Yes, Poetry

You can download the free ebook on Lulu here!

JAY CORAL

A POEM UNMADE IN BED


before i unfurl
the eyelids of last night
i hear the highway breaks
into roaring waves
tar to golden sand
the dream rolls
i touch the palpable breeze
of the ocean in my face
am I still in a beach hotel
in Puerto Rico?
shadows of the palm trees?
narrate adultery in the ceiling
smoke detectors beep
the mating calls of the coqui
and the great tucan
plants her digital eyes in the alarm clock
i reach for a body
my arm feels the moonshine
on the sheets of the cold bed
i gaze at the creases
a billowing ghost
succumbs.


I NEVER SAID INK IS BAD


after your pen went blank
you dipped its point
in your tongue
and rolled it in your scalp

you then parted your hair
and gave me a flash
as if saying
“i think it’s dry”

you dropped your gaze
for no reason
and did not acknowledge
the hermeneutics in our eyes

you were locked
and i was quizzed
you never told me the story
and i never said ink is bad.



ROBERT HOWELL

DESCARTES WOULD BE PROUD…EVENTUALLY


When we have lost our humanity, what is left to preserve?
The damaged heart that is afraid to speak?
The soul buried in repeated conversation?
The mind that atrophies under the strain?

The stress of the day clothes the fallen as a cloak, 
blotting out humanity, and replacing it with carefully scripted replies.
The man becomes less of a man, and more of an automaton, 
in the interest of self preserving efficiency.  

I am imprisoned in walls I built, 
guarded by the rituals I accepted,
protected by the rehearsal of the appropriate.
I’m not sure I think, therefore perhaps I am not.

Convenience has become an imperfect life-support, 
Routine, a replacement for thought.
Our flesh is preserved, our psyche defended, 
while we slowly decay within.

The walls are starting to crack,
the ritual becoming tedious and without meaning.
Preservation means nothing to the dead.
I know I’m alive because I’m starting to hate what I’ve become.



DONAL MAHONEY

LET HER BLOOM


The first time a man meets her,
his lids flicker,
an appropriate reaction.
 
The first time a woman meets her,
her eyes pop out and coil on her forehead,
another appropriate reaction.
 
Who can blame either?
Today, who buys the canard
about the true, the good, the beautiful
 
in theory or in a woman?
Let them watch her as I did.
Let them frisk her for flaws
 
that will allow them to live
as they are, as they were,
as I was when I met her.
 
Till then, let her bloom
with my children
while I wonder, I try.


YE OF LITTLE FAITH

 
     for Thomas Aquinas
 
Part readily the skin
and readily the pulp, 
as readily the tongues
wild apples bore,
eviscerate the cores,
and watermelon spit the pits
they cannot swallow.
Let this be done before
the tongues
wild lemons bore
find no cores.
 


EIRA NEEDHAM

OCEAN TAPESTRY


Swallowing jelly babies for a treat,
a Baleen wallows in the waves,
where butterflies glide close below
whispering together; their long noses 
nudge through kaleidoscopic coral reefs
to adjacent caves.

The carnival’s awash with revelry.
On a rocky stage, toads sing loud and long
accompanied by pearl’s bongo beat.
King Neptune’s golden tones resound
with seahorses’ clicking castanets,
while octopi hand-jive, rippling
in a rhythmic tide and
mermaids belly-dance; undulating 
spangled tails, hair flowing.

Surf-wisps surge as cloudy creatures 
merge with cumulus, swiftly drifting off.
His Majesty remains, flooding 
azure realms with amber shafts.

I jolt back to reality, clouds dispersed;
my reverie ends — tea-break is over.



TIMOTHY JOS. NELSON

WE WERE GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD


Sitting around blazing beach fires
with our moonbeam dreams
as the sky burned away
we laughed and screamed
and you knew what I believed

No plans but the world was ours
eyes full of smiles and sun
the net hadn’t caught us yet
spirit as free as the salty breeze

We were going to change the world
by living in the moment
find peace & security through spontaneity, by accident
swimming out of the rip tide
swimming away from the net
we’d change the world
if we just knew how to do it



KATIE MCCLENDON 

A SERIES OF WORDS THAT MIGHT NOT WORK

 
            (Hospital)
 
Her room was not a room,
but a space sectioned off
from the corridor
by a curtain.
 
In small, plastic boxes
I counted anonymous rows of
cotton balls, tongue depressors,
surgical tape, unopened needles.
  
My father talked to everyone,
told a story about the woman 
who poured sweat and fell back,
would not answer him when
he called, would not wake up.
 
I borrowed a Scrabble board, but
only made words longer, never
started new ones, stopped once
to stare at the man on the television
who told me to floss regularly.
 
            (Funeral)
 
We gathered in a room
that was not a room,
but one circular wooden wall
that went round and round
and round.
 
We had no ceiling,
just tilted pines that
bent over us,
peering in.
 
I counted the rows of
people. I wanted to sit
in the back, but my father
would not allow it. He
said, Family should sit
in the front.
 
I filled a paper plate
with too many sweets:
shards of chocolate,
a slice of sugar crusted white cake,
one inch of fudge, hard caramel candies,
smashed up chocolate chip cookies,
gingersnaps, mints,
pumpkin and apple pies that drifted
over the edge, taffy.
 
            (Silence)
 
I hovered near the edge
of the hospital curtain
while my father begged
Please, say something
to her. Anything.
 
My sisters whispered
in her ears,
placed their small
hands on her still
body.
 
I hovered just outside
the room, practicing words
that did not work, trying
to keep my hands open.
 
            (Cake)
 
When I was eight,
she made me a
cake. It was chocolate
with chocolate
frosting. From a
drawer filled with
decorations, she
pulled out a package
of candy sailboats
that peeled from a
wax paper page, and
pressed the prettiest
one to the top of the cake.
I filled an icing syringe
with transparent red
and she cupped her
hands around mine,
helped me write
my own name. I
never said Thank you. 

            (Step)
 
At her funeral,
a woman introduces
herself, says,
You must be her daughter.
I say,
Step.
 
She says, It’s all the
same thing, isn’t it?
I nod, uncertain,
remember the way
we refused her, year
after year, my sisters
and I.
 
I sit in the front, next to
her mother and her brother. 
Filling myself with sweets,
I push the food in so
fast and hard that
something in me snaps
and the word is no longer
a word, but the memory of
cake and names, a picture of
her as a young girl, her arm
curling the waist of my father.
 
Her memory is not an
obligation, but I make room,
allowing space
for words that might not work.



W.J. NUNNERY

STATE STREET


The cement shakes when we laugh.
And a street cornered bum sweating a life’s fill
of borrowed Newports and stolen sips of already
drunk beer, he chants brother, in half broken
monotones, the change in his faded Green Bay Packer’s
cup jingling something schizophrenic, rolling thuds,
metal against plastic, hollow stirring sloshes, plastic against
metal.  This sound, it rings like the infinite crash cymbal
on one, a ceaseless tsunami, painted a moonlight sadness;
the abandoned baby grand’s first airy high note.
This is what we walk to looking for a winning lotto ticket,
or even just
a frail handed miracle, one
that can’t help but latch on tight enough.
And up a ways, the capitol is holding its breath
looking down at this lingering secret,
trying not to laugh, trying not to whisper out
some smart alack remark.



ASHOK RAJAMANI

HOW THAT MUMBAI WOMAN ENJOYS THOSE SAMOSAS

 
There she was, dancing in
the red brick open-air kitchen
facing the veranda, laughing and giggling
like a crazed
and lonely spinster playing with pets
One tiny fan whirled slowly above her as she inhaled the sticky, moist Mumbai air
scents kicked in, one by one
 
Garlic,
turmeric,                 
chili, coriander, ginger —
all blended seamlessly to create her
altered climate, an atmosphere of irresistible flavor
 
when her mission was completed, she brought her platter of freshly-cooked, freshly-fried samosas to the table
They began eating what she presumably considered, psychotically, to be miniature dumplings of ecstasy.
 
After
all, she had been dancing
and laughing manically as she constructed them 
There were few words spoken, as her mouth was full
relishing
her creations
This is my daily snack, she yelled! 
 
Nobody understood
how this could be, how she could eat her fried samosas daily and still maintain her skinny figure.  With her body
somehow she must have exercised daily, but they couldn’t imagine her voluntarily breaking a sweat.
was it classic binge and purge
no, they assumed, forcing herself
to gag would take too much effort 
 
Just
really,
really,
 
good genetics. 
Lucky bitch. 
 
After the meal was completed in the spicy air of that spiced room, she surprisingly
removed the dishes herself. 
Barely pausing at the kitchen sink, she said she had to go to the bathroom
 
when they heard
the wretching
the toilet flushing
the sink spraying
 
they knew why she remained thin                  
and wondered
 when then the next meal would be served



DOUGLAS BERTRAM

VANITY


She’s chasing the rim of an egg. A miasma, from 
where I’m sat, of vagaries too wan to catch. 
What passes for light nears anyone’s guess as 
dimming leads pour through each eye and charcoals
skitter to a blot in fruit gone over. As if for a first time 
buried with a sleight-of-hand threading the 
squib to a line, perhaps, more itself. Unheard
night falls a wing-beaten glister: stroke on stroke the
febrile scuff of claw to eave, eave to ear, hand to me 
– it catches her. And tallows fetter the air. 
So here’s grief, joy – familiar ecstasies; over a broken grin
my eyes reading:

         their chair cupping wails unheard
         her hair sweats to a knot greasing 
         the pace of a twilight hunt obscene 

         unseen. The cry a spat din flensing 
         a mother’s caul to retched shame. 
         Yet not only theirs

– who? Not us, then. Shod leaves fatten in 
brushed glass and eyeing you it stills:
this scene’s of anywhere. It’s then as flat as now, evening
into days beyond a sable-touch.
You’ll be remembered to her later, a flicker on the wing, 
unfamiliar if enough. But
our shadow casts the hour it fills. Lampblack, as sour as
rind or grits in oil.
 

SAM CAMPBELL

THE GREAT JOURNEY

The traveler in me says follow the pull. 
The pull is this force, this powerful force that feels like God on the horizon holding a magnet that’s attracting my belt buckle. 
I see ladies, beautiful ladies. 
The kind of ladies that you don’t just turn your head for, you clutch your chest because your soul was sucked out of your body and followed the angel that just walked past you on the street corner. 
Before you can even picture her face again in your mind your head has already whipped around and your feet have started to scream at you to stop and introduce yourself to your future wife. 
 
But reevaluate the situation, feet, soul, head. 
She isn’t following your pull.
Do I risk it? 
Do I want to ignore the horizon? 
No, my mind is focused on my travel—my travel in life, my travel in mind, my travel in experience. 
It’s not that I’m narrow minded, but rather cynical. 
There’s a great opportunity to be had and people walk the other way. 
Those are not the folks that I am going to have distract me. 
How about the ones that say my adventure yesterday was so moving that I will doing again the next day, regardless of how putrid it is. 
These folks follow this force, this pull. 
They see something they want and take it. 
 
Take it now. 
It won’t always be there. 
Well, it will, but will you always see it? 
If I lost its sight I’d simply light my cigar and wait to die. 

———————————————————————————————————————————
Contributor’s Notes:

Sam Campbell’s work has appeared in Full of Cro Quarterly and Blinking Cursor Literary Magazine. He is a creative writing student at Concordia University St. Paul and continues to grow and learn as a writer and a musician. 

Jay Coral occasionally blogs at http://bluejayeye.blogspot.com/. He is happy with the views of the cars and the planes from his window but wishes he can see the boats as well.

Born in Scotland in 1982, Douglas Bertram read Music at Durham University and, later, at King’s College London. He lives, works, and writes in London.

Robert Howell is a poet and writer living and LIVING in Central Florida, who owes all of his success to his forever patient wife. 

Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, MO. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Pressand Washington University in St. Louis. One of many Pushcart Prize nominees, he has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal,Commonweal, Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Public Republic (Bulgaria), Yes, Poetry, CalliopeNerve, and other publications.

Katie McClendon is a queer writer who recently graduated from the University of Washington and currently teaches a Fiction & Memoir class to LGBTQ students in Seattle through the Bent Writing Institute. She has published poems in Mare Nostrum (2009) and The Bent Anthology (2007) and is always willing to say yes to poetry.

Eira Needham began life in Seven Sisters, a small mining village in South Wales . However she has lived most of her life in Birmingham , UK. Her poetry covers many subjects and forms and has been published in print and online. She is soon to have her first chapbook published. Through interacting with other poets she has made treasured friends all over the world.

Timothy Jos. Nelson teaches college composition in Maryland. A diverse writer, Tim has published both fiction and non-fiction. His homage to Kerouac, and the city of its title, “A San Fran Serious,” was published by Sacramento Free Press as part of its Poems-for-All chapbook series, and he had another poem published in this series. Other work is published in Poets’ Ink, a Maryland State Poetry & Literary Society broadside, and Grub Street. His music and cultural reviews can be found online at PopMatters.com and Glide magazines, among others. Tim was an invited poet presenter to Towson University English Department’s 2008 Spring Reading Series. Visit timjnelson.com for more.

W.J. Nunnery was born in Madison, Wisconsin and has lived there his entire life.  His work has appeared in The North Central Review, Xenith Online, and Postcard Shorts . Currently, he is a creative writing student at Concordia University St. Paul.

Ashok Rajamani is a writer, poet, and visual artist in New York City.  He is a member of the Authors Guild, New YorkWriters Coalition, and South Asian Journalists Association. Ashok has been published in numerous outlets, including South Asian Review, Pif Magazine, and 3:AM Magazine.  His artwork has been submitted to many venues, such as Exit Art, a leading New York Cultural Center.  His groundbreaking memoir, “BRAIN KARMA,” will be published by Algonquin Books in 2011. For more info:  www.ashokrajamani.com.