JUNE 2008

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Justly Desired and Inspiring Awe
By Savannah Schroll Guz, Apr 03, 2008

And there had never been any children. They’d tried. But it had never happened, and then they had stopped trying. Now, he came home to only her, and her crossword, and her broiler pans of chicken still knotted with yellow skin and mottled with grease. No children tumbled at his feet or... (more)

Cells
By Matthew Brian Cohen, Mar 21, 2008

If the Snapple caps were true, it was my first breath in this body. All else from me had been shed to exile—the smoke from the cigarettes I tried when I was drunk and lonely, the layer of sweat caked on my hands since puberty, the fibers from sweaters too tight in the shoulders, the flakes of burnt skin from summers... (more)

Untitled
By Jason Karolak, May 19, 2008

A Review of Ball’s Samedi the Deafness (2007)
By Jason Jordan, May 27, 2008

Specifically, the plot centers on James Sim, a mnemonist by trade (“someone able to perform unusual feats of memory,” says WordNet), who one day witnesses the aftermath of a stabbing in a nearby park. The victim, who goes by the name Thomas McHale, “must have been stabbed at least a half dozen times” (6), and with his last breaths, informs Sim that he must bring his murderers to justice, ominously describing the purported ringleader known as Samedi. Naturally, though, McHale mentions numerous others involved in the crime—“The daughter, Grieve, said McHale. The handler Torquin. Many of them in a house, I can’t even say where. I was held there. I jumped the wall, ran for hours” (9).—which gives the inexperienced Sim enough clues to... (more)

The UPS Guy
By Daniel Irwin, Mar 21, 2008

 The UPS guy don’t knock anymore.
He just sets the stuff at my door.
I guess there were just
Too many bad experiences
With harassing this late sleeper.
He used to pound on my door
(Seemingly) endlessly.
Which was pretty much a joke
As my hearing comes and goes
And there ain’t no guarantee
That I’d hear his frustrated knocks.
My “Sieg Heil, killer” to his
“Hey man, I’m just doing my job”
May have been a little extreme.
Maybe it’s not all his fault.
Then again, maybe it is.

 Foreign Stuff
By Daniel Irwin, Mar 21, 2008

 Okay, so I don’t know
A shit load about computers.
Hell, I just found spell check
The other day.
Then I found this site
That would automatically
Translate English into
Several other strange languages.
I typed in some stuff,
Hit a language button at random,
Then sent that off to
Some place far away.
From the response I received,
I couldn’t tell if I was
Invited there or if
They were coming here.
Best I reckoned,
They were either making
Offers of wild, bizarre sex,
Or were just threatening
To kick my black cat’s ass.

Daniel Irwin is an artist/writer (both a matter of opinion) working as a medic in a maximum security prison in Illinois because his creditors expect to be paid and he gotsta eat. Work published in the U.S. and around the world.
YANG CHU’S POEMS 50
By Duane Locke, Mar 30, 2008

 Flaneurs frustrated, Andre Breton,
Synchronistic fantasies blocked,
                                                                     Unconsious,
The unknown, has no aleatory stimulation
To open
                           The nailed doors of the un-
Known,
                          The I-am unconscious.    Flaneurs
Cannot see the Algerian gee gaws,
Trinkets, bibelots,
                                                     Silver fish hooks,
Books with Jardin de Plantes goat-skin covers
Displayed
                              Gutta percha doll dressed as Security
Guards.
Flaneurs cannot see the sweet Rabbi doll
That stands on one foot while reciting from memory
The total Torah.


Flaneurs cannot see what originates the dark night
Entrance to the unitive life, when the automatic
And a tea ceremony find
                                           the sacred.

Flaneurs cannot see what is inside the shopping mall
Show window—not even the surreal Rosa Luxemburg,
Her body dissolving, dripping to form a yellow rose
On a sweater-making machine in
Viet Nam—

Due to the flags draped over the glass.    The country
Is at war again.    Every shopkeeper must support the American
Empire.


Flaneurs are more concerned with Pound’s Cantos, Eliot’s
Wasteland, Williams’s Patterson, Olson’s Maximus than
1600 B.C. cattle rustlers called armies and their modernization
As thieves of oil.

Flaneurs with nostalgia don grey flannels, think about
Uncontainable abundance,
Lament the simulated patriotism
That diminishes with flags and flag shadows
The alterity of best sellers
Scattered on dark purple velvet in mall’s bookstores.

In their pockets they carry copies of Kierkegaard.

Duane Locke lives in rural Lakeland, Florida, a few feet from an osprey nest, and has a Ph.D. in Metaphysical Poetry. As of January 2008, he has had 5,935 poems published in print magazines and e-zines, 17 print and e-books published, and 209 photos published in magazines and e-zines. For more information, Google him.

i think of her this time of year
By Justin Hyde, Mar 17, 2008

waiting for the bus
in front of
ames high school:

huddled against a tree,
coat zipped
over my nose.

she was
in a dirty yellow skirt
exposing her legs
from the knees down,

just sitting there
on the bench
twisting a finger in her ear
and licking it clean
while her calves
spotted white and
purple.

tard lover,
jared zeto yelled
as he sped past
in his camaro.

fuck you
fuck god,
i thought

while wrapping
my coat
around her legs.

Justin Hyde lives in Iowa where he works as a correctional officer. His first book of poetry Down Where the Hummingbird Goes to Die is available from the Guild of Outsider Writers and Zygote in My Coffee.

Listed at Duotrope's Digest





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