Two Pieces, Giorgia Pavlidou

 

A Vampire Called Eurydice  

 

How comfortable the warm darkness of caskets --

Doubtlessly finer than nowadays’ low-quality blood

 

Still much to my surprise,

Orpheus eventually arrived.

I followed his back for a little while,

bumping against a shadow or two    (more to stay true to the myth instead of really

wanting to)

 

Yet I was curious: “Will he succeed this time around?”  

 

As was to be expected, he turned his head once again --

Tired, stuffy, dark circled eyes looked at me for the umpteenth time.  

He didn’t impress me much; I feel forced to confess.

Or was he a she? Or a they? Difficult to say, today:

 

Even genitals have minds of their own -- on this present day.

 

Relieved that my hero had so blatantly failed once more,

I returned to the comforting darkness of my sepulcher  

(apropos: my relationship with light has never been exceptionally bright).

 

Hades isn’t such a bad place after all, I thought, while my coffin welcomed me back inside.

The embittered Goddess, Persephone, stared at me with her usual pitch-black eyes.

 I drooled gazing back at her magnificent, mean-pale and perforating face.

And before I could even think of rising up, and lick her splendid but insipid dark lips,

her hungry tongue, deep inside my menial and brittle little mouth,

was already done circling around mine:

 

So-so comfortable - I was mandated to think - the convivial darkness of my casket.

Much-much more exquisite and finer than nowadays’ low-quality blood.

Fun Republic

 

Fun Republic was the name of my favourite mall. One of the reasons I loved going there was that it had both a butcher and a bar. The bar was on the top floor. The butcher was on the first.

A few days after I began frequenting what would become my favourite bar, a young female journalist committed suicide. The girl jumped from an indoor bridge on the top floor where the bar was. While I was enjoying my sixth or seventh tequila, I vaguely remember that the bartender tried to convince me that the girl wasn’t a regular.

“Besides,” he said emphatically, “she was sober.” While he was telling me all that, I remember thinking, wow, this man has a huge head. And why does he have hair sprouting out of his ears?

Slightly tipsy and while holding my big plastic bag of meat, I wobbled to see the bridge. I wanted to feel how it is to walk around the spot where someone had just experienced a massive amount of anguish.

Imagine you’re trying out new lingerie, I thought, or enjoying an omelette when you suddenly hear this strange loud thud close to you.

Pacing back and forth on the bridge with my dripping bag, I don’t remember feeling much. I quickly returned to the bar. I needed another tequila. Much to my dismay, however, the bartender refused to pour me one.

A handsome young man with reddish and unusually long hair sat a few stools away from me. A colourful three-to-four feet tall half-human half-monkey hybrid figurine stood next to him. I made sustained efforts to not wonder why that was. When he looked in my direction, I asked him if he knew why no drinks were being served. He told me that the owner didn’t want people to think the girl drank in his bar and then jumped. Other customers who were drinking suspicious lemonades said that this was out of respect for the deceased girl.

It all irritated me. I implored the large-headed bartender with the hairy ears to pour me a drink: “please, bro, I’ll pay you double or even quadruple for another tequila.” He looked at me in a sad way, wobbled his head and made a shrieking sound, perhaps saying something in his dialect, I wasn’t certain, but he surely didn’t offer me a drink.

Feeling disappointed, I decided to leave.

 

Exiting the mall, still dragging around my dripping bag of meat, I saw the artist and his apelike figurine at the parking lot. They were sitting on a stationed Harley Davidson. When I approached them, he suggested going up for drinks.

“But you just said they don’t serve alcohol out of respect for the dead,” I said.

He ignored me and played with his long red tresses. Next, he smiled at me and touched the forehead of the statuette.

“What do you have in this big black dripping bag?” he asked next. I didn’t buy meat that day because the butcher shop was closed, so I agreed to go for a drink with him.

At the bar I refused to drink alcohol. “I rarely drink during the day,” I lied. “What about coffee?” he asked. He looked sexy in his extremely tight jeans. His crotch was bulging out. The figurine, he and his bulge looked wonderful together.  

“Please, if possible, very strong coffee,” I asked the thick-headed bartender. I glanced at the artist, but it seemed as if he looked right through me into nothingness. I did my very best to not wonder why.

I used to drink double or triple espressos back then, but as expected, when it arrived, my coffee wasn’t strong.

“Through the coffee, one shouldn’t be able to see the inside of the cup!” I yelled, upon which a short little man ran off to bring me extra instant coffee on a little plate.

“Don’t worry,” the artist said. He played with his tresses some more and smiled looking out the window. The figurine seemed more figurine-like than earlier, but the handsome artist’s bulge less bulge-like. Taking a sip, I tried observing the bulge through the corners of my eyes. Alas, even with the extra instant coffee it all tasted bland.

Feeling disappointed for the umpteenth time, I left. The artist and the figurine left as well.

Crossing the bridge, I saw that in the meantime a net was spun on one side of the bridge but not on the other.

“Work in progress?” I asked the artist.

“Nope,” he said. “The net will be spun only on one side. You see, I’ve heard that the mall received just enough money to spin a net only on one side.”

He seemed to find this fact funny and laughed loudly. I could clearly see that he didn’t miss any teeth.

I laughed as well and tried observing his crotch a little more, to see if it was still bulging out. What I saw tickled my groin.

“What’s going on,” the artist asked, “your face has turned red.”

“Nothing,” I said, “absolutely nothing. It’s just that I’m experiencing the world being perfect just like the way it is.”

His almost-black melancholy eyes stared at me with this look people have when they don’t understand what is happening, and they’re assessing whether they’re in danger or not.

Nevertheless, he offered to drive me home.

We drove through a slum at breakneck speed. The road had more potholes than asphalt, but that didn’t seem to surprise anyone.

I kissed the artist and the figurine goodbye, entered my apartment, and dropped myself on my bed. After putting the dripping chopped-up body parts in the fridge, I contemplated my day at my favourite mall. I thought of the butcher, the bar, the bridge, the young female journalist, and the strange loud thud at least some customers must have heard. I thought of the artist and his woody friend, the potholes, the slum, and the net spun only on one side of the bridge.

“The world is perfect just like the way it,’ I said to myself, and I smoked some more, observing through my window a crooked yellow laser springing up behind the silhouette of a man standing straddle in between a few wild bushes growing at the side of the potholed street in front of my apartment.

Originally trained in clinical psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, Giorgia Pavlidou is an American writer and painter intermittently living in Greece and the US. She received her MA in Urdu literature from Lucknow University, India and her MFA in Fiction from MMU Manchester, UK, (though her meetings with visionary LA poet-philosopher Will Alexander have been and still are exceedingly more impactful). Her work has recently appeared in such places as Caesura, Lotus-Eater, Zoetic Press, Maintenant Dada Journal, Puerto del Sol, Entropy. Additionally, Trainwreck Press (trainwreckpress.com) launched her chapbook inside the black hornet’s mind-tunnel in 2021. Ireland-based Strukturriss Magazine selected her as the featured visual artist of their January 2022 issue 3.1. She’s an editor of SULΦUR online literary magazine. 

Anvil Tongue Books published Giorgia Pavlidou's debut collection of poetry in 2022. Copies can be purchased by navigating to the 'Books' tab to the right. 

Selected Works, Soleil Yakita

Absent Father 

Pocketed, whisked away—absent, Father, 

You were suddenly an ensnared creature 

Blank eyes blazing with animal terror 

Gasping, gargling, against the biting steel. 

As the compass needle knows North, Father, 

A great agonal force stirred within you, 

A gnashing, sweeping, unceasing machine 

Indiscriminate, wholly unseeing. 

And later in the yellow dim, Father, 

When moon-pale skin shone mercifully breathless, 

My lips brushed a cool form like a statue 

And sensed the dead air; the emptiness. 

cleansing, mending 

Today my pen is a paintbrush 

cradled in the sleight of my hand. 

It no longer chokes and sputters 

on yesterday’s noxious thoughts. 

I do not wield it as a dagger, 

carving red into my journal. 

Today words unspool in gold ribbons 

from the lithe movements of my wrist. 

Gentle, dancing loops fill the page: 

raspberry jam. . . warm marmalade. . . 

Sleepy-eyed autumn. . . silk sunsets. . . 

Today, 

today my pen rests. 

12.30.2022 

Under the rev’rent hush of the pre-dawn morning, 

the muted whistle of the witching-hour train 

trails in a sleek silver streak through the blue darkness; 

the station awaits in cool adularescence. 

A magic is dream-caught, webbed through the quietude: 

one secret among passengers and observer 

each of us guarded and snuggled comfortably 

against the velvet night’s lust’rous underbelly. 

Today 

Today my body a bloodied gash 

against the faded paisley of my bedsheets— 

pit-marked by the half-moon digs of my nails, 

I weep scab-fluid like a bark-stripped tree. 

I murmur to myself, little blue lies 

just askew from the pulsing vein of truth: 

deoxygenated capillaries 

that bitter my mouth like underripe fruit. 

But a sleek algal film clings to my skin, 

in guarded seclusion it flourishes; 

I revel in the slick cocoon of grime 

with no promise of metamorphosis. 

Yet soon I must shed this warm shroud of filth,  

and beneath it seek some semblance of self. 

Untitled 

In rev’rent prayer and on my tired knees, 

I suckle Death’s slender, icy fingers. 

I lick them until my lips fall numb, 

And my stomach curdles with hot acid. 

Until my mouth tastes of bitter-black ash, 

My jaw slack and my restless mind placid. 

sonnet no. 2 

Do whisper gentle things against my lips,  

that which would fracture, burst, in open air;  

Sweet Nothings—stolen, golden spheres of bliss, 

that float between us fragile, warm and bare. 

Caress my skin with faint and feather touch, 

as rushing breezes rustle flaxen grain; 

Do drench me in a wash of scarlet blush, 

as sunlit forests blaze with amber rain. 

Beneath my circling rings of ribcage reach,  

and press your palmprint flush against my heart; 

Its silken form do gently cup and squeeze, 

to choke the pulse then feel it hard restart. 

Do whisper hidden words into my ear,  

Sweet Nothings lustrous, tender, soft and dear. 

grey matter 

a brooding lethargy like victorian rot: 

all plague masks and posies, corpses and consumption 

words trail soot on the walls, thoughts stain with putrid grease; 

tongue tastes food as if spoonfed from the ashtray 

fine, gritty granules like gravel, sediment, and 

misguided sentiments, unspoken resentments 

swiftly accumulate like thick glacial refuse 

in the warm crannies flush against the optic nerve 

and down the curving corridors within each bone: 

pebbles crowd like teeth in the carnal catacomb 

Soleil is a recent transfer and undergraduate Creative Writing student at Stockton University, and she has just begun to familiarize herself with the local literary community. She works as a library assistant, English tutor, and (unofficial) printer repairwoman at Atlantic Cape Community College. Soleil is also a clarinetist in the Atlantic POPs Community Band, where she can happily immerse herself in wordless rhythm for a few hours each week. She is just beginning to send work out for publication. 

Soleil's poem, grey matter, was originally published online via A Thin Slice of Anxiety:

http://www.athinsliceofanxiety.com/2023/03/respice-finem-self-important-notion-of.html

Skinwalker, Lauren Scharhag

 

It’s not like in the werewolf movies

where I wake up naked in the forest,

not knowing how I got there or why

I have the taste of blood in my mouth.

It’s not like the stories where curses

make beasts of men. No, it’s more akin

to those Eurasian primordials of whose tree

I am but another branch, where turning men

into wolves was the rite of hunters and

warriors. No moon governs me, and I know

exactly what I am and where I’ve been. It’s in

my very name, by means of it, it goes on all fours.

Some say it started when the Spaniards came,

and if you don’t know the story of those years,

I probably don’t have to tell you the story

of those years, the age of ruthlessness and

conquerors. Sometimes, I think it must be because

for so long, we were nomads, and you don’t just

shrug off three millennia of wandering, trekking

across ice bridges and down the rugged coasts,

but only the Creator knows for sure, they

who conjured light from the east, and Earth

from a single yellow grain. Sometimes, I think

I was born to this, that I only unleashed what

was already there, my nature mutable as the

golden tortoise beetle, the snowshoe rabbit,

or certain tree frogs. Nothing in my cosmology

says I must forgive. There is only balance

and imbalance, and imbalance must be corrected.

The sort of trauma that washes down through

the generations, like litter in the stream of our DNA,

and it’s not as if the atrocities ever stop. I am

the endless Night Chant, waiting for the world to heal,

the tireless ceremonial dancer, the ultimate hand trembler,

for surely we must remove the source of the malady.

I take the darkness into myself, and when our enemies

tell us we are less than they, I am ready

to fling it back at them. I am ready to don

the forbidden animal skins, to sow terror and

harvest a crop of bones. You could see why

I would trade the Pollen Way for blood, why

I would call upon the powers of wing and

fang and claw, why I would become pitiless

as the hawk’s unblinking gaze. I pray you

never know the pain that drives someone

to become this, that you never have to pay

the price to become this, the agony of

transformation: my fingers, once so skilled

at weaving, hardening into talons, canines

overtaking my omnivorous mouth, forsaking

forever the taste of corn and beans, my feet

into paws, and then the aftermath of becoming,

in which I am no one, neither living nor dead,

perpetually half human, half creature, all monster,

the stench of mass graves and privation. Once you

start down this path, there can be no turning back.

And yes, I can be dog, coyote, wolf, bear, cougar,

owl and crow, but I would rather be the deadly

bacteria destroying you from within, the brain-eating

amoeba lurking in the water, the compulsion

that seizes people to pet a wild thing that could

maul or trample them. The medicine men try

to pray us away. Those who know of us do not

speak of us, for fear we will hear. Admittedly,

we are not hard to distract. There’s always some new

imbalance to chase down. Dip your bullets in ashes,

and if you know the Skinwalker’s human name,

then speak it, and they will be destroyed. If you know

my human name, then speak it, and I will take you

with me. Unlike you, I don’t fear the world’s end.

I know more are waiting if we could but rise

to meet them.

Lauren Scharhag (she/her) is an award-winning author of fiction and poetry, and a senior editor at Gleam. Her latest poetry collection, Midnight Glossolalia (with Scott Ferry and Lillian Necakov), is now available from Meat for Tea Press. She lives in Kansas City, MO. https://linktr.ee/laurenscharhag

Skinwalker was originally published via Mitchell Pluto Artzine:

https://mitchellpluto.com/2023/02/27/skinwalker-by-lauren-scharhag/

Three Poems, Amy Hoskins

 

Faith Forward, Democracy

I.

Because you see a flower, it changes your day. 

To make a sacred space, you don’t need money.

The Earth is sacred as the Heavens, you and me.

Your body is a temple. Your heart a flowing flower.

Reality is milky, relative to your experience, 

your perception.

Please come sit with me, and just be.

Tell me from the heart, your story,

What shaped your life up to now.

II.

Is it poverty of the spirit that causes you 

to destroy what is good? 

You’re jealous of goodness.

Goodness grows. 

Thrives despite attempts at eradication. 

We’re all born with it, but hatred is learned.

Everyone deserves genuine love. 

Unconditional. Respectful. 

Everyone deserves a life that gives them joy.

And ye harm none, do what ye will.

Blessed be, all beings are worthy of love.

All the angels came. All the demons.

Pandora’s Box split asunder, irreparably. 

It only seems like the end of the world, 

in this epic battle for our souls, 

our shared future.

III.

Phone calls come in that I don’t answer. 

Australia. Afghanistan. Malaysia. Peace.

Please leave a message.

Things are happening at such a rate, 

it becomes difficult to describe the times.

What Bardo of Bardo’s is this?

When mythology fails, the fight for vision is brutal. 

Reality is not a movable feast.

What do we replace old mythology with? 

Respect, but new thinking for new times? 

2023 seems too far into the millennium to be 

defending old ways of thinking.

Unless your old thought be eternal, grace. 

Kindness from the heart. 

Do Justice, do kindness, be humble.

Faith deserves a reality check. 

All people deserve human rights. 

Faith forward, democracy. 

New faith meets old faith. 

To love is to resolve this. 

Anything is possible. 

Why not choose progress over destruction? 

You can’t escape the news if you’re a statistic.

Neither can your children, your children’s children.

Loving Oneness

And so it begins, nurturing mini beings.

Seedlings to get misted every day.

We will only have crazy weather now. 

Stormy weather that leaves us puzzled, in awe. 

Perplexing climate change is upon us. 

Leadership is maddeningly slow to act.

How many ways are there to say

The world is on fire?

What is it? What is it you’re chasing with that 

chaser? The knowledge doesn’t go away.

Seahorse, lion, both tender and fierce.

What would you do? Run away? Don’t run! Does that mean 

fair game for death by beating, taser, gun? Don’t even breathe. You’re not free. 

Yet. Ancient injustices are coming to the fore. We speak out for resolution.

Change is incremental. We need changes to flow creatively, progressively.

It’s a delicate balance we find. Surviving.

Why hide women’s faces, even the 

mannequins in the store? 

What is the power of a face? 

A woman’s face? Is it fear?

Facing death in the lives of 

three dear friends. Mortality is in the room.

Inescapable but each a brave fight with 

chemo and radiation side effects. 

Hope in the darkness. 

This too shall pass. 

Life and death are in delicate balance. 

So many set ups, traps, deals. 

Inescapable as death, credit cards. 

Buying your money twice through lending programs. Who would poison the Earth for more money? It’s never enough. It’s not infinite, abundance of Nature.

Time zones hit in waves across the planet.

Palms up, straight from the heart.

It’s ok to pray. All that good energy can heal. A ripple effect of love is on its way.

The corners of my mouth have found a new smile, on top of a blue sunny day.

Today the Sun is shining but I can’t find my smile deep down.

To love is to be there, for you, loved ones, Nature that sustains us. To love is a path filled with art, music, literature, film. With human endeavors to be better. 

To love the world and watch it spin toward death, this illusion of consumerism that keeps us wanting more, is but killing us. My heart aches to see a better world survive and thrive.

I’m learning to pray with all my might that it will not be the end of what we know as life. To rest, eat, exercise. To learn as long as I live.

Love is seeing the good in yourself, others, Nature. Love abounds if only we believe and see it all around us like magic.

It is magic. We are wizards, crones, poets, painters, healers. We breathe. We learn to love Oneness in time. There is still time.

Deep Thoughts from the Bus Stop

I have to wait until the sirens stop. 

My breathing is interrupted.

The breathless waiting to exhale.

Breathe in dust and fumes from the 

main streets. If dust could talk.

We do our best at the windows. 

Portals, reflections, lenses. 

How the whole landscape is altered

without a car. An opportunity to walk

In the rain with an umbrella. 

You won’t melt.

Why not take the bus?

Simple and efficient transit system. 

Reality of so many without means. 

Meet nice people on the bus, 

on the way there. Feel the wind on 

Your skin while you walk. Hear songbirds.

See shadows and light from the

Ground up to the trees and clouds. 

Walking changes everything.

In cars we seem to be floating above

People walking in the weather.

It’s an illusory distinction.

The world seems infinitely accessible

As long as you can afford gas, maintenance.

Drive your car for now, not forgetting the 

planet needs less, not more.

Stay tuned. 

We are blessed with abundance from the Earth.

To siphon resources instead of nurture

Is the old Industrial model. 

Instead, every bit of Earth could be

growing yummy fresh produce. 

Creative intelligence. Create your life. 

Recycling. Inventing. 

Make peaceful waves. 

Focus on your personal best.

Frida says, Hey, with flowers circling her head.

Surrounded by bones, blood, fruits. 

She’s furious.

A hurricane has been forming, swirling. 

Societies, networks, a web. 

We are bound to each other for best and for 

worst. Opposites of belief, opinion. 

Or opportunities? The storm is among us 

all despite how often we check the news.

Stellar zeppelins became obsolete. 

That one film of the tragedy was enough to 

force a way to new technology. 

Admit failure. 

Blimps now give us views with 

Precision cameras. 

Drones and Go-pros do the same. 

We are a society obsessed with visuals. 

Now drones can kill a mass of people.

Do we see that visual?

When has it gone too far?

Water. Resources. 

We are on a precipice. 

Can we evolve together? 

Where are we without our smart phones? 

Without electricity, without water, 

We know how to be without for a time. 

Survive.

What is redemption now? 

To be absolved, to be free, 

but with a moral code? 

So many sharks in the tank, 

even they deserve kindness. 

We are all irrevocably connected

As a spider’s web, a tree’s roots. 

None of it is neatly tied, but complex as

Glowing highway trails at night. 

Peaceful breathing gets us back in place. 

Safety, clarity, moments of peacefulness. 

Up and out with feelings. 

Down, and grounded in the body. 

Spirit.

Whether we have a car,

Modern amenities, or not,

Sometimes breathing through it 

is all we have.

Amy Hoskins is a poet and visual artist creating with disabilities from her home in South Nashville, TN.  Hoskins has hosted the monthly Gestalt Poetry Open Mic, which is virtual for now, since 2017. She has had more than fifteen poems published in the US and Amsterdam. amyhoskins.com

Selected Works, John Guzlowski

 

Kafka and Me at Starbucks

He scratches on a notepad

And I ask him what he’s writing.

Nothing, he says, just some words.

Blue, lunch, Mildred, faith, and love.

Why these words? I ask.

He looks at me and smiles and says

For a writer, you ask too many questions.

Kafka on War

Let me tell you

What you already know. 

Man is a beast.

Look at him 

standing next to you.

One minute 

He’s laughing.

The next he’s eating 

your mother’s 

Tits and belly.

All you can do

Is shoot him.

Then have some coffee

And a donut.

You’ll feel better.

Kafka Alone at Starbucks

Kafka sits at the table 

drinking coffee 

He wonders 

why it's so quiet here 

He remembers all the coffee

He ever drank

and stirs the star of words

into the cup

Kafka Pauses

Kafka waits by the door.

There’s something on the other side.

He can hear it.

A breath. A scratch. 

A foot moving back and forth

Almost as it were dancing.

He wants to open the door.

But he’s enjoying the fear too much.

If he opens the door, 

The fear will scatter like a cat.

Kafka and God

Kafka passes the temple,

Wonders what he’d do 

If he were God for a day.

He knows he would drink

More coffee and eat

A bigger piece of pie.

Kafka’s favorite song?

It was California Dreaming,

though he never heard it.  

He died before John and Michelle 

ever wrote it, even before 

they were born, but Kafka knew 

the song, the cold that wouldn’t stop, 

the church a Jew could never enter.  

The sense of a gray street 

that leads nowhere.

Over a writing career that spans more than 40 years, John Guzlowski has amassed a significant body of published work in a wide range of genres: poetry, prose, literary criticism, reviews, fiction and nonfiction.

His poems and stories have appeared in such national journals as North American Review, Ontario Review, Rattle, Chattahoochee Review, Atlanta Review, Nimrod, Crab Orchard Review, Marge, Poetry East, Vocabula Review. He was the featured poet in the 2007 edition of Spoon River Poetry Review. Garrison Keillor read Guzlowski’s poem “What My Father Believed” on his program The Writers Almanac.   

Three Poems, Dana Trick

 

Time 

Time . . . 

Why are you sand,

So much infinite in everywhere 

But always slipping through my fingers. . .? 

Life . . .  

Why are you a politician,

So fill on your majestic promises

Yet leaving behind broken things and people. . ..? 

Love . . . 

Why are you a rose,

So engraved with thorns 

But so blessed with soft beautiful petals . . .? 

Wisdom . . . 

Why you are a paradox,

So needed and desired

Yet always hated then abandoned . . .? 

Wonder . . . 

Why are you a child,

So full of joy and awe 

But constantly, always, so fragile . . .? 

Death . . . 

Why are a dream,

So full of dread and fear,

Yet so yearned for. 

Chained Girl

I'm just a chained girl

Who lives in a perfect indoctrinate life,

Limbs constantly dragged to the beat 

Of a performance that can’t see me.

I’m just a chained girl

Who can no longer feel—or believe in—

Her wings under the cold web of chains. 

I’m just a chained girl 

Whose mind and heart continue 

To dream of the freedom and happiness

That comes from being and loving myself.

I’m just a chained girl

Who can longer be satisfied with dreaming happiness

And now fights back against the chains 

That froze her wings since she was a babe.

I’m flying girl now,

My wings, scared and bruised,

Carrying me to my dreams and happiness

That are mine and mine alone.

Human-Humanity-Hypocrisy

Choose all that apply before reading the rest of the poem below: 

{Disabled, Indigenous, Asian (East, South, Southeast), Latinx, African, Mixed, Poor, LGBTQA+ Female, Immigrant, First-Generation, Refugee, Any Religion} 

Why must a {insert here} 

Have to work so hard to prove their humanity they already have

To the powerfully parasitic privileged who is so eager to take it away

By any means necessary? 

Why must a member of that {insert} 

Have to spend their entire lives navigating though 

Trapdoors, puzzle rooms, walls, cages, chains, and laws

That only preserve the institutionalized inequality of the powerfully parasitic privileged 

While they promote hard work and determination would fix everything in their lives? 

Why must a member of {insert} 

Are forced to morph their personalities, their identities, their communities

Into the monstrous majority monotony society/status quo

Of the powerfully parasitic privileged  

That always condemn, criticize, scapegoat, stereotype, harass, assault, murder them

At every chance, at every crime, at every tragedy, at every minute of them trying to live? 

Why must a member of {insert},

After surviving through the oppression obstacles, 

Have to constantly inhumanly, impossibly, infinitely

Be perfectly good and civilized 

So their communities would eventually encounter 

Less torment from the powerfully parasitic privileged? 

Why does the {insert}

Be even more tormented after their minority-hero—

So chained and crucified to the ballet burden of role model—

Is discovered to have done something wrong, immoral, evil,

Therefore giving the powerfully parasitic privileged excuses to continue

Their discrimination, scapegoating, harassment, attacks, murder, dehumanization

Till the end of time? 

Why does the powerfully parasitic privileged 

Claim that only they have humanity in the world 

Even though their actions and words are synonym of humanity

Even though everyone on this earth

Like the said historically marginalized minorities 

Has humanity from the very second they are born?

Born a first-generation Mexican-Canadian-American autistic biromantic-demisexual with ADHD, Dana Trick lives in Southern California where it is clearly foolish to wear black any day. Besides writing, she spends/wastes her day by either reading weird books; researching history because she has a history degree; drawing art and comics that she posts on deviantART under Silencedbook9; and watching cartoons, anime, and Youtube videos. Her work has been published online--Art of Autism, the Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Kolkata Arts, The Writer Shed, The Writers Club, and The Ugly Writers—as well as in print anthologies: the 2018 Moorpark College Print Review; the Poets’ Choice Realm of Emotions; Other Worldly Women Press’ Behind Closed Doors; Free Spirit’s Historic Tales; Wingless Dreamer’s My Glorious Quill and The Book of Black; Dragoon Soul Press’ Organic Ink Volume 5; and The Ravens Quote Press’ Balm 2. She wishes the reader a nice day.

Three Poems, S.C. Flynn

 

ELEVEN KILOMETRES

Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean

This is where life’s journey ends, 

the deepest well of the world’s mind,

mother earth’s vagina

and darkest subconscious.

The outside pressure would crush you flat;

remember what it’s done to the creatures

we passed on the way, the world’s deformed children

that it hides away for shame, floating nightmares

of tentacles and hard flattened bodies

that stay by their mother’s side and do no harm.

But maybe you and I are the disgraces,

the ones who were born in the shallows above

and then crawled up on land and grew wild;

without the discipline of deepest water

our brains ballooned out big and empty

and now the clever wandering children

descend in technological incest.

HUNTERS OF THE LIGHT

The arctic terns will soon be gone

to seek the endless daylight in Antarctica,

passing over Cretaceous cliffs of gulls

and then, while the sun grows hotter, 

rivers of Serotonin drained from cities;

diasporas of isolated minds

locked inside, dreading arrest in the night.

On they go, away from the darkness

that covers interrogation and famine,

above the fires and record temperatures

until they reach the melting ice of Dayworld.

When the days again get shorter they return,

craving the insomniac sun,

longing to sleep but fearing to dream.

MUD SUBMARINE

Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin

Six men descended in this diving bell

while the colours in its extra thick windows

dropped an octave lower. On the riverbed

they were double-pressured, low tide pirates,

close to the surface but far from its rules.

A different, distinct sense of time

must have floated down there; uneven,

gulping down entire empty intervals.

In the impatience of their seclusion

they surely hungered for strangers’ faces

but only saw the nameless press of twilight,

lingering sediment of isolation;

fluid forming something out of chaos

then instantly discarding any shape.

S.C. Flynn was born in Australia of Irish origin and now lives in Dublin. His poetry has been published in many magazines, including The Honest Ulsterman, Cyphers, Abridged and Orbis.

Three Poems, Mark Wilson

 

Initiation

Mug’s game

ludo-swirl

textual

reconnaissance

through the

subterrain

of ledger:

its recto 

stained verso

calibration-

dance of

de-cluttered

pagination

choreo-

graphs

breviary-snug

moveable

feast-board

slides the cuts

sideways

upcycling

found refuse

to installation-

ideograms

What method?

Don’t be too

methodical

& laboured

in welding anew

scrap metal

stamp coin

with impression’s

style Lear’s

snubbed profile

nosing grass

ant-as-centaur

boils down

grande basse

don’t take

yourself for

anything more

than mug-visaged

as you whirl

ludo-hemisphere

at Fortuna’s

tart behest

for one

final waltz

in the piazza

of burnt vanity

inhaling only

from ink-

stained digits

this amulet

of a smithereen

of ash 

Recital

Applause as life-sentence.

You’re only democratic

with the dead,

a tyrant to the living.

Recital is self-execution,

to their strained laughter

(still it will be performed).

Present in body, absent

in every other faculty.

Automated & enunciatory:

jaw-clamped , oesophagus

of sandpaper, murmuring

your sheet-music tirade

prescribed to the point

of proscription.

You are mouth, pure

unadulterated mouth.

Applause as jury-trial.

On the razor’s blade

(Occam’s or the drawn sword

of your Hari Kiri?

Who can readily discern?)

Preamble more oracular

than the composition itself.

Hardly sibylline,

your collocation

of fragments & shards.

Gists, sauced piths which are

rag-bagged, then dropped

into the goulash.

Intoned with Epicurean

indulgence, this: 

your cuisine-macaronic.

Language is an armoured 

vehicle, bringing menace

& wholesale atonement

in all its inky contrail.

Applause as solitary confinement.

Won’t someone pass me

the hemlock through this

semantic-grille?

Book Contract

Contractual in ink’s

haemoglobin legalese

masking the mutual

exploitation leases its

dead-hand clowns gadfly

signature-piece formal

overtures undercut brio

of imagination’s paradigm

traces ironia steel-serrated 

laughter excruciating

Covenant’s spilt

blood cursive’s

momentarily

pristine

Mark Wilson has published four poetry collections: 'Quartet For the End of Time' (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), 'Passio' (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), 'The Angel of History' (Leaky Boot Press, 2013) and 'Illuminations' (Leaky Boot Press, 2016). He is the author of a verse-drama, 'One Eucalyptus Seed', about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two, as well as a tragi-comedy, ''Arden'. His poems and articles have appeared in: The Black Herald, The Shop, 3:AM Magazine, International Times, The Fiend, Epignosis Quarterly, Dodging the Rain, The Ekphrastic Review, Rasputin and Le Zaporogue.

Three Poems, Edward Tedrow

 

Open this poem 

 

From the piece of my brain  

that thinks elsewhere I want 

to flick open this poem 

like a Zippo and light 

a fire on your arm hair, 

the impetus to jump out 

of the box you confine 

your noggin in.  I want  

to flip open this poem 

to reveal the inner intentions 

the true guts of it.  I want to scatter  

the words like a deck of cards,  

a puerile shuffle, and see down  

past them the depth of which 

I am currently unaware.  I  

want to dissolve   

this poem to reveal a  

single poetic atomic 

itching awe in my mind. 

Black Spot 

 

Sitting on my sofa, something  

catches my attention 

in my peripheral. 

There is a black spot on my ceiling. 

Its shape is unclear from this distance. 

I think I have not seen it before 

but I may have seen it  

everyday, an irregular in the drywall, 

and return to reading my magazine. 

After some time I look at the spot again. 

It seems closer to me.  

It is closer to me. 

It’s a bug.   

There’s a damn bug  

in my house.   

Bastard! 

It moves toward me  

when I am not watching 

and stays still 

when I stare. 

Like death. 

Dark. 

Creeping.   

Motionless.  

Everyday. 

Every single day. 

Each time I glance up  

I hope to see it retreating 

having found nothing to  

feed on. It must have found 

something to feed on. 

I look again minutes later 

and it is closer still, 

of course. 

Soon it will be overhead, 

of course. 

Soon it will fall in my lap 

and I will cuss jump and jerk  

like I didn’t know  

it was going to happen. 

The Smell of Honey      

 

Some say my dog loves me.  Honey seems happy  

to see me but I see her as more needy than loving.   

Every day she roams the manicured back yard  

and eats dog food that I buy at a grocery.   

While her snacks vary a little the same dog food  

is out for her every day.   As she lies down she listens 

  

and wonders when again she will be petted or fed.   

When I lean down to touch  

my forehead to hers  

I smell the matted hair of 

an ancient wolf hungry, chasing  

a meal on a clumpy prairie  

 

panting panting  

missing and missing.   

On another chase  

and missing again.   

Catching the next one  

on the fuel of desperation.   

 

I smell the tearing  

of flesh and the yanking  

of meat that does not  

want to leave the bone.   

I smell the luxury of blood  

all over the sated wolf’s snout and paws.   

 

I owe it to Honey to pull  

on a rope with her.  When I lean down  

to touch my forehead to hers,  

Honey smells a man  

bewildered in a supermarket  

wondering if he’s lived his life right. 

Edward Tedrow lives in Slidell, Louisiana with his wife. 

NHC III,2; IV,2, Irene Koronas

 

1

90 percent in colop dex 3,

a protennoia in the ophite

version. 5 or at least 7

pentads doke the authentic 

flex. When segmen

hose the dentalize

and ghost the first

clinamen 

the first cog

the second tity

will alcove 55 ping pong 

tesseras.

A slant intrution

for a moment

filters notspars

inguges 

to perspective

an introx moot, 

oxic shutty 

that meta lorri

tarns the diagram

from pockanch 

the repro 

2

Dereading

discuts

and edits desponse 

to what is 177-78

derepeat 398

derefer 2 critical 

dequirements

sense or less

precise neodeduce

a statuary dehabit

the suspense trigger

that pronouns 

deincluse

3

This suppose broken

by dectifying

injunc with possible 

dedecessor the dedecessor

each ascend 

the decumference

deremains straight

a clear decupera

and an energy dereserve

from deconversion

the dialectical intricacy

alters a sharp degion 

at this point

degather and deinterpret

each expurg decall

becomes deputation

for expulsion

Irene Koronas is the author of numerous collections of xperimental writing. Her Grammaton Series includes siphonic, Volume VI (BlazeVOX, 2022), lithic cornea, Volume V (BlazeVOX, 2021), holyrit, Volume IV (BlazeVOX, 2019), declivities, Volume III (BlazeVOX, 2018), ninth iota, Volume II (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2018) and Codify, Volume I (Éditions du Cygne, 2017). Her collections include Turtle Grass (Muddy River Books, 2014)  and Pentakomo Cyprus (Červená Press, 2009). Her xperimental writing and sauvage art have been published in Alligatorzine, BlazeVOX, The Boston Globe, Buzdokuz, Cambridge Chronicles, E·ratio, Marsh Hawk Press Review, Offcourse, perspektive, slowforward, Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art and Word For/Word. She is the Publisher of Var(2x). Her website is irenekoronas.com. 

Selected Works, Daniel Y. Harris

2.223 

Zakhor, its symmetrodonta 

(reNgine for recon): this Kol 

Nidre is arkhonic—death 

urge, the archive. 

Crystallō—files:NUM/ringbuffer. 

2.224 

This archenomology—covenant

is struck with Karkinos: otobiograph

for no pasarán, 

hacks a CTF.     

 

2.225 

Shibboleth—a priori: request

a forgery (CSRF) 

attack—Šin.

3.03 

Indifférance in black oilcloth,

sprung from rumor—use

Pwndora, the massive

Ipv4 scanner. 

3.031 

Ǵhutóm in beyng, the pincer 

grip (gobfuscate 

in the SharpChisel):

in Weltjudentum, the hackney,

the cobalt strike aggressor

against the sorites paradox:

unworld. Run TorBot—axis split

the null (exonerator/condemner).

BURNALLs lingual barb (sawol). 

3.032 

The fygure—memoires d’aveugle:

CodExt (encode/decode)—overlap:

CyberChef, Ciphey, Katana,

Basecrack, Sttr. This pelvic

collateral—sauf le nom

neuts pies lesu domine dona eis

requiem. Pistil/stamen by Satanael:

co-ordinata—the radix is negative.

Qeeqbox/socialanalyzer.git.

Coda: apokálupsis/hazon:

j-eden—this traumnabel. 

3.0321 

 

Tzerufei ‘Otiyyot—the syntagm 

divinitatis symbola: (Zbase32, hex,

geohash). Viens, reconnais 

la voix qui frappe ton oreille.

The law’s contra: 

gitcide—baud.

3.04

                 

The testimony 

(naguère)—OffensiveRust,

its haplóos cirques a high

hollow: prijōs. 

Body—gerem. 

3.05 

Dimyon in the exitwunt 

(Šabbat)—its RedGaurd in a C2 

facility preflow. Exploit this hapax

legomenon (VLANPWN):

Āyīn-e Mānī in the epiphysis,

or this adyton, the combrox.

3.1 

 

CRISPR-Cas9 antiviral defense

system or negentropy/syntropy:

SillyRAT—Überlegungen

bust. The despoiler.   

Daniel Y. Harris is an extreme experimentalist. His Posthuman Series includes The Resurrection of Maximillian Pissante, Volume V (BlazeVOX, 2022), The Misprision of Agon Hack, Volume IV (BlazeVOX, 2021), The Reincarnation of Anna Phylactic, Volume III (BlazeVOX, 2019), The Tryst of Thetica Zorg, Volume II, (BlazeVOX, 2018) and The Rapture of Eddy Daemon, Volume I (BlazeVOX, 2016). His extreme experimentalism has been published in Alligatorzine, BlazeVOX, The Denver Quarterly, Dichtung Yammer, E·ratio, European Judaism, Exquisite Corpse, Marsh Hawk Press Review, The New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, perspektive, Poetry Salzburg Review and Word For/Word. He is the Publisher of Var(2x). His website is danielyharris.com.