The Python

Not a Bad Way to Begin a Morning

by Guy Kettlehack

Guy Kettelhack is the author and coauthor of numerous nonfiction books. He's currently an artist and a poet. He lives in New York City.

The thing, we think, to do with puzzles
is to nuzzle them affectionately,
wake them up at dawn while nobody

has anything much on – kiss their little lips
and let them know whatever slips
between you will be reconnoitered with

in privacy. Soon whatever you had
thought the point was to pursue will lose
its primacy and be replaced by something

like a clue – gently, without warning,
stretching its accoutrements, and yawning.
Not a bad way to begin a morning.

What I’d Call a ‘Myself’

by Guy Kettlehack

First Person slips off the shelf.
Keeps missing whatever I’d call a ‘myself.’

Second might do,
through its sneaky ambiguous usage of ‘you.’

‘One’ has a sort of a Jamesian tone,
but it sits rather too much aloofly alone.

Personal pronouns keep missing the bus:
they only report what purports to be ‘us.’

So I tried to look ‘I’ in the eye.
I drew what I saw in the mirror. Oh my.

Something looks back from the page.
Quiet, polite – but in covert outrage.

Wet Flagstone

"Samuel" a post adolescent novella

I've enlarged my post adolescent novella, "Samuel." It's in press at Amazon-Kindle. I hope to have it out in paperback shortly.

smile with narrow evil eyes

by Tom Prime
resident post-beat poet



I do feel better- tag the tarred
esoteric goulash- bitter monkey onions

Hero sham there in the tallow candle wax
among the dust
each feathered crocus
onomatopoeia
so many empty hopes in

dreams of large, veiny branches

not positive
or unhappy
just pain painted white

here in the shame belly
a dignified toad eye smile receptacle

against all the natural laws
physics like icicle chains
in eskimo politically correct lobotomy rainbow

- smile with narrow evil eyes