January 2018 Vol. III No. I
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!
Illusion . . .
On the eve of that day
When she kissed me with tweet
I was in love with wine
But still I recall that greet
Her warm breath in my ear
Mingled with moisten echo
My eyes smiled with tear
A silent, loud expression
Her shadow was in my eyes
Or in that glass of wine
Which was like blood, but thin
I gulped to make her mine
She was there or everywhere?
In clouds, in air like celebration
I felt her strongly, without fear
Of death, time and illusion.
© Pappy
(Pratik Pandya)
INSOMNASYTHESIA
I’d sleep if I could
but behind the raucous clouds
banging their thunderous pots and gongs
a torrent of burbling stars
floods the sky
blaring the ode to joy
I’d sleep if I could
but some aphorist keeps saying
‘necessity is the mother of invention’
and I think
NO
things just are
they don’t need to be
and necessity
that hunger in the belly
is just as much enslaver as creator
But what would Dionysius say?
That he needed to invent wine
so that he could get good and drunk?
I’d sleep if I could
but Bacchus is snoring too loudly
after the bacchanal
the one I’d not been invited to
since I’m not on facebook
and don’t follow twitter
I’d sleep if I could
but I think maybe I am asleep
and just don’t know it yet
or maybe I’ll not find out
except in a dream
the one where Bach and Bacchus
are dancing rumba together
singing Beethoven’s ode to joy
both a little drunk
out of necessity of course
​
Denny Stern
Get Your 2nd Annual ModPo Anthology Print Edition
These poems by this year's Modpo students collected in "chapbook" form. Price $6.95 first volume, savings on shipping when mutiple copies ordered at once copies.
S&H $3.99 each volume
(outside USA may add to shipping costs)
​
Profits to go to Kelly Writers House
​
Amerindian Tryst
Oh: could I be the saviour of culture
Through our love?
First I make my thrust
And then am clasped
By the redwood case of your toned form
Above the apex of my oil-balmed tan
Yours burgeoning out
Mine seeping happily in
And so arouse me to our pushing each other
To our clinched erectness
Through our embrace we stifle the Great Dying
Through deep-breathed lips I am turned fluid –
The serum of total health
Spread in its sheerest droplets
To be the total cure
Our clasping traps and redirects
The energy surge of war and rapine
We are the life force
The Tsunami reversed and purified
Nurturing anew the soil
The forests, the herds
Our cities rise again
From the crumbling
Of the white man’s concrete
​
David Russell
Down The Shore
Wish I were here all year.
Cool breezes:
furl and unfurl
the flags on the boardwalk,
whip my hair
around my head,
sweep my sorrows
far, far out to sea.
Seagulls:
screech, soar, swoop,
challenging each other.
White-capped waves:
move relentlessly to shore,
approach, crash, retreat,
approach, crash, retreat,
over and over and over,
setting a hypnotic rhythm.
People are kinder here.
They know the secret:
celebrate the here today,
no yesterdays,
no tomorrows,
no promises.
Just the magic
of a shore moment.
At one:
with the sea,
and the sand,
and the sky.
Rosalyn Levine Blatt
Finding Route 95
Visit over,
I wend my way
through a maze
of one-way streets
back to the main drag,
nowhere I've been before.
I'm on an avenue, four lanes,
headed south at 6 PM,
the setting sun
slants through my window.
I follow a bus
west, toward home.
Ahead, sun blazes gold
through gray clouds
as I pray,
"God, get me somewhere
I recognize."
​
Margaret Fieland