This has been a year of change and we have included work nominated during our Monday night sessions. In preparing for the next issue in 2019, we are using a guestbook to collect emails from which we will solicit each poet for their favorite piece among the work they have written.
One-Owner Vehicle by Gary Turchin
The Vision is God’s,
the eyes, mine;
The Voice, God’s,
throat, mine;
Flavor, God’s,
tongue, mine;
Texture, God’s,fingers mine;
Breath, God’s,
lungs, mine;
Perfume, God’s,
nose, mine;
Love is God’s,
heart, mine;
Thoughts are God’s,
neurons, mine;
Divine Spark is God’s,
candle, mine.
The Muse, God’s,
this poem…mine?
When my father was alive by Gary Turchin
When my father was alive,
the world was made of car dealerships and bowling alleys.
The alleys had 100 lanes each and parking lots out front that could hold 200 big American cars without breaking a sweat.
When my father was alive,
cars were so big they had their own zip codes, though there were no zip codes back then, so they named them after places that would have zip codes one day:
Chrysler New Yorker, Chevy Malibu, Pontiac Bonneville, Dodge Sierra.
When my father was alive,
there was a bomb shelter store right next to the bowling alley, with a bomb shelter that looked like a giant tin can laying on its side out front.
Me and my cousin Jeff would go into the bomb shelter on our walk to the bowling
alley. It smelled moldy and metallic inside. We’d imagine the Ruskies pushing the
button, and us safely canned away while the world outside toasted and burned.
Then we’d finish our walk to the alleys, kick off our canvas sneakers and don
those stinky tricolor leather ones they made you rent for a quarter when you bowled. I hated those shoes, and their chemical smells, but I loved to bowl. So did my father. When he got a new bowling ball and shoes—I guess they were sold together—he passed the old ones on to me. The shoes still smelled, but at least it was a smell I was familiar with. Odd how my fingers and feet were close enough in size to his by then to do a credible job for me. I think I had a 152 bowling average, or was that my father’s average? Can’t remember now, but I do remember that our coed bowling team was called “Turchin & his Mistakes.” You can imagine how good my team was. Nancy G., skinny as a blade of grass, could barely pick up a ball, nevertheless hurl it, under control down the alley. Her specialty was gutter balls. She was an expert at gutter balls. We’d be lucky if her score added up to 13 or 23 after the full 10 frames. We didn't care. We were just having fun, and if the world had ended tomorrow, what would her bowling score matter? On the way home from the alleys, Jeff and I would stop back into the bomb shelter, hoping the Ruskies hadn’t made any “mistakes” with their bombs, dropped some into a gutter, hoping to even out some perceived score.
When my father was alive,
we lucked out: the Ruskies never did.
When my father was alive,
there was a miniature golf course around the corner from the bowling alley and bomb shelter store. One year they built a second miniature golf course right next door to the old one. The new one was named after Arnold Palmer, the most famous golfer in the world. You could golf at either course, for the same 50 cents, but we stuck to the new Arnold Palmer one that whole summer. He was so famous and all, and we’d played the old course for years.
When my father was alive,
the world was made of golf courses and swimming pools.
When I was 13, my father drove me and the Gardner brothers, Mitchell and
Harlan, in his Chrysler New Yorker to Ashbrook Golf Course to play our first round of real golf…Dad didn't play golf then, though he took it up eventually, after he’d had his fill with bowling and bowlers. Would pass more than one set of golf clubs and golf shoes on to me over the upcoming years; again, we were close enough in size to be a match.
When my father was alive,
no one we knew, or knew of, ever bought one of those tin can bomb shelters.
Never saw one in any back yard or side yard or saw one supplant a swimming pool that were becoming so popular in yards in those days. I guess people decided they were better off boiling to death in a pool than frying to death in a tin can. The store that sold the shelters didn't survive a year, but the model stood out front, sealed so we couldn't get inside of it anymore, for years. A monument to its own folly.
Never eat a mango in proper company by Gary Turchin
Better to eat it alone
unconstrained by manners or etiquette
leaning over the compost bin
dripping its honey-juice
over rotting husks of corn,
soggy asparagus spears,
empty egg shells,
while tearing its smooth skin off in strips with your dirty fingernails
that grow sticky and wet with the sweet orange drizzle
now oozing over everything
your chin
cheek
beard
hands tongue lips
and down your welcoming throat
even over your crisp white shirt
whose orange stain will long remind you—
even while dining with more formal company—
of your private summit with the Mango God.
MAYDAY in AMERICA! by
Gary Turchin
AMERICA:
This is your distress call:
MAYDAY! MAYDAY!
Your alarm bells
are sounding, America.
Can you hear? are you deaf?
too numb? too dumb? to notice
your proud ship of
state listing?
ready to fall
over like one of those great trees in your primeval forest
Don’t mistake it for your freedom bells…America
or your Liberty Bell
it's a distress call,
MAYDAY! MAYDAY!
All hands on
deck, America,
Launch the flares!
Broadcast our coordinates:
UNITED STATES of AMERICA;
Year of Our Lord,
2017;
At sea,
LOST.
But whatever you do America: don't abandon this ship.
Don't even think about it
Stay and fight,
like men do, like women do,
to the death, if need be,
Don’t abandon this ship.
Its beacon of light
Shining house on the hill
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
MAYDAY! MAYDAY!
There’s mayhem aboard this good ship,
the mad captain has lost his grip
(if he ever really had it)
The corporate pit bulls and their military lap dogs
march in lockstep,
eat their own
young to feed their greed,
MAYHEM! MAYHEM!
The Orange Ogre, King of Mayhem,
leading us over a cliff,
Washington’s ship
Jefferson’s
Hamilton’s
Even Abe Lincoln’s ship!
Over the cliff
Oh Captain, my Captain,
Gone mad as a
hatter,
Our flag and
ideals,
Torn and
tattered!
All hands on deck!
Launch the goddamn flares!
Send out the distress call!
America the beautiful,
God shed his grace
on thee,
and crowned thy
good with brotherhood,
From sea to
shining sea
MAYHEM! MAYDAY!
MAYHEM! MAYDAY!
Get your bloody hands on this deck!
and fight for this ship!
Like your life depended on it,
‘cause your life as you know it, does.
Whatever you do,
don't abandon this ship,
One Nation under
siege,
Divisible
Without
liberty or justice for all,
With plenty of guns guns guns guns,
for everyone a gun!
The madness, like cancer,
neither the Supreme Court nor Congress
can provide the answer,
It’s up to us, good seamen and sea-woman
don't abandon this ship
don't abandon this ship
whatever you do:
don't abandon this ship
MAYDAY!
MAYDAY!
MAYDAY!
Things
not to discuss with your hummingbird by Gary
Turchin
* Your career goals. Hummingbirds don't care about who or what you want to be, nor when you want to be it. A Hummingbirds only ambition is to find and savor sweet flower nectar.
* How much your house cost when you bought it, or how much it’s worth today. Hummingbirds will fly off at the first mention of the price of anything.
* Where you went to college. Hummingbirds don't go to college (or any school for that matter). Why would they care which school you went to?
* What you think of the current political climate, or the President? Congress? Governor? Mayor? Hummingbirds don't vote and wouldn't even if they could. It’s not power they’re after, but flowers.
* How many kids, grandkids, great grandkids you have. Hummingbirds don't keep track of their own progeny, why would they want to keep track of yours?
* What day the city picks up your garbage. Hummingbirds don’t make garbage, don’t even understand the concept of garbage. Why would they need to know about your pickup day?
* Ditto, street sweeping day, and which side of the street you have to avoid parking on. Hummingbirds park wherever the hell they want to park, and don’t have streets to sweep. (See reference to “garbage” above.)
* What kind of art you like. Hummingbirds don't much like art in any form or style. They've got their beaks stuck in fresh, budding flowers, day in, day out. Why would a mere picture of a flower be of interest to them?
* And if you should mention humming, be on guard. They can get apoplectic when someone tries to talk to them about humming. Trust me, don’t go there, unless you have an interest in having one of your eyeballs pierced by a Hummingbird beak.
* How much you wish you could fly just like them, stopping midair and all. Do you have any idea how many times they've been told that, and how sick of hearing it they are? We, with our giant metal flying ships, stinking up their air, disquieting the quiet they so cherish. No, I wouldn't bring up flying if I were you.
Well, you may ask, what topics can you discuss with your hummingbird? Good question, now you’re thinking.
You can’t actually discuss anything with hummingbirds. They have no interest in conversation. That’s an absolute. Soon as you open your mouth, they’ll be gone. But if you wish to cultivate a relationship with a Hummingbird, try bribing it (yes they gladly accept bribes in the form of flowers, especially long tubular, bright colored flowers, red ones in particular.) Keep your gardens lush with such flowers and you and your hummingbird can share many happy, and quiet, seasons together. Save your talking for your dog, partner, or spy agency of choice.
Gary Turchin is the author/illustrator of the wondrous, If I Were You (Simon DeWitt 2011, and the award-winning Ditty-Ditty Doggerel; A life From Bad to Verse (Simon DeWitt, 2012). His newest collection of poems, Falling Home, was published in 2013 by Sugartown Publications. See http://www.garyturchin.net for these offerings and more.
Gary is also performance artist, poet, and illustrator. His children’s poetry show, Gary T. & his PoetTree, has been performed in more than 300 schools and libraries throughout California.
To see/hear and learn more about Gary, see the documentary film about his life’s journey, The Healthiest Man On Earth at http://youtu.be/craVH8mzpuQ .Gary is also a Poetry Express Berkeley host on the 4th Mondays of each month.I don't want to be Joan of the Narrative Arc here,
wielding my flaming sword of story to drive you
from my personal bleeding-heart-liberal paradise,
but here's a prompt: write a poem using the words
grant, bell, garner, brown, ford, and rice.
Employ a light touch, no sing-song or doggerel.
No sentimentality, please. No rants.
Attention to form but not formality.
Invoke all the senses. Let me see, hear, feel
what the twelve-year-old saw, heard, felt
waving that BB gun around the park.
The gold and orange leaves of Cleveland.
The smell of them rotting in rainwater.
The black-and-white pulling to the curb.
The crack. The pavement rushing up.
"The Fall" first appeared in The New Verse News
Jan Steckel is a former pediatrician who stopped practicing medicine
because of chronic pain. Her poetry book The
Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award.
Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks
(Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The
Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her fiction
and poetry have appeared in Scholastic
Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her work
was nominated three times each for the Pushcart and Sundress Best of the Net
anthologies, won the Goodreads Poetry Contest twice, and won various other
awards. She lives in Oakland, California.
He was too afraid to let anybody know what he was going through
But after a while we pretty much knew but all I could do
Was watch as this disease almost destroy his whole entire family
But at his funeral they didn’t grieve
They came to pray tribute to Mr. Freeze
And it wasn’t about how he taught them Pop locking and break dancing
One by one the youth marched down the aisle to Pomp and Circumstances’
Talking about how Ben got them off the street and gave them a second chance and
Now that he is gone and we’re still living
We hesitate to step up to the plate
To give these youth something to believe in
And part of the reason
Is that we still dawn the stereo types of the down lows and who’s creeping
When this disease is not about whom you sex it’s about teaching
Right about now the best cure is prevention
And I hear some of the drugs for this disease
Does more damage than the infection
And condoms have little relief when you are injecting it into your veins
As 9 months later another statistic is born into the strain
I SWEAR!
I would rather have cancer
Because even in this debilitating disease you would still embrace me
You would run more than a mile
Make me your poster child
And have parties in honor of my memory
Like if I’m some damn celebrity
But if I had A.I.D.S
My so called friends would no longer be
And as I walk on by
You would step to the side
As if this disease knows boundaries.
Afraid and along
Out here on my own
I became my own worst enemy
Didn’t want to look in the mirror
Praying to God that you would see things clearer
Because all I ever wanted was for you to be here for me
A simple embrace might have given me the will to survive
So save the guilt trip
Wipe those tears from your eyes
If you couldn’t do it when I was alive
It damn sure meant nothing to me when I died.
Elaine Brown aka Poet E Spoken © 2005
Elaine Brown: I have been writing ever since my Mother and siblings taught me how to hold a pen. I grew up listening to the stories my Grandmother and Mother would tell me about my family and their struggles wondering how I could change things. So, history and writing became my passion. I have been writing Free Style Poetry for almost 30 years combining past and present issues that affect our daily lives; motivating people to change their mindsets.
AS YOU WERE by Jennifer Blowdryer
African - no white jacket
chilly perhaps taking too long
making the soda. Eyes still
alive - not for long
Patrick
flip of hair black
sheet angle gloss
never just walk
its all a tool
You blew my head damn you
I can't unite disdain escape
and happy delirium anymore
I'm at that age now
Medicatoins, waltzing through
the day sea sick tolerated
and tolerating
Jennifer Blowdryer, who loves the food at Taste of the Himalayas, is a writer and performer whose next book, 86ed, is out in snippet previews form on Pedestrian Press. She divides her time between Berkeley and New York's East Village.
Bang Bang Niner Gang by Cassandra Dallett
If you grew up in San Francisco
you remember when Joe Montana ruled
probably rocked a red satin Forty Niner
Starter a time or two
when wins filled the drunken streets with revelry
when Ocean Beach filled that rare hot day
you probably remember that we always protested here
that the police were dicks but they didn’t kill us
all the of the time
This town was a Forty Niner town
working class and freak filled with hippies and punk rockers
black panthers brown
cholos and gay pride and all of us living side by side
these days you’ll get called a gang banger
for wearing the color of your hometeam
In the park where you grew up
the white boy calls you out
his dog chasing you and your food
the white boy moved here
with the blizzard of whites who stand in line
late into the night to eat burritos
Mr. Snow ain’t from here
but is so comfortable in his whiteness
he says red jacket makes you a gang member
calls homeless disgusting
calls you wet back
your family has been here longer than he’s been born
There are only white folks in the park now
they are new and white and owning
buildings burned to make way for the crop of them
they call the police on you
the firing squad
without question
empties clips
reloads
59 shots
your 49er jacket blood red
full of holes
you are one more name
to be chanted
in the streets
we no longer recognize
I know the police have always worked for the rich
the war on drugs was always about locking brown people up,
and why all these prisons are built
But I swear this town didn’t used to be so mean
The newspaper doesn’t mention that you went to school
had never been arrested
the newspaper said you were agitated
threatening
there are words
that start with a T
thug and threat
there are trials
police are never charged at trials
White people keep on coming
and coming pointing us out pushing us out
to the edges like animals
to them we are bangers we are beggars
we are tent city trash makers
we the former tenants of San Francisco
dead in jail sleeping under the freeway
out here somewhere
between Stockton and the grave
Love
is Unruly
Dark and early
mourning your face,
a rough cheek-soft kiss,
your neck.
I’m crying in the car.
On podcast the artist
speaks of painting black bodies,
of fame and ego.
I think of all the colors in your skin.
How I long to polish the red tones
sandalwood sweet.
The artist has the last name
of a man who beat me up.
You would never hurt me
but I am hurt by you
brilliant and incarcerated
braggadocio should be yours.
Art is your bone structure. I think
about your wrist that small mark of beauty
you rising to the hoop
intelligence that transmits physically even,
unlike my own awkward.
And still, you get me.
You got me, I consider jailhouse marriage
a future of separation.
Isn’t that what it’s always been?
Whichever two people
locked up by fear
and capitalism.
The artist speaks of desire.
You and me
we see each other
ageless
and without shame.
The door was heavy, a loop of twine as a handle
I often struggled with
falling backwards on the wooden ramp
worrying the fat-sacked grey speckled barn spiders overhead
afraid they would lower onto my head
and the goats running from the barn
especially Bucket with the biggest horns
the meanest disposition.
They had goats that chased kids,
and adults that found it amusing.
At Sweet Peas’ house
It was hard to get so much as a drink of water
having to stand on something to pump.
The bathroom was the whole outdoors-
no outhouse, or bucket, no electric light, or lantern
just grab toilet paper by the door and find a spot
away from the goats and the spiders to shit or piss safely.
Which meant surely holding it all night long
and not adding bed wetter to the embarrassment.
Each night I sobbed I wanna go home, I want my Mom till dawn.
At home when I thought about spiders I loud-cried
till mom turned a light on.
Here there were no lights and there was no Mom.
Sweet Pea’s mother wasn’t tender like that with me
She’d say, why did you bring her? she cries every time!
The dark was vast sleeping on the pine floor
unable to see the ceilings bumpy plaster
windows framed with splintery grey wood
terrible branches swaying in the pitch-black night.
There was nowhere to run
it was all fun when we left my house twenty miles away
I had someone wanting to play with me,
wanting my company, when the adults were all stoned
glazed nods of agreement when I asked could I go
I’d fall asleep riding up over Eagle Hollow
rolling puppy bodied down tree lined roads
and up up the hill a running start
foot smashing gas pedal to floor
from Don’s house where the mailbox was
and the nearest telephone was,
up the steep part fishtailing, gravel flying against the car
just when it seemed we wouldn’t make it
we’d be barreling across the flat part
where the puzzle grass grew and the stone wall
led to the gas tank, we rode like a horse.
The trees parted at the dooryard
and the house tucked in there like a wicked witch.
Each time I remembered the terror freshly
as if brainwashed to do it again
the barn spiders in the woodshed
you had to walk through to get into the house
The whole family, her family, Sweet Pea’s family,
laughing at me, the scared one
just five or six years old.
When thirsty eyes fixed on the huge mayonnaise jars of milk
I made the mistake of expecting cold cow milk
instead the gamey shit taste of goat filling my mouth
causing me to retch.
Inescapable fleshy and warm like their teats,
scary like their horns,
impossible to get from my mouth.
The dirty taste of animals
that ransacked the house
strewing clothes as they munched,
knocking jars of food to the floor
and spreading it around while shitting
and giving side eye, a fuck you, but more sinister.
I’m gown now, the goat guy is my step-dad,
they’ve long since got electricity and running water
I love a Thousand-day-gouda almost as much as sex,
but people, please, what’s with all the goat cheese?
I don’t want it on my salad or looking tempting on baguette,
goat milk tastes like helplessness and fear,
like licking the barn’s dirt floor, the twitching tail and shifty eye.
Don’t, talk to me about goats, or goat yoga,
or goat cheese, even if it has a creamy French name!
Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra writes of a counter culture childhood in Vermont and her punk rock adolescence in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been published
Press in the spring of 2014.
COMPOTE YOURSELF by David Erdeich
We seek perfection
Because it doesn't exist
Exactitude yes
The monk copies the bible
The rabbi copies the Torah
It must be copied exactly as written
Or else you're required to start over again
But if every language has
A different word for the same thought
How do you represent that on the page?
What if your diacritical remark
Is given the wrong color?
What if some languages have
Thoughts that others lack?
If it's an object I can use thought transference
To send the word picture from my mind to yours
But what if it's a concept
What if I can only FEEL the elephant in the dark?
How do I put inflection,
Or genuflection for that matter, on the page?
Homonyms are humbling as well as hobbling
Puns are everywhere
Legs akimbo, arms akiddo
I kid you not
If we can't play with the language
Does it become a charade?
The brine leading the brine
Down some vinegary path to deluction?
I'm going to give you some space
To taste your words, rinse, spit them out
Misspell your misspent youth
Unbend your gender
Lest it bounce off your freddy fender guitar
Strum and drang your words through the meyer lemon
And discuss disgust with the same windy aplomb
You usually preserve to fritter your apples away
1. APPLE STORE by David Erdeich
A toy store for adults; a way to diddle without the piddle; the toy has
become the shrine because of its beautiful shine. Any fool when
instructed can make correct use of the tool. Only the idiot, unable
to rise above it, to get rid of it, makes an altar of it. Extract those
precious plumes, assemble the multiple rooms, descend into its
abyss, to wait for Siri's kiss. For she will absorb your fluid, this
feminine modern day druid. She'll return your feet to root, screen
you off from your loot, void you to empty space, then artificially
replace your binary applique with new face and brand new day.
In the belly of the beast you stay, face electrocution if you stray.
Science Fiction predicted this plight 50 years ago. A plug for the
back of every human nape in order to transit the grid landscape.
Matrix, matriarch, iphone, padrone--you cannot feel you cannot
moan. Your gaze is flat, your eyes are glazed. Dimensions squared,
awareness raised. You don't drink yet here's the djinn to twist your
innards from within. Hurricanes will inundate, rising seas approach
the state of the art of fools. Political disaster, fascist fear. Local
ordinance thus explodes, people ignored, instructed in code. In
order to decipher declare yourself a lifer. Pardon racists, decry
immigration, imaginary borders, enforced segregation. Three or
more black men can't stand on the street and practice politics
without the cop on the beat feeling fear, feeling threatened
approaching with gun and stick. Freedom of assembly is fine
if you are white, but the difference is as clear as day and night.
If it's for ALL, then heed the call--get the principle right.
2. WATERFRONT PROPERTY by David Erdeich
They sold you waterfront property at thrice the price. It
included a mother-in-law in the backyard. Earthquake, flood,
or termite insurance costs extra--double! Hurricanes, tsunami,
rise of water around the globe, Ah yes, waterfront property!--
drowning insurance not available.
David Erdeich: Combine the sensibilities of a stand-up comic
With the observations of a naturalist
Serve it through a saxophoneTelegraph Avenue airbrush artist/street vendor/organizer
Conversation With the Wind by Georgette Howington
I don’t know you
yet we touch often.
The skin on my face
blushes the chill always
make my cheeks pink.
The force of your strength
tangles my hair into
streaming rifts
of this way,
or that way.
I hold it down
while squinting,
my nose wrinkled,
lips mumbling, “I prefer
still days”, and “don’t
care for sailing”,
but you never seem
to resent that.
No, instead, you
continue to greet me
with poetic whispers
dancing along side
like an old friend.
Georgette Howington
Copywrite 8.27.17
Georgette
Howington is a UC Davis California Naturalist of the Mt. Diablo Region. Her poems are published in Iodine, Sleet, Poeming
Pigeons, among others. Her poems won
Honorable Mentions at the North American Women’s Music Festival, Ina Coolbrith
Poetry Contest in 2016 and the Benicia Love Poem Contest 2018. As a horticulturist, her niche is Backyard
Habitat and secondary-cavity nesters.
She is a County Coordinator and the Assistant State Program Director for
the California Bluebird Recovery Program and an activist in the conservation
community in the SF Bay Area for over 30 years.
Georgette is also a published garden and environmental writer.
Dundee by Jack O'Neill
The north west sky brings morning
light through the window
I am as far north as I've ever been
and this morning strike further
North to Dundee, birth place of
my father's father.
It will be a journey of connection
and forgiveness between--
To heal the space between--him
and me. Me, the life headed south
bound on a west bound train;
Him, William John Dorotheus O'Neill,
not a warm and friendly man.
Of course there are reasons. From the
perspective of a life is a single thing,
The reason is no respect for the space
between; and then, terror of the
space between.
This morning the bird is on the branch
and I go through the space
This morning the sage is in the air
and I go north to Dundee.
Jack O'Neil: In the school year '55/'56, I attended kindergartens in Berkeley, Chula Vista, and San Diego, CA. One through eight I attended Catholic schools in Honolulu, HI, Takoma Park, MD, and San Francisco, CA. And three high schools in northern Illinois. At my fourth college, somewhat near graduation and looking ahead, realizing I was more suited to a random sort of life; I shifted into shiftlessness and the rewards thereof, finding a kind of stability there.
an old woman who does not sell rice cakes by elana levy
i am an old woman who does not sell rice cakes-
though that might be more honorable-
selling instead ideas words books poems
anger resistance rebellion rage
unknowing
knowing it is unknown
knowing the should of knowing the moment
knowing something is terribly wrong, that
resisting reality is futile
it is so
yet raging
knowing raging is unholy.
i am an old woman who does not sell rice cakes-
not even tomatoes from her garden or shawls loom spun,
who flings out to strangers and loved ones: how come?whose teachers say: so it is
as God has wrought,
who's learned of love for all
and nods assent,
yet does not know how to go on.
i am an old woman who does not sell rice cakes
nor tomatoes not even Yes's
though easier to sell than No's,
surrounded by flowering plants
redwoods with their cones
chickadee cheeps
hummmming birds
graced
wow-ing along
asking how it happened.
this old woman who does not sell rice cakes
nor tomatoes not even home-baked bread,
whose money pays for the death machine
honestly, can not smell the stench of rotting-burnt corpses of
manned-unmanned-drone-killed children
cannot hear the doomed pigs' squeals in unmoveable crates
cannot see through unopenable dungeon gates of
Florence SuperMax or Guantanamo
and has never tasted the fumes of Bhopal or Chernobyl
or even Louisiana's waters where so-called-BP's oil
from platform fled.
i am an old woman who does not sell rice cakes
nor tomatoes nor shoes made from tire treads
refuses to play games on demand
as i am an old woman
given leeway
some no-way-you-can-harm-me place
free as a bird in a roomy cage
larger than most.
i am an old woman who does not sell rice cakes
nor tomatoes not even broadsides,
who struggles to stand tall
pressed against the icy cold jagged-glass-topped concrete wall
of Callousness, Greed and Big Lies.
i am an old woman who does not sell rice cakes
who, at times, stands
still
beside her stall.
elana levy is a recent transplant to the land of her daughter, of avocados and redwoods, from the northeast, of snow, lakes and green.
Elana taught math in community college for two decades. first photographed by FBI in 1959. Student and teacher of Jewish meditation and Kabbala; factory worker, social justice activist, radio producer, video director; embraces silence one month yearly.
still studying hard, knowing there's no easy answers.
god
i wish i could write
as good as that girl
walks
pataphysics by Charles McCauley
yesterday coming down the stairs
I met a woman who wasn’t there
she wasn’t there again today
if this interests you
you are lost
C O McCauley is a retired naval
aviator, has fronted a rockabilly band and performed in community theater. His songs and poetry about growing up
southern, the Viet Nam War, and Native
American culture have appeared in The Tule Review, California Quarterly,
The Aurorean, Blue Unicorn, and Soundzine. He resides in Martinez, California.
Hello, Paradise [[PART TWELVE]] by Clive Matson
Hello, paradise. Paradise ,
good-bye.
Stand in the hurricane
and stare
it in the eye.
Contrails write obituaries across the sky.
Hello, science that reveals how long it took to get here.
Hello, science guessing how long we’ve got left.
Thirteen-point-eight billion years to conceive
protons, neutrons, electrons, photons, black holes,
neutrinos,
Boson particles. Thirteen point eight billion
plus a few years to find them.
Thirteen-point-eight billion
to evolve the mind that can calculate those years
from the Big Bang to now. Thirteen-point-eight billion
years
nuclear science, nuclear medicine, nuclear magnetic
resonance.
Thirteen-point-eight billion years
nuclear bombs.
“Forgive me, Gaia, for I have sinned.
I forgot to breathe with the one
who all day breathes for me.”
“Nuclear Free Zone” sign at Oakland town limits,
swords word by word hammered into ploughs
and the ground tilled across wood tables,
seeds planted and signs crop up around the cactus apple
at Vista’s limits, Berkeley ’s,
Fairfax ’s, Sebastopol ’s
though it’s very late.
Loaded
trucks stop at the gate
and nuclears waft in unabated,
hot ions in air, water, soil, food, cars, construction
material
uncontested, walk blithely in
in
our own bodies unmolested.
Talk to the hand. Talk to the hand.
Plow and plant the seed. Till the ground and plant the
seed.
How many destruction atoms reside in us?
How
many radioactive? Psychoactive? Physioactive?
One cup
water dispersed globally
puts twelve hundred molecules in every cup in your body.
How much uranium-235
from
several metric tons
global militaries parked in our biosphere?
Don’t count. You don’t want to know.
Uranium-235 one times
ten-to-the-minus-seven
percent body mass,
at 80 kilograms
twelve thousand eight
hundred uranium-235 atoms
decay in your body every
minute, forty-four million,
nine hundred ninety nine
thousand a day. A snippet.
The menu: we offer tuna fish fillet in several flavors:
Three Mile Island, Columbia River, Chernobyl ,
Fukushima .
Would you like condiments?
Cesium-137? Plutonium-240,
iodine-131, radium,
curium-245, strontium-90, radon? Any of the others?
Add collagen,
petrol vapors, sugar,
mono-sodium-glutinate,
high fructose corn syrup,
propylene glycol,
carboxymethylcellulose,
parabens, polysorbate-80,
nicotine smoke,
genetically modified whatevers,
half your meds and the
rest.
Any of the rest.
The list longer than your arm.
Longer than a snake skin.
Longer than a tapeworm.
Longer than my rap sheet.
Longer than your list of petro-fucking-chemicals.
Feed me. Feed me tastes so I won’t grok my own.
Putting our immune system
to the test.
Knowledge ramps up the
stress
and we become more friable.
Less deniable. More
susceptible. More pliable.
Rev up the immune system
one times
ten-to-the-seventh power
and you have a
chance.
Against a dozen-plus
million mutations a day.
And counting.
How strong the immune
system
must be! How untired,
refired, inspired,
how required for moderate
health
otherwise
we’re dead.
Yesterday.
Happy go lucky! Sing a
song.
How could we go so
terribly wrong?
Our paradise. Evolved for
us. Paradise here and now.
The universe is bio
generative
and slightly benevolent
otherwise we’re
dead.
Yesterday.
Stay healthy. Work soft.
Be cheerful. Get fit. Stay loving. Be cool.
Five mutations will a cancer cell create.
One atom plutonium provides for eight
and will suffice
better than ice.
Now we know how cancer cells originate.
Our worst enemy is our own government.
“Yellow rose, naked tree….
It’s what I see, they bloom for me.”
Medical apparatus swings on line
when health teeters, oncologists, mammograms,
chemo- and immune-system therapy,
nuclear magnetic imaging, isotope scans,
radiation machines.
“No, no! Don’t
tell the doctor
you have insurance! Into your blood
he’ll pour a super-expensive drug.”
Eight hundred fifty thousand dollars
average cost for cancer treatment.
Both hands on the deal. More money to steal.
“The comfort of the rich
depends on the abundance of the poor.”
Thirteen-point-eight billion years
to create this moment.
Thirteen-point-eight billion years
for this plutonium, this uranium, this dispersal of hot
ions,
these atom bombs, neutron bombs, fusion bombs.
Thirteen-point-eight billion years
for this immune system, these T-cells,
this over-revved defense system
holding its own in subcutaneous battles every minute.
Thirteen-point-eight billion years for this minute.
For the
next. And the next.
Thirteen-point-eight billion years
until
the instant
your immune system goes down. Overwhelmed.
Plant the seed. Plow and plant the seed.
“Be joyful, even when you see the facts.”
Hello, paradise. Paradise ,
good-bye.
Clive Matson hung with the Beats in New York City in the
early 1960s and he reconnected when he performed “Hello, Paradise. Paradise,
Good-bye” at the European Beat Studies Network in 2017 in Paris. The passionate
intensity that runs through us all emerged on a backpacking trip in the
southern Sierra when he saw trees and mountains and smoke from a wild fire –
and began that poem. He won the 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National
Literary Award and the City of Berkeley Lifetime Achievement award in poetry
for 2012. Visit him at matsonpoet.com or wikipedia.
The distance from one end
of the wall to the other is more
than she can measure. The names
are more than she can count.
She remembers handing in the paper
with its hair-in-the-drain signature:
a form allowing her to board
the familiar yellow bus
for the second time that morning.
She remembers the crack in her seat;
how she squirmed for the entire
stomach-rolling ride,
sank further and further
into the cotton stuffing; how
the corners of the torn vinyl
dug deep into her leg
as the streets and trees outside blurred by.
Now, as she stands before the wall,
wisps of blonde hair tickling her cheek,
she wishes she were back on that bus.
Or back in the classroom.
Or warm at home.
Or anywhere but here.
Her grandfather, she has been told,
is somewhere on this wall.
A man she has never met.
A man she never will meet.
A man who wasn’t there
for birthdays and Christmases
and Easter Sunday dinners.
A man who never gave her anything
to remember him by.
There is a heaviness here
she lacks words to describe.
Miss Stevens shows them
how to make a rubbing. The students
snatch at art supplies, squabbling over
who gets what color crayon
and how many.
But one girl hangs back, squinting
at the wall, taking in each name,
searching, searching
for the familiar set of letters spelling out
the only connection she has
to a stranger.
Only when the other children
are furiously scrubbing at their own papers
does she step forward.
She will remember this day,
years from now: walking the length
of the dark wall; finding the name sooner
than she’d hoped. White on black,
just like the others.
She will remember this moment—reaching out
for her grandfather’s name, reaching up
to a height she would someday attain,
rubbing a pink crayon over a piece of paper,
watching the familiar white letters appear.
Eight-Legged Salem by Elizabeth Alford
Sometimes I want to watch it burn
Watch it burn and fall to the ground
A heap
Of twitching legs
And swollen thorax
Swallowed by flames
Of fear
And uncertainty
Sometimes I want to watch it burn
This spider I cannot name
I cannot see
Glinting in the sun's rays
Hidden for half the night
And all of the day
Behind the backyard speaker
Hung unused
For so many years
Dusty and forgotten
You too, Spider, may one day be
Dusty and forgotten
When the remnants
Of your unfailing armor
Shed only
In the dead of night
Fails you at last
When the lamplight
Goes out
For the last time
You too, Spider
May feel fiery tongues
Lick your feet
Like the women and men
Of centuries past
Bound to stakes
Forsaken
More kindling
Fuel for the fires
Of fear
With one flick of this lighter
Gripped tight
Between bone-chilled fingers
I think
I could be rid of you
Forever
Rid of fear
Rid of uncertainty
Rid of an evil that even now covers
This world
A tangled web of silk
Amid the brambles
Rid of the unknown
That lurks in the shadows
And waits
But then I remember
You are not evil
You are simply
Here
As I am
No
I will not condemn you to the fire
To the abandon of Death
Who even now sits at your side
And waits
I will not call you a witch
I will pocket my lighter
And take my leave
This mission to kindle
The fire within
To watch it all burn
To watch harsh rain
Wash our remnants away
This fire within
No lighter can spark
No wind can extinguish
---
Train of Thought by Elizabeth Alford
The 10:08 train rumbles by, headed south.
I step outside, beyond the boundaries of safety,
into comfortable darkness: my front porch.
The rain has been unceasing lately,
but seems to have let up for the moment.
I don't turn the light on as I leave.
Out of habit, I look up into the shadowed corner
of the dripping awning, just above the door,
where the long-empty wasp nest conceived
from mud and who-knows-what-else still sits.
With lighter in hand, I become Prometheus:
bringer of light and fire in dark times
for humanity. And these are dark times.
These are dark times, my friend, I want to call
to the young man across the street, lighting
his own smoke. The end glows. I see a thousand
possibilities contained in that unhinging fire—
in the flick of the wrist, in the falling ash,
in the bitter taste of the future.
The future has always been hazy, at least to me.
Even a wasp has some sense of purpose, can see
the bigger picture. The compound eyes—
those probably help. It's comforting to know that
even a wasp, infinitesimal in the scope
of the universe, can see in all directions.
I can barely see in one direction: forward.
I'm standing outside in the dark and wet,
watching a stranger, smoking a cigarette—now,
thinking about poems that haven't been accepted yet,
waiting for the familiar rumble
of the next train.
More than anything, it's the silence
that's killing me.
---
Little Tongues by Elizabeth Alford
Regrets are best served
on a bed of cold linguine.
Regrets are red, saucy, spicy.
Regrets are the ripe tomatoes we picked,
each containing a vast richness
and fullness of flavor when left to simmer
for a few minutes, hours, days. You see,
the years of disappointments are
the recipe, and we remember regret
every time we taste it.
A spoonful here: the sprout
of youth, putting down roots,
how leaves spring to unfold.
A spoonful there: a pair of green
lovers sunbathing, ripening
red, still growing. A spoonful
in autumn, when we go to harvest
what we've learned. And in winter,
we pull out our stored-up regrets
from the back of the freezer,
thaw them out. Heat them
on the stove. Stir them
constantly. Serve them up
over cold linguine.
Go on, eat up, we all say,
regret dripping from our tongues,
our lips, our drooping chins.
It wrinkles our brows,
stretches our clothes, stains
our souls. But, perhaps
even regret has its place
on our plates. It tickles our senses
like a pollinated breeze, memory
after memory rising like steam
from the earth after a night of rain,
or like a tomato vine tied to a stake.
We all need that stake at first.
We all need that taste.
We all need the recipe for regret.
So go on, eat up.
And maybe someday,
try cooking it for yourself.
Spice it up while you can.
---
Musings on the Muse by Elizabeth Alford
I.
Like I told my other lovers
before they vanished like lamplight
at the end of the night,
“I don’t want to be the book
that you pick up occasionally
when the uncertain fancy
strikes you, like your hand
across my face.”
See, I’m not a hardcover. In fact,
I’m barely a paperback.
If you twist my pages, they will tear.
I wish I could call myself published, but
I’m a notebook on the shelf,
collecting dust.
II.
I think of cavemen painting walls
and hieroglyphed Egyptian halls,
of words inscribed with quill
and ink on scrolls…
But you are a disease.
A bacterial contagion, a cancer
without remission, a virus in its infinite
mutations. I am infected
by you and your misplaced
intentions; first you torture me
with dreams of novel fame
and fortune—then make me a poet.
III.
But it’s not you, it’s me.
I am finite.
I will one day return
to the waters our ancient scaled
ancestors crawled from. I will lift
myself, limb over limb, always push-
ing forward, however much
my body may flop
in protest.
In this ever-expanding, ever-
contracting
universe, I am yet another
beating heart,
another set of lungs, expanding
and contracting
‘til I expand
and contract
no more.
IV.
Long after we are gone,
I will still have these words—
like a field’s worth of sun
or an iridescent sea
of golden grasses glinting,
waving, bending with the breeze
that shuffles clouds too
on a blue-sky day,
giving rise to Rorschachs
everyone can see.
I hope one day
they do.
---
Elizabeth Alford (Hayward, CA) usually writes on her laptop, but in its absence will settle for her cell phone. A magna cum laude of CSU East Bay (B.A. English, 2014), she is still finding her place in the world. Recent and forthcoming publications appear online at the following venues: One Sentence Poems, Contemporary Haibun Online, the other bunny, & the cherita: your storybook journal.
I Will Try and Attempt by G David Schwartz
I will try and attempt
Most anything to let
Be be experiences except this
Not Cannibalist
I Never Did And Never Will by G David Schwartz
I never did and never will
eat poison mushrooms on purpose
And if I see them is a dish
I hope I will get distracted
My Wife Gets Mad At Me I Guess That Is Her Job by G David Schwartz
My wife gets mad at me, I guess that is her job
When I tell me my Grand pa was the best cook
Then my son-in-law
Why ought I lear to cook.
I Love Penguins by G David Schwartz
I love penguins
They are so precious
But in a book on food
It just sounds (still searching for an appropriate word meaning oh hell no way.)
In The Serengeti by G David Schwartz
In the Serengeti
I went with my friend Freddy
Were we ate spaghetti
From noon till time for beddie
Note: An earlier version of "I will Try and Attempt" appeared online via Creative Talents Unleashed (Dec 2015). G. David Schwartz is the former president of Seedhouse, the online interfaith committee. Schwartz is the author of A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue (1994) and Midrash and Working Out Of The Book (2004), and is currently a volunteer at The Cincinnati J, Meals On Wheels. His newest book, Shards And Verse (2011) is now in stores or can be order online. "Names are not real people," he says.
A Short History of My Housekeeping by Melinda Clemmons
First apartment (grad school):
I take vague swipes with a damp paper towel
to thumbprints, cobwebs, decades-old grime.
Second apartment (marriage):
I go from room to room, polishing corners,
leaving the middles cluttered and dusty.
Third apartment (California):
I open windows to sunshine and eucalyptus!
Who needs to clean?
Fourth apartment (divorce):
There is less to clean though the dust still settles.
I plant narcissus, and tend it with devotion.
Fifth apartment (new love):
I clean, he cleans, we clean together.
Afterwards, we sit on the deck with martinis in jam jars.
Even my heart feels clean.
First house (baby):
I keep house with my thumbnail:
scraping up bits of this and that from sinks and floorboards,
the baby on my hip, flopping and laughing.
This house (middle age):
I fling the door wide, sweep toward the porch,
let the breeze do the rest.
Melinda Clemmons lives in Oakland. Her stories and poems have appeared in The Cimarron Review, Kindred, Daphne Magazine, West Trestle Review, Eclipse, 300 Days of Sun, Cavalier, and The Monthly. She worked for over twenty years in programs serving children and youth in foster care, and is now a freelance writer and editor in the child welfare field. She is a frequent contributor to the online news site The Chronicle of Social Change.
The MadDAMN Butterfly by Ishtar-Lhotus Reiah ZeviarAn Existential Inquiry
The generations of Life...
Whisper like rippling memories,
Colorful concoctions in the mind's eye
Streams of Imagination (Image-a-Nation)
Feel the forms inform (INform) all my mortal sensations.
Am I a person? And what is it to be a person?
Or just a passing Data Transducing Waystation...
For all these wondrous, wonderland, wavelength frequencies?
And what makes me BE all that makes me ME?
Momentums of "Monkey see...Monkey do."
Collect enough Mass to call it CULTURE
And make it something that everyone in the crew must pursue.
And then review... And then renew...
Hmmmmmmmmm...
Meanwhile my many travels have shown me
that we are all ultimately just variations on the same.
Languages CAN translate
And the rest are actually Accessories habitualized
which decorate like a frame...
and can circumstantially be retrained.
(and rearranged or interchanged)
What I want to KNOW is the Soul inside
As we traverse upon this planet,
This incredible Sphere that we all ride.
Each journey weaving and bobbing in the greater cosmic tides;
Sometimes evolving and refining in crucibles of conflict
where our characters are challenged and tried,
and hopefully, eventually... purified.
What I want to LEARN is how to Love & Be Loved,
For this is what True Healthy Conscious Living is made of.
All have been given ample Desire & Breath.
So much to explore + sort through between each Birth and Death.
But I have found so much Hate + so much Fear.
And how it adds up Year after wounded, layering, compounding Year.
Compassion comes from firsthand experience,
But so does an unruly Vengeance.
Ambivalent now
In this Journey...this Quest...
for True Healthy Living.
If I embrace to face my worst,
Can (and will) I then heal INTO my Best?
I've become "The MadDAMN Butterfly"
Seeking safer scenarios where I can momentarily rest
Far Away from whatever treats me like I'm just
some attractive but dangerous, bothersome pest.
And maybe if the Cross Currents allow...
We can all invest in wiser ripple effects
Which will make us all (the) more sustainably,
intergenerationally, favorably blessed.
And isn't that what it's all really about...anyways?
So much more than clique culture + competitives
Or simply impressing and being impressed.
For on this Earth we ALL are guests.
Thank You Divine Infinite Spirit.
Ishtar-Lhotus is a fourth generation Asian American originally from Pasadena, California. Her early years emphasized the eclectic lenses of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and Sesame Street and Disney's "It's A Small World" through mixed church congregations, classrooms, campsites, babysitters, and frequent travels both nationally and globally. Consequently she is rooted in the positive potentials of the Virtual Village. She has a degree in Theology and Liberal Arts from Ambassador College, and continues to pursue interests in Spirituality, Metaphysics and Healing Art modalities. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area she received a certificate in Sound, Voice, Music Healing from CIIS California Institute of Integral Studies. She has also shared in performance as a singer, songwriter, keyboardist, hand drummer, dancer/choreographer, gymnast, cheerleader/group stunts, swimmer/diver, choir alto, storyteller, visual artist/crafter/sewing, character model, movie extra, videomaker + talent. She loves to celebrate the universality of Humanities through the Arts, and so her poetry often processes and echoes a wide range of this human experience.
We are soldiers on
the battlefield
With life light in
our eyes.” Said Sis Sonja
1994 Tribune
calls
Ask,
“How many guns did
you have at the
George Jackson
Free Health clinic?”
How many guns?
Not how many
services were provided?
Not how many
programs were implemented
Not how many
doctors or healthcare workers volunteered.
Not even why we’d
care to put into practice such a program
With so many hospitals in our
community,
No, the reporter
didn’t ask any of that!
She asked how many
guns we had.
Not what illnesses
or diseases most affected
our communities or
how often we provided
Diabetes, sickle
cell and High blood pressure test if at all
Or what was my
field at clinic
Though I could
have told her my interest in certain
Grains to regain
genetic memory
But she was more
interested in,
How many guns we
had
Not who ran the
clinic or what hours and days
of the week we
were open
Or who was our
hero or sheroe to set about such a task
as managing a
clinic or what was assessed
that continues to
sustain community’s health needs today.
No, the reporter
asked
How many guns did
you have?
Late teens, 20
some thing Black women
Volunteered as
interns studied to become
Doctors, nurses
pharmacist, and therapist,
Did homework
between seeing patients
Black Drs. Tolbert
Smalls & Eddy Newsome
Were volunteer
staff physicians
Tried to reverse
curse of drug addictions
Purposefully
placed in neighborhoods
to weaken Black
power base
Developed programs
to neutralize drug threats
Opened methadone
program believed
at that time would
eradicate heroin
Took vital signs,
did sickle cell test,
Tested for
Diabetes,
Kept patient
records
Organized charts,
med room, pharmacy
Gave better care than
Kaiser dared
Held life light in
our eyes,
Books our bullets,
educationally armed
Knowledge our
right to fight through labeled walls
imprisoning us as violent, drug infested gun
carrying,
sex crazed
ignorant jigga boos.
Kwame Ture warned
us,…
”we must be
politically prepared for what is coming.
We have no
choice. The revolution is coming
whether you want
it or not.
How many guns did
we have?
“We were soldiers
on the battlefield with
Life light in our
eyes.” Said Sis. Sonia
Tureeda
Mikell Aka Toreadah, Story Medicine Woman, is an award winning poet, called
activist for Holism, by Native Palestinian.
South African Professor at Cal State Long Beach called her a Woman Of
Truths. Ngugi wa Thiongo renown author
and professor called her the Word Magician. Published nationally and internationally, audience
member said “ Tureeda is hell bent on asserting life!”
Coney Island boardwalk
attraction no skill
point a paint gun
plastic ducks
bulls eye targets
bottles or cans
a young man
called “Shoot the Freak”
dark-skinned, curl hidden, close-shaved
island cousin PR|DR
“He’s a freak! Shoot
that freak!” barker eggs on another
young man pins
gun to
his shoulder aims
abandoned lot strewn with refuse
55 gallon drums
bar-stools garbage cans
pallets piled up
the shooter’s buddies pat his back
without touching him
respect his focus
“You got this bro.”
“Get ‘im.”
I squeeze up to the front
line the “freak” wears a
white Tyvek painter suit
yellow splotches his right shoulder and left kidney
he runs from the can with a radioactive symbol
crouches under the plywood pile on the right
maybe it’s because his shift’s just started
maybe he’s never actually been in the yard
His eyes meet mine in a
flash
shared shame
flintlocks our eyes
salt and iron well in my mouth
He knows
I’m afraid
too
Mimi Gonzalez-Barillas (emerging Noemi Rose) is a romantic feminist who aims to battle the cynicism of this too human world through a poem or a punchline. She's a seasoned comedian who's traveled the world to make audiences laugh including US troops from Iraq to Japan plus national Prides, Womyn's music festivals and cruises and television appearances. Throughout her years on the road, poems emerged among the jokes in her journals and now offers itself as Dream B. She is a candidate for an MFA from Mills College in May 2018 and feels she’s earned a bonus degree and offers her eternal gratitude for all she’s learned from the brilliant and beautiful Oakland literary community.
Marj Swann by Britt Peter
The sturdy farm girl
Things were breaking down
You wanted to work forever
Thought you had to
Drove a car nearly that long
Engaged all the issues
Race relations, wars, missiles
Submarines, working places
Progress and regress within
Various bureaucracies
You knew how big the job was
And how few turnings
Seem to occur
Any volto toward resolution
The neat sonnet
But you were glad
That you had worked toward
The dimensions of fairness
Even in radical boardrooms
You were always clear headed
Insistent and alert
The glad effort; since childhood
Thinking now of the few rides
I gave you to meetings, some meaningful
And the thousands you must have
Sat in on before that
Your daughter Carol, saying
“her indomitable spirit”
Your monumental effort and energy
Sing praise to that!
For Marj Swann (1921-2014)
Britt Peter was born in the North Arm of Indian Valley in 1938. His parents moved to the Bay Area at the start of World War II and he has been living here off and on ever since. Britt has loved poetry in all forms for most of his life, starting with Burl Ives, his grandmother’s songs and Carl Sandburg. Among the artists, poets and musicians he has known and admired are Juan Silva, Jim Gray, Kenneth Rexroth, Carol Tinker, Lloyd J. Reynolds, the Alexander brothers, Jack Spicer, Gene Fowler, Welton Smith, Bob Stephens, Don Cobb, Karl Shapiro, Lee Bartlett, Willie Van Ness, and Jack Gilbert. The richness of their lives and art brushed against him and often matched or fueled his own internal growl. Britt’s poems have appeared in The Intransigent Voice, Blue Collar Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Poetry Now and the California Quarterly He and his son Alexander Peter have filmed and presented over thirty poems on YouTube. Britt can be reached at forestpeter6@hotmail.com
Ghost Jaguars by Mary Mackey
by day you told us the dead crouch in the jungle
arms wrapped around their knees
heads down blind
living in a great blueness
that expands to the horizon
like an infinite ocean
at night they rise
and hunt ghost jaguars
drink the black drink
fuck the trees
we threw your yopo seeds on the ground
and trampled them
begged you to come back to us
but you had already eaten your gods
gone hunting with the dead
seen the sun rise and gone blind
Mary Mackey is the author of 7 collections of poetry including Travelers With No Ticket Home (March Hawk Press, 2014) and Sugar Zone (Marsh Hawk Press 2011), winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence. Mackey’s poems have been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Dennis Nurkse, Ron Hansen, Dennis Schmitz, and Marge Piercy for their beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. Garrison Keillor has featured her poetry four times on his program The Writer’s Almanac. In Fall 2018, Marsh Hawk Press will publish her new collection: The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems by Mary Mackey 1974 to 2018. Mary is also the author of 14 novels, several of which have made The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller Lists. You can read more of her poetry at https://marymackey.com, connect with her on Twitter @MMackeyAuthor, find her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/marymackeywriter/, and sign up to get copies of her quarterly newsletter.
NOOR SALMAN---MANY FOR THE PRICE OF ONE by Garrett Murphy
In the wake of a horrible
tragedy in Orlando
where numbers were murdered
and more were wounded
the Law-and-Orderies,
unable to deliver their brand
of justice to the real assailant
who had slain himself,
somehow realize they actually
had a smorgasbord waiting in the wings---
The Assailant’s widow!
But of course!
Go for the wife!
Remember, she’s Muslim
and of color too.
So it doesn’t matter if she
knew nothing as she claims,
or was battered and bullied
by her husband,
Big deal!
She is automatically
GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION
(and not just with her
husband)!
She gets new batterers to
pummel her,
more bullies to cow her.
Since the real killer
went and deprived them of
their shot at bogus cojones
the wife is ripe for the picking.
Many for the price of one!
And with her
the Law-and-Orderlies get a
bonus
they could never have gotten
with the actual killer:
A WOMAN!
Now they can utilize their
fantasies of dominance,
a better bang for their counterfeit
buck.
© 2017 Garrett Murphy
THE OPPRESSOR RULE BOOK by Garrett Murphy
ATTENTION:
If
you are reading or hearing this
You
have no doubt purchased
The
Oppressor Rule
Book.
Rest
assured,
our
aim is to take you through each
commandment
in
this manual
to
make you achieve
all
your effort’s worth
for
your investment.
We
shall begin the reading
of
the commandments,
which
are as follows:
Oppressors expect kudos from
the ones they oppress.
Oppressors feel good by
making others feel bad.
Oppressors pick symbols
as easy targets
instead of going after
the actual culprits.
Oppressors believe that they
are the salt of existence.
Oppressors believe that only
they
can be right and are shocked
that others can possibly
think
for themselves.
Oppressors always believe
that they are perfect
so how dare we oppose them!
The oppressor’s favorite
hiding
places are:
Tradition,
Popular opinion,
Authority,
Poll numbers
and
Sound bytes.
Oppressors never believe
that
their actions are wrong.
Oppressors never believe
they can ever be wrong.
That is what makes them
oppressors.
WARNING:
Some
oppressors believe
they
can never be oppressors
simply
because the institutions
make
that “impossible!”
On the contrary-----
You
don’t have to be a race
to be an oppressor.
You
don’t have to be a gender
to be an oppressor.
You
don’t have to be an economic state
to be an oppressor.
Don’t
have to be a hierarchy
to be an oppressor.
Don’t
have to be a religion
to be an oppressor.
Or
ideology, size, nationality
or
any other demo
to be an oppressor.
You
just have to oppress
to be an oppressor.
And
not even for twenty-four hours
to be an oppressor.
And
you sure can’t be
BORN
an oppressor.
for
Oppression
is action
plus intention
not
accident of birth.
Oppression
is
Oppression
is
Oppression
is
Oppression.
Therefore,
you
too
can
be
an
oppressor.
And
now the replies from the
makers
and readers of this book.
What
do you have to say?
NO
POPPYCOCK
PREPOSTEROUS
ERRONEOUS
I
DO IT BECAUSE I LOVE YOU
BALONEY
I
DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG
DEAL
WITH IT
IT’S
YOUR FAULT
YOUR PROBLEM
GET
WITH THE PROGRAM
GO
WITH THE FLOW
BECAUSE
I SAID SO
RESPECT
YOUR ELDERS
YOU’RE
JUST JEALOUS
IT’S
ALL IN YOUR MIND
YOU’LL
THANK ME FOR IT SOMEDAY
OBEY
AUTHORITY
MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY
DO
AS I SAY
NEVER
MIND WHAT I DO
IT’S
YOUR DESTINY
IT’S
GENETIC
IN-YOUR-FACE
YOU
JUST MADE IT UP
MADE IT UP
made it up…
(Well,
what
can you expect from a perpetrator
but
a typical oppressor line?)
That
concludes this reading of
the
Oppressor
Rule Book.
See
NEVER for more options.
©
1995 Garrett Murphy
Garrett Murphy, a political and human nature satirist, lives in Oakland, CA, and has written several chapbooks of poetry and prose.
It’s hot! And I’m hungry...
And tent cities increase in size and occurrence while we talk of war, sanctions, deployment and deportation... all at the same time
Whole nations are underwater. Pestilence of our own making sickens survivors. Children and old people curl up and die by the side of the road but we don’t hear their plight for we have our own disasters...our own miseries...so we dismiss their plight as hoax – or nationalism – or patriotism –whatever!
Roads close... Airways fill with static created by hysteria. The face of feigned ignorance turns its traditional blind eye while clichés come home to roost...
Evangelicals lay hands on common thieves. The exorcism aborts far short of success. Frantic...we open the good-book and flip pages.
Meanwhile, dreams and Dreamers ponder their rubble-covered countrymen as they brace themselves for another xenophobic storm surge...
And the people draw closer...
Mapping ways to possibility...
Blazing trails to the future... Pooling and preparing...
It’s the only way!
Untitled
I put the earth to bed
in all her splendor
I turned out the light
and bade her rest
in all her splendor
I turned out the light
and bade her rest
I patted her back
to soothe her tensions
I sang her a love song
for all she's been through
to soothe her tensions
I sang her a love song
for all she's been through
I listened to her sighs
until I couldn't stand it
I fell on my knees
and led the world in prayer
until I couldn't stand it
I fell on my knees
and led the world in prayer
Jeannette DesBoine admits to being “possessed by the love of words and haunted by the spirit of the printed page.” The
PORTRAYALS by Dee Allen.
"Jail-bird"
"Gang-banger''
"Meth-head"
"Predator"
"Wanna-be mob
Buster"
"Knife-swinqinq
Nutter"
"Deserved to get surrounded
By heat-holding cops"
"Deserved to get grounded
With 21 shots"
But
These are portrayals
They want you to know
These are portrayals
They want to show
Based on derogatory
Stereotypes
Grist for the mill
Of tough-on-crime hype
Half the city
Went ballistic
Over cop murder
Sadistic
On paper,
We're statistics
Never get this
Twisted
"Street thug" image
Adds to the tension
The reformed ex-prisoner
Never gets mentioned
Not the smiling sweetheart,
Not the mother's son
They concentrate on "the menace"
"Beast without a gun"
But
These are portrayals
They want you to know
These are portrayals
They want to show
Based on derogatory
Stereotypes
Grist for the mill
Of tough-on-crime hype
He made no sudden moves,
But they made him die
Police and papers
Unify to crucify
A troubled youngster
Suckers had to play God
Racial death
Via interracial death squad
Suppose I got met up & lit up
By the bill?
Would the press call me a thug?
Probably will!
Folks swallowing official
Stories get played!
If you were gunned down tomorrow,
How would you be portrayed?
[ For Mario Woods—1989-2015. ]
Dee Allen. African-Italian performance poet currently based in Oakland, California.
Active on the creative writing & Spoken Word tips since the early 1990s.
Author of 3 books [ Boneyard, Unwritten Law and Stormwater] and 14
anthology appearances [ Poets 1 /: 2014, Feather Floating On The Water,
the first 4 Revolutionary Poets Brigade Books, Rise and Your Golden Sun Still shines, to name several under his figurative belt so far.
Robot Bee Lamentation by Georgette Howington
Behind
sunflowers Robot Bee waits at dusk
as the ancient
ones fly home and glimmers
of sunset are
caught by the looking glass of
their eyes,
gentle creatures, wings beating
softly, bodies
gliding on currents of wind,
heavy with gold
pollen, spilled upon
them after
gripping a locked blossom
and buzzing a
musical note –
The ancient
one’s history dating back 120
million years
ignore Robot Bee, her stiff metal
alloy plastic
body seen through sheer petals.
Robot Bee
yearns to be graceful, gentile,
and spontaneous
yet her programming only
allows her to
pollinate almond blossoms.
She strains to
fly amidst the ancients in
the bending
rustle of garden flowers,
make music,
collect pollen and sip nectar…
but no, she tumbles
mercilessly and the
ancients only
see her as a pitiful but
ominous THING.
And as the
ancients line up to enter their
hive ever so
respectfully of one another
they murmur among
themselves, “this
may be our time
to Bee no more…”
© 8.26.17
Georgette
Howington is a UC Davis California Naturalist of the Mt. Diablo Region. Her poems are published in Iodine, Sleet, Poeming
Pigeons, among others. Her poems won
Honorable Mentions at the North American Women’s Music Festival, Ina Coolbrith
Poetry Contest in 2016 and the Benicia Love Poem Contest 2018. As a horticulturist, her niche is Backyard
Habitat and secondary-cavity nesters.
She is a County Coordinator and the Assistant State Program Director for
the California Bluebird Recovery Program and an activist in the conservation
community in the SF Bay Area for over 30 years.
Georgette is also a published garden and environmental writer.
In the Age of Innocence, by
Michael Caylo-Baradi
I’m
partial to the beauty of the city, each time
you muscle
me with tales mustering us
into a
glow faint as distant stars. We restore tears
in this
sanctum, and use the body to weep,
and sweat
into beads, into rosaries, into sorrows
and
lamentations. We kneel for the
satisfaction
of prayers here, and engorge our
throats
with mutinies against shadows
that curve
dreams into the clarity of street-lights.
Then, we
slang midnights around vowels
and code
them with conditions glammed up for
a
kaleidoscope of addictions. But never
forget I
gave you the power of porn, to help you
find
yourself, balling for roomier positions
in the
neon caves of gluttony. You are still a child
in the
logic of dissonance accruing acres of skin.
You do not
have the grace of animals yet. You
gobble up surrender, the way religions crucify their myths.
This poem first appeared in Eunoia Review.
Michael Caylo-Baradi's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Galway Review, Blue Fifth Review, Blue Print Review, The Common (online), Eclectica, elimae, Eunoia Review, FORTH, Galatea Resurrects, In the Name of the Voice, Ink Sweat & Tears, Local Nomad, MiPOesias, Otoliths, Ou
This poem first appeared in Eunoia Review.
Michael Caylo-Baradi's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Galway Review, Blue Fifth Review, Blue Print Review, The Common (online), Eclectica, elimae, Eunoia Review, FORTH, Galatea Resurrects, In the Name of the Voice, Ink Sweat & Tears, Local Nomad, MiPOesias, Otoliths, Ou
That’s Me in that Song by Jim Barnard
It’s been a long, long story.
I’ve watched you rise to fame,
the concerts no-one came to
Your headaches in the morning,
cheap wine bottles by the bed,
combing the beach for sand-dollars,
‘bout the only kind we had.
You’d throw driftwood in the waves
and Frodo would go crashing through
retrieving them with his lab smile,
good therapy for both of you.
You always loved my body,
my hair long and blowing.
I’d go to work and you to practice,
our love alive and glowing.
Lord, how I know,
that’s me in that song.
My, my, how things do change,
cheap wine to speed and cocaine.
Toronto to Boston to New York,
I’m lucky if I see you on the plane.
Kids screaming and panting over you,
their breasts swinging in your face
as they ask for autographs and more.
Looks like fame done took my place.
You’re a diamond or a clown to them.
Investment or amusement,
surely not a real man.
They don’t know your anthem.
And you don’t either anymore.
Your poetry’s gone from depth to jive
but what to hell, another line of cocaine,
another million plays, you’ll say its live.
and I still remember,
that’s me in that song.
Well its raining. I’m on the road again.
‘Cept this time, I’m the one who’s driving.
These wipers were never worth a damn.
Today they’re worse, I guess I’m crying.
I turn on the radio,
and what a cryin’ shame.
It’s you, and don’t you know you're singing
the song that brought you fame.
That’s how I used to be.
That’s me in that song.
I’m turnin’ off the radio
and snuffin’ out my cigarette.
That’s two more habits
it’s way past time to quit.
It’s not that I don’t love you -
god knows I do.
It’s just I lost myself
in lovin’ you.
That’s me in this song.
Yes, that’s me in this song.
Jim Barnard, a transplant from the California/Mexico borderlands, a social worker/therapist working with and for kids and their families and a union activist by trade, a grandfather of the most precious 2 year old in the world in retirement, and through it all, a poet and short story writer.
The Abyss by Kelliane
Parker
It is a beautiful day, only you aren’t part of any of it
I see you contemplating the water’s edge and you begin to
walk slowly out into the water
I watch at first unconcerned, then I hold my breath and wait
for what I know is coming
You walk slowly, intentionally, not stopping, until you pass
the first and then second break
I start yelling, telling you not to go out any further but
you aren’t listening
You just keep moving farther away from shore, until a large
wave grabs you and pulls you further out
And I’m yelling for help and people jump in and paddle out
And I swim to where you are and you go under just before I
reach you, but you don’t fight it
This strange force pulls me down too. I fight and struggle to get to you
And the bubbles go up toward the light to freedom
But you and I? We
keep going down, down, down into the abyss
Where the light starts to fade and the sound is muffled
I try to reach you, but you just give me that look that
says, "it’s too hard"
And my lungs feel like they are going to burst, but all I
see in you is resignation
But I won’t stop
I can’t stop
I won’t
And the bubbles go up toward the light to freedom
But you and I, we keep going down, down, down into the abyss
Where the light is just a speck at the surface and all I
hear are the sounds of my own struggle
And the rescuers busy themselves in a flurry of activity at
the surface
And I, I negotiate with god, trading everything to bring you
back
And the bubbles go up toward the light to freedom
But you and I, you and I, you and I don’t
Kelliane Parker Works in a hard-tech start up at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and teaches marketing and public relations at the Academy of Art University. She and her partner, Poet E Spoken, are co-founders and co-hosts of My Word Open Mic, in Berkeley. Kelliane is a life-long activist for gender equity, fighting global poverty and an outspoken voice for survivors of sexual assault. More recently, she has begun to tackle stigma around mental illness, wellness and disorders. For more information go to www.mywordopenmic.com.
Those Were Strange Times by Bruce Bagnell
The
giant Golden Buddha serene
in the
dirty room.
Outside,
eroded stone heads
atop
the ancient temple;
beggars
lining the streets
of
lemon grass and tapioca rot
near the
jungle’s edge.
Siren
songs of missiles and ach-ach fire
took
many to death.
We,
the still-flesh,
conquered
by Nam’s disease,
slowly
yielded to Medusa,
our
souls turned to stone
Those
were strange times,
three
dead crashed into the water supply,
and we
talked about stagnant, pukey toilets.
Death’s
intrusion not allowed.
Singha
was our aphrodisiac
in
this remarriage of men to chaos,
the
beer poured into our deep throats
as we
worshiped a glass-cased phallus.
Gilded,
oversize, It waited for offerings behind
the
Takhli Air force Base Officer’s Club bar.
At
night, wasted, two F-4 pilots
rolled
for drinks on a floor of broken bottles –
a
celebration of nihilism in a shapeless feral heap
screaming
at darkness’ rebirth,
cuts
welcome,
an
awakening on the ground.
Awaking
over and over
at
mach one, the plane screaming,
five
G’s in the avoidance turn,
drop-button
hit,
bombs away,
killing little men
on
orders from some remote office.
You
never saw
the Buddha,
the little men,
yourself.
Lifetimes
later that unfortunate first awakening rumble of tears
shoved
down inside, turning to jungle rot.
Can you afford to see
The orange robes
blossom red again?
You
never understood
the big golden belly in the
dirty incense filled temple
but
you see the way of their lives
blown
up again and again.
In the
end the ultimate destruction
was of
you.
We were on
Clair Island,
the mist in
heavy upon the raspberry lane.
Climbing
down there was foxglove in the hedgerows,
the outline
of a building grayed,
fog washed
into half vision.
We stood
looking back to the sea.
A bird in brush
sang police
whistle songs
near an old
quay
limpets showed
high tide way up the rocks,
a seal caught
breath below in the narrow channel out.
You had
better know the rocks
like a fish
to bring a boat in here,
you had
better want this idyllic wet place
with its
steep hills, stone cottages and cows,
with its
jalopy cars, pieces hanging with fence wire,
all supplies
expensive coming off the boat.
We knew of a
husband of a friend who lived here,
inquired of
him to an innkeeper
to learn of
the three-chimney house on yonder hill.
We didn’t go
to see him,
the boat was
leaving in an hour and besides,
she had left
him years ago,
tired of the
smallness of this place,
mostly
nature to look after
unless you
wanted others all up in your business.
I’ll bet the
seals knew him, the cows for sure
and what of
her, did she ever know of him
in the
surprise of his move
to this
misty steep-hilled Island
or was this
another marriage built on myth
to be
dissolved by little things,
a calving at
three AM,
the
wind-driven wet-cold of the place,
bookstores
an hour’s ferry ride away?
This is what
we took back on the boat,
thoughts
about men and women slowly blown away.
We stood on
the deck, wind in our faces.
A seagull
used our ferry’s air-wake to glide behind,
the boat
tolerating the bird, a good marriage this time.
Bruce Bagnell has worked as a
cook, mechanic, and college professor; held various management positions
including running a car dealership; and was a USAF captain in Vietnam. Now
retired, along with writing he is a Poetry Express Berkeley host. He has been
published in OmniVerse, The
Scribbler, The
Round, Blue Lake Review, Crack the Spine, Chaparrel, Oxford Magazine,
Diverse Voices Quarterly, Studio1, Westview Magazine, Zone 3, the Griffin, The
Burningwood Literary Journal, Poetalk, Tower Journal, Glassworks Magazine, The
Alembic, Juked, and
The Cape Rock among other
publications or online postings. His poetry book, “The Self-Expression Spa,” is
just out from Sugartown Publishing.
Long, forceps-like pinchers and large garbage bag in hand,
I walk the perimeter of my block. Sometimes I mutter,
shake my head, sometimes just keep going. Nothing
surprises me now: forlorn condoms, wilted on the grass;
six pack containers; bottles in brown bags, some murky
liquid lingering at the bottom; peel-off advertisements
for carpet cleaning; fruit rinds; photos of a missing pet,
offers of reward; ubiquitous q-tips--the drug users’ aid;
leaflets threatening the end of the world,
the need for repentance; and always,
dog shit, humid-fresh or petrified grey.
Today I round the corner, see
six plastic bottle caps on the sidewalk,
coded red, yellow, green, awkward
to pick up. I pincher each part-way
to the bag, drop some again. Nearby a man
of uncertain years, in knee-worn pants, soiled shirt,
holds six empty plastic bottles without caps.
He watches my grab-hold technique.
When I maneuver the last cap to the bag,
pleased with myself, he steps closer, looks at me,
says, Gracias, places the bottles in my bag.
I say Por nada, both of us formal.
He holds up his hand to stop
my departure, bends to the pavement,
gathers a sodden clump of paper, places it
in my now half-full bag, steps back, gives me
so broad a smile, I must smile back. Gracias, I say.
Por nada, he replies.
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