Lisa Gordon/Djuana
Jan Savanyu
Joel Fry
Tom Bell
Jerry Hicks
Kenny A. Chaffin
Danny P. Barbare

Lisa Gordon/Djuana

Duplicity
 
The step back to square one
just before you arrive
is not the same
as never having moved.
 
Today there is
rend & clash,
bent fortitude reaped
of holding two ideas
powerfully singular
like two thumbs
in separate holes
of a slipshod dam.
 
What you covet
is the possibility of leakage
even though it appears
you do everything in your power
not to let that happen.
 
It's a good thing you think
that those who care about you
can't see what
you're really up to.
 
Copyright © 2003 Lisa Gordon
 
 
Monogamy
 
The pandering after a clutch
that was the trigger, the found poem, the surprise -
bow-legged bravado & all that
hope for deep erotica shimmering - yes -
candles burning next to the radiator
melting wonky into flaming trees of good & evil
& the love on the wood floor
a shoehorn splinter of
love - man/woman -
mortally seeming last chance though
really not.
 
The woman's later kisses are a murmur of ecstatic condolences.
The man, prettily alive, strokes shoulders & falls summer-thriving
asleep.
 
*
 
You'd keep him if you could you think
at the same time not even believing yourself.
 
More correctly
you'd keep, if you could,
the self that you become here
lying all there next to him.
 
This has nothing to do
with committing
emotional fraud.
 
*
 
Years later in one of those dreams
where all the players have the wrong names, wrong faces
 
you recognize his hand holding a tea pot from Tibet
extending out of the sleeve of a homeless woman
who hasn't allowed touching
in a decade.
 
You have the most intense urge to kiss her,
drink the limp green tea
straight from the spout
spent leaves & all.

Copyright © 2003 Lisa Gordon

bio:  I'm a schizophrenic, but a lucky one, meaning my pills work at least for now, I have strong love in my life, I can function, I've mostly learned to deal. As far as writing goes: Well I always loved something that Margaret Atwood said many years ago when she was asked why she wrote. Her answer: Why doesn't everybody? Yes, that is it - natural as drawing breath, & everybody knows how difficult that can get at times, at the very very least metaphorically speaking.

Jan Savanyu

Newfangled ten thousand tenfold device that brannacks
forth a solution: the hair of the pintofolded woman or Edna
proclaiming her hate with kisses ten thousand ten folding
two brannacking beaming forth a nude conversation with
arousing tools of social flesh gouging more of what it
intended or twenty thousand five folded that face in the
grocery crowd that singular creme devil to resist no speak
no look but atonement made mother brannacking a
twentythirtyforty
 
spaces or shes what's left after the udder is milked
brannackbefolding tenfold fifty measure nano-machine where
is her on button
 
edna eye give you meye gumption          iu?
 
 
Copyright © 2003 Jan Savanyu

bio:  I am a 24 year old student in Richmond, VA. I am heavily influenced by the likes of Dickinson, Cummings and Corso. all I can say is that you must keep positive thinking and no illness in your body and mind can destroy you.

Joel Fry
 
 
If Night
 
If night has no water
or siphon in its bucket,
it is lost. It can only return
with two smooth stones
fastened like moles
to its skin.
 
If the moon knows lakes
and seamless strata,
then morning will open
and run its paddle
across an appendage
of birds in flight.
 
Copyright © 2003 Joel Fry

bio:  My name is Joel Fry. I live in Athens Alabama. I was diagnosed with Manic-Depressive illness at the age of 16. I have been published in the Melic Review and Stirring.

Tom Bell 
 
3/29
 
"War has colored all of our lives for a very long time."
 
Is casualty notification at all casual?
 
Instanteous haplessness =+= with new technology comes earsback pinning
anxiety = you pine.
 
Generic enbed, embed, in bed those angels dancing on the head of a pin
winning the battle
we are
 
"They [we] have been monitoring listening posts and flooding the
internet".
polling advertisees
 
"terminalizing" BaghdadaDada
 
I hate that it happened to him,
                                                            he who
"indoctrinated" us into the Marines way
 
our media mediated immediated knowledge of war
 
headlines creep under, crawl along inexorably relaying the underlying
messages quick [or better, as quickly]
 
 
3/27
Embedded media
Terminalized
Frag news crawls along at camel's pace under the TV picture
of....
Akhbar
 
TV has
Crawling once more under the screen
Along the banks of the Tibris
Clouds billow over Baghdad
Phones on the cutting edge disconnect
 
Regarding the Pain of Others
 
Nearby plaque commemorating Grant-
Land Rice's birthplace, Condoleesa
Rice lays out options, shopkeep, Kurd out of Jerusalem, carefully
handles
Camels out of Winston-Salem out of baccy from nearby fields as
encroaching
Vietnam vet fondles neck of Bud Light shimmers through on shockandawe
headline. Camera shifts to SUV mall miles off. Sex
y ad sublimes isms MONSTER.COM AMAZON ATLAS shrugged.
 
"in Bklyn over
the last 2 weeks a lone African-American has
murdered 4 Muslims and a few other shop keepers...extropolate
that..."
 
The show will go on tonight
 
3/25
 
"Invalid option" the computer
announced (snickered, spit out, bellweathered, cajoled underhandedly a
soft
lob I could, I thought, wham outa the park but overcut down into the
ground)
today via BellSouth (Cricket, Clickit, Verizontally)
the SSI Disability Examiner stated (uttered, actually he saw the irony
as
well).
 
Could be the name for a new school (flock, coterie, collab) of poetry
 
[but
would have been truer before 9/11 and the latest discovery of the
ability to
rejoin (at
least in one sense or maybe even enjoin) the trumpets of war].
 
War is a real danger or a brief bickering TV flicker.
 
NEEDS A VISCERAL DIMENSION
 
3/22
 
and then you wonder one day if the word is really the way i wrote it
 
interesting. had this thought last night
"and then you wonder
one day
If
the word is really the way I wrote it?
the word is really the way I write it?
they write it?
we write it?
this pen writes it?
this computer writes it?
this ami,ation program zips it?"
 
Then I got your message and thought of Lu Chi and brush meditators and
something Dmitri Buatov said about the roots of visual poetry and
Pennebaker's research which might say the how you 'say' actually
determines
what you say as in process determines content.
 
i think aan has done some things along this ine and a lot of people
don't
see it.
 
food for thought,
but for now I'll pick up my train of thought and write my world and
wonder
how well off Johnny Paycheck would have died had he not done 'Take This
Job
and Shoved It"?
 
3/19
 
Their madness, their badness
 
 
60 and still
 
           or
 
60 and still kiCKing
 
     or
 
Still
 
              or
 
Standing still
 
Attention
 
 
3/18
 
 
                               Unpolished Lines
 
In the air
Everywhere
These days. Unsaid
                              Unspoken
                                             Retracted
Contracted for e-publication if you would contract it or
                                     polish it some
 
It may be
Mayday, Mayday.
But say
Ing is by far the more difficult
Op
        ti
             on.
 
"I find it harder and harder to keep track of everything I don't do." -
John
Cayley in private email,
 
"I wonder; we seem to love poets and poetry for they can express in
writing
so well how they feel, which we can often relate to.
 
That may be part of the problem?" - response posted to a self-help
bulletin
board.
 
"Or part of the solution" - response to response.
 
suppression of
poetry helps me
digest the way
the world rumbles
on?
 
Copyright © 2003 Bell
 
bio:  Tom Bell is a psychologist in private practice and a widely published poet. He currently has diagnoses of irritable bowel syndrome and major depression.

Jerry Hicks
 
How long war -- who?
 
Fracture!
My mother, 20, own house,
she leaves a perfectly strong man,
100 miles drives
to Hawthorne place of great-grandmother
deposits me in dirty diapers, like a bad check.
She on to become worldly educated.
 
Terrified of stern, three, missing my dad, never
smiling grandmother no matter what grow
eat, poop, lie, listen talk, the
radio, you fight, cry, learn to shoot
a sling-shot, bird names, little sad songs, fly
kites. Some direction. School. Sticks. Steps.
 
Saw dad, mom occasionally, mysterious tide
flow on varient schedules different
goals and means. He found one day hill overlooking
Burbank airport, said, "Be strong."
He great war leaving to go far oceans. Nations needed
us. Fracture!
 
I, 5 cried and continued cried life mostly, cry
fills eyes black blobs dizzies me every life day. Tears throb
like seasons random crazy.
 
Unloved growing burden on who cares me feel some
evil child deserving nothing. God punishes crimes
I ignorance commit.
 
Do all wars forever? would my dad. would my mom.
would warmth and bounty...
i question -- i never the war, never.
nothing ever went. destroyed
i like London, i bombed Berlin,
i Hero-She-Ma cloud-dark. i core my life.
child wrong parents. wrong war world. wrong.
 
Copyright © 2003 Jerry Hicks
 
bio:  Jerry Hicks also appeared in Issue 8. His poems have been published in Rattle, Red River View, Anthology, Dan River, VeRT and others. Hicks hosts literary workshops, poetry events, and slams. He received the Excellence in Literary Art award from the City of Torrance in 1999. Books are "Even Weeds have Flowers," "Instructions Included," and "Blind as Bullets in a Crowd."

Kenny A. Chaffin
 
Innocence
 
In the Fall we'd gather the family together
the annual harvest of birds.
To clean and freeze some of our chickens,
as food for the coming year.
 
With the lawn the colors of Christmas
we pulled the entrails out. We'd catch
their legs with stiff wire snag
while they pecked the ground for food.
 
They'd flop on the grass
for what seemed like days;
blood spurts shooting from severed necks
as their thumb-sized hearts slowly stopped.
 
We'd scald them in a huge iron pot
with a wood fire for the heat. Pluck
the feathers (save them for pillows)
and pull the insides out. Find the liver,
gizzard and heart and save them with the rest.
 
For washing and rinsing we'd use zinc-plated tubs,
rolled from the wash-house to lawn.
We'd cut some up into legs thighs, and breast,
others we'd simply freeze whole.
 
And this is how it was done:
Daddy would grab them, head in his fist
and with two quick twirls pull it off.
I was too small, without the strength
to twirl them in the air. So I'd hold them down
my foot on their face and pull till the silence began.
 
Copyright © 2003 Kenny A. Chaffin
 
bio:  Kenny A. Chaffin has written poetry and fiction for over 10 years and has published poems in Vision Magazine, Array, Esc!, The Bay Review, The Caney River Reader, poetandwriter.com, WritersHood, Star*Line, MiPo, 14-4-30, and Melange. He lives in Denver, Colorado where he works as a Software Engineer to supplement his poetry income.

Danny P. Barbare
 
Cat in the Curtains
 
So cool is the room
On the couch
By the window at night,
Because the cat
Is in the curtains.
 
Copyright © 2003 Danny P. Barbare
 
 
bio:  Danny P. Barbare lives in the USA. He lives with his wife and two small pets in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. He has a Southern accent and loves to go on long walks the woods.