July 2018 Vol. III No. VII
Not your ordinary poetry magazine!
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Prose & Form Poetry
Featured Poem - Editor's choice
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WALLETS AND WALLOWINGS
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Wallets and wallowings, pursings and prayers—minding the business, then
falling down stares. Watch him in worship. Adonai! Adonai!
Watch him cauter-wallow in his fine hide wallet, purchased from Neiman's
for pliancy. But the cow-eyed woman, milked dry and calved, lies in the
skin—though not cured nor soft—with purse strings bound round her neck.
The wallet is wanting—the silk purse from the sow-cow; kow-towing to
profligate Venus, the keeper of swine and lopper of ears. Mawings and
mouthings: momma got trussed and basted, momma got lost and wasted.
Io, big eyed, leaps, jumps over the moon when the gadfly stings
in the mournings. The laughter of dogs paws the breakfast nook.
Demeter spins suspended, hangs by her feet. Sweet old Ceres!
Commercialize the grains while the maiden roams in the dark, dripping her trade, her scarlet commerce; superficial, sacrificial, and oh so saccharine.
Blood weeps from the eyes of the pomegranate, running red food dyes to
grow carcinogenic. The crocus, the rose, and a hyacinth lower their
heads—all rot on time in their vases.
Bull power! Full power! Utterly udderly! Testing and tasting, and making it go through the grinder of meat and through the chew of the two-bellied cow.
Io, hot, hops smack smack smack, then bounds right over the son. The man
in the moon brings on his slaps to break the brash bovine back. Bellow,
bellow down below. Bellow then low. Again.
Caul and collar at the milking time, "Sook you, Heifer! Sook, suck and
chew! Ciao!" Cud the creature. Cud the day in a puddling. Ruminate the
ruin of the altar.
But wallets are caves and caves get raves in the dark and in the witching
land of cow hides and hungers that purse, and udders, those mudders, and
wallets in fall.
Exorcise some demons and start from scratch! Intangential discourse. Of
course. Off course! Off on a tangent, just like on a horse—giddy up,
giddy up, bear Banbury's Cross! Pluck hair from the mare that bit. Hide!
Hide wallets and wallowings, tangents and pairs not minding their
manners, still tripping down stairs.
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Originally published in Recursive Angel.
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Pamelyn Casto has articles on flash fiction in Writer's Digest, Fiction Southeast, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letter, Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of New American Reading, and Critical Insights: Flash Fiction.
Better than Starbucks began wholly as a creation in my mind. Now the wonderful collaboration of dedicated editors is creating a monthly magazine that I could have only dreamed about when I was starting out as a one person organization.
Having said that, there are no direct connections between U Penn, Al Filreis, KWH (Kelly Writers House), ModPo (Modern & Contemporary American Poetry), or any of the actual affiliated programs to ModPo and this magazine, other than I have been a part of ModPo for several years now. There is, however, a strong spiritual and intellectual connection between BTS and ModPo.
If I had not gotten involved in the larger community of ModPo, I don't think I would have restarted a literary publication. I am certain I would not have added a Formal & Rhyming Page, and probably not a Translations page. I have a pretty narrow preference for poetry, but the course and the people at ModPo have expanded my view of poetry to the point that I decided if I could find good people to help me do it, we would make BTS as broad of a source of styles and genres as possible. We have been fortunate to establish a team of talented editors and are in the process of an ever expanding quest to find poetry wherever it may be.
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Thus, it seems fitting that we dedicate a page to my fellow students at ModPo, and/or anyone who wants to share experimental poems. The thing about experiments is, they often fail, but as the point is to learn, not to create perfection, even failed experiments in the lab or on this page, will offer something for us, if we will find it. and when the experiment doesn't fail... well, you will see! - Anthony Watkins
Welcome to the Anthropocene
The world you want
could all be yours
on demand—would
you want one where
​
instead of trees
withering like
orphaned salad
you watch polar
bears capsized, gray,
bloated in a
plastic soup sea?
Or would you log
out, nuke a cup
of that soup, and
praise the grace of
the world we'd made?
Is this any good?
Falling like wind
through the alleys
between buildings
in Winter came
​
the afternoon.
Bright or cloudy
it would have been
the same. I can't
remember which
of them it was.
What I can put
a name to is
​
the sham into
which my summer
bloomed like concrete
thickened in clouds.
​
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"These are written in a little four-stanza/four line-per-stanza form that I developed."
Matt Stefon is the author of The Long Contraction and Shaking the Wind. He is poetry editor of West Texas Literary Review. He lives north of Boston.
Senryu
A private meeting
between two single colleagues
... silent looks, few words
Nursing my wounds from
The nurse's needle
Road works when walking
to an international
traffic conference
Crowded rock platform
— a bikini girl fishes
for compliments
Lunch at KFC
I'll buy the chips because
they're out of chicken
​
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Ben Taylor lives on the Central Coast, near Sydney, Australia. He enjoys writing, beach-going, being in nature, and laughing with friends.