Guest Poet

eclipse of moon
wolves
quiet

– Cole Eubanks

Britney’s sweet &
sour fog of whiskey
breathe wants prisoners.

Her pierced tongue is
equipped with a
lifetime of lies.

Like saying she
loves me in the
bathroom stall of a bar.

But I push her off
knowing to go further
involves ruin.

A “pseudo junkie”
Justine calls her
which is untrue.

Though methedrine / blotter acid
are her trapdoors
to forget
what she can’t speak of.

Her eyes- two missed exits of rejection
as tears and mascara make
a garish mess of
a face…
she slowly redoes.

Later she returns to our table
where she will find sport
teasing college boys
she’d easily destroy.

Who surround us
as if she were the prey
and not the other way around.

I watch
half-amused.

While the boys move in closer
for like everyone else
not rejecting her
they have no idea
how much
they have
to lose.
And lose they will
their naive college boy smiles
gutted and slashed while
her’s forever lost remains.

– Rp Verlaine

I astonish myself—
my socks match

I have the concept socks must match
and also I drive a car

Someone thought the thought we should
bustle about in cars

Thus I make my daily runs
in a practical hatchback with low mileage

So many ideas speeding around the planet—
somebody grabs one from a hurricane

and smooths it out
while two others get their hands caught

in a jar of extra-sweet better-mousetrap
that spills over five continents

and here we are souped-up nations
all in matching socks

and sporty sedans
complete with shiny rims on our wheels

– Jean Biegun

1st Haiku

at the stadium…
my team nets the ball
I’m still gazing at her

2nd Haiku

my stern boss blushes
at unpunctual new
female worker

– Enobong Enobong

This blazing ball of fire is
what I can’t touch in its eyes.
If I do, I’ll have four fingers left
to draw the print of my feet.

The waves of beautiful waters that glint
blue and the downpour of its dryness is the
lines of steam beneath my eyes…
I hopped over.
I felt the sweetness of lilies
and the blue cover cloud in my mouth.

And, a finger thrusts into the windows of
my dream, so I’d have four fingers to read
the parables in my palms.

Father left me in the portrait of his hunched
back
And, I took in my hands a dimple
from his chin and the Apple that destroyed
Adam in the tube of my lungs.
And in his back, the tongues of thorns were
unsheathed to slay his last egg.
My face was painted with beautiful
ridicules so that I’ll glimmer with filth and
my body was steamed in the hearts of
embers so that my wrinkled skin would be
mocked like the tales of the viral ugly
duckling.

Brother bought me a pen and sister, a peel
of woods to craft the photograph of my
father whose body was shaken in the
Earth’s mouth.

Now, I found solace.
And I am the boy whose palms bleed to
write an anthology of his own plights.

– Osho Olaitan Jeremiah

The street lies gloriously in ruins,
One step in the soil- just like travail at birth.

Our murdered land is painted with tussle and beautiful pangs,
And night is mixed with servile fearfulness and veteran buzzing mosquitoes at a feast.

Beware of the one-eyed macho- a monstrous visage,
So hallowed and gracious in terror.

Our people bathe joyfully in airborne disease and dine with freshly baked infection.
Our feeble mouth war, day in and out,

When your sun is gone up, our sun just walked in- the season of million mischiefs.

– Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo

or if the room is empty, or if it
holds the breath of uneasy ghosts

if the walls are deep blue and sunlit

we will exist here
in hopper’s silence

we will sit next to dusty windows
from some other century

a view of what, though?

not cities and not water

an expanse of manicured lawn?

yes, and then the interstate
beyond it, but empty

there’s been a tragedy

it’s the end of an age or
not quite the
beginning of the next

we are witnesses

we are in love

this, at least,
is a comfort

– John Sweet

Persuasive as a Pentecostal preacher,
the dark-haired man with a tranquilizing
voice and hypnotic green eyes speaks first.
They follow me in unmarked police cars.
Signal strangers on the street to mess
with me and manipulate my mind.
There’s a knock on the car window.
Honey, Henry just hit a home run.

His face distorts and disappears,
replaced by a frizzy redhead.
The black ops broke into my house
and implanted a microchip in my skin
like my vet did with my Dalmatian.
They harass me with lasers and loud
noise. A voice blares: Manager on
Aisle 10. Sorry, she says, That’s me.

The screen goes dark and a gray
and wrinkled woman whispers:
They spy on me with motion
lights and watch me as I sleep.
They sneak in and sprinkle
cyanide in my salt shakers.
A silhouette saunters across the screen.
Mother, have you taken your meds?

A teenager in a nose ring and tattoos
articulates like an anchor on ABC.
The CIA decapitated my entire family
including my grandma. I escaped
from their mind control camp today.
One or all of you could be one of them.
A girly girl grabs the mike: Get off
my laptop or I’ll tell Mom and Dad.

The cameras continue to film
fresh faced followers feeding
on the frenzy of the internet
conspiracy cult, convincing
them to ditch drugs and doctors
to listen to voices on the web
repeating the same rhetoric
as the voices in their head.

– Sharon Waller Knutson

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art – John Keats

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
were I as far away and dying? Were I you, star,
would my wavering starlight inspire nursery
rhymes? Oh star, if only I were lightyears gone,
leave onlookers starstruck, disappear by morn—
Bright star, how doth thou be so aloof and cool?
How can I twinkle when I’m less starshine,
more starburst—the red flavor, the one no one likes.
Less Eremite, more Jezebel, less pure than you, star.
You’d never let these bastards break your heart, no, you’d
supernova the shit out of them, vaporize to stardust.
I’m stuck sipping Starbucks and crying about capitalism.
Could I learn to be like you, starling in training, but
I’m stuck stargazing, dreaming of upward swing.

– Sarah Karowski

He lived in a morgue
that was renovated into a house
(an old friend of mine
I haven’t seen in years),
and the spirits would come out
at night, poking you in your sleep,
or so I was told
because I’m yet to meet a ghost
who wasn’t still alive.

– Richard LeDue