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Tag: Poetry
Categories
Tom Barlow – 3 poems
The Beat
WBZ reached out with the beat from Boston
in ’64 and struck my libido like a tuning fork.
I hid the transistor radio under my pillow
and wondered what the lucky kids back east
had done to deserve the beat while nothing
moved in my part of America for days on end
except copies of the Bible and corn weevils.
We had no beat unless WBZ bounced off a
chance cloud, leaving me to imagine kids in Boston
necking to the music from subversive bands
while we in the heartland were trapped in
the amber of crooning Elvis. On those dreadful
nights when the reception failed, my fingers
frantically coaxed the radio dial. All I wanted
was to swing and thrust and howl to the songs
I knew were out there exploding the night like
a train wreck and the shackles on me rattled
as I danced to the static all by myself
there in the Ohio dark.
Gardening Lessons
The wheelbarrow tire is still flat, a
long-standing excuse I lean upon, for
I was not born with dirt under my nails.
I am therefore not inclined to bury pinches
of carrot seeds just to spend hours on
my knees trying to distinguish between
weed and vegetable. Still, when fending off
the chaos of a morning, I envy those who find
peace in the garden. My father claimed
this blessing, planting and tending his crops,
with our reluctant help, after a long day
making steel. I know he was aware of the
farmer’s markets groaning under the
burden of fresh produce only a few miles
from Monica Avenue. I do not doubt his
passion for gardening was true, but I have
long suspected there was also a lesson
for us in our labors, passed down one
generation to the next in case the end of
the world should fall on our days and we
would starve if we didn’t know how to
hill potatoes in the blistering summer sun.
If this was the case, the lesson didn’t take
and I will surely starve.
The Stoic
Grandpa Lester was stoic as Mount Rushmore /
only after his death when I was ten did I learn
that as a teen he ran away from the family and
joined the circus / this would have been back
on the Ohio farm around 1916 / plows / outhouses /
handsewns / prayer meetings on Wednesday /
dumb nights and coal smoke / buggy wheel tracks
in frozen mud / I never asked him about his youth
for I assumed he had been born seventy years old
and all those signs of a lifetime’s labor back on the
farm / a hundred acres and a milking herd / had been
done by elves / and now I long to know how a
taciturn farmer transformed himself into a circus boy /
did he bathe elephants / hawk circus peanuts /
was his ponderous nose covered in face paint / did he
hang with the human cannonball and the trapeze lady /
so rude of him to take such stories to the grave / although
I share some of the fault / I’ve never been curious enough
about anyone but myself / and I’ve lacked the courage
to run away from any expectations / so as I age my face
too is showing less and less emotion / for fear, I suppose,
that people will understand just how Grandpa shames me now.
Tom Barlow is an Ohio author of poetry, short stories and novels. His work has appeared in journals including PlainSongs, Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, Hobart, Tenemos, Redivider, Aji, The New York Quarterly, The Remington Review, Aurora Review, and many more. See more at tombarlowauthor.com.
Tom Barlow
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Categories
John Grey – 2 poems
IN SICKNESS
Pain never goes away.
It settles down
on the darkest places
where it can fester
and get uglier.
In a year’s time,
it wriggles back
into the flesh and bones,
refreshed, empowered.
Your lungs have
barely recovered
and now, once again,
soft sleep currents
must give way to harsh
rapids of waking
at dark hours.
People say,
don’t be discouraged.
After a while,
they get discouraged
saying it.
BOATING IN THE SWAMP
As darkness oozes into swamp,
their similarities busy with mosquitoes.
I’ve misjudged the time.
Solid earth is farther than the stars.
With every insect bite,
my arms feel like human sacrifice.
Hands sweated to oar,
I row through reed
and mangrove,
floating islands,
from isolated backwater
toward the distant light.
The sludge below
assures the feel
of suspended animation.
I’m moving
but not enough to shake
the drip of heat,
snakes cozying up to boat,
the grunt of frog and alligator.
Home is my destination.
These waters define home differently.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Penumbra, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner and International Poetry Review.
Categories
Charlotte Cosgrove – 2 poems
The Day’s Events
I have a knack for seeing these things before they occur.
I am not bragging, There’s no third eye or
Sixth sense. I just watch, listen,
Replay. Every conversation, meeting,
I am actively eavesdropping.
I have played it over, become surveillance.
As if I sit in an office chair, spinning, a long black
Cylinder shooting down from the seat
Splaying out in four legs, an animatronic
Praying mantis. Multiple screens play,
Like bathroom tiles but with moving pictures
Entitled: The Day’s Events.
Because of this constant monitoring I am tired when I see you two
Together, the looks, the ease, the sudden
Disinterest in your respective partners.
And I wonder if you already now
How this will play out. Or if I’ll have to wait
For the footage to be played.
Eating Feelings
There’s been an evacuation in me.
A case of – It’s not you, it’s me.
Sense has left me, the good old common kind.
And now I am a shell, a scraped out creme egg.
I open a tube of pringles, unwrap a milky way
And it is like relieving toothache by a dentist’s injection,
Wrenching out a tooth from the nerve,
And I am left, slobbering.
Charlotte Cosgrove is a writer and teacher from Liverpool, England. Her work has appeared in Trouvaille Review, Dreich, The Literary Yard and Wingless Dreamer. She has work forthcoming in Confingo, Beyond Words, The Broadkill Review, Words and Whispers and New Contexts 2: an anthology. She was recently shortlisted for the Julian Lennon poetry prize. She is editor of Rough Diamond Poetry Journal.
Categories
Joshua Martin – 2 poems
Scrape the Bottom of the Feet
EARTH
B
O
U
N
D
& down to
drown in
pieces of
self-indulgence.
A pretty insignificant
office party blew
the lid off the
gov’ts plans /
executions /
malfunctions.
No
ATTEMPT
At
PEACE
was ever
M
A
D
E
.
the saddest one
can jump
first.
European Art House Skyscraper
Facile dimensions like comet’s tail
end of the line stockyard crashes
brawlers
bailed OUT, simpering in
wetted state of
bliss
ful
pretending. My moon lacks
hands.
My THUMBS lack infernos. And,
inside a statement,
making amended CURTAINS
ruse meant having to become
inebriated. Alas! Alas!
Poor young cannibal
pretending to pose for
military photo album
curving manufacturing
CRISIS!
devils in EASTERN
European art house
skyscraper
built to reflect
orange. Pardon my
French loss.
Leaving
to regret
PanCAKE
makeUP
tip of the nose
& hesitating.
Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is the author of the book Vagabond fragments of a hole (Schism Neuronics). He has had pieces previously published in Train, Fugitives & Futurists, Otoliths, M58, Punk Noir Magazine, Beir Bua, Scud, RIC Journal, Ink Pantry, Streetcake, The Collidescope, SORTES, Prolit, E-ratio, Nauseated Drive, and Fixator Press among others. joshuamartinwriting.blogspot.com
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