An Allegory

is when you say
one thing
but mean something else

like when you’re
talking chickens
but it’s really about people–

your tale is of a wolf
who creeps into
a hen-house at night
and devours a half dozen
of the best layers–

only it’s no wolf
and you’re not actually
talking hen-house–

it could be about
some army
razing an enemy village

or a man
moving in on you
back when you
were too weak to defend–

you tell me
you fear wolves
and you feel
for chickens–

what you mean is
you’ve learned to fear and feel
in equal measure

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review, and Qwerty with work upcoming in Blueline, Willard and Maple, and Red Coyote.

The Goodbye Note
 
So you don’t forget,

Our time together
has curled away from
an enduring narrative arc.

Does that make sense?

I’m not quite sure how to put it,
but from now on we should avoid
whistling the same songs,
crying through the same films,
liking all the same books, beer
and restaurants, sharing
all the same old enthusiasms.

Our time together should be

forgotten like a flimsy alibi
scribbled on greasy napkins,

ignored like the inane melody
haunting your morning,

snubbed like the poor boy
who loved your whole childhood,

cast out sobbing
like a demonic soliloquy
into a herd of swine.

Yours truly.

 
Tim Hawkins’ short fiction and poetry can be found in many print and online magazines and anthologies. He has published a poetry collection, Wanderings at Deadline (Aldrich Press, 2012), a poetry chapbook, Jeremiad Johnson (In Case of Emergency Press, 2019), and a story and poetry chapbook, Synchronized Swimmers (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). His second full-length poetry collection, West of the Backstory, is forthcoming in late 2020 from Fernwood Press. Find out more at his website: http://www.timhawkinspoetry.com

The Executioner

The pieces of glass between
my teeth intensify
the bitter aftertaste while
I sacrifice
seventeen innocent petals
hemlock
in cahoots with my thighs
I refuse to kneel in front
of the irreversible
The last breaths,
impossible to count, sink deep in
the decoction and
transform into drops of blood
The last beats of
my bored heart
fade away smothered between
the speechless aggression of my other pieces of flesh
and merge with the lynchings of the crowd

If I decide to satisfy
my own dying wish
I will call to the bartender for
one more of the same, please.

Kristina Krumova is from Sofia, Bulgaria. She has a Master’s Degree in “Contemporary History” from Sofia University. Her work was published in Ghost City Review, North of Oxford, Red River Review, Ann Arbor Review, The Pangolin Review, Dream Noir, The Conclusion Magazine, Unlikely Stories, Oddball Magazine, and The Mad Swirl Anthology 2019. Kristina Krumova works as an editor for Publishing house “Kryg.”

*

Where the sky dries up
these sunflowers scale back
though just as easily

you could take a chance
trap this rain left over
growing wild the way each petal

breathes in while laying down
where your mouth would be
come from a name

written on a tree
clasping it and the sun
not yet a wound that oozes

–you could drink from a slope
and place by place tame this mud
to bend, gather in wells

scented with melting stones
and the darkness
you no longer want to stop.

*

Even before you touch
it has lift, rushes more air
over one hand and not the other

though once at the controls
spin is what you cling to
letting the knob drag the door

the way moonlight never leaves
has nothing to do with skies
closing in on each other

half rivers, half mountainsides, half
whatever you hold in your arms
is stone, counts the turns and when.

*

A jacket could trick my arms
help me forget once they leave
though what I become

has lips and around each shoulder
both sleeves fit the way skies
still overflow, break free

settle down, neatened
as if this mirror was still looking
could hear, I don’t see you, louder.

*

You hover the way each memory
stands by –the faintest scent
breathes down your brain

till its dust reeks from moonlight
and you cover your arms with air
holding them down, drag this table

more than enough for clouds
and though nothing falls
you’re sure it’s safe to exhale

making room in your heart
for the smell from skies
and what they too wanted back.

*

Its shadow is helpless here
festering the way your fingers
lean over the watermarks

not yet covered with paper
though left in the open
this wall could heal, the butterflies

gently circling down
and under the painted leaves
the empty branches and wings

–you thin this paste
as if one arm works the other
till what you turn in

unfolds toward painful corners
and days without a sea
making room for you.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Rosenblum Poems, published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at http://www.simonperchik.com.

To view one of his interviews, please follow this linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8

The Phrenology of Words

Men of science trace the curves
and the lumps, the sloping hillock,
rugged clefts and steep inclines,
with skilled fingers. They pause
in mid-exam to consider the meaning
of the Apex of A, a U shaped declivity,
the bizarre confines of scientific Z.
Try to provide a contextual content
of separate entities that are independent,
in and of themselves, but have such
different meanings when placed in
relationships with another. A dark art
emerges from the ruins of abandoned
archaic words and forms, especially those
that have no meaning in poems of
misdirection and misguided substance.
All conclusions are subject to revision
even ones that appear obvious.

Only the photographers of the spirit world
are satisfied with their results. Auras are
illusive but strongly felt even as libraries
are being dismantled and burnt to the ground.
The shadows captured in these photos are of
real people but no one can remember their names.
There are no words left to describe them.

Alan Catlin has two new full length books out: Asylum Garden: after Van Gogh from Dos Madres and Lessons of Darkness from Luchador Press. 

Cold in July

Even the birds have forgotten
How not to shiver;
Canadian breeze entered
Without a knock, picked up
Erie steam. The geese
No longer fly north.

Old-timers postulate
The distance of Earth
From Sun is growing,
Forever growing, a gradual
Shift from the night-time
Of summer to the dawn
Of the new ice age. They sit
Before July fires, birch,
Maple, Ash, sip
Heady concoctions of wine,
Cinnamon, cardamom.

Only the steelworkers
And the guy on his bulldozer
At the garbage dump
Are warm.

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Collective Unrest, Cough Syrup, and Blood & Bourbon, among others.

In The Garden
 
In the Chihuly Garden
bees pollinate flowers
ignoring exhibits

while visitors
photograph glasswork
paying no heed to bees.

Bees belong to flowers,
art belongs to indoors.
tourists belong to their cameras.

But what about you and me?
Do we “belong together”
as a popular song suggests?

Or shall we dismiss the lyrics,
and stick to the facts?

Boris Kokotov was born in Moscow. He is a poet and translator, the author of several poetry collections. His original work and translations to English have appeared in Adelaide, Blackbird, Chiron Review, Constellation, The Lake, Poet Lore, and Washington Square Review, among others. He lives in Baltimore.

Again

Later in June, we would wish
the rain over us, welcome that last

crisp of spring. We wanted to hold
these lovemoments, whisper of forever

written in the tree buds. And yet we knew
what was coming, sad repeat of last

year’s summer, drying grass, bend
of flowerheads into the field, the sudden

broken promises, the surrender of our
tired hearts. How we knew again

that everything that started in April
would show its fraying edges, and by summer

the end of all of it would begin.

Late August Evening

Blue moon in the sky, full
for the second time this month.

Just like us, meeting for another
try at love. We sit at our favorite

restaurant, order our favorite meal –
garlic pasta, buttery bread and halfway

through you are certain it’s over. The
rest of our dinner going untouched and me

watching your face, now fallen out of love,
your voice talking about everything

that isn’t us. The waiter remembers
our favorite dessert – tiramisu and two

romantic spoons. I want to warn the knowing
smile from his face. Instead, I take a bite,

sweetness going dead on my tongue. I look
at your hands, skittery birds about to fly.

Meanwhile, outside, the second chance moon
continues to shine, flickering in and out

of the sky, hidden, then not, behind
a balled-up fist of ­clouds.

Francine Witte’s poetry and flash fiction have appeared in Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, Lost Balloon, Stonecoast Review, Moon Candy Review, and many others. Her latest books are Dressed Wrong for All This, (Flash), The Theory of Flesh (Poetry), and The Way of the Wind (novella). She lives in NYC.

Autobiography

The story went that when I was born
my nose broke when I hit the floor.
At four, I watched my mother stuff
my blankie like a headless twitching body
in our trashcan and tamp it down.
At six, I left play forts behind.
At six and a half, the Brothers Grimm.
(Mother threw out the book—of course—
citing the family violence within).
When I was nine, we left our house
with the basement bomb shelter
and moved near the city dump.
At eleven, I left my childhood friends
for a lipsticked group that roamed our district.
On my twelfth birthday, my father left off
smacking me in favor of a lock on my door
and a snarled-back lip in front of others.
At thirteen, I left, but came back in the dark.
At fifteen, I tried to leave my body
but the fuming nurse refused my wish.
Two years later, I left home again, but
snuck back for a suitcase and stumbled into
a realistic toy gun pointed at my chest.

Luanne Castle‘s Kin Types (Finishing Line), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award. Her first poetry collection, Doll God (Aldrich), was winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she studied at University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University. Her writing has appeared in Copper Nickel, TAB, Glass, Verse Daily, and other journals.