Every Day Poets

THE LAST MORNING OF THE MAMMOTH • by Frederic S. Durbin

Submission — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:00:01 +0000

One grey morning the Mammoth
Perceived an uncouth luminosity
In the world beyond the curve of his tusks,
A distasteful display of Necessity,
A vulgar procession of the very latest Instants;
And with a mighty snort
Deep in his trunk he muttered,
’Pah. I shall no longer be.’
And he lay down
And became a Controversy.

Frederic S. Durbin is the author of the dark fantasy novel Dragonfly and the novelette “The Bone Man”, a nominee for this year’s International Horror Guild and LOCUS Awards. His YA fantasy fiction has appeared frequently in Cricket Magazine, most recently “The Star Shard”, which is being serialized this year. He teaches ESL and writing at Niigata University, Japan. www.fredericsdurbin.com

THE ROMANTIC AND THE PRAGMATIST, BIKING • by Daniel Ausema

Submission — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 08:00:01 +0000

Sometimes
I hold my arms out and coast,
pretending to fly.

Sometimes
I grab the handles
and … pedal hard.

Daniel Ausema has a background in experiential education and journalism and is now a stay-at-home dad. His fiction and poetry have appeared in dozens of publications, including Every Day Fiction, Nemonymous, MindFlights and Raven Electrick. He lives in Colorado.

LIBERATED • by Barbara McGinley

Submission — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 08:00:01 +0000

And this is where they… shall we say – lived?
Can you see? See how the light – as meek
as the tormented – shies away from the floor?
What brutes our forefathers, ma’am, you say?
Perhaps. Those who emerged wore the carapace one way
or another forever more: it bowed their backs, fouled
their eyes, they were cowed, gazed
ever inwards.

How did they come to be here? They were felons, of
course they robbed; they maimed; they got
high. Some did the unspeakable. I know,
I know – imagine incarcerating deviants
like this!

Shall we close the door? No – a simulacrum
too far?

Barbara McGinley has been trying to write short stories for years and this year finally enrolled in a writing class–not an online one!–and had to face other people as she read her work! Now she is producing poems as well as the occasional story hand over fist! She is married and has three children, including a new baby.

THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT • by Steve Goble

Submission — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:00:01 +0000

Censor not contrary views
nor lock them out of sight
one should always crush false news
beneath the weight of light

Steve Goble writes fantasy, horror and science fiction, along with some poetry. One of his short stories, ‘The Gods-Forsaken World,’ was an honorable mention selection in ‘The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008,’ edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant.

HAPPY NEW YEAR • by Peggy Landsman

Submission — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 08:00:01 +0000

January 1st
No work, no mail, no money
Take out the garbage

Peggy Landsman’s poetry and prose has been published in both online and print literary journals and anthologies, including Gander Press Review, Spindle, The Muse Strikes Back (Story Line Press), Bridges (Indiana University Press), and Iodine Poetry Journal. Her first poetry chapbook, To-wit To-woo, is available from FootHills Publishing. She recently published a contemporary romance novel, Passion’s Professor (Midnight Showcase), under the pen name Samantha Rhodes. Peggy has a website at http://home.att.net/~palandsman.

DIALOGUE • by Peggy Landsman

Submission — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:05:01 +0000

Why can’t I see in the dark?
Because you open your eyes.

Why can’t I see in the dark?
You only fail when you try.

But I need to see in the dark.
Be still then. Be patient. Be present.

But I need to see in the dark.

You need with a need much too violent.

Peggy Landsman’s poetry and prose has been published in both online and print literary journals and anthologies, including Gander Press Review, Spindle, The Muse Strikes Back (Story Line Press), Bridges (Indiana University Press), and Iodine Poetry Journal. Her first poetry chapbook, To-wit To-woo, is available from FootHills Publishing. She recently published a contemporary romance novel, Passion’s Professor (Midnight Showcase), under the pen name Samantha Rhodes. Peggy has a website at http://home.att.net/~palandsman/
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January’s Table of Contents

Nicholas — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:00:08 +0000

If this issue were to be christened, a fitting name would be the title of Daniel Ausema’s poem: “The Romantic and the Pragmatist, Biking.”

Step right up, because we have romantics and pragmatists. We have traditional sonneteers and free form experimenters. We have saints and sinners and freaks playing tennis without a net. In short, we have something for everyone.

We have popular returning poets like Steve Goble, K.C. Ball, Gabe Dybing, and Rumjhum Biswas. We are also excited to welcome new contributors, like LOCUS-nominated Frederic S. Durbin.

Our third issue delivers thirty-one harbingers for 2009. Some are harbingers of good tidings, their jewel-like brevity celebrating life, love, beauty. Others forecast danger and doom, reminding us of pain and loss that must inevitably come to us all. Each of them, whether their words bask in light or rise up from shadows, strives for an expression of truth.

Truth can cast a spell of melancholy; it can stir nostalgia; it can kindle joy. Truth can be funny as hell. Sometimes truth is a lie. Sometimes a lie is more true than the truth. Truth manifests in different guises; its incarnations can appear in as many forms as there are angles from which to view it.

Here are thirty-one angles. Enjoy the views.

January’s Table of Contents

Jan 1	Peggy Landsman	Happy New Year
Jan 2	Steve Goble	The Weight of Light
Jan 3	Barb McGinley	Liberated
Jan 4	Daniel Ausema	The Romantic and the Pragmatist, Biking
Jan 5	Frederic S Durbin	The Last Morning of the Mammoth
Jan 6	Gabe Dybing	Sonnet IV
Jan 7	Kristi Wilson	She Leaves
Jan 8	Rumjhum Biswas	In Which A Tamil She-Poet…
Jan 9	L R Humphries	Momentary
Jan 10	Lee Beavington	Softshell
Jan 11	Rhonda Parrish	Ballerina
Jan 12	Richard H. Fay	Moaning Hemlock Tree
Jan 13	C. L. Holland	The Charge of the Lightweights
Jan 14	Amy Corbin	On the Rocks
Jan 15	Alex Keegan	Weight
Jan 16	Jason L. Huskey	To Forget is to Forgive
Jan 17	K.C. Ball	The Alchemist’s Chant
Jan 18	Jonathan Pinnock	Grey Goo
Jan 19	Joan	Explorer
Jan 20	Errol Nimbly	Good Purchase
Jan 21	Jeanne Holtzman	A Betrayal, Callously Denied
Jan 22	D.C. Porder	Aunt Sharon
Jan 23	Dianna L. Gunn	Haunted
Jan 24	Aurelio Rico Lopez III	Crash and Burn
Jan 25	Kurt Kirchmeier	Acorns
Jan 26	kc heath	Toothache
Jan 27	Joe Scott	The Importance of Conversation in a Monologue
Jan 28	Robin V. Herrnfeld	Impossible?
Jan 29	S. J. Higbee	The Road
Jan 30	Doug Paul Case	Wintertime Regret
Jan 31	Caroline M. Davies	Home Thoughts

THREADS • by Davina Colpman

Submission — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:00:01 +0000

Nana’s stationery box kept safe an old photograph, one I’d taken as a child.
A fine gift she gave me,
a disposable camera,
and one summer eve’s mischief in my parent’s garden.

She hung decorative silver balls, pilfered from the Christmas decorations chest,
from the trees
with silk ribbons

almost like spiders’ webs.

The kind you see strung with water pearls after it has rained, and
as precious as glinting beads, like a stolen necklace,

dropped
and its
fine silken threads
a delicate

trap

in what became as she struggled
        a stubborn
            awkward
     tangle
        that
        clung to her mind
…clouding
        into tissue that will not tear.

And when the spider comes
when that dark dark shadow comes

its eyes, a hundred mirrors reflecting a hundred heads
and sudden fragments of lost self chorusing: where are you now?

But Nana is free. She stands beneath a young apple tree,
reaching to its highest branch, glass bauble full of sunlight on a summer’s eve,
a silk ribbon in her hand.

Davina Colpman has published poetry in Aesthetica Magazine and been long-listed for the Fish International Poetry Prize. She’s a graduate of the UCLAex Writers Program and is a slush reader at Every Day Fiction.

CONTENTMENT • by Jeanne Holtzman

Submission — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:00:01 +0000

What I miss,
even more than passion that flares
like a parched forest stuck by lightning,
is the yearning.

The greedy, delicious pain
that you reach for again and again,
like wiggling a loose baby tooth.

The hollow pain that expands
like bread dough on a warm spring day,
filled with the whistle of missed trains
and the scents of lost lovers.

Pungent with promise, it propels us past despair.
Yearning knows better than to douse itself
with satisfaction.
The carrot hanging from the stick
will be mushy with maggots.

Contentment can’t be bothered
with a cockamamie chase.
Like a lazy housewife,
it ignores the dust of boredom and comfort
settling on the sofa.

Jeanne Holtzman is an aging hippie, writer and women’s health care practitioner, not necessarily in that order. Born in the Bronx, she prolonged her adolescence as long as possible in Vermont, and currently lives with her husband and daughter in Massachusetts. Her writing has appeared in The Providence Journal, Writer’s Digest, The First Line, Twilight Times, Flashquake, Salome, Hobart online, Hip Mama, Every Day Fiction, The Iconoclast and the anthology Freckles to Wrinkles. You may reach Jeanne at J.holtzman@comcast.net.

LAST CALL HOME • by Darren Coxon

Submission — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 08:00:01 +0000

You’re there at the end of my voice
as a crackle, a hum, the distant percussion
of pain as you turn from out to in.

You have no language now with which
to play your part in us; only a pause
as the things I say to hold your silence back

make the last scratches on a memory
that will soon be dust. This will be
the last of me in you.

There are no words to fill our gaps.
Now, the end of this last call home,
will be the end. Like there is nothing more final

than the white space at the end of this line.

Darren Coxon teaches English in an international school in Switzerland. He has had poetry published in Iota and The New Writer, and articles in the TES and the RPS journal.