Christopher Woods: Leaving a Kiss

A woman who says she was so overcome with passion for a valuable painting on display in France has been charged with criminal damage after kissing it. - BBC NEWS

what will become you, of me?

something as brief as a kiss

has united us. Conspirators.

there are rules about me -

lines and brushstrokes

colour, canvas, vision.

but the only lines I think

about are the canvas edges,

the space between me and

those who come to see,

worship or dismiss, world of voyeurs.

you brought me passion,

something I have never known.

out of all those in the museum,

you alone stepped forward.

you will suffer consequences

for crossing another line,

for making me almost human.

Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Chappell Hill, Texas. His poetry collection, Maybe Birds Would Carry It Away, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. His photographs can be seen in his galleries: https://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/f861509283

M.J. Arcangelini: Privilege

The richest men alive have collaborated,
even though it went against their instincts,
to retain a small army of specially trained
technical engineers assigned to completely
redesign the common sewing needle.
 
They have also assembled an expensive
selection of geneticists, biologists, and
zoologists assigning them the very daunting
task of developing a method to re-combine
DNA and create a very tiny living camel.
 
In this way, the billionaires hope to pass
the diminutive camel through the much
enlarged eye of the newly engineered
needle and thereby purchase their way into
heaven, as they are certain God intended.
 
 
M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania. He has resided in northern California since 1979. His work has been published in many magazines, online journals, over a dozen anthologies, & 6 collections, the most recent of which is “Pawning My Sins” from Luchador Press, 2022. YouTube channel

Miriam Sagan: Honolulu Fracture

The score for birdsong was asemic.

The narcissist was lonely in the rain.

The shopping cart lady lived nowhere but also inside the loop of memory.

On the Pacific rim in drizzle I bought mochi ice cream and Kim Chee.

I said “I love you” and kissed you standing on the street corner.

Without the palm tree there would be no cuneiform.

Sad udon steamed in broth were actually quite tasty.

I drank coffee as if I was trying to remember everything at once.

What have I forgotten? My To Do list, my childhood, my shoes outside the door.

Who else did I kiss on a wet street corner?

How many lines did I set out to write?

Was I a Picasso or a Frieda Kahlo looking for my twin in a mirror?

You can see the gap in the volcanos between skyscrapers when the clouds clear.

Miriam Sagan's books include Castaway (Red Mountain, 2023) and Border Line (Cholla Needles, 2023). Her poetry was set to music for the Santa Fe Women's Chorus, incised on stoneware for two haiku pathways, and projected as video inside an abandoned building during the pandemic under the auspices of Vital Spaces, New Mexico.

Robert Okaji: I’ll Have the Body Sandwich, and Hold the “Me,” Please

The story of my life, as they say. Being that fleshy lump

held between cold steel and granite, blue flame and skillet,

or that subject of inexpert experimentation in a sterile

bedroom funded by military contractors or accounting miracles,

I am no longer startled by my irrelevance to the economy.

I can assemble IKEA furniture, manipulate words, slice

salami, calculate volume in terms of books, chain saw

trees, fabricate shelving, repair PVC, curse in three languages,

prepare quiche from scratch and compose poetry (sometimes

simultaneously), to mention just a few skills, and all with great

humility, and, alas, no pay. In a previous life, I administered,

tended budgets, said "no." Now, I want to say "yes," but no one

will listen. My in-box is littered with ads for portable

oxygen, leaf guards for gutters, herpes remedies and geriatric

dating services, with a few funeral home missives and phishing

expeditions thrown in. I've been sized and assigned to a particular

box targeting a certain demographic which may or may not

be mine. The story of my life, as they say. Whoever they are.

Robert Okaji is a half-Japanese Texan living in Indiana. His most recent chapbook, Buddha’s Not Talking, won the 2022 Slipstream Annual Chapbook competition, and his work has appeared in such publications as Shō Poetry Journal, Only Poems, and Big Windows Review, among others. 

Sam Smith: Mock Sonnet 17

This know-all, kill-all countryman,

mud-spattered dog and gun, drove

one-armed with his belly in his lap,

the pick-up cutting corners and regularly

veering across the road. (It has long been

accepted that human beings cease to be

human once behind the wheel of a vehicle,

become but another cretinous part

of the machine.) This grunt and moan countryman,

sour-faced wouldn't be told, knew all about here,

every dip and bend; but not that another, like him,

was on that same road that day and heading

his way. The pair became a joint funeral notice

sellotaped to the usual village lamp-posts.

Sam Smith is editor of The Journal (once 'of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry'). Author of several novels and collections of poetry - samsmithbooks.weebly.com - he presently lives in Blaengarw, South Wales, and blogs at thesamsmithcom.wordpress.com

Marianne Brems: Tangles of Loss

She clears away crumbs,

brings in the mail,

moves the hose around the yard.

These are not things that fold

under the insistence of grief.

They merely proceed

to punctuate time and matter.

 

I imagine wrinkles of angst

seeping from her fingertips

as I watch her feed the dog.

Then her hand quickly smooths

the top of his head.

Married forty-one years,

his unexpected end so sudden.

It may be that lifting large boxes

while packing up the house

pushes back against

tangles of her loss.

I must remember not to open with,

How are you?

each time I see her.

 

(First published in Mosaic Art & Literature Journal, June 2022)

Marianne Brems is the author of three poetry chapbooks, the most recent, In Its Own Time (2023). Her full length collection Stepping Stones is forthcoming in 2024.  Her poems have also appeared in literary journals including The Bluebird Word, Front Porch Review, Remington Review, and Green Ink Poetry. She lives, cycles, and swims in Northern California. Website: www.mariannebrems.com

Patrick Chapman: Departure

Atonal city petered out, a dying machine

dismantled on the Hudson, its heartbeat

a pocket of corrupted arias. Towers grew

glass coral, their panes refracting a trillion

calumnies across the plazas laid down

without purpose. In degraded circuits

abandoned temples had fallen to ruin

like ancient shopping malls. In the husk

of a Starbucks I found a congregation

of obsoletes, masked faces hard as life.

They moved in unison, an eerie disco,

eyes fixed on glitching screens forever

looping desolate commercials, art for

the bewildered. Politics, erectile tissue

paper, vulvic mineral water, Walmart

euthanasia. ‘I am not,’ muttered Einar,

a creature, ‘your Ottoman automaton.’

I said I understood. I bid him farewell

as I left. In my earbuds came a funeral

of brass. The Knee Plays had resumed.

Footnote: 'Einar' and 'The Knee Plays' appear in the title poem of Chapman's first collection, Jazztown (Dublin, Raven Arts Press, 1991). 'Departure' is a follow-up to that poem.

Patrick Chapman's first collection, Jazztown, appeared in 1991. His latest, The Following Year, is published by Salmon in 2024.

Jim Murdoch: Endothermic Entropy

Endothermic processes embrace the paradox of entropy's dance, as the absorption of warmth unravels order, giving birth to the beautiful chaos of transformation – Original quote generated by OpenAI's GPT-3.5-Turbo language model

 

Remembering is a bad idea.

Every time you do

you remember a little less

and a little wrong.

 

Memories are brittle

and need to be

handled with care.

Better yet, not at all.

 

We memorise things piecemeal:

dribs and drabs and odds and ends.

Recollection is largely reassembly.

But like doing a jigsaw made of ice.

Jim Murdoch lives down the road from where they filmed Gregory’s Girl which, for some reason, pleases him no end. He’s been writing poetry for fifty years for which he blames Larkin. Who probably blamed Hardy. Jim has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels.

Mileva Anastasiadou: Midwinter Daydream

There is light my love, but also, there is darkness here, sometimes.

And sometimes the light is blinding, and when it fades out,

the dark is darker, scarier because we’re used to light.

We feed on love, we’re high on dreams and lust and each other,

we’re fucking bright,

we shine and glow, and when days grow dark,

they find us unprepared, and we do nothing,

but stand still and wait,

we say, this too shall pass,

because darkness doesn’t last long, and light always wins.

There is light my love, but also, there is darkness here, sometimes.

And life isn’t as whimsical as it’s supposed to be in fairy tales,

we are the jokers, the tricksters, we’re Puck’s little helpers,

and when death comes to claim life,

he finds us unprepared, and we do nothing,

but stay silent and mourn,

we say, this too shall pass,

only it doesn’t,

because we don’t know how to fight death and we don’t know how to die.

There is light my love, but also, there is darkness here, sometimes.

And sometimes darkness comes fast, disguised in new forms and old shapes,

dressed in new ideas and old habits,

it comes in bursts, in floods and heatwaves, in failures and letdowns,

and finds us unprepared,

and we slip gently into that good night,

we slowly die,

because we don’t know how to fight darkness or how to rage against the dying of hope.

There is darkness my love, because we did nothing when lights went out,

because we danced and danced and danced like ballerinas,

like the swans in the lake, like sugarplum fairies,

we mixed it all up, but the cake didn't rise,

we said, this too shall pass,

only it didn’t,

we failed at dancing, cooking, playing, loving,

and life is the exact opposite of a midsummer night’s dream,

life isn’t a carefree joyride, it’s sad and cold and hard,

and Oberon, the king of fairies, still lives here somewhere,

but there are no forests anymore and he can’t find his way home,

he’s lost, defeated, dying,

and we are dark particles now,

because we swallowed, we swallowed, we swallowed,

and we postponed war until it was too late to win,

we daydream about summer,

because our hearts remember what light feels like,

but our eyes, our bodies, don’t.

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of "We Fade With Time" by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work can be found in many journals, such as the Chestnut Review, New World Writing, Milk Candy Review, the Bureau Dispatch, and others.

Ray Givans: Casualty

Somnolent, in the heat and rhythmic tick of the wall clock, it seems hours

before I am invited to cross the stream between waiting room

and Triage. The nurse commandeers a wastepaper basket as makeshift doorstop,

yet a wheelchair, pushed and hauled, barely makes it through.

Her assessment room has become a thoroughfare

as doctors and nurses swoop in and out, scooping up handfuls of papers,

opening and slamming shut drug cabinets.

Height? Weight? …. The Triage nurse disappears

into the adjoining control room, spot-lighted from a blue ceiling.

Doctors align x-rays, display on a screen, scrutinize the radiographer’s handiwork,

then bluster away to attend to multitudes. There are no islands of calm here,

just the fretwork of trolleys, patients folded into available spaces.

A woman on the other side of me engages. Here, twenty-four hours

she wears the forlorn look of a refugee set down on a foreign beach.

Ray Givans has been published in five pamphlet-length poetry collections, and one full collection with Dedalus Press. Ray was reared in Castlecaulfield, Co.Tyrone, but has lived in Belfast from the age of eighteen.