Raindrops splash soft the wicker bladed field,

squish-smush patter pushed rhythm on stone shield:

hardy gnomes huddled close sans voice or torch

bide stormed ire on this lonely giant’s porch. 

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John Lander enjoys reading and writing out of his hammock in Texas. He dislikes mosquito bites.

---

 

Massive cardón cactus bearing black buzzard fruit

Seven feathered frock-coated, red-faced vultures

solemn judges atop colossal elephantine cactus limbs

weighing today’s sunrise as their crimson verdict.

 

Opposite side of arroyo a twisted torote tree hosts

a harvest of polished carbon-caped crafty ravens,

humorless lawyers cawing law stropping their bills,

mooting the merits of yesterday’s deathly decisions.

 

TROPICAL BLISS 

 

In sweet air between these somber morning audiences

flashy yellow black orioles vie with electric blue jays,

rosy blushing finches, thrushes, and crimson cardinals.

Melodic bird songs backed with palomas’ soft cooing.

 

Down middle of the arroyo a trickle of mountain water

rivulets into a shallow swamp. There a stilt-legged blue

heron with stately gait moves meticulously, sharp beak

ready to spear, stalks prey. Hidden Harris’ hawks watch.

 

SEA SHORE

 

Where stream kisses sea, clouds of spindle-legged

sand pipers in choreographed mass run nimbly back

and forth in time with tide, tiny toes test sea.

Suddenly wing into air echoing their beach ballet.

 

Wheeling inches above whitecaps, a squadron of pompous

primal pelicans skim with aerodynamic stretched wings.

Motionless, just tips, fingering crashing breakers.

Flight leader flaps, they follow his beat one by one.

 

SKY HIGH

 

Overhead resplendent fork-tailed frigatebirds and sharp

Eyed eagles spiral over blue-footed boobies and black

cormorants. Scanning ocean and land, observe a dignified

covey of quail run like hurrying nuns to sanctuary.

 

Black against azure sky ugly wattled turkey vultures

wheel beautifully in multilayered eccentric circles.

Below the rat-tat-tat of a flicker woodpecker pecking

shatters bliss, shouts “the-glass-house-the-glass-house!”

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John Brooke, an expatriate Canadian living by the Sea of Cortez in Baja California Sur, Mexico. He is an old advertising scribbler and a new writer of poetry, flash fiction and short screenplays.

 

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Welcome to our September issue.  We have some great poems for you this month, kicking off with a feast of words from John Brooke.  And we have arty stuff from Bill West, the sound of laughter and the noise of tears…  I promise you – great poems! and something for everyone, I’m sure.  In amongst the poems every Monday you’ll find a nougat of Inspiration and some of you are already sending us the poems that have arisen from those – interesting
Thank you, as always to all our poets and to all of you who read, vote and comment.

I’m off to Baltimore later this month and hope to be meeting two of our poets, Jennifer Stakes and Jody Costa.  And I’m going to meet Nathan Rosen of MicroHorror  
I leave you in the capable hands of Kathleen who will be moderating comments and looking after the shop.

I hope you’ll enjoy these as much as I enjoyed choosing them.
Oonah

September’s Table of Contents

Sep 1	John Brooke	La Plumas
Sep 2	John Lander	Dwelling
Sep 3	Effie Collins	Smoke Dance
Sep 4	Garth von Buchholz	Statue of Eros
Sep 5	Paul Ingrassia	Unwritten
Sep 6	A. J. Smith	Back to School
Sep 7	Richard M. O’Donnell	First Glimpse
Sep 8	Angel Zapata	The Noise of her Tears
Sep 9	Nicky Phillips	Barbequed Dreams
Sep 10	Waden Nyn	Motion to Relative Surface
Sep 11	Kristine Buenavista	HADLUK
Sep 12	Sara Bickley	Division of Labor
Sep 13	Errol Nimbly	IT’S TARTAN TERRAIN
Sep 14	Colin Galbraith	The Final Nail
Sep 15	Summer Ross	Whiskey Kisses
Sep 16	David Didau	Amsterdam
Sep 17	Bill West	Bernal’s Picasso
Sep 18	K. M. McElhinny	With Full Heart
Sep 19	Vaughn Fritts	4 a.m.
Sep 20	Irena Pasvinter	Stampede
Sep 21	Jerry Kraft	Grace
Sep 22	Jody Costa	The Biggest Secret of My Life
Sep 23	Monica Goldberg	Theories of Everything (T.O.E.s)
Sep 24	ddgryphon	TWO A.M.
Sep 25	Tyrean Martinson	My Mother’s Compost
Sep 26	Tim Galati	Past Beauty Exhausted
Sep 27	Barry Basden	Stealthy Diet
Sep 28	James Gilmore	Early Hours, 9/28
Sep 29	Jan Darrow	A Night Out
Sep 30	Crystalee Calderwood	The Paper Crane

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I
have seen
have felt

this thing
long before
life came

before hours
spent

sitting silent
remorseful

repentant

what I
have seen
what I
have heard

I have had

shoved
in my face

thrown
in my life

foul
rancid rain
from putrid
clouds

yesteryear’s
afterbirths
rotted and
unforgiving

what passes
for life

such a thin
layer in reality

forever mourning
the fever sunrise in

the depths of man

I have faced
my past
my demons

had my worth tested

I’ve come to know
my capacity for murder

with virgin’s eyes
I see myself
as the monster
I could

be

and now
with my hand
on the door
to the future

I wait

---

Effie Collins is a writer of horror/dark fiction and poetry. She lives quietly with her family in the shadows of the beautiful Appalachian Mountains and has published a few pieces of fiction and poetry in various publications.

---

Lass
moans-
her cries
can be heard
even in the grave.
Spurned after his lust’s gone away
dried, drained, devoured, discarded now,

as scum out like scurf

Scuffle on.

Hapless

end-

Death.

---

Hema is a postgraduate in commerce and library science, works as a school teacher, and is interested in reading and writing verses. She is on Facebook and at www.voicesnet.com (among the top 100 poets).

---

Time to dig around. Look in your closet and find something to write about – it can be a List poem or a poem that concentrates on a patch on an old pair of jeans, or about the monstrous (clothes) awaiting you in the depths of the closet.

(As ever, if you send us the resultant poem in a few months’ time, don’t put it in targeted poems -  just let us know we inspired you.)

---

Tomorrow will be my anniversary;
the little black x on the calendar above my toolbox tells me so.
Thirty-three years I’ve worked here.
A lifetime,
making small metal parts for airplanes, bombs, medical devices.
I can make anything.
I could have been an engineer, architect, a teacher or doctor,
but the girl got pregnant
and I came to work here instead;
someday I’ll get a gold watch.
I like the sulphurous reek of the cutting oil,
the precision of the drill bits,
the dangerous cutters and purposeful handtools.
The digital readout on my control panel flashes numbers at me only I understand.
Every day I operate the same machine.
I eat lunch from the same metal box.
I talk to the same people,
and have the same conversations.
I wear coveralls, steel-toed boots and eye protection,
not because my job is dangerous
but because they tell me to.
On Friday afternoons we sweep up the metal shavings,
the floor-dry and cigarette butts,
a week’s worth of trash.
Vern, Dave, Tommy and I,
we lean on our brooms,
shooting the shit until the bell rings
and we can go home for the weekend.
The owner stops to watch us.
Expensive shoes, tightly creased slacks,
comfortable shirts with little embroidered alligators on the breast.
I punch the timeclock;
he’s there in the window, watching.
His alligator smiles at me,
as I get into my pickup
and drive away from his company.
I meet the guys for a beer.
We talk about the ball game,
and wait for Monday.

---

Kip lives in Tucson, waiting for the next monsoon. He writes to keep the flying monkeys away.

---

 

She’ll neither select me nor outright reject me.
The summit seems scarce worth the climb.
And yet it’s no wonder that my heart grows fonder:
She’s absent so much of the time.

If she wants to postpone, let her do it alone;
I will wait, though forever she tarry.
I am happy withal, for — pace St. Paul —
It is better to burn than to marry.

---

Sara Bickley lives and writes in Dayton, Ohio.

---

A chipper, springer, then a trickle
Ice cracks free of the Glacier Wall
that calves, throws the block
out, down, into the sea
The splash explodes, rocks growlers
frightens the seal
that dives under the floater

A look, a tone, a sudden flurry of words
Suddenly she says what is really on her mind
She snaps at him, harsh
Shocked to learn what he has done
he sits back, silent, and listens.

---

Ahan 4 yrs as a chaplain’s assistant in the 82nd Airborne, Tim holds a BA in English and a BA in Arts & Letters. At Uni he studied Photography, History, English, Linguistics, German, Russian, Classical Greek, Swahili, Chinese, and Japanese, and with an MA in Applied Linguistics, he holds Japanese certifications in classical Okinawan karate, traditional Japanese fencing, and traditional Japanese archery. Tim lived in Japan for 15 years and Kenya for 3 where he worked for the UN. Tim lives in a shack in Alaska that as long as the snow doesn’t melt too much the walls stand reasonably perpendicular.

---

 

I was born on the 10^th day in the month of Tishrei

I did not come easy

I did not come breathing

one small collarbone broken and the cord moved just so

the room was still and silent and waiting

I screamed

the room exhaled

the morning was white and hot already

in its last moment of full glory

before Indian Summer was replaced by the cool collective sigh of autumn

my skin bloomed from lifeless blue-grey to the blotched purpose of a raisin in the sun

they gave thanks for my cries and color

it was Yom Kippur

one wears pastels and sits inside atoning for all those big and small sins of the past year

it is a day of regret and promises

a day of shame and hope and hunger

I would carry these things with me

like the white Africa-shaped birthmark on my thigh

for every day of the years of my life

and one collarbone just slightly crooked

---

Lia Molly Deromedi grew up in Chico, Northern California. She graduated with a degree in Literature/Writing from the University of California, San Diego. Lia is currently in the process of completing her Master’s in English from Brooklyn College where she also lectures. She lives and writes in New York.

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