Neil Ellman - Three Poems

Echo of a Scream 
(after the painting by David Alfaro Siqueiros)

Hunger creates its own echoes
children without fathers
anarchic screams

there are no full bellies
in this part of Hell
no choice

as if the cries
of the infants
will harvest the land

as if the innocent
will join the Trinity
In peace—

hunger breeds
like echoing pleas
on a shrieking face.

Pink Angels 
(after the painting by Willem de Kooning)

Pink angels shaped from flesh
they wonder
at the wonder of desire

in their boudoirs
no resemblance of wings
old habits heaped in piles

tongues explore
each other’s mouth

secret crevices

dare they speak
    awakening pink?

dare they swallow
    their lascivious words?

Quartzeat 
(after the painting by Cy Twombly)

This
arrogance of line
stretching from the Pleistocene

presumptive
solitary
speaking in tongues

meandering

the gods
reaching down
touch the earth with

feeble strokes  
tentative

half man
whispering back
babel scratches/artifacts of sound

stroke it
before it disappears
with the curve of any word.

Arianna Deligianni - One Poem

Grace

 

Her ginger curls in the Sun,

flames on fire.

Her freckles,

spatters of molten 

chocolate,

on her milky face.

Grace

was her name.

Her ember eyes,

searching,

on the beach,

her hands,

so small and tender

building castles,

home to her dreams

that came not to pass.

I remember her,

as she would want me to.

A little princess,

with Muzzy in her hands...

God, she'd never let that teddy go...

Forever

she will hold

innocence

and bliss,

that I 

no longer behold.

Forever shining

that smile on her face,

Grace

was her name.

 

John Pursch - One Poem

Clarity

Checking grocery mounds for dog eruptions,
a mental amplitude infers empty, plangent style
where quick, rhapsodic format clearly obtains,
yielding preening and the wielding
of a carton's foolish scourge.

Graven eyes explore
the tarmac's torrential potency,
arriving with families
of sawed-off logical nebbishes.

Accumulation continues,
unaware of frozen cataracts,
droplets of terminal feast,
and the long-sought smearing
of capital bounty.

Exponential vials, tails
trimming sand pits to quibbles,
emotional amber affixed to germinal flux,
occasional doves on a bedrock totem
of towering cumuli...

What could clarity be,
effaced and lambent
in this thundering?

Jason E. Hodges - One Poem

Stepping From Photos

The day before yesterday’s yesterday
I gazed upon photos of you
In a place I wished I could have gone

Climbed into a shot captured by the click of a button through the eye of a lens

Your image frozen in the happiest of times
Oh how I yearned for a better tomorrow, a better today
One without the turmoil that has wrapped itself around me
Stepping into your photos was my only escape
Escape from the hospitals with their dim gray lighting and square tiled floors
With hallways of never ending paces from people wondering if they’ll ever go home
Escape from the watching of shadows spider web slowly over buildings
As the sun falls on the backside of the city
Escape from the lights of the night coming alive in the in the skyline
Through the pane glass I stared at another day passed
Another bill stacked
Oh how I wished for something to change
For an angel to fall from the sky or leap from the photos I clung to
But nothing falls to the needing or jumps to the wanting
At least this is what we are thought to believe
Until the inconceivable happens
You stepped from the photos with my last bit of hope
An angel from the snapshots of time
It was like I reached up in a star filled sky and pulled down the dream I was dreaming
The need I was needing
For sometimes hope keeps itself hidden till just the right moment
Unseen to the unfocused, like the sky-colors bending after the storm
Hidden till all of the badness is gone the rainbow will always emerge
Like a jazz player blowing his horn through the smoke filled bar
Seeing waves of music move just in front of him for the first time
For the smoke was the canvas he needed to see what he had felt for years
Whispers of wishes coming true in the pages of my life

Bobbi Sinha-Morey - Three Poems

The Softness Of Life

In the softness of
life it's her smile
that keeps the flow
of mystery, the small
tremors of love sent
through her brief,
undeniable selves.
In the morning light
she is like a crystal
born of dreams and
every hour, every
day, she begins to
sprout new leaves.
Wrapped in the
petalled chaos of
sheets she is lit by
the sun like a gold
Venetian halo.
Her world is a gift
of hope untouched
by any dark thoughts
that may coalesce,
and her future has
a voice of its own,
an echo of serene
words inside of her.

Mirror Of Dreams

In my mirror of
dreams I see you
again leaning on
hope, the pale irises
of your eyes once
reflecting the torn
skies of the mind
and, when I listen
to you speak I hear
your voice, its humble
tone telling me you
won't be staying for
very long. Yet now
that you are out of
reach your weary
features lay tattooed
in my memory, and
feeling your absence,
there is an empty
space in a soundless
room. A few seconds
of sunlight are enough
for today, and loneliness
is such an invisible door.
Seldom do you pass
this way.

Petals Of Water

After her swim she
wipes petals of water
from her skin, a wet,
cool pleasure lifting
her burden of joy as
brightness brushes
the earth and idyllic
home she lives in.
Her thoughts converse
with the flowering muse
in her mind, a dialogue
without falsity. Words
spring up through her
throat, out past her
definitive lips. A sassy
speech of love. Crushed
roses spill from her bowl
of milk glass; she rubs
their scent on her finger-
tips. Her voice trembles
like tiny wings, and she
raises her hands in prayer
up to the dying sun.

Sarah E. White - Two Poems

The Crash

The staggered stumble that is my life
How did I ever land here?
I have no memory of this journey
Only the crash of the landing
My body is still aching from the fall
The bruises are fresh
They have yet to fade
The healing goes slowly
When you’re working through the pain
Rebuilding a life from the remnants of the past
The wreckage lays scattered
Cast about carelessly
All the little pieces of nothing
Now must be dealt with
Little pieces of memories
Things I don’t recall
Useless clues to how I landed here
An island of wreckage
Of lost history
Still feeling the bruises that I don’t remember receiving
I have stumbled to a stop
Crashed here alone
Forced to heal
Before staggering on
To the chaos of my life

Words for the Tasting

Sometimes I just don’t feel like talking
Speaking the words is just an impossibility
I am just unable to say them
Unable to hear them as they spew from my mouth
The words sting my tongue
As they move past my teeth
As they move past my lips
I bite down and clench my jaw on them
Holding them back a bit longer
Words like hot lava simmer in my throat
Those bitter words swallowed whole and simmer there
Words burn tears through my eyes
Singeing my cheeks
Burning holes in my pillow
If only I could speak the words somehow
If they tasted better
If they sounded better
Maybe I could say them
If only I could put them together
To express my thoughts
But I can’t
It hurts
Hurts like hell
Tears at my seams, barely holding together
These words are of no use
They fall on deaf ears
So I bite down and swallow them whole
Again