MISSY CHURCH

Goodbye, My Love

You fucking
little slut
I was the only one
that’s what you told me
during our long walks in the park
late nights in North Beach
Sundays on the Bay
watching the normals walk dogs
and run for health
while we kicked back the last of
champagne and Four Loco

Now you little slut
you spread ‘em for another
one after another, after another
tens and hundreds and
god knows, maybe thousands

San Francisco
you little slut 

Your thighs chafed at the 101 and 280 split where
trains and Giants fans
fight for a piece of your precious flesh
strangers
touching you and rubbing you and
trying to stay the night
“It’s too late to catch the BART…”

You
Little
Slut

Little hipster ants running
back and forth
and back and
forth and back
and
forth
over that sweet spot at
16th and Valencia

Last I heard you’re even letting Google buses
cum inside of you
without a condom
his insides spilling into your
deep dark places
changing your DNA
becoming more him than you
even the Guardian left

Once reserved for poets and the poor
now a couple grand in the back pocket of
Sir Papa Landlord
will grease the foundation springs
that keep City Hall afloat

Oh

San Francisco
you little slut
your head in Marin
one hand in the Pacific
the other in Oakland
gateway to jesus
dissected by midwestern mosquitos

I’ll hold your hand when you die
while the ants trail off the ventricles
of your heart and
into the bigger parts of another town
blood gushing from the new
baby bridge pipes decorated with technology
feeding your nemeses with X’s

Some day San Francisco
you will hurt like I do
from my Fruitvale
watching your busty bridges heave
their last horny sigh

I will miss you
in a stalker kind of way
a love gone sour
a full house of high school polaroids

Some day the Google buses will
have rusted and leave you with
a cunt full of tetanus
his aged semen will wither upon your clit
where the ants have left a pile of empty eggs
and torn the plaids in strips
in an attempt to wipe away the proof
that you
San Francisco
are a slutty lover
who lets
anyone in
for the right price 

            --Missy Church

Missy Church is the host of a seasonal open-mic in Fruitvale, Oakland called Naked Bulb.  As a creative member of the Beast Crawl, Oakland's own literary festival, Missy participates in local art and literary events and is a Pushcart Prize Nominee. CHURCH - Retrospective, released by Paper Press, is Missy's first full length book covering the last 20 years of her poetic life.  

ALEJANDRO MURGUÍA TRIBUTE TO FRANCISCO X. ALARCÓN

 La Boheme—January 10^th

                                           Para—Francisco X. Alarcón

Francisco is smiling

though he is bleeding inside

around him songs and flowers bloom

outside a colibri hums

an amaranth in the middle of 24th street

spreads its seeds

Francisco (Xochipilli)

con corazón de vida

in his hands

is smiling

 —Alejandro Murguía

Alejandro Murguía is the author of Stray Poems, City Lights Books, and is

the Sixth San Francisco Poet Laureate and the first Latino to hold the post.

He is also a Professor in Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State

University.  *Tribute for Francisco X. Alarcón

JOHANNES BEILHARZ

Star gazing

         near Gevgelija, Macedonia


I

You drive onto the bridge
at the edge of town
that ends there in nothing,
park on it, don’t worry
about the police jeep
parked there. Get out your flash
and walk left, through some
brush, winding a bit, come

to the railroad tracks, cross
them. There’s a fence with
a metal gate on the other side,
reach around the top to
unlatch it, go in. There’s
the cabin and workshop.
And the arbor to the right.
We’ll be sitting there
for our star gazing, for
our smoke and drink,
popcorn and potato chips,
laughter and talk. See
you soon.

There’s just a sliver
of moon out tonight.

I can promise you
lots of deep dark infinite
blue. About the stars
we’ll have to see.

II

What’s that clanking
I hear off and on?
Someone on the tracks?
That’s from the shadows
walking by on the tracks,
ghostly in their silence.
Shadows tall and small,
walking by without
speaking, walking north.

Seventy-two legal
hours to cross the
country along those tracks,
on the way to the
promised lands of
plenty up north, where
there’s money and
work, where they take
you, put you in camps,
process your papers,
give you asylum if you’re
lucky, allow you to
work, learn something,
where there might be
a future.

If not, you’ve at least
avoided the hell at home
for some time.

Seventy-two hours
to reach Serbia, then
cross that country
traveling immigrant
tracks and roads. Then
another border and
another up to the
promised lands, the
pastures of plenty.


III

And we gaze at the
stars and talk about
poetry readings and
expanding our horizons
in the white heaven,
about our creative
avant-garde projects,
dig into the snack bags,
drink beer and raki
and smoke and talk
about the shadows
on their tracks north
to the promised lands,

the pastures of plenty,
while the stars are
gazing down on us.


                – Johannes Beilharz





Johannes Beilharz, born 1956, is a writer, translator, painter and photographer. He writes in German and English. His most recent books are 101 (haiku and fibonacci) and Eine finnische Jazznummer für dieMissverstandenen (poems). He lives in Rome, Italy, and Pliezhausen, Germany.

PAUL CORMAN-ROBERTS

POEM FOR DIEGO

“Old man, take a look at my life

I’m a lot like you

I need someone to love me

The whole day through”

-       Neil Young

Most of the Earth

that has lived

has done so

in oceans

or tree tops

there has been more

than one fall from Grace.

All of this stopped being Eden

when we received the invitation.

Is there any beauty more terrible

and awesome to behold

than Democracy…

and I mean REAL Democracy

                     TRUE Democracy

real and true

majority rule?

Nothing upends the status quo faster

and that’s why the one percent

of the one percent

can never allow it.

Oh and the anger over all this,

Oh yes how the schools lied to us

and yes perhaps civilization

is an oversized delusion

to keep us docile

to keep us alive and soft and

so what?

You will still need to get over it.

You will still need to fall in love.

You will still need to be held.

You will still be a mammal,

baby.

WARM NOVEMBER RAIN

You know the drought is bad

by everyone’s fetishization of rain

from whiny rock stars

to the silent praying on the corner

for the mistress who abandoned

our bivouac Eden

Let all hypocrisy

from all quarters

convene in the hologram

of a tropical harbor

replete with an “out of this world”

feasting for the indigenous.

The sea will always claim us

if we flirt with him too much

because he cannot claim back

the moon his distant lover

lost so long ago

the surf his raging grief

the rhythmic lap lap lapping

a mournful sigh.

The world he created

was designed to lure her back

his lover now a satellite

but there is no harder mistress

than gravity.

The ocean is now the open wound

where the lovers were forced to part

as much by her own hand

as that of her other lover

stellar bodies passing in the light

everything after a vast

gorgeous limbo of broken mind soup.

This is the dream still prompting

you and I after all:

this is where it came from

and sure the dream is worthy and sturdy

but it takes hard work

to experiment it visceral.

Young people on psycho-actives

have their libidos exposed

jealousies unmasked

naked agendas spelled out

in sand drifts

around the ghost show bonfire.

We need a natural disaster

to make us relax a little

grow more comfortable

find emotional maturity

in each other’s orbit

but I promise you

someone in this circle

is a whispering traitor

and the length of the coastline

was doomed long before we got here

and will remain so long after we are gone.

                   ---Paul Corman-Roberts

Paul Corman-Roberts is an original core-founder of Oakland's Beast Crawl Literary Festival. His latest collection of poems is We Shoot Typewriters (Nomadic Press, 2015.)  He spent the night of the Rodney King riots barricaded inside a Circle K convenience store.

SUPRIYA KAUR DHALIWAL

                                         SUNSET AT THE RIDGE

                                                            In the vicinity

                                                      of the candy-coloured

                                             Lego houses of Simla, I stand to

                                  savour this scene. The ingredients of the sky,

                         cry, colours of clementine rose, a cocktail of melancholy.

                                                         The air is giddy.

                                              The petals of rose smudge the

                                      setting sun and its backdrop, and I start to

                              walk back in the dark along The Ridge, in a hope to

                        find another version of me, an orange tinted version of me.

                                                                        ---Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal

Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal is twenty, and currently pursuing her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from St. Bede's College, Shimla; and the author of two poetry anthologies: The Myriad and Musings of Miss Yellow. She has spent maximum of life so far in the lap of snow clad mountains and green arenas, and thus believes that it's the nature, the countryside that provides her the fodder for her pen and poems. She wants to spend her life writing and being a wayfarer. This poem was first published in Musings of Miss Yellow (Authorspress, New Delhi).

PHILIP METRES

Gardens: A Retranslation

Behind one’s back,

sight unseen—

quite enough.

Alone with one

another.  To stare.

To glossy.  Eye

socket.  Peep

Two missionaries got home and discovered their apartment had been robbed. They called the police. When they arrived they walked around the apartment, showing them that everything was gone except for a camera, untouched on the mantle.  When the police left the missionaries sat down…now the camera was missing—

hole.  Tonsils

swollen. Voice

in the wilderness

icing over.

As the saying

goes.  Openly.

                                                                                           ---Philip Metres

Philip Metres is the author of Pictures at an Exhibition (2016), Sand Opera (2015), and To Seethe Earth, among others. A two-time recipient of the NEA and the Arab American Book Award, he is professor of English at John Carroll University.

JESSICA M. WILSON CARDENAS

Down in the Belly

welcome to the birth of a nation

where people deliver themselves upon their death to the air and the atom

twin mingling of universal deduction.

welcome them to the Harlems and havocs, and nations free temples

that create life's never-ending rat hole statuses where we all sit in line

after line, and wait, in line.

where we find each other in the shadow of a broken brick,

and sift the edges for quarters. this is your people,

hand in hand, in song,

union to keep from being swallowed.

the father’s throat is wider than the mother’s.

the net has been thrown and we are holding still.

holding without gloves or sand, and sweat still protruding, watching us

slip slip slip until we are down in the belly.

a cavern of saints and saintly trotters, whose causes are held

captive in the imagination, past the tongues of deliverance.

behold the capital belly,

unnourishing and never full.

                        ---Jessica M. Wilson Cardenas

Jessica M. Wilson is a poet from East LA. Founder of the Los Angeles Poet Society, a curator of literary goodness. SeriousLonging, her book of poetry, is available from Swan World Press in Paris, France.