Eye on Life

Poets tend to
keep an eye on life,
the world is a veritable,
verbal soup to them,
their souls are dreamcatchers
sifting through the chaff,
seeking only the perfect grains
from where their heart is turned to lead.

Spending hours
with creative powers,
discovering ways to phrase,
the kaleidoscope center of a tulip,
soft coos of a baby cuddled
unabashed tears on the face of a
hardened veteran returning home…
and the godawful ache beneath
one’s sternum when love fades.

Thier pupils hold studied Irises,
not just purple blurs
along a garen path walked,
but each bloom spotted
becomes a metaphor
for some act of literal growth.

They hold great responsibility
in the grip of a pen in hand,
for hearts are moved by poetry
minds can be changed
movements created with
just a series of measured
strokes of genius writ.

It is a curse and a blessing
to view the world in
an 8 by 11 inch space,
always composing thoughts
amidst sorrows or beauty,
but the joy comes in the blanks
that are filled with pure expression.

I am resigned to being a poet,
and I will re-sign again and again
the works my muse
so graciously grants me,
then read them often
in the wee hours
and smirk a bit
at my profound legacy.


by-MFB III

Hives

My REM is a hotspot for bruisers.
The receptionist ushers them into my bedroom and I have to say
            What can I do for you this morning?

            What can I do for you this morning?
This one’s a regular. He
escorts me away from my slack-mouthed sweetheart,
to my family room,
to the sofa that makes me itch.

The visitor invites me to sit by him, face his hazel
eyes, Greek cheekbones, rueful smile,
our twelve-year-history.
            I’m married. When you come, it
            looks bad.

He apologizes and I begin to feel his love.
It’s on my left knee first. His leg is just
touching mine.
He slides his hand between
our legs and starts
scratching my knee hard.
            You’re hurting me.
He asks if it really hurts or if it just itches.
            It bothers me.
I crane my head and look through the bedroom door
to the lump under golden covers.

My alarm goes off to end this encounter, but
I leap toward the bedroom, past my spouse…
I press dream.

Back on the sofa,
I let the visitor grab my face. With scratchy
callous hands, he pulls me in to suck
on my top lip.

I feel the pulsing,
scratch my knee, wrists, back, both calves.
I’ll take my medication when it’s over.

By Tara Bowen

Poems by Jill James, Featured Poet, October 13th, 2009

the world’s number one prison pen pal

the world’s number one prison pen pal
is hard at work typing on the laptop with the broken ‘e’
wearing silver stirrup pants and crystals and Vicks vapors
and talking shit about love with a barmy mouthful
of health food and NPR is on and this person
spends all day writing letters to the forgotten men
and women of the busted justice system

the world’s number one prison pen pal
also teaches literacy on Thursday nights
and then once in a while the world’s most
number one prison pen pal writes a poem

it’s a hard day’s job because there are 16,000
Lonelyhearts and that’s just one penitentiary
but the world’s number one prison pen pal has enough
love for every one, only all the envelope licking
and stamp sticking and paper cuts and lazy eye
is making production supply to the slammer slow

but it’s all worth it when an inmate sends a
mall machine snapshot of themselves with braces
and dated hair with a note and a baseball card and
a big wad of baseball card bubble gum
and then no one is alone with the stupid summer
camp sandwiches or broken teeth or
make outs or plain brown shoes with rainbow laces

I envy the world’s number one prison pen pal
I even wish she’d write to me

honeypot of a library book

my Bukowski book is a
man magnet
for flocculent married
middle-aged chick repellers
baking tragic bellies
in the fizzy hot tub
filling up with hair
it’s okay reading
this cocky fuck cause
he cracks me up enough
but the flies on my honeypot
of a library book are buzzing
too close up my bathing suit
begging me to rot on the same
page, so in the sauna,
like the girl Jesus I was
come on to become,
charity bred and burnt into my
blood, I read a poem out loud,
laughing so hearty from the throat,
throwing out bread crumbs
to spa pigeons, ladling out
the gruel of good words
in the soup kitchen of flesh
while we sweat and sweat
then the men leave feeling the best
and I try to read the next, but
the page is too wet

obligatory landscape poem for the man who didn’t like the subject of love

branches in the shape of ghostwriter
wrists, playing only the white keys
on a cobwebby hammond organ
twilighted by dim headlights
that honeycomb the mist
a silent film in which
snowflake rice a roni rains
on the faces of skid row angels
who die pale and unkissed
smushed into tire track graves
like flattened angelfood cakes

compact cars cheeseburgered
by snow slices, silent night
for honeymoon hotels and piano bars
I breathe alone in clean alone air
just petting the land with a mitten
this sweet white no man’s land
powdered snow sugar
sweetening my soft coffee hair
for this wonderbread wonderland
I praise the lady winter with
kind little winks through wet lace

3 haikus on father’s day

santa clause construct
drinking on the job
a hand in the cookie jar

six foot track star
scotch worms for brains
suiciding every day

fragmented prism man
broken like a bottle
indifferent, negligible, over

Voyeur

We were in Central Park.
I was bleeding from my nose for no known reason.
It was all over my hands like exploding grape juice.

They called ‘Red Rover Come Over’
and the Italian and Dutch boys from that private afternoon
in the flesh were running past me with the flag,
taunting me, their pale legs brushing my party dress
just minutes after we were kissing
in a pile of Jamaica leaves.
The older man was watching us from the bushes,
naked with a crown of holly berries,
unable to touch us
except with his sad shellacked eyes,
the years of raping himself
congealed into gumball teeth in a row
that cursed us as he pissed on the innocent clover,
saying, “This is all you’ll ever know.
This is all you’ll ever know.”

by Jill James

Rub me raw

Rub me raw
Stain my hands
With chloroform and
Colored hearts,

Paint my visage
With the skin of
Fallen natives,

Red men pushed into
The worst bits of land,
Roast my loins,

With blitzkrieg
And al Bashir’s untainted parts-
God bless the Sudan,

Scrape my skin
With the scope
Of Sanger’s scheme,
Genocide in a magazine,
Rub me raw,

Pull me across
Gettysburg’s untrimmed lawn,
Ford’s theater at early dawn-
Assassinate a dream,

Taste me, I am
Unkempt rage,
A generation of discontent
And deadly plagues,
I am little bones of anarchy,

Part the Deadly Sea,
And rub me
Raw.

by Jenn Kelly

Poems by Bruce Waller

Scattered black twigs

sinking down a snowy bow —

mascara tears

The Lopping

Soil-stained hands prop

the lopping shears handle open

against the tree stump. He rips

the file across to sharpen each blade

while the white roses

quiver

on death row

(Drunk Before) The Blue Noon

I need to start a revolution somewhere in my head
To escape this madness and crippling boredom
That has confined me to my lonely room
Getting drunk again before the blue noon
Dissolving into the web of artificial lives
Dancing on the split-screen with spiders in their minds
I need an entomologist to identify my kind
When I'm glued to the repetition
That has paralyzed my time
But, I realize it's not the spiders I fear most
But, the mice that surf eternal seas
Of sticky webs and rotten streams
Wasting all my precious dreams
I need to start a revolution somewhere in my head
To absolve myself of feeling like the living dead

by Christopher Morris

For Burma

They stand together

Floating rows of tawny blossoms.

A low hum, like a gathering storm, bends the wind,

They do not break.

Dark clouds release torrents of lead-heavy heat,

Pearls of red rain dot golden petals, and 

Sink gently into pools of refulgent, crystal brightness,

Creeping vines climb and twist around tree necks, which

Slowly slump amoungst jags of roses and marigolds.

by Marie Jones

Austin, Texas

Three Poems by Megan McDonald

Jumper

Heart pounding
Racing toward the train
Life in every limb
He dives low
Dives for the sparking wheels
Heedless of the ever-wide eyes on-board
The hollow circle mouths

Purpose in every limb now
Scattered across the tracks
Clinging to the train
Begging two questions
Of the heavy silence
Where does the pain begin
And does it ever end

Several miles up the line
Held back by a weak link fence
The next one watches
And waits



Habitation

He rarely speaks my name anymore.
He says it’s not necessary.
He says names are for unfortunate others
Not acquainted so intimately.
I am not sure how I feel about this
Anonymous intimacy—are we
Two strangers living in a common house?

His body moves through mine as through a door,
Pushing toward escape so persistently.
I am not sure if I exist during
This communion of boredom and ecstasy.
The passionate prayer is uttered in silence
So as not to betray our identity:
Two strangers living in a common house.

Does he touch me as he touched women before,
Or am I different, separate from memory?
Do his hands hold the power to tell me from
Another flesh since his tongue ignores me?
I seek recognition in his voice
Because I no longer want to be
Two strangers living in a common house.

I listen for some whisper of opportunity
To articulate the forbidding words.
I will speak of love when introducing
Two strangers living in a common house.



When a Poem Speaks to My Soul

when a poem speaks to my soul
I can feel the air around me
move my fingers through it
sift it
push at it
and feel it push back
a living thing
a comforting thing
an embrace of something outside myself
larger than myself
something larger
something full of more promise
than I ever have been
or will be
and all is right and true
as long as the words persist
as long as those words breathe

About the poet, Megan McDonald

Land of the Free

Land of the Free, I ache within

This treasure trove of gaunt and thin

An Escalade uncaring

Pass the needy sharing

Why must it be this way?

The hunger pangs, a knot inside

Children groan; my pain is pride

The plasma TV news

I stare down at my shoes

While barefoot orphans pray

The tight insides of them and me

Which hunger’s worse, I think I see

To know and still be not giving

Is wealth that’s not worth living.

Redemption starts today!

by Ed Pierce

Metaphysical Nightmare

Whispers, images, flashes
Haunting
Deep waters move rapidly

Dream or memory
Confusion
Fevered imagination plotting

Insanity beckons
Looming
Shadows of reality or shades of imagination

Frame after frame
Clicking
Taunts fast and clear

Screaming conscience
Shrill
Mind mirrors shatter

Shards fall
Cutting
Tearing the delicate foundation

Death breathes close
Stop!
It does

By Bridget Bowen

Her Silenced Song

She seems to speak aloud,
Aloud so high pitched
It’s a constant ring in my ears,
A tune in my head,
A tune that stays stuck,
Stuck in my head,
So loud I feel I sweat it,
My heart pumps fast,
I sweat as it pumps faster,
She seems to pore out my pores,
As her tune beats with my beat,
It is similar to my heart beat,
Is her beat the same as my beat?
My sweat the same as her sweat?
I don’t know but I do know
She seems to speak aloud,
Aloud to me is what I hear,
Aloud to me is what I feel,
Aloud to me not with her voice,
But with her presence so soft,
Like her lips I feel,
She speaks to me aloud,
Even when she is silent,
Her silence is perfection,
Perfection is her,
Her perfection is her,
Stirring in my heart,
My heart beats to her,
It’s beating to her vibe,
Her vibe that’s in no need of her voice,
A voice that stays silent,
A soul in which coincides with my soul,
A soul that is no more a soul,
A soul that is no more alone,
My soul which is now our soul,
Bestowed upon me I am proud,
Proud to live with
And proud to die for,
No more does my heart
Beat alone by itself,
So with her tune in my heart,
It creates a tune that makes sense,
A sense that is heard,
A sense that cannot be silenced,
So that we may seem to speak aloud.

By Brandom White

Generations of Rain

When my Grandmother died I asked for her umbrella
The fabric is a map but not in a language I can read
A traveler she was, bravely circling the globe, alone
It pinches me and makes me bleed when I close it
I try not to flinch
To be brave

by Patricia Costanzo

Immigrant Dreams

A child of two lands

And two different cultures

Driven to find greener pastures

Fleeing from war, anguish and pain

I came to this land hoping to gain

A better life for my family and I

A chance for us to do more than survive

I came here a lifetime ago

I crossed many waters to land on this shore

A shore that held the promise of dreams fulfilled

The promise of a life of which I only dreamed

Here there would always be food and clean water

And schooling for my daughter

There would be no poverty, hunger or war

And opportunities would flow outside my door

What I found when I landed upon this shore

Was not what I dreamed of a lifetime ago

Problems abide in this foreign land

They are just of a different nature from what I left behind

There is still hunger but on a smaller scale

No one wants to employ foreign workers

Go back home they say

So I work in a diner

Although I have four degrees

I toil and I sweat to meet my family’s needs

I often dream of my home

On that other shore

I want to go back

To where I was before

But I cannot leave

Not just yet

I have growing children

And a load of debt

I will stay here just a few years more

and then I will return to that other shore

There is still hope in this land

For dreams unfulfilled

Hope for my children

but not for my dreams.

By Maureen Injete Chesoni

A Full Circle Dream

A brave young woman boards a boat,

she is determined to live a dream of freedom and

escape frozen tundra of tears and bitter hue.

She crosses the Atlantic and meets a man.

She a native of the land of Laps ,

and he a wayward son of Belgium blood blue.

She is not pretty and he is without care,

they both have motive to love and share:  

he for spite and she for a new home,

they hold each other for a short time

before he escapes to search out a more comely embrace. 

Before he leaves he does the right thing,

for his son he signs the certificate.

The life of the mother and son is not easy,

exiled from her home and her cold family.

The boy grows tough and steet smart.

A reflection of Chicago’s colorful past,

from his mother he inherits a true heart.

He serves her new land in World War Two,

and meets a woman of Scandinavia .

Three daughters are born soon,

one of them would be my mother.

A history of an immigrant family from the Lapland ,

Sami and proud.

We dwell in the new world now,

ever homeward our eyes are drawn,

to the frozen Lap and soil of our breed.

For now we toil in the land that has forgotten its creed.

“Home of the Brave and land of the Free”.

I followed my Grandfather’s example and served this land,

but the lies of traitors have left their mark upon me.

One day I will return home,

and hope I will find warmth among my people

and leave this stolen land of greed. 

Home to the land of my ancestors.

Home to die Free!

- By Robert Petersen