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Simon Perchik - four poems

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These gravestones are shaped the way every avalanche wants to enter the Earth –first as a single doorstep then the rush though the rocks you listen for are already moons helping you find the door for holding on while the light under you becomes another shadow made from wood lays down as a room that cannot change its mind is filled with cracked lips, the cold and end over end the strong corners, the kisses that made it here. Your face is covered with paper now held in place by its words for sky and wind –a simple love note can keep the rain away let you read forever in the dark though it tastes from the salt still on your lips –all those years soaking up this hillside till nothing was left to open except over your cheeks you have all the air you need in the corners not yet grass. You sleep with the coat buttoned and though your eyes are closing the sleeves cling by listening sure her favorite dress is somewhere in this room no longer morning, name
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Nicole Borello - No Formal Burial

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No Formal Burial I dreamt the roses died. The shape and odor melted into a red ocean. I dreamt I was gnawing on a warm piece of bread. A delusional delicacy disappearing from my palms. My dead branches poked with drought and dusted with barren earth, bleed thin twigs. I dreamt I was awake, that within the dream their bellies were full. They were different versions of myself: skinny, fed, bloated, in peasant bondage, feverish, tenant in a tenant-landlord brawl. I can’t seem to escape the spiral of my children’s limbs. My milkless breasts lead my children into misery.                             …guigh orainn na peacaigh,                                         (pray for us sinners)                                                     …anois, agus ar uair ár mbáis                                                             (now and at the hour of our death) And I dig the earth just to prepare. Nicole Borello is the author of So What If I Bleed (Llumina Press, 2010), Fried Fish an
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Paul Hostovsky - Three poems

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First Line In the end of days what you need is a good first line. To distract you from the truth with its own truth. The way pain can sometimes distract from pain. The way beauty can sometimes distract from pain. The way a good bedtime story can light up the dark side of an entire planet, given a little room with a bed in the corner, a few right words, a child listening. In the end of days what you need is a good beginning. Something hopeful and trembling like a tongue. Something open and unselfconscious like a mouth, listening to the words, and the music of the words. Something steeply rocking like a ship, or a sleep, heavy, floating, viable, smelling of saltwater and infinite possibility. Distance I love coming back here to this place where I was happy, or maybe I was unhappy and I keep coming back because I’m not here anymore--not there anymore. There’s a difference between a great sorrow and a beautiful catastrophe--beautiful for the way it brought peo
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Taylor Emily Copeland - Two poems

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Kala gives a tour of hell This is the metal box he locked me in. This is the chain he used to keep me bound. This is where he shot Charlie three times in the chest. This is where he buried him, like a dead animal. This is where I was allowed to walk around, like a dog, to smell the air, to hope for release. This when we hear about how likeable my captor was, how he was a great boss, a model citizen, never the type to do this. This is when I don't talk about my bare back against a metal floor, about tasting his scent, about the thumping sound in closed in spaces, and how it echoes in my teeth and eyes. This is when you can read about the fourteen year old that he bound and forced, about how they released him, gave him the chance to step up his game. This is the hole a gun makes, a shovel makes, a void makes when someone you love dies. This is when I give the story an edit, a heroine. When someone asks me what its like to kiss another girl It tastes like cotton candy,
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Don Kloss - Those People

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Those People   I never wanted any more than I could fit into my head- Dave Grohl, Monkey Wrench   They want a McMansion, with a pool and hot tub on 25 acres. They want a summer home on the beach at the Outer Banks. They want a house keeper, cook, gardener, and nanny. They want a Land Rover, Porshe Cayane, or Mercedes. They want the best private schools for their kids. They want bodies and faces like gods, and a bank account so large, the bank manager himself comes to cut their lawn. They want Caribbean cruises, and world vacations. They want to have celebrity actors, musicians, artists, designers, and authors for friends. They want jewelry that startles. One day, a chauffeur, a large yacht moored at a private dock, a helicopter, a private beach. They want to always be happy and healthy, and never die. All I want is a twenty-four-hour Taco Bell. Don Kloss is a 60-year-old poet, musician, and songwriter. He is a New Jersey transplant from rural Ohio. His poems have been published
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Kendall A. Bell - Two poems

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Like salvation  And here is the jar of stars I've  collected - your name etched  into each glowing corner. And here is the pulse of my wrist against the soft flesh of your legs, a reminder of devotion, the Morse code of an unspoken truth. And here are the arms I travel like memory, like the record playing over and over into the deep corners of evening. And here is the weight of what I carry each day, in all of the inches of  skin, in the name of this perfect thing we cannot name, but know to be our reason to open tired eyes, to hold like a newborn - like salvation.  Come bail me out of this god forsaken precipice I watch her cat eyelinered eyes flutter in the strain of the artificial light at 1am. Her body, a still, pale softness surrounded by a deep sofa embrace. Her forehead tilted back and exposed. I want to make a ritual of kissing the taut flesh, watch the anxiety's release, let the glow highlight the perfect i
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Glen Armstrong - Spoon Bender

Spoon Bender But I was left alone. Like a bent spoon. Or a cowboy. Boot that needs reheeling. I walked around for a while feeling. That I’d put too much faith. In Uri Geller and symmetry. My new and expanding faithlessness. Would take me far. I embraced that national restlessness. That so many young men before me had. I drove my rental car. To Redondo California. But I remained alone like a show dog. Only bred when some shadowy. Master’s needs took precedent.  Or a discredited theory. I would have thrown the broken boot. Into the ocean if there had ever. Been a broken boot to throw. Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank.
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