Wednesday, November 18, 2009
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Picking up on the breadcrumb sins of unknown and/or unpublished writers
About Me
- Strangermusic
- Writer, poet, teacher, Bob Dylan and Boston Terrier enthusiast. Also anxiety, depression, panic attack survivor as well as professional hypochondriac.
Peycho Kanev
A NOTE
naked
fearless
in front of the window
in this summer Sunday morning
how I came to this?
throwing sesame seed
in the room
and thinking about Siberia
as the ravens outside on the wires
try to scream at me
but I don’t scream back
because they have places for people
who do that
and my life is something like
a meat chewed down to the bone
upon this earth I keep dreaming about
Babylon and Cleopatra
and I know that the summer in Rome is green
and the winter in Russia is too much vodka.
how long can we carry on?
upon this land
with this wasted air in my lungs
we keep dreaming for better days
we keep dreaming for salvation
as someone winks at us.
————————————
THE POETRY IS NOTHING TO FUCK WITH
Well, let me explain to you:
the bum on the street, with
the bottle hanging in his maddened
pocket,
stretching his hand to you
is poetry
all the f-male creatures of the night
dressed in cut skirts and sucking
cigarettes in their colored mouths
are poetry
all the girls in the punk clubs
with their anger and their beauty
and their stamina
are poetry
the bombs that falls down in the trenches
and tear up bodies and transform them in pile
pile of useless organic junk
are poetry
the demented men in the madhouses,
strapped to their beds,foaming,cursing,shaking,
their heads full of pills and visions
are poetry
the bars full of quiet,shelterd,beautiful,
little people,starring down at their glasses
full of hopes for something better
are poetry
Hemingway’s shotgun was poetry
the bullet too
the booze is
poetry
the drugs are
poetry
the dead trees
the wasted lands
the knife in your
hand
your girlfriend lying
in the bed
everything and
everyone
is poetry
and at the end
when this world
explode into the nothing
it will be poetry too
no more
no
less.
—————————————————————————————————-
Peycho Kanev loves to listen to sad music while he drinks slowly his beer. His work has been published in Welter, The Catalonian Review, Off Beat Pulp, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Tonopah Review, Mad Swirl, Southern Ocean Review, The Houston Literary Review and many others. He loves to put the word down and not talking on the cell phone for days. He is nominated for Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. His new collaborative collection “r”, containing poetry by him and Felino Soriano, as well as photography from Duane Locke and Edward Wells II is now available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/r-Peycho-Kanev/dp/0979129494/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245429788&sr=1-1
Neila Mezynski
PINK DRESS
Her small jaw thrust forward
when she drank.
Behind the large rock
I saw the ruffle of her pink dress.
Sarah was atop the rock,
the baby unattended.
Dad, too far gone
under the ruffles.
Mom hiding in the sweet peas.
——————————————-
PAINTING
Reds nestled against blue.
Those blues, won’t budge those blues.
Better not push or stand too firm.
Try some green to get over the top.
Maybe brown will get me through the woods.
Weaving in and out
Words, wordless words.
A fairy tale.
————————————————-
WORDS
Slippery words.
Stand still words.
Make me proud.
Words.
Prickly butterfly net.
In the middle in between at the end.
Anywhere I’m not.
————————————————–
MY CYPRESS
Uncle Ned resembles you, tree. The way you stand there not saying much. Tie that needs watering, hair like mud your shirt with holes where birds have pecked. That you are planted in. At the time of my birth there was a lot of trees in that arboretum. And bird’s nests. My bird nests.
——————————————————————————————————-
One time dancer/ choreographer now painter/writer, Neila Mezynski currently has fiction and poetry published and forthcoming, on foundling review, snow monkey journal, 13 myna birds, apt, mudluscious. also writes art and music reviews for online and in print magazines.
Tim Scannell
MA NATURE’S CONCRETE NICHE
From a maple rookery,
One mile SE, an inerrant
Sky highway funnels 200
Crows to town, 3 miles NW
(Daily): 6 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Crows are working stiffs!
————————————————-
THE MATCHBOOK
A little, so little
How easy
The tabletop
Leveled by a
Matchbook:
Years & years of,
“Oh, he’s fine!”
Kyle Hemmings
WILL YOU SURVIVE WINTER
When it creeps under your skin
your mama’s voice
buried in the walls
or your laundry
your hand me down cable knits
your corduroys
worn at the seat
taking on
someone else’s life
assuming the pose of scarecrows.
Your thoughts of anorexic girls
in empty pools.
By the first snowdrift
you will grow autistic
speaking in signs
to people shoveling the sidewalks
a strange guest locked
behind their windows.
The hungry girl you thought
you knew so well
is now dry ice
under your shoes.
It once felt like water.
It understood everything.
It did not burn.
———————————————————
AN EXAMPLE OF HOW A MICROBIOLOGIST MIGHT LOOK AT PHYSICS
My sister believes I’m more transparent than dead.
It’s really her wish that has granted me new stamina.
She blames herself for the accident, daydreaming at the wheel,
her thoughts perhaps growing amorphous as the amoeba
I read about for class. We took strange shapes in those last days,
held on to the nucleus of our common pasts, and in the wheelchair,
pushed down hospital corridors, I offered her what she must
have thought was a false smile. Cheer up, I said,
I‘m going to walk again.
As always, she promised she’d take me to a Yankees game.
Then, it wasn’t long before I was placed on a ventilator,
taken off, pronounced as brain dead. So here we are.
The Mets are down by three. Jeter up at bat.
The crowd cheers. My sister is talking to me as if I’m still there,
which I am. It’s just that I’m form malleable to memory,
or as I like to think of it–the density of the holes inside a soft pretzel.
Jeter hits a homer over the stands and the ball whizzes through me.
Everybody is going crazy looking for it. It just didn’t disappear.
Nothing does.
Tonight these same fans will search under their sheets,
their beds, making sure their partners are still there,
the pseudopod-like movements, the simple-cell love,
the fear of not catching something
that can always go through you.
——————————————————————————————————
Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. His most recent work has been pubbed in Literary Tonic, Why Vandalism? Bent Pin Quaterly, and FourPaperLetters.
Steven Purkey
PISSING TWO STREAMS
pissing two streams
symbolic if shit
i’m fat and flabby
the beer is catching up to me
like the girl i just fucked
lying in my bed naked
she’s generous with her flesh
let me fuck her hard
as her face tightened and
her body writhed
she’s catching up to me
catching on
she knows the way i am
i’m so predictable she says
she doesn’t know of my sex
but she wants to
that’s what first intrigued her
she’s jealous of what she doesn’t know
and is afraid to find out of
discomfort, i don’t know which
way to go
pain both ways
and i don’t know where the happiness is
i once felt it
before i started writing shit like this
i piss two streams faster and harder
i piss two streams like the’re both alive
and both matter equally
i piss two streams like there’s no tomorrow
and of course there isn’t
i piss two streams and then I pass out
because i can’t take it anymore
————————————————————————————————-
Steven Purkey just got out of his third rehab and is now working on the new issue of his zine, Modus Operandi. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Sergio Ortiz
TO THE HUARANGO TREE: A DESTROYED ECOSYSTEM
Charcoal and sand devour our cities—poachers pay no attention
to the resting places of our ancestors, a spring of light
with its fierce harvest of pomegranate, grapes, and huarango.
Demons blow until there is nothing but the dark. Our lives
are broken lamps hung on the shadows of missing trees. It was
in the substance of the bones we ground and ate like a war.
———————————————————-
INCARNATION
This is the red marshland,
where a bird’s broken
thirst sprouts
like cactus: salty,
tired, and sad.
A few goats
rummage through
the weeds
while an ox chews
on the day’s dream.
This is the ground
where I was born obstinate
like a fungus.
Fear
and suffocation sleep
below a dead line.
—————————————————————————————————–
Ortiz has a B.A. in English literature from Inter-American University, and a M.A. in philosophy from World University. His poems have been published, or are forthcoming in: The Acento Review, Poesia, The Driftwood Review, Words-Myth, The Taj Mahal Review, and other journals and anthologies. His chapbook, At the Tail End of Dusk (2009), was published by Flutter Press.
William D. Hicks
A PERCEPTION
Words
Start days
End nights
Fill in blanks
Between other words
Sometimes inspire
Sometimes hurt
Not
Who we are
Describe
Who we look like
Clothes don’t make man
Neither do words
It’s a perception
——————————————
BAD HABITS
You spend
The first half
Of your life
Accumulating
The habits
You spend the
Last half
Of your life
Trying to
Give up.
Thank you Dad.
——————————————————————————————————-
William D. Hicks is a writer who lives in Chicago, Illinois by himself (any
offers?). Contrary to popular belief, he is not related to the semi-famous
comedian Bill Hicks (though he’s just as funny in his own right).
Hicks will someday publish his memoirs, but most likely they will be
about Bill Hicks’ life.
Harry Calhoun
THE DOG AND THE NEW MORNING
My dog curls in a ball
in his bed at the foot
of my bed like a coiled spring
90 pounds of black Labrador
that will unfurl at daybreak
and fly before me to the deck
where he stops and sits
and unwinds and sniffs
the new day, unwinds and examines
the compact backyard meaning
of each new morning
like a fist remembering a hand
with its fingers splayed
seen before, but this day displayed
alien and new, fresh dew
and perhaps light icy frost
mingling with mud on the paws
anticipated. Last night as we slept
we ran together, paws swatting air,
little midnight yelps,
through the mud
and through the memories
——————————————————————————————————-
Harry Calhoun’s articles, literary essays, book reviews and poems have been published in magazines including Writer’s Digest and The National Enquirer. Recently, his online chapbook Dogwalking Poems and his trade paperback, I knew Bukowski like you knew a rare leaf, were published. The latter is now available from Trace Publications and on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online booksellers. He has had recent publications in Chiron Review, Still Crazy, SNReview, Orange Room Review, Bird’s Eye review, Abbey, Monongahela Review and many others. Recently, he was one of 12 poets invited to LiteraryMary’s anthology, Outstanding Men of the Small Press.
(But he doesn’t take himself that seriously, fortunately, otherwise we’d be smothered in his hideous ego.)