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MARCH 2008 | |
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Beautiful Music from a Bad Mouth
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By Kristin Komar , Feb 17, 2008  |
Beer: A Story of Love
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The Late 1980s On These Mean Streets Of The United States Of Amerika
By Doug Draime, Feb 01, 2008 Being in my late 40s ( an old man in some people’s book ) and homeless, watching my days fold like a bad poker hand, where the few chips left on my side of the table I pushed back into the game and I let them ride I was treading on thin ice and I thought fuck it I might as well dance and I danced baby I danced After Buddy & Ritchie Died Flaming Down From The Sky Yeah, The Big Bopper Too By Doug Draime, Feb 01, 2008 3 white-panty clad, blond cheerleaders, lead the parade, twirling batons, high stepping pushing that hairy bush all with little white boots putting one foot in front of the other, eyes straight ahead, no sideways glances. The band marching behind, 10 rows deep, playing “Let’s Go To The Hop” by Danny & The Juniors. All the cars in the parade were 1958 Cadillac Fleetwoods. There on the sidelines with his sad hang dog James Dean look, the guy who claimed to be Elvis’ second cousin from outside of Memphis, there he was pitifully drunk again. His pregnant wife and 2 other kids in toe He waves, bobbing his head around the marching band, his upper lip twitching like the King, and then suddenly he lunges forward and down to his knees, and into the gutter, vomits profusely. Yeah, that’s about when the music ended for me, too, man. Doug Draime has been a presence in the ‘underground’ and small press since the late 1960s. He was part of the notorious Los Angeles poetry scene of the latter 20th century. Most recent books: Spiders And Madmen (Scintillating Publications) and Next Exit: Three w/ Misti Rainwater-Lites (Kendra Steiner Editions). Forthcoming: Dancing On The Skids from Tainted Coffee Press. He lives in Oregon. Interiors By L. Ward Abel, Feb 01, 2008 These days have been all interior shots; reddish, sienna, dark around the edges. When a lamp turns on or off you can see it from the outside, outside where I always hear trains, hear their rolling thunder and then that cry across pine rows. But beyond these blinds and glass is a place too big for me. When there is no more tint in the air, when the switch drains honey from the room, I’ll lie here in the dark, and on the inside. This Is the Time By L. Ward Abel, Feb 01, 2008 There is a storm when it’s quiet, something that grinds beneath the surface of things even when it sounds like Spring. I’m being robbed by these bad days. Outside I point up at an angle, make an arc in the south sky; sunrise to the left, sets on the right. What’s more, I follow it all from one chair. Inside my TV has suddenly lost the red hue and favors the blue. Poet, composer of music (Max Able / Abel, Rawls & Hayes) and spoken-word performer (Scapeweavel), L. Ward Abel lives in rural Georgia, USA, and has been widely published in the U.S., Europe and Asia. His chapbook, Peach Box and Verge, has been published by Little Poem Press (2003). Twenty of his poems are featured, along with an interview, in a recent print issue of erbacce (UK). Abel’s full volume of poetry, Jonesing For Byzantium, is published at UK Authors Press (London, 2006). His new chapbook, The Heat of Blooming, is forthcoming from Pudding House Press later this year. |
The Fortune Teller
By William Taylor, Jr., Jan 09, 2008 An old woman has a shop on the corner of my block where for a fee she tells fortunes on a walk to the liquor store and back I could do as much you don’t have to be gifted with the divine to read the lines and the scars on the faces and the bodies of the broken down pimps and their slack-jawed girls the addicts and the lost the dead-eyed hipsters and the rest of us drowning here on Larkin Street the future is written on every face every wall every broken neon sign above every strip club and still she’ll charge you 40 dollars it’s such a racket. When She Lights a Cigarette and Asks By William Taylor, Jr., Jan 09, 2008 god is yourself walking out into yet another day never knowing exactly why god is the yellow sun shining down so uselessly upon everything because that’s all it knows to do god is the smile and the laughter of the girl on the bus beautiful enough to remind you why you ever bothered to exist at all god is a story you can’t guess the ending to enough change in your pocket for another drink the bright red polish on the barefoot toe of the skinny prostitute on Larkin Street the voice of the old bartender at the Gold Dust Saloon as he laughs and tells me he’s looking forward to the beautiful nap god is a half bottle of wine found in the cupboard at 3 a.m. the man with a handful of pennies who asks what I can spare and the laundry quarters I give him simply because I am too ashamed to do otherwise god is every splinter of light in between all the darkness and god is the darkness and when she lights a cigarette (god is her cigarette) and asks me why I never go to church I can only wonder where it is she thinks we are? William Taylor Jr. lives in San Francisco with his wife and a cat named Trouble. His work has been widely published in the small press and across the internet in such publications as Poesy, Anthills and The Chiron Review. His work is scheduled to appear in upcoming issues of the New York Quarterly and his latest book, Words For Songs Never Written, a selection of new and collected poems is now available from Centennial Press. A book of new work is currently in progress with Sunnyoutside Press. Poem From My Grave By Michael Lee Johnson, Feb 04, 2008 Don’t bring the rosary beads it’s too damn late for doing repetitions. Eucharist, I can handle the crackers and wine; I love the Lord just like you. Catholicism circles itself with rituals-- groundhogs and squirrels dancing with rosary beads, naked in the sun and the night, eating the pearls and feeling comfortable about it. Rituals and rosary beads are indigestible even the butterflies go coughing in the farmer’s cornfields. Cardinal George, Chicago, would choke on the damn things; some of his priests would have thought it a gay orgasm or piece remote found in scripture from Sodom & Gomorrah. But my bones in ginger dust lie near a farm in DeKalb, Illinois, where sunset meshes corn with a yellow gold glow like rich teeth. My tent is with friends where we said prayers privately like silent moonlight. Farmers touch the face of God each morning after just one cup of Folgers Coffee Columbian blend, or pancakes made with water and batter, sparse on the sugar. Sometimes I would urinate on the yellow edge of flowers, near the tent, late at night, before the hayride, speak to the earth and birds like gods. Never did I pull the rosary beads from my pocket. It’s too late, damn it, for rosary beads and repetitions. Michael Lee Johnson is a poet, and freelance writer. He is self-employed in advertising, and selling custom promotional products. He is the author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom. He has also published two chapbooks of poetry. He is also nominated for the James B. Baker Award in poetry, Sam's Dot Publishing. He is a contributor to the Silver Boomers poetry anthology about aging baby boomers, by Silver Boomer Books. Michael Lee Johnson presently resides in Itasca, Illinois. He lived in Canada during the Vietnam era and will be published as a contributor poet in the anthology Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came to Canada in the Vietnam War Era scheduled for early 2008. Visit his website. He is now the publisher, editor of Poetic Legacy, Birds By My Window: Willow Tree, and A Tender Touch & A Shade of Blue. All publications are now open to submissions. Untitled By Elizabeth Murray, Jan 12, 2008 flower heads tilt gently sweet sun warms the resting forms >>deep sigh<< back to work Elizabeth Rose Murray has poetry in The Beat and The Ranfurly Review, a regular haiku feature on Dogmatika, fiction on 3:AM, Six Sentences and Savage Manners. She also writes a poetry critique and a blog on getting published. Visit her at her website.
Duotrope's Digest reported that decomP was #4 in the Top 25 Swiftest Poetry markets and #13 in the Top 25 Most Approachable Poetry Markets before 2007 submissions closed.
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my father and Kant
that kind of hypocrisy
Justin Hyde lives in Iowa where he works as a correctional officer.
Entertaining the Tourist
Kristine Ong Muslim’s publication credits and recent acceptances include more than five hundred poems and stories
in over two hundred journals and magazines worldwide, such as Bellevue Literary Review, Caveat Lector, Chronogram,
Cordite, Etchings, Grasslimb, Pearl, The Pedestal Magazine, Scrivener Creative Review, and Turnrow.
Waitress
Melissa Hansen lives in San Francisco where she writes, works at public libraries, and is a co-editor of poetry
for The Guild of Outsider Writers. She has published and forthcoming work in various literary zines. You
can visit her at her MySpace.
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