Journal

A Journey into the Fog of the Living

When I came to the place I needed to be, I waited.
The people were not the people I expected to meet.
I had picked a muddy spot on a fold in a map and left.
When I finally arrived, I knew I had not arrived.
Arrival should note a coming to an end of a journey.
Arrival for me meant a break before moving on.
The day I left, the sun was shining and it was snowing.
The snow was coming down hard, a hail kind of snow,
The kind that tears potholes in blacktop and injures cars.
I left anyway. The sun was beautiful against a backdrop
Of nothing, no mountains, no rivers, no prairie grass.
At the first gas station, I went out into the blizzard.
I filled the car with ice balls and black stones.
On the road, the snow began to whimper. The sun left.
Thick clouds covered the horizon, the road, the land.
Soon it was so dark, it had to be night and it was night.
I slept in a rest stop too noisy and nosy for rest.
In the early hours of the next week, I took off again.
I drove and drove until I reached the ocean.
My car stalled in the sand on the beach. I watched the surf.
There was nowhere else to go. I took off my shirt,
Felt the frost in the air, and dived into the large waves.
This is the best part: I woke Sunday morning in Japan
Surrounded by the thick bones of people the whales killed
Their blunt spears interlocked within the skeletons.
A small boy came to me and spoke a small boy language.
I understood everything, took his small hand,
Walked to the end of the beach where the horizon faltered
And found a way home. This is where we depart.

Michael H. Brownstein‘s first book of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else, was recently published by Cholla Needles Press (2018) in which the poet explores the linguistic world of Alzheimer’s.

Before the Big Bang

The rainy evening
has sealed us
with fluid wax of rain
inside a taxicab
along with the driver and a bag of groceries.
The rainy evening
boasts its streetlamps and illuminated shop windows
it shoves in its bent fingers with massive rings
like a crazy rapper;
it shakes a heavy gilded chain on its neck:
yo, dude, listen to the freestyle of the street drops!
And I listen and heed to the shower.
I see a man of rain hanging from the roof,
spewing quicksilver from the downpipe.
It’s so difficult to believe
that once we used to be fish.
We vanish in  the depth of unphilosopher stone.
The diamonds turn into graphite dust.

The monumental, big-boned grand piano of the avenue thunders.
It sags on its crooked dragon’s legs.
A passer-by presses the gray keys of the crosswalk.
The headlights snatch from the darkness the keys of the tree trunks
clinging-black like wet dresses.
The night strums us.
The night plays us back.
The night fools around with a waltz of bitten-off fingers.

I wonder, had anyone known before the Big Bang
that we both of us (not counting the driver)
would get  stuck in a cab in the middle of the Universe?
Did the divine plan include our love and dinner:
meat and mushrooms, cheese, grapes, red wine?
The god bluffs,
and the royal flush of zodiacal signs is highly suspicious.
The game will last long, believe me. The shower, some jellyfish things–
wet, octopus-like–
lash their arms against the roof and the windows;
the benches shine glossily;
the light jumps up and down like a cornered rat.
I think, I feel you – it means you’re alive.
It’s a great luck and great happiness to live and to love.
It’s a great crime against the stars,
against black holes, galaxies,
space zombies.
You slightly press my hand in the darkness.
Your finger strokes my palm, and my fingers answer–
outside of me–the fingers snuggle, play and kiss each other
like seals on an iceberg.
Streetlights sweep past outside;
they are gray-haired old hags with burning unbound hair;
they curse the slowing rain in ancient witchese.
Dull sinister windows float by,
and the sleek mannequins
look at us with envy in their tense postures.
We are alive, my love
Alive, alive,
we’re living bait in this deluge of the world…

Dmitry Blizniuk is an author from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in The Pinch Journal, River Poets , Dream Catcher, Magma, Press53, Sheila Na Gig, Palm Beach Poetry Festival and many others. Dmitry Blizniuk is the author of ‘The Red Fоrest’ (Fowlpox press, Canada 2018). He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine.

 

Aileen Bassis is a visual artist and poet in New York City working in book arts, printmaking, photography and installation. Her use of text in art led her to explore another creative life as a poet. She was awarded two artist residencies in poetry to the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart prizes and two poems appear in anthologies on the subject of migration. Her journal publications include B o d y Literature, Spillway, Grey Sparrow Journal, Canary, The Pinch Journal and Prelude.

For the Simple Things

Ramshackle rickety run-down near-ruin,
Barely fit for the spiders and flies,
But the roof is sound, and the floor is dry,
And there’s firewood stacked good and high.

A flickering fire on the low corner hearth
Adds to the rafters’ smoke stains
But a cough or two is little to pay
For walls between me and the rain.

The turkey is done with little for fixin’s,
Only biscuits and beans but they’re hot.
Cold water for wine, straight from the spring,
And canned peaches will do for dessert.

Haunting wind whines in a low minor key
A prelude to winter in “A.”
Someone piled bracken fern deep on the bunk
And I’ll sleep like a calf in the hay.

So thanks for the food and thanks for the roof,
The water, the wind song, and the bed.
Thanks for the fire, so warm and so bright,
And whatever may still lie ahead.

I can’t think of Anything

where once words poured
out of my chest
only the sound of isolation
‌        betrayal
‌                 rejection
drives a pointed nail
through my membrane

where once words were the only solace
to an ever-changing world
that claws its way into your heart
and leaves it empty
just so the words cannot come out and play
‌        cannot form the lines you want to hear

melodies once shared the space
where pen met paper
and words flew all around
dropping into verses
but as time ages you
the less there are of words
and a need for sharing what’s inside

 

Maria A. Arana is a teacher, writer, and poet from California. Her poetry has been published in various journals including Spectrum, Peeking Cat Anthology, Cholla Needles, and Nasty Women’s Almanac. You can also find her on twitter.

Redeye

Outside my window:
cities are flung like galaxies
across the sky-dark earth.
In the mirror of the wing,
the moon is a pot of fire.

Between stars and earth, movement
is the white noise of engines,
murmur of midnight conversations, hiss
of recirculated air.  My tablet is tedious;
my seatmate thumbs a well-worn magazine.
Across the aisle, an old man gently snores.

No god of Olympian stature,
no up nor down
just the trundling snack cart,
tomato juice, pretzels,
and a window unsure of earth and sky

Galaxies drift on.  Words cease,
and thought;  finally we hover in blackness,
blessed .

 

Hugh Anderson lives and writes on Vancouver Island, but sometimes his prairie roots show.  He has published in numerous literary publications, but most recently in 3 Elements Review, Grain, Right Hand Pointing, The Willawaw Journal, The Tulane Review and Vallum.  He has one Pushcart Prize nomination.