For the Tears
May/19/12 20:14 Submission: Art | Photography
About the Artist: Louis Staeble lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. Recently, his photographs have appeared in Orange Quarterly, Trigger and Lucid Eye Review. He has work on display at Divine Interiors in downtown Bowling Green.
Molts
May/17/12 12:57 Submission: Poetry
Collecting at home was never like this. Here,
wrapped among branches of old and massive oaks
in southern Texas, these tangled walk-in webs,
iridescent in the autumn sun, spun silk the scent
of dangling death—flies, mosquitoes, midges,
hold molted treasures of 64 different species
of spiders belonging to 12 genera. At this point,
there is no protocol for the enthusiast mostly
gathering ghostly, eight-legged exoskeletons
from the diversity dwelling within this swelling
of communal strands; my preference is to use my hands.
I love the contact and the fact that all these arachnids
in one place presents a mystery. I know none of the molt
owners intimately, like I do those who shed their past
lives in my house or yard or even in my presence.
The Pholcids, for instance, those small-bodied, long,
leggy cellar spiders who hang in cobwebbed corners,
when juveniles, require sensitivity to their needs
after each instar stage expires, hormones
triggering hours or days of wriggling free
their very beings from structures they’ve outgrown,
bad organic fits cast off as foreign. Yet still,
the drying, clear creatures remain gently touching
those smaller, lifeless versions of themselves,
foot or palp or fang connected to the familiar,
like children holding security blankets
for days. I always wait to acquire their sheds.
It’s not really a hobby, but for the love of spiders
that I desire to collect remnants of those little lives
with whom I share the web of space I call my home.
About the Author: Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s poetry has appeared in Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Spectrum, Pedestal Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Evening Street Review, Midwest Quarterly, Jelly Bucket, Red River Review, LanguageandCulture.net, Concho River Review, and many other journals. She holds an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College and is co-founder of Native West Press--a 501(c)(3) nonprofit natural history press.
wrapped among branches of old and massive oaks
in southern Texas, these tangled walk-in webs,
iridescent in the autumn sun, spun silk the scent
of dangling death—flies, mosquitoes, midges,
hold molted treasures of 64 different species
of spiders belonging to 12 genera. At this point,
there is no protocol for the enthusiast mostly
gathering ghostly, eight-legged exoskeletons
from the diversity dwelling within this swelling
of communal strands; my preference is to use my hands.
I love the contact and the fact that all these arachnids
in one place presents a mystery. I know none of the molt
owners intimately, like I do those who shed their past
lives in my house or yard or even in my presence.
The Pholcids, for instance, those small-bodied, long,
leggy cellar spiders who hang in cobwebbed corners,
when juveniles, require sensitivity to their needs
after each instar stage expires, hormones
triggering hours or days of wriggling free
their very beings from structures they’ve outgrown,
bad organic fits cast off as foreign. Yet still,
the drying, clear creatures remain gently touching
those smaller, lifeless versions of themselves,
foot or palp or fang connected to the familiar,
like children holding security blankets
for days. I always wait to acquire their sheds.
It’s not really a hobby, but for the love of spiders
that I desire to collect remnants of those little lives
with whom I share the web of space I call my home.
About the Author: Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s poetry has appeared in Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Spectrum, Pedestal Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Evening Street Review, Midwest Quarterly, Jelly Bucket, Red River Review, LanguageandCulture.net, Concho River Review, and many other journals. She holds an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College and is co-founder of Native West Press--a 501(c)(3) nonprofit natural history press.
Arson
May/14/12 14:17 Submission: Poetry
She’s gone and she left you a scent hound bitch
and a book of fairy tales with a faded cover; you
can’t make out if it there are two ms in grim.
The dog’s too old for the scent and tracking
business, led you to the dark corner of the
backyard shed, but you just found a pile of dirt as
fine as ash.
You can take all that dirt stomped inside your
shoe, pour it onto her unmade side of the bed, but
that won’t make her come back.
You can take all that dust add flour and yeast,
bake it in a cake but that won’t put her inside of
you.
There aren’t enough breadcrumbs in the
world to bring her back.
About the Author: Connie A. Lopez-Hood served as a Poetry Editor for the Pacific Review and Ghost Town literary journal. She edited and contributed to the chapbook anthology 'Blankets & Other Poems: Poetry for the People of Japan', in which all proceeds have been donated to Japan Relief. Her work appeared or is forthcoming in Gaga Stigmata, Our Stories Literary Journal, Polari Journal, Lingerpost, The Newer York, The Half Penny Marvel, Symmetry Pebbles, and others. She is collaborating on a chapbook entitled 'Operation: Lifted Flowers' and lives in the Southern California mountains.
and a book of fairy tales with a faded cover; you
can’t make out if it there are two ms in grim.
The dog’s too old for the scent and tracking
business, led you to the dark corner of the
backyard shed, but you just found a pile of dirt as
fine as ash.
You can take all that dirt stomped inside your
shoe, pour it onto her unmade side of the bed, but
that won’t make her come back.
You can take all that dust add flour and yeast,
bake it in a cake but that won’t put her inside of
you.
There aren’t enough breadcrumbs in the
world to bring her back.
About the Author: Connie A. Lopez-Hood served as a Poetry Editor for the Pacific Review and Ghost Town literary journal. She edited and contributed to the chapbook anthology 'Blankets & Other Poems: Poetry for the People of Japan', in which all proceeds have been donated to Japan Relief. Her work appeared or is forthcoming in Gaga Stigmata, Our Stories Literary Journal, Polari Journal, Lingerpost, The Newer York, The Half Penny Marvel, Symmetry Pebbles, and others. She is collaborating on a chapbook entitled 'Operation: Lifted Flowers' and lives in the Southern California mountains.
Steeper Digs
May/10/12 11:25 Submission: Poetry
Was that an ibex vanishing, a moment ago, into the greens
surrounding the falls in a far country,
into the mists, away, like grace hoped on and more your own
as it eludes you? And who,
after some twenty-five Ohio summertimes, can resist the whim
so not to follow now, imagining
another year of it, with points you must make points of, for any
chance to be convincing,
with the details and desires, yes, and books you might actually
be changed by still to get to,
the peas and the onion sets begun, and that ibex vanishing, into
that brightening and rain in store
since it's the season, whatever the tin man thinks, or the tan man
makes of it, of this second
deer at the fenced edge of woods and greening field. So much
for the values cached, assessed
in mobile calls and in-dash videos, for these containment stones,
this steep dig announcing
steeper digs to follow, and for this deer about to bound, then
stymied, with fields ahead
or state groves to adventure, through the brightening or shade
a day in the mid-nineties
might make welcome, but, for a moment or so, considering,
with how many deer minds
to turn him from that long gaze back to shadows, which,
in time being,
makes me smile, even the tin man say, the tan man
reasoning
on local makes and matters, earlier
evening
beverages.
About the Author: Robert Lietz is the author of eight published collections of poems, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press), At Park and East Division (L’Epervier Press), The Lindbergh Half-century (L’Epervier Press), The Inheritance (Sandhills Press), and Storm Service (Basfal Books). Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems. Over seven hundred of his poems have been published in print and on-line journals, including recent publications in Istanbul Literary Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly Online, Avatar, Contrary, Terrain, Valparaiso Review, Salt River Review, and Lily. Several unpublished collections are currently finished and ready for publication, including West of Luna Pier, Spooking in the Ruins, Keeping Touch, Character in the Works: Twentieth Century Lives, The Vanishing, and Eating Asiago & Drinking Beer. Meanwhile, he keeps active writing and exploring his interest in digital photography and image processing and their relationship to the development of his poetry.
surrounding the falls in a far country,
into the mists, away, like grace hoped on and more your own
as it eludes you? And who,
after some twenty-five Ohio summertimes, can resist the whim
so not to follow now, imagining
another year of it, with points you must make points of, for any
chance to be convincing,
with the details and desires, yes, and books you might actually
be changed by still to get to,
the peas and the onion sets begun, and that ibex vanishing, into
that brightening and rain in store
since it's the season, whatever the tin man thinks, or the tan man
makes of it, of this second
deer at the fenced edge of woods and greening field. So much
for the values cached, assessed
in mobile calls and in-dash videos, for these containment stones,
this steep dig announcing
steeper digs to follow, and for this deer about to bound, then
stymied, with fields ahead
or state groves to adventure, through the brightening or shade
a day in the mid-nineties
might make welcome, but, for a moment or so, considering,
with how many deer minds
to turn him from that long gaze back to shadows, which,
in time being,
makes me smile, even the tin man say, the tan man
reasoning
on local makes and matters, earlier
evening
beverages.
About the Author: Robert Lietz is the author of eight published collections of poems, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press), At Park and East Division (L’Epervier Press), The Lindbergh Half-century (L’Epervier Press), The Inheritance (Sandhills Press), and Storm Service (Basfal Books). Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems. Over seven hundred of his poems have been published in print and on-line journals, including recent publications in Istanbul Literary Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly Online, Avatar, Contrary, Terrain, Valparaiso Review, Salt River Review, and Lily. Several unpublished collections are currently finished and ready for publication, including West of Luna Pier, Spooking in the Ruins, Keeping Touch, Character in the Works: Twentieth Century Lives, The Vanishing, and Eating Asiago & Drinking Beer. Meanwhile, he keeps active writing and exploring his interest in digital photography and image processing and their relationship to the development of his poetry.
If
May/07/12 20:06 Submission: Poetry
If you had known
Chocolate and cabernet
Heal the flashes of pain in the hand
You would’ve sworn off the doctor
Long ago.
About the Author: Lizz Bronson's work has appeared, or is forthcoming in, Haven, Sacramento Poetry Center's Poetry Now, and New Verse News, among other publications. She believes that writers and poets have the ability to save the world by transforming their pens into magic wands and shape shifting words into symbols that will transport people into other lands.
Chocolate and cabernet
Heal the flashes of pain in the hand
You would’ve sworn off the doctor
Long ago.
About the Author: Lizz Bronson's work has appeared, or is forthcoming in, Haven, Sacramento Poetry Center's Poetry Now, and New Verse News, among other publications. She believes that writers and poets have the ability to save the world by transforming their pens into magic wands and shape shifting words into symbols that will transport people into other lands.
breath
May/05/12 17:21 Submission: Art | Photography
About the Photographer: Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 15-year-old photographer and artist who has won contests with National Geographic,The Woodland Trust, The World Photography Organisation, Winstons Wish, Papworth Trust, Mencap, Big Issue, Wrexham science, Fennel and Fern and Nature's Best Photography. She has had her photographs published in exhibitions and magazines across the world including the Guardian, RSPB Birds, RSPB Bird Life, Dot Dot Dash, Alabama Coast, Alabama Seaport and NG Kids Magazine (the most popular kids magazine in the world). She was also the only person from the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run See The Bigger Picture global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year Of Biodiversity 2010. Only visual artist published in the Taj Mahal Review June 2011. Youngest artist to be displayed in Charnwood Art's Vision 09 Exhibition and New Mill's Artlounge Dark Colours Exhibition. www.eleanorleonnebennett.zenfolio.com
The Colonel
May/03/12 13:53 Submission: Poetry
“A government is a criminal enterprise.” – Elster, in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega.
King me! Computer checkers ring the tribes
In diplomatic double-talk that mounts
All those I cannot fool and hands out bribes
Of virgin twelve-year-olds and bank accounts.
These medals give my war crimes special station,
So when I smile, I seal my judges’ doom,
Then ride insurgency’s unbridled nation
To succor terror babies from the womb.
Once, corporations were the State and hired
Mercenaries who’d enforce their scams,
Dissolving borders with machetes wired,
And money transferred Into holograms.
Now, ruthless power writhes this judas tree
With criminal kisses to sell. King me!
About the Author: Michael Karl (Ritchie) is a Professor of English at Arkansas Tech University, where he serves as advisor to the undergraduate literary magazine, Nebo. He has had three small press chapbook publications and work published in various small press magazines, including Gihon River Review, Margie, and The Arkansas Literary Forum.
King me! Computer checkers ring the tribes
In diplomatic double-talk that mounts
All those I cannot fool and hands out bribes
Of virgin twelve-year-olds and bank accounts.
These medals give my war crimes special station,
So when I smile, I seal my judges’ doom,
Then ride insurgency’s unbridled nation
To succor terror babies from the womb.
Once, corporations were the State and hired
Mercenaries who’d enforce their scams,
Dissolving borders with machetes wired,
And money transferred Into holograms.
Now, ruthless power writhes this judas tree
With criminal kisses to sell. King me!
About the Author: Michael Karl (Ritchie) is a Professor of English at Arkansas Tech University, where he serves as advisor to the undergraduate literary magazine, Nebo. He has had three small press chapbook publications and work published in various small press magazines, including Gihon River Review, Margie, and The Arkansas Literary Forum.
Prose is finally here!
May/01/12 15:03 Submission: Art | Photography
