Amit Parmessur - One Poem

O Thamizh Kadavul

(a poem dedicated to Lord Muruga)

O Thamizh Kadavul, you’ve always, always been

the rose enclosed by the mountains of my heart,

just that I’ve often lost myself in a dense forest.

I’ll seek you, my Guruhuha, every Tuesday –

I’ll dwell in that pious cave of devotion and

mould a melodious, holy Tuesday out of every

day. You are someone’s child, just like me,

and this makes me very proud.

I want to pour milk over your grace and

see my sinful soul slide down serpentine rivers.

I’ll repent for forgetting you by clattering

my teeth in painful, perpetual passion, and

washing my eyes with warm and serene tears.

To feel the power of your Arupadaiveedu Temples

I’ll show my feet the most religious paths.

Please, release me from all emotional debts,

physical and abstract diseases

in this polluted place.

Help me to let go of my ego.

Unveil me to myself.

Cleanse me!

Now.

O Thamizh Kadavul, offer me your nectar,

love and wisdom.

Inspire me to heaven.

O Thamizh Kadavul you’ve always been

the rose enclosed by the mountains of my heart,

just that I’ve opened my eyes just now, forever.

BIOGRAPHY: Born in 1983, Amit Parmessur lives with his black cat nowadays. Since 2010, his poems have appeared in more than 100 literary magazines such as Ann Arbor Review, Black-Listed Magazine, Censored Poets, Damazine, Eunoia Review, Front Porch Review, Red Fez, Poetic Medicine, The Short Humour Site and many others. His book on blog Lord Shiva and other poems has also been published by The Camel Saloon. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius. He is an ex-student of Collège du Saint Esprit. As long as he gets published, he knows he is on the right track.

Christopher Kenneth Hanson - One Poem

Telegram Of Telepathy

 

Radio frequencies in our mind:

A transmitter signal lies, weakened-

Now broke, corrupts.

Identical chambered function-

On Illicit boundaries:

Framed

Unknown crippling bandits-

- 

Perception of bizarre static 

Bandwidth output currently

The frequency line, compromised-

code error-

Stop.

Won't be home-

Stop.

Biography: Greetings, how are you? Christopher Kenneth Hanson is an innovative poet from New Jersey. You may find Christopher's art and poetry via the internet by searching additionally for ckhanson81.

Donal Mahoney - One Poem

Serial Killer

 

The puma of the will

has pounced again

 

This time, a doe

too slow through snow

 

The fangs are in

The kill’s the will’s

 

The stomach roars

as it devours 

the blood and gristle

in its lair

 

BIOGRAPHY: Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor and a number of online publications.

Jeffrey Park - One Poem

PENANCE

And so I pull on

the scratchy flesh-colored

underwear

and walk stiff legged

among the citizens in the town square,

stand just by the entrance

to the drugstore

and pretend not to watch

as they emerge

with fragrant purchases

though the herbal aromas tear

at my nostrils.

And so I sit on the bench

in front of the old folks’ home

and don’t feed

the hard-staring bitter pigeons.

And so I

pour a handful of sharp

pebbles into

my best pair of shoes.

Look at me, please, acknowledge

the painful steps I take.

Not painful enough by a long shot

but at least give me an E

for effort.

BIOGRAPHY: Jeffrey Park is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He currently lives in Munich, Germany where he works at a private secondary school, as well as teaching business English to adults. His most recent poems have appeared in Subliminal Interiors, Danse Macabre, Punk Soul Poet, Mobius, Darkling Magazine and elsewhere.

 

Donal Mahoney - One Poem

Sadie Says

Perhaps it’s true

perhaps it's not

we'll never know  

if it's the reason 

Sadie sleeps 

till noon each day

then with her limp 

walks to the beach  

to feed wild cats 

but never a dog

because Sadie says 

everyone knows

cats are poetry

dogs are prose.

BIOGRAPHY:

Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor and a number of online publications.

Stephen Jarrell Williams - One Poem

Forever

So many of us wilting
under our circumstances,

craving
a quiet pause,

flower by the stream
sipping cool water,

our strength coming back
again young...

and for a moment we are there,
no numbering of days,

timeless in the sun,
no questioning heaven,

falling into the future
beginning,

we bloom forever.

BIOGRAPHY: Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to stay up all night and write with lightning bolts until they fizzle down behind the dark horizon.  He is the editor of Dead Snakes at http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/ and UFO Gigolo at http://ufogigolo.blogspot.com/

Felino A. Soriano - One Poem

Of evening this horizonal mantle

Trance

(maintain unable
            meander ameliorated | preference of the syntax

held within hand of the colder climate, corporeal
appreciation this
                                    untangled verb of solid shine with mosaic)

with miscellany
unbroken         guidance of eloping light
lifting
            eyed
ingurgitation these
                                                imagistic motions
gladden replacement behavioral function these

orchestrations of naturalized


                                                                                    communication

Amid

opacity’s conviction collating numerous hours with
                        asterisks decorating hidden

cells
circulating
saturating

revised fulcrums this

isolated memory gradating prisms

Lamentation

light—

burgeoned       becoming         unbroken
undulating       syzygy             paralleled

final apopemptic more so fleeting aggregation

alliance in the vocal lunation

cultivating spectral

deliberation

BIOGRAPHY: Felino A. Soriano has authored 50 collections of poetry, including Analyzed Depictions (white sky books) and Intentions of Aligned Demarcations (Desperanto, 2011).  He publishes the online endeavors Counterexample Poetics and Differentia Press.  His work finds foundation in philosophical studies and connection to various idioms of jazz music.  He lives in California with his wife and family and is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities.  For further information, please visit www.felinoasoriano.info

Bryan Murphy - One Poem

In Palestra

Relentless mosquitoes work out on us

as we sweat to choreograph a miracle:

reversing atrophy, forestalling entropy.

Supple beauties stretch for an alternative

to anorexia as enhancement of allure;

veterans of Balkan peace-keeping

flex fingers to set a punch-bag swinging;

a hopeful hunter of a Syrian siren

labours to give her something solid

to cling to in the wreckage.

In confraternity of mindless exertion,

we strive to recruit forgotten muscles,

sweep free our minds, enter the nirvana

of this hour leased from the world outside. 

Biography: Bryan Murphy is a former language teacher and translator who currently lives in Turin, Italy. Places that have hosted his work range from the Brighton Evening Argus to the Venice Biennale.

Stephen Jarrell Williams - One Poem

SOMEWHERE
 

I see
the last of them
climbing over the mountaintops

searching for a better place

sun setting
lavender clouds

hopefully
a safer world within the distance

some heaven waiting
somewhere

a harvest time
daily

singing from the many
houses knitted in the green countryside...

Biography: Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to stay up all night and write with lightning bolts until they fizzle down behind the dark horizon.  He is the editor of Dead Snakes at http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/.

Neil Ellman - Three Poems

Puppet Theater
(after the painting by Paul Klee)

We are puppets
moved by strings
whichever way
the puppeteer
turns his hand
herky jerky
papier mâché
we obey
his silent words.

Cyclops
(after the painting by William Baziotes)

From its enclosure
at the zoo
the rhinoceros
wonders
why the one-eyed man
has lost his eye
and still can see
while the one-eyed man
wonders
why the rhinoceros
has a single horn
and still can fight
and even mate
with other creatures
having two.

Hurrah for the Red, White and Blue 
(after the lithograph by Sam Francis)

What a country
It must be
to have a flag
frayed at the edges
perhaps
red and white
where blue
should be
in so few shapes
no states
no stars or stripes—
unfurl it
to the wind
and watch it fly.

Biography: Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey.  His poems, many of them ekphrastic, appear in numerous international print and online journals, including Alba, Anastomoo, Crack the Spine, Counterexample Poetics, Clutching at Straws, Carcinogenic Poetry, ditch, Dead Snakes, Indigo Rising and Otoliths, plus more than a hundred others.  His eighth chapbook, Convergence and Conversion, is due out shortly from The Knives, Forks and Spoons Press

Donal Mahoney - One Poem

Lifts Her Like A Chalice

 

The weekday Mass at 6 a.m.

brings the old folks out 

from bungalows 

around the church.

They move like caterpillars  

down sidewalks, 

some with canes, 

some on walkers. 

Father Doyle says the Mass 

and then goes back to the rectory 

to care for his mother 

who cannot move or speak 

because of a stroke.

And every Sunday at noon 

when the church is full, 

Father Doyle, in full vestments, 

wheels his mother

in a lump

down the middle aisle

and lifts her like a chalice 

and places her in the front pew  

before he ascends to the altar.

Sometimes at night,

when his mother's asleep, 

Father Doyle comes back to the Church 

and rehearses in the dark 

three hymns she long ago 

asked him to sing at her funeral.

He practices the hymns 

because the doctor said  

she could go at any time.

When that time comes,

he doesn't want to miss a note.

The last thing she ever said was 

"Son, I'll be listening."

 

Biography: Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor as well as a number of online publications.