Thanks to Halvard Johnson for letting me drive his Truck.

Pahá Sapá

Not for Sale

Crazy Horse Monument

Jena Strong: Gestation

Gestation 

On my mind.
Name changes.
Circuitous history.
The weight of gold.
Single hawk soaring.
Road trip honeymoon.
Sweet-smelling babies.
Early morning bloodwork.
Mystery of the next moment.
Fragility and strength as one.
Euphoria induced by caffeine.
Gratitude for sleep embrace.
Not waiting for another day.
Saying hello to old friends.
Gestures of commitment.
Erring on the side of yes.
Embodied and ethereal.
Symbolic and physical.
Not turning my cheek.
Not wasting my time.
All the way here.
As it happens.
Loving life.
Amen.

Jena Strong is the author of two collections of poetry and prose, Don’t Miss This and The Inside of Out. A 2013 Goodreads Newsletter contest winner and long-time blogger, her work has appeared widely both online and in print. She works as a career counselor and creativity consultant in Amherst, MA, where she lives with her fiancée and two daughters.  www.jenastrong.com.

Tony Brown: Exam Questions For The Next World

Exam Questions For The Next World

Section One:

Explain intersectionality
as it relates to
systemic oppression.
Include in your essay
the following terms:

blood dugout.
pitted bone.
rape shop.
sharpened stone.

Section Two:

If you are assigned
the role scapegoat,
how will you survive
your turn in the wilderness?

Show your work.

Section Three:

What five words
ought to be erased or respelled
in order to lift their magic?
Defend your choices

without attacking others.

Section Four:

Define a process
for removing
the history
in your own eye.

Secton Five:

Will there be any room for any mercy
in the next world
that has not already been shown
in the present one?

Discuss.





Tony Brown is from Worcester MA. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He front the poetry and music group Duende Project; a chapbook "The Embers" will be published by Tired Hearts Press in the fall.

Linda Saccoccio: Grit and Love

Grit and Love

Your black curly hair

was too dark

Your curls defiant

wiry springs that

recoiled in the fog

full, standing taller

than your confidence

small face

eyes like focused arrows

shaded under spirited locks

It was enough trouble

already

this shrub-like ebony halo

Not light, not straight

not preferred

Then year by year

white lines appeared

multiplied

turning this crown silver

In the mirror

In photos blanched in sunglow

curls obscured

unstoppable loss of blackness

Is it okay for a woman

to sport a silver cloud?

Are you fading into oblivion?

Where is the comfort in being alive?

Can you be saved by pigments?

Do you join the club?

Bond with women who color?

Will it improve?

Will it heighten the quality?

Are you serious?

Do they think so?

This new color in your hair?

This flattening of curls

This culture delivers

whatever you want

In a salon named Harlot

in Venice Beach

You name it

Sure you’re at their mercy

Sure you haven’t a clue

What do you want?

You pay with time

You pay with surrender

You pay big bucks

For needle straight hair

Glowing red brown

A sister of Raggedy Ann

Yet you are no doll

Your hair grows

determined as bamboo

Defying the promises of restored youth

truly an uphill climb

When once the black reigned sovereign

Now the glistening silver obstinate

as any weed

Reminds you life is maintenance

Beauty is a burden

And women whose roots don’t show

are either more fortunate than you

Or they bow to a

different goddess

Linda Saccoccio is a visual artist and writer with a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC. She lives and works in CA, exhibiting painting in art fairs. Her inaugural book of paintings and poems is "Transitions and Translations", it is available at:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/linda-saccoccio/transitions-and-translations/paperback/product-21700432.html

Alysse Kathleen McCanna: Chicago

Chicago

He took a vow of

silence, chastity;

then the fall of man

to ecstasy: wine.

My father, the atheist,

likes a good scotch

after work, and steak

medium-rare, and eggs

over-easy.

Too much theology

can drive a man from God,

from brothers, to the ends

of the earth. Or at least

to Chicago.

I was brought up to trust

my heart and not a book;

my gut and not a preacher;

my strength and luck and

not someone’s benediction;

but on Thanksgiving

and Christmas

my father, the atheist,

still blesses the wine.

Alysse Kathleen McCanna was born and raised in the Midwest. She graduated from Smith College in 2007 and now lives between the mountains and the plains in sunny Colorada

Two Poems by Jose Padua

Gravity

I am a passenger on a train called Gravity,

my feet are plunging toward the Earth,

my moustache is losing its hairs as I fall,

my nose feels like it’s being inflated.

No wait, I am the pilot of a ship called

What the Fuck, and I don’t know how

to steer and I don’t know where I am

going. Or I am an infection on the ass

of that percentage of America’s youths

who are clueless. I don’t kill them

but I make them do dumb things to

relieve the annoying pain, like listen

only to music that has a certain number

of beats per minute, or sniff bath salts

to get high, or stay awake all night being

revolting with thinking about revolt.

Sometimes I am a sponge, soaking up

the lotion, the spilled nail polish, the

sickly sweet soft drinks, the bodily

fluids that somehow escape the hold

of industrial strength adult diapers.

Man, that’s gross, and I’m gross, too.

But I’ve been a puppet, a pauper,

a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king,

which means I was once Frank Sinatra,

telling you to get out of my face, Jack,

after a show, and while you’re up get me

a martini, and I was also a woman in Vegas

dressed in nothing but silver dollars

and a smug, almost witless grin. And

I was Mothra, Godzilla, the Hideous

Sun Demon, a killer shrew from

the island of The Killer Shrews,

but best of all I was King Kong.

Ah, Kong, he was huge, he was scary,

he was a monster. I was huge, I was

scary, I was a monster. But above all

I was a love story, the only kind of

love story you’re going to get nowadays,

the only love story you can afford,

so close your eyes, rest your hands

in your laps, my friends. Yes, listen

closely to these words, because I am

your friend, and I am sitting next to you

here on this train.

Ride a White Swan

It’s 1968 and I’m high on something

someone said today in class about

dinosaurs, how Tyrannosaurus Rex

was the king of them, how he seemed

to soar into almost space with his head

full of teeth and hunger. These words

make me feel like the end of a long

equation that used to confuse me,

the response to the question to which

I could never listen because I was

busy thinking about the distance

between me and the door. And

the person speaking was me,

at about the age of eleven when

for some reason, maybe it was eating

more mangoes and less cheese,

I stopped staring out the window

and looked at my teacher because

I didn’t have to hide and because

I knew what the answer was all

along. If this were today, before

I’d achieved the clarity of mangoes,

the doctor might have recommended

that my parents pump me up with pills

to make me focus, to make me take part

in the society of youths who pay proper

attention to the more boring parts

of their childhood. But in 1968 the air

is becoming breathable again, and my love

for the world that surrounds me

is becoming a car, driving away

from all the other children, leaving them

behind like the dust the people who used

to live in the house I lived in then

left behind when they left and

we moved in.

Jose Padua's poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in many journals, newspapers, and anthologies. After living in big cities like Washington and New York all his life, he now lives the small town of Front Royal, Virginia where he and his wife, the poet Heather Davis, write the blog Shanondoah Breakdown http://shenandoahbreakdown.wordpress.com/.

Paul Tristram: Glue-Sniffing in Neath Castle Gatehouse

Glue-Sniffing in Neath Castle Gatehouse

 
It was the late afternoon of a school night
at 26 Pendrill Street, The Melyn, Neath.
The house was packed full as usual,
my Nana was sat in the living room
reading The South Wales Evening Post
and shouting bits of interest into the kitchen
where my Mother was, over the sound
of the TV blasting out the new kids show
‘Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends’
whilst at the exact same time upstairs
could be heard the ‘Our House’ 7” single
by Madness blaring loudly again and again.
“Listen now love, have you heard this?”
my Nana shouted over to the greasy kitchen.
“They’re complaining about glue-sniffers,
messing up the Neath Castle remains
with their glue-bags and cider flagons.
It’s bloody disgusting, don’t you think?
they should be whipped the bloody lot of ‘em!”
My Mother strides into the room all neurotic
and waves a dripping saucepan around
the room at me and my brother and yells
“I bet you two pair of Bastards are involved
in this bloody palaver, you and those stinking
yobo’s you’re always hanging about with!”
“Leave it out Mam, for Fuck Sake!” I yawn.
My Nana jumps up out of her seat and yells
“Don’t you fucking swear at your Mam,
like that then now mun, you little swine!”
My Mother comes rushing back livid
into the room with a different saucepan
dripping 5 pence beans juice everywhere.
“Mind you now boyo, I’d give you what for
if the last time I hadn’t have broke my
big toe kicking your brother and my thumb
punching you in that fucking head of yours!”


Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography
published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids
instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.

Three Poems by Rose Solari

Another Shore

It is essential to imagine

one thing as another — as when

the small hard winter apple becomes

a globe for the dollhouse schoolroom

where the rubber children learn

their geography; as when a pan of mud

is really quicksand, and in it G.I. Joe

is sinking, sinking, until a buddy

pulls him out in time; as when the old

round wooden drying rack, with all

its bare arms up, is your helicopter,

rising over the shores of Okinawa,

where you will find your brother,

not yet broken, and carry him home.

After All

So it’s just you and me, sad ghost

dissolving so quick by my side.

And we’re all down to senses – beer snap,

smoke taste – and the handful of photos

boxed on a high shelf that I’ll never climb.

Farewell, then, to the love and the hate

of it, to the shattered vase and the purple,

predictable vine. Now the stories you could

not tell will never be spoken, the demons

you never named all blanks on the line.

Brother, it took me twenty-three months

and four countries just to be here –

where I stand, with one foot by

your grave, and one in the clear.

Spell for Vanishing

That clatter of plates is her

warming up to the old story. The house

in Hawaii that wasn’t. Pineapples

growing on cartoon trees she’ll never

see. Brad is the name of the ghost,

and you already know his sea-color eyes,

the size of the ring, but still

you keep listening, wiping the same pot

over and over.

Then, just like that,

she’s wished you all away — four kids

not born, your father dispensing

the sacraments  in a parish by the bay.

You’re his, not hers, you’ve always

known it. Which means,

right now you don’t exist.

Rose Solari is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, The Last Girl, Orpheus in the Park, and Difficult Weather, the one-act play, Looking for Guenevere, and the novel, A Secret Woman. She has lectured and taught writing workshops at many institutions, including the University of Oxford's Centre for Creative Writing at Kellogg College.

Karren LaLonde Alenier: Refuge

 Refuge

On the porch of this house a nest
Grows not fabricated by bird
Like the painted bunting houseguest
To Carolina banks sheltered
By low lying shrubs pines anchored
Less by roots more by seaward dunes
No this flat little disk cankered
Into the wood this day in June
Belongs to a wasp jejune
Pest of the insect world vying
To control working to impugn
The peace we rented here flying
About this space we want to claim
My love man of calm spoils reclaims




Karren LaLonde Alenier is the author of six collections of poetry, including Looking for Divine Transportation, winner of the 2002 Towson University Prize for Literature. Forthcoming in late 2015 from MadHat Press is a seventh collection of poetry, The Anima of Paul Bowles.

Three Poems by Dwayne Martine

Red Rock Meditation  

I collect shadows

   as I walk

into the twilight

   ridden piñon,

lulled into the sky,

   uncertain,

hushed by work strangers

   each of us

hauling armfuls of

   the quiet

like gathered cedar

   firewood.

We climb towering

   Entrada,

red sandstone cliffs near

   my birthplace,

along a razor

   wire fence,

carting a backpack

   of sixers

and a liter of

   Bacardi,

up a trail not

   intended

for uninducted

   visitors,

ascending until

   only gas

refinery lights,

   the risen

moon and our closing

   distances

compel us forward.

   We do not

look down because there

   is nothing

else, gathered around

   the fire

with each other, but

   this first drink,

this last imbibed dark

   communion

to lives lived edge close,

   burden free,

balanced between work

   and future,

memory and night,

   not yet reeled

into tragedy’s

   elegant

device. We drink and

   laugh as each

devastation of

   a failed

transmission or a

   remembered

four-hundred year old

   hurt melts and

is forgotten in

   the liquid

warmth of precipice’s

   darkened clutch.

In a still moment,

   as the wind

shifts and the laughter

   stops, I pray

this night to never

   end, I pray

to halt our peace-flight

   march to the

inexorable

   red stone brink.

Imperial Nostalgias

a Navajo Film

Looking into the mirror, I could

be anyone:  an Italian, Latin,

dirty Burt Reynolds in another

feather. I’m sweating under

these thousand stage lights, my

skin burning and dripping like

wax, yet still I return for revenge,

for a white man’s love, for

easy justice, for a place where

civilization’s word does not

apply but my anger does. Just

because there are no real

redskins here doesn’t mean it

shouldn’t be about a semblance

of us. Just because I’m not real

doesn’t mean the hot, mineral

redness I’m painted with comes

off easily or that revenge isn’t

the reality. They want to shoot

my eyes out so I do not rise

from the dead, hungry for more

revenge. They want to bound

my hands so I do not strike them

down hapkido style. They want

my broken English to mean I am

real, that I am not immediate to

the nightmare hiding under my

beaded headband and black hat.

They want my studio silence so

these screams will seem rehearsed.

They want movie justice so this

burning reality is the real illusion.

Autochthonous Tercets

I take the material of this tired, burdened life

and fret it with my thumb until the edges fray

and the weave tears into stops and longs strips

of midnight. These long unraveled segments

have just enough strength left to strangle

my enemies, tie and burden my family, hang

me from something tall. Shimásani, my

Grandmother was a sheepherder, a divorcée,

a Harvey Hotel waitress and a weaver.

She lived through Riverside Boarding School,

her first husband, broken stories and the loss

of a child. She wove and wove:  the language

of her birth, the rudeness of the bilágaana,

the places of her life and the private spaces

in her mind. I weave the language of my

alienation, the rudeness of white people,

the places of my life and the private spaces

in my mind. She wove the loss of another

child, a husband, knowing the world. She wove

her grandson’s face. She kept the hundred

by hundred foot rug of her life by her side,

leaving one imperfection in the august weft

to be teased out and questioned. I weave anew

into this newly unwoven life the carded dawn

of her memory, the few threads, patchworks,

imperfections of a woman whose life is to be

remembered obliquely, without her name spoken.




Dwayne Martine is a Jicarilla Apache/Navajo poet living in Tucson, AZ. He has been published online and in print. He works as a professional writer and editor.