Literary as hell.
How easy it was, at sixteen,
For the earth to tilt on its axis –
A slanted glance, a mean word
Overheard, an arm withheld.
Then the bottom of the evening
Would fall out, and if I could have,
I would have sold my mother’s love
For sex, drink, and sham affection
Maddened by Detail
there is a solitary moment here
nothing too complex
the sky split by a single bird
white clouds shaped as a ladder
death spread upon the street
under the guise of orange fur
(squirrels still have so much to learn)
the window of a house
I walked on eggshells until the yolks
revealed themselves as the true enemies.
Then I beat myself up over
the inevitable, which, too, was inevitable.
The sun told the moon
to thank her lucky stars chickens
kept hatching, uncounted by sheep
pretending they gave a fuck who fell
asleep. Continue reading
In response to my most recent rant
About the politics of my state
And the new governor who plans, among
Numerous other evils, to save money
By denying dialysis to those on Medicaid,
To establish “right to work zones” where
Workers can be paid whatever the bosses want,
To cut funding by half to universities
Where people might be educated
To be wary of folks like him, Continue reading
Curses and Blessings
By Dvorah Telushkin
Hanging Cranberries
In the Sukkah—
Our Fall holy day,
Cement New York City courtyard,
“You f….cheap bastard…”
A shrill voice
From an anonymous window.
Reckless hatred.
“I’m slaving away all day!”
Cracking before the sentence ends.
“F ….you!”
Prickles of knives.
Icicles forming on our skin.
Venom that sucks the
Spirit of celebration.
Imagine, then, 7 days later,
Same cement courtyard,
While disassembling
The Sukkah,
A Chopin Sonata
Wafting from a higher window.
Playing on a piano.
Melodious and serene.
Ephemeral melody floating
Between the Bamboo roof.
Through twirling cardboard birds.
Royal Blue Stars of David,
Drifting into
And caressing, with unspoken wisdom,
Our hearts.
The Rocky Road of Moving Pens
by Janet Buck
I almost die, lose my pen, disappear, come back to life a little bit. Somehow, perhaps by the grace of persistent boredom and a two-minute glance at reality shows, I find that precious stick among tsunami-sized piles of dog hair and shredded Kleenex under the bed, and voilà, the writing world has changed its clothes. It’s been more than five years since I’ve written or published much at all, so I’m hungry for that feeling of putting together a poem without losing a piece of the puzzle to the puppy teeth of our new Yorkie. The Ars Poetica floating on the internet was always a pretty dicey glass, half-empty, half-full, but I was under the comfortable delusion I could hold the cup without it slipping from my hands.
The water is now on the floor, our puppy’s licking up the mess, and I am left in dizzyland. The pastures I’m familiar with have grown new grass and added weeds, thistled ones. Poetry is a slinky woman wearing a thong; editors want short and terse, nothing over 30 lines. A complete sentence in a poem is considered excess grit. The bulk of guidelines threaten me with: “Don’t do that, do this instead, we like this, we don’t like that, we hate the part of reading fifty pounds of subs—and e-mails are a presence that will get you shot, or hanging upside down in the town square, with people throwing rocks at you. We don’t pay you; you pay us. But please submit; we want your work.” I fall for it like a three-scoop ice cream cone in my favorite flavor.
Fairly early on in the game, I was smart enough to realize that getting paid to expose my soul just wasn’t a “happening” enterprise, rather like setting up a lemonade stand at the North Pole and expecting people to fork out a buck for more damned ice. I’m the first to admit I fully applaud the invention of submission fees because journals without fiscal support go down in flames, and I feel sad when I read giant messages on my screen that say, “We’ve drowned and no one came to rescue us.” The fact is that we’re all together standing in the breadline out in the cold.
Where were you? I waited at the coffee shop. I pulled a chair out from a wood table, its rings stained by rings of saucers of friends who'd chatted above wisps of visible air. Friends like you and I, only you weren't there.
I waited as a waiter asked if he could bring me an espresso or tea, but "Oh, none for me;" I was waiting for a friend, would be rude to indulge before he could even attend. "Ask me in a minute or two, or three."
I waited with legs unfolded, pitched up, and neatly braided. A bell above the front door made fanfare for a man who moved like a tide of rust color hair, denim pockets full of whats-its galore. I wondered if I could love him while I began to hate you, as I waited there.
I felt the time pass through my center; smelled the scents of scones and sweets nestled cutely together, temptations to my patient nature as I began to question, "Will I wait this way forever?" The door's bell answered as another stranger made way to enter.
I waited with warmth on my skin, for you. For times we sat in bars that needed us out, when we walked by our sides on sidewalks. Me, maybe you too, wondering what we might be about. But now I wondered if we, now, were through. I waited as my hair fell out. My skin cracked too, like a soft clay pot put too early in the kiln; or a statue, like a quarter in a well, once wishing at gods who dispensed good and ill, but now buried in some forgotten hill. I waited as my eyes turned white. The leaves all turned from green to red, for you; for me all shapes made shadows of light. I waited as my tongue turned dry, as all my senses failed to give good notice of you passing by, if you even would arrive. I waited ‘til my breath let go. Poor strangers must have laid me in a stretcher, or an old sack; I wouldn't know. Maybe I've passed to some heavenly realm; or somewhere far worse could be true. Or maybe I float on, mixing with the steams and sounds of this shop, continually, forever asking: where were you?
Dina Hashem is a writer and stand-up comedian from New Jersey. She studied English at Rutgers University, and now writes and performs in New York City. Dina has been a featured comic at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, Boston Comedy Festival, Limestone Comedy Festival, and Burbank Comedy Festival. Her writing has been featured on the websites of Comedy Central's Indecision Forever, CC Insider, and Nickelodeon.
The Frightened Magician’s Final Performance
by J. J. Steinfeld
There at the front of the stage
a frightened magician begins to perform
one more anxious trick
Halloween night has been long and disappointing
the tricks and trickery
getting more convoluted
than an inveterate swindler
reminiscing over a lifetime
of seeking the beauty of deception.
I will make a ghost appear
and offer solace and consolation
I will make a ghost take earthly form
and offer a million sweet proofs,
the frightened magician says,
sweat on his straining brow
knowing the weight of last chances—
in the midst of the most sonorous
abracadabra words I’d ever heard
he drops dead and hits the floor
like a discarded prop
or a perfect clattering curse.
Everyone in the audience
goes home with a new memory
and something to talk about
for at least a day or two.
A Cemetery’s Birds and Ghosts
by J. J. Steinfeld
in a cemetery as unyielding
as mythology and madness
hasty in its grasp for meaning
and explanation and joy however misshapen
you experience a concoction of time
and language and garbled truths
what shameful nourishment taunts
you hear a song you cannot comprehend
birds and ghosts all about
some louder than others
you see a phase of the moon as indecipherable
as the moment of birth and the instant of death
you hug, in desperation or random coercion,
a vision and feel its defiance
birds the girth of ghosts
and ghosts the airiness of birds
you take a brooding morsel
that was once something else
you smell a fire from another time
and say to the birds and ghosts
words about another era
that era less long than current minutes
it is by minutes that punishment is exacted
you attempt to retrace your steps
the cemetery laughing beneath resentment
the birds with the voice of ghosts
the ghosts with the naturalness of birds
it will all be different and bearable
when the visitors arrive
one by one or in a frightened group
unlike unafraid birds and enduring ghosts
J.M. Templet is one of our Halloween writing contest finalists for 2015. We’ll be publishing our contest finalists every day until Halloween, when we’ll announce our contest’s winner.
existential trolls
We set up under rainbows
no one notices the crunch of bones
or the rattle of stone
as we gorge on candy
left from last year
perhaps a hand might be attached
we don’t mind
the pink the white
the awful red
the purple and blue
they all mask the ugly
faces we hide from each
other
by Carl Boon
The journey takes her past
the faces of the women
in the village making tea.
She thinks to photograph them
to make a book, but they're so many,
and some trail children
through valleys of flowers
until rock, until sea, until
the world's run out of wonders.
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