No River Shall the Sea Refuse

by Jarrett Fontaine

No river shall the sea refuse

there is no choice when chose for you

a milky bath of skyward blue

it's steady guide

the inward swim

rolls across your rippled skin

under currents panicked bare

the lifeless roar

of eye-locked stare

mysterion

she grabbed my hand

walked in water-swallowed sand

and sang to me

as we absorbed

but all her rhymes

just felt so forced

that anchor dragged on ocean's floor

in deeper waters waves recede

a stream of blue in blood I bleed

when empathy won't feel for you

no river shall the sea refuse.

Joel

by Brittany Cagle

Brackish water washed over

the tips of his feet as

the current drew

him violently in,

until he swirled

with the grasses

beneath the black water,

The landscape blurred into a string

of air bubbles and distant

strangers only saw that

quick blur of silver ripples.

I was dreaming somewhere in the distance,

with my friend sinking

underneath

the moonlit surface.

Maple Scarf

by Brittany Cagle

Under a harvest moon,

atmosphere smolders

red flames that lick fields of

corn stalk and golden thread.

Summer lurks behind in

fragmented memory,

has left reminders

in the bruised apples that litter

rows of leaf nests. And

silently they tumble down

the weathered skin of oak branches,

leaving a carpet to welcome snow.

Where Do the Balloons Go?

by Brittany Cagle

A balloon

rises, and

becomes a shrinking

emerald.

Helium breathes

In wisps of cloud.

A child

traces the sky,

his finger

to the sun.

The Words of a Dutiful Niece

by Adreyo Sen

 

It would be nice if one day
Words
Had the sweet immediacy
Of chocolate
Or some other such vehicle
For the treachery
Of sugar.

Words are cheap
Conjure them off
Thin air
Or make them king-sized
Dark satisfaction
In large letters carved
On marzipan
Or animal crackers.

Even the poor
Could gobble them off
Weighty tomes
And discarded
Ice cream wrappers
The stale ink would add a kick
Most promiscuous.

I could put your grieving bulk in front
Of a widescreen TV
And let Owen Wilson do his stunts
In deceptively convincing glee
As yet his wrists functional
And watch you float away
High and numbed
By saccharine comedy.

Myself
I would stick to chocolate
Treat myself to some sleek Godiva
Or naughty
After-Eight
After emptying your bank account and moving
To Aruba.

Molly Maguire's Pub

by Christian Reifsteck

 

I could never stand

a misplaced apostrophe,

so I do not buy

the black shirt hanging

from the pub’s tin ceiling

that reads, “Patricks’ a saint

I ain’t.”

I do not wear grammatical errors.

But the boys who pretend to be men

in their black leather biker vests and chain wallets

and tattoos encircling their necks

don’t know any better.

They pretend to be the devil himself—

antithesis of everything holy,

everything Saint Patrick.

I see it in their eyes,

through the smoke clinging to the tin ceiling

and the wrinkled posters of Irish landscapes

plastered to the lime green walls of this little corner bar

squeezed between the close neighborhood houses

surrounded by mountains in a little corner town

that pretends to be Irish in this little spot.

I see the hesitancy in their faces

the uncertainty, the small innocent fear

undetectable under a fifth beer,

invisible behind a beard,

and as subtle as an inappropriate apostrophe

that no one really notices.

Knock Shrine

by Christian Reifsteck

God appears to me in such plainness sometimes—

here in Mayo, where the Virgin and some sheep and a cow

appeared behind the church to a group of farmers

nearly one hundred years ago.

And now a concrete shrine

has covered over the fields.

God appears to me in such plainness sometimes—

but not in the stark white statues marking the spot,

not the wall of glass encasing them,

not the massive stone rosary,

not even the rows of post-modern holy water fonts.

Not in these.

But God appears to me in such plainness sometimes—

in the elderly woman half-blind and timid

and thankful, so thankful to that selfsame God that I,

some stranger who has determined how to coax

the holy water from the font’s silver udder,

am here to guide her hand to fill up her cup.

And so God has appeared to me in such plainness—

in the old woman who can hardly see,

in her nervous request for assistance,

her relief that I just happen to be there,

and in the used plastic water bottle

that God flows into.

Slimy Lemons in Aged Whiskey

by Brent Lucia

The old bird walked in, flapping her cheap wings.

Scouting for rusty Johns.

Screaming at Hell’s gate to let her in for her sins.

She clung to our noses like burnt rubber.

Peeling at the rind.

Dumping a twist in her Powers on the rocks.

And in the black sea, against her empty palm.

Sinking against the past.

Passing away from all the lonely touches of her day.

Anonymous Relation...

 by Dr. Smita Anand Sriwastav

 

They were not just friends keeping in touch by phone calls and sharing the occasional lunch together.

They were not lukewarm acquaintances, scribbled names in some address book, a smile shared on mutual sidewalks, a hand waved in greeting. They were more, much more, sharing a more close knit relation. They were not lovers, sharing intimate gazes over flickering candlelight and their lingering touch scribing poetry on the skin of another. Their realms did not spoon together to make one perfect whole. They were strangers bound together by cords of loneliness; as the lonely moon becomes acquainted with the bay, yet their existences are destined to be separate. They fill the vacuum of their haunting silences with innocuous words, just to make those moments more palatable, but it is not a communication, a sharing of thoughts, a blending of ideas—just meaningless tirade to fill empty hours. They recognize each other, are familiar with their habits and idiosyncrasies but the thoughts of one are not reflected in the gaze of another. Understanding is elusive, for they are just archipelagos disjointed and separated with no bridge joining them but the frail threads of necessity. 

Remembering Dibrugarh...

 by Dr. Smita Anand Sriwastav

She is a blushing bride at dawn, cheeks tinted in cerise with vermilion streaked between parted locks by fingers of sunshine. There is a piquant aroma in her breath emanating from morning yawns of tea leaves. Bejeweled in dew, she wakes up stretching her limbs as fragrance of withering hursinghars caresses her sleepy contours waking her with a kiss. Her moods are like the tempest’s whimsy whose strain echoes in dulcet notes of sitar in the breeze, when drizzles fall from skies to pepper the trees in wet pecks. She dons verdant apparel always, draping it over lush realms and her laughter is heard to reverberate in the rippling gait of the Brahmaputra cascading down into her embrace with whispered covenants of fertility. She is a woman through and through painting her versicolor dreams on the clouds for all to see at dusk. At night she adorns herself, dreaming of her beloved, in satin quietude and ornaments of asters and fireflies,

her raven mane braided in fragrant orchids. The distant blue hills are her tiara softly glowing in daylight to proclaim her as a queen on nature’s throne...