V6 N1

Volume 6, Number 1 2024

Joseph Stanton

KANTAN

You are about to enter
a room with a déjà vu,
after years of wandering.
You are searching for a pillow,
a magical pillow that contains
incandescent images
of the future.
You hesitate at the doorway,
considering the night sky.
Seeing your name in lights,
you expect to star in eternity.

A breeze lifts you into the parlor,
and you stand,
in a half-remembered warmth,
talking to an old woman
who could be your mother
but isn’t.
Suddenly
the tingle down your spine
chimes midnight,
and you know you are in the right place.

While the gruel cooks,
the pillow comes to meet you
on the matted floor.
Visions fine-tune inventions
of fulfillment.
You sigh at beauty beyond
the stretch of words,
at music played on marble waterfalls,
at flowers that eat their own colors.
You rule the garden with an iron smile.

Torrents of pleasure
tumble you endlessly.
Your smile comes full circle, and,
having rounded yourself into a moon,
you see how your glow ripples the water
and wonder
if you have become
a Buddha.

It had to happen.
Torn from your pocket of joy,
you find yourself
spinning back into the room
where the old woman
hunches before you
asking if you’d like
a bite to eat.

You laugh and laugh,
uncontrollably,
maniacally,
shaking and shaking
until you shatter
into unimaginable constellations.

Mark Young

A LETTER TO MATSUO BASHO

Each morning, in the later

part of the season, two

rainbow lorikeets arrive &

perch in the upper branches

of the mandarin tree, sitting

there, couple-comfy, until

I have finished my garden

duties. Then they move to

the lower branches to eat the

ripest fruit, piercing the skin

& attacking the flesh. Some

skins & segments fall to the

ground. Other leavings remain,

stalks stuck to the wood, hollow

orange shells, miniatures of

those lanterns you like so much.

Thomas M. Cassidy / Cheryl Penn / John M. Bennett

Michael McPherson

BLACK ANGEL

Fine boned and sleek,
she fights the bridle
and prances, legs thin
as wind from mountains
and her coat shines dark
like a bottomless sea.
This fast horse flirts
and beckons, her kisses
reach to find that last
best thing inside you,
the part you thought you
lost or somehow left
at the pale doorstep of
cold howling emptiness.
She walks in your spirit
like long warm breath
to the bottom of yesterday,
her teeth bared to the bit
and all your crisp bills
waiting, daring anyone so
foolish to bet against her.
But a halt in her gait tells
you once she was ridden wrong,
this tiny blemish like blues
that will color your night
and call out all your demons
so you must face them down,
money on the line, chatter
of fools who would malign
a wound within this filly.
There is no horse today
that ever can catch her,
her blackness like space
between all brittle stars,
but one you broke still
haunts you—shadow of
a single terrible error
so difficult to forgive.
The horse of your mind
is her only rival, doubt
that saps your courage
and remaining firm resolve.
She carries your shrouded
one lightly in her shining.
Only look to the turn of
her aquiline head toward you,
her offer of chance, of grace,
of healing when you watch her run.

Sally Anderson Boström

THE WINTER MONTH

In the old world this was the ninth month
and I was born in the first

Your ancestors called it the winter month, and I’ve always thought
that winter begins when we set the clocks back
when we try to win against the darkness

Now the nights are long, the daylight in my children’s eyes
a glimmer of what we took for granted in summer

The Swedes have six more November words than we do
novemberhimmel for the sky right now, or the lack of it
novemberdimma for the light right now, or the lack of it
novembergrå for the color right now, or the lack of it
novembersol—you get the idea

But then there’s novemberstämning
which is the feeling of November
And novemberfrost, which is different from septemberfrost
which is new and exciting, and also when I met you

So here we are at the beginning of darkness
which may also be the end

Tessa LeBaron

Christy Passion

IF I WERE AN OPTIMIST

the obvious would be to write about this garden
filled with the buzz of bees overhead
in the flowering avocado tree, the creep
of curling pumpkin leaves along the wooden box,
or even of the neighbor cat, wading
through a thicket of red torch ginger
cautious black paw over cautious black paw,
sniffing at broken patches of afternoon light.
You would squint at the obtuse;
the many fallen leaves not yet swept away,
a cracked stone pathway,
shocking burst of purple eggplant.
All of it as proof
that the untended finds its way without us—
they bloom and fall and move in miracles
while we give our hearts away.
Reel in quiet revelation,
the cat leaping up at a white butterfly,
a furtive glance from an ordinary dove,
and the teacup beside me
balanced in the grass
half full.

Bill Wolak

The Willingness First Glimpsed in Your Eyes

Joseph Stanton

SINGING SUZY TO SLEEP

Thirty-three years I have waited
for this listener,
happy to hear my voice
singing about time
and all it cannot change
about love,
which is the reason
for trying to sing
when this perfect
little angel of light,
my baby,
is leaning partway into sleep
and needs the smoothed edge of song
to bring her the rest of the way home
to whatever dreams her babyheart
knows how to make.

I am singing her
what she must come to know:
that it’s still the same old story,
that the world will always welcome lovers,
that time goes by.

She feels what I mean, I know, clinging to my shoulder and the sound of my voice as if they made a difference— the tiny flower of her fist opening and closing and opening.

Billy McKay

Joy Buzzer

Jeff Bagato

THE JOYS OF SERF CULTURE

On the back of a rhinoceros
the countess rides out
to inspect her lands,
all shopping malls and nail
salons dripping with sweat
from somebody’s brow
unseen and unknown;
the pizza parlor flips out pies
like UFOs into the atmosphere,
flying free across America
like crows or vultures
covered in red sauce
and cheese, flapping broad wings
and circling the heads
of weak individuals lying
half dead in their cars;
hamburgers walk the earth
marching straight from the griddle
and dressing up for a promenade
in sesame seed bun,
special sauce, tomato,
pickles and onion—all the best
burgers toss a pearl necklace
over their forms, like two rows
of teeth coming down for a bite,
but burgers can run
circles around most meat
eaters, skipping and laughing
and making a scene—beer flows
in the fountain like the perception
of time, sampled and assembled
by analog brains to push
a person out of the goo—
cars do jumping jacks at every
corner gas station, happy
to feed on the vast teat
of America, oil dripping from their holes
like French fry grease
through a paper bag full of hot
death; it’s a panorama of ice
cream bars and cigarettes
and monkeys dancing a jig
for more noodles, loaded on coffee,
and brains fit to bursting
from the rise of language and sin
like an apple pie encrypted
with credit card numbers,
addresses and lies, lies,
lies for the taxman,
the auditor, the fuzz

Hawai’i Amplified Poetry Ensemble

Guerrilla Writers

Richard Hamasaki – poem, vocal, and bass / H. Doug Matsuoka – keyboards / Shinichi Takahashi – guitar / Matt Barnett – drums / percussion

Ron Welburn

POSTMODERN AGE

They call this the postmodern age,
and I once asked
“What comes after the avant garde?”
Baraka once chanted of “post-American” 60’s and
I knew what he meant,
all politically ezzthetic, the worlds of color
crowding into North America to join us.

But I am dubious of some motives,
even as the dispirited and the lost are obvious,
even as the games on the monitor screen
train you to perfect your aim and kill,
even as the kill itself is casually
disconnected from prayer, food, and survival.

In the words you can see our world
the way the long time ago people understood it;
you can, from any spot on the ground, or
as we drive, attempt to block out
the house or tower promontory to
the escarpments and the cresting range.
You can see; but it takes more than listening
to absorb this knowing.

Postmodern’s many voices include
the 4 X 4’s traipsing up and down, and
the din of mowers and drones of cargo planes
competing with the hawks’ whistles and the falling leaf.

I am dubious of how this makes music stronger.
Yet, Red Tail, Porcupine, the Youngbloods,
Plains Ojibway, Black Lodge,
these are the singers of power.
Sometimes in their songs I think of hard bop,
of Monk and Coltrane, of a Mingus orchestration.
The drum and soloists may take this form in me.

When we drove home from the Dartmouth pow wow
with those young guys from Manitoba on tape
singing the Anishnabeg and the beauty and the power,
we were singing that in the circle
no lost adult or child cannot be found.

Bill Wolak

The Tripwire of Uncertainty

Fourteenth Floor

Fully Assembled

Tim Tapajna – lead vocal, acoustic guitar, electric guitar / Mike Tapajna – electric guitar, saxophone, accompanying vocals / Mark Tapajna – keyboards / Al Rothacker
bass guitar, accompanying vocals / Robert Mozik – Drums, percussion, accompanying vocals / Janice Fields – violin

Timothy Pilgrim

Flying Jack Daniel’s to a séance with Theodore Roethke

Our imaginary cockpit
was lit by candlelight
as I strapped in beside you
grinning sweaty at the stick.

Your whiskey laugh, wild breath
said the flight ahead
would be a dance of pleasure,
sky-crazed waltz with death.

We chased Wordsworth’s nightingale
across a dark cloud bank
then buzzed Aphrodite
sunning naked on her back.

Spotting Xanadu below us,
we plunged into the wind
and climbed, chasing blithe spirits
skylarking in Coleridgean sin.

One last shot of Jack gulped down,
we whirled skyward just for fun
then crashed into ocean breakers
beneath the smoldering sun.

Steven B. Smith

My prime time-slice?
the hour sitting alone
in the dark
toke in hand
purr blackcat blackdenim lap
wife upstairs asleep
old dog on floor at her feet
my sole light low gas fireplace
and downtown Cleveland 3 miles north
blocked by night and leaves
leaving bridgeblurts
of stark white headlights
and acid red tails
each sure their north most important
their south more right
and of course they’re right
and of course they’re wrong
as usual
each right impacting right
each wrong rippling long
me the mess of mass between
their certainty circus
with my no go no where no know
still warm from womb
awaiting worm
where north, south, right, wrong
no belong

Kathy (Lady) Smith

Walter Bargen

DOWN COUNT

It was the unexpected misery,
not so much unexpected
as what was not fully imagined,
not the end dream but the apocalyptic projection.

Suburbs without electricity, lights out,
the cycloptic-cold fish eye of television screens
floating belly up in living rooms,
faces closing in, a distortion staring into

reflections, a projection of diminishment,
a panicked self-absorbed aquarium. Ground shivering,
house shacking, radios strapped to tables,
the advertisements beat out of them,

the talk shows mute. Refrigerators no longer
wandering kitchens, humming their monotonous tune.
The darkness, the silence. The only
weather report, to stare up at the sky,

extending only as far as the horizon
of shingled roofs. As if time had stopped,
each face filled with amazement a moment longer.

Paul Hostovsky

THE CURIOUSITY FACTOR

Don’t you love that it’s a thing,
the wretchedness
on the other side
spilling over, puddling
like transmission fluid or
blood, forcing us to slow down
because it’s all so irresistible,
so infectious that we can’t
look and we can’t stop looking
at the beautiful catastrophes—
beautiful for the way they
bring us together over them—
in a world where every last one of us
is stuck here with no idea why,
hoping and praying it’ll all become clear
somewhere up ahead,
the unseen hands of angels
bearing brooms, bearing stretchers
and wreckers with winches,
not exactly clearing it up
but clearing it away somehow
before we ever get there,
so we never know in this lifetime
what it was we were waiting for
or the reason for our long-suffering.

Mary Ellen Derwis

Brandy Nālani McDougall

RETURN TO THE KULA HOUSE

Night, and the road to Kula
is lit completely by the moon.
Driving, headlights off, I see shadows,
blurred pastures lined in barbed wire.
I am trying not to remember
the old house, its glassless windows—

a kitchen knife through a window—
my mother and father in our Kula
house. I don’t want to remember,
but the face in this moon
has the same harsh, wiry
gaze. Walls lined with shadows,

bruised fists, for years, I shaded
them with unbroken windows
and fence-posts left unwired,
where our little house in Kula
overlooks all of Maui and the moon
could never ask me to remember.

Once, it was enough to remember
without remembering, to think of shadows
instead of parents, the laughing moon.

I roll up the windows
and park the car. The Kula
wind against my neck. The barbed-wire
fence, glinting silver, running wire
past our house for years. I remember
I was nine when we all left Kula,
my parents spinning shadows
around our secrets—the front window
that perfectly framed the moon—

Crying, my father woke me, the cold moon
in his voice: Hurry. Now. And I ran, wiry
from sleep, saw my mother by the windows,
pressing a knife to her chest. I remember
her, ashamed and hollow, the shadows
under her eyes. The knife thrown to the Kula

night, the moon as I ran out the door. I remember
falling on barbed-wire, and behind me, two shadows,
boarding up empty windows and mourning our lost Kula.

John Dorsey

CYCLOPS SONG OR WRITING A BALLAD IN THE ICU

with one eye front & center
i wonder what people will think
when i get out of here
will they call me a cyclops in search of a prairie
a ghost in the shape of a rose
just hoping to be left alone
i wonder if the night nurse
regrets getting that tattoo
of a sparrow
on her right ankle
back in high school
that even now
looks slightly infected
under the hospital lights
her hair sweaty & matted
after a 12 hour shift
waiting for her slow dance
with the mid missouri heat to be over with
leonard cohen’s angels of mercy
at least got to come out of the rain
long enough to say a prayer
after that what good is a song
when your pockets are full of poems
that will never make out of this room
when the moonlight feels dead
when all you do
is stare at bare walls
& that same nurse’s hand
feels cool to the touch.

Donna Dallas

I STROLLED BY MY MOTHER’S BONES TODAY

Along the beach trail
among beer bottles
hypodermic needles
condoms
broken bits of glass
her collarbone
how could there be another
neck so slender
the beaded bracelet
for sure it was hers
turquoise faded to light blue
almost white

Hippie lover
bonfire warrior
beer and blaze
over the crash
of wave after wave
year upon year
slow havoc
wrecks the bones

I left her pieces
peacefully
as I found them
a scattered deity
littered about
to continue
the legacy
of her late loving
drug-haze body
the scent of musk
mixed with opium
her favorite
her demise
never near enough
for me to inhale her

Bill Wolak

The Imperceptible Balance of Restless Tides

Michael McPherson

TAPES

I’ve received your phone messages
and kept them all, years worth.
This archive contains voices dead
and dear, and much I’ve travelled
far to forget. Today I foolishly
played it all from start to finish,
lavished this afternoon on my back
listening to hear a long gone brother
of my heart, and the father I lost
last week. I find that in between
there are women. I must admit
there are lots of them. They call
for chocolate ice cream, for damaged
cars, cigarettes, directions, boyfriends
who’ve betrayed them, to hear how I am.
One offers a haircut. Another waits
on the bar. It’s eerie.
I must admit I find it easier
to love the dead. It’s a mistake,
this electronic snooping on the past.
Voices in prison, voices grave,
screams of promises and forget me
nots, urgent requests for
drugs and money and redemption,
cries against this restless
tide of our years toward what
we can’t know—Hello, I’m here.
Still waiting for your call.

Agnes Vojta

PACKING LIST

The blue dress that has pockets for pebbles and shows off my legs.
The sandals with the Velcro straps for the beach.
The linen jacket for chilly evenings.
A pair of scissors to trim lose ends.
A map to know where the boundaries are.
A mask to hide my true feelings.
An adapter to understand your language.
An icon of the patron saint of disagreements.
A gift to appease the needy gods you worship.
A calculator to determine how many apologies to exchange for my faults.
A purse full of coins to purchase absolution.
A spare heart in case mine gets broken.
How to make it all fit.

Cheryl Penn

The-Dial-Round

Kenneth P. Gurney

FRACTION REMAINING
EQUALS 1/128th

During my first half-life
I was too happy
to become tired.

In my second half-life
I wore flannel
to enhance my masculinity.

In my third half-life
I cradled a knotted sweatshirt
to practice for my first born.

In my fourth half-life
my face was dented
by a doorknob I crashed into.

In my fifth half-life
I flickered in and out of phase so quickly
no one realized I was only half there.

In my sixth half-life
every time I got the kitchen floor spotless
muddy feet ran across it.

In my seventh half-life
I forgot my wisdom teeth were pulled
and asked them for advice.

Joe Balaz

Joel’s Madness

Joe Balaz – visual and poem / vocal / electric guitar / rhythm bass / harmonica

Jason Floyd Williams

the last defense is silence.

My mouth always gets me in trouble.
There are always moments I threaten vows of silence,
but that never lasts long.
So it’s hard for me to think that Art, my paternal granddad, was
always stoic & silent.
I believe he was just worn out, like erosion,
through a long stretch of losing arguments.
His personal admittance of failure,
his defense strategy, was to keep quiet.
There was that time he & I drove his golf-cart,
parked by the railroad tracks, & watched the Amish
work on a couple acres of his land.
They worked in teams—
fathers & sons, neighbors & friends—
cutting & processing the oak & the elm.

Art & I sat & watched them, awkwardly, like anthropologists
trying to interpret this bond, this teamwork.

We sat like that, watching, for years.

Jon Bennett

Sharko

Since he’d been a choir boy
he had a good shtick in the missions,
a week of good deeds
and they’d give him the keys
Then he’d rob the poor box
and go somewhere else
In New Mexico he hit a big score
and holed up
in an Albuquerque flophouse
with 4 cases of Muscatel
He got esophageal hemorrhoids,
and gin blossoms, but the worst thing
were his feet
It was a rare condition
called Charcot’s disease
(pronounced ‘Sharko’)
His feet swelled to the size
of watermelons
and when they shrank back down
were permanently disfigured
Go ahead, look it up
it’s a thing
Since then everyone calls him ‘Sharko’
but he doesn’t rob
poor boxes anymore,
he’s too slow
to get away.

Michael Nyers

A Tribute to Charles Bukowski

Christy Passion

HERE’S A POEM FOR YOU, BUKOWSKI

You might have liked him,
watched him at least,
appreciated the way he said, sure
the cool lowering of his eyelids, nod of his head,
cigarette dangling from his lower lip
slow, smooth, sure
a man’s man.

you would have watched her too,
a honey of a wife
when she took out the garbage late at night,
cheap god chain firm against her breasts

watched her take deep breaths and linger
around the roach infested rusty cans near the street,
no cars rolling through that late at night.
She’d stare down it though
stare for a good minute like she was waiting for something.
You ever saw a woman stare without hope, Bukowski?
without anger, without fear? Like watching a horse race
knowing from the second the gates open, the bet you placed is lost?

When she gets back,
the noises from their apartment,
the crashing of pots, slap of skin, muffled cry—
keep the same rhythm as the moths dancing downstairs
in the liquor store lights.

I don’t think you would have taken sides.
I think you would have gotten out of Dodge
and gone to the nearest bar, got a drink, and got laid
in that order. Imagined doing that wife
and not looking in her eyes.
I think you might have been able to relate.

Jonathan Taylor

COYOTE IN THE STREET LIGHT

I see Coyote heading home, alone
From a jag with Anishnaabeg

Yeah, I bet he tried to steal your woman
Like he stole your lighter
Drank up all your New Year cheer
And bummed half a pack of smokes
Coyote only listens to one song
He puts on “I Wanna Be Your Dog”
If you try to change the track
He’ll growl and gnash his teeth at you
Coyote woke up at 11:45 AM
Pulled three lighters out of his pocket
Lit a bent cigarette
Then howled at his howling head
He’s still trying to howl his hangover away
On New Year’s Day

Paul Hostovsky

A MODEST PROPOSAL

Let’s get rid of all the carnivores, why
don’t we? It would go a long way toward
world peace. I mean, do we really need
all those birds of prey? Wouldn’t the common
house sparrow, which is able to perform
complex tasks like opening automatic doors
to enter a supermarket, be a more appropriate
national bird than the bald eagle? I mean,
think about it: if we lost all the lions
and tigers and bears, the cats and the dogs,
and the humans who can’t make the switch
to vegetarianism, wouldn’t life be kinder and
kind of sweeter? OK, maybe you’re thinking
a world without dogs is no place you’d ever
want to live. And though the sparrow’s diet
consists mainly of seeds, it does eat the occasional
animal: beetles, caterpillars, flies and aphids,
among others. OK, I withdraw my nomination
of the sparrow for the national bird, but hear
me out: we’d still have elephants. In fact
we’d have way more elephants than we have now,
not to mention gorillas, rhinos, horses and cows.
And all those humans who wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Teodoru Badiu

Blue Magic Forest

Sally Anderson Boström

SOMMARHUS

In the shadow of the house
the grass is cold and wet.
I wonder if it was ever meant to last.

If we ever really think about permanence
or what we’re passing on.
My children are the fourth generation to sleep here.

And in that house, the one with the splintered gable
and the sinking floorboards, the windows still intact,
we can count five lines of blue eyes and heavy brows.

In August, we pick wild strawberries in front of the pigpen.
The animal long gone, the berries oblong and red as a fingernail,
some as large as mine, others as small and sweet as my sons’.

We squat, eating from the rich soil of the swine. I offer
a handful of berries to the baby who snorts them
smiling, his soft face nuzzling my open palm.

Then we play three little pigs, they run from the pigpen
to the wooden house, to the sinking cement house.
I howl like I don’t allow myself in the city, they squeal.

My husband, the bloodkin, sits back in his chair, smiling,
not because the women before me were too busy to play
but because I’m crawling in the grass with no pants on.

Mallory N. Ortega

Brittany M. Ortega

boop

Thank God for clever people, you know?
The mind like an ant hill,
the mind like a box knot,
the mind like a twisted tongue tucked
too far into

the panting mouth of an old

running
shoe.

I picture these spaces at length when I read you
(and you, and you, and you, and you).

Some of you seem partial to pastoral landscapes.
See here. The gourd
balanced on her head
holds red wine and thumbs threaded through
okie-dokies.

Some think like sackcloth, which is to say thinly,
and then to say roughly, like fortified
pant racks.

And some, like you, have minds like ball bearings.
Its weight in my palm of newfound understanding.
Frictionless roll from one thought to another,
and when viewed more closely,
I see my own face.

You might now be wondering what the title’s about.
And if so, your mind looks like work in an hour.

Look.

If I poke at your chest to point out a stain,
it’s only to pretend I am striking a match
on my finger’s way up to your
schnoz.

Angela Caparaso

Punti

Richard Stevenson

SIT DOWN, FRED ASTAIRE!

Sit down, Fred Astaire!
Action Dachshund’s
tap dance and tarantella
has all you two-legged hoofers beat.

He’s got four-to-the-floor
totally tubular moves
and cha- cha- changes
with a gabardine groove.

Soooo smooooth. And tubular.
Did I say he was tubular?
A total tube sock dude!
In the pocket, in the groove.

His Duradeck Pirouette
would have had Betty Grable groveling
to get a spot on his dance card.
So don’t you take it hard.

Action Dachshund – Dax for short –
Ain’t one to disport
his fine canine gams
about yer southern debutante porch.

He’s fine supine. Don’t need
no mint juleps or two-lip clench
to get him through his day… Ruff
or harrumph is all he need say.

They should make a fedora
outta his hide when he dies.
Keep it cocked sideways
to let y’all see his grin.

When he comes down from the stairs
to center spot to receive first prize,
Slinky’s got nothing on him. He rolls
like an elastic off a bank roll, baby.

Yeah! Action Dachshund!
Cattle catcher chest,
commanding snip snout.
Dancin’s what he’s all about.

Teodoru Badiu

Fly Try

Steve Klepetar

MISTAKES

All my mistakes were gathered in one place.
How could there be so many?
My parents were there, smiling at me.
My mother handed me a shovel and I started to dig.
Errors of judgement flew from the floor into huge heaps.
So many times I should have kept my mouth shut.
My father laughed about the time I paid ten cents
for a small comic book, while his fat issue of the Times
was just a nickel. How that one stung.
All those baseball cards I threw out, and the Nehru suit
I wore once. Oh, it was painful to watch myself
trip and tear my school pants,
sign up for Eighteenth Century German Drama,
belly flop from the ten foot board, leap from the top
of the garage, tumble off the palomino as we rode around
the dressage ring, laughing about how much beer we’d drink
if only we could get a ride to the tavern at the top of the hill.

John Dorsey

A GOLDFISH IS GONNA DIE TONIGHT

a guy covered in grease
wearing a hat for the local body shop
stands by the ferris wheel at the town fair
holding a plastic bag filled with just enough water
to keep a single goldfish on life support
as his girlfriend yammers on about funnel cake
& how she really wanted a pink teddy bear
sipping a light beer in daisy dukes
two sizes too small
with thighs like fried dough
while using her free hand
to flick the bag with her fingers
to recreate some sort
of backwoods generational trauma
where everyone gets smacked around
she keeps flicking her fingers
just long enough
to make waves
just long enough
to make you rethink feminism
as you wait for a prince cover band
that only knows a few charlie daniels songs
sometimes we all end up in the wrong place
drunk to the gills
we just dive right in.

Tessa LeBaron

all-in-your-head

Fourteenth Floor

FRIGHTENED

Tim Tapajna – lead vocal, acoustic guitar, electric guitar / Mike Tapajna – electric guitar, saxophone, accompanying vocals / Mark Tapajna – keyboards / Al Rothacker bass guitar, accompanying vocals / Robert Mozik – Drums, percussion, accompanying vocals / Janice Fields – violin

Jon Bennett

FEAR AND TREMBLING

There’s a Chinese restaurant
on the corner of Clement and 24th
They have irrelevant green beans
and their fried tofu is maudlin
but it’s the only place
open after 2am
and so I eat there
almost exclusively
To quote Kierkegaard,
“In as much as
and in the sense that,”
the linoleum is revolting
and the chili oil
like brown fish scales
floating in a snow globe
from Hell
I find it all comforting
especially the old neon sign
blinking “Chaos Chaos Chaos”
and then the solitary apostrophe- ‘ ‘ ‘
I can honestly say
I dine on chaos
I dine on chaos nightly.

Kathy (Lady) Smith

Walter Bargen

THE KNIFE IS DEEP

He didn’t know what he was looking for,
or that he was looking at all. He just started
to talk, and having started to talk,
mid-morning sitting one chair back
from a friend’s breakfast table,
where two children eat quietly,
listening too intently to the point of boredom,
the daughter eventually getting up
and placing herself first in front of the TV,
but even there she can’t escape her own boredom,
so she turns to the computer and is erased.

The son more curious, at least mildly surprised,
even mystified by the conversation
that transcends the Saturday ritual
leading from the known to the known,
soccer practice to movie, but now this stranger
speaking volumes in paranoid tongues:
stolen elections, government terrorist
alert to undermining the opposition,
secret arrests, people stripped of citizenship.

Fighting a war to keep the rich rich,
sounding like an insect caught in a cardboard box
under a porch light by his front door, chitinous legs
working the corrugated walls of night, rich rich.

Steven B. Smith

Rubicon

Donna Dallas

DEAD OF NIGHT

Where have you gone boy
with your blonde frosted mullet
and denim vest layered over
a hand-me-down leather biker jacket
you disappeared
from 108th Street and Atlantic Avenue

You took a drag
of a cigarette
sprinkled with angel dust
we watched your eyes quake
flit and roll backwards
2am so dark the moon a navy hue
blurred behind a menacing cloud
we saw you
then we didn’t
your body hit the floor in a blink

We waited in the dead of night
for the ambulance
clutched your left hand
to keep it from twitching

You’re gone
along with the park
apartment buildings litter the view
of the stellar stars
never saw a navy moon again
in my sleep
I still smell tobacco
and angel dust burning

Steven B. Smith

You say seeping
I say weeping
let the games begin

Pain is the price paid for being
and for hurting nature again and again

And yet man is nature
and nature lies
and nature cheats
and nature steals
and nature eats

This forever fight
twixt entropy and escalation
never ends

So I lay back in ecstasy
knowing trouble’s down the line
but hot tub bath is now

Ellen Jantzen

Influencing Memory

Jason Floyd Williams

the fog.

He remembered my mom, his first wife,
throwing a cinder-block through
the caddy’s windshield
while he was in it.
But he forgot about all
his affairs with dancers
that led up to that moment.

It was his story.

A new story in the dementia rotation.
I didn’t want to correct him.

algae in the pond.

On the phone, he tells me what
I need to hear—
That I put my mom into
a home for the right reasons.
She’s always had mental issues.
She’s in a secure place now.
She’ll be taken care of now.
Properly fed. Properly medicated.
“You remember, Jay, the piles
of dirty dishes
in the underground house.
The dog shit, the fleas.”
My ol man’s dementia is a
type of algae—
It usually clouds things,
you get portions of visibility.
But today it’s nearly clear.

He also says,
“Jay, you should see what
this stripper is doing on this movie
right now.
She should be arrested.”

Kenneth P. Gurney

KILLDEER MISS THE DUNES

The sea god realized swallowing
all the plastic dumped in his realm
gave him a belly ache.

He beached himself not far from a stream
where an osprey ate what remained
of a salmon not fully consumed by a bear.

The sea god vomited nearly twenty acres of plastics
to fill an area the locals complained
suffered from severe erosion.

He withdrew the sea and its tides fifty yards
so it would not rush on shore and steal
this multi-colored sadness.

A raft of buffleheads was quite upset about this
since the sea god’s actions
moved them closer to orca filled waters.

Sea otters mapped out the new shoreline
with its new perspectives of sea stacks
and the minor alterations in the clouds.

Tony Beyer

ANTHROPOBSCENE

the religions which disdain
life on earth as a plaything

trivial and insignificant
rely on the default that no one

who’s moved on into the afterworld
has authentically returned

with evidence one way or the other
so treating this planet with respect

as if it’s the only one we’ll know
makes sense for all species

not least the most God-obsessed
and therefore perhaps most destructive

a minor tailless branch of the primates
too feeble to succeed without its heavy brain

Ellen Jantzen

Watchful Posture

Steve Klepetar

MISCHIEVOUS GODS

There’s a portion of the sun I’ll never see.
Maybe it lies over the ocean, years from now.
Maybe a hole will open, so large that solar
winds rattle windows in every house.
I can’t stop thinking about all the things
I won’t see. These thoughts disturb my rest.
When that happens, I walk for miles
along the river trail. Sometimes the paths
divide and I find myself in a new meadow
or by a spring fed pond, where green water
hides among the leaves. It may take hours
to find my way home, and by then I’m hungry
enough to feel nothing but the joy of food,
textures and tastes that send pleasure through
me like the burning arrows of mischievous gods.

Jon Bennett

THE MONKEY WITH THE GUN

There were 3 monkeys
and one of them couldn’t see
although sometimes
he’d pull down his blindfold
just as the one wearing earplugs
occasionally popped one out
The really sick monkey
with tracheal cancer
could, in a pinch,
use his electric voice box
But these three monkeys
often didn’t like
what they heard
or saw
so when they spoke
it was usually to tell someone,
“Shut up!”
If that didn’t work
there was always the 4th monkey
the one with the gun
and the delete key.

Thomas M. Cassidy and John M. Bennett

Timothy Pilgrim

BOOKMARKED DREAMS

Real dreams having fled me,
nightmares gone too, I wake
before dawn, curse the night,

stream a faked dream instead.
I close eyes, hold breath, trust
to be soothed though it’s a lie.

Tonight, rock concert tour,
me, lead singer, Clapton-like,
with dreads. Witty, fit, not tone-deaf,

to-die-for in bed. These me-dreams,
bookmarked, yellow-stickied, queued
in my head. Rich, happy, sheaths

of friends, loved by my children,
I give big to the homeless, shelters,
even my sibs. One marker, though,

ragged, for a dream I repeat —
my heart beats on its own,
like magic, I sleep.

Mary Ellen Derwis

Fourteenth Floor

KILL THE BASSPLAYER

Tim Tapajna – lead vocal, acoustic guitar, electric guitar / Mike Tapajna – electric guitar, saxophone, accompanying vocals / Mark Tapajna – keyboards / Al Rothacker bass guitar, accompanying vocals / Robert Mozik – Drums, percussion, accompanying vocals / Janice Fields – violin

Joseph Stanton

THE SHIP OF LAUGHTER

The boat is a thin line
of darkness that rises
above a rumor of dawn

on dark, dark waters.
The boat must make it through
jagged masses of cloud

and mountain. As always
shadow could be everywhere
but for a certain glamour

at the heart where beat
the pagliacci,
the drumming clowns whose tears

are laughter, whose laughter
tears and gathers to the sea
that rises to fall, falls to rise.

It is the steady beat
that keeps the ship above
the waves, making light of all
that passes for darkness.

It is enough that the oars
beat against their shadows.
It is enough to get us
somewhere, anywhere.

CONTRIBUTORS

Teodoru Badiu is a Freelance Neo Pop Artist and Creative Media Designer based in Vienna, Austria. His work has appeared in magazines, websites and books such as Computer Arts, New Masters of Photoshop: Volume 2, and PSD Magazine.

Jeff Bagato produces poetry and prose as well as mail art, electronic music and glitch video. New books for 2022 document experimental text work from the past few years,
including In the Engine Room with Bettie and Andrea Reading Pornography, Gonch Poems, Robot Speak, and Floral Float Flume: Flue Flit Flip. A blog about his writing
and publishing efforts can be found at http://jeffbagato.wordpress.com. He lives in Universal City, Texas.

Walter Bargen has published 26 books of poetry. His most recent books are: Too Quick for the Living (2017), My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (2018), Until Next Time (2019), You Wounded Miracle (2021), Too Late to Turn Back (2023). He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009). His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in over 300 magazines.

Jon Bennett writes and plays music in California in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. You can find more of his work in various places online.
A collection of his poetry is available through Amazon at Leisure Town.

John M. Bennett has been widely published, and has exhibited and performed his word art worldwide in numerous publications and venues. He was the editor and publisher of Lost and Found Times, from the middle 1970s to the early 2000s, and he is the founder of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries. He has a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature and lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Tony Beyer writes in Taranaki, New Zealand. His print titles include Dream Boat: selected poems and Anchor Stone.

Sally Anderson Boström is the author of the chapbook Harvest, and numerous short stories, essays, and poems. Her recent work can be found in Humana Obscura, Ms. Magazine, Sweet Lit, and an anthology with Gunpowder Press. Originally from Santa Barbara, California, she has been living in Europe for the past 15 years. After 11 years in Sweden, she is currently living in Czechia, with her husband and two young children. http://www.sallyandersonbostrom.com

Angela Caporaso is an Italian artist focusing on mail art, artist’s books and visual poetry, working with the mediums of collage, trash-art and, more recently, digital formats. Angela Caporaso’s art has always been characterized by a constant research and experimentation. She lives in Caserta, Italy.

Thomas M. Cassidy aka Musicmaster is an active and prolific collagist, mail-artist and stand-up poet. He currently serves on the boards of Cheap Theatre and Rain Taxi Review of Books, both based in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he collects, breeds, raises, and occasionally mocks books and ephemera. Several of his pieces or stream-of-mouth captions can be watched on animator Wayne Nelsen’s channel on YouTube.

Donna Dallas has appeared in a plethora of journals, most recently The Opiate, Beatnik Cowboy, Tribes, Horror Sleaze Trash and Fevers of the Mind. She is the author of Death Sisters, her legacy novel, published by Alien Buddha Press. Her first chapbook, Smoke and Mirrors, launched in 2022 with New York Quarterly. Her latest chapbook, Megalodon, was launched with The Opiate.

Mary Ellen Derwis is a painter and photo artist, and her work has appeared in various publications online and in print. She was born and raised in Cleveland, and later lived in San Francisco, California, before relocating to Honolulu, Hawai’i. She returned to live in Northeast Ohio for a little more than a decade, before moving
to live in Virginia.

John Dorsey is the former poet laureate of Belle, Missouri and the author of Pocatello Wildflower. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Fourteenth Floor was a Cleveland progressive band that toured for awhile and is
remembered for their impressive cd Circus, Saints, and Sinners. A few of
the songs from that varied music cd is included in this issue. Tim Tapajna,
lead vocals / acoustic and electric guitars, Mike Tapajna, electric guitar / saxophone / vocals, Mark Tapajna, keyboards, Robert Mozik, drums / percussion / vocals, and Al Rothacker, bass guitar / bugle / harmonica / vocals, were the members of the band.

Kenneth P. Gurney is an Albuquerque, New Mexico poet. His work has appeared in print and web publications around the world. His latest poetry collection is
Far Away Right Here. More of his work can be found at umflop.com As he ages, he has gained a greater appreciation for things like Pantone 301 C, a smartly turned
5-4-3 double play and movies with few actions sequences.

Hawai’i Amplified Poetry Ensemble’s “Guerrilla Writers” was originally released on cassette in 1989 with Richard Hamasaki on bass and vocals; Shinichi Takahashi on electric guitar; H. Doug Matsuoka on keyboards; and Matt Barnett on drums. Richard Hamasaki is currently collaborating on and co-directing a short experimental film with Bay Area filmmakers Jody Stillwater and Sebastian Galasso. The film is based on the late Wayne Kaumualii Westlake’s poem titled “MANIFESTO [for Concrete Poetry]” first published in 1979 by ʻElepaio Press in Seaweeds and Constructions No. 6.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily,
The Writer’s Almanac, and Best American Poetry. His newest book of poems is Pitching for the Apostates. More on his work can be found at paulhostovsky.com

Ellen Jantzen was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Her work has been exhibited widely and can be best described as photo montage. Jantzen’s work provides a link
between traditional and digital art forms, and bridges the world of drawing, photography and collage. She lives in Valencia, California. http://www.ellenjantzen.com.

Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has appeared worldwide in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Chiron, Deep Water, Expound, Muddy River Poetry, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Voices Israel, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. New collections include A Landscape in Hell, Family Reunion, and “How Fascism Comes to America.”

Tessa LeBaron is a visual artist in Cleveland, Ohio. She creates all kinds of work such as portraits, animals, vibrant landscapes, and visualizations of the subconscious
mind. Her focus in her work has been on what nature has to offer us; things like growth, progression and healing. She would like for her illustrative style and use
of color to depict a sense of contrast and tranquility. She wants people to examine how environment can elicit a certain thought or feeling. LeBaron has freelance work
experience from commission work, logo design, and painting murals. Throughout northeast Ohio she has created large scale murals for many local businesses.
tessalebaron.com

Brandy Nālani McDougall is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Hawaiʻi, Maui, and Kauaʻi lineages) poet raised on the slopes of Haleakalā on Maui. She is the author of The Salt-Wind,
Ka Makani Pa’akai, a book of poetry, and ʻĀina Hānau / Birth Land (The University of Arizona Press, 2023). She is an associate professor of American studies at the
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. McDougall was a Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day in May 2022. In 2023, McDougall was appointed Poet Laureate of Hawaiʻi through 2025.

Billy McKay has been creating artwork ever since he was in grade school. After acquiring a degree in art, he went on to help run his family’s local printing business.
It was here that he learned graphic design and different print application skills. His time in the printing industry led to many years of exciting work and successful
relationships with hundreds of area businesses. During that time, he also created and produced underground comics and games that were shipped around the globe.
Billy combines his love of monsters, toys, and 1980’s pop culture into his current line of acrylic paintings. He currently lives in North Olmsted, Ohio with his wife, son, cat and 21 year old goldfish. http://www.artbybillytherobot.com

Michael McPherson (1947-2008) was born in Hilo, moved with his parents to O’ahu in 1954, learned to surf at Waikiki, attended private and public schools, followed the
waves to Maui and Kaua’i, 1965-1970, and completed an M.A. in English at the University of Hawai’i in 1976. He was the first Fiction Editor for the Hawai’i Review in
1972 and a panelist at V Symposium International James Joyce in Paris in 1975. He founded Xenophobia Press in Wailuku in 1980 and published HAPA, a journal of
contemporary literature and literary criticism of Hawai’i, annually on April Fools Day. He is of Scottish, Irish, Norwegian and Hawaiian ancestry, descended from
nineteenth-century sailors and women of the islands.

Michael Nyers is a designer, mixed media artist, ENFJ, mental health advocate, doer, dreamer, and all around funny guy from Youngstown, Ohio. His passion is blackout
poetry, which he sees as a look into the subconscious mind that can promote mindfulness and creativity, benefiting overall well-being and mental health. He is the author of Finding Light in the Darkness – a collection of blackout poetry.

Brittany M. Ortega is a poet from Fort Worth, Texas. Her work is available on Amazon.

Mallory N. Ortega is a non-professional, and creates art as a hobby artist from Fort Worth, Texas. Under her artist name MNO, her work can be seen on Instagram.

Christy Passion is a critical care nurse and poet. Her work has been featured by the Academy of American Poets, and has appeared in When the Light of the World Was
Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, an anthology of Native Nations Poetry. She is the author of Still Out of Place, a book of poetry.

Cheryl Penn is a process based art practitioner dealing in the medium of ideas. Currently she is creating large scale paintings (in excess of 25 layers of paint,
mostly asemic writing, 2.5mx4m) which are researched and replicated, layer by hand painted layer as a unique, modern livre d’artiste. The artists’ book and painting
function as a single idea. She lives in Durban, South Africa.

Timothy Pilgrim, a Montana Native and Pacific Northwest poet, has numerous acceptances from U.S. journals such as Seattle Review, San Pedro River Review,
Santa Ana River Review, and international journals such as Windsor Review and Toasted Cheese in Canada, and Otoliths in Australia. He is the author of Mapping water and Seduced by metaphor: Timothy Pilgrim collected published poems. His work can be found at http://www.timothypilgrim.com

Kathy (Lady) Smith finds inspiration in nature, particularly birds and local wild animals. She draws creative ideas from her relationship with her husband, cat, and dog,as well as the spiritual inspiration she finds in the Cleveland Metropark adjacent to her backyard. Her style is free verse with internal rhyme, and poetry is often
narrative in nature. Lady’s love for nature and storytelling extends beyond her poetry as she also wrote a book with her husband to record the story of the first half of his
life – Stations of the Lost and Found. Lady works to make positive ripples in the world and inspire others to do the same. She is the editor of The City Poetry, a literary
and art magazine of Cleveland, and she lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Steven B. Smith, — poetry, art, fotos since 1964. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Joseph Stanton has published eight books of poems. The most recent are Lifelines (2023), Prevailing Winds (2022), Moving Pictures (2019), and Things Seen (2016). His poems have appeared in 13 Miles from Cleveland, Poetry, New Letters, Harvard Review, Antioch Review, New York Quarterly, and many other magazines. He has taught poetry workshops at Poets House in New York City and at the Honolulu Museum of Art. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

Richard Stevenson recently retired to Nanaimo from a thirty-year gig teaching English and Creative Writing at Lethbridge College. He has published forty eight books. Recent releases are Bature! West African Haikai, Dark Watchers, and Eye to Eye with My Octopi. He lives in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada.

Jonathan Taylor is an Anishnaabe from the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario, Canada. He writes poetry, is an Anishnaabemowin language consultant, and teaches
Anishnaabemowin to children and adults in his community. Taylor’s writing has appeared in Red Ink Magazine, Yellow Medicine Review, Quills Canadian Poetry Journal, and the Muckleshoot Review. He belongs to the Turtle clan and writes for Crazy Horse and NDN girls.

Agnes Vojta grew up in Germany and now lives in Rolla, Missouri where she teaches physics at Missouri S&T and hikes the Ozarks. She is the author of Porous Land and
The Eden of Perhaps, and her poems have appeared in a variety of magazines. agnesvojta.com.

Ron Welburn is an emeritus professor of the English department at UMass Amherst. His hometown is Berwyn, Pennsylvania and he grew up in Philadelphia, graduated from Lincoln University, the University of Arizona, and NYU. His poems have appeared in over 120 literary magazines and anthologies, among them The Yellow Medicine Review, and Pensive. His seventh collection, Council Decisions: Selected Poems. Revised & Expanded Edition was published in 2012. Welburn is an Accomac Cherokee descendant of the Gingaskin Reservation on the Virginia Eastern Shore, and neighboring tribes in the Chesapeake Basin, and African American.

Jason Floyd Williams has led a life parallel in adventure to such fictional characters as David Carradine in Kung Fu, Lorenzo Lamas in Renegade, Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk, and the Pulp hero, Doc Savage—wandering, sometimes, often times, adrift in strange towns, helping local folks with greedy land barons, assorted wayward women with struggling bank accounts, susceptible bankers with deep pockets, political cronies of corrupt village mayors, etc. Essentially, he’s a tumbleweed. Rootless. Lost on the highway. A comma in search of a sentence. Next time you see a disheveled mess in the shape of a man on the road, thumb bent back, lock the doors & drive a lil faster.

Bill Wolak has just published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages and photographs have
appeared as cover art for such magazines as Phoebe, Harbinger Asylum, Baldhip Magazine, and Barfly Poetry Magazine.

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. He is the author of more than sixty books,
the most recent of which is with the slow-paced turtle replaced by a fast fish, published by Sandy Press in May, 2023.

13 MILES FROM CLEVELAND Edited by Joe Balaz

Joe Balaz lives in Northeast Ohio in the city of Cleveland. He edited Ramrod–A Literary and Art Journal of Hawai’i, and was also the editor of Ho’omanoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature.

The cover image, a night time photo taken during the Winter, is a photo that was taken by a sergeant in the Brecksville Police Department, which was shared and submitted to the magazine. A special thanks to that officer’s generosity.