Marvinlouis Dorsey

I've 

never

seen

a tree

takin

a

nap

Michelle Smith

L

A

N

D

M

A

R

K

OF

MY

B

O

D

Y

Has lots of curves

from its mountainous terrain.

Hips and weight carried 

well bodied and shapely as poured from 

a bottle of Tanqueray 

&

M & M's covered in

a sweet and chocolate coated covered shell.

A Carmel candy bar with vintage verve.

Strong with a sting,

chilled on ice in a Godlinger glass.

The Landmark of my body is my lips parting

and throaty, enjoying the quench of thirst.

A lady Los Angelino who gave birth 

30+ years ago.

My body is a landmark 

valuable 

wise

wonderful 

woman of work 

PJ Swift

History

Events just

beyond and before our petty lifespans

feel impossibly distant, forgettable, irrelevant

and quaint

In fact, these events are breathing down

our throats. Breathing for us. Full

primal breaths. In and out. Out

and in.

Where does our wisdom go?

Gained with each breath

and then expired

with final exhalation

lost in history

Curse or privilege?

that all do share

to live our lives

with fresh-formed eyes

all experience unfurled

as if for the very

first times

Kafka's 85th

Kafka celebrated his 85th birthday, which was strange because he died at 40. But 85 was a good age to be and not that implausible considering his penchant for fitness and good eating. Perhaps, in an alternate life, penicillin was discovered just a little bit earlier, averting his early demise. Or, somehow, in this alternate scenario, Kafka had managed to avoid contracting TB. Kafka would live on. Of course, there was the Holocaust to consider. The 85-year-old Kafka must have evaded that by achieving literary fame sometime in the 30s, perhaps with a Nobel Prize, and consequently being invited to the US before the full brunt of 1938. Maybe Kafka settled in Hollywood for a while and had a role in writing a few misconceived, unproduced screenplays. He would spend those years in the company of other central European exiles, among them Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, and Thomas Mann. 85-year-old Kafka would have known a cinema he might not have imagined. Perhaps there was a meeting with Hitchcock about a possible adaptation -- with Welles, there would be one for sure. After the war, Kafka returned to Europe. Would he succumb to Prague again, enduring a communist regime, perhaps pressed upon to create works of propaganda, leading to his next exile? Or would he go straight to West Germany, fortifying his spot as the Great German writer? Or would he choose Vienna or Switzerland instead as his base as the doyen of letters? Kafka would be back in Prague for celebrations of his 85th birthday. The city was in the midst of the Prague Spring, enjoying freedoms and artistic renaissance. Young filmmakers of the New Wave and the progressive playwright Vaclav Havel would flock to him to pay respects and request permission for adaptations and imaginative stagings of his work. How much would he marvel at this world, or would he simply, wizenedly, be innately of it? In less than two months, Soviet tanks would drive him out of his city again. People might even describe those moments as Kafkaesque. But by now, he would be accustomed to this living cliche and know how not to let it affect the true essence of being Kafka.

Denise Dumars

Morro Bay

 

            After the Morro Rock, Morro Beach CA

 

It’s a big fucking rock.

Otters swim in the bay

lots of little rocks on the beach

to make cairns stacked all over

this used to be a volcano

well, hell, no such thing as a dead one

the scientists say now

wish I could live in Morro Bay

and see the big rock every day

and the fat squirrels on the beach

and the fat seagulls and fat pigeons

and fat sea lions and fat tourists

just like me and man look how long that line

at the Foster Freeze is

it’s the most happenin’ place in town

which tells you how exciting the town is

and that’s why I’d like

to live in Morro Bay.

 

The Big Fig Tree

           

                        After the Moreton Fig Tree in Santa Barbara, CA

 

Because that’s a real thing

big enough to give a leaf

to Michaelangelo’s David for his junk

big enough to give the hitchhikers some shade

big enough to keep the developers

from chopping it down

roots like veins in a really buff dinosaur

fruit the ruddy blush of not your mama’s fig

and like every other thing in Cali just about

not a native but a transplant

not Adelaide Crapsey but Adeline Crabb

brought the tree from Australia in 1877

will someone please shout to my cremains

if it makes it to 2077 man that would be so cool.

Jeffry Jensen

SLIPPING IN SOME HISTORIC SNIFFS

Spring came in a picnic basket

I rolled over in the freshly mowed grass

A poet was let off his leash near the jungle gym

The woods were crackling with new life

Solitude began more provocative by dusk

A squirming mouse took a right turn at the cattails

I was not ready for Dante in adolescence.

My sophomore history teacher expected me to master the Inferno.

My sophomore German teacher expected me

to get higher than 80% on vocabulary tests in order to pass

Baudelaire still was not ready for my menagerie

The air had escaped its cage before Ovid came home

Paris had some new palaces in the spring season

Pasadena had a touch of melancholy going majestic

Evening had all the charm of a poet in bliss

Rimbaud took a whole season for an experiment in Hell

Green water went delirious on a Friday in May

The doctor called to ask me about a bone job

Solomon walked into oblivion before PBS could see color

I had so many major loves go south before I could

Identify any landmarks that could find an impassible river

Virginia Mariposa Dale

Husbands like dead roses

smell too much of musty curtains

bearing the security of the sepulchre

the happiness of arranging

color-coded tea cups all in a row

For my pagan willful soul

I will not be a wife

therein lies too much submission and strife

Give me lover, give me equals

between whom love reigns unharnessed

wherein one can find

happiness without a bind.

Patrick Walters

she gives a wink 

and a smile

            to beat 

                 the world

                                  and the world

had

       no defense                          

                           for heart filled

                                                      prettiness 

                    when

i say world

                    i mean

               me

Hedy Habra

Gezi Park, 2013

            When bulldozers rolled on, poems of protest covered the walls

 

At nightfall, they melt into a sea of discontent, glide like a procession

of fireflies answering the same call. Invisible hands hold a flickering

candle, feet stomp ebony streets, at times, a face appears outlined like

a picture and its negative.

 

Staring through windowpanes and balconies, eyes follow the silent

march. Flames rise, scintillate under streetlights. Each tiny flame, a

prayer for trees to breathe in the heart of the city where voices are

heard riding the wind, where whispers seep through rustling leaves,

reach benches where lovers hold hands, spin around street artists,

pause by storytellers, into children’s curls, before landing on the

forgotten newspaper where words in suspension gather strength.

 

And the roots remember, strong rhizomes stretch elastic limbs, new

shoots yawn awakened by dawn, echoing millenary murmurs.

 

First published by Solstice Literary Review

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)

 

 

The Road to Tyre

            spreads its loose ribbon along the shoreline,

                       through orange groves hedged with white jasmine...

 

"We'll stop at Sidon,"

you once said, "I'll tell you

the secrets of every stone,

of every carving. We'll bring

back a blue vase

of iridescent blown-glass,

perhaps a small narguileh."

 

On the roadside, an old peasant

wearing a white shirt

and gathered black pants

leads a donkey

loaded with fruit baskets.

 

"I'd like to buy pomegranates

to share when we return

to Beirut," I thought. 

"I'll part the red leathered

skin, roll the ruby seeds

beneath my fingers

one by one."

 

I can still feel the salty breeze

on my lips, the warm,

dizzying scent of orange

blossoms, a bridesmaid's

endless walk to the altar. 

 

We never made it to Tyre

that day. 

We never saw the Crusaders'

Castle together,

we'll never cross its paved

causeway hand in hand,

a narrow path, invisible

from a distance,

like a carpet thrown over

the blue waters, linking

its threshold to the shore.

 

Year after year

we dreamt of going South

again. The pomegranates

untouched,

forgotten on a shelf

receded in my mind,

they must have shriveled

like the fruits I pick

with care, then throw

out the window, deep

into woods.

 

 

First published by Parting Gifts

From Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013)

 

 

Raoucheh,                             

Thirty-five years later, Beirut’s Pigeons’ Rock

                        forever mute witness of the civil war

 

a huge rock erect

   where purple evenings

conjure Phoenician sails,

a backdrop to tales heard

   as a child, of lovers hiding,

often drowning in its grotto's

emerald tears. 

   I used to imagine

how the Champollion,

a ship venturing too close,

   lay trapped for years

in blue mist,

her insides

torn apart by this Giant's

   unclenched fist,

stopped in slow motion,

in an idle attempt to rise,

petrified by salt spray,

  her remains buried

in quicksand

in the midst of the Bay.

 

A fallen Olympian,

   forever flanked

by dancing waves,

its ire, our inner

   obscure well, as if

casting a black

cloud over the former

brightness of sails,

   rustling canopies,

over our steps along

the Promenade des Français,

 

breeze flowing

through my curls, gusts

   of wind sculpting

our bodies, redesigning

silhouettes,

erasing footsteps,

   echoes of laughter,

muffled sighs,

all the people

long gone.

 

Some, as pawns

   on a map, glided to

another turquoise Bay,

in Jounieh,

along the wavering coastline,

      an ersatz, surviving its artifice...

There, people of the same faith

pull on the narguilehs

in the cafés,

play dice and backgammon,

 

   women of the same clan

stretch their smooth,

lustrous bodies

   under the midday sun

deserting Raoucheh's corniche

its rocky shores now crowded

   only by male bathers

and fishermen,

 

while the imposing stone horseshoe

clamped in indigo

   is no longer a good omen

after so many years

of fallen,

dismantled bodies

   blown up theaters,

casinos, snipers’ crossfire

from deserted terraces,

   the air still remembers

the smell of fear

and gunpowder,

 

its acrid taste unmasked

   by the unrelenting fumes

of daily exhausts. 

In every corner,

   next to a restored building,

an old house stands, scarred,

windowless,

phantomlike,

   awaiting mouth agape

the miraculous facelift.

The burning sun tires

   of recycling endless debris                          

left over by thousands,

the waste of hatred,

   and time, once a healer

broods despair.

 

Some far away will dream

  a laced balcony,

delicate mosaics, unfaded,

   patina adding its final touch

to pink façades, sepia walls

faceted stones,

   deeply engraved in the retina

unfolding in the mirrors

of our minds.

 

I recall how wafts of orange blossoms

mixed with effluvia

of salty breeze,

   once whispering under pillars

and arcades, would reach us

as we rested under a Jacaranda’s

   trembling blue shade.

 

I often gazed through thick glass,

   at the delicate displays of vials and flasks

rescued from the depths

of Tyre and Sidon

gilded by time,

   marveled at the fluidity of erosion

over blown glass

and burnished metals,

all pearl-like treasures forever gone,

 

   like so many of us,

the lucky ones

fading away in distant lands

   dreaming new dreams,

our children unaware

of what is no longer there,

   unable to hear the voices

we cannot silence

 

the song of the orphans

the song of the fishermen's nets

the song of the abandoned house

the song of the goat living in a palace

the song of the refugees milking a goat over Persian carpets

the song of the windshields constellated with stars of death

the song of the driver forced to leave his car at an intersection

the song of an entire school bus emasculated because they were Maronites

the song of mothers and children blown up because they were not Maronites

the song of a town torn apart, its children hanging like heavy fruits from olive

   and almond-trees, nipples and testicles dripping with blood on the lower branches

the song still heard through murmuring leaves, cacti and pine needles, as the roots remember

the song of Beirut burning us safe watching the flames from a hill,

   waiting for the madness to reach the mountains

the song of the man who never returned home, his head rolling behind his car

the song of a fool who crossed the green line to meet his Muslim lover,

   only to be found the next day in a small bag under the infamous bridge

the song of the silent ride over the bridge of death, the only way to the airport. 

I ran to have a passport picture taken with the two of you,

   tried to comb your hair as best as I could.

Your hair so fine, it curled around my fingers.

 

First published by Mizna Literary Journal

From Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013)

 

Karen Pierce Gonzalez

 

P’qalten:at

Musqueam/Squamish born

high-matriarch of P'apeyek 

in shell headdress and shawl,

net and knife in hand,

now cast in bronze, stood here,

watched her people

fish freely, water lapping

at their rooted, native feet

before steamships, railroads, and Englishmen

in laced finery cut their homeland into strips

of Vancouver like a steak, fat trimmed off;

flesh roasted over open fires

that burned cedar groves of totem wood into ashes.

Photo note: In this photo (by me) she also holds 2 poetry books (Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs by Karen Pierce Gonzalez, and Enough by Damien Donnelly).

Dean Okamura

 

Sparkling

There is always something – There
There is always something – Alive
     something
          that touches
          that twists
          that disappoints
          that laughs and tears

It's all part of the human experience
There is nothing doing about it
     except
          stopping it
          quenching it
          making it less historic

Be
     that's it
          just – Be
Thinking it through avoids bad Karma
Yes
     keep it in check
but
     once that little voice says go

 

Be
Be
Be yourself
Be the magical Genie that blesses this space

 

The Suspended

Guardian angels were sad. They wept for
The Suspended. These people suffered, yet
usual causes were not to blame:
— no deaths in the family
— no bad fortune
— no sickness
— no tragedies.

 

Their sadness oozed from growing old,
lost connection with friends, or
lack of passion and talent.

 

Once, angels watched a young woman
who sat in a corner. She stared at the wall,
perplexed – confused. The wall pigment
seemed off to her, causing waves of vertigo.
She stared for hours well past sunset.
The room became dark. She could not picture

the room painted in a more pleasing shade.
The Suspended only knew dark-cloudy skies and
never saw clear-blue-radiant heavens.

 

Angels felt they needed a healing hug.
Even heavenly contact left these humans
wanting, like water droplets
hanging on the underside of a rail.
When angels touched the rail,
droplets fell to the ground.
The Suspended preferred to cling to the rail,
upside-down in a line. Their lives
suspended between heaven and earth.

 

While people shouted hallelujah
without faith and belief,
others prophesied historic victories
without lasting inner strength.
Many pretended that everything was good,
with most things out of control.
The Suspended told good stories,
making words cast illusions over
the reality of souls and lives they lived.

 

Perplexed, guardian angels covered
their faces with their wings,
unable to bear the paralyzed grief.

Jack G Bowman

He stands on the edge of the wall that overlooks the San Gabriel Valley,

looks down at his small children

nervously sitting along the edge

he lets them up.

Time to take a tour inside the buildings

see the photos of the sun,

the blue of the walls,

which match the shade of air force walls,

where the rows of alien bodies were photographed

on aluminum gurneys in the 1950s

Mt. Wilson

2018

Scott C Kaestner

ROSCOE’S

Roscoe -

being a new age

philosopher of sorts

was one of the first to ask

one of life’s pressing questions

“Which came first

the chicken or the waffle?”

Petrouchka Alexieva

On the Globus There’s a Landmark

 

On the globus, there’s a landmark

that I treasure for life.

It’s name is engraved on my heart.

Its name is whispered

by the blood in my veins.

 

I keep there a chest full of treasures

– the memories of childhood,

all of the secrets of my youth,

my mother’s lullabies

and every father’s advice.

 

It has the scent of blossoming cherry

and China rose. The mirror remembers

my prompt, my wedding,

the days when my two kids were born.

The other places are just dots

on the map that I pass by in this life.