Featured Writer: Christian Ward Day 3

Moth

Landing on a photograph
of my father, it must have thought
the bulb of his scalp was a source
of light; just as for years I thought
the transmissions from his heart
was love.

Featured Writer: Christian Ward Day 2

The Source


Now that grandfather’s tumors have started

collapsing the timbers of his organs, his body

has started to stink. Nurses hold their breaths


when changing his sheets, giving him food

and water. The daffodils in the vase by his

windows have turned away, shut their petals.


I ignore them when sitting down by his side

to read him the newspaper, tell him of daily

happenings. When it increases in intensity,


I smile and remember reading how the ark,

filled with putrid smells from 151 days

of travelling, beached itself on the summit


of a mountain and all known life crept out

from that foul smelling source.

Featured Writer: Christian Ward Day 1

Winter


You cannot dream of winter

happening because it is always

there in the background,

whatever month it is. Walking

along a pier in August you

will hear it grinding against

the iron legs, in the gulls’ mews.

Sitting on the porch in April,

you will feel it rubbing against

your legs, turning your skin

white as milk. Fake a surprise look

in November when snow falls,

ignore the glimpse of ice behind

your parents’ eyes.
__________________________________________

Fulton Street

After Walker Evans' 'Girl in Fulton Street'


This is not the city Frank
wrote about. There are no
hum coloured cabs or men
stopping for a cheeseburger
and malt shake. Lana Turner
has not died and the sky
has not worn its funeral coat.
This is the city made of glass
where people wear alien nouns
like Fedora and Cloche Hat
and sniff the air like gundogs,
eager for the scent of their identity.



Christian Ward is a 28 year old London based poet whose poetry
can be currently seen in journals such as Thieves Jargon and Origami
Condom. His chapbook, Bone Transmissions, will be released in March
courtesy of Maverick Duck Press.

Inside the Snowglobe by Paula Ray

You shake me up to watch
my mind fall in flakes,
your amusement.
No longer content to be
the drowned figurine,

feet glued to winter scene
never changing season.
You always churn my world
into a blizzard of thought,
unless I cry my dammed tears

all over this shelf I have allowed myself
to be placed. Among your other souvenirs.
I wait for you to toss me aside, unwanted.

The impact of the fall
will bust me
free.

Specks of glitter
will no longer be my bad luck,
my shattered reflection,
but your mess to clean.

Before I'm released, gaze at me
one last time and watch this
pretty little fantasy land piss
all over your open palm,
like your future's sprung a leak.

Paula is a musician and emerging writer from North Carolina where she teaches band, gigs about town on her saxophone, composes, and feeds her literary addiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as: Word Riot, Mad Swirl, Oak Bend Review, The Orange Room Review, and A cappella Zoo. For a more extensive list of her publications with links, check out her blog: musicalpencil.blogspot.com.

I Believe in Public Transportation by Ben Nardolilli

I Believe in Public Transportation


@#$%...@#$&…&$%@!

I can’t listen to the music,
The sweet flowing music
Because of the trains,
The goddamn trains
Which shake and rattle and stroll
Right through my room
And never stop for me.
The goddamn trains
Which are always moving,
Always shaking
Coming like earthquakes
Magnitude 6 I believe, and green,
But not friendly to my environment.
Shaking me up and down,
Throwing everything off
A millimeter every day,
So that every month
I am losing inches.
And sanity,
Because of the goddamn trains,
The metal beasts below me
That wind up and down the stairs
Pass through the tub when I bathe,
Making waves,
Passing through my head when I sleep,
Making ripples in my mind.
Coming into my dreams, the goddamn trains,
I want to kiss the girl but her lips tremble and I cannot,
Goddamn trains,
I want to hold her
At least a little while longer before having to wake,
But I can’t,
Goddamned trains
They wake me up and shake me up,
They toss me like dice in my sleep, in my seat.
I believe in public transportation,
It’s a good thing to reduce the dependency on burning black gold,
For if we dig precious things from the earth,
We invite disaster upon ourselves,
(I heard a Hopi say,
I wonder what he would think of the goddamned trains,
if they ran through his pueblo.)
And it brings us together,
Gives us the touch of others,
The occasional acrobats on steel bars,
Children who sell candy,
Which is better than them eating it,
What with,
The epidemic going around.
The trains,
Yes the trains are a good thing,
Yes, even the goddamned trains.
In general.

@#$%...@#$&…&$%@!

The goddamn trains never stop,
They only pass through.


I am a twenty three year old writer currently living in New York City. My work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, and Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, The Delmarva Review, Clockwise Cat, Heroin Love Songs, Literary Fever, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition I was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintain a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.

Crossed Eyes by Matt Maxwell

Crossed Eyes

The rivalry blossomed over time, as they became aware of the other's deficiencies. It led to a murder-suicide (which doesn't have the rhyming snap of homicide-suicide) and the man couldn't identify the killer.

The left eye could wink. Quickly. Furtively. The right eye couldn't. The right eye rarely took a punch, never stagnated a black bruise. While the man kissed Cassie, the left eye opened and drank her skin, and the right eye looked beyond, at a blank wall or the game on tv. They couldn't decide who to score the advantage.

The left eye glittered gold flecks, and women cooed. The right eye whorled gray storm clouds, and women swooned. It stood as a tie.

The right eye couldn't decipher text at arm's length but could pinpoint a thong outline at twenty yards. The left eye lacked strength to decode billboards but read without squinting, managed fine details on Photoshop.

They bantered. Mocked. Went criss-cross, meeting at the nose, to punctuate contentions. Stood at polar opposites to shun the other.

What prompted the homicide-suicide was debated, but the man's interview proves jealousy ignited the feud. The left eye read a selection of poems—horrendous, trite, inane poems. The right eye peered over the book at two high school girls in mini-skirts. The left eye cussed for having to bother with painful drivel. The right eye curtly ridiculed the whining. The left eye reprimanded, demanding equality in all sights, insidious or heavenly. Accusations became spiteful. The right eye ogled what the left saw as a blur. The left eye railed, refused to quiet. It escalated to the homicide-suicide, with the deaths seconds apart. Painful. Bloody. Too quick for the man to recall which eye first went black. The blind man blamed the deaths on horrid poetry.


*First Published in Mad Hatters' Review*

I am a schizophrenic writer, a haphazard photographer, an obsequious malcontent—tripping and sprinting and moshing to my own multi-limbed drummer. Some of my fiction has found its way into Mad Hatters' Review, Noo Journal, Sein und Werden, The Salt River Review, Flashquake, Eyeshot, Cezanne's Carrot, Defenestration, and others. I am also an associate fiction editor with Mad Hatters' Review.

My Father's Advice by Howie Good

MY FATHER’S ADVICE

Wear hunter’s camouflage.
You don’t want to be
one of those people,
do you, whose goal in life
is simply to stand there
and look good?
Your grandmother was,
and the soldiers tore
a crying baby from her arms
and flung it on the fire.
Therefore, every day,
practice invisibility.
Plunge through intersections –
the busier, the better –
just as the light turns red.
Move often and without regret,
and leave no obvious trail,
no broken twigs and such, to follow.
The devil is upstairs humping
a pillow, pretending that it’s you.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University
of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry
chapbooks, including most recently Tomorrowland (2008)
from Achilles Chapbooks. He has been nominated three times
for a Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net
anthology.