Big Time Wrestling Comes to a Small Town, 1963 - Bob Bradshaw Channeling Life - Rex Stocklin Heat Wave - Joseph V. Kleponis All I Knew about E - Laura A. Ciraolo Breakfast at Sunrise - Laura A. Ciraolo Speaking for the Dead - Laura A. Ciraolo No News of Her Dying Father - CC Milam No Quickies Here - Levon DeBranch The World - Jon Ballard John Thomas Clark
A flightless eagle, I live on the edge Of your world now. No longer can I soar For I am not in high feather. No more Can I ride life's sunlit thermals. The wedge Between us widens. But I have a hedge — Lex - who flies to me and nests on the floor When I perch on my bedside cliff. There for Me out of loyalty, his service pledge Roost, at my legs, insures I do not fledge On my own. He places himself before Me so I cannot fall. To underscore This, when I am on my morningside ledge And my bird dog lights by my bedside shelf, My heart soars for this is something he taught himself. John Thomas Clark lives in Scarsdale, NY with his wife Ginny, daughter Chris and his black lab, Lex — the best service dog in the world. A retired NYC teacher, his poetry has appeared in or will be published in The Recorder — Journal of the American-Irish Society, Mediphors, Celtic Fringe, Exit 13, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Lachryma and Hidden Oak. He has written "The Joy of Lex" — an upbeat romp, in sonnet form, which tells the story of life with Lex. "Othering" is his mss of 150 sonnets which recounts the journey of a person who others, who becomes "an other" as he faces a burgeoning physical disability. He has also penned "The Captivity of St Patrick" — a 700 pg novel which provides a window on fifth-century Ireland. Big Time Wrestling Comes to a Small Town, 1963 Bob Bradshaw
From the top bleachers my grandfather and I watch the wrestlers taunt each other. Soon my grandfather is up and yelling, spittle flying. The whole arena is standing, the bleachers shaking. The wrestler on the floor, his chest as bloody as a butcher's apron, is carried off on a gurney. Don't worry, I tell my grandfather. It's all staged. But he is sure they hate each other. Not even when we see them outside slapping each other on the back does he doubt their blood lust. My grandfather is still agitated, face red, his faith in their feud unshaken. In the ring wrestlers with outstretched arms circle like scorpions facing off. Bob Bradshaw is a programmer living in Redwood City, CA. He is a big fan of both naps and the Rolling Stones. Recent and forthcoming work of his can be found at Eclectica, Blue Fifth Review, Apple Valley Review, 3rd Muse and Tattoo Highway. He has a terrific son, who is a drummer these days for a punk band, Mental Hygiene. The band jams in the garage. The neighbors aren't happy, but Bob is.
Channeling Life Rex Stocklin
the day drew long and shitty and, damn, if I couldn't remember the reason I meant to get up it's times like these that i wonder what keeps me from walking into traffic or into the bead of some idiot's rage i hope i can find a decent thought to give me velvet comfort or at least some cold pizza and a good piece perhaps it will be a good day then i'll watch film at eleven on my busted philco they'll tell me if i made it out alive Rex Stocklin is a man of many facets ... a chemical engineer by schooling, but far more entranced by music, writing, the arts in general, comedy, ethnic cuisines and wordplay. Rex, at 51, is also a 12-year stroke survivor, but turns to poetry such that "stroke" doesn't consume his entire life. He does this usually in his underwear & fedora while feasting upon green tea and dark chocolate.
Heat Wave Joseph V. Kleponis
days of summer's heat build and fall into dead air - shots ring through the night now the city's still- blood red fingers of dawn streak across the sky in Boston Harbor's cold, gold shimmering waters waves of hope beat on Joseph V. Kleponis is a teacher of English and American Literature who lives north of Boston. He has had poetry published in Modern English Tanka, Ribbons, and Contemporary Rhyme. A haiku will appear in the issue of moonset, to be released in May of 2007. All I Knew about E Laura A. Ciraolo
On urban curbs fortune hunters pan for gold among bags and boxes. My grandmother limps in flopping shoes she discovered with her searching eye, a laser sight red dot on target. My grandmother's car was a junkyard filled with treasure: copper wire, newspaper, rags. Deposit bottles rolled as we rode going in and out with the tide. In the backseat I worried, staring at the gas gauge, doubting E meant Enough. But I always remembered to push with my legs, hands gripping the big chrome bumper as we got the old car those last few blocks home. Breakfast at Sunrise Laura A. Ciraolo
It is in the early morning when all you hear are the clocks ticking. It's then you can pretend they are still there, asleep, safe in their beds. And the sunlight need only touch their faces with warm beams to wake them. It's not until you pour the juice and perk the coffee, put the bacon on to sizzle in the big black skillet That the ghosts appear one by one to join you for breakfast. It's not until you sit down and bring that steaming mug up to your face, When you remember that yours is the only chair pulled out from the table. Speaking for the Dead Laura A. Ciraolo
For Rose, Edna & Eleanor The old ladies on my street lived into their nineties and saw a whole century unfold before them. They showed me pictures of themselves as young girls, playfully costumed, smiles caught in a slant of light. Rose, Edna, Eleanor, old fashioned names of the early twentieth century, that lived to see the gassed soldiers return from the first war and married the men going off to the second. They raised their families, buried their parents and put their great-grandparents' moldy portraits out in the trash. Tenacious, stubborn, they played cards for pennies as if they were hundred dollar bills, and could carry more groceries walking with a cane than anyone driving a mini-van or SUV. And I watched each time the ambulance came and one of them never returned, refusing to be bullied into unnatural extensions of their lives. Rose went first, fast, as her heart failed. Edna was next as her bones broke and crumbled into dust. Eleanor is still alive, but one day her sons came, and she was gone. I send cards to a new address without response, and I imagine that while her body is there she has already joined her friends, the girls from the block who played and stayed almost one hundred years. I speak for them now, forgotten, as new families move in who never knew them. I remember them each time I look into Edna's mirror, rescued from the day her son came to empty the house, a huge dumpster out in front. The mirror is etched with leaves and flowers and hangs in my entryway, so that when I leave and look at my reflection, I am not alone, because they are there behind me, smoothing my hair, waiting for me to join their game. Laura A. Ciraolo has poems forthcoming in the New York Quarterly #63, iota (UK) and the Long Island Quarterly. Her poems have recently appeared in MiPOesias and Orbis (UK). She lives and works in New York City.
No News of Her Dying Father CC Milam
No news of her dying father... nada Just playing the waiting game now we slept last night we were so tired just... both... crashed into a million different pieces and awoke this morning in each other's arms such is life... and death CC Milam is a reclusive poet who practices Ceremonial High Shamanism in the tradition of the Tang poets. He was profoundly influenced by the writing and philosophy of Han Shan, and believes that poetry is an ancient magickal process.
No Quickies Here Levon DeBranch
Let's assume for a minute, that I honestly believe you're coming to see me on the third, once I can afford to bus you down here. Let's assume for a minute, you truly mean what you say when you say you can't wait to meet me once the money's wired. Let's assume, for a minute we're going to have days and days of unbridled sex in my grandmother's bed to celebrate the arrival of her Social Security check. We've already spent the better part of three minutes fantasizing about what very well could be the greatest weekend ever. It's too bad the first bag of crack and the twenty which will follow, will become more important on the third and by the fourth, I won't even have enough money to bus myself down to the corner store where the Western Union is. Let's pretend, for a minute, that the only thing more appealing to me than the idea of screwing you is the familiarity of all notions of me totally and completely screwing myself. We've already spent, the better part of five minutes talking in circles about the inevitable. You have to admit, since we've been chatting online even thought we haven't actually met this has been some of the best sex you've ever had. Levon DeBranch is the fiendish alter ego of a poet who lives in Connecticut, who shall remain nameless. The dishearted poet feels he has been "marked" as a publication junkie, and what poet would want that? Levon DeBranch is merely a way of still being able to get the poetry out. As one editor responded to him: "Are you going to just die if I don't publish you?" The poet's answer? "Probably."
The World Jon Ballard
As if I had critiqued aloud the wild maneuverings Or hygiene habits of our taxi driver, though I'd only observed how the city was lit against The night, as if against an enemy or a stranger. I could tell by the dim corners of your mouth That you wanted to speak, to tell me For instance what a miracle the world is Even here, now, huddled together in this Taxi, shuttled toward some get-together For which you needed new shoes and I— According to you—a new silk tie, a trim, a new Attitude. Outside, I could see the dark treetops Only as a blur, then blotches of light that might Have been stars or stones in a far meadow echoing What the moon had just said about the world Being overrated, all the cities, all the little parties. Jon Ballard is a poet as well as an occasional literature and writing instructor for Oakland Community College in Royal Oak, Michigan. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Blue Earth Review, The Valparaiso Poetry Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Soundings East, and many others. His first chapbook, Lonesome, is due in 2007 from Pudding House Publications. He lives in Mexico City, Mexico.
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