The Inequality of Affection — poetry by Donovan James

Feeble folk songs drift
Across exhaust coated streets,
While hollowed out Americans
Slurp fifty cent Saigon beer,
Back dropped by the luscious wavelengths
Of distant mountain ranges marrying clouds,
A tan and specked shore,
But all I perceive,
Are your curves, your words, your smell.


Rare dispatches stumble
Across the pacific,
Making surgeons of love lorn poets,
Who dissect the space between
Precious letters,
The feelings and thoughts
You keep bottled up.


But there's only room
For passive aggressive theories to flourish,
Worries of your indifference,
Of your bed littered
With discarded interest--
Goddamn this immutable distance!
And the enigma of your words:
"I don't really feel alone."


.....I
do.....


Oh, the inequality of affection,
Where one is left to roast,
And wait,
Words stifled in cement blocks,
For love is suffocated
By force--
And affection won through deceit,
Is such a bitter drink,
And warmth bequeathed through pity
A somber affair,
And lust acquiesced through guilt,
A passionless gift,


Leaving love lorn poets
To ponder upon a shore,
Of when
Or if, at all,
The recipient of unrecited poems
Will return.


The chorus crescendos into silence,
And you disperse into the horizon,
Leaving only foreign mountains
Dotted with forests...
The beer is warm, the bar
Empty,
I drink, absently,
Look out over the water,
Where listless embers of empire still burn,
The reeking plumes of terror,
Extending through time.


___
Donovan James tries to express humanistic and idealistic views in poetry, despite a ravaging cynicism. He believes that the money and effort allocated to war and fear should be used to feed, shelter, and educate the poor, no human being excluded. He tries to write poetry that connects with other buoys adrift in this absurd and lonely world.

Silky Sorrow —poetry by Sujoy Bhattacharya

I was playing with the caterpillar . 
It crawled down the trunk of the sesame tree . 
I was sitting near a red- ant – hill allowing 
them to inject formmic  acid in my body .  
The caterpillar crawled on over my shoes 
waving her body in a peculiar dancing posture . 
I was building logical relation among the three – 
Uncouth caterpillar , supple silk and captivating 
Butterfly – hades , earth and ecclesiastical sky. 
Millions of caterpillars crawling here and there 
The beautiful  earth veiled behind silk cloak . 
Butterflies homeless soaring high up in quest 
of a habitable hearth elsewhere in other planet . 
Outcry of the flowers – musing nymphs nefarious! 

Bob Bodycomb — poem by Ian C. Smith

Most fights were hardly gladiatorial,

wrestling jousts until the one pinned ceded,

promoted by schoolboy agents provocateurs.

These rituals of strength presaged our future,

the ether through which we were about to plummet.

Keen for peer approval I usually excelled,

good at sport, rash, while he was sound, calm.

We rode the same bus, neither friends nor enemies.

Expecting to win I was soon discomfited,

shielded within the circus from teachers.

The years grind us.  I read his name, remember

his precocious ambition to be a cop.

He has shot dead a criminal during a siege.

On the run from sad times I reflect

how simply giving in ended youthful foolishness.

Far afterward, news with his name again,

this time a wheat silo, a rural shift,

his attempts to rescue two boys from suffocation.

Do distant echoes blister his quiet moments,

the price we sometimes pay for our dreams? 

___

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in , Australian Book Review, Australian Poetry Journal,  Cream City Review, New Contrast, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Stony Thursday Book, & Two-Thirds North.  His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.

Our Nation in the Desert Pot —poetry by Francis Annagu

Our nation potted in
The trough of the litttle desert pond cracked
In the ravaging sun, its treasury is full of
Gold and contracts yet the poor have no baskets to harvest
The fallow plots of wheat while the wealthy seat
Over round tables for a cowrie shell more
In roudy toasts to their iron greed.

Our nation drank alot of wine from the
Vultures pot of greed, ever since the masses have
Come to the parliament gates, a colony of
Those with dry tongues and bellies
On a long trek to the house of coins and omelettes
As the grumbling Almajiris* like killing predators
Till out the barns of ants in search of gathered grains
Under dark clouds of the nation's strayed bullets.

As the roofing sheets gave a scorn to the thatched roofs,
The judge strutter to the courtroom with a
Wig on his fattened head for another
Justice miscarriage
 measured
On the cheap electors as their blue blood
Scamper into cheap bone marrows
The
 migrating antelopes are chasing the winds.

As the red-rains of anguish falls on the widowers'
Leaking rafters, the gluttonous bats
In olympian race perch on the healing magma of the hills.

The poor will remain hungry  as earth has
No rains to grow their crops in the winter
Time when the ruinous storm blows death
Makes a harvest of the weak people of irony
,
The dance of the weak are like the tropical trees reciting the
whirrings of the mocking winds-
The shrieking cries heard yet a sheriff
Pass by amidst the injustice and corruption
 in sharp bending
By the wealthy carrying about their trinket boxes.

Audible sounds of suffering splash on the streets,
The labour union grouse against the inflated prices
Of petrol and food items, as the giant elephants
Refuse to trunk water to the nation,
The people limp to the slaughter houses
Collecting the broken bones of hornless rams
And every step they take is toward the dawn
,
Oh night has trailed the thin anchors of the ship!

The thunderous hooves of the suppressed masses in protest
Tore the tarmacs as the
lamentation
Of their empty bowels heralds that the weak
Are in a salvaging call to the political
Prelates with handful of sands
Mourning their nation carried by the desert storms.


___
Francis Annagu is a Nigerian poet. His poetry x-ray the social and political ills in the society, especially Africa that has suffered many a sandstorm of corruption and injustice. His poems have been published in Potomac Review, Ayiba Magazine, Kalahari Review, The Poet Community, Lunaris Review, Galway Review, The Commonline Journal, Crannog Magazine, Sunflower Collective and many others. His first poetry book, RAIN UPON US, will be published soon.

a grandfather's reverie —a poem by Milt Montague

michaela and me
a park bench
at riverside
watching


swift waters
rush to mingle
the fresh effluence
into the forever ocean


we sit quietly
out of sync with
time or reality
observers


my arm shielding
her slight body
as life rushes
headlong onward


time
for peace
after wrestling
the tide for ages


her trek barely begun


___
Milt Montague was raised in New York City, survived The Great Depression, and World War ll.  After 20 years back at college he discovered poetry at 86.  Now at 90 plus he has 98 poems published in 29 different magazines.    

Children ( After Kashmir) —poem by Ananya S Guha

Close in the barracks

they are pelting bullets

not stones

take the women away 

they are pelting bullets 

not stones

arm the men 

they are pelting bullets

not stones

tell the children to remain inside

so that they do 

not become blind 

pelt stones.

Children love to play.

___

Ananya S. Guha lives in Shillong, INDIA.

Scale Drawing —a poem by David Felix

_
David Felix is an English visual poet who comes from a family of artists, magicians and tailors.

Born in Wales, UK, sometime during the last century, he was raised on oil paint, sleight of hand and Singer sewing machines. For over fifty years David has been working with language in a visual way - a long history in paint and collage, in three dimensions, in galleries and festivals, publications, performances and video.

He now lives on the island of Funen, in southern Denmark.

Lares —poetry by Catherine McGuire

Lares. Roman: “Lords” – household ancestor spirits

Once the guiding spirits of each house –

souls risen from ancestral bodies buried

deep in the sacrarium, the altar room –

now even the name is unknown.

Over centuries, our dead were banished

first from house

   then yard

                        then town

backed relentlessly away from the places they protect

deeded the useless soil of surrounding hills.

Is it surprising the once-sacred land feels empty?

Any wonder we can hop like fleas

from town to town,

free to leave our homes

to strangers, and the dead

to manicured graves, their next step after nursing homes?

Professionally managed, expunged as guardians,

the dethroned Lords come to us only in dreams,

holding the fraying thread of our ancestry,

the unacknowledged geas – another word

we have left behind in our blind stumble forward.

___

Catherine McGuire is a writer/artist with a deep interest in Nature, both human and otherwise. She's had poems published for 3 decades, in publications such as New Verse News, FutureCycle, Portland Lights, Fireweed, and on a bus for Poetry In Motion. She has taught workshops around Oregon. Her chapbook, Palimpsests, was published by Uttered Chaos in 2011 and her first full-length book of poetry, Elegy for the 21^st Century, will be published by FutureCycle Press in 2016. She has three self-published chapbooks.

The Kingdom —Fiction by Isaac Birchmier

The Castle was a straight and narrow path, like a giant corridor. It had green boxes in its straight and singular hall, and the boxes were filled with various objects and provided a nice place to sleep, and protection from the weather—especially when the rain came.

But the King on many occasions warned the Prince to not spend too long in the green boxes, for every two weeks or so large carriages approached and lifted the green boxes sky high and emptied the padding within the green boxes and rolled off and away, the sound of the whistling wind behind them. And the King warned the Prince that, once, the Court Jester, who went by the name of Lenny, got caught in a green box as a carriage arrived to clean out its padding, and that Lenny had been resting in the green box, and the carriage dropped him headfirst into the jaws of the monster carriage, and he was carried off to the guillotines, never to be seen again. 

Dust — poem by Ananya S. Guha

Angular

dust shapes 

everyday thinking 

into minutiae 

speckled, dust 

raises pillar of fortitude,

shaking, crumbling 

in grey fear oxen driven

greyhounds. 

Dust has particular East 

particular West into amorphous 

tongue tied ghosts of beaten 

track. Everywhere. Nowhere. 

___

Ananya S. Guha lives in Shillong, INDIA.

The Funeral of an Ex —a poem by John Grey

Gone without short dresses and big eyes
on a rainy winter afternoon,
your memory in my head,
the remedy all mourners work with,
my time going on.
yours withering in the chill.


Strangers put you down,
a good soul
amid an American city
while I retreat to my home
to see how well
I can weep for other beings,
years after longing
has reduced itself to inevitability.


I look over my shoulder
as I walk to the car.
What do I expect?
That you will follow me?


But nothing to worry.
The dark has no interest
in what is left of the light.
My footsteps are mine alone,
to crumble on their own time-table.


On the way home,
I wonder where you've really gone.
No real joy there, I expect.
But no cruel debts either.
But what do I know?
You have made yourself the deepest of secrets.


I cruise the streets aggrieved
while hailing the voice
of a wailing songstress
on the radio.
It will have to do
until some old photograph comes along.


___
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Gargoyle and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry Review.

Between —poetry by Eman Bouras

It'll either be by means of explosion, in a car in between where I should be and where I shouldn't-- A crossroads perfect for perfume worded spells and goodbyes to a god in overalls I'm too far away from. A wall or a dip in a road and jump of a car part I never understood, and another wall that doesn't give as much as the other one was supposed to. 

Or by means of everything, him, 
his hands-- simple and gone away, 

around my neck. 

___

Eman Bouras lives in Florida with her guinea pig and two dogs. She studies Biology, and enjoys spending her weekends outdoors. 

A Masterpiece of Modern Horror —a poem by Lora Maslenitsyna

If we’re vaginas, she was a curtain

Or veil, as she used to repeat to us

I, too, was meant to be a veiled virgin

But found my vagina with thanks to his

Cold shovelhands searching, thanks to your veil,

And thanks to blood gushing down through the halls—

Not quite as scary as Jack told the tale.

As if he wasn’t seated on his balls

Just busting at his typewriter all day,

Grabbing the keyboard with his shovelthumbs.

He bust it and blood broke through the doorway

Now, I call it a certain time that comes.

You know, I still think he should have laughed more;

It’s clear his wife certainly knew what for.

Popular in Your Network —a poem by Brad Rose

Angry flies are such beautiful animals. Like when you’re afloat on a shimmering sea and your bunkmates from the ghost conference assure you even the lame dog will one day be fed, but you can’t stop thinking, so much roiling water with nothing on it, but light.  Of course, the specifics of my participation are a closely guarded secret, but who am I to complain? I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to assume a sniper’s perspective, even if you missed the swearing-in ceremony, goddamn it.  Everyone loves a trapdoor, especially those two escaped suicides who were elected Most Likely to Succeed.  But I warn you: never get caught between two trains that pass, simultaneously, like identical twins, in opposite directions.  You’ll find your eyes rapidly following these lines across the page, like chasing the southerly end of a northbound bullet, and before you know it, the pleasure will be all mine.  In fact, on this dwarf planet there is no alternative. It’s business as usual, especially when you’re left to your own devices.  Wake up early from the nightshift so you can dream it true. Death ticks relentlessly inside us.  There’s no escaping.  It’s all the rage.

Death ticks relentlessly inside us.  Wake up early from the nightshift, so you can dream it true. It’s business as usual, especially when you’re left to your own devices.  In fact, on this dwarf planet there is no alternative. You’ll find your eyes rapidly following these lines across the page, like chasing the southerly end of a northbound bullet, and before you know it, the pleasure will be all mine.  But I warn you: never get caught between two trains that pass, simultaneously, like identical twins, in opposite directions.  Everyone loves a trapdoor, especially those two escaped suicides who were elected Most Likely to Succeed.  I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to assume a sniper’s perspective, even if you missed the swearing-in ceremony, goddamn it. Of course, the specifics of my participation are a closely guarded secret, but who am I to complain?  Like when you’re afloat on a shimmering sea and your bunkmates from the ghost conference assure you even the lame dog will one day be fed, but you can’t stop thinking, so much roiling water with nothing on it, but light.

_

Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles, and lives in Boston. He is the author of Pink X-Ray (Big Table Publishing, 2015). Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction, Brad’s poetry and fiction have appeared in: The Commonline Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Folio, decomP, The Baltimore Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, San Pedro River Review, Off the Coast,Heavy Feather Review, Posit, Third Wednesday, Boston Literary Magazine, Right Hand Pointing, The Molotov Cocktail and other publications. Brad is the author of three electronic chapbooks, all from Right Hand Pointing: Democracy of Secrets, Dancing School Nerves,and Coyotes Circle the Party Store,

Dear South Africa —poem by Chestlyn Draghoender

Dear South Africa;


The world is changing
around us,
And so are we.
We have become an angry nation,
blaming our government,
fighting our own President.
Shouting in the streets:
“Zuma Must Fall!”
Throwing tantrums like hooligans.
Is this where we’re headed now?
Is this what our past heroes fought for,
lost their lives for?


No!


So, take heed!
You have already come too far
to turn back now.
Look at the many things you
have accomplished.
Reducing poverty
Quality education for all
Entrepreneurship and job creation...


Thank God for that.


Angels (children),
Your futures are bright,
like the star that comes out
every morning.
Grow up to believe in yourselves.
Youngsters, have faith.
But, remember that faith
without works are dead.
Lend a helping hand
and help find solutions to
your own problems,
instead of complaining all day.

“No jobs, No opportunities.”

No single human being
can change the world.
But if we unite,
if we educate ourselves,
if we speak one language,
we can build a tower
that reaches high into heaven.
Like the first people
in the days of Noah.
Then,
then nothing will be impossible.
Instead of fighting each other
and engaging in insignificant wars.
Criticizing our politicians;
they owe us nothing.



To make South Africa
a safer place, a sanctuary
for our children,
A country with hope
for our next generation,
And a place with good memories
for our elders,
We should strive for more.
Strive to make things better
for our neighbor.
Be change-makers, so that
our children and children’s children
can live longer.
They should be free.
Free from drug and alcohol abuse.
Free from violence and hate.
Free to be who they want to be
without fear of being criticized.


Elders, take responsibility.
Stop criticizing the youngsters of
today. They
are not a lost generation.
The world is changing.
Parents, take responsibility,
And put your foot down.
Train your children to become
future leaders.
Instead of fighting each other.
The world is changing.
And youngsters,
take some responsibility for your
actions.
Educate yourselves.
Let no man despise your youth.
Learn to be an example of good
behavior, in speech, and actions.
Above all,
Remain a humble spirit and stay
out of trouble.
The Lord resists the proud.

The Right Album —a poem by TS Hildago

The Right Album

I tore the corners of an envelope
on the day of my childhood
something like exultant
and cathedrals, shields,
even masters in black
came out of it
(and this is something
I do not remember if explained
in TV commercials);
back to soccer:
also glue,
some media star,
the last signings
as a main topic,
as a closure:
a new brush painted suit
and the most expensive by far:
all the time in front of an album:
years, centuries,
a whole morning;
I tore, rimless, exultant,
the corners of an envelope,
after divorce
and a tense wait.

_
TS Hildago is a Spanish writer.

Scudder's Gorge by Geoffrey Craig —reviewed by Calliope's Sandy Raschke

Scudder’s Gorge, by Geoffrey Craig 
Prolific Press, 290 pages. 
ISBN #978-1632750556 

Calliope’s readers are familiar with Geoffrey Craig’s short stories, as several have appeared in our pages over the years. Although he has had a verse novel and novella serialized in a literary review, Scudder’s Gorge is his first full-length novel.

Scudder’s Gorge is a masterfully told story of family, unrequited and romantic love, hate, secrets, joys and tragedy, and exposes the depths of what man is capable to doing to his fellow man.

Craig’s elegant prose (evocative of the late Wallace Stegner), is impressive; he is like an artist, first using a broad brush to create the background, then employing a smaller one to fill in with details. The vivid imagery he uses to describe the Vermont landscape gives the story a genuine sense of place and atmosphere, and sets the tone for this family saga spanning almost one hundred eighty years and six generations. It is a history that sometimes repeats itself, with sadness and agony. Several themes are reiterated throughout Scudder’s Gorge: tolerance vs. bigotry; peace vs. war; expiation for previous wrongs, and respect for all people.

An enigmatic Prologue begins the story, of an elderly Japanese man taking a walk in Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945, stopping at a small temple after several air-raid sirens go off. But, unable to see any evidence of the bombers, he goes outside again...facing the bright flash in the sky...

Then moving back in time, Craig unveils the story of the Scudder family and others who settled on a land grant from the Territory of Vermont in 1795. Out of the wilderness, Lucas Scudder and ten settler families created farms and community. They live in peace, trading with nearby Native Americans, the Abenaki. That is until 1799, when Philomena, the daughter of Lucas Scudder, falls in love with a young Abenaki man she meets in the woods while picking berries with her sister Carrie. Eventually smitten by Susuph, she initiates a sexual relationship, which they carry out in secret places, unknowingly witnessed at times by Sean Reynolds, a mentally-challenged young man from the settlement. Philomena and Susuph want to marry, but an accident changes everything. After their last tryst, Philomena loses her footing and tumbles down a hill.

While Philomena lies unconscious at home, Lucas Scudder and eleven men from the settlement take revenge on the Abenaki, based upon their prejudices and Sean Reynolds’ misperception—that Philomena was raped and battered by Susuph then dumped in front of the Scudder’s cabin.

The settlers raid the village and are met with resistance; a shot is fired by one of the Abenaki, hitting one of the raiders in the shoulder. The ensuing carnage leaves twenty-one Abenaki dead: all the young men, five women and seven children. The few survivors flee to the north to another Abenaki village, but the reverberations of the massacre will last long into the future.

Philomena awakens two days after the raid, and when she discovers that Susuph has been killed along with the other Abenaki, calls her father a murderer and cuts off all communication with him. Months later, she delivers a healthy baby boy that she names “Remember,” then dies within four hours of his birth. She has left her sister Carrie a letter, in which she describes the sins of her father and the responsibility of the family to see that such prejudice and violence never happen again.

Carrie marries and raises Remember as her own, and when she dies, she passes on Philomena’s letter to him.

The story moves from the first generation of Scudders slowly into the future, through recessions and depressions, World War I and II, the postwar era and the atomic age, into the late 1960s, and ends during a demonstration against the Vietnam War. And through it all, Philomena’s letter is passed on to each successive generation, a reminder to the Scudders of their responsibility to regard all of humanity without prejudice.

Craig’s deft hand and sensitivity regarding controversial but important social matters draws the reader in and keeps one turning the pages. Highly recommended.
___

Sandy Raschke is the Fiction Editor for Calliope, the official publication of the Writers’ Special Interest Group of American Mensa, Ltd.
___
Geoffrey Craig’s fiction, poetry and drama have appeared in numerous literary journals, including the New Plains Review, Calliope, Foliate Oak, Spring – the Journal of the E.E. Cummings Society and The MacGuffin. He has received two Pushcart Prize nominations. In January 2016, Prolific Press published his novel, Scudder’s Gorge. Previously, Wilderness House Literary Review had serialized both his verse novel, The Brave Maiden, and his novella, Snow.