October 2017 Vol. II No. X
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!
General Poetry Page with Suzanne Robinson
Use links below to connect to other poetry sections
The Dog Across The Street is Dying
I know this by the sound of her bay.
A once deep courageous hunt
Has turned to a soft sound of searching still.
Relentless tracking,
Even at the end of things.
The mysterious trails
Into and out
Of this world.
Rebecca Villineau
Wild swimming
The first time I swam in the wild
We went to a lake in the moors.
Tadpoles skimmed the water’s edge,
Lapping up the last of the sun’s warmth.
You waded in, laughing,
Feet sprinkling us as they went
“Come on in!”
“But the tadpoles…”
In the end I followed your lead:
Dodged around the little black blobs,
Sucked up the chill with hot flesh.
“The fish are tickling my toes!”
We soon ran out of words.
The sunset paled
A pink and orange ending
As we shivered, huddled in a blanket
Reluctant to move again.
Zion Lights
Dancing In The Kitchen
(sixty years together still...)
They dance in the kitchen
like movie stars from 1939
With her eyes closed,
she imagines herself to be this man's siren
all heady scents, fiery hair, and throaty whispers
she could be a star of the silver screen
alabaster wrists and swan neck
flashing emeralds and rubies
the whisper of her caresses
delivered by hands in long satin gloves
With his eyes shut
he could be the UPS man
twenty five years old
in summer shorts
flashing a devil of a smile
his lips deliver a commanding brush
of sea-deep kisses
that rock her from
her toes to her cerebellum
and back again...
There is music
a solo saxophone
drifting in through the open windows
soul-stirring on a cool and scented breeze
Icy cocktails are produced
as smooth as slipping skin
he removes her gloves
allowing her fingers to
graze the rim of her frosted glass
pluck a briny glistening olive
and
place it between his teeth...
It's a shabby room
scuffed up floors
a patched screen door and
counter-tops in avocado green
He washes... she dries
that's the way it's always been
sweet tea and ice cold beer
to toast another perfect sunset
as if, he had arranged it all
just for her pleasure
his face crinkles
with that funny lopsided smile
she knows so well
He fiddles with an old black radio
slow, sweet jazz fills the kitchen
spilling into every corner
crossing the room
he takes her hand
Sixty years of Saturday nights
still dancing in the kitchen
Jill Sharon Kimmelman
Where Home is Still
Our family
home
where we reside
where our hearts beat
where our blood melds
flowing inward
always
collective
together
The kindred ties that bind
some ties eventually loosen
our blood flows outward
onward
pooling beyond a great wall
miles long
decades wide
a chasm
apart
Time
occasionally an ally
erodes the great wall
a day long coming
familial blood flows
inward, again
where our hearts beat
where our hearts are
where home is, still
Rob Spina
Two short movie reviews
On The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Drug dealers and warlord-emissaries,
With a gardener-priest thrown in,
Turn round about on the line of the empty horizon
On Gilliam's Brazil
From the necrophilia
of seductive non-identity
to the search for papers
flowing round Tuttle's head like a mummy's wrappings
Ken Hay hopes these poems might inspire other people to do their own ‘poetic reviews’ of movies and the like.
Half a cup of coffee
I fill a half cup of coffee up with water -
Realizing I am diluting it;
Into the microwave - heated soon - for quick consumption -
The same with life as you get older:
Substance or quantity?
With quickly passing radiated days...
The orbit of your heart
I always felt that your heart was surrounded by a circumstellar disc of
pain;
and if only I could navigate (safely) through the torus of
disappointment
the hypotrochoid of loves roulette could be won with the
coplanarity
of my heart.
Jon Nakapalau
