Three Poems by Catfish McDaris

Portrait At 37

Living each painting
in a dark palette of
potato eaters & miners

Colors drove him mad,
lips quivering with emotion,
tears filling his eyes

His painting of Sorrow, a
naked, pregnant, starving
woman, he lived with in
Amsterdam

Capturing rivers, making
flowers grow, old empty
shoes dance

His brother loved him
& now the world.


The Spanish Juggler

Mandolin & Guitar,
The Jester in bronze,
Triumph of the Dove

Three Musicians,
Young Girl On A Ball,
Family With Monkey

Two Saltimbanques With Dog,
Night Fishing At Antibes,
Lanterns & Spears.


No Remorse
"A nest of vipers is not as deadly as the hunger of one man." an old Shinto proverb

Often I sit in
the parking lot
at work

Watching the sea
gulls & tug boats,
with men wearing
blaze orange caps
at the helm

Listening to David
Baerwald with his
bloody hands on
the cover of his
tape, Triage

Always thinking
about how easy
it would be to
just drive away
from my job

Head for Taos or
Mexico & look
for my amigo,
Torres the matador

I think I too
could kill bulls

Then I look up
from my daydreams
& see a beautiful
woman in a black
patent leather coat
with matching stiletto
high heels

She walks by &
stops in front of
my car & smiles

& I forget who
or where I am.

Morning Jewels

Richard Hartwell

Swung from tips of tender cypress boughs,
Beads of brilliant dew bejewel the morning:
Fairy ointments, night oils on new growth,
Globular prisms gather to split the new day,
Light from the narrowly degreed dawn
Hastens horizontally across the garden,
Compressing shadows with each moment;
Illuminations of diamonds and emeralds
Explode from feathered, evergreen tips,
Regally attired, awaiting supplication.

The LA Moon

Amit Parmessur

The pregnant American moon dies away
from the unkempt LA sky
From the wide window,
perched in near emptiness, I can see
an empty page
in the bittersweet sky, one upon which
I am trying again to decipher the pledges
made by an unfaithful angel

I have traveled from clime to clime,
from sky to dark caves,
like an orphaned heart
chiming with sorrow and dread,
and the American moon is nothing different

To every place I’ve gone,
the moon is suffering enormously
from those intent looks of hungry folks,

She is suffering from the severe scars that
exaggerate what she wants to unveil,
her sore flesh looking like a very
pale reflection of a confident Goddess

Is the stained Los Angeles moon
another unsuccessful project?

Is she another incomplete canvas deserted
by a painter tortured by visions too
beautifully painful, just like those

I regret when
I think of what has vanished from my life?

Disruptions

Carmen Rabil-Eichman

Let me disrupt you,
whip my bellicose bead upon,
secure you in a Jacque Louis David
vexing vision. I carefully place pearls of
clarity, hindsight rhinestones
hammered against equivocal edges, unbalanced
Neoclassic beauty, our deep hues inhaling
stark shadows desecrating diaphanous dimensions,
cut-chipped diagonals gouged, a heavenly attempt
to direct lackluster moments, dictate Romantic shifts,
force us to die-cast dynamic motions
that rival Napoleon commanding winds and fate
while crossing the St. Bernard. Our passion-storms of antiquity
raise his stallion, his arm compels us to follow, our historic
battles hurling straight into hell.

Microbism

Peter Magliocco

Now I wonder how the stars
regard us majestically
during the long midnights
of summer, when we contemplate
the enormity of space.

Do astral sentient beings stare
back through their own telescopes?
Those living in stellar architecture
vacuum stardust from the cold
landscapes of desolate silence,

perhaps like ghosts waiting
to manifest themselves someday.
Draining energy from our future
digital instruments, waiting
for our knowledge to equal

their own erudite sciences.
Those ancestral gods will awake
from a long, cosmic hibernation
to scan the heavens at last.
Will their bulbous eyes be peeled

through squamous orifices,
writing new testaments in
words of alien language
describing the last remnants
of earth's inhospitable barrenness?

A geography toppled by some
civilization nearly extinct,
except for the lingering microbes
of human origin, now hiding in
terrestrial oceans of dust.

MY ISLAND

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

I was never clever,
never inspired envy.
I found my own island,
closed up my feeble mind.

I learned how to float one
morning with my face up
to the sun. Shadows all
around me. My island

was sinking. My island
was without fish. There were
wild birds in the sky. They
started to talk to me.

I longed to fly like them.
I wanted to fly to
the sun. I wanted to
catch fire, be the sun’s food.

Chattahoochee River in Morning Fog Russell Streur

Gossamer Threads

Carmen Taggart

Disappointment, and frustration erupt,
Words as sharp as the knives you so carefully tend sever the ties that bind,
Neither of us knowing how to fix them or even if they should be fixed,
You simply drive away.

I can’t see your smile to know that you are still mine,
The voices in my head tell me that you are moving on,
The phone a poor substitute for the feel of your embrace,
A tentative thread binds us still.

I want to be in your arms,
Your hands cupping my face,
Eyes locked as I tell you that I love you,
That you will always own a piece of my soul.

I settle for phone calls and laughter,
Weaving a net of gossamer threads,
Our spirits dance across the divide,
Cold comfort as we relinquish our ties.

Ambulance

Panos Panagiotopoulos

I'll be reborn tonight, into the streets I'll be reborn
tonight, I have a thought, it's pouring out of my eyes
it flows down from the open window like a desire but it's a thought
and it sprawls like a red stain across wet asphalt.
Take me on an ambulance ride into the night,
tonight, I'll be reborn and we can spread ourselves like a
red stain on wet asphalt, chasing that thundering thought down,
I want the sirens howling above and behind us,
a trail of smoke and sirens behind us, tonight the city is
a red stain on wet asphalt, into the streets I'll be reborn
as a thought pouring down the open window like a thunderous desire.

Gossamer Threads

Gossamer Threads
Disappointment, and frustration erupt,
Words as sharp as the knives you so carefully tend sever the ties that bind,
Neither of us knowing how to fix them or even if they should be fixed,
You simply drive away.
I can't see your smile to know that you are still mine,
The voices in my head tell me that you are moving on,
The phone a poor substitute for the feel of your embrace,
A tentative thread binds us still.
I want to be in your arms,
Your hands cupping my face,
Eyes locked as I tell you that I love you,
That you will always own a piece of my soul.
I settle for phone calls and laughter,
Weaving a net of gossamer threads,
Our spirits dancing across the divide,
Forever entwined.
My Bio ~ Carmen Taggart writes and photographs when the muses speak from the mountains of Pennsylvania. Most recently Carmen's writings have been published at The Camel Saloon, Ink Sweat and Tears, and Ink Bean. More of her ramblings and musings can be found at her virtual home http://www.musidoras.com

Cold Feet

Rebecca Gaffron

my feet are cold but my hands are warm,
rejoicing in sentient flames reawakened,
fearing this too will pass.
your tear drops into the corner of my eye,
a drowning man's cold fingers clasp mine
one more time.

Two Poems by Zaina Anwar

Fragment XI
(The Oyster)

One day, the oyster
would give birth to a pearl

so white and glistening,
it would cultivate light

as if through a prism
in the anonymous depths

of the raging
sea.


Fragmentation

He came to me
with hot caresses
and lilies and solemn
promises.

By the time he left,
my heart
was a broken mirror.

True Art

Joseph Farley

you paint yourself
and others
blue, green, orange,
making exotic beasts
from women and men
already carved
in bone and sinew.
even this wild beauty
can be made
more sensuous,
more animalistic
with zebra or
tiger stripes,
fur and fangs,
and then the descent
into nature
begins.

MALE SUPREMACY

Larry Ziman

boys trying to prove they’re men,
men trying to prove they’re heroes,
heroes trying to prove they’re gods,
gods trying to prove they’re worshipped

Carnival

Sandy Benitez

Miscreants and midgets amble
ahead of me. I fall behind.
Soles of my converse sneakers
sticky with bubble gum and taffy

droppings. A red velvet curtain
parts like a rose in bloom
and I pick up the pace so as not
to miss the bearded lady's show.

She appears in a long, black gown.
An hourglass figure reminiscent of
Marilyn Monroe. My eyes become magnets,
attracted to the surreal image

standing before me. I imagine Dali
courting her, asking her to smile
as he paints her face among landscapes
of melting clocks and cracked eggs.

Behind me, a lizard man snaps his tongue
like a whip. Flies swarm away.
In the distance, a werewolf howls
at the tapioca moon. The crowd

dissipates into fog, leaving remnants
of footprints--some human, some animal.
Things better left unknown.