note from editor:

"Everything gets a little 'phantom kangaroo' when night falls." - David Tomaloff 

dtomaloff 02.jpg

"earth { +ling" by david tomaloff

When I was younger, my mother told me that the hills are really just the backs of dinosaurs. I would sit in the backseat and imagine that the dinosaurs were sleeping, waiting to rise up, waiting for something to make them rise up. That's the thing with nature and extinct creatures. They're really hard to impress. I think it's because they know secrets that we don't know. The Universe is a beautiful monster. Sometimes nurturing, sometimes a devil. For every one thing I don't know about how the Universe works, I imagine 20 more things that might be true. Like how every light in the night sky is a UFO. That dandelion seeds in the wind are secret love letters, or that birds speak a magic language that I can learn. One of the most beautiful descriptions of nature I've ever read is a passage from White Fang, by Jack London. He says:

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness - a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

(I leave you with that, because I can't really top it.)

Claudia, January 2011

Suicide in a Palace

by Tanuj Solanki


A dozen testimonies
of the queen's fetish for doormen,
stand outside the palace facing east,
facing the rising sun
that smiles with a blessing on their lives.
Remnants of last night's drizzle darken
the colors of the palace sandstone,
reddened yet awaiting further reddening,
as yellow light strives to enter royalty.
The thirteenth doorman sleeps inside,
for the first and the last time,
in a room that has seen
regicide, patricide, and fratricide;
his hand is over the queen's dark hair--
a status quo from last night.
Knowledge of the fetish evades him,
as the secrets reside in the queen's bosom.

The dozen is puzzled in their own minds
‘Oh, the ways of the regal esoteric.’
But the erotic memory of royal treatment,
makes them look over their shoulders
in comic curiosity
to decipher from hints the happenings
of the latest night in the oldest room.
The queen wakes up first,
and advances to the balcony,
in a robe that tells the dozen
'Oh, the physical has transpired.'
Little clouds of jealousy surround them,
as dark clouds of rain surround the palace,
swiftly,
instantaneously.

The queen ponders the events
of a night where she loved,
loved with passion,
and promise and hope,
and a beckoning of eternity,
crushed by a perfection
she thought couldn’t exist.
A single tear drops down her left cheek,
and somehow manages to sparkle
in the cloudy morning of the now grim day.

The dozen watches with intent
the changing hues of the queen's countenance.
And though each of them is lustful,
each of them depraved,
their jealousy mixes with happiness--
the weird happiness that emanates
from knowing the one you might have loved,
is loved.

And then in the next instant,
the queen jumps from the balcony;
head hitting the sandstone floor
of the courtyard,
blood gushing in a random flow
on the flatness.
Death comes swiftly, even before
the dozen arrives to look for it.

The thirteenth sleeps smugly,
and the room witnesses suicide.

Star-bellows on the train blow their horns

by Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick


Star-bellows on the train blow their horns.
I am happy, one exclaims,
for my mother was a sage-tree and my father, a thorn.
I ask them for a naming, a way to move through pain.
Oh simple, another says,
your body's a shell you'll break out when you're ready,
with your own horn to blow and miles, yes mountains worth
of snow to burrow the forgetting, to graciously love everything
turned to ash and bone

 

Cyan Graveyard

by Scryer Veratos


Cajun spice arises the fallen
The obsidian casted solstice is upon us.

"yes we are Indigo, we are Glitter Fog London,
basking in the uranium caskets that held us."

Bombs leave amaretto salts that evaporate skin.
Hope is put into the entrancical dance between natives.

"so sumerian smiles will alude us, the azure anunaki as gold cats
find our tombs, they cry. We should not be revived."

Majesties ill usions render the messiah's power useless.
Unless mephtaphysical rare knowledge becomes
a unified vision.

"And grey pellucid tears move synnically down my Icarus cheeks.
I flew too fervently, and your verbosity didnt quite match your malcontent."

The ultimatum,
magenta and cyan must converge atop the promised lands
highest point.
Deceased synergy must be used.

"We are the platinum eyesight, 
the vicariuos splitting maul 
and you will never unknow us."

limbo

by Peter Schwartz


h.
staying alive takes two hands
but the implied traffic of having slept in a bed
weighs shadows by an open
window

f.
reflection's not the only light that matters
so I've sold myself to a future version of myself
hoping someday my feet might
taste the ground

s.
your shoulder's a church
I can't forgo, an igloo of salvation
melting in the tropical heat
of your defenses

l.
which marathon taught your legs
to cry when the pavement soured
from the very natural losses that
come after so many miles

e.
space is a kind of god, stretching
out forests already named after the fires
that will destroy them, elbowing
out the darkness

c.
cardiac secrets wobble in my chest
like bowling pins, thunderstruck
registering only from the neck up
as I massage the day away

k.
soft sacrifice, my knees have hardened
into olive pits, the temperature of the earth
when it's saddening in place
the removal of bird life

w.
the circumference of my shame
amplifies itself like music nobody wants
to hear, buried waist-deep in mud
I hear everything

Francesca, I Had An Affair

by Nathan Logan


You will haunt me when you die.
I know because you say, “Nathan,
I'm going to haunt you when I die.”
Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa.
First, we need to attend a party
with a piano player and coat check.
I need to tell our guests that you think
a bed sheet is not a good fashion choice
for walking around the neighborhood.
I need to write a little poem about it—one
where you do ghost stuff in a ghost raincoat.
I'll call it, “Francesca, I Had An Affair,”
and the audience will believe I am awful.
They'll wait for your disembodied voice.
They'll want to ask about your raincoat.

 

Sunny’s Too Tavern

by Cynthia Linville


She dripped red across four time zones –
nail polish, hair dye, ink, blood –
trying to stay ahead of the refrain
that chased her like a flood.
 
In Barstow a honky tonk shaman –
fingers trembling on guitar strings—
called her to the altar
at the motel across the street.
 
She touched him as if he could heal her
his thigh-vein pulsing her fingers
slightly off-tempo
to the music in her ears.
 
In the morning they felt like two skeletons –
teeth on teeth when they kissed –
and she drove on towards Mexico
still listening for the music she missed.

Discovered

by Joseph M. Gant


there was time, now past
when discovery was
of all things new
and unmolested by experience.
but now as the scene of some crime
itself, discovery
lays beaten, waiting in dark corners
with panties tied around its ankles,
gagged and begging guilt from hapless grins.

 


Astronomical Rabbit

 

by Jennifer Phillips


Born                         late
to the             cross 
in         Ares
pale  wood
rabbit bucks
fate to know
why sunlight only
hides the   darkness
why               firelight
of bile           burns out
 all matches  and
why      moonlight
runs across      wet faces.

 

 

Since my father died

by Harry Calhoun


Sometimes I feel so close
to death that I dream I am rubbing
the bones of my father’s spine
 
poking out of his back.
 
But those are isolated instances.
 
Most of the time
I feel as if I’m riding a train
woefully behind schedule,
 
its whistle trailing ghostlike
Into the constant night behind me
clattering slowly but surely
 
over the low and gentle hills
of his living backbone.
 

Broken at the waist

by Felipe Rivera


Where Nature and Sanity blur or consciousness,
A buzz and static, noise, and warmth
A perversion, pervasiveness of virility and dog shit
Crisp, clear, unobstructed,
From outside, inside like a zombie, headless
Chicken (in communion with the corpses)
A three is an orange, but more like a red
Thunderous monotony, a wild horse
Instinct and words that hide others, the true ones
Like an insect shedding with a heavy body
Clumsy, grinding, finding letters, sent and received and never sent
Not agile but just a single unit
Impaled with sloth
A single white pillow, smeared, heavy with makeup
And oil and stale, faint smells of resting
Heads of unwashed hair, faces
And muffled cries of (you fill in the blank)
That hair brushing her cheek, her brow,
Her jaw, her chin
Her eyelashes fluttering before
Nightfall

To Beckon a Perfect Lover

by Laura LeHew


1.
know that it is time
rip up your wish list
be gone illustrious white knights—
unredeemable damaged beyond repair types
unlock the possibility
 

2.
cop an attitude
dress to your best asset
add a touch of leather
remove one article of clothing
go unfurled into the world
 

3.
invade his personal space
hold eye contact
whisper a question
touch your would-be lover on his shoulder
fold him into you

The Anger Tree

by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal


God has planted the seed
of anger in my mind.
How could I stop feeling
angry, if God created
these feelings inside me?
 
I pray to Buddha too.
When I bet on games
I tell Buddha I will
stop believing in him
if I don’t win.
 
The anger inside me
grows like a tree.
It is God’s tree, with
apples and snakes,
and I am no gardener.
 
I cannot prune the tree.
I cannot cut the anger.
It is God’s doing and
I don’t want to go
against God’s creation.

 

contributor bios

Cynthia Linville teaches writing at California State University at Sacramento and hosts a local Friday night reading series. Her poetry has recently appeared in the Sacramento News and Review, the Sacramento Bee, Brevities, the Cosumnes River Journal, the Rattlesnake Review, Song of the San Joaquin and WTF. She is managing editor for www.convergence-journal.com.

[d]avid : [t]omaloff (b. 1972) | racine, WI, US | author, LIONTAMER’S BLUES (six eight press) | likes: jazz | hates: jazz | photography: yes | his work has also appeared in: Ditch Poetry, Otoliths, elimae, and/or, Counterexample Poetics, BlazeVOX 2KX, the Delinquent, and Calliope Nerve | see: davidtomaloff.com

Felipe Rivera is co-founder and editor for the La Ventana political journal and its literary supplement, El analfabeto. He has been published in Cipactli, the San Francisco State University Latino art and literature journal, the oldest and longest-lasting of its kind in the United States. 

Harry Calhoun’s articles, literary essays and poems have appeared in magazines including Writer’s Digest and The National Enquirer. Check out his online chapbook Dogwalking Poems and his trade paperback, I knew Bukowski like you knew a rare leaf. This year, his poems were published in the book The Black Dog and the Road and his chapbooks, Something Real, Near daybreak, with a nod to Frost and Retreating Aggressively into the Dark. He’s had recent publications in Chiron Review, Orange Room Review  The Centrifugal Eye, and many others. He edits Pig in a Poke magazine. Find out more at http://harrycalhoun.net

Jennifer Phillips is a MFA candidate in poetry at Minnesota State University at Moorhead. She has worked in biomedical sciences and knows way too much about how creepy biology can be.

Joseph M. Gant is a scientific glassblower by trade but a writer by passion. His work has appeared modestly in the independent, academic, and commercial press. Joseph lives in the Philadelphia area where he edits poetry for Sex and Murder Magazine. His first full-length collection of poetry, Zero Division, is forthcoming with Rebel Satori Press.

Laura LeHew loves zombie movies, Dexter, and Anne Carson [in a purely platonic-poetic way] she is hoping for a non-CGI comeback of Werewolves; she has one husband [whom she met at a science fiction convention], eight cats [Nikita (la Femme), Tessa, Mr. Socks, Baby, Dorian (yes he is grey), and the Army of Darkness (Raven, Shadow and Smoke)]; she never sleeps. She is also the Editor of www.utteredchaos.org. 

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal lives in Southern California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles County.  His chapbook, Digging A Grave, is available from Kendra Steiner Editions.  His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Right Hand Pointing, and Unlikely Stories.

Nathan Logan is the author of the chapbooks Arby's Combo Roundup (Mondo Bummer), Dick (Pangur Ban Party), and Holly from Muncie (Spooky Girlfriend Press). He is a doctoral student in creative writing at the University of North Texas.

Peter Schwartz's poetry has been featured in The Collagist, The Columbia Review, Diagram, and Opium Magazine.  His latest collection Old Men, Girls, and Monsters was published as part of the Achilles Chapbook Series.  He’s an interviewer for the PRATE Interview Series, a regular contributor to The Nervous Breakdown, and the art editor for DOGZPLOT.

Roxanne Broda-Blake is a twenty-year-old human anatomy enthusiast, studying biological anthropology in Central New York. She likes to stitch together science and art in the leaky basement of her brain.

Scryer Veratos was born on a comet headed towards earth during the jurassic period and has been writing poetry since. He invented the lightbulb. He also has a small gnome assistant named Riri.

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick graduated with her Masters in Fine Arts from Sarah Lawrence College in 2010. She recently completed her first full-length manuscript of essays and poetry and has a chapbook in print. She writes in New York and Texas. 

Tanuj Solanki works in an insurance firm in Bombay. He is 24. His work has been published in elimae; Short, Fast and Deadly;Boston Literary Magazine; Yes, Poetry, and others. He is currently completing a short story collection about fatalism in Indian cities, titled The Bom Bay of Life. He just can’t learn swimming.