Monthly Archives: December 2011

Various Tessellations 28… by Felino A. Soriano

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Various Tessellations 28
—after Christopher Mize’s painting, Waiting for Her Again

Wine glasses of many users remain of the
illusion of corporeal satisfaction.   Again
this
             wandering of trust misinforms and
             flattens sedentary pleasures into death’s
                     intuitive dissipation. His mouth, terse.
Fingers
interlaced
as weakened wings,
broken

                     by wind’s dichotomous sway then violent

maleficence.

 

Felino A. Soriano is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. Over 3,200 of his poems appear at BlazeVOX, Unlikely 2.0, infinite space, Clockwise Cat, experiential-experimental-literature, and elsewhere. Recent poetry collections include Intentions of Aligned Demarcations (Desperanto, 2011), Pathos etched, recalled: (white sky books, 2011), and Divaricated, Spatial Aggregates (limit cycle press, 2011). For information regarding his published works, editorships, and interviews, please visit: www.felinoasoriano.info.

Copyright © 2011 by Felino A Soriano

 
 
 
 

Parking Spaces… by Carrie Albert

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Parking Spaces

She wore birkenstocks without socks
in winter. Her cheeks mirrored the light

pink of her pressed blouse.

Five minutes of morning affirmations
and she would float to the top,
cream in a cup. The labyrinth of fear
disappeared; suffering was tossed

in a bag, sent down the river.

In the dentist chair she took vacations,
meditating at the edge of a lotus pond,

amid hundreds of orchids.

After the stroke, fate caved in.

A nurse with rhino skin fed her rice
and carrot mush, parked her in the hall,

in line with the others.

Take me back to bed, please take me to bed.

Silenced by a syringe,
with her best friend still inside,

she began to float again.

She always could picture a parking space
before leaving home, delighted when
a car pulled out right where

she wanted to be.

 

As a child, I often wrote plays and performed them with friends. I wanted to be an artist who lived in an attic. I studied both visual art and literature in college and actually lived in an attic for 13 years. Poetry was always a vegetable I didn’t “get”, like beets, yet that’s what I wrote. Now I think poetry and beets are mysterious. Steamed beets are especially delicious with feta cheese, walnuts and pomegranate juice.

I catch the muse’s seeds from conceptual ideas, observation, memory, and dreams, along with found imagery and found words. Being in kind with surrealism, I observe the magic of inexplicable coincidence.

Copyright © 2011 by Carrie Albert

 
 
 
 
 

Blurry Eyed by Randi Carlton

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Blurry Eyed

It’s been years since I’ve slept
I’ve just been smoking in the depths
Of these chambers divided

The shape of a heart reunited

You said that you liked when my eyes got smokey and small
You said that you loved that I’m not that tall
But I feel like a brick fallen from a brick wall

When I think that you didn’t mean those things at all

So I will cry until I make myself ill
And I’ll go live with the trolls under the hill
I’ll leave you alone
I’ll turn to stone
You never loved me
But I always will…

 

Randi Carlton is blurry eyed and sullen. She paints, draws, writes stories and mythic lyrical poems, as well as fiddles with digital art in a one room apartment rooted somewhere in the vast expanse of cyberspace. In 2010, Randi was a finalist in a News Portal Site’s writing contest. Her winning short story, “Dust Storm,” was featured on several blogs including The Record Live. Randi Carlton is not content to slip into obscurity.

Copyright © 2011 by Randi Carlton

 
 
 

It’s Over, A Phone Conversation… by Dan Nielsen

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It’s Over

The sad man slouched down folding up
until his chin came to rest,
and rested, on his knees—
—fingers remaining
where they’d been, laced

atop his head because he was crying.

The woman he loved moved her hands from her hips
and used their heels to press deep
into the sockets of her eyes, and said,
“Why don’t you ever … ”

“Why must you always … ”

The sad man swayed side to side,
too far and tumbled, banged
his head hard against the edge
of a coffee table, upsetting

a vase of daisies.

The woman he loved—it was a race against time—sped
to the kitchen for paper towel.
The sad man righted himself and apologized.
The woman he loved wiped the table.
“This will leave a mark
even if you can’t see it.”

  
 

A Phone Conversation

There was a phone book attached to a wire cord.
The sad man opened it and paged through until he found a column
with his last name, touched it with a finger, and moved the finger
down until he came to

The Sad Man and The Woman He Loved.

He dropped a quarter into the slot. It hit the bell
on the way down, assuring him that everything
was fine. But then the dial tone was a dead person
on a heart monitor. He looked at the number again

and touched the appropriate pads in correct sequence.

The ringing was like a baby crying.
The woman he loved picked up.
“Hello.”
“Woman I love, is that you?”
“Yes, sad man.”
“You said I could call.”
“And you did.”
“Did you see the eclipse?”
“I saw it in the paper.”
“It was right outside my window.”
“You have a phone?”
“I’m at a restaurant. I dipped rye toast with grape jelly in the egg yolk.”
“You like doing that.”
“Do you miss me?”
“Not yet.”

 

Dan Nielsen has always lived and will eventually die somewhere in Wisconsin. He manages an art gallery: Gallery B4S, and is involved with the reading series: Bonk! He was most active in the early ‘90s when everything was paper and staples and SASEs. His work has appeared in places you’ve never heard of as well as Exquisite Corpse, Wormwood Review, Chiron Review, and other of the larger smalls from late last century. Dan Nielsen has also published work in these books: Selected Poems of Post-Beat Poets, Stand up Poetry: The Extended Anthology, and Created Writing: Poetry from New Angles.

Copyright © 2011 by Dan Nielsen