WHAT THE SCHOOLS TEACH

by Vanessa Raney

So the secret
– what the schools teach –
is rolling the
meat with oil, fingers
wet, before
you slip it in, warm, the
pan covering.

The Illusionist

by BethAnn Caputo

Show me how you do that trick.
The one where the stars in your mouth
turn to black holes and lost to them are
my tongue and the words you are too afraid to hear me say.

Somewhere,
there is a perfect ending where I know exactly what you are thinking
and I am more sleight of mind than ever.
I have mastered this game of hide and seek
and can make things appear out of nowhere,
long after they have vanished.

I can dive head first
over
and over
and over again
into shallow waters that spell words like
mistake and forsaken
and float to the surface, unscathed.
I am not shackled or hanging upside down
drowning in a pool of dazed morning afters, silver linings
and obstacles like the New Jersey Turnpike
that make it hard to get to you.

Saw me in half before you go this time,
and take with you the parts of me
that can’t let go.

Brittle Handles

by Perry L. Powell

Reach out and it’s missing. Reach out and all you touch is gritty air. Reach out and there is thick coat ice on all your branches and your work is unavailable.  Your work is unavailable and your power is out.  You have no power to play. And no play to power. When nipple to nipple, where are your warm ones? Reach out to remember. Not owning the world, you cannot fix it. Not fixing the world, you cannot own it. Not the world you own.  Not the fix you’ve blown. Not broken off like a figurine still on the shelf. So once this tree has fallen over your lines, you reach out and what’s to hold? Yet again here you go riding your bike in all directions over black ice.

Kintsukuroi

by Reena Prasad

 Kintsukuroi they call it
 The art of mending with gold
 It works on people too-
 too fragile to be recycled
 and too human to be sewed

 An aranjanam and a radiant nettichutti
 to offset the paleness that unslept nights
 had bestowed
 Bangles to hush up the name
 she whispered sometimes
 to the breeze
 Zari edges of her sari to cover up the
 unsteady trip of her feet
 The gilt to light up her husband’s house
 to thaw the strangeness
 and make her feel at ease
 She entered, right foot first
 and was swallowed by obscurity
 Her golden padasarams kept beat
 to the fading music of her subdued ankles
 though an image of a broken silver one
 on a bare chest
 caused cracks in the mirror
 when she looked


Author's note:
aranjanam = waist chain
nettichutti = a head jewel
padasaram = anklets

Bad Dog

by J. K. Durick

Good and bad are simple concepts
In the canine world, while arbitrary
At times, they summarize so much:
Good gets gentle words and pats on
The head, a treat or two, or perhaps
A chance to go along one more time,
And bad, the other paw in this parade,
Gets angry words, a hand or foot out
Of nowhere slapping, kicking, another
Tug on the choke collar, or time spent
In the too tight kennel they kept for
Moments like this; in the end, it’s just
A matter of reward and punishment,
Like we get so often; when good we get
Good words, good grades, all the extras,
Privileges and paychecks, pomp and
Playthings, a cozy life in comfortable
Surroundings; but bad we get other
Things, more guilt than glory, smaller
Checks, pink slips and traffic tickets,
Doors closing and busy signals, empty
Promises and pockets, all the next to
Nothing they hand us grudgingly –
All a matter of punishment and reward,
So we sit up nicely, rarely bark and
Wag our tails, hoping they notice.

You are here

by Andrea DeAngelis

You are here
in that circle
of red and dread
that center
of despair
and I don’t care.

Going nowhere
slow and slower
coarser and colder.

The subway stalagmites
growing into many rows
of graying teeth
that will cut your throat.

No one cares
what you think
only what you do
and what you do isn’t doing
but only your job
which makes you feel
less than nothing.

So you are here
when you only want to disappear.

You are starting to believe
that bitch Becky
who told everyone
“Oh, she’ll never get anywhere.”

You are here
you are here
you will never be there.

Etienne (1)

by Sherry Steiner

Etienne was slow in returning, long months relished, dead leaves, green leaves, colored leaves, what used to be a long hour in a day turned to a week swelling to months of calendar counting and x'ing out and numbers marking in. Moments devouring the old shot, popular angles instantaneously removing directional control, some said all was not lost.

Phillip, for example initiated artificial passages that no one could board, he simply said that it just didn't matter, like music once again, the two found generated visuals without the usual warhola perspective, one of them might have said something - but it was a fade, dissolve and focus-through kind of deal, audience participation on tempo, fairly obvious he stalks his own backgound of related actions. Etienne etienne focus focus o more cuts per minute, histrionic over-lappings, a thirties adventure no doubt, no wonder, half a million dollar musicals, pastel revolvers, brutal street sarcasm, phillip rejoiced in the baroque, increased synchronization - miniature compressions, he reels, implicating positive data accentuating viewer decay, his is a brief story, far away random case samplings stood at the forefront - no one knew what he was talking about. Just hold the elevator, please. breathless, etienne...underground cabled clergymen came forth - harbinger of gross negligence, firing up low brow reductions from twenty-five years ago, the story is old, a has-been-around - wrought iron, guarded by his spirit etienne joined a long line of images at an Italian storefront, 'I have no need' someone heard him say.

Yes, concise and to the point and remembering this he said no more.

Physical rhythms - a valid tool for mental escape interested Phillip. amused no doubt by the lack of centripetal decay he shot a series of close-ups subject to the approval of the shopkeeper, cosmopolitan juxtaposition, a fourteen letter word, hey, just back-up, generalize, track it casually, remember - this unit is not labeled for individual sale.

There We're Atheists

by Bhargab Chatterjee

Catching the fire of a withered flower
you drink from Neptune's tumbler;
your thirst makes a mirror before me.
There colours meet and change all possible shapes
of an usual morning.

Knowing,
death has all colours and shapes
in obvious finitude,
you,
my "Belladonna, the Lady of Rocks"
smile.
Out of the yellow paddy field
the shadows of our hunger grow
and perpetuate yesterdays.

"I rebel therefore we exist,"
you say stepping on the floor
of my room;
there we're atheists.

Towards the Park

by Tony Rickaby

blows into road
hits ground and bursts
rolls in arc.
end lands in gutter
rubbish tumbles
veers onto pavement
misses pushchair
rests in plastic
catches in crack
cut head oozes
brick forms cloud
bag drowns in puddle
flicked black plastic flaps
slicker tumbles
rolling orange

layover

by Wanda Morrow Clevenger

those grub jobs
and crud bosses
weren’t more
than a high school grad
could expect
but
I got to dress up
and show my legs
and buy
my own beers
and
tell myself I was
on the way
up
somewhere

and really
they were
all of them
all of it
disposable

a layover
until
I was somewhere
else where
someone else
bought
the beers

Life in a Word

by Patricia Williams

Stage I
Look at the word, lust, take an unvarnished view: craving, desire, an inordinate appetite, burning fire, a yearning for more than required, an itch that needs persistent scratching. To lust after, to covet, to want, predisposes one, to others of the Deadly Seven, like envy, greed, and gluttony. Lusty sex sins, attributed to mental disorder or concern unbuckled, committed by Hollywood types and alike by pious clerics sniffing perfume mixed with the scent of baby powder, generate psychological thoughts: how magnetic draw fades quickly, how sex without love just makes you sad.

Stage II
A word that defines a form of decay, rust, freezes motion, emotion, is a scale formed from disuse, a condition of oxidation, limitation: observe the person whose pinnacle occurred at age eight on the stage of the Original Amateur Hour. Rusted-shut is rigidity, inflexible and barren, neglect over time, a bureaucratic universe with cliché-filled dialogue, wordplay, and nonsense, byzantine utterances from pale-faced scholars. Find rust in cast-off devices, disintegration, waste from civilized living, corruption, tarnish, decomposition, politicians rusted in place, producing parodies of democracy.

Stage III
When examining dust, a word implying powder, dirt, earth, grime, think Dust Bowl with choking billows of dust that muddied the sky, black blizzards with soil turned to dust. Think loess: pale yellow, buff-color, dusty soil cover, fine particles, ground and pulverized, silt-sized sediment deposited by wind-blown dust. Dust-replacing-the-sea speaks of upheaval, great change, the passage of time, see the dusty world in a grain of sand. Ash, dusty residue, recaps cremains, ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust, all that remains. Blow away, fade away, dissolve, dissipate, scatter; dry and bitter dust.

Be Some Sugar ! Baby

by Narendra Kumar Arya

Hey ! You want me turn up sugar
Killing my core bitterly
When air is as thick as mucous
And water as live as venom
And the aftertaste on cortical neurons—suicidal
Still bleeding and hot.

Please lend me your ears for a while
And listen into my auditory tunnels
Exploding with echoes of insanity manufactured
And you say hey chap! It’s time to forget
It’s virtually irrelevant, just clumsy
Chill ! Those shrieky sounds and thuds belong to history
Don’t pester with cries of ancient past, any more
Be some sugar! Baby
It really goes well with time.

Deluged often with advices to be mellow
Going past creatures of haunting mind
How  can I elude oozing pain
Drilled by your stabbing smokes
On the streets, inside the clouds, over the cities
The vessels inside my chemo-treated spirit
Carry no oxygen, no traces of life
Clogged with mindless consumerisms’
 Already poisonous vanities.

You insist onto my bitter brain
Telling, sugars eradicate mental extremisms
Sure to cure your intellectual inflatulence
Helps treat depression easy
Hey dumb! Why relish your nerves
With utmost negativity
When you have whole damn planet
At your disposal, to fuck around
Come on! Be some sugar! babe
Show some Maturity.

Gusts 6

by Michael Cluff

Mina rode the wild winds
into an oasis
mottled by cheeky breezes
and fern-ringed kangaroo paws
dipped in leaves a sculptor
would envy.

Roscoe waited
for her at the entrance
to the pottery shop
next to the hot dog stand
in the third rate outdoor mall
on a clipped back street
near the faltering freeways.

He grew just for her
and she just caroms and drifts
from one tienda
to the other.