April 2012

POETRY

PUJA 

The priest throws holy water on the crowd
as we pray among the scent of incense smoke.
The moon hears a heavy bell on the temple porch.
Hinduism is not a religion, it is a philosophy.

In the worshipping room, Kali goddess of black death
looks on, tongue out, stiff as stone, blood-stained.
Like art galleries, more worship rooms in adjacent places
praise Ganesha, others.  I wish to be a chameleon.  But

this is her week: the moon and sun alike chant
to the mother goddess wife of Siva in all her forms.
We consume her blessings from banana leaf plates and clay cups.
Hinduism is not a religion, it is a way of life.

Performers dance and sing and romp, all under a tented stage,
all dedicated to Durga, As we surround the performers
and flail around with the dancers we witness the art
of flower giving, priest worshipping, food offerings, tabla drumming.

In its final act the crowd of thousands parades through black veins
toward the deified river, holding high wax icons of divine motherhood,
the sun beating down hard, to where it dunks its idols
into waxing waters polluted with borne illnesses.

Joshua Gray lives just outside Washington DC with my wife and two boys and is the DC Poetry Examiner for Examiner.com as well as Co-Chair of his local arts and humanities commission and a Board member for The Word Works. His book Beowulf: A Verse Adaptation With Young Readers In Mind was published by Zouch Six Shilling Press earlier this year.


Dumb Questions

In every zombie movie
From Zombie Lake to
Children Shouldn’t Play
With Dead Things,
The living wonder
What motivates the undead
To clamor for human flesh,
As if the undead are method
Actors in a bad Fellini movie.

In one movie a coroner
Asks the torso
Of a bound zombie woman
Why she lusts for brains.

Seems like a stupid question
To ask someone
Who wanted to eat your brains

Thomas Vultonburg is a published poet and creator and can be found at Zombie Logic Press- formed by poet, actor, screenwriter, bloggist, and founder of the Zombie Party (Z) in 1997, to seek out and publish the most original, innovative and powerful poetry being written. Many of his books are listed for sale on his ZLP site.


End of Days

Twenty three thousand
seven hundred
and twenty five days
gone.

Seven thousand, three
hundred days
left.

More or less

The forever horizon
is lifting its veil
only to reflect
the end in its eyes.

Too soon

Like a starved child,
I devour the golden
honey and nectar
of life in hope its sweet
contentment will fill my insatiable
soul

Until the end of days.

Lois Losyk occasionally opens the basement door and gives light to her dark side. Her works have been published in Greensboro’s News & Record, and Fire & Chocolate poetry anthology.


Silent Tears

Silent tears run down my face
Silent tears that cleanse and heal
My tortured soul

Silent tears run down my face
Silent tears that that sting and burn
Like acid upon my broken heart

Raeanne Furfaro lives and writes in Anchorage, Ak. She has been writing since age 17, but has never published outside of personal sites. Raeanne is working on a children’s book and a novel. She writes poetry as it speaks to her.  


Frankenstein’s Monster

Sewn, stitched, bolted
into another life
parts of criminals and saints
a heart unwired
brain electrified in lightning dreams
he wakes again
born new , womb-torn
Prometheus in flames
from flesh and clay
creation, annihilation
the tragedy of rage
relentlessly pursued—
he is a man like you and me
like us he is a man

in pain.

Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey.  His poems appear internationally in more than 120 print and online journals, including Alba, Bolts of Silk, Counterexample Poetics, ditch, Indigo Rising, Otoliths, Spark and vox poetica , among others


Steel

I am reluctant to record these events
If no log exists
it should be easier
to allow it not to imprint
no visible layers
no sediment to tell a tale
no tale to tell
no tattling
no more battling
make it stop
don´t speak anymore
hush hush baby
push push
lose the will
pause the reel
better still, stop this projection
it's upside down
out in the hall
I hear the shackles
banging

Mercedes Fonseca (@CedeRed) is a UK-based poet with an MA in Creative Writing. She has performed poetry at events for Reverberate, speak easy and Bad Language MCR. Her work has been published by Bad Language and Fatzine. CedeRed’s new material will feature in April 2012 edition of PoV Magazine.


The Return                                                                                                       

His socks are neatly stacked                                                                                
Next to the ironed handkerchiefs
Under her skin the boil festers.

His dinner is served on
Their wedding china
The walls of her heart hang black with mold.

His carpets swept clean
Tables dusted, plants watered
Her marrow is bloody with anger.

His kisses returned
Sweetly
Under smooth lips are teeth of razored steel.

Cynthia Eddy lives and writes on the eastern shore of Virginia.   The quiet village sustains her sense of neighbor and belonging.   She holds a BA in Art History. Poetry creates a chord between reader and poet.   That chord remains long after the reading.   Every poem reaches into the reader and brings forth an understanding, a moment of ‘I’ve been there’. She has been published in Third Wednesday, Eunoia Review and in Emerge Literary Journal.


Bargain

Oh, I can lend you a heart
if you're looking.  One
drawn by a small hand.  One
that dissolves.  It would fall
apart in soft pieces as it
passed from my grip
to yours at the hand-off,
poisoned by ink.

Or I could find one that lives.
One that shudders in ice
beneath the locked lid
of a Coleman cooler.

A fresher one, maybe.
One that could sing and
beat time like caged wings
that beg for open air,
that beat when you come near,
even after I've covered the cage
with a dark cloth for the night
and for the day
and for the days to come.

Megan Kellerman is a recent graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson’s undergraduate Creative Writing program. Her work has appeared in Scribblers, Catfish Creek, and is forthcoming in Emerge. She received the Andonis Decavalles Poetry Scholarship twice, as well as an MFA Award for Excellence in her major at FDU.


 


HAIKU

End

End of days
world lies in ruin
hope flees all

Carrie Ann Golden is a poet, habitual daydreamer and cross-genre writer. You can find her YA web serial fiction and horror at carrieanngolden71


Unconditional

Unconditional
Didn't include zombie you
Should have stayed human

Jeremy Engdahl-Johnson's fiction has been published In Spitball, Writer's Billboard, and Blue Moon. His nonfiction has been published in Seattle Weekly, Northwest Runner, and Computerworld. He has written two novels. His zombie activity is documented at Zombielanche.com .


PROSE

Helpless

The square lies under a motionless sky the color of scabs. People dot the grassy concrete, a disconnect in their expressions, their postures suggestive of accident victims. Their clothes, if they have clothes, are beyond soiled. Seeing these things, I feel absolutely nothing.

A woman enters from out of view, contrasting her surroundings. I watch her approach one of the indigents, a man. His face is drawn and infected, and somehow familiar.

I want to warn the woman away, but something in me forbids it. So I watch. I watch her go to him, saying things I cannot hear. I watch her uncertain walk; her conflicted thoughts, visible in her body. I watch her near, reconsider, and then kneel to the man in a gesture of aid. Finally, I watch him rise up and gather her in his arms, biting. A mute shrieking as he feasts on her face, leaving her a limp, hemorrhaged horror. I watch this, too, and am helpless to interfere.

Helpless, even though the man is me.

When the woman offers no more blood, I wipe my wet face and lie back down, with the others.

This has been happening more and more. Something is wrong.

A. A. Garrison- His short fiction has appeared in various magazines, anthologies, and web journals, most recently Something Wicked , Kaleidotrope , and the Pseudopod horror webcast.


At 23rd and First

She panthers in front of my car,
her one kitten a tumbleweed behind.

I brake sudden, intersection
of Curly's and Bedrock Bars.

Ghostly slips, cat and kitten dash
towards the empty VFW lot,
everybody finished with
their whiskey and waters.

I pull over to curb.
Bars' lights slick
and ooze neon tears
over and over my vehicle,
lonely ten pm rainbow.

Mother cat pauses, a pine shrub
bedded in cedar chips, the city's
small gentrified coup,
and the kitten burrows in.

I get out of my car, the scent
of Jim's Short-Order-Egg-Scramble
(steamy, greased windows)
walk over and sit, the lot pavement
cold as space.

When cat turns she sees me,
mirrors, plumps herself under
someone's forgotten truck,
waits with golden eyes.

I realize I'm not the answer
to a stray with a mission.

From the car again I watch her.

She slowly pads over to the spot I was,
crouches, sniffs, holds herself there
as if to reclaim this interruption.

After a moment she moves
across the street, shadows the edge,
the pale, faux marble bank building
and disappears, probably to the
train yards rich with their
infinite stars of grain.

The kitten is quiet and unmoving
as I approach.  But shakes the bush,
a seed rattling inside a gourd,
mewing and climbing branches
away from my voice.

Not for her mother to be surprised
by again, supper for them both
buttoned in her mouth,
I drive away this time.

My car's tires find all
water-filled potholes, firework
streetlights' reflection,
loosen glittered asphalt,
diamond galaxies toward home.

Liz Minette has had poems published in fwriction :  a review, Literary Juice, Abbey, Nerve Cowboy, Earth's Daughters among others.  She has been writing for about 10 years or so and is working on a chapbook of poems.  She lives in Esko, Minnesota, near Lake Superior.

 

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