Announcing Kind of a Hurricane Press's First Annual Poetry Contest!

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE 2013 KIND OF A HURRICANE PRESS EDITOR'S CHOICE POETRY AWARD ARE NOW OPEN!

First Place Winner gets $200 (US)  Payable via PayPal

for more details check out the Kind of a Hurricane Press Editor's Choice Poetry Award Site:

http://editorschoiceaward.blogspot.com/

Three Poems by Michael H. Brownstein

BUMPING INTO THE SKY 
  
You think intolerance a white paste 
you can spread across the air. Day comes 
with a break between minutes, the red 
flash of the red-winged blackbird, 
a greeting from your I’noGo tied*
slung not to your belt, but to your insides: 
If you say you cannot tell 
what is true and what is not true, 
you are saying you have lost 
faith with what is real. Clouds bunch 
beyond the lake, lay out a steady rainfall, 
move within wind like a herring gull 
in need of food. 

*Among some Alaska natives, the i'noGo tied ("house of spirits") refers to a luck and protection amulet made from blubber encased in seal fur.--Wikipedia

 

 

 

A CHANGE IN THE WAY WE BREATH OXYGEN

 

This story is about three men tied to a cave,

black bear no longer once upon a time,

two brothers, coyote and wolf,

the beginning of the flight to urban legend.

 

I tie a knot to two ropes,

then I tie three knots to five more,

but still the balloon is too heavy to fall from the sky

and the cloud eating dragon hides well in the blue clouds.

 

This is not a tale of love-lust and greed—

everything turns brown on the other side of things
and nothing else stays green for long.

A DAY AT THE BEACH

 

the blue eye opening in the sky,

a graying, a washing of seed,

a great ray slips into the shallows

and warm waters form shadows

around him.  In the distance

the eye blinks and sunshine fills us.

We light the bonfires and pass out

sticks, marshmallows, graham crackers.

Soon the eye will blink again

and we will leave the surf and sand.

This storm is an easy one, the trees

bend to the wind, and we make

our way home to plywood and shelter.

 

 

 

 

Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published. His latest works, Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (http://booksonblog35.blogspot.com/) (Camel Saloon Books on Blogs) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missori, 100F Outside and other poems (http://barometricpressures.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-katy-trail-mid-missouri-100f.html) (Barometric Pressures--A Kind of Hurricane Press). The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100F Outside And Other PoemsHis work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), and I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011: (http://tenpagespress.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/i-was-a-teacher-once-by-michael-h-brownstein/). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

 

 

A Poem by Michael Cluff

Symbiosis          April  22, 2013

The world is fluid
all parts melt, meld and blend
without restraint
one into the other and then another.

Man should take the hint
refine the example
nature has always set
for our rebellious kind.

Imposing human egoism
and power-mongering ambitions
is a construct of the hubristic mind
not the ebb and flow
that allows all species
to exist within their own needs.

Survival is not plausible for one
if it goes about willing, gleefully
glorying in the extinction of one
after the other
and another.

Green is a lucky leafy color
in symbology
not brown or grey
dirt or dryness clinging
to these shades.

A willow weeps
when the land is abused
shamrocks and geraniums
drop into nothingness
when pesticides overwhelm
their lovely leaves
streams turn brown
from a hoe's raping of the ground
and gulleys carry nutrients
away to the brackish bays and seas.

The Sea of Aral
is decaying, dying
'cause of mankind's need to
reduce the whole world
to fit into his self-centered needs.

Today
listen to the hushed yet rising song
in the Norco winds
imploring the ear:

"all life is only kept all
when people work to keep any one form alive
at no one's  benefits
but at all's."

And San Onofre
is just south of Corona
awaiting an earthquake or tsuamni
all its own.

Mike Cluff is a writer living in the inland section of Southern California. He is now finishing two books of poetry: "The Initial Napoleon" and "Bulleted Meat"-- both of which are scheduled for publication in late 2013/early 2014. He believes that individuality is the touchstone of his life and pursues that ideal with passion and dedication to help the world improve with each passing instance .He also hopes to take up abstract painting in the next several months.

A Poem by Zach Fechter

Rainmaker

Sing that song you dark rainmaker

You who stand frozen in deep stride

Over our cities of the plain

You who flash breathless whites

And snap unearthly jaws

 

Sing that swirling mad twister

Of grey blues about our empty homes

You who to me are a mass of

Dreams expired in the dawn

Who’s going to tie you down tonight?

 

Sing of that marble river

Of our chase for the mystical tiger

Of our final journey as men

And cry for us

To sweep us away

 

The rainmaker was a poor mummer

Just a useless beautiful map he was

But we saw the map and were

Swept away from the mindless nothing

In the reggae blue

 

 

 

Zach Fechter lives and writes in Southern California. He has been published in Poetry Quarterly Magazine and Kind of a Hurricane Press. He is a graduate of Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. 

Three Poems by Kelley White

Wild Root Charlie

 

lived on the Cat Path.  Employed by the Fish

and Game department to test fences he had

a wife and a fawn and an appetite for cigarettes.

Daddy’d take me after supper bump dusting

down the narrow road and we’d click our tongues

at the turn-around ‘til Charlie’d come nosing

his smooth cool face through the wires diamonds

to tongue my carefully offered carrot and potato

peeling. .I longed for the doe who stood

at the edge of the trees and the tiny face peeking

beneath her flank.  Oh, Charlie.  One day you leapt

them all, seven fences, barb-wired and rolled,

picketed and spiked, storm and stockade and

electric buzz for some apple orchard in your

dreams.  They retired the project.  In a decade I’d

wrestle boys at the empty turn-around, their

tobacco mouths hard against my teeth,  remember

your beauty and grace and wonder did your doe

still wait out in that darkness for your return.  

Swoosh

Just when I'd forgotten to believe

wind lifts leaf and twig and stick

rush of darkness water world

wood trees angry angels

fighting back and rain

is more than lighting

changing earth rock ledge

conversation of power

light and black cloud hold

fool human body pressed

mossbark wet frightened

creature waiting eyes.

Who is dancing?

daughter

feather

leaf

the voice of snow

Pediatrician Kelley White worked in inner-city Philadelphia and now works in rural New Hampshire.  Her poems have appeared in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA.  Her most recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books).  She received a 2008 PCA grant.

A Poem by J.K. Durick

Weather

It’s great the way it defies us like this,
keeps us guessing, looking to the sky
As it builds up and tumbles toward us.
We track it on radar as if it were another
incoming bomber or speeding motorist.
We name its most memorable moments:
there’s Katrina and then Irene and Sandy,
name them and blame then, watch their
approach, their progress, and what they
leave behind. It defies us, reminds us,
treats us like children, afraid of thunder,
mythologizing lightning, seeking shelter,
places susceptible to wind damage and
flooding we never see coming our way.
It takes our hiding places away, makes
short work of all our efforts, our houses,
our roads and bridges; even graveyards,
our final resting places, aren’t spared,
are sent downriver with the rest of us.
It’s always with us, whether we want it
to be or not; like today, after days of rain,
it’s hot and humid, gathering its forces,
piling clouds over the lake, ready to make
the afternoon over into what the weatherman
calls occasional showers and the possibility
of localized flooding, much like yesterday
and the day before that, and the day before.

J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Decades Review, Northern New England Review, Third Wednesday, and Up the River.

Two Poems by M.J. Iuppa

True North

 

What frightens you isn’t Ontario stretching out before you, calm as

a yawn, its taffeta ripple stippling the surface of morning’s grays, but

a fallen branch, the color of coal, posed like a withered arm on the sand,

waiting for you to pick it up and point it in the direction of traffic, where

soon you will merge with the day's reckless continuity.

 

               

Feast Day

 

The mulberry, ripe with berries, ousts
its horde of ransacking birds
into summer’s steamy air—
and, one by one, they return
to filch a few more.

From the porch, we watch wings
swell       & flash out of the shaken tree—
dissolving into the safety
of the wood’s emerald shadows.

Restless, I rise
& lean against the railing.
The day’s momentum quivers
in its feat of all or nothing—

I hold my breath, anticipating
the conference of birds returning
to settle this tree’s estate—
the berries they will divide
& cart       in spite of
petulant cries.

 

 

 

 

M. J. Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario.  Her most recent poems have appeared in Poetry East, The Chariton Review, Tar River Poetry, Blueline, The Prose Poem Project, and The Centrifugal Eye, among other publications.  Her most recent poetry chapbook is As the Crow Flies (Foothills Publishing, 2008), and her second full-length collection is Within Reach (Cherry Grove Collections, 2010).  Between Worlds, a prose chapbook, was published by Foothills Publishing in May 2013.  She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor program at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

A Poem by Christopher Kenneth Hanson

Staid, The Night

This night, the day fowl laugh hazily

Through the wafted green air-

Said night-as seeded, dazed:

And quiet, frequently-

 

To a realm of callous currency now:

Here fly- the frigid clipped mocking birds;

Lurching past frigid chirped contingencies-

 

Towards a space of tempered reality; even

Sprouts of a languid sky- infinite-

Here lie-here lies-

By lone skewered sky

Sedated, in posture- as tripped night.

 

 

 

 

Christopher Kenneth Hanson (ckhanson81)

ckhanson81@gmail.com

http://sites.google.com/site/ckhanson81

https://www.youtube.com/user/ckhanson81

https://sites.google.com/site/indieartsl/

Two Poems by Susan Dale

August 2^nd, 06

The wind singing phrases

of bawdy clouds
And a draconian sun penetrating into
Heavy afternoon
Sun - miles deep 
Fathoms wide
Quivers of heat waves
wrapping around 
crackling tales of corn
bellowing with pomposity
To surge ten feet high
 
Standing water
rife with the debauchery
of spawning mosquitoes
Pink-gold frailty of peaches
Hanging in dreams of voluptuous peaks
 
Brooding heads of flowers
hanging down
 
Lustful vines of grapes
Bindweed enveloping a cringing landscape
Laser waves corresponding
With pink-cheeked tomatoes

Back of the woods, wheat fields

shorn of their beards
shimmer in brown corpses
 
Shrieks of black-eyed susans
Silver-blue thistles wearing spike helmets
Dragon flies painted with Art-Nouveau wings
 
And the lavish praise of butterflies on phlox
 
Mosquitoes with brass knuckles
Melancholy flies humming at the screen door
Honey sticky winds
Métiers of bird song; shadows of bird wings

A narrative of sun and sky

Of summer; languid, wet-lazy summer  

August

High, wide, deep August
Hot, thick, soupy
high-summer
Woven in garlands of chicory-blue and queen anne’s lace
Fastened with tansy buttons
 
Drinking nectar from orange lily cups.
Holding tight, breathing heavy
encompassing, erotic August

Every nook and cranny does she fill with wanton flesh.

Lover of the red-flame sun thrashing pigment from her skies

Ripening copious spawn.

Languid, lush August

of purple-popping grapes
And pools of black-eyed susans
Hammering heat pounding rivers and lakes to froth.
 
Succulent, sultry August
thunder drumbeats
and cracks of lightening
sizzlingthe skies to curdle
to rent open
to rains of blind-passions 
That lick tree-tops, and suckle the steamy earth.

Decadent, voluptuous August

Climbing in vines thick and rampant
Tangling within themselves, wrapping around tree trunks.
Rushing lickety-split
up and up
Enshrouding swollen clouds of autumn‘s promise.
Bursting, juicy-ripe August
Rubbing sun-soaked limbs
Against the bronzy flesh
of melancholy September


   

Susan Dale’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Ken *Again, Penman Review, Inner Art Journal, Feathered Flounder, and Hurricane Press. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan. 

 

 

 

Two Poems by Rick Hartwell

Tern Around

 

Not lonely, alone.  She is

solicitous of her solitude.

Her limitless blue world

expands seasonally to

four compass points.

Speckled tan against ivory,

head cocked to one side,

she is the focal point

centered in the stark

arctic of her world.

Is she praying in this

austere light or the prey,

or perhaps part of the

prayer itself?  She is

unique, vibrant in a

world of visual sterility.

Some subtle switch in

electromagnetic flux,

perhaps a temperature

trigger in her cortex;

for whatever reason,

she prepares for extended

flight, unaware of any

Darwinian dilemma.

Why now, here, right in

the middle of creation?

 

 

 

One Leaf Falling

 

I watch one leaf drop from

a rose tree at twilight and

wonder what it signifies.

 

I note it was not a petal

from a bloom long past

its blush, but mere leaf,

one of many, not one

soured by the sun, tanned,

not fit to serve any longer.

 

It was a leaf still green,

presumably still full of life.

 

What made it fall then?

 

Why let go mother branch?

 

Or was it flung from its nest

for some unseemly conduct?

 

I’ll never know, not being

knowledgeable of leaf lore,

tree coda; but I would wager

that within the tale of the

fall of the leaf – or was

she or he pushed after all? –

lives the story of mankind.

 

Yes, I’ll wager; but what

will you put up on your side?

 

 

 

Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember the hormonally-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing, Rick would rather be still tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon. He can be reached at rdhartwell@gmail.com.

A Poem by Heidi Morrell

Kauai

Ever changing light angles down
onto volcanic ridges and jutting peaks
cloaked in myriad greens,
seamed with the white froth
of elongated thin waterfalls,
like the piping on a velvet robe.

Mottled laden clouds burst forth,
torrents pound the porous ground,
while burgeoning magenta and yellow green plants
palm and plumeria,
are once again showered,
green vines snake up huge monkey pod trees,
all joyous in the washing.

Wild cockerels accompanied by their hens,
strut and arch,
adorned with vivid emerald and copper tail feathers,
they scratch and peck abundant insect life,
after rudely breaking the delicate dawn.
Flowers and fruit fragrance the silken air,
soft, rounded, whispering into one’s face.

The gentle Hanalei bay,
breathing with eternal tides,
conceal a silent kingdom below;
by day, blue green skin,
but at sunset,
the red gold water reflects the treasure
of its sky.

Heidi Morrell's poetry has been published in:  Big River Review, Unaureon -2 poems (broad sheet), Cat Fancy magazine ‘90’s, Emerge Literary Journal 10/12, St. James Newsletter 2010.  Heidi also writes a bi-weekly column for Examiner.com - L.A. disability.  Go to: www.examiner.com/user-hbmorrell