*Please Note: our new address is www.betterthanstarbucks.org
December 2016 Vol. I No. VI
Not your ordinary poetry magazine!
If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!
Felling
Manoeuvre from the tangles
of the poppy fields
that wrap around you
like sea-weed
criss-crossing in between
your hands, your legs
swaying a childhood dream.
Your mouth is the opening of a cave
A cloud of bats circling as if possessed,
your tongue
a sea urchin guarding a burning secret,
your fingers knitting the clock backwards.
The ink runs dry on the paper scroll
untouched
like the dinner laid out on the table
Suddenly, I’m dying
-Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla
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(The Beginning of the End)
the Morning after
gloomy and gray
Not much sleep
after the speech
of Sinking ship
or souls to save
moving on Together
toward a new day.
​
Mary Thompson Hardwick
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Hardwick, a ModPo Alumni for 5 years and ModPo CTA for 3 years, lives in Conway SC
Paktia Province, May, 2011
Green fields
poppies and wheat
Mountains towering
and steep
Could you even climb them?
Nomads on mountain plain
moving higher
as summer comes
Tents and camels and goats
for real
Not a painting
or old photograph
Real people
Near a river
full with spring runoff
Peaks still wrapped
in snow
But not too close
What do they know?
​
Virgil Huston
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A TRUMPET
Octopus
changes color
Blue if it's
excited
Pale if it
feels fear
Red if it's
angry
They release
Ink from—
Ancient ink—
when they feel
threatened
​
Debra Josephson
ModPo Week 10: Poem Talk episode 47
It's late afternoon dark.
My big-brimmed Aussie hat
and ancient denim jacket
are keeping out the rain.
The barn cat is sitting in her now usual spot
atop the hay bales.
She's getting older. Her companion is gone
and she now lets me come within three feet of her
before starting to get uncomfortable.
We talk.
Neither of us understands the other
but we go back and forth anyway.
I put food in her bowl and grab some flakes of hay for the sheep.
It's dark enough that the automatic lamp is on in the chicken coop.
On bluetooth headphones kept dry beneath my big hat
I'm listening to a podcast about a poem -
one of the final assignments for an online class.
Later, I'll log into a forum and discuss the poem
with students worldwide.
Somehow I, on a farm on a ridge in the middle of nowhere,
have dropped into the future.
The sheep do not berate me for being late.
They get down to the important business of eating hay
before it becomes sodden with rain.
Bob Zahniser
Zahniser lives on a farm in Yamhill, Oregon, USA with a flock of indolent sheep, three dogs, two goats, two cats, two horses, six chickens, and innumerable gophers. His work has appeared in Belleville Park Pages, Walk Write Up, Filling the Void (anthology), Perceptions, The Portland Alliance, Byline, Paper Gardens, Skylight 47, and the Ottawa Arts Review.
Get Your 1st Annual ModPo Anthology Print Edition
These 42 poems by this year's Modpo students collected in "chapbook" form. Price $5.00 S&H $2.00 shipping charge, no matter how many books you order!
(outside USA may add additional shipping costs)
​
Profits to go to Kelly Writers House
The Unknown Magic
Since ages, people have been thinking,
Keeping mind amazed & their eyes blinking.
We do have ever expanding universe, but ideas for it winking,
Since ages, people have been thinking.....
Beings are created for a reason unknown,
Without authenticity, people tend to make clones.
Is it really a big question, or a tragic?
If they cannot think over it, its Magic!
Beliefs become weak, if they don't have a strong sight,
Beyond a span,even the thread is unseen for a flying kite.
Why in the matter so dark, they have a sun shining so bright?
Their senses arouse for the feelings unseen,
Tricks they play through their hands so clean...
They still prick their heads for the auroras turning green!
Magic for them, changes from good to evil,
For some its God, for some its devil.
For this magic to be known, they tries hard....
Their eyes glared, when they saw the missing card!
May be enlightening self with magic is out of bound....
Because this same magic will make you roam round and round!!
​
Saket Penurkar
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
​
For Tamim Ansary
​
I whisper that this Khan was a whisker in the beard
of The Prophet, God bless his memory.
Khan copied The Prophet's life of Non-Violence
which The Prophet lived fourteen hundred years ago.
Khan saw in cold-stone, Kaaba terms that
all places shine in Mecca's crack of brilliance and
the Call-to-Prayer's source hides in echoes
like God’s tear dropping into the ear of the practitioner:
"God is the all merciful and the all compassionate."
The violent erect governments hidden in States
while wearing clothes of belief, which hides
true intent. Doers of love, do not say. They do!
Do not let those who say, kill in hate. Become
doers and not lying slayers. Submit to doing
love for the rest of your Non-Violent life.
-Don Hagelberg
Hagelberg has been active in social justice and civil rights and refused the draft on November 22, 1963, the day on which President John Kennedy was assassinated, serving instead to go to prison for 1964 and 1965.
He took creative writing courses (Berkeley, Stanford and Oxford), and in 1974 created, produced and hosted "Live Poets," a two-hour radio program broadcast weekly on a listener-supported Bay Area radio station.