Imaginary Swimming Lessons —a poem by Andy N

Bewitching my every breath

Across mist leaving Blackburn

In a Indian Summer moment

Your goodbye sings

In the silence

Over the rainbows

And the relentless rain

Floating into imaginary lakes

On the platform

That I want to swim across

Even though I can’t swim.

___
You can find more about Andy N by visiting his Official website, Facebook and the Westend Writers (writing group)

Eraser Marks on a Chalkboard —poetry by KG Newman

The reporter asks did you sleep with the intern?

Unrelated, the masseuse asks is this deep enough?

Somewhere else, the waiter asks can I fill you up?

In a file in my mind, she asks do you feel alone?

Can I get you anything to drink? But when I finally say yes

and invite the glass to my lips, I’m stepping out the door

to a street I’ve seen before, one abuzz with many trucks, trucks

that sound like they’re stuffed with many weighty boxes, boxes

that smack into each other like

conflicting sentiments.

Unrelated, a thin-haired man on a park bench finally sighs deep

and birds ascend away.

Somewhere else, she’s upstairs

rifling through the bathroom drawer

for who knows what,

a brush maybe,

an Ambien,

a cleaved yellow sprig.

___
KG Newman is the editor of a high school sports website, ColoradoSportsNetwork.com, and lives in Aurora, Colo. He is an Arizona State University graduate and his first collection of poems, While Dreaming of Diamonds in Wintertime is available on Amazon.

Secrets and Their Keep —poetry by John Grey

It's secrets I'm talking about.
Concealed subjects.
Confidences suspended in time.


And all of the pressures
that insist they clam tight
or pop open.


To tell or not to tell -
they come at you from all sides.
shrinking even further
the space in which you operate.


Loyalty to a friend
or relief that the truth
is out in the open at last.


No credit cards.
No safety pins.
No nail clippers or letter openers.
This is all you have to work with.


___
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and the anthology No Achilles, with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and Nebo.

Watching My Friend’s Child —poetry by Adina Cassal

Five years old and full of magic

he revels in the wonder

of the backyard sprinkler

running around it

like chasing rain

his skin and his innocence

mix with the rays

of the afternoon sun as

he throws his head back

laughter satiating the minutes

with the sweet exuberance

of the wet cold colliding

with bare chest, legs, arms

at every step of this summer dance

round and round and round

he goes, savoring blue drops

sticking out his tongue

to catch some more

bending his body at times

to mimic the arc

of the stream that rises and falls.

I stay dry.

Later, he will pick up an earth worm,

give it a name and blades of grass,

show me his Spiderman

dinner plate and tell me

he can't wear pajamas tonight.

He will blink his eyes, yawn, shed a tear

and stay up past frayed story books

and broken lullabies

just to listen

for the key at the door.

___
Adina Cassal has resided in the Washington, DC area all her adult life. Before that, she lived in six countries and acquired a love of languages, music and cats. She works providing human services to people she deeply respects. She has been published in Alimentum as well as previously in The Commonline Journal.

Missing —poetry by Chelsi Robichaud

You look at your face in the mirror

Recognizing yourself

But something is missing

You study the arch of your brow

The curve of your lips

The cut of your cheeks

But it isn't there

It feels like a piece of you has been lost

But looking in the mirror, it is not evident

It is quiet, silent.

It breathes within you and yet remains inexistent

It leaves a deep pit of worry in your chest

That you cannot name.

It breathes

It bleeds

It bruises

Where is it?

Where are you?

___

Chelsi Robichaud is a 22 year old English student studying and residing in Ottawa, Ontario. She has been published in several magazines, including: Transition, The Perch, The Commonline Journal, The Copperfield Review, and Mythic Circle.

The Preacher —poetry by Ally Malinenko

He gets on the train.

Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, he says,

Excuse me ladies and gentlemen,

this message is for the parents

I’m out here today talking to you

because there is an epidemic

amongst our kids

and it is as bad

as crack.

Remember crack?

That blew up in our faces,

didn’t it?

Praise jesus,

You know what I’m saying sister.

Ladies and gentlemen I’m here

talking to you about K2

this drug is killing our kids ladies and gentlemen

and at hope house,

where I work near the Marcy projects

we could take money from the state

but we don’t

ladies and gentlemen

we don’t because

if we did we would have to leave God out of it

and ladies and gentlemen that is not going to happen.

Because God is life and life is God

I know, ladies and gentlemen

because I used to be an addict.

I shot heroin into this arm for twelve years

before God saved me, ladies and gentlemen

and now I’m here to save your kids

Thank you sisters, praise be.

He’s still talking but instead of listening

I’m watching the girl sitting across from me

as she quietly

and noiselessly

starts to cry.

And the woman next to her touches her

so lightly

just on the shoulder and whispers

are you okay?

But she just buries her face in her scarf

and sobs to herself

We are all so alone, together, aren’t we?

___
Ally Malinenko is the author of the poetry collections The Wanting Bone and How To Be An American (Six Gallery Press) as well as the novel This Is Sarah (Bookfish Books). A forthcoming poetry book entitled Better Luck Next Year is slated for publication in 2016 by Lowghost Press.

A Hire Insight —Fiction by Janet Olearski

Clifford

The day before the new faculty interviews, Sophia fell off her horse and took a resounding blow to the head. Her brain reverberated within her skull as if it had been clouted with a frying pan. At the hospital, she was pronounced sound and went about her business as normal, but inside her body an atavistic sense had been awakened from its divine slumber.

Graham

I sometimes feel that Clifford is in another world and certainly not knuckling down to the job in hand. We have barely a week in which to sort out the new hires. Ahmed in HR always drags his heels on this, so we can’t afford to waste time at our end. We’ve got our short list. Surely it can’t be too much to ask Clifford to show a bit of leadership and hurry up with the interviews? As for Sophia, what was she doing anyway riding a horse in the desert?

Eve

The hospital bit was just attention-seeking on Sophia’s part. I would have thought that anyone falling in sand would have had a soft landing. She always has to be one up on everyone. I’m not impressed with people who injure themselves. Clifford put her on candidate-lunch duty. Clearly that was all she was fit for.

Clifford

Sophia is meeting the job candidates for lunch. I had to lean on her rather heavily to do that much. Everyone else was either tied up, or simply didn’t want to be bothered. However, one could say that Sophia went the extra mile, or so I soon discovered. As in the days when she first learned and dabbled in Tarot, that old instinct, that sniffing out of feelings and impressions and inner thoughts, started to take her over.

At least that’s my take on it.

Graham

Our most promising candidate … that chap Peter. She didn’t like him. Can you believe it? After the lunch, she followed me to my room and she said, ‘Graham! Are you listening to me, Graham? Make sure Clifford doesn’t hire him.’

Eve asked me what the problem was. I said it was nothing. Just Sophia having a bit of a rant. What Sophia had actually said was that this chap Peter was going to cause an awful lot of trouble. Honestly, I’m at a loss.

Eve

Sophia gave me one of her looks. Graham said I was being paranoid. No, I wasn’t. Sophia has never liked me. I think she’s just mean and embittered because I have a husband and she doesn’t. Well, who would have her? She’s just plain weird. Her latest thing is that she doesn’t want us to hire Peter. He seems fine to me. Maybe a bit earthy, a bit too up-close and personal? I don’t know. But, what do you need from a teacher? We’re not hiring a president or something. He’d be fine.

Clifford

I rather liked Peter. I thought him intelligent and cultured. Just the kind of teacher we need for our Institute. We need to up the standard. This is the way to go. As I was saying to Caroline last night at dinner, ‘For goodness sake, we’re not a summer school. We need a touch of gravitas.’

Graham

So I said to Sophia, ‘What’s your problem, Sophia?’

And she said, ‘Mark my words, Graham, you’re going to be so sorry if we hire Peter.’

I said to her, ‘And what gives you that idea?’

‘His handshake,’ she said. ‘Maybe you didn’t pick it up, but I did.’

I said, ‘Pick what up, Sophia?’

‘It was speaking to me,’ she said.

‘The handshake?’

‘Yes,’ it said, “I am short-tempered and irritable. You are inferior to me, but I will put up with you for now because of the interview situation.”

‘And what was all that then,’ I said, ‘intuition?’ 

‘Insight,’ she said. ‘It was insight. And I’ll tell you something else,’ she said. ‘That Peter has a roving eye.’

There’s no two ways about it. I’m going to have to talk to Clifford about Sophia. We can’t have a loose cannon like that in the department.

Clifford

Graham is complaining about Sophia. I tried to explain to him that as one of the longest-serving faculty members, her opinion counts for something. I told Caroline about it. She’s never been a fan of Graham.

‘He’s terribly ordinary,’ she said. ‘He’s probably worried that if you hire Peter, he’ll lose his foothold in the department.’

She could have a point. I told Graham to be patient with Sophia.

Graham

It’s pointless speaking to Clifford. He’s like Sophia. As I said before, he’s in another world.

He said, ‘Oh do be patient, Graham. Sophia is not herself at the moment.’

Is she ever herself? The woman’s deranged. Clifford sees Peter as intelligent and cultured and she’s going around saying, ‘We don’t need troublemakers like that working alongside us.’

Eve

If you ask me, Sophia was always a bit strange even before the horse-in-the-desert incident.

Clifford

I don’t ask for Graham’s opinion, but he gives it to me anyway. Caroline told me – and I think she is absolutely right – that the sooner I take this whole matter into my own hands, the better. I need to make haste and take some decisions.

Eve

Why do we have to interview so many people anyway, asking the same questions over and over, looking out for the tell-tale body language and listening for slips of the tongue? There’s nothing wrong with Peter. Maybe Sophia fancied him and he didn’t respond to her cues. That’s why she doesn’t want us to hire him.

Graham

Bad news. Sophia’s sabotaged another candidate. Ernest. She held his notebook for him as he repacked his briefcase. According to her it spoke to her … again, and it told her he wanted security for his wife and two children, but that his drinking flawed him and sentenced them. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. She told Clifford. I’m guessing we won’t be hiring Ernest.

Clifford

One more candidate to go. Brenda. I think I’m ready to take a decision about Peter. Ernest is off the list.

Graham

Here we go again. Brenda, it seems, ‘had hidden something deep in her heart.’ This is the inside story from Sophia. We’ll have to stop her going to these lunches with the candidates. But it’s like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. I suppose Sophia knows something about bolting horses. It seems that Brenda’s husband lived ninety percent of his time in the capital. He told Brenda he was tired of the commute, but what he hadn’t told her was that he had a mistress in the city. She knew anyway.

            ‘Her calm exterior belied the tormented soul within.’ Sophia’s words, not mine. According to Sophia, Brenda ‘coveted all she saw in the present and all she would take in the future.’

What on earth does that mean?

Clifford

Sophia has left. That’s it. She’s gone to China. I drove her to the airport. I said to her, ‘So you want to eat, pray and love.’

She looked at me coldly and she said, ‘No, only pray, and you should too.’

I told her, ‘You just couldn’t forgive me for hiring Peter and Brenda.’

She said, ‘You’re the director. It’s your decision.’

Graham

Well, that all ended rather badly.

Clifford

Yes, I know. I should have listened. Who would have thought so much could happen in six months? Peter has moved to Qatar. It was quite sudden. With him he took his new four-wheel drive, and my wife Caroline. Six months on Brenda stole Eve’s husband. We start interviewing for new faculty next week.

Graham

What is his problem? All I said was, ‘Clifford, this CV you’ve given me … it looks good but, you know what, I’ve got this funny feeling about it.

___
Janet Olearski is an Anglo-Polish author, born in London, based in Abu Dhabi, but of no fixed abode ... effectively, an urban nomad. Her short fiction and poems have appeared in various publications including Jotters United, Far Off Places, Bare Fiction, Beautiful Scruffiness, and Pen Pusher. She is the founder of the Abu Dhabi Writers’ Workshop. Website: http://www.janetolearski.com

The Mole —poetry by Ananya S. Guha

I hate to say it 

but the mole on my nose

is only an architecture of disdain

pure contempt for grecian looks

and ultra

violets have broken into unmusical 

songs, I  have  hand for blasphemy

for those in exile ( in oblivion)

but the mole gives intrepid warmth

to a less than humane heart

heart that mocks at  love

and sees in body lust 

philanderer of  hope, testimony

coming back to the mole,the nose itches

in radical protest against human faces

of dignity. revolt then, you reprobates

crush the sinner's dying plea of  resurrection.

the mole looks blacker, wilder and the body

warms.


___
Ananya S Guha lives in Shillong, INDIA.

Slog —a poem by Wayne F. Burke

Dried skin

on my scalp;

I rub different creams on

but none help--

48 hours of sunshine would cure

me

but there is no sun,

no moon either,

no stars;

a gray plenitude of

fog,

impenetrable sky of

sludge

dull as years spent in

cribs of

babyhood;

dirty as the dish rag

grandma used to wipe

the sink with;

northeast-gray the pigeons

fly through:

swilled soup-of-the-day

with glops of charcoal,

lead...I rub some on my

head and

it feels good

in a kind of strange,

and maybe sick,

way.

___

Wayne F. Burke's latest book of poetry DICKHEAD is available from Bareback Press and at amazon.com.

British Soldiers —poetry by Michael McInnis

He listed one of the
Charles as an 
emergency contact —
Simic
Bukowski
Manson
— on the form the
nurse handed him
reeling from ingesting
red helmeted British soldiers.

Sheet lightening still
crackling across his eyes as if
Orion had risen
during the summer,
winter only a
name given to war
heroes who walked in
heavy gales through a
pocked landscape.

The tree down across
the cratered path,
Cladonia cristatella and
Trebouxia erici holding
out for new growth,
luminous from the night’s rain,
bitter and musty tasting
still as they pumped his
stomach of the lichen.


___
Michael McInnis lives in Boston and spent six years in the Navy sailing across the Pacific and Indian Oceans to the Persian Gulf three times, chasing white whales and ending up only with madness. He has published poetry and short fiction in Rasputin Poetry, Literary Yard, 1947, Dead Snakes, Monkey Bicycle, Cream City Review and other little magazines and small presses.

“La tristesse durera toujours” —poetry by Adaline Long

As a child I dropped my lace hankie in the sea
I traced it in the stars that night,
connecting the dots by squinting till they blurred,
moving my head till it fluttered like a white butterfly, as shadowless
as waterlogged, broken-winged on the rocks
what’s it like? I said
you know, you said, then words fail you as

you drift for time innumerable
time’s immeasurable in the immemorial sea
waves should pass in moments but have no watchdog clock, so snarl
and snicker in a spray of salt and slap down only
a
particle at a time so that
lifetimes
of saltwater flow in your eyes
before you are
crushed.
Vincent may as well have said, “la mer durera toujours”,
for it has taken away even the wings your little girl gave you.
I want to sink, you said - to be anything
but a restless shadow on the epidermis of a sea I will never
sound the depths of
You cannot sound the depths,
but I tell you that years hence when the sea of stars
is parted
when rioting smoke in black-plumed migration pulls the sky like a magnet
to ground
when fleets of shadows sear the roots of earth
and baptize you in fire
when volcanic sunset billows in the west,
you will choke on breath from lungs you’ve forgotten you possess as you see
there in the sunlight
the shadow of a little girl you once were, and shudder that you
like the waves
forgot that time could pass

High up you will see the husks of old shadows spark
and bloom like flaming meteors
wished on and
ash-purged.


___
Adaline Long is a previously unpublished poet in NYC. Her work has received seven recognitions from Scholastic Writing Awards.