A Dying Lust

by Ali Znaidi

a flicker of a candlelight was waltzing,
         and quivering, as it was caressed by a gentle wind—
                               an endless orgasmic trembling
                                                                            of lust

         a comet dancing
                                                   through the dark

                                                                             once again
                                                                             only the wasps
                                                                    next door were singing

the      beat
symmetrically

                     went on
                                                                                   lust
went away, and helplessly thawed
with the appearance                                           of the first sunlight

After His Death

by Anastasia Placido

She smells of smoke again
   It's not just on her clothes
but surrounds her like an aura
            hangs in her hair
she is trying to replace her grief.
    The smoke clouds her emotion
As she inhales vast amounts
                         fills up her lungs
                     attempting to feel anything but
the emptiness.
   She cannot cloud her eyes.

The heaviness is there
and her face sags under hard glances and
     newly forming worry lines
I can see it
  the shift
It hurts to just look at her
    her hugs make me cough
the acrid smell of sorrow makes my eyes water
      But I hold tight.
Squeeze her like a bellows
      and stoke her back to life
I've followed the smoke to the dying flame
  And
I'm not about to watch another one
           go out.

Belly Up

by Lisa Vihos

I bellied up

to that hard place

where you belly up

when you carry

the whole weight

of every sad, sick

thing that ever

happened to you

and ask to have it

rinsed off

in fire water

moonshine

one fifty proof something or other

I really don’t care what; just anything

to cauterize the

gaping wound

ripped open

every time

I have to see you

and think about

how we once were

and how we are

not now.

Canyon in the Cold

by Travis Campbell

There upon levels so high, they stand out
Hanging heads over edges with wide eyes
To witness below the growing of sprouts
That bloom and die before the dark does apply
From these fantastic heights, they have no control
Able to offer no help to lives fall down
Underneath their world with rope bound souls
Forced to witness new buds choke and brown
And then comes the strong rooted warrior
Explode through boneyards of decayed stem
Toward the watchers, a fresh carrier
Reaching branches to touch as god did Men

Snap twigs and break limbs and pile them as tinder
Strike the flint; throw the spark, the chill night ender

Hard Whiskey

by Devlin De La Chapa

It’s 11 in the morning
I’m sitting in a bar
drinking hard Whiskey
Everyone is talking but
I hear nothing but the sound
of heavy breath fucking my ear,
fucking with my Whiskey breath
A nice old man, around forty or so
but not for this girl who is all but sweet of sixteen
who loves hard Whiskey in the morning
when her mama thinks I’m learning in school,
while her daddy sinks his big rig in the dirt
all to support my secret filthy habit.
It’s now 11 something in the morning
I’m lying on a bed in a motel room somewhere
beneath the seedy ruins of LA’s misbehaved
A bottle of Whiskey resides beneath the pillow
as the thick of some prick’s dick drowns my sorrows
My pussy, a vacant hole beaten to a tender rawness
is absent of no tender mercy, just detached from pleasure
I contemplate going Cold Turkey but the measure
of hard Whiskey is no challenge from its promiscuity;
I am a drunk, I am a teenage whore, I have a problem

I'm Better with Numbers

by Sheldon Lee Compton

Let me count the ways. Allow me that, and listen closely. Please.

One. Through and through, a blessed stone arrowhead beneath the tree root to the far end of the ridge.

Two. Miles suspended in all the water the earth offers while seconds, for once, gear down and step away, giving in. Just this once, in this life.

Three. While spinning in a ramble like a blackbird breaking the morning, even then, more then maybe. Never less. Dark-walking across those words, my fingertips chopping at the places where light once lived. Rambling with my heart slipped from shoulder to sleeve to palm.

Let me count the ways, and count and count and count. I'm better with numbers when your breathing can be heard.

No Heroics Near Cars No More

by David McLintock

Bauble configurations of metal, plastic, glass,
Cushions, radios, air-bags, stashed on low radials,
Squeezed round a magnificent empire-owning face
Whose little brow flickers in the mirror above the dash.

How they harry me, horn up behind me, pursue and pass
At puddle-splashing speed as I hunch in the thin width
Of pavement edging their city-piercing whooshing traffic.
How they hector constantly blurring by, how they hoot.

How can I walk a reverie, when every route
Walks me toward their flow? I hear the hum, and the air
Congests rubber, diesel, metal, a thick, sickening
Perfume, loud to the back of the throat. I lose bravery,

And seek the Green Man, a pagan atavism.
What committee commissioned him, mooing tradition?
I press on hm, and wait. Finally, engines tamp down. I cross:
A frail man targeted by impatient lions.

This Place

by April Salzano

You ask how much I want you. With a consistency            
that tears at my skin, centrifugal spin                      
to my core. I want your touch on my body my mind
your breath in my mouth, open,
quiet. I belong to you already. I remain still,          
uneasy, unsettled. How often can I
touch you before you vanish like light edging
at the blinds, before the sullen fog of morning reaches      
in to take you back, leaving me wet from your tongue,
drunk from your smell, tracing my way back to my own
reality, a place I barely recognize.

Ask me tomorrow. Ask me a year from now. Ask me
to describe how it feels once I’ve gotten
what I wanted, taken what wasn’t mine.
Ask me then when you know my fear of failure
overrides my stubborn refusal to relent. Ask me when
we’ve finished consuming each other, breaking silences into
sound, heroically battling each other’s ghosts
back down where they came from. Ask me

when we’ve finished memorizing
our respective lines, scars, the place
I twice tore open and was sewn back together,
the eyes inked into your weathered skin, watching
me watch you. Ask me when
the engine has finished killing the track. I cannot
define my reasons while I am still
carrying you around, a half formed idea, something
I created on my own. I cannot

reach you where you are. I am again consuming
leftovers, half eaten ghost rations, discarded.
And I am tired. I have already waited through this season
in another life, its weather blowing a restless black wind,
its sun scalding my skin, which I would sooner crawl
out of than be this untouched. I have been here before

crouched in a dark hole waiting to be found. Waiting through
the words of a language
I do not know, a dialect I never learned, cannot
translate or articulate, whose words promise to bring you here,      
to make you rush headlong to where
I exist, waiting.
Waiting for you to come,
not back, but forward, to this place you have never been.
This place is who I am. I am this place.
It is where I will be, waiting.  In spite of myself.
I am inside this place and I do not
            know how to
                                    find my way back out.

A Thousand

by S. E. Hart

stretched between myself
a thousand ways within and without
a twisting contortion that blooms
iridescent in your sight
with a thousand heartbeats inside of my chest
flutters of moments and seconds
crescendos of life and atoms smashing
together in perfected sequential order
I give way under the
weight of your thousand stares
lost somewhere in your eyes and
traversing an elliptical ring around
your misplaced dreams
take hold of me and we can
live and make love in ecstasy
a collision of senses and sensations
just you and I
and the heartbeats beneath our chests
for a thousand years before we die

All of You

by Kufre Udeme

All of you speakers of truth
Beaten and hated with passion
Casted out into the hungry storm
Without a shield over your bleeding heads;

All of you sowers of true seed
Sent into jungles of pagans
Attacked by cannibal monsters
Without an eagle to swoop down for your rescue;

All of you figures of laughter
Noahs of today's century
Stoned like Stephen of old
Without the council to appeal for your sake;

All of you lambs among woves
Steadfast in the warfronts with evil
Yet charged for holding your swords
Without trial, impede and cut short like John the Baptist;

Continue in diligent while you sow the goodnews
In my father's house you'll have eternal rest
Your present agony shall never stand against your joy
And your crown shall surpass His Excellency of White House.

Angels & Coyotes

by Kallima Hamilton

Leonid meteors pepper the western sky
where eagle chicks hide in the belly of pine.
Smoke signs gone, I'm
confused by the strong shaman dust
of old peyote buttons and broken bones.
The pain
of lonely cloud whisperers
is echoing their silence with arrows of forever.
Here, along tear-stained trails,
angels & coyotes
dance hungrily
high on the ridge, moon-drunk, howling.
Vision quest, shape shift,
our minds luminous from fasting,
we see through vast canyons of stars,
straight to the heart of Earth Mother
who lives on this dangerous rim.
Some strange ghost glitters
at the far edge of lodge pole, skims
sage, speaks vaguely about rain
for blue corn. Caught between
flesh and earth, we shudder under
shadows of loose feather and stone.

By All Counts

by Joan McNerney

Proper and improper fractions
have distinctive differences

Proper fractions study at
prestigious universities.   They
attend cultural events and play
at least one musical instrument.
Proper fractions step aside
for ladies patronizing only
haute couture shops.

Improper fractions are hooligans.
Each one guzzles cheap beer,
crunching potato chips while
screaming at wrestling matches.
Improper fractions knock over
seniors to reach clearance racks.

Beware of mixed figures.  These
hybrids can not decide what they are.
Medication might help them plus
talking therapy so popular today.  Never
allow children to associate with them.

Negative numerals should be avoided.
Those will only subtract from your life
flinging freezing rain in your face.
Conversely, positive numerals are
delightful handing us glowing statistics
and bright bouquets of fragrant daisies.

Never take integers for granted.  Do not
allow yourself to be divided but let
all quotients be fruitful and multiply
until that day when your number is up.

The royal palace in Hyderabad

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

The palace was luminously wet reaching out to sky

In its shadow lay the kings and their faceless women

Whose fine drapery interrupted their noses and eyes

Under many big-vaulting domes and resounding halls.

Their noises went up to ceiling to return empty

Like their noses and eyes lost from their faces.

They were not lost really but had never been there.

When the silks arrived they forgot w omen’s faces.

The women sat there gossiping about other women,

Other women in the harem and their fine draperies.

Their men’s bloated egos did not show on the faces;

Their man’s egos showed on the woman’s stomachs,

On the little heirs to the throne who came from there.

A fine bangle, a glittering necklace and some pearls

Hushed talk about the latest addition to the harem

And the scraps of conversation went on as it rained.

They had no faces for the evening conversation,

Only bodies fully draped in the finest gilded silks.

In the beginning they sat on the ground huddled.

Later the West grew on them in white man’s land

They sat on sofas and high backed chairs presiding

Tea ceremonies just like the sophisticated women.

They still did not have their noses on their faces.

What He Finds

by Mather Schneider

First came the men
who carved figures in rocks
on the hills in the
desert.
Eons later the art teachers came
like lizards slinking
from the sea.
The teachers soon dominated the land.
Their philosophy:
the soul is a spring
you have to pay them to drink from.
They couldn't understand
how anything had survived
so long without their
instruction
and they institutionalized art
so that it would never slip
from their sticky
paws.
They brought it all inside
the safety of the yellowed walls
and stuck stiff
to the single agenda:
preservation of the status quo.
Every once
in a great while
a student will summon the courage
to walk away to the
desert
and fend for
himself.
What he finds
out is how
strong those first
men were,
how small one feels
alone under
the stars, and how hard
that rock is.