Keith Higginbotham

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Future Is Coming, Academics Predict

Classes are over for gaslights,
glasses, windmills, gifts
and grace. Classes are filled

with scribbles in notebooks found
in Walt Whitman’s trash.
Walt is calling us off
to barbecues at the love palace

beyond the Interstate, country
paved with fences, surrendered
to statistics. The wilderness has
bought a condo on the road

where Thoreau copped his
final plea. Classes are over
for a while, sayeth Karl

Wallenda walking with a pole
across the Tallula Gorge. Classes
are over, according to Poe,

recovering from addiction
in Richmond’s Shockoe Slip.


window rock drill

step down into sagebrush
flowers and leaves
typically three-toothed

where butterflies light
cottontails nibble
and scatter with the sound

of steps on rabbitbrush
and snakeweed landscape
without much green

sandstone layers flat
and tilted tilted and flat
sand dunes frozen

saddlehorn formations
entrada like faces
juniper and pine with leaves

needlelike explosion
of nut pine pinecones
with wings whiptail

lizard trails across collapse
of geology where monument
canyon creeps into colorado

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 Keith Higginbotham lives in Columbia, SC. His poetry has recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in Clutching At Straws, Counterexample Poetics, Eratio, Liebamour Magazine, Otoliths, and trnsfr. He has published two chapbooks: Carrying the Air on a Stick (The Runaway Spoon Press) and Prosaic Suburban Commercial (available as a free PDF download from Eratio Editions).

Donal Mahoney

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Whole Thing Over With


From her side of the bed
the wife suggests he get dressed,
go out in the night and
purchase a piece. She’s

not in the mood. Or
if he must, he can
go ahead, stick it in,
shoot it off, and get

the whole thing over with.
She doesn’t care any more
where he pours it
so long as he’s quiet

and doesn’t wake the kids.
Too tired to dress,
he sticks it in, explodes,
rolls off, finally spent.

Maybe now the beasts
that will never creep
within his crosshairs
can get some sleep.


The Last Honeydew

On the way home from work
I buy the last honeydew
in the window at Meyers.

Tonight the wife
will cut it in half
and with elbow bent

scoop the pulp
like ice cream
from its golden shell.

She will savor its juices
as I do the cherries
on the sundaes of her breasts.


Mop Woman

Near dwarf this woman.
Foreign born, Minsk,
perhaps. Her nose

a fist. Her hair
a whisk broom
only black. Her back

an Orthodox cupola.
Her arms braids of gym rope
lowered to the floor.

Orangutans could climb
those ropes, hand
over hand, no rose

no purple
doughnuts
on their hinds.

Near dwarf this woman.
Foreign born. Minsk,
perhaps.

Her hands, all gristle,
hang an inch, no more,
above her shining floor.



Rodding Out

a Bulgarian plumber’s song

And so I’ll tell old Max,
and maybe he will listen,
it’s time to call
the plumber in
and tell him,
“Here’s the deal:
We’ll hire you today
and Friday you’ll begin
rodding out Camille.
When you finish
bring her back,
and we’ll see if she will yield.
And if she won’t
you’ll try again,
rodding out Camille.”

-----------------------------

Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. A Pushcart nominee, he has had poems published by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Public Republic (Bulgaria), The Beanik (U.K), Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), The Osprey Journal (Scotland), Pirene's Fountain (Australia) and other publications.

Peter D. Marra

For Polly

It’s too easy to fall down,

Fractured child
falling from the sun

Waiting on the beach for Time to arrive.

Scraping across the sky,
Grabbing at the clouds,

Gentle bird watching the sounds.

She smiles and
All is well

Baltimore Fell’s Point
3/27/2010

=====================================

Asphalt

The sour taste in the back
While the little children
play in the street

While the parents don’t care that the end is in view
Disaster fights the sun

And electrifies the clouds.
Rubber man can’t stand still

Rubber man can’t stand still
Rubber man can’t stand still

The telephone
is an assassin

While the children lay in the street and
the constant communication keeps

the walls.
crumbling.
========================

The Sin Eater

Clothed in black gauze
waiting
For the final sun

Laughing at the moon at rest
Spinning inside the eyes from afar

Her hooves click clack down the hall

Ready to absorb the shadows

J.D. Nelson

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Hollow Hoot of the Iron Owl

(Written on a graph paper napkin)

Around the 5th I know of.

Fake walk or schwa.

I feel like an average monster
without the suction cups.

Hoot of the winking sharm.
This cloud of chains.

A mirror Earth in my rear view.
One brain is missing.
It isn't funny.

A robotic crow is an English monster.
Snowflake Rooster is a wooden monster.

Morning is missing.
The wood hoof.

The spyglass aroma of tomorrow.
I call it black and make rainbows.

Toronto is a demanding village.
I can't happen all at once.

Darth Vader cookies.
The frog in Pampers.

J.D. Nelson

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A LORD HEAVY


Was it yesterday or not the morning? I speak little, boiling noise of the heart. I smoke and study little words. Morning ark in head. One morning the ribs.

One pheasantyear.

Grafted hand is none of that black water. The Mars of Kokig.

Ohlumbus the buyer with mood and fingers. A dusk of purple. The hygienic ghoul.

Oh, sope, the old one if that was a vampire with Denver wheels.


• • • • • • • • • • • • •

19 MINUTES OF SCRAPING

In Black Sabbath jeans. Princeton in every blade of grass. The trout of stomachs in Nottingham. America is the peach with beetles. The Dallas of forty-one a dollar ago. Stinking of plenty, another blue knight with beans and the secret yarn. 'Umbling or humbling?

ENDING: With liberty and justice for all of God's monsters.

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

Magic "G" the Golden Wok

The angry capitol of Colorado. The Trenton of my youth. The grass in the morning with bull. The complete STAR WARS in memory. The moment in a yesterday blue. Artful Charlie, the buffalo who smokes on Sundays. The future is Frankenstein. Scream the day. Normal eyes in Mars of the room. The Judas Priest kid at the arcade. Glass, maybe denim. The other day was the other day. Mothership day of Christ in the future. How about now, tonight? Denver loves bargains.

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

bio/graf


J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words and sound in his subterranean laboratory. His bizarre poems and experimental texts have appeared in many small press and underground publications. Visit http://www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. His audio experiments (recorded under the name OWL BRAIN ATLAS) are online at http://www.OwlNoise.com. OWL NOISE 0, his album of experimental spoken word, is available as a free download at http://www.mediafire.com/owlnoise. J. D. lives in Colorado, USA.

Ivan P.

~ ~ ~ ~

deep in the
sky
hawks dream of
hairy tongues
and squeaky words from
rusty codices

~ ~ ~ ~

stewbums drowse entangled in hollow sunbeams:
it's only fluid flesh full of clear skies and summer songs

~ ~ ~ ~

have i ever stolen a handkerchief from a living saint
a wing from a tortured angel
a ground from a mumbling worm
a bedtime horror story from a child
a shit from a bull
a sun from a blind dog
a water from a laughing fish

~ ~ ~ ~

night is for empty freight trains
and raccoons endlessly gulping the moon
drunken policemen and hungry
noisy trees; joy for spiders
calm for the souls of butchers

~ ~ ~ ~

when bolsheviks came to power scriabin
already entertained
with his insanity whoever he had found
on the other side so
lenin just quietly
smelt chamomiles time and
again and idly dreamt of
hot nuns
in the northern convents

calm spread along his bald head and
the forests of holy russia
full of sacred three-legged hares
winged pedophiles
and pious worm-eaters

Russell Streur

ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES


We died in the dust.

We died in the rain.

We died on the hills in the arms of our fathers who came and who died and hung from the crosses and died in the darkness and ashes with our mothers before us.

We died in our beds and we fell from the cliffs and died on the rocks.

We drowned in the sea and we died in the summer and we died the day we were born in famine and plague.

We died on the mountain by fire and stone.

We died in the mouths of hyenas in the jaw of despair and we died in the valley leaving footprints and bone.

We danced on the flood and we climbed on the shore and we stood in the cave in the eye of the lamb and our veins and our lungs were the sound of the drums on the moor in the song of the heart and the hymn of the dove.

We rose out of mud and we came out of clay.

We came out of the tomb and the mouth of the fish and we rose from our graves to the hour of earth from the weave and the warp and the loom of the night.

We came from the ark and the maze and we rose from the dew and we came to the day with the loaves of the bread and the skins of the wine.

We walked on the water and we walked on the moon and we walked on the streets of diamond paved cities in impossible joy wearing dresses of light.

We rose out of dirt and rode on the wind and we wrote on the walls and came up from the wreck of our ships in unfathomable deep with the heart of the ocean passed through by the storm.

We came with the flame and the wand of the stars in our hands on the third morning of May and we came out of desert and we swam on the tides with the breath and the word and the names of our gods on our lips: and like heroes and ghosts and lovers survive.