June 21st, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of cigarettes
photo – Stephen Sheffiield
Gasoline Can
photo – Stephen Sheffield
Smoke
Artist Biography
Stephen Sheffield, a native of the Boston Area, is an alumnus of Cornell University (1988), where he obtained a BFA in Painting with a minor in photography. He received his MFA in photography from California College of Arts & Crafts (1993), in San Francisco. Stephen Sheffield has exhibited nationally for many years and has a number of large-scale commissions in Boston and New York City. He is a professor of advanced photography at the New England School of Photography in Boston, and is represented in Boston by the Panopticon Gallery
June 21st, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of Amelia Earhart
On the Death of Amelia Earhart, and Related Topics in Plant Biology
Maybe there’s just one too many celebrities
running around, or it’s because every mountain’s
crowned with a flag and those that aren’t
are so effortlessly photoshopped,
but it’d be no big mystery today. We’d find
your gallant obituary jockeying for position
among business mergers and political sex scandals,
a caption for the otherwise nonsensical plot
on the scrolling news ticker in the DMV.
Within days they’d have the wreckage skimmed
off the Pacific and we’d forget it happened
at all, those of us who’d heard.
And if America used to close her fists
to grieve, then today her wide frame is too busy
with the purchasing of hair gloss and munitions
–Be honest: what did you see in that
wild blue desert that needed to be crossed?
All those islands so committed to their internal definition
of patience never even asked to be named.
And a few unlucky ones we’ve designated
as bombed ranges, where a rain of flammable gel
is just one more natural phenomenon they can’t explain:
as surely as the banana leaves glow gold
under sudden interrogation, refusing to surrender
the only secret they think they know
to a question regarding nitrogen fixation
in the soil of our rose gardens,
back home.
Author Biography
Matthew Weiser is a bioinformatics PhD student. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
June 21st, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes of conspiracy, slut, cigarettes and leftovers
This Is How The Wind Blows In The Face Of Eternity
you poor
immature
sod
waiting
to be
discovered
America
did not come
to Columbus!
Victoria!
Victoria!
every exclamation point cannot describe you.
drop dead gorgeous!
what are you doing in that place?
I told you, “I was in love with you,
then I fell out of love with you,
and now I am in love with you again.”
and you laughed and said, “we had our space, our groove,
our moment in time.”
I said, “I want to see you again.”
you said, “OK.”
now my thoughts are consumed by you
and why I ever left you.
what was I thinking when I stuck my tongue
out at you with that other woman by my side?
Bookstore
I went out looking for
D.H. Lawrence.
I came home with
Villon and Carl Sandburg.
reminds me of a date
I once had
about 3 years ago.
Singlehood
we smoke cigarettes in the house.
we are alone
and loving it
Note To A Friend Who Had Once Made My Heart Smile:
you
have
lost
your
edge.
Author Biography
Mike Meraz lives and writes in Los Angeles, Ca. He has been published numerous times online and print. You can check out his work here: http://black-listedpoems.blogspot.com/
June 21st, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes of slut and the last word
Slut Zero
Let us now contemplate the first slut.
We’re not talking the woman practicing promiscuity before the notion of woman as property was instilled, that doesn’t count, we’re talking the first woman to go against the standard of submission for the sole purpose of her own pleasure.
I keep picturing our slut in a cave with a bush hairy enough to rival the mastodon coat she wears.
And she probably did wear a mastodon coat, because she was the first wealthy woman in the history of existence. Her cave was decorated with gifts of grateful Cavemen from miles around, gifts of baby seal fur and Saber teeth.
Art was created out of the necessity to impress her; ancient cave paintings, the deer running from the arrow wielding figures were cave men trying to explain to her what they had to offer. Our slut bathed in the height of cave dwelling culture.
And I’m sure she never had to lift a finger for food or water. She was the best fed among all, a bit overweight by our standards, you could say she was built like a brick shithouse. Cavemen loved em thick.
Cavewomen gossiped about her in their fireless holes while their men poked their heads into the warm cave of the slut. They jealously chattered away in their children’s ears about how she was the cause of their hunger and cold, and this negative cogitation has carried with us ever since.
I think I read someplace that the after sex cigarette was invented directly through contact with our slut.
She changed the world forever by indirectly inventing the wheel, as word of her skills spread to neighboring Cavemen who needed a faster route to her cave.
Our slut set the rules behind the scenes, thereby setting the standard for all politics that forever follow.
Bush was her fault. Obama was her fault. It’s her fault I’m an anarchist.
Misunderstood high school students, confused midlife crisisians, and unhappily married cougars by the millions are still benefiting from her endeavors.
Hotel Finlen (with Michael Earl Craig)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhpv0EueaQE]
Author Biography
Dalton C Brink dropped out of the Navy where he studied nuclear engineering. From Memphis, he traveled to Bozeman, MT. Dalton founded/runs the DIY arts venue-The Cottonwood. He’s the singer/songpenner for Numbers and the author of three books of poetry and a novel, Finis and The Light Echoes. www.daltoncbrink.weebly.com.
June 21st, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of cigarettes
Speed Dating
The woman lifts her hand to her heart,
patting its hard work.
She loads her ashtray in a slow burn of double meaning: souvenir, absence.
Her mouth open in a loose-fitting curl
pinned all night.
What is her mouth open for?
What is about to enter her.
She is receiving; she is a receipt.
She is itemized and rain checked.
She is standing in line, marketing her brand. No-nonsense.
A shining ruby mouth is an appeal, an advertisement,
a question.
Diamonds revolving the finger a promise, an arrangement, a hurry.
She has only her mouth strained open, stained a bleeding color.
Her hands clasped in her lap like a store-bought bow.
Her mouth chewing on its straitjacket
as she pulls out wishes like bunnies: soulmate, teacups, suburbs. Her body stands guard against break-in; her laugh the alarm, 3AM blaring. Nobody falls asleep
to the sound.
Author Biography
Stella Padnos-Shea’s poems can be found in Chest medical journal, The Comstock Review, Lapetitezine.com, and ldyprts.tumblr.com, a collaboration with jewelry artist Margaux Lange. Having been employed as a college instructor, jewelry maker, and therapist, she also is a mother to a nine month old daughter. Please find her at Stella.Padnos@gmail.com.
June 20th, 2012 § § permalink
On cigarettes and conspiracy
Crush
Here are boys who pull fish from the nearby lake that wraps around the house. Tongues paralyzed and glittering, they fill bucket after bucket of sluggish charred ghosts. Here I tell the boys to pay attention to the fires in dreams: The girl never died. But if she really died, we never talk about it. There was no man. There was no one slipping near gravel or kissing on the side of the road. There is no wishing of ashes, the rumble of a fire that never happened. There may have been a noose, but it was used for overturning the logs in the fire. There was a yellow bird near the window; we saw it from the lake. Our hands were covered in the glimmer of fish scales. Our shins were swollen with water. There was a black dog nearby, waiting for me.
Helen Vitoria – Cigarettes
Author Biography
Helen Vitoria is a poet and photographer. Her work appears online and in print: elimae, PANK, The Awl, FRIGG Magazine, and many others. She is the author of several chapbooks, a full length collection and a pamphlet forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press. Her poems have been nominated for Best New Poets & the Pushcart Prize. Find her here: http://helenvitoria-lexis.blogspot.com/
June 20th, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of Amelia Earhart
Amelia, Landing
Flying along the line of sun
I slice the sky, determined, metal.
Over the water, low-lying clouds,
flat, dark, that mimic unmapped islands.
Or I mistake misty islands for the shadows
of clouds. So many, dotted like pearls.
Above me, beautiful empty azure.
I feel I’m traveling to the dock
of before. I must be on you but
cannot see you. Fuel is running low.
Electra through the clouds parts
not-my-own shadow but earth, trees,
a wrecked steamer, signs of near
distant, near future habitation.
Author Biography
Ellen Kombiyil is a native of Syracuse, New York and a graduate of the University of Chicago. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Cider Press Review, Eclectica, MiPOesias, Sojourn and Spillway, among others. She is currently working on the manuscript for her first book. She lives in India with her husband and two children.
June 20th, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of Amelia Earhart
AMELIA EARHART AND FRED NOONAN ENCOUNTER AN INFESTATION OF LAND CRABS ON NIKUMARORO ISLAND
We expected mosquitoes to cloud and suck us dry
but it was land crabs
we couldn’t fend off even with our boot heels.
Even with the hundreds we tossed into the fire
where they hissed
and popped so hard
we had to dodge
the flaming shards of them.
They pinched us in our sleep, drew blood.
Their antennae stroked
our arms
like the leg hairs of scuttling cockroaches.
They clogged the campfire with their black flexed claws and charred meat the scent of tires striking a runway.
We fashioned a hammock
from the aircraft windshield, our pants, and the last threads of bootlace.
We slept in shifts.
We tossed fish skeletons into the scrub
for five minute’s peace.
Even fifty feet away
we heard pinchers
snap the spines of sea bass
as if they were pecans in the vise
of a nutcracker.
AMELIA EARHART AND FRED NOONAN CAPTURE AND EAT A GREEN SEA TURTLE ON NIKUMARORO ISLAND
It was crawling up the sand. It was heavy as a lame calf.
It took us both to drag it by its flippers from the reef to camp,
then toss it on its back by the embers.
Now what?
Its shell was hard as coral.
I had to pry
an iron wedge
between an underbelly seam, pound it with a conch
to finally draw its head,
which Amelia swiftly severed with our last shred of propeller.
We hollowed its body with cockle scoops and scallops.
Gore caked our arms
to the shoulders.
We rinsed in tidal pools.
The terns went insane.
They flapped
pink and shrieking in the bloody shoals.
All night we boiled the meat in recent rain.
We popped
one of the champagnes, toasted with tin-can flutes our luck.
I pounded the shell like a bongo.
Amelia blew across the bottle’s lip
in rhythm.
Next morning we carried the husk
to the beach,
launched it
on the tide.
Foam thrust
its white fingers through the cavity
and claimed it.
Author Biography
Paul David Adkins grew up in South Florida and lives in New York.
June 19th, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes of the last word and conspiracies
Jerimiah Whitlock – Conspiracy
Jerimiah Whitlock – the Last Word
Jerimiah Whitlock – The Last Word
Artist Biography
Jerimiah Whitlock is a filmmaker, art director, and photographer living in Estes Park, Colorado. In Jerimiah’s professional career as a filmmaker, his films have played in film festivals reaching Estes Park, Boulder, Boston, Chicago, Portland, Florida, Shanghai, London, Paris & Kentucky.
www.ChemLounge.com
June 19th, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of the last word
MOON’S TAKE ON VENUS
I was imagining her – small, elfish
in a white gown transforming
into black snakes while she twirled
and swung suddenly a flaming lasso.
With such power, it was obvious
she wanted me to see her this way,
what some might call Apocalypse
but I call Sunday night.
THE GREAT ESCAPE
That Big Dipper’s always dumping space
on my abode, I see it
when I give beer back to the gods
to a soundtrack of gargling soprano frogs.
I give it first to the peach tree
then the apricot and cherry trees
saving the apple and plum trees for last.
By now the gods are drunk enough to rob.
Author Biography
Jason Mashak (b.1973) is a Michigan native who lived also in Georgia, Tennessee, and Oregon. After earning degrees at Portland State University, he moved to Prague, where he writes occasionally, edits routinely, and teaches his daughters everything he can. His first book – Salty as a Lip – is to be reissued in late 2012. Jason reports a second book is in motion.