editor's note
I would like to thank my father for doing the front cover
and my mother for doing the back cover
and both of them for doing me.
excerpt from a Nicanor Parra poem
En poesia se permite todo.
A condicion expressa
por cierto
De superar la pagina blanco.
"In poetry everything is permitted. / With only this condition,
of course: / You have to improve on the blank page."
Street Cat
by Amy Bracken Sparks
from The Falling Woman Poems
Psyche scrapes her belly
over a cyclone fence,
her one bad eye a field
without stars, gaseous sky
still over the mills,
impossibly hideous
like infinity.
She molds herself to the door,
rat tail so frozen if bent
would simply break off.
Primed on open tin cans,
her claws, her teeth
ready for mangy dogs.
My arms are shredded
from all the times
I broke her embrace.
Ugly princess saved by
no god, she fell,
her crushed spine a line
of tiny boxcars slammed
together without warning.
What's Real
by John M. Bennett
Since the roof's shingled with
sinks I oughta keep my thinkings
clean. But the drains don't work and the
runoff rains through the house
whenever you crosses my mind. So I
sleep under a table and store my
soup, hoping for drought or the
weather in cans
Garage
by Dale Vidmar
Constantly finding a ball
or a rake
an old shovel all rusty
from moisture seeped
through the roof
a pushmower
which once filled summer
with scents of fresh clipped grass
and a worn pair of garden gloves
almost buried beneath
a small pile of leaves
long since dead and windswept
into a corner while
cobwebs ply their strength against
the red rollerskates
Sissy used to wear
on Saturday afternoons
at the playground
COCKATOO
Ring of Bird
by Ralph La Charity
large noisy showy & crested
rapt & rapid rap am
mind frisk that jazz is am
take me (get thee)
to where the sleaze
has dimension
& is noble:
Am the Cockatoo
hardcore
paddy & tarpaper
tin can ripe right
betwixt Mind's firm thighs for days am ...
Living Citizen Word Force Frisking Back am
Fahrenheit factotum fare-thee-well d'Harpsichord
Zamboanga Probolinggo
the Sunda Strait & the Banda Sea
Cafe Krakatoa
kapahulu kakayua
Boundary
by John M. Bennett
Sunk knee deep in the floor I
felt the wall pulled my hair. What
was it, me? The rugs splashed up and my
undies wet. I gotta cross the room like
wading through a toilet and what're the
stairs, a waterfall? Is everything
in the kitchen boiled?
Wallowing
by Joyce Porcelli
How did I ever get stuck in this pit of ooze...
Too old to quickly leap from it as it suffocates me...
the few gasps of air that I manage to take quickly evaporate..
the sun that filters in takes its hasty leave before I've
even had a chance to feel any warm glow...
this ooze pulled me back in....
it's not my nature to be part of ooze...
meeting up with nice guys that are afraid to be nice guys...
how unendingly sad for them...for me. Nice has become a dirty word;
unbefitting in a real hero of the late 20th century on the
planet earth....
If the ooze would saturate my brain,
then these moments of insidious cognition would be wiped away,
and reflection would be a thing of the past.
She Was
by Kevin Williams
She was
trying to
construct
a life
that would
make sense
of things
she found
in gift shops
We Know
by Jo Smith
We know what to do
We work and play
We have fun
We look fine
March of the Toads
by Ron Haybron
The toad people march today
They're coming to cart you away
They'll have guns and spears
And all wear bandoleers
The toad people march today
The toad people march today
The toad-king has sent them to say
"Give up anthropoids!"
In so many woids
The toad people march today
They're coming all warty and brown
They'll pull your pajamas right down
And give twenty licks
With a couple of kicks
To pound you right into the ground
The toad people march today
They're seeking a human to flay
A few pounds of skin
But a hint of a grin
Will prove it was all just in play
The toad people march tonight
They're looking for riot and fight
They'll cut off your toes
And most of your nose
And tweak your ear with all their might
The toad people are sick and tired
Of lawnmowers that cut up their yard
They lose hands and feet
Small fragments of seat
And living without them is hard
It's too late to run from the toad
They've captured the highway and road
You can't flee in your car
You won't get very far
When you turn on the key you'll explode
Toilet
by Ron Haybron
I irrigate my colon
Brush off all my clothes
My mind is full of nasty thoughts
I never fool with those
Cannibal Saliva
by Steven B. Smith
Marijuana and Mozart on a Sunday morne,
plethora of complacencies
of tongue, beard, bush.
Poets fall down.
Dream.
Drown.
PLEASE DON'T FUCK THE BABY
by Luigi-Bob Drake
PLEASE DON'T FUCK THE BABY
IN PUBLIC IT'S NOT NICE
TO DO IT WHERE OTHER PEOPLE SEE
THEY GET JEALOUS.
PLEASE DON'T FUCK THE BABY
WITH A CLENCHED FIST. IT'S HARDER
TO HIDE BLOOD THAN BRUISES
THEY BRUISE FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS.
PLEASE DON'T FUCK THE BABY
WITH OPEN SORES. IT'LL GET HERPES
OR SYPHILIS OR GONORRHEA
WHATEVER DISEASE YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE.
PLEASE DON'T FUCK THE BABY
ON TV. PEOPLE MIGHT WATCH
AND REMEMBER THEIR PARENTS.
AND DISMEMBER THEIR PARENTS.
PLEASE DON'T FUCK THE BABY.
Cupon
by Melissa J. Craig
Holyday special
Look super shine in this holydays
bay a super cut blow dry sperm
at this incredible super price for
only $25.00 in all
Have beautiful holydays
Have man
Have marry
Bring this cupon
Feliz Daddy o o o
let go
by Crow
"let go"
then she was able to cry
laugh and
and
and often lighthearted
like
she said. "this
felt secure".
she
she realized that sex
expression
abandonment.
she became bruised,
she was free
frigidity melted.
in the fourth
passionate person
offer.
a sufficient
lack
during
the
first section
point. his
was not able,
insufficient
ship, basic
committment is
the
developing
to
the
turning point
finally offered
to
yet never reach
the first few months.
Marriage Proposal
by Steven B. Smith
December of 68 I was lying on LSD on my bed downtown Baltimore.
Walls, floor, ceiling, doors all painted flat black.
Metallic mobiles and assorted assemblages hung from the ceiling
turning at will in low green and blue light.
My future wife walked in and sat so she could see me in the mirror.
So and so just got married she said.
That's nice.
Silence.
Watch her reflection watching me.
So and somebody else also married.
More silence.
Watch her reflection evaluate my reflection's reflection.
Even through the LSD I could see she wasn't talking what she was saying
so asked.
I just want to know what's going to happen she screams
stalking into the living room.
I lie there amid my hallucinations and resentfully realize
I'm too weak not to marry her.
Another's strong needs always overrode my indifferent apprenticeship.
20 minutes later she skulks back to the bedroom.
OK I snap.
OK what? she snaps back.
We'll get married.
When?
Six months I finalize
feeling sure the artist within will wither once reduced to marriage,
suburban boxes, the upperclass hypocrisy rampant in her family and friends.
We had a rich wedding in a high Episcopal-cum-Catholic cathedral.
Reception held of course at the country club.
None of my freak friends came.
The day of the wedding
I put all the trash left from moving in the middle of the floor
smoked the last of my grass
took off all my clothes
and slowly danced naked about the trash
sprinkling it with my box of monosodium glutamate
and chanting unknown chants of sorrow.
A Reading Poet
by Christopher Franke
A real bad bard--
concurrent with
a movie of:
pimps, whores, and dope--
I've been a fool in school,
a poet to pupils,
for money
and a plastic lunch,
& under a 'prohibition'
as though Pope said,
'Drink deep but not the dregs.'
And I have read
at a college or two,
for no credit.
--Not that I'm read.
Not that I'm read!--
I've read my work
to the accolades
of jukeboxes
in bars; and behind bars,
in work houses,
like speech
were a breach
of security:
I've been
non in-
mate non grata.
I've read to the crazy
and had them laugh
where they shouldn't 'of'.
I've read to the sic
and made them snicker.
Putting them out
of their misery,
to the bored,
I've read reams.
I've read to the ignorant
and been ignored.
I've read my poems
in a parking lot . .
to attending cars;
and gone
to a junkyard or two.
I have been at
the water's edge,
the bridge's moving
over head;
and I have driven
the aged
off their rockers;
and put in a tizzy
a poet or two.
I've read
in libraries,
to clutches of poets,
and community centers, too;
in vain in churches,
in bookstores, and in justice centers,
to music, and dissent! At Workshops,
I have found poems
quivering before Occum,
or in vises caught.
Like notches on a handle,
they spoke of the drafts
through which poems
had passed.
Against their versions,
I progress.
To 'curb the doggerel',
I've hit the road . .
and read on the street.
I have read to concrete & glass;
I've read to blossoms & to grass.
And then in coffee houses,
I've read to chess and talk,
above the mechanizations
pf Cappuccino and Expresso;
and, also, I've read my poems
to bursting rooms
to demimonde
and demitasse
and to the volumes
on their shelves . .
at home.
Untitled 1
by Lila Voss
It felt so good to be finally
Alone.
She was right where she should be.
Life was what it was
And rightly so.
The days rose and fell
Rich, complete.
Girlishly,
She began noticing
Just how many
Little red trucks were
Suddenly
On the road.
Thumbnail Sketches
by Patricia Fallon
Thumbnail sketches
"Going no place"
Is this Art free?
Can Art be pro rated like teaching?
Beauty is in the cuticle
The Gift - Pt 1
by Steve Garee
Over and under the freeway noise I heard her plastic
heels draw closer. I'd observed a white Cadillac drop her off
minutes before, the street being deserted since. Had watched her
stand in that well worn streetwalker fashion, half in half out of
a closed storefront. Clutching a seedy brown paper bag to my
breast I glanced up and down the Cincinnati street looking for
non-existent rides trying to imagine what line she could recite
for this particular situation. Deciding since a business
proposition was to take place (unless I did something as fatuous
as running along Linwood Avenue in the opposite direction) I
should browse the wares for sale.
Turning to look at her I adjusted my eyes from the
dirty gray of the freeway to the clash of her black skin and
saffron chemise. Quickening her pace to almost a trot she
approached me smiling, apparently proud of her gold tooth. My
heart skipped a beat and then began to pump faster; as if a car
had pulled over to the heed of my call and I was taking that
initial long stride, changing in my hands the bag for balance.
The backwash from the freeway traffic twirled her shift and
indiscriminately pushed debris around at our feet as I waited
for her to speak. She looked into my eyes for a minute before
rumaging in her small black vinyl purse. Pulling out a twenty
and thrusting it towards me as she said,
"Here sugar, take a cab."
I stared at the money speechless and penniless for a five count
before I stammered,
"That won't help much, you see I'm uh, going to Cleveland."
"Cleveland, shit honey you must be crazy!'
Returning the money to her purse she spun laughing and bopped
back to the storefronts.
Idea For A Play About A Young Man Who Carries Baggage
From A Terminal Gate To An Airplane
by Bruce Checefski
The play takes place at the commuter area of a major metro
politan airport. The woman accepting airline reservations
is of the same race as the young man carrying baggage.
(i.e. mother figure) Play takes place through two seasons:
winter and summer.
room setting: chairs with televisions attached
additional characters: mother/son
set: coffee, vending machines coffee, polyester clothing
young woman: reading USA newspaper
young gay man: sunglasses, leather pants, smoking a cigarette.
eats a hot dog during the play. Moves from
center right position to putting luggage near
gate, to hotdog stand, to cigarette machine.....
casual man of Puerto Rican race
Business Man
Writer from the mid-west.
Most of the dialogue occurs between the two black characters at
the terminal
Play begins with the mother/son relationship, ends with others
boarding the plane.
Mid-west character, writer: heavy corduroy jacket with jeans and
black shoes. Stops to read the New York Times to ensure
that he will not be seduced by New York. reads about
murders, death, & AIDS. At one point the AIDS text is very
visible to the audience. All the while he is sitting
in the terminal feeling like he's been imprisoned by the
drab looking walls, cinder block, yellow. He's impatient
because he is on his way to Philadelphia to repossess
his car which was stolen 6 weeks previous. But, at
the same time he recognizes his uniqueness and sees that
the world is unfolding before his eyes for him. It
belongs to him. These characters are here at precisely
the time he needs them to be, he sees them, he sees
himself in each of them. He imagines himself being each
person he meets, even the ones he reads about in the
paper. He sees himself laid out at a GAY Liberation
funeral for having died of AIDS, he sees himself shot
down in the streets of Greenwich Village. Even while
reading about the 'puzza' murders he imagines him-
self as the victim. At one point while reading about
a young man who was being held in a state prison for
drug trafficking, and while seeing (his) picture in
the newspaper, sitting on a horse (picture slide) he
imagines himself in that situation; being imprisoned
while reading about a Soviet Jew who was being held for
political reasons he imagines himself as that Jew in
that prison (slide from newspaper)
He sees each as a hero.
man sitting at Terminal reading a newspaper.
Lights go out. Walk to the front stage explaining
what the character sees himself as. Slides in background.
Lights go out.
Man sitting at Terminal reading a newspaper.
etc.
Late Medieval Saint
by Charlotte Pressler
He was a late medieval saint, and in the dream I was talking
with him. He did most of the talking, of course. Saints tend
to be like that.
"When I was becoming a saint," he said, I was either very
good or very wicked, angelically pure or utterly bestial.
The reason for this was that my desire to please men and women
had utterly disappeared; I only desired to please God. And
since I no longer cared for the estimation of men, but only
for my friendship with God, I did not withhold myself from
any thought or deed which I might imagine unless the grace of
God interposed and forbade it. And since I had not always
that perfect sanctifying grace, for it was God's pleasure to
sometimes withhold it, that grace did not always stay my hand,
and in its absence I not only imagined but willed and committed
the most frightful abominations....."
Untitled 2
by Liala Voss
Bulldozing down the highway,
In a deadly race with Time
Toward the Future,
The night air blasts through the window
And roars in my brain.
I want the wind to be a bullet
That leaves amnesia in its clean cut groove,
While my body attempts to
Regurgitate the Past.
The Gift - Pt 2
by Steve Garee
I've told this story before and the question always
arises, 'Why didn't you take the money?' I never have an answer
but I'll now attempt to give one. In the split second after she
offered the money to me it ceased in my mind to be twenty
dollars. Oh it still could have been money, but it also could
have been a Dresden china doll or a ticket to a Red's game. What
it was, it was a gift. The gesture smacked of humanity, of
fraternity, and I didn't know how to accept it. This had nothing
to do with that beware of strangers bearing gifts crap, I just
could not understand why she would consider giving a gift to a
honky stranger. I honestly doubt she's done anything similar
before or since, and I wish I could ask her why. Why the gift?
poet's gift
by Jo Smith
was stickynew
was hotdamp
was trueclean
demanded to surface
began to emerge...
was siezedquick
was formedsolid
was coatedsmooth
wore thick hard layers
of incomprehensible
was presented modestly
to those with broken teeth
while those who bear siblings
slice the shell with knowing minds
taste the sweet stickynew
touch the hotdamp
swallow the trueclean
Monism Monitor
by Robert Garnack
The spokes are spun
in a liquid generation
and it finds a heart beat.
Craters on a swift wind
whistling the waste of time
that my empty mind will eat.
I dropped my speculations in a night deposit
to retrieve nomadic dreams
Cracked a mad shaft falling asleep
The frenzy blue sky screams.
In an open grassland the clouds pass
as their shadows cross my thoughts
I close my eyes to erase the day
and the pressure from the dots.
The blood flows to find another day
In a live spirit
I've got to go my way.
Untitled 3
by Lila Voss
Walking in the rain with the dogs
Wet hair
Raincoat and hood,
I feel that old self curl around me:
A favorite shirt,
So comfortable, but
A little too small.
any invert
by Joffre Stewart
any invert
for Security
rapes Freedom
court martials Equality
batters Nonviolence
pollutes routinely
while it aborts choice
democKKKratically
with IRS rip-offs
for a racist, nuclear ISRAEL
of Ruling Class
hegemony...
Pasta Less Filling Than Romance
by Jim Lang
hr words
formed solids
to tap against
like a forehead
as i left rectilinear
they elongated
and accomodated
th absence
alone and seen
hr sculpture
rose up
under hr
an enormous vehicle
hr last wave
travelled yards & yards
in th heat
from th surfaces
moved my appearance
up & down & up
like the sun long
after the set
Writings On The Wall
by Les Black
50 For A Day
I Love You
Hump Hump
Metaphor
by Dale Vidmar
just
past
three
before
five
Time Piece
by Dale Vidmar
The tick
tocking
tucked
away
in pockets of businessmen
Wall streeters
tap
tap
tapping
figures of
loss and gain
loss and gain
Stock
world marches
up and down
to the sound
of
buy and sell
buy and sell
While
tick
tocking
hands mark
the now
and
when
of
loss and gain
buy and sell
how
and
when
now
and
then . . .
the double play
by Jim Lang
the double play
is numerologic
5 to 4 to 3
something golden
in th hypotenuse
of a glare/
round th leading
shadows
past th pitcher's
pubis
th hitter and
his rbi
forced out/
only the homer
is unambiguous -
let yr selfs in
hey mister
by Steve E Gloom aka Steve Melton
day after night
after day a
dim bulb dangles
from frayed cord,
the mind and body's
slow decay
Hey Mister!
eye doodah fun
key cheekun
wit my sister
Psyche Lulu.
she just coocoo
for cocoa puffs...
Waking alone
Pull back the shade
cambodia in cleveland
by Steve E Gloom aka Steve Melton
the hallway's always gray
gray sunset on west 84th
yellow babies
running and screaming
down the gray hallways
of cambodia in cleveland.
dusk mothers play
unintentional, oriental charades,
planting rice paddies
in ohio mud,
a backyard refugee garden,
no speak English.
for you
by Steve E Gloom aka Steve Melton
my thicklegged microwavable wife,
i will wear a king louie bowling shirt
for you.
reville
by Luigi-Bob Drake
you get up in the morning, drive to work,
come home, watch tv, go to bed.
you get up, drive thru yr life,
to work, to come home, to forget about it.
get up, go work, drive
home forget. you forget
up, try to get
to work, forget to come home.
you can't get it up, are driven to work,
come home to find that a wife you'd forgotten
ranaway to iowa with a shoesalesman, you don't remember
that she took the tv.
my words
by Steve E Gloom aka Steve Melton
my words are
Hollow,
Quiet,
Meaningless,
Insignificant,
Unimportant,
Pitiful,
Pathetic,
Nothing.
what are yours?
Celebration
by Daniel Thompson
Out of the body politic dying
Nights without bread
Led to the carnival knowledge of color
At the nip and tuck of the budding revolt
In naked beard and scandalous sandles
I was overcome by the shallow, wee town
And contrary minds of the city sprawl
My mustardseed faith moved the mountain on me
And the flowers crushed on the sidewalks of time
Were my seedy bedparnters in crime
Rocks from the cradle and the billy club rub
Were wisdom cracking the star-spangled fang
After the dogbite the rabbis returned
With plastic priests and pasturized milk
So I wrapped God's news in an old fish story
...and man swung from ape's umbilical cord
Till guilt edged the serpent under the heel...
Bruised legacy and the bootstrap snapped
When all the innominate, hump-the-dump bones
Were grinding the stones and sticks to fire
While I Adamed an apple off the knowledge tree
And turning the other tongue in cheek
Slicked my good hair in her downhome desire
Then shifting to high gear in the wilderness streets
Where pot and panic handlers begged to differ
Of necessity tripping fantastic light
I turned on the system, the dark riders circling
Brother, can you spare a victim?
And moved on as thin as a praying mantis
...alive again; deadly as sin...
On the nit of my grit and the grin of my skin
Love Poem
by Daniel Thompson
Sleep
Or do
What you will
My love
I'll be your
Sheet your pillow
Your arms against
The night
Have faith
My hands
Will lie untroubled
Out of sight
Or wakened
Rub our blind love
To double sighs
Of light
The Rich Get Richer
by Steven B. Smith
Republican
Republican't
Republicunt
Republicscam
Replicant
The rich get Richard Nixon
the advantages of atomic weapons over cyclon-b
by Luigi-Bob Drake
they're faster
more efficient,
cost effective,
and you don't have to look at the faces.
Junkie Luv
by Steven B. Smith
My eyes slither open, shut
In golum time my tongue
Rasps brown lizards
As I hiss my want of you
In careful solitude
O my preciousss
Sleep whispers soft leavings
On my lids my head nods
Nods my precious
These fingers numb in spite
The clash of needle
And the floor
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Agent of Chaos
