The Cat

The man lying next to my bed

by Arunansu Banerjee

Arunansu Banerjee, from Kolkata, West Bengal, India, has been writing poetry only a few years. His work appeared on web forums such as Here & Now, Kritya and The Peregrine Muse. He is a teacher by profession, with a degree in physics and a specialty in softwares. His primary love is listening to Indian Classical music. Favorite poets include Charles Bukowski, John Keats, Rabindranath Tagore, E.E.Cummings, Li Po, Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda and Matsuo Basho.


He's obese, double-chinned, middle-aged.
He can mumble a few words as and when
his memory allows him. Met with a mishap
in some early spring in the altitudes of Himalayas,
and lost his locomotion. Days are only numbers now,
so are the nights. He lies composed in a hospital bed
next to mine.

Each day his wife visits him, a frail woman
with a morbid face, and begs him to utter her name.
He observes her in silence. Maybe

all he remembers are the pines and rhododendrons,
the wildflowers and the dictionary of birds in the lap
of ancient moss-ridden rocks.

He takes scarce notice of me, with his eyes glued
to the ceiling fan. Gulps down food, water, medicines
when told. Sleeps when told.

I watch a physiotherapist folding his arms, limbs.
Up and down. Up and down. Then sideways-
left to right, right to left. The man struggles hard

to stir up the patient, to somehow impart a rhythm
to his stiffened existence. The patient mutters at times
the names of places of an earlier world

where morning fog gives way to the splendor
of icy peaks

but then he shudders
as leaves do
amid the shivering tone of autumn wind.

Poison Berries

In answer to Maurice Sendak commentary

by Alex Nodopaka




Conceived in Kiev, Ukraine, Alex Nodopaka first exhibited in Russia then finger-painted in Austria, studied tongue-in-cheek at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco.

Alex says, "Presently I am a full time artist, writer and art critic wishfully wishing to act in a Sundance movie."



that his walking stick is used to hit people
and that publishing is vulgar and cheap
and that he has nothing to be happy about

and that the whole world stinks
and that the lack of culture is depressing
and that he is looking forward to dying

I'm elated to inform you that I'm very happy
to have contributed only intellectual junk to society.
I've been an engineer and an artist of every type

for all of my life. I'm proud to report that seeing
the consumer population go through
withdrawal symptoms has me laughing sardonically

They never should've encouraged me
with gold and silver and bestow upon me

august laurels to celebrate my junking up their world

.

Yellow Leaf

Costermonger

by Robert Florey


Robert says, Robert Florey isn't my real name. Mine is difficult, and clunky. Robert Florey was a more-or-less hack director.
I've mostly been a cardiopulmonary tech, in Los Angeles, but now, as you can see, I'm located in Washington State, and I'm semi-retired.
I think you can find my birthday, March 7th 1945.
I am Robert Florey. I live in Washington State, in the United States.It has a total population of around six million Homo Sapiens.I am one in six million.
I do not write poetry. I write 'pieces', or 'works', or 'pieces of junk poetry'.
It isn't because I'm lowering myself to a bunch of unsophisticated country folk who could not separate a tryptich from a triole from a trochee.
It is because, sadly, I find I cannot write poetry to save my life.
But I hope to entertain here and there.
And I can critique better than I can poetize.
I can at least point out points of difficulty. If they're difficult for me, they're bound to be difficult for others.
I know the rules of the road, I've studied more theories of poetry than I can count.
I tend towards Ezra Pound's ideas on the subject, they make sense to me as an argument, but I've also noticed that the best of the poets generally follow his advice pretty closely.
In my opinion, art is mostly a matter of taste. One cannot write a perfect poem:that is, one that delivers something important or entertaining to every person whoreads or hears it.
One is always writing for a limited audience.
I think that all critique that actually says something, that isn't pap, like,'oh, I liked the third line in the second stanza' or something equally uninformative,is valuable to the author, because it will point out where the author mightinclude more people than she/he has actually done.





Costermonger thou art;
a potato is to thine own self
something to tutor with,
to take to the shake-down
and rantipole, as with a wife, methinks.

The good Lord hath made thee thus,
and the good Lord hast tried thee
and found thee as thick as grass,
eek as a rick of hay,
He is satisfied with his wittles,
be they as they may;
and if perchance, costermonger
you may delay
now and again
with some drab, some Sal upon the canal,
still a good Lord can thole a whitlow
upon one or t'other hand;
not so severe is the sin, to blow
away the chance of a dream in Heaven.

Be then what thou art, costermonger,
and fear not to depart.

Spider Wonderland

Letter to Myself at Age 5

by Daniel J. Flore III


Daniel J. Flore III has volunteered to teach poetry as a rehabilitation tool for people suffering from various forms of mental illness. He was awarded the Florence Kerrigan Memorial Scholarship to the 2009 Philadelphia Writers Conference. He resides in Pennsylvania with his fiamce.





you come to me in my sleep
penetrating the heavy curtain I try to lift during the day
you wiggle your way through my swampy eyes

your tan is an ocean
and sometimes all the earth sinks in it
especially my white stone feet
I watch them submerged in your depths
where there is no sound but your giggle
it is a dragonfly
and its hum is a riddle that I'm the answer to

its at this realization
that I make you leave
to go back to the sun
and the mystery of your wings

Picture in Picture: My Son's Cell Phone Masterpiece

My son, Marc sent me this I-Phone photo of my granddaughter Hannah's reaction to my portrait of her and her sister, Alex. I think it's a masterpiece. I hope no one objects to my posting it.

Daylilly

The Garment

by Fred Longworth

Fred Longworth restores vintage audio components for a living. His poems have appeared in numerous journals including California Quarterly, Comstock Review, Pearl, Rattapallax, Spillway, and Stirring.



The shirt everyone adored
when you slipped it on
finally fell into disrepair, collar ragged
as an elder's voice, pockets torn
like the prospects of the disillusioned.

Still, you kept on showing it off,
even as admirers turned to other darlings,
and shadows that used to part for you
hardened into impenetrable walls.

When I saw you last, rats scampered
at your heels, and moths fluttered
around your head. As for the shirt,
ligatures of vanity dangled like cobwebs.

The South Window

on the death of a dog

by Dunstan Attard


Dunstan Attard was born in 1953 on the Mediterranean island of Malta where he still lives. The significant influence on his life was his father who struggled to come to term with his detachment from his agricultural and deeply religious comminty in Gozo to live in the ambitious environment of a Maltese town. Attard's fascination with island life wrapped in steep history today energises his concept of being. Attard, who's first language is Maltese shares his emotions using the English language which is his second language. He rarely makes an effort to communicate with his reader as his poetry is very often a series of words that surface through his emotions at the time of writing.



dogs die
in bundles of echoes
that come from perfumes
of childhood roses
oozing
the resigned flesh
of silver moons

then comes the resolution
not to adopt another dog,
for too great is the pain
of the passing away

then eerie emptiness
creeps
into cracks of water
spreading the alphabets
with tears
that taste of mint

i call on the old landscape
and gaze on the stillness
of empty stables

by now
the horses have become butterflies,
i empty ships

The Butterfly Leaves the Flower

Ten AM

by Don Schaeffer


Coping is fun
I think as I lounge
in late Spring

while the kitchen
is slowly reborn
and I have made tea

on a slow grill outburner.
We are in a bubble
of Summer.

The insects are kind
I have never heard
so many birds.

One of them is singing,
"we need ya-we need ya-
we need."

When we imagine Jacob wrestling with the Angel

by Guy Kettlehack

Guy appears in a previous piece.



We imagine that the Angel was immensely strong.
What if we are wrong?
What if he was feeble, soft, ethereal –
apt, perhaps, for Paradise, but not at all

equipped for this pragmatic and incarnate world?
What if how the episode unfurled
required Jacob to change strategy
from grapple to caress: so that, as he

lay hands on that mild evanescent flesh,
he quickly comprehended that his task – a fresh
enlightenment suffusing him, below, above –
must change from causing pain to making love?

by Don Schaeffer

The thing that doesn’t want to be

by Guy Kettlehack


Guy says, "I'm not entirely sure why I'm on this site -- someone must have suggested it -- and I'm happy, I suppose, to be 'linkable' in some way or other, but my more conventionally marketable skills are not what I'm pursuing now: I no longer write nonfiction 'self-help' prose (which is I guess would be the category of most of my published books) nor do I book-doctor or edit or consult publishing-wise (which I'd done for many years): I am now that strange useless if happy pariah, a poet -- who's recently added art (to which I've returned after many years) in the form of illustrations for my poems: and playing the violin with some regularity & I hope to some pleasing effect. So I'm not looking for 'work' -- although am always open to peculiar and interesting suggestions for -- ha: well, that's where you may come in. Anyway, I'm here in one form or another. Do with me what you will. "

























The thing that doesn’t want to be
is stuck here for what feels, to it, like an eternity –
which guarantees, of course, it’s not:

but rather merely lots and lots of undesired time.
It’s locked into its vast inarguable premise
that it didn’t ask for this. It is devoid of fear –

which might at least have lent it focus.
One might suppose that its inertia
would result in some repose, but no rest nourishes:

indeed, not one thing flourishes –
not even hatred, fury or psychosis. Sometimes
it daydreams (since it never sleeps)

that some thrombosis might deliver it
from having to exist: but it creeps through
another eon and persists. Its blood runs ruthlessly.

It seems to know that once you’ve come,
you cannot go. At least not for a trillion trillion
trillion trillion trillion trillion years* or so.

Micki

A Visit to the Dead

by Kathleen Vibbert

Kathleen Vibbert (Cass) is retired, studies all forms of poetry, manages low vision, and enjoys traveling and her granddaughter. She was recently a finalist in the Palettes & Quills Chapbook contest judged by Dorianne Laux, was also included in Muscaldine Lines Anthology, OVS and Women Celebrating Women Anthology.


He arrives at her grave daily,
with a vase shaped like eggplant,
blue iris open and lightheaded.
He stands still in the sun,
as if to warm her again,
kneels by her iron bed,
clears dandelion and mud
from the crevice of her name.

His eyes are hard kernals deeply set and dry,
he begins the conversation,
Your peonies have changed from pink
to white this year
the screen door lost its wings
to a summer storm
I miss your flute, it rests
in the case by the armoire
Sis and Johnny have invited me to Memphis;
I believe I’ll go.
Tonight, I’ll pour a spice rum ,
grab my leather jacket, fleece scarf,
we’ll finish this on back porch.

Study of Dried Seeweed

My Eye

Doggy Park

Sunbeam Kids

by Ruth Hill




Ruth Hill was born and educated in upstate New York. She has traveled North America extensively, including two years in Alaska, and five years sailing in BC. She is now a Certified Design Engineer. Over 70 of her first year works have been selected for publication.




Is memory Heaven, then,
where the things we love are stored
like toys in an attic?
Is that where we get to live
when this world is over?
Up in the sunbeam on the worn planks?
We’d better store things up, then,
to play with for eternity.
Is that where our friends are waiting?
…and where we’ll wait for friends?
…to come up and join us,
and play again?
Are regrets, then, the basement dungeon?
…with rat poison and traps, damp and dark,
with electrical shorts and coal dust,
…is that where the druggies hang out,
where the bad kids go?
…to pretend they’re having a good time,
having shut themselves off from the attic,
when it was no longer good enough for them,
or boring,
or they stopped loving us?
Did they just feel left out?
Misunderstood?
Could we have made it better for them?
Dare we ask?
…and risk our safety on their broken stairs?
I’m afraid of them.
I want to climb to comfort,
lock the attic door.