Issue #8

Two Poems by Felino Soriano


Painters’ Exhalations 371
—after Edmunds Lucis’ The Hunter

Hands, hefty thickness,
innate skeletal construction, forthcoming
predetermined
unaltered scope, target-escape
unlikely demeanor. Head
an extraordinary still. Eyes
roam in oscillating fashion,
ambulate into distance of
ascertaining ignorant prey.
Senses, serial in gradating
grace, the armor of attack
untouched by the runners
into swallowing, devastating
expanse.


Painters’ Exhalations 375
—after Dale Grimshaw’s Window to the Soul

Copacetic cliché
bound to the language-fib
conundrum,
belief sans empirical
clothing. Soul window
stained, hummingbird wing
apparatus visual disbelief
holding value in a vernacular
staircase leading into unknown
regions of philosophical inquiry.
Soul, existent, or, a fabrication
of structural design
waving eastwest among the
wind’s weight delegated to
construct formational harmony.


Biography Note:

Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974, California) is a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. He edits/publishes Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com, an online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press, www.differentiapress.com, dedicated to publishing e-chapbooks of experimental poetry. As a poet, he has authored ten collections of poetry, including Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008), Search among the Absent Found (Recycled Karma Press, 2009), and r (please press, 2009). The internal collocation of philosophical studies and love of classic and avant-garde jazz is the explanation for his poetic stimulation. Details are at his website, http://www.felinosoriano.com/.


Two Poems by Gary Beck


Ode to Dave Dawson and Freddie Farmer

I remember your books
blighting my childhood lust for learning,
reading you over and over,
when nothing else was left.
You were always winning;
sometimes wounded, but always winning.
Vacuum sealed for freshness, inventive,
heroic, resourceful, and always winning.
The Japs, the Jerries, so easily defeated,
you would have even beaten the commies,
but I grew up, ending your wars.
Today a man,
I smile your asinine morality
that rooted in my child’s mind
and wonder what you did for fun
after crushing the enemy.


Crash Landing

After moon set
wing tips lost in darkness
flickering lights at 30,000 feet
transit the airborne traveler.
Centuries below
clouds pitter patter
little girl toes
digging in the sand.
The endangered bird
flails the air,
hiccups an octopus explosion
that frees the stewardess,
rigid smile waxed in place,
offers coffee, tea, chocolate,
as the last hand gropes blindly,
veins surfacing in the pantry,
reaching for survival.


Biography Note:

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn't earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His chapbook 'Remembrance' was published by Origami Condom Press and 'The Conquest of Somalia' was published by Cervena Barva Press. A collection of his poetry 'Days of Destruction' has been published in 2009 by Skive Press. Another collection 'Expectations' is being published by Rogue Scholars Press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. He currently lives in New York City , where he's busy writing. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines.


Two Poems by Mark Jackley


AFTER BEING UP ALL NIGHT
AS HER HUSBAND EXPLAINED HE WAS LEAVING

Soon she moved to Baton Rouge,
where lost souls washed up
from New Orleans, some of whom
perhaps would also greet the day
clutching their ribs, bobbing
tearfully as morning
bled into the bedroom like a slow,
quiet flood of words.


AND

the drunken fifty-year-old
carpenter who leans against
the chain-link fence puking his guts out after hurling
his whiskey bottle
(finally)
through the living room window and
the slumping telephone
cable above him burdened by the weight of all those angry,
tearful and inadequate words
yet defying gravity,
held up by the strength
of something hard and splintered,
teetering and weathered, shit upon for years,
made by calloused hands
much like his


MONUMENTAL SCRAPINGS
Jeffrey S. Callico

Harbingers of delight these skeptics.
Forms shift upon dark piano benches.
Lovers crawl on shards,
Their droplets red reminders of rage.
No one knows why and so they stay
Alive, lights dotting skylines, muddy faces
Caked like bricks; even a mist cannot console.
Swallows crash to pavement, wings
Sudden displays of terror, undergrowth of night.
All warnings exhausted, legs running out:
Space left for nothing, tender shoots frail as death.


Biography Note:

Jeffrey S. Callico has been featured in several online literary journals, including FRiGG, Johnny America, Dispatch, Origami Condom and Full of Crow. His collection of short fiction, Fighting Off The Sun: Stories, Tales, and Other Matters of Opinion, is available on Amazon. He can be reached at wiredwriter26@gmail.com.


Who Cut The Cheese
Peter Magliocco

Fart jokes plug your nostrils
with smells of urban pollution
in the key of broken violin strings
sounding like zippers snapping off
faces of the dead Mandalay Bay chorus
assaulted by jokes of a suicide bomber
barfing out punch lines with sickening zeal
somebody tells you the world ended
yesterday after you received a cell call
giving you pinkeye forever

That's when your girlfriend materialized
with duct-taped nipples
from back issues of Smut Today

lit with a match
behind that rectal gas
igniting

your
exhausted
passion


Biography Note:

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada. He has poetry at THE SMOKING POET, A HUDSON VIEW POETRY DIGEST, THE BEAT, HEELTAP, THE BLUE HOUSE and elsewhere... His new novel is The Burgher of Virtual Eden from Publish America (www.publishamerica.com). He was Pushcart nominated for poetry in 2008.