Innocent

I cover my ears
to muffle the sound
of blood that will not
be silenced.

Generations of souls
with no voice of their own.
Casual death
consuming their existence.

How many will it take
to fill the hole
in the stomach
of the masses?

Joe C Miller

Joe C Miller spent most of his life in the Midwest before moving to moving to the coast some 20 years ago. It is in the culture of Wilmington, NC and the coast that his artistic nature has been given the opportunity to blossom and flourish.His poetry has been published on at Word Salad, Clutching at Straws and Epiphany Arts. It has also appeared in Wilmington’s own “Bootleg” magazine as well as “Between the Lines” poetry festival chapbook. Anthologies in which he appears include “Gravity Hill” published by St. Andrews College Press and “Aries” a Southeastern Community College Publication.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Worry

A woman fiddles with a radio dial and swerves
just enough to make ten children fatherless.

And for the rest of the week, I worry each time
you put on your silly red coat and go out

to return the videos or buy us a bag of tacos,
as though any second I’ll hear the sirens

of some impossible rescue across town,
maybe even feel that psychic pang of horror

we see in movies whenever a loved one dies.
I know it’s awful to write that I’ve been thinking

about a world that doesn’t have you in it,
though each time I panic and feel guilty for being

so morbid, you wander back into the coffee shop,
the bar, our apartment, and most especially

that corner of my brain where all the traffic
flows in your direction. So there’s no one

to complain when you show up late, all smiles,
and kick off your shoes like you own the place.

Michael Meyerhofer’s third book, Damnatio Memoriae, won the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest. His previous books are Blue Collar Eulogies (Steel Toe Books) and Leaving
Iowa (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award). He has also published five chapbooks and is the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. He is also the author of a fantasy series, the first book forthcoming from Double Dragon Publishing in 2013. For more information, please visit troublewithhammers.com.

CODA

The rest is a sleepwalk, a prelude to the final encounter,
the moment before the car crash,
before the bullet enters the victim’s body,
before the airplane hits ground,
before the bomb ignites at zero,
before that frozen moment in prepetual space,
that last speck in amber,
that moment of total consciousness,
the utter lack of faithlessness. . .
Fight it. Fight this sleep that stops you from taking in everything from living and from remembering.
Fight for every ounce and breath of life, even though most of your life
will be one long struggle to rid yourself of this curse of consciousness,
this consciousness Jean Paul Sartre was
so afraid of,
this life we want so badly to be rid of, and yet this life we’re so
afraid to
leave because it is all we know. Enjoy it, live it, revel in it,
because, my darling,
it has no more meaning than my eyes reflected back in yours, but oh how
we desire it. . .

Originally from Bandung, Indonesia, Jean Jones received a BA in English in 1986 from UNC-Wilmington, and an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry in 1988 from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Jean currently teaches Basic Skills at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, North Carolina. He has had two books of poetry published by St. Andrews Press from St Andrews College, North Carolina; the most recent, Birds of Djakarta, was released in 2008.

Perigee of the Moon

He buried them there with a whimpered prayer
At the Perigee of the Moon,
Beloved Wife and unnamed Child
Both wretched from his arms too soon,

He planted the flowers, he tilled the grass,
And prayed for the flowers to bloom,
And the Wind is their Breath that brushes his face,
At night as he lays on their Tomb,

“Oh Sweet Shade of Night, I show You no fright
For of You I would ask a boon,
Take my breath and twine with theirs,
Before the pregnant Moon,

Have mercy on the one who loves
And lies upon their Tomb !”

The apparition heeded his cry
Knowing to Live that he must Die,

We are Spirits together, she, my Child, and I,
‘Neath the sweetness of the Moon,
Apogee, Perigee, Powerful, Mystery, Lustrous and Shadowy Moon.

“Too soon, too soon, dead too soon.”

Kristen Houghton writes “nice little horror stories” guaranteed to make you check your locks and look under the bed before going to sleep.” Her book, Stolen Property- Tales of Terror, is in pre-publication. She is currently at work on the Catherine Harlow, Private Investigator series where her detective encounters plenty of horrors of her own. The first in the series is due to be published in late 2013.
Kristen is the former head writer and fiction editor of Mused Literary Magazine. Besides blogging for The Huffington Post, her portfolio includes a weekly column for the new, innovative TwoDayMag.com, writing for More Magazine, the San Francisco Examiner, and various other in print and online magazines. She also writes under the name CK Houghton.
Kristen Houghton, is the author of the following popular books:

No Woman Diets Alone – There’s Always a Man Behind Her Eating a Doughnut

And Then I’ll Be Happy! Stop Sabotaging Your Happiness and Put Your Own Life First

Remember, Hetty? (A YA Ghost Story)

A California girl at heart, she and her husband, Alan reside in the New York City area which is “magical”. For more about Kristen, her books and short stories, please visit www.kristenhoughton.com/

To My Mother on her 90th Birthday

Everyone who knows these old ladies grinning into the camera —
Silver hair, gleaming dentures, rhinestones —
Will soon be dead,
But my siblings persist with photos:
You and Loren, his lump hand on your shoulder.
Ethel May and Eula Bates hand you bottles of pink bath salts.
Patty Johnson gives a box of chocolates,
Cameras flash as if you were a Queen.

In the kitchen, I pile silverware, half-empty tea cups,
Dinner plates scaled in chocolate frosting
Knowing the photos will be forgotten in bureaus and shoeboxes
Mixed in with busty cheerleaders, red haired boys on tricycles, girls in wedding gowns,
Aunt Isabel in her blowsy pastel dress
That summer she poisoned the family on rhubarb pie.
But here in Arkansas’s summer heat wave
We conceal every doubt
And do our best to get it right.

You hurry us along saying, “Time for Dr. Phil”
While I circle the dining room popping balloons with a fork
Afraid any photograph will betray my heart
Where the chambers collapsed so long ago
Those years you moved us from house to house
To conceal our under achievements
As if you could make a Rambler into a Cadillac by switching hood ornaments
The era you surrendered to Lawrence Welk’s orthodentia
When my need for a mother’s touch slumped in darkness like a dying miner.

Only an ear to my heart can hear our voices from back then
Trapped in those chambers
Fighting for breath
Struggling to find some arrangement
To bring you back to life.

Dawning of the Blackest Day

“There it is, just up ahead. Can you see it, Eddie?”
He could. It looked like something out of a horror movie — flaking paint, tattered fence; but he trusted that Sam wouldn’t take him anywhere too bad for him.
In retrospect, it just looked like a crack-house.
“They got the best stuff, little bro. You’ll see.”
They picked up the pace. Eddie’s hands were shaking. He was scared, but he wanted his first taste; and he wanted it bad.

Are those trees? I can’t tell. Mommy, I’m sorry. Is that you, through the mist?

Eddie started hustling not long afterward.
It started out simple enough, the occasional panhandle or “hey mister” sob story. It was easy for people to believe that the ratty looking street kid was just a victim of circumstance. Who would believe that, in this small town, a thirteen year old was already addicted to crank?
No, it was easier for them to just give him a little extra, believing that his dad left and his mom had lost her job. And Eddie could turn on the waterworks like nobody’s business. When he would start to tear up and say, through sobs, that he and his mom had just lost their dog yesterday, when it slipped off its leash and got hit by a Greyhound? Forget about it, the money practically jumped out of the suckers’ purses and wallets. Of course, his mom (and dad, and older brother Sam, for that matter) were still living in their nice suburban home not two miles from where Eddie ran his scams to pay for his habit.
And believe me, he made enough not only to fund his habit; but to elevate it into an expensive one.
It couldn’t last forever, though. When Eddie was only fifteen, he looked in his mid-twenties; and people just don’t donate to adults. That’s when the fake crying ended and the real kind began. It hurt, it physically hurt, to go without the drugs.
It wasn’t long before he gave his first hand-job for a fiver. But snorting turned to smoking, and a fiver wasn’t enough anymore. So the handies gave way to blowjobs for a ‘twomp. When smoking turned to shooting, BJs turned into whatever would buy a fix.
But by nineteen he looked in his late thirties, and no one wants to fuck a washed-out junkie. The purses and wallets closed to him altogether. That’s when he started taking them.
Meth doesn’t pay for itself, after all.

I can see the way out; but it looks so far away…

“C’mon, gimme just a taste. You know I’m good for it.” Eddie’s pants were pooled around his ankles. D-Rock, his dealer for the last five years, just shook his head.
“You’re lucky I don’t kick your junkie ass. Put them fuckin’ pants back on, you tweaker piece of shit.” D-Rock’s grill glinted, and Eddie wondered how much he could pawn it for.
The fight was not fair.
D-Rock wasn’t getting high on his own supply, and Eddie’s attempt to rob a real criminal was just one in a long line of stupid decisions.

How did the nights get so black, and when did the days get just as dark?

Eddie couldn’t remember the last time he saw daylight. He lived in a world of shadow and streetlights.
When he could no longer avoid seeing them, despite the darkness, Eddie tried telling himself that the bruises on his legs and chest were from sleeping on hard ground and the occasional beating he’d taken living on the streets. But in the back of his mind, a little voice told him those were KS Lesions, and he knew what that meant. The voice sounded like Sam’s.

“Sam, is that you?”
Eddie couldn’t believe his eyes. Walking right across the street, in a button-up shirt and khakis, was his big brother Sam. How many years had it been since they’d seen each other? The guy across the street didn’t seem to notice, though, so Eddie called out again, louder.
“Sam! Hey! Over here,” but the man just kept walking.
These days, pretty much every guy walking by looked like Sam. And they all looked like the dad who had never actually walked out on anyone, despite the stories Eddie used to tell for a quick buck.

Sam? Dad? Mommy? Anybody? Please, help me. Help me to be free. I just need you to lead me…

Eddie’s family never even knew it when he died. Sam kept his mouth shut about getting his kid brother into drugs, and he never told his parents that he’d seen Eddie on that street corner, looking like Hell had already claimed him as one of its denizens.
Sam often wondered if he should have said something when Eddie called out to him that day.
But it was already too late for Eddie. His life had become a nightmare-painted broken dream, and he just couldn’t wake himself up from it.

I see you. I know you. You’re me — and I’m coming home.

One morning Eddie just failed to wake up. AIDS had eaten away all his defenses and the pneumonia finished what the drugs had started long ago.
In his dream the night before, as he lie freezing in the hoarfrost of a moonless November night, Eddie had seen himself standing on a pedestal over his prone body. Below him, a heavy mist crept through the wintry thicket where he lay, blanketing what he knew to be his own corpse lying there at his feet. At the edge of a copse of trees he made out a callow, peaked face. It lifted its nose and sniffed like a predator that had caught wind of a scent.
It smells me, Eddie thought, it smells the rot in my veins.
Finally free, Eddie thrust his hand into the air and it stretched impossibly upwards, penetrating some invisible skin as Eddie saw, for the first time in years, the light of a never-ending day just at the tips of his fingers

Marc Nocerino is a writer, musician, poet, armchair philosopher, libertine, mystic, and most recently; father. Marc was born and raised under the foggy canopy that blankets San Francisco, where he was first exposed to the exotic and profane elements that became a seminal influence on his creativity. He currently lives amid the tall pines of California’s Sierra-Nevada Foothills with his amazing wife and daughter.
 When not writing for pleasure, Marc spends his time doing a ridiculous amount of homework as well as working as Assistant Editor for She Never Slept, an online horror magazine where he also writes the occasional review. His work has previously been published at Penumbra Magazine and The Horror ‘Zine.

Paramedic Cowboys

 

Constantly giving command performances of arrested development.

Went to get some air. The earth’s turning is not audible.

Eyes on the prize, but the gift gets stuck in my head.

 
Cut myself some slack. Retire early. Go right on sleeping.

A firm mattress makes me hungry. A stay-at-home mom

understands living in another age.
 
 
Hard choices are a menace to society. For old time’s sake,

thorazine and pantsuits. The tuna casserole needs a minute.

I believe you are here in the southern village.
 
 
A pigsty outside the box. Traveler’s checks and a full tank of gas

in an honored Ford truck. A river without a bridge. Overreacting

to unexpected houseguests.
 
 
I was afraid to tell you my mother was born in a one-horse shit hole.

A Shakespearean intermission that tickles your fancy. Prolonged exposure

to the full extent of the law.
 

Kathamann has been active in New Mexico’s art community for over thirty years, exhibiting in juried, group and one-person shows. She received her B.A. in Visual Arts, cum laude, at the College of Santa Fe. She has also studied with Helen Frankenthaler, John Chamberlain, and Beverly Pepper at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Jorge Fick, a noted modern painter, was her painting mentor. Mishell Karma Gaia, a 1973 Karmann Ghia, an art car created by Kathamann was inducted into the Houston Art Car Museum in 2007. Photos of Mishell have appeared in numerous publications,including Raw Vision, the world’s leading journal of outsider art, and The People’s Paper of Beijing. Kathamann is a retired registered nurse and Peace Corps Volunteer in Afghanistan.

http://internet.cybermesa.com/~kathamann/

Arcanist Probation

leery they are of exalted labels, honorifics

the label divides, limits

for they who are broken have a choice

live or die; get up or stay down; grow or shrivel

 

those who heed the call

who heed their dreams

who heed the signs

who heed the writing on the wall

 

step forward and take command of yourself

step forward and live up to your potential

step forward and show your strength

 

exclusive, by invitation only

will you accept, not knowing what’s on the other side of the gate?

not knowing what you’ll find when you look inside yourself?

not knowing what they will find when they see you?

not knowing how limitless you can be?

 

invitations scattered across the cosmos

clues, twinges, glitches, ordinary only to the unordinary, the contrary

signs both subtle and gross

only those with eyes will see

only those with fingers will touch

only those of mind will know

 

a character recognition, both symbolic and personal

the symbol who is the person

the person who is the symbol

pointing to a container of utmost divinity

 

here, all are related through a knowledge considered profane

merely esoteric, merely nameless

one from ten and two from a hundred

not understanding that which is only hinted at

things naturally fall into place, clicking, the honing of tools:

seeing, dreaming, feeling, knowing

 

system of checks and balances

invention balanced by discovery

creation balanced by reason

creation checked by the consensus

escape checked by conviction

lifting checked by gravity

imagination checked by the brutal truth

 

they are the children

they are the fathers and mothers

they are the tricksters and the teachers

they are wise old hermits and the mad fools living under a bridge

they are warriors and they are cowards

they are everyman

they shout the unintelligible from the rooftops

they howl at the moon and they check its astronomical measurements

yearning for when it casts shadows of trees in the ubiquitous forest

 

the world’s shadow is where you will find them

their acknowledgement can direct thy path

producing a watershed moment

they are tangible

they are here and now

they hide in plain sight

they do out of necessity

they do out of whim

 

out of discord among them, diversities grew

motives from the selfish to the selfless

their connection bled

only with clarity seeing them as one

frivolousness of purpose degenerates things to their atomic form

once whole, now estranged, split

they divided themselves, they conquered themselves

lost and scattered they are

hidden as gems in the sand; hidden from each other

isolated

hiding from themselves, lying to themselves

a defense against the great fear of unleashing themselves without inhibition

without regret

 

from one there are two from two there are ten

from ten there are hundreds

the two reflect each other

an infinite sequence of nested mirrors polishing each other, preparing

the ten are neophyte to Zelator

to lord of the portal to Adeptus Exemptus to Ipsissimus.

the hundreds are one

the one is hundreds

 

a multitude forming their own consensus to unleash creation

those of arcane force gather

the ocean becomes the drops the drops become the ocean

immortal rites opening the gates

rising through the spheres.

Brian Tenneson lives in small-town USA where he spends his time practicing word smithing, researching math problems, and playing music.

The Night Is Thirsty With Sirens

The mind is like a TV set – when it goes blank
it’s a good idea to turn off the sound
-Ernie Kovacs

I’m drinking with somebody’s daughter
And it’s the seacoast pull of alcohol
Again. A female singer {she’s somebody’s
Daughter too} is pulled by keyboard-cool
Sentimental magnets in this intimate club.

If a lady in the Los Altos hills were here
With her daughters, I know they’d want
To soft shoe the carpet in opposition to all
Those whose feet feel more secure
Stomping in crowd-clotted concert halls
Where there is no music anymore.

But, now, my business must involve these
Encounters with daughters: I believe it has
A lot to do with ambitious working girls,
Also vivified on San Francisco’s West side by
Camille’s baby daughter Tara {today, named
Thumbelina)}in highchair swatting muffins: her
Spoon charting the air like dark Chaucer. Not
That her parents haven’t been without the
College English ivory tower blocks of opposition.

I am, however, talking about Tara draining her
Eyes with tantrum, turning into an immature
Replica of this Santa Monica secretary who’s
Dabbing mascara drips, now, from deeps of
Nagging nightclub blues.

All this is remarkably receptive by my memorial
Radar: Tara’s mother filling sink with dishwater,
While the window on Page Street becomes this
Drunken pane of moonish light: and when the
Little girl klops her dessert into a cup and tries
To drink a cookie, and failing, finally, offering it
To me to fail, as I always do, too, the solid stuff

{Daughters and men have these moments in
Common} so much so that when Camille says:
“Did You know it’s the Solstice?” I can’t tell if
that’s a cosmological excuse or a weather report.

Nevertheless, now, back here, in smoky piano
Bar, a personified jet lag nags at me: her voice
Clanking like a cashregister: her blank mind
Linking with an urban incursion of ambulance
Chasers. And she pulls at her highball glass as
Though she were swallowing her mother’s
Bel-Air antique pride.

Outside, the night is thirsty with sirens.

Michael C. Ford has been publishing steadily, since 1970, and credited with 23 volumes of print. He’s been featured on 13 spoken word recordings, that include 6 solo documents, since 1984. He received a Grammy nomination in 1986 and earned a Pulitzer nomination in 1998. A 2012 poetry and photography project marks the author’s 5th volume of work published by ION DRIVE. For earlier titles plus critical and biographic commentary, please, visit www.iondrivepublsihing.com

Aunt Agatha

The Winter-clad poplars carried their children,
The Leaves,
In their arms,
Escorting them to the grave,
As they marched in the howling breeze,
Limbs writhing in misery,
As they hurled them bodily amongst the nearby tombs,
Where they gathered,
Unburied and still; brown and shriveled,
Forgotten and alone.

So like that Winter grove,
We, too marched, in solemn procession,
As the thick leaves gathered round,
As if bearing witness to our sorrow,
As if to speak the truths of our souls by declaring,
See! We are here to testify to your sorrow.
For we have already departed from our mother Earth,
And have gone forth to join her in anguish.

Snow began to lightly fall,
And, somewhere, a mockingbird shrilly sang its piercing, tuneless song,
As Winter began Death’s slow seasonal concerto of remorse.
As the concert commenced,
The tombstones leaned, gray-faced, forward in their seats in the earth,
Intent on each rattling tone as it shrilly lept out of Winter’s throat.
The music cursed the air with the cacophony of the Wind,
And its incessant howling.

As the grave rite commenced,
We gathered closely round the coffin and waited.
And waited, still, long after the rite had completed.

Without, the leaves thickly fell upon the Winter ground,
As the snow began to pile into thick drifts amongst the tombs.

In the distance a slow baying began to arise in the chill air,
Then, more.

We wheeled the coffin of Aunt Agatha outside and waited,
Perhaps the prayers would work; perhaps not.

The coffin was suddenly thrust open in one violent burst,
As a snout-nosed beast bolted forth out of the velvet cloth within,
Bolting forward into the snow to flee through the poplars beyond into the heavy woods,
Where the heavily burdened poplars yet bore their children, the leaves, to the grave,
Uncertain of their own fate in this weary world,
Yet certain of Death’s renewal and its hideous cycle,
And, as the leaves fell,
Aunt Agatha rolled amongst them with blasphemed merriment,
Mocking Death and Life in one profane, instinctual act.
The trees looked on in horrified dismay as Death bared Her Jaws and bayed.

John Timothy Carney is a published horror writer and poet as well as Ragtime Piano composer. He was born on December 13th 1960 in San Francisco, CA and was raised across the bay in Castro Valley, CA. He studied music as a child in the late sixties and later in the late seventies under another music teacher by the name of Edith Ryan. He attended high school at Moreau Catholic High School from which he graduated in 1979. He then went on to study music at the University of Pacific in Stockton, CA and graduated in 1985 with a BA degree in Liberal Arts. His ragtime works are available on scoreexchange.com as well as last.fm. and can be accessed by conducting a search under his name under the subject of Ragtime. His horror works have appeared on numerous occassions in the archives of The Horror Zine, edited by Jeani Rector, most recently in the April 2012 edition of the same as well as in Death Head Grin among other e-zines. His work will be published in Death Head Grin’s upcoming e-book available in June 2012 with a work of sonnet poetry in the horror genre entitled The Tomb of Azathoth.
http://www.jtimcarney510.com/