vintage poetry

2021-07-20T07:03:00.001-07:00

https://www.quikly.com/quicken-loans/s/DNMxWwox?utm_content=blogger

2020-12-06T11:08:00.002-08:00

<div style="text-align: center"><label for="description">100 million dollars please </label><input type="text" name="descriptionInput" id="description" maxlength="127" value=""></div> <p id="descriptionError" style="visibility: hidden; color:red; text-align: center;">Please enter a description</p> <div style="text-align: center"><label for="amount">100,000,000.00 </label><input name="amountInput" type="number" id="amount" value="" ><span> USD</span></div> <p id="priceLabelError" style="visibility: hidden; color:red; text-align: center;">Please enter a price</p> <div id="invoiceidDiv" style="text-align: center; display: none;"><label for="invoiceid">100,000,000 </label><input name="invoiceid" maxlength="127" type="text" id="invoiceid" value="" ></div> <p id="invoiceidError" style="visibility: hidden; color:red; text-align: center;">Please enter an Invoice ID</p> <div style="text-align: center; margin-top: 0.625rem;" id="paypal-button-container"></div> </div> <script src="https://www.paypal.com/sdk/js?client-id=sb&currency=USD" data-sdk-integration-source="button-factory"></script> <script> function initPayPalButton() { var description = document.querySelector('#smart-button-container #description'); var amount = document.querySelector('#smart-button-container #amount'); var descriptionError = document.querySelector('#smart-button-container #descriptionError'); var priceError = document.querySelector('#smart-button-container #priceLabelError'); var invoiceid = document.querySelector('#smart-button-container #invoiceid'); var invoiceidError = document.querySelector('#smart-button-container #invoiceidError'); var invoiceidDiv = document.querySelector('#smart-button-container #invoiceidDiv'); var elArr = [description, amount]; if (invoiceidDiv.firstChild.innerHTML.length > 1) { invoiceidDiv.style.display = "block"; } var purchase_units = []; purchase_units[0] = {}; purchase_units[0].amount = {}; function validate(event) { return event.value.length > 0; } paypal.Buttons({ style: { color: 'gold', shape: 'rect', label: 'paypal', layout: 'vertical', }, onInit: function (data, actions) { actions.disable(); if(invoiceidDiv.style.display === "block") { elArr.push(invoiceid); } elArr.forEach(function (item) { item.addEventListener('keyup', function (event) { var result = elArr.every(validate); if (result) { actions.enable(); } else { actions.disable(); } }); }); }, onClick: function () { if (description.value.length < 1) { descriptionError.style.visibility = "visible"; } else { descriptionError.style.visibility = "hidden"; } if (amount.value.length < 1) { priceError.style.visibility = "visible"; } else { priceError.style.visibility = "hidden"; } if (invoiceid.value.length < 1 && invoiceidDiv.style.display === "block") { invoiceidError.style.visibility = "visible"; } else { invoiceidError.style.visibility = "hidden"; } purchase_units[0].description = description.value; purchase_units[0].amount.value = amount.value; if(invoiceid.value !== '') { purchase_units[0].invoice_id = invoiceid.value; } }, createOrder: function (data, actions) { return actions.order.create({ purchase_units: purchase_units, }); }, onApprove: function (data, actions) { return actions.order.capture().then(function (details) { alert('Transaction completed by ' + details.payer.name.given_name + '!'); }); }, onError: function (err) { console.log(err); } }).render('#paypal-button-container'); } initPayPalButton(); </script>

Benny the Butcher - Took the Money to the Plug's House [Official Video]

2020-10-25T20:34:00.001-07:00

Killah Priest - Tai Chi

2020-10-25T10:34:00.001-07:00

Styles, Pharoahe Monch - The Life

2020-10-25T10:18:00.001-07:00

Dave Schwartz

2017-04-06T20:37:00.002-07:00

Lets Go To The Dance

G David Schwartz

Lets go to the dance

I don't think its in france

Just down the street here

Be Back In But Five

G David Schwartz

Be back in but five

Hope to find you alive

So please do survive

This Is Not A Poem

G David Schwartz

This is not a poem

This is a short essay

Believe what I say

Cherish The Women

G David Schwartz

Cherish the woman

Respect all the work she does

Don't make fun of her fuzz

poems by Natalie Crick

2016-08-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday School

Madeline loves it
And sits as Mother would.
The priest is like her Father
Dressed all in grey,

Palms fluttering with
Paper clowns,
Legs and arms spinning anti-clockwise
Like the priest's eyes slide

From side to side.
We are his for an hour
But he cannot touch us,
For we are jewels to be watched,

And, one day taken.
Nobody has ever held his hand
But Grandmother, with rings like
Little girl's warnings.

Alfonso Colasuonno

2016-08-16T09:01:00.001-07:00

80-YEAR-OLD WOMAN IN THE INDIAN RESTAURANT

You used to be a librarian

At Brooklyn Public and NYPL

You live on Avenue M and Ocean

And you got robbed

But it was your fault, really

You probably shouldn't have kept the door open

Even if it is a Jewish neighborhood

And you like this place

But there are better places around

But you like to come out here

Cause you used to live around here

And you are heading off soon

To go to the library

To borrow a Victor Borge tape

Oh, you know him

What's that you said?

I'm sorry, I can't hear you

New Yorkers hate when I ask them to repeat themselves

You said you watched him when you were eight

At your aunt's on Nostrand

Terrible thing, he escaped from Denmark

Funny, but such an odd sense of humor

Just like my cousin

Also a comedian

I think the library still has his

What do you call them?

Yes, records.

FLATLANDS

If I listen closely

I think I can discern

The death rattles

of Old Brooklyn

Over here, in this little idyll

Where American flags still fly

In front of detached one families

The sprinklers turning on and off

Soaking well-manicured lawns

I can hear the pangs

In the abandoned synagogue

Shuttered pizzeria

And proceeding out of

The mouth of the old drunk

That one with the faint brogue

Leaning against the door

Of Mickey Reilly's bar

Who Colleen serving up the Guinness

Tells me has to call a cab nightly

To take him to his home

on Schenectady Avenue

To rejoin his dog, old

His wife, old

His son, grown, around on the holidays

His TV, on, the news, Letterman

I can see the decay

In the lines on the forehead

Of the fiftysomething Jew

Double parked on East 51st

Waterfalls playing on his tape deck

The model 1994 too

I can feel it wither

In the hands of the old Italian

Ashing his cigarette

By the swings in Power Playground

Hands that once kneaded dough

For the best pizzeria

On all of Avenue N

Before he sold it to the Albanians

Who in time will sell it to the Mexicans

And they still dance in their best suits

Over at the American Legion

And Greekie still serves

The eggs and toast just right at George's

But the last yachts off the Paerdegat

Will all sail off in their sunset

On their way to Jersey shores

The sons of displaced migrants

From Cork, Naples, and Riga

Displacing themselves yet again.

ON MOVING TO RURAL WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA

I’m becoming more and more like him every day

The babyface won’t last forever

And my fuse is shorter now

I’m turning into a foreign man of foreign ways

And I’ve withdrawn for the most part

I’m prone to joy

And prone to rage, just like him

I guess I’m an immigrant too

I’ve journeyed to some queer land

Where the people are odd

We’re all strange though, in his mind

Their ways aren’t my ways

But I won’t look back

He never did

I don’t incline my head in the direction of the old country

That’s just a memory to me

Just old Polaroids that have grown yellow and frayed

Still, the displacement rattles my bones

I wonder how it affects him

We all must have known it at some point

Even the wife’s Congregationalist forebears, centuries ago

I can understand them

And I can understand him

I found a new nation here

And I’ve made sure to try to blend in

I don’t speak - my accent marks me

I have my own enclave, just like him

I talk when I’m there, with my people

I tell stories about the pop of a Spaldeen off a broomstick,

Summers playing in the stream of a Johnny pump,

And how the August sun melted the chocolate cones from Joe B’s truck

I always make it sound better than it really was

I’m sure they’ll understand me out here

Just like they understand him back there

I wave, greet them with a friendly “hello”

And they don’t walk on by

It’s on 322 -

Take a left,

A right,

And place your foot gently on the brake.

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

He calls out,

stenciled on a Chinese immigrant’s tee shirt,

at a strip mall,

in a town off I-80,

and I sit down to a meal of white rice,

wonton soup,

chicken and broccoli,

and those little crunchy noodle things,

a fortune cookie,

Sprite instead of oolong tea,

this ain’t fine dining,

a rest stop off I-80,

that stencil on a Chinese immigrant’s tee shirt,

I bow my head,

take a breath,

eat and drink.

I am the co-founder and Poetry Editor of Beautiful / Losers Magazine (http://beautifullosersmagazine.wordpress.com). My fiction and poetry have been published in Zygote in My Coffee, The Camel Saloon, Citizens for Decent Literature, ppigpenn, Gutter Eloquence, Horror Sleaze Trash, Dead Snakes, Yellow Mama, Quail Bell Magazine, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Rusty Truck, Pink Litter, The Galway Review, Record Magazine, Soul Fountain, Randomly Accessed Poetics, Winamop, Visceral Uterus, Fuck Art Let's Dance, O Sweet Flowery Roses, Pretty Owl Poetry, The Milo Review, Postcard Shorts, and Farther Stars Than These. I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Beloit College, where I learned under esteemed poet Bei Dao.

Donal Mahoney

2016-05-18T16:18:00.002-07:00

A Man and a Dog

A reporter asked Wilbur once

if there were any advantages

to being deaf and Wilbur

used sign language to say

not that he could think of

except you miss all the gossip

and that’s a good thing

if you live alone in a trailer camp

in a small town in Oklahoma

but it’s not a good thing

when a tornado comes through

and everyone else hears it

at midnight and gets out alive

but they forget to wake you

and you go up with the tornado

along with a dog

you can’t hear barking,

two small stars in the sky.

Donal Mahoney

As Wally Explained on the Locked Side Later

Another day at the zoo and

Wally’s new job was to feed the apes.

Old Stanley had fed the apes

for 40 years and loved the job

but told Wally he was retiring.

He was showing Wally the ropes when

Wally got hit with a coconut

lobbed by JuJu, the oldest ape,

who liked Stanley but not Wally.

Stanley drove Wally to a dentist

to check the damage to his teeth

but the dentist wanted to be paid

in advance and Wally had

no money, only a bus pass

and a bag lunch back in his locker.

He had never had a credit card.

The dentist looked and sounded

like Mel Brooks and kept saying

he wanted his money before drilling.

Wally’s father came to the office

and started writing a big check

to the plumber who had come over

the previous week to fix the toilet.

Bleeding from the mouth Wally yelled,

“Dad, write the check to Mel Brooks,

not the plumber," but his father said,

“Wally, shut up for a change" and he

kept writing the check to the plumber.

His father had been dead for 30 years

but he and Wally never got along well

when his father was alive either.

Donal Mahoney

Answer Me This, America

Took the wife

to a pancake house

the other day.

National franchise

good food

fine reputation.

Skipped the pancakes

had bacon, eggs,

hash browns, toast

and coffee.

Wife went fancy,

had an omelette.

Grabbed the check

because the busboy

started clearing

the table early.

A young dervish

new to the job

swirling his cloth

for minimum wage.

Bothered me

to realize he'd work

three hours and a skosh

to pay for the same

breakfast, more

if he left a tip.

Reminded me

something’s wrong

with our great nation,

how we do business.

Have both ears open.

Hoping for an answer.

Donal Mahoney

Marimba in the Afternoon

Raul is a kind man

who plays marimba

in a salsa band at LA clubs

late into the night.

Some afternoons he plays

at a nursing home in Cucamonga

where he was born, grew up

and dashed home from school.

He’s paid with a taco,

maybe an enchilada,

a burrito now and then.

On Sunday a fresh tamale

almost as good as his mother

used to make after being in

the fields all day, long ago.

Old-timers in the day room

bounce in their chairs, some

on wheels, to Raul's music.

Long ago they were young

and danced all night in

tiny clubs after being paid

a few dollars a basket for

picking grapes and plums

under pounding sun.

Donal Mahoney

Fly Fishing

Many years ago Miriam’s parents

took the kids for the weekend

while she and Jack motored north

to fish for trout in Montana

at Miriam's request.

Unsteady in her hip-waders

but casting with abandon,

Miriam lobbed a snide remark

and the hook snagged Jack's ear.

Jack told her not to worry,

just a tiny bit of blood.

He'd put a band-aid on it

back at the cabin

before he fried

the rainbow trout still

wriggling in her creel.

Decades later Jack is back

at the cabin with his Phyllis,

a quiet woman who

has never cast for trout.

He thinks she’ll do well.

Jack’s lost track of Miriam,

who sold the house long ago.

The kids are on their own.

He still scratches the ear

where an itch recalls

Miriam’s remark.

poems by , John Grey

2016-01-28T09:59:00.002-08:00

John Grey

RITUAL

She calls her mother daily,

lips taut, teeth cracked open slightly,

her speech restricted

to only the most mundane of sounds.

Meanwhile, her mother pulls on

her daughter's words

like hands round rope

in a tug-of-war.

She wants the truth to come pouring out

along with the small talk,

break through these unnatural barricades.

But what's on the daughter's mind is too dense.

It can't be wrenched from her head

without taking half of her brain with it.

So her mother's futile entreaties

sweat and ache, grow callouses.

But she'll telephone again tomorrow

and then the day after that.

She has this urge to sa)' little

and hold back much.

Her mother feels a duty

to nibble at the ordinary

while imagining the worst.

It's a ritual that fills a need.

Mostly, it's the need of the ritual.

JOEY AND THE MOTORCYCLE

You were drawn to the chaos,

borne around bends,

through thin, dangerous channels

or brandished above me

over trees, rooftops,

your crazy grease-stained wheels

farther and farther below,

your dying like flying across the sky.

Watching the stars,

I want to separate you

from how I feel,

awed by your untamable,

unimaginable speeds

before ice played a role,

and slid you on like water

racing for the downspout -

the grave that knew

it was only a matter of time.

DOWNWARD DAN

A drunken brawl

that he can hardly remember

and Dan had lost half his front teeth,

found himself sprawled on a sidewalk

in Dover, Delaware,

spitting blood and molar,

a burning throb in his jaw

as if someone had connected

with a flaming arrow.

A cop came by,

thumped Dan's wayward mouth

into a smile.

Dan reckoned it was tough,

from that angle

to tell what the joke was all about.

All he could think about

was his busted face.

how long it would be

before even the ugliest of women

found it to be kissable again.

He never did locate a dentist

who would work for nothing

or a fancy lady friend who could see past

his sunken cheeks.

But there was always liquor.

It never asked for

what he wasn't prepared to give.

His gums could testify to that.

There were more brawls,

more sidewalks,

more cops

but. at least,

he never lost another tooth.

One night, a homeless woman

offered him a place to sleep

under her bridge.

And she had a bottle of rotgut

which she shared.

That's how low Dan's sunk

since we hung with him back in the day.

He eats out of dumpsters.

He panhandles.

Whatever money he comes by

goes straight to the liquor store.

Soon, his insides will go the way of his canines

and without need of an intermediary

like a punch to the gut.

Dan's the one we all consult

if we want to know more about

a downward spiral.

And his run-ins with cops

are our dispirited lecture

on the true meaning of the law.

He's also a good example

of the tipping point

when alcohol becomes booze.

And he and his toothless bride

are a willing case

of what it takes sometimes

to be with somebody.

How many years is it

since we were all in high school together?

We knew Dan before he was an illustration.

poems by Doreski, William

2015-11-30T11:44:00.002-08:00

Greenland and Antarctica

Field ice knuckles down to the sea

and fractures. Slabs coast away

to addle container ships lurching

to New Jersey, Hamburg, Rotterdam.

I lie awake worrying that bergs

as big as Manhattan will crush

these fragile ships and deprive us

of necessities fresh from China.

Aren’t you worried, too? Your back,

as you sleep your crescent of sleep,

is a map on which I can project

new seas, new continents no one

even mildly sane has explored.

Maybe you’re dreaming of field ice

shuddering as thick rivers melt it,

climate change sickening the air

with the cries of failing species.

Maybe you’re dreaming of hiking

those ice-fields with me, crampons

groaning with purchase, ice axe

poised to slaughter pale creatures

that loom in the chilly fog. I press

against you, hoping that layer

upon layer of flesh will protect

the planet from its ugly secrets.

You stir a little but snooze away

my local effects. Antarctica

and Greenland seem so far away,

their rugose coastlines beaming

with winter sun or brooding

with winter dark. Which winter

are we? Early traffic sizzles

as the daily commute begins.

No one commutes to Greenland

or Antarctica, but the ice fields,

caught between competing eons,

simper like freshly printed paper

on which the latest scripture scrawls.

Red and White Stripes

Framed in the red and white stripes

of your six pillows your face

goes adrift, warping into places

I can’t enter without mourning

the forty years we discarded

like a cargo of empty oil drums.

The city grumbles to itself

with most of its passions muted

by the buzz of construction sites

and the criminal expressions

of cops in fresh new uniforms.

We should visit the museum

with its Dutch masters blazing

and Goya too angry to paint

but painting anyway, on and on

into black and gray infinities.

We should lunch like typical

elderly couples, late blooming

over delicate little sandwiches

and glasses of oily white wine.

In a few minutes the patter

of your bare feet on the hardwood

will present angles of vision

no one since Adam has enjoyed.

The snore of traffic will become

gossip of epic proportions,

and the stoplights will pause

on yellow for hours at a time.

The cops will almost learn to smile,

creasing their aggressive trousers.

Then you’ll fade into distance

rendered geological by habits

we hope to acquire. And then

I’ll know why the red and white

stripes of your pillows say nothing

of ordinary blood and flesh.

Lana Bella poems:

2015-11-26T13:06:00.002-08:00

Lana Bella

1) IN THE BREW OF LEISURE

from the outside,

the house was painted rose salmon

with blue shutters,

in what silver stains lived another life,

I stared at my shadow on the wall,

its gaze traveled where hued runnel bled into

the yolk-sun overhead,

then earthward

to a pair of feet standing in the brew of leisure,

what wonder drug was this

when I let idleness become a river of two suns,

one was the leaving moon drawn closed and dark,

the other, the wakeful one,

seared imprints where my shadow

gave chase into breath's filter,

conspicuously near,

just once beneath this heat's imprint,

I would like to be

on the side of a place where leisure went to hide,

and not be felt or seen--

2) AN IMPOSSIBLE WOUND

an autumn pine cone laden of sap drove

down my prayer balloon, then inside my

fingers it stretched heavy like a wrecking

ball yawn, her mouth, red and upturned,

snapped my impossible wound in two as

a forked bone,

I held within the songs she sang to me,

remembering an ocean parting between

us now--her sand-paper words that still

rapped my knuckles into bend hastened

like a storm tearing through my flesh,

I stood on a tale which went untold, dim

in the autumn breeze that traveled the

narrow turns of her cinched chiffon robe,

it was a brief indulgence, I knew, for the

end came ever so keen and fine,

her gaze rose over miles of shifting planes,

and upon the fickle skin of these nimbus,

my love restraint laid down in mourning,

orphaned like a shrapnel dispersing along

the unforgiving soil,

I became a stone lay unobstructive, stoic

to her leaving over then round the carved

landscape, even when everything that grew

around me pinged of twin emotions: her

baptismal stamp and my elegant sorrow,

so wherever or however long I will live, I will

tuck myself carefully away in a place only

known to me, without her--

3) WHEN HE IS MOST LOST

an old man wraps himself in familiar threads

of the garden's atmosphere,

with his bad hips and worse eyesight,

he folds in two as if a bent dollar bill,

it is early spring,

sunlight and birds make their descent

below the window sills,

where he is knuckled deep in dirt,

a handful of clouds and blue daffodil

plunk down besides his burnt-brown skin,

he breathes them in,

leaving shadows like an angel's nimbus,

looking about the garden,

he wonders how little things like bird seeds

and fertilizer

could release the pulses of emotion,

when he is most lost.

4) CATCH PHRASE

if I could reach out,

and take hold of

the first word you spoke as it was then,

because at some point

I became just an empty catchphrase

that traced your skid-marks

with my eyes--

I let your ghost settled the weight

on my body,

a thin stale leash of smoke

tethered me to the earth

as I dug with my hands through

the russet dirt,

for your messages

from the grave--

5) DEAR SUKI: LETTER J FOR JEANS

Dear Suki: Los Angeles, December 2nd, somehow, just now,

I find a memory of you in that old pair of blue jeans, the one

that tears awfully at the knees and fades from front to end.

My melancholia, this, when there is nothing to lean back to

unless I am holding on to some visible threads with your

invisible glue, how steady the ligaments, how imperishable

the starch. This may seem silly but it is not my intention to

make you sad, at any rate, I think I will don your blue jeans

over my wool leggings, to add an extra layer to ward off this

December cold. So that my stirring moves just so against the

memory of your body.

vintage poetry presents Peycho Kanev :

2015-11-24T13:38:00.002-08:00

The Reportage

A wooden cabin in the woods.

I sit by the dusty window and

look at the greenness of the world

outside.

Nothing interesting happening

inside but out there on the ground

between the trees and the bushes

there’s a little red and blue bird

bathed in afternoon light. It just

stands there as if trying to communicate

with me.

Hey, little birdie do you want to discuss

the problems of Essentialism or maybe

you prefer to ponder on the sorites paradox?

Whatever you want. But before that, please,

take notice of the bobcat which is slowly

creeping towards you.

Now

You write these poems so someone could read

them, right? And someone reads some poetry

right now, probably not written by you but

it’s still good.

The printed page glitters in this dark world,

giving enough strength to the heart for just

one more beat. It is still night and the book

in my hand flashes as a lantern on the shore,

a rescue beacon to all illiterate ships wandering

through the eternal darkness

and the seagull perched on the rocks tells me

that he’s the author of Pablo Neruda’s The Captain's

Verses -

we all live for that moment, literary or not.

Come Morning

And the darkness slowly retreats

like a Napoleonic soldier from

the dazzlingly white Russian winter,

carrying nothing but his shattered pride.

On my doorstep you write with your

sparkling letters the beginning of today’s

bright tale, which includes everything,

even me and the shadows like homeless dogs

sniffing the corners and looking for a shelter.

Please, do not come yet. I would like to

sit by the candle light a little more and finish

reading the autobiography of Leon Trotsky.

And after that? Well, then I’m all yours and

you can do with me whatever you want, except

taking me for I walk out there. You know

I can’t stand all this whiteness, I’m a night

person and so is my house, which right now

is awash in your shameless light and the books

on the shelves are already burning and I feel

like I’m back in Nazi Germany in the 30s.

Peycho Kanev is the author of 4 poetry collections and two chapbooks, published in USA and Bulgaria. He has won several European awards for his poetry and he’s nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of the Net. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.

Vintage poetry presidents (true classics) The Fly by William Blake

2015-11-12T13:29:00.002-08:00

The Fly

by William Blake

Little Fly,

Thy summer's play

My thoughtless hand

Has brush'd away.

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

For I dance,

And drink, & sing;

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life

And strength & breath,

And the want

Of thought is death;

Then am I

A happy fly,

If I live

Or if I die.

2015-03-19T20:58:00.003-07:00

A Poem Writ While On The Treadmill

G David Schwartz

Dedicated to Ms Brittany Francs

Brittany is so pretty

And I did get a hug

I think then she and me

Could someday be in love

She is so attractive

Her smile

lights the day

And if she was mine

I’d never run away

She has a light lifting laugh

And a gorgeous smile

I would be so happy

To be with her a while

Her long black hair flows down her cheek

And I just love to hear her speak

For the sound makes me want to be

Oh brother is she married?

I Didn't Want To Get Old

G David Schwartz

I didn't want to get old.

When I was a young sprout

Now I se its too late

I just don't want to go out

Age us seems to me

Is an introduction to

Being in the grave yard

Not visiting any one new

And also not standing around

Something -something, something ground

I Can Never Kiss You

G David Schwartz

I can never kiss you

Not now, not in a while

Because I do not want to

Ever cover up that smile

Welcome To Cancun

G David Schwartz

Welcome to cancun

Like you flowered shirt

Just don't run around

or y'all fall dawn in the dirt

I'll Not Call Him A Salty Dog

G David Schwartz

I'll not call him a salty dog

Although he has a tail

He is not I will not take

Not here, not anywheres

2015-01-25T10:14:00.003-08:00

2014-08-30T19:37:00.003-07:00

2014-08-18T11:49:00.002-07:00

poem by : ross vassilev

2014-07-30T13:35:00.001-07:00

the indispensable nation if you ever find a human skull just lying around somewhere bury it in the ground and maybe it'll sprout an olive tree maybe it'll grow a pair of black wings and fly off with the crows all the way to India where 3000 years ago some Goddess laid her body down to become a river turning desert to forest for the people or maybe the skull would feel more at home in Cambodia joining the mountains of human skulls erected by Pol Pot and paid for by Uncle Sam.

2014-06-14T17:41:00.005-07:00

https://soundcloud.com/prophet-has-soul/last-minute

poems by JD Dehart

2014-06-03T18:47:00.001-07:00

JD DeHart

The Anti League

They have banners and sashes,

these quiet old lady patrol people,

their cracking voices infused

with some otherworldly

demonstration vigor, now seizing

memories of years ago, sit-ins

and nationalism, yielding themselves

to their new great cause – forget

the wisdom of years past, forget

the girls who need the extra care,

rocking their screeching young,

not getting the expected;

the league now marching,

their cracking voices laying down

proverbial knowledge for buttoned-down

old-fashioned homespun reason

where there is no reason,

only a cause and a static sound.

A Weekend’s Promise

Walk with me along the pathway

I walked when I chose to matriculate,

look now daughter at the piece

of your future that can be in this place,

that can grow full and unleashed;

do not be burdened with the mundane

life you see in front you, do not listen

to what the boys say about you

and what you can and cannot be,

listen to voice of my teacher, the sweet

high tone or learning as she unpacks

a sentence, noun plus verb.

Caricature

It would be easy to paint you

as a stark figure, my dear,

but do not illustrate yourself

as others do, leaving out the important

details, the parts of you

that make you whole, do not listen

to the angry voices of those

who should love you, for they only

criticizing themselves, then curling

back on a slight manipulation,

do not blame yourself for the fault

that lies in others;

so weave your portrait, strong,

strong like you can be, like you are,

and exist, a hope and complete circle.

2014-05-12T12:09:00.004-07:00

April Salzano
asalzano@hotmail.com

Bio: Recently nominated for two Pushcart prizes, April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is currently working on a memoir on raising a child with autism and several collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in journals such as Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle. The author also serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press (www.kindofahurricanepress.com).

Text Slap

I am sure there is an emoticon or emoji

to fit what is needed when I annoy

the hell out of you with my incessant questions,

answers to which you have already provided,

but I forgot not because I wasn’t listening,

but because I was—to everything

in addition to what you said,

laundry crying

kids on infinite spin cycle

students barking

dog whining

all forces conspiring

against my attention span, capability

of my memory.

We need a our own combination of keystrokes,

delivered via cell

for the next time it happens.

A symbolic hand to face, a parenthetical

punishment of sorts to shock me

back into the realm of the writer.

Retrospective Disapproval

is as pointless as retroactive praise. Lessons

have been learned with or without reinforcement.

The statute of limitations expired long ago. History’s

characters cannot change their clothes, the color

of their eyes, or be recast, except as memory fails.

Mine is sharp, all unfortunate edges, a mirror

I hold that reflects no perception but my own,

not fairest, but historically accurate. For the past,

I may be sorry, but I will never apologize.

The Church of Sugar

I worship bread dough rising,

kneel before icing slathered

on a binge, lick cupcake

with peanut butter center,

tongue the body of my tiny god.

Sincerely,
April Salzano
asalzano@hotmail.com

Text Slap

I am sure there is an
emoticon or emoji

to fit what is needed
when I annoy

the hell out of you
with my incessant questions,

answers to which you
have already provided,

but I forgot not
because I wasn't listening,

but because I was--to

poems by Donal Mahoney

2014-02-28T17:11:00.002-08:00

Midnight in the Garden of Envy

It's hot in our bedroom this midnight in June.

The air conditioner died but my wife sleeps on.

She spent the day weeding the garden.

I finally decide to open a window

and pray for a breeze.

No breeze but I hear roses and lilies

arguing about which is the prettier,

which of them deserves more space

in the garden to unfurl their beauty,

petal by petal, like Gypsy Rose Lee.

The peonies mock the roses and lilies,

claiming peonies are the prettiest of all.

The petunias along the borders yell

not to ignore them because they're not tall.

Suddenly there's a ruckus among the hibiscus.

They, too, claim they're the most beautiful.

They want more space, as do the hydrangeas.

The roses decide to offer a compromise.

Tomorrow they promise to count

which flower in the garden attracts

the most butterflies and honeybees.

The flower that attracts the most

will be named the most beautiful

and be given more space in the garden

and won't lose a bloom to bouquets.

The other flowers discuss in a whisper

the compromise offered by the roses.

They take a vote and agree to comply.

Finally, silence returns to the garden.

I tell my wife in the morning to hide out

in the yard with a clipboard to confirm

which flower attracts the most

butterflies and honeybees.

We can't trust the roses, I tell her.

They'll cheat on the final results.

I ask her to keep an eye on the sunflowers

since they didn't join the furor at midnight

over which flower's the most beautiful.

I tell her more butterflies and bees

will visit the sunflowers tomorrow

than any of the others because

sunflowers at noon leap in the air

and kiss every cloud in the sky.

Donal Mahoney

--------------------------------------------------------------

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had work published in Vintage Poetry and other publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. Some of his latest work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.A1MWANJM.1vEf04em.dpbs.

2013-10-04T16:44:00.001-07:00

Melissa Davis

mdavi584@yahoo.com

A Still Life Portrait

I painted my life when I was twelve

Sunshine and beaches and lots of friends

I would find my match –

A connection for life

We’d have children

We’d party

We’d be rich with never a strife

I restored my painting when I was twenty

Good books, good food, and a few good friends

I would find my match –

A connection for life

We’d have good educations

Wait to marry

Have children later

Be secure with never a strife

And now my painting is cracked

No team can restore its former state

I have no match –

No connection for life

I am alone, lonely

My friends are pills

Reality is a nightmare

And it cuts like a knife.

I have read work from Vintage Poetryand have noted the high quality of work accepted. I only hope my poem meets your standards. I am a doctoral student and teacher. I have had poems and fiction pieces published with journals such as Leaves of Ink and The Circle Review. My nonfiction has appeared in journals such as the American Reading Forum Yearbook and The Commonline Journal.

Thank you in advance for considering my work.

Sincerely,

Melissa Davis

short stores from umehoma new link

2013-08-30T12:51:00.001-07:00

cheek out my new link , short stories from umehomo

http://umehoma.com