Cling to wet walls and scrape butter off knives
I can’t beat them
So I walk around them
Screaming my bloody head off
Hoping no-one will join me
Keith Nunes: I live in
Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes