Three Poems by Amit Parmessur

Morning Dew

 

I know you stare at the pregnant

dewdrops mourning on the leaf

and feel like Atargatis, ready to

transform yourself into a mermaid

for unwillingly killing my love for you.

 

I know you wonder where

these dewdrops were born.

Yes, right from my heart.

 

A more careful look will

reveal they are not mourning.

They are half-bird femme fatales

whose enchanting voices

want to draw you to me again.

 

These dewdrops have stopped

and hope to avoid a dark plunge.

You must move before my legs

fuse together and I forget my name

one stormy night

invaded by guitar music.

 

Mistakes happen and

rainbows do break into dust.

In every dewdrop there is a Utopia.

In every man there is a woman.

 

I’ll forgive.

Run.

 

Or else, one day you might keep

asking “Is my King alive?” and count

the dewdrops on every blade of grass.

 

 

 

Pre-Christmas Colors

 

When I stop my bicycle in

the swirling dust and watch the

old woman’s lush garden I feel

like a roasted turkey on two wheels.

Once at the library the textures

and tastes of the books transform

me into a blue world map and

then flatten me into an ancient page.

The frantic bazaar decolorizes me

and I become invisible. I still

owe the egg seller a few coins.

Forgetfulness you see.

When I stop again and see the

sun stealing water from the

municipality fountain I feel eager

to serve others. I’m the type who

feels timeless when I hear the big

town clock. Yet, I fail to be proud

of my people as I see almost

everyone whizzing past with musical

corks in their ears nowadays.

I feel like pointing a gun at those

who throw cigarette butts on the

ground too. They have a head

of cauliflower instead of a brain!

I just hope Christ never quits me

and we ban selling unborn chicks

or else I shall keep buying eggs for free

and hatch them into life and

fill my street with merry cackling.

 

 

Horizon

 

The horizon seems complacent.

The sea is sending out fingers

to accuse her of deceit.

The sea is sending out tongues

to remind her of his voice.

 

The girl muses with pristine glee,

sure he will forgive her,

on the bench she destroyed him.

She gazes at the overlapping love

signs drawn by crazy teens

though much is awaiting her;

yeah, carefree she sits on,

smiling dreamily.

 

One minute sign strikes her

and her heart springs up,

as the green leaves around rustle.

 

On her way to him she sees him

in someone else’s arms.

She understands.

 

She comes back and

sleeps on the sand for some time

while the sea is sending out paws.

She stands

and goes to meet the horizon.

 

 

 

 

 

Born in 1983, Amit Parmessur has been published in over 100 literary magazines, like Ann Arbor Review, Salt, Hobo Camp Review, Misfits' Miscellany, Jellyfish Whispers, Kalkion and Red Fez. His book on blog Lord Shiva and other poems has also been published by The Camel Saloon. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of the Web Anthology. He lives in Quatre-Bornes, in Mark Twain’s paradise island Mauritius, with his cat and three dogs.

Two Poems by Juliet Wilson

Evening Rain

A brief heavy downpour
-almost tropical-
stops
suddenly

dark clouds lift
a pale rainbow

chimney pots
glow with evening

distant thunder
forebodes a later storm


Autumn Evening

Geese gather in the fields
hidden by the evening mist.

Spider webs drape hedgerows
where robins sing.

Stone becomes gold
in magical light.

Deer rest, alert
under a yellow frost-moon.

The hedgehog's prickled ball
waits.



Juliet Wilson is an Edinburgh based writer, adult education tutor and conservation volunteer. Her second poetry chapbook Unthinkable Skies was published in 2010. She blogs at Crafty Green Poet (http://craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com) and edits the poetry journal Bolts of Silk (http://boltsofsilk.blogspot.com).

A Poem by J.lynn Sheridan

Giver

The green plucked pumpkin
         steams in my pot
not for the cobbler but for the
                        cobblestones
painted with rust and toiled
                                            doilies.

I’ve seen the apple-skin-                                                                           

                                    thin widow

lay her wishing head upon
              washed rags and

fossilled leaves

with fresh blessings
          for her losses—

the etchings in her sandalled cheek

where cobblers and merchants tread
with heavy steps

unknowingly tapping stones
into old world
                 works of art

                  

fringed with prairie grass.

 

 

 

J.lynn Sheridan poems and writes in the Chain O’Lakes area of northern Illinois where she lives with her scruffy construction-guy husband and children, but she’d rather live in an old hardware store for the aroma and ambiance. Her poems can most recently be found in Beyond the Dark Room (an international poetry anthology), a Poetic Bloomings’ anthology , MouseTail Press and her blog, https://writingonthesun.wordpress.com and @J.lynnSheridan.

A Poem by Christina Murphy

 

Crossing

 

red blaze of oak on a back road leading to visible fields where no house is
 

the mustard seed is a window into all that remains unseen on crooked paths overgrown with weeds and twisted roots
 

the glass eye seeing darkly shall know as it is known and weep in solitude along the crossing that never ends
 

tribulation is to grace as tides in the ocean opening to rain; deliverance is a maze of cold with snowflakes descending
 

that cover the surface, obscure its beauty, and leave the traveler in one dimension--calling out, calling out
 

always the call, lost in the frozen air, alone, adrift, as the seas in equatorial /ethereal splendor
 

as all other dimensions converge and disappear
 

 

 

 

Christina Murphy lives and writes in a 100 year-old Arts and Crafts style house along the Ohio River. Her poetry is an exploration of consciousness as subjective experience, and her most recent work appears in PANK, La Fovea, StepAway Magazine, Pear Noir! and Humanimalz. The poets she most admires are Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, and Jane Hirshfield for their undaunted (and impeccable) sense of the interrelationship of language, imagery, and consciousness. Her work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for the 2012 Best of the Net Anthology.

A Poem by Phillip A. Ellis

Azaleas

Azaleas glow
in the light of the moon's dreams,
and the brilliant whiteness
turns them translucent,
like a wisp of a breeze,
and just as slight.



Phillip A. Ellis is a freelance critic, poet and scholar. His
chapbooks, The Flayed Man and Symptoms Positive and
Negative, are available. He is working on a collection for Diminuendo
Press. Another has been accepted by Hippocampus Press. He is the editor of
Melaleuca.

Two Poems by Travis Laurence Naught

Everyone Needs Sustenance

Monkeys muddle bananas into necessary truth smoothies
By gnashing their teeth together

Grinding the unpeeled fruit until juices start to seep out
From both puncture holes in the skin
And natural seams separating from the pressure
Of being chewed and squished by capable hunters

Who are only trying to survive
And better understand the world through natural fulfilment


Territorial

Lion with the golden mane event scheduled
be wary of the animalistic pride
stalking in the near high grass
planted there by bowling pin king
of the inner city jungle with its own ecosystem.

Drop timing to be executed with justice
expertly handed down the ladder
until fire truck extended rungs span the gap
over heads on lesser beings
between predator and prey the real fight exists.

Fighting tooth and nail gun battles
rage throughout the lighted flame blaze
sparking interest among nearby creatures
ready to flee the scene at a moment's notice
because proud victors all flaunt their dominance.



Travis Laurence Naught is a poet who happens to be a quadriplegic wheelchair user. He earned his bachelor's degree in psychology from Eastern Washington University in 2005. His poetry memoir, The Virgin Journals, was released by ASD Publishing in 2012. More individual poems by Travis could be found in print (RiverLit, Northwest Boulevard, Empirical Magazine and more) and online ( http://www.deadmansreach.com, http://49writers.blogspot.com, http://www.pyrokinection.com/ and more). You can follow his daily update page online at www.facebook.com/TravisLaurenceNaught

A Poem by Louis Marvin

Sharing

 

Yesterday

I alone sat at many benches in the arboretum

 

Today

I alone sit on this roof in Waikiki

 

While a whispering wind makes palms sway

 

here and there with the sounds of parrots and macaws

caged here, free there

 

I have no one to share these silly, simple secrets with

 

Can I share them with you?

 

 

 

louis marvin

on this pacific island with chinese girls

born burbank, lived phoenix, loe the island

teacher, coach, ex-soldier, writer/artist, tennis champion

A Poem by April Salzano

Psycho Finch

 

The crazed finch that built

a nest of moss in the middle

of my hanging petunia basket

screams at the front

window every morning at daybreak

as if part rooster,

firing misguided warnings

at her own reflection.

On the inside, my son yells back.

Each stands respective ground

well into morning.

 

 

 

 

April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is working on her first several collections of poetry and an autobiographical novel on raising a child with Autism. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Pyrokinection, Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Rainbow Rose, The Camel Saloon, The Applicant, The Mindful Word, Napalm and Novocain, Jellyfish Whispers, The South Townsville Micro Poetry Journal, The Weekender Magazine, Deadsnakes, Winemop, Daily Love, WIZ, and is forthcoming in Inclement, Poetry Quarterly, Decompression, Work to a Calm, and Windmills.