Flash Fiction… by Stephen Prime

Posted on May 27, 2012 by randomlyaccessedpoetics

Flash Fiction

“I’m sitting at my desk, wondering what to write when there’s a knock at the front door. As I go down and answer it, I’m still not sure what is going to happen. I open the door. There’s an old man there with a parcel. He’s wearing a courier’s uniform, but I don’t see if there is a van nearby. He hands me the parcel and I have to sign it. We thank each other and he turns away as I shut the door. The dog wants to sniff the parcel, and she sticks her nose in the way while I’m trying to cut the tape. Inside the parcel is a book. I open the book. I begin to read. It says:

“I’m sitting at my desk, wondering what to write when there’s a knock at the front door. As I go down and answer it, I’m still not sure what is going to happen…

Stephen Prime, originally from Yorkshire, England, now lives in Tokyo, Japan. He teaches English literature at a Japanese University and has been published in Aesthetica and New Fiction. He likes whiskey and walking his dog and hates society and pollution.

Copyright © 2012 Stephen Prime

Getting the Point… by Louie Crew

Posted on May 20, 2012 by randomlyaccessedpoetics

Getting the Point

Priapism is a potentially painful medical condition, in which the erect penis or clitoris does not return to its flaccid state, despite the absence of both physical and psychological stimulation, within four hours.

There are two types of priapism: low-flow and high-flow

80% to 90% of clinically presented priapisms are low flow disorders. Low-flow involves the blood not adequately returning to the body from the organ.

High-flow involves a short-circuit of the vascular system partway along the organ. Treatment is different for each type.

Priapism is considered a medical emergency, which should receive proper treatment by a qualified medical practitioner. Early treatment can be beneficial for a functional recovery.

The duration time of a normal erection before it is classifiable as priapism is still controversial. Ongoing penile erections for more than 6 hours can be classified as priapism.

The name comes from the Greek god Priapus, Πρίαπος, a fertility god often represented with a disproportionately large and permanent erection.

Louie Crew, an Alabama native, 75, is an emeritus professor at Rutgers and lives in East Orange, NJ, with Ernest Clay, his husband of 37 years.

As of January 2012, editors have published 2,165 of Crew’s poems and essays. Crew has edited special issues of College English and Margins. He has written four poetry volumes Sunspots (Lotus Press, Detroit, 1976) Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987), Lutibelle’s Pew (Dragon Disks, 1990), and Queers! for Christ’s Sake! (Dragon Disks, 2003). You can follow his work at http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/pubs.html

Getting the Point was found by Louie Crew in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapism.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Crew. The University of Michigan collects Crew’s papers.

Copyright © 2012 by Louie Crew

Christmas Chai… by Jessica Tyner

Posted on May 13, 2012 by randomlyaccessedpoetics

Christmas Chai

That Christmas I gave you an aphotic

steel teapot and you taught me

how to make chai.

I filled the gaping vessel’s mouth with tap water

while you peeled slices of unwashed

ginger root. Two spoons

of Taj Mahal ground tea, a mouthful

for each.

Cardamom pods, cracked with your crooked teeth

and pried open with fingernails, tossed

helpless in the boil. Milk

comes last,

an opaque white stream

soothing dark spiced water.

The sweetness we could never agree on.

My slow honey, your raw

sugar. That Christmas you gave me words wrapped

in a lilting accent and I taught you

how to say I love you.

I opened my mouth to take you in

while you peeled away clothes from the night

before to spoon,

together, on the mattress.

You bit my shoulder, red fissures from teeth

while I pulled your frenzied hair. Lost together

in the cheap red sheets,

I never came last.

And the sweetness

we could never agree on.

Jessica Tyner is originally from Oregon, USA, a member of the Cherokee Nation, and has been a writer and editor for ten years. Currently, she is a copy writer for Word Jones, a travel writer with Mucha Costa Rica, a writer for TripFab, a copy editor at the London-based Flaneur Arts Journal, and a contributing editor at New York’s Thalo Magazine. She has recently published short fiction in India’s Out of Print Magazine, and poetry in Slow Trains Literary Journal, Straylight Magazine, Solo Press, and Glint Literary Journal. She lives in San José, Costa Rica.

Copyright © 2012 by Jessica Tyner

Note To Self…by Thomas Zimmerman

Posted on May 6, 2012 by randomlyaccessedpoetics

Note To Self

It’s Mahler’s Sixth, with Szell conducting, on

the stereo:

the tragic in our art

and lives is what I’m thinking now, the part

we play within the cycle.

Wife is gone,

and dogs are fed, asleep. I’m with my self

or selves, my many deaths and births.

The gold-

brown leaves shot through with sun, the crumbling shelf

of cloud beyond the neighbors’ house that’s old

but freshly painted and reroofed, the new

blue vein I see on my left shin. . .

and now,

from woodwinds, strings, the brass erupts.

How do

we handle flux? Catholicism, Tao,

or Hamlet’s calm “Let be?”

My wife comes back

tomorrow. Percy yelps; he wants a snack.

Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, MI. Poems of his have appeared recently in Antiphon, Electric Windmill Press, and The Petrichor Review. You can link here to Tom’s website: www.thomaszimmermanonline.com

Randomly Accessed Poetics

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Monthly Archives: May 2012