Kai kicks off NPM with an excellent collection of themed poems. Welcome to FC, Kai. Enjoy the blue ribbon! Desperado (Boneless Café) These short, bright autumn days, the sky a lighter blue than summer’s as though it’s fading with the year. The bay nudges into the land saying, Look what wealth of sparkles I bring. The fronds of the palms along Lamont Street dangle, relaxed, like a gunslinger’s fingers above the holster – or is that me, confident I can draw something out of all this loveliness to fly and pierce your heart? And like the desperado, I’m willing to gamble in this dangerous game of letting beauty enter us, my own flawed life. Boneless Café again Karen, on her way to a meeting, covered in zig-zags, stops to say hello as the track riffs…
10 Collages by Bill Wolak
One of FC’s most beloved contributors has returned! Take a look at 10 more collages by the talented Bill Wolak. Artist’s Statement: Everywhere we look there are faces staring back at us. Out of the corner of the eye, we spy a wink from a passing shadow or a smile in a gleam of water. We project our selves outward into the field we experience. Collage sets out to record these fleeting impressions. “Drifting on a Strangers Smile” “Aloof as the Touch of a Mirror” “Learning How to Breathe Through Your Own Scars” “The Slip Knot’s Enticing Touch” “Tingling That Deepens Every Embrace” “Quick as a Smile’s Net of Moonlight” “The Arousal of Circular Lips” “The Tenderness of Seeds” “The Whisper of Sand” “With the Flesh of Awakening Moonlight” Bill Wolak has just published his…
“Happy Birthday to Us,” Poetry by Bruce McRae
Happy Birthday To Us I arrived mid-century. A flaw in the seamed dimensions. A stone dropped down a cistern. Already ancient, wonderstruck, fire in my gills and hair, life-naked. I was born all of a sudden. A shift in the given paradigm. A handheld globe of teeth and fur standing athwart of all of history. A faint itch, a rudimentary element, I appeared as if quite by accident. A figure blurred by the side of the road, an eleventh planet, a tiger’s teardrop, a snowman in the parson’s orchard. Heavy with dreams, I was awoken early for my rough appointment. A manic isotope in a fat-lit cavern. One of those molecular contrivances you hear so much about. A mighty atom. A coy abstraction. ** Reality The rules of the game remain couched in esoteric phrases…
The Contemplations of Kathryn V. Jacopi
One of Us A sucker-punch thought, we will end. The assault turns into a cold sweat from the contours of my couch. One day we might fight over the over-due mortgage, you promised to pay. The dent in the new hallway’s paint, I never denied. Who keeps the dog when we sell the house? We fought the morning a bus crashed into the glass store. The highway exit was blocked and first responders’ lights spun. I read on my phone that no one’s hurt and we held hands the drive home. What if we’d decided to replace the glass in the tv stand an hour earlier. The first time I wrote this you sat next to me on the couch. TV commentaries must-know insight, scores on your phone, notes for a fantasy, but you…
“Variations on the Trolly Problem” and Other Poems by JP Mayer
de rerum natura and I realized I was the pieces I was picking up, all scattered across the floor, all technicolor fragments of static jettisons from far away; I am a farmer in Kansas. I am a doctor in Nairobi. I am a prisoner in Beijing and a pilot in Lahore and a fisherman off the coast of Jeju Island; the saltwater pulls at them with its ebb tide but all the same the lines on my hands are not ones that can be washed away ** love in lost time I shot Proust dead in an alleyway on my way home from work. It was something he said it was love is a reciprocal torture his body hit the pavement with a thud. It started raining on my walk home and I…
The Mechanics of Melancholy: Engaging Poetry by Rick Ratliff
Dark hallways Long hallway, doors on either side Like the departure platform at a rail station. No eye contact, everyone looking down, Shuffling along the bland grey floor. Away from the new arrivals Lighting is always dimmed like perpetual twilight And darkness creeps out of some doors like a black fog We come to say goodbye to those who no longer hear, And who stare blankly at the ceiling: While we are looking at the floor. Departure time is slowly approaching, Breathing is mechanical like worn breaks And the smell, the odor that’s hard to describe– Body odor with musty deodorant Exhalation is pungent. No talking now It goes quiet at departure As we silently stand in ovation as we exit FORGOTTEN SONG FORGET ME NOT She’s not you — yet, neither are you, (anymore) You would like her; I think. Flaxen hair (like yours) And I trust all the understanding A widow has of memories and loss. That helps, as I am daily learning To be the reluctant guardian…
Jennifer Judge’s Poetry Tells Us The Way Things Just Are
PEOPLE Always say you know what to do when your child cries, you just know, like some parent gene kicks in, the knowledge springs up in your brain like it’s always been there, a priori knowledge. But that’s a load of bullshit. Watch a baby fall backwards and drop a chair on herself. You see the chair going but you can’t get there in time to stop it, and you can’t control the gasp that escapes you. You’re not supposed to gasp, have to remain calm so that the child does. And when there’s nothing, nothing, nothing that calms her after the fall—walking, talking, hugging, singing, kissing—you know your love is not strong enough now for anyone, that you are what you are, failure of a parent, and you know this is your life now….
The Resilience of Life – Captivating Poetry by Marianne Brems
Flower Stems If heaven were a place to walk without fear before an audience jaded in judgement, a place to love without concern about running alone on earth’s curve, a place to rise in the morning without tripping on stones by evening, a place to play in dangerous rivers without swallowing water, a place to carry wood to a fire that never burns out, a place to throw out regrets with the dust swirls of empty rooms A place where traffic lights are all green, the sun sets peacefully after dinner, and sleeves are never too short. Then resilience would wither, muscles atrophy, bones relinquish their density without resistance to strengthen them in a field where flowers fill every space and their stems, though succulent, are the sturdiest pillars. Night Siren The too near wail of an ambulance assaults the quiet core of night, its rising then falling crescendo repeating repeating unsettling all that’s settled as it announces an unidentified human incident rife with pain or loss or both. Yet this ambulance, defying disruption and speed limits, delivers with singular purpose a medical team eager to serve, to make whole, to mend the punctures of sharp protrusions or the malfunction of a dusty heart and to begin a restitution that even in darkness has…
Linnea Skoglöv: Portraits of Love
Cigarette Waking up slowly to a room set in darkness, eyes searching for light but finding nothing buta silhouette. You on one side of the bed and I on the other, not touching but I still feel you on my skinlike my mouth senses the aftertaste of a cigarette. A cigarette you smoked even though I begged you not to, I turned and said I won’t kiss youever again but you hugged me from behind and what was I supposed to do. So I kissed you. And you tasted worse than when you apologise for your breath in the morning, but the secondyour lips touched mine I had already forgiven you. Because when you look at me my heart suddenly belongs to a hummingbird, beating right out of my chest. And I need to feel your fingers…
Dayna Lellis: Telling Timeless Truths
Your Value Instagram followers Twitter retweets Facebook likes Snapchat views Numbers we use To quantify #Popularity #Beauty #Wittiness #Worth These numbers mean #Nothing Compared to the people In your life Yearning for quality time With you They don’t need numbers To see your value Emotional We develop strong arms, carrying around emotional baggage for months, even years. We mistake this for strength. We weaken our grip on our baggage, opening it to reveal its untidy contents to others. We mistake this for weakness. May Day Unnecessary clicks, swipes, and likes are taking away precious seconds, minutes, hours, days of our lives, of our budding dreams. “Just a little longer, okay?” “I’ll do it tomorrow,” you say. Tomorrow is growing impatient. Tomorrow is ready to bloom today. Two Vows I’ve walked this path for eternity. Its minutiae are etched into my mind. One random day, to my surprise, I notice stairs that reach the sky. As I ascend, I glance below. I see paths that swerve, with shadows galore. Others appear straight with a sunlit glow, but on closer inspection they have bumps as well. I search for mine. It takes some time. Its gentle curves are…