Month: July 2016

Categories
Poetry

Linda M. Crate – 2 poems

I’M MAGIC

 

If you’re looking for me

you shan’t find me

because I’m magic,

and you don’t believe;

I suppose a healthy dose of skepticism is

to be expected from one who doesn’t

even hold his religion

sacred

let alone his love—

you hunted me like a wild animal

with your wolf fangs

you dragged me to the ground and made me yours,

and I let you;

but I puzzled over it all—

because while I knew love was painful

I didn’t think it required this much blood,

and so I changed and became stronger

I was always a wild creature;

but now your gilded cage can’t even find me

let alone hold me.

🍃

 

A SOUL ON FIRE

 

You put your hands

into my cosmic cookie jar,

but my stars were not

yours for the taking;

they burned you on the sharp

edges of their wildness—

always I was “too” something:

too fat, too uptight, too anxious, too provocative

or I was not enough:

not pretty enough, not provocative enough, not brave enough

you could never make up your damn mind,

and so when I look back at the pictures

I can safely say

that I’m happier without you;

and your icicles so sharp and so cold as the hell fire

in your soul.

🍃

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. Recently her two chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press – June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon – January 2014) were published. Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015. The second novel of this series Dragons & Magic was published in October 2015.  Her poetry collectionSing Your Own Song is forthcoming through Barometric Pressures Series.

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Linda-M-Crate-129813357119547/

Novels: http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Magic-Linda-M-Crate/dp/1508572968 & http://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Magic-Linda-M-Crate/dp/1517126312/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456149250&sr=1-1&keywords=Dragons+%26+Magic+Linda+M.+Crate

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorlindamcrate/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thysilverdoe

Categories
Poetry

Stanley Kaplan – 2 poems

DOUBLE DAMNED

 

I spurn your sentiments,

and you spurn mine.

I situate myself side saddle 

on that hayseed horse.

I, a woman cultivated

and created to consider

the sound points and the

puny pronouncements,

of he, the man in my life.

 

But she wonders how this

and that happened to me

and mine.

O saraband and stately

pavane, what precipitated

this passion, this poignant 

participation in the daily 

doings?

I will be double damned if I do.

🍃

REVENGE

 

Hollywood, who,

no why, no way to 

exchange this day for that.

Like Bill Sprat, who had

no fat,

on his fancy belly, we

who watch, wish him no

well.

If not hell, a half one

situated on a southern

ridge.

🍃

Stanley Kaplan has published work in a number of journals and anthologies, including, Onthebus, Chiron Review, Midstream and Quiet Courage with others forthcoming.

He lives in New York City where he paints as well as writes. Stanley is the recipient of a Pollack- Krasner Foundation grant.

Categories
Promotional

Bindweed Magazine Interview on Six Questions For

This week Bindweed Magazine is in the promotional spotlight, courtesy of Editor Jim Harrington at Six Questions For. The interview answers any questions you might have about the ins and outs of Bindweed, so feel free to have a peruse.

Categories
Promotional

Guidelines update – Use of pseudonyms

​Bindweed Magazine is currently open to submissions for Issue 3 (publication in October, November and December). But before submitting, please note the following addition to the submission guidelines:

🍃 If you wish to use a pseudonym, please make sure you mark your work with PEN NAME: and LEGAL NAME: If you don’t mark work clearly in this format, and work is published under the wrong name, the Editor reserves the right not to make any corrections upon publication.

🍃 If the Editor receives any emails from contributors demanding any changes after publication from an author who has not followed the guidelines, work may be withdrawn at the discretion of the Editor. Bindweed is a labour of love at the cost of time and effort to its publisher. Here at Heavenly Flower Publishing, the Editor appreciates good email etiquette.

Hope to read your submissions soon,

Leilanie 🌺 

Categories
Fiction

Ken Seide – Fiction 

ALIVE

My girlfriend was brushing her reddish hair, more strikingly red than usual, brushing it in the mirror when I came to say goodbye to her father.

                “Lee,” I said not wanting to startle her. She didn’t hear me.

                I know her hair is red but I think of it as gold, the color I perceived when I first saw it ten weeks before, running past her to a coffee shop, not wanting to be late for our first meeting. I had yanked on the locked coffee shop door, turned around, and beheld her.

                I watched her brush her hair in her father’s home, mesmerized. “Lee,” I said. I was almost pleased that she didn’t hear me. I got to watch my beloved caress and care for herself, like David gazing at Batsheva.

                I didn’t think I was going to see her father again. Only inner family members had been lately let into the room where he would die, and I wasn’t in the family yet.

                I stepped into view of the bathroom mirrors reflecting each other so she could see me behind her. But she didn’t. “Lee,” I called again, this time starting to get frightened.

                I had seen him four days ago. And a week before that, when he was still standing frailly and conversing softly and taking short walks in his home but also knowing that his life was coming to a close, I sat at his dining room table on his sixty-first anniversary and asked for his permission and blessing to marry his daughter.

                The fear hit me, because when do two lovers not hear or see each other?

                When one of them has left this world. Which one of us had died?

When else can one lover not hear or see the other?

                When one lover is only a vision, a projection of desire and fulfillment before one’s wishful eyes.

                She finished brushing her long hair and splashed water on her face, framed by reddish  spirals. She turned and finally saw me, startled.

                “I was cleaning up for you,” she said. “So I wouldn’t look haggard.”

                She stepped forward and kissed me deeply and I knew then as certainly as I know anything in this often painful world that we were joyously alive and real and corporeal.

                She took my hand and led me into her father’s room, her careful step over the oxygen line, and then mine, another advance in our sudden but not surprising journey.

🍃

Ken Seide