Mayim Moonchild

BIO: Mayim Moonchild is an up-and-coming model & poet. Some of her best poems were created under the shadow of a make-up artist.

Hayley W

My lips chapped as if I swapped spit with the devil

My eyes water like a mother in mourning of a deceased child

The room feels as if its twirling,

yet it feels stuffed full & muggy

I can barely breathe

Is this death,

or what is love?

Timothy Pilgrim

Bio:

Timothy Pilgrim (a journalism professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham) is a Pacific Northwest poet who has published over 100 poems, mostly in literary journals.

Count ravens

Together, we maneuver a steep hill

then a loop. I drop you off, 

head three streets down, 

turn into a cul-de-sac, mine,

crawl up the walk, through door,

go blind, die. Later, I  count ravens

mourning out back. They form

a long line over my grave, caw out

in unison, weep. I kneel, pray,

rise, drive away, intent.

We tend to make death

more important than it really is.

Timothy Pilgrim

  Accidental dawn

I fall asleep in some old barn,

drift away on heaps of straw. 

A lone rooster awakens me,

crows, "rise, open eyes."

It is curious how things,

like cocks, can be so familiar: 

combs, red, feathers shine, 

eyes beady, yet intent.

Nestled back in golden nest,

I urge the rooster to complete 

its song  -- join in, sing along,

face another accidental dawn.

Timothy Pilgrim

    In my dream

we stand together, 

naked, on our bed.

The fire licks red.

I reach around, make you

excited. We bounce upward,

together, heads slap ceiling

until mattress and frame break.

I reach out, grab the headboard,

try to steady us

so we can stay together.

You push the wood stove over,

it falls into pieces, no coals glow.

I throw one fire brick

at the lamp, break its glass.

Shade still on, it lands upright.

The yellow bulb burns bright.

Timothy Pilgrim

The Mystic

Ron Koppelberger

The Mystic

The distance between hymns of primal myth and the vespers of his evening benediction was often the difference between draggled misery and reverent exhilaration. Cam Initio was a mystic of netherworld wonder in fabulous force. The rumor was that he could even raise the dead. It was not relevant that he was responsible for perpetrating the rumor or the subtle slight of gossip in the rumor, suffice it to say that Cam had once roused the concerns of a once drunken purveyor of the drink to an almost conscious level of existence.
To raise the dead, substance and secondhand life he thought , tantalizing revivals from the silent moments of death and the bliss a new dawn. He flipped one of the Taro cards over and the truth of a mystic revelation was unveiled; “The World” the card read, a world of life and death, fortune, fate and tales of rare precedent. To raise the dead, not some drunken oaf from the county tap, but to resurrect the flesh Cam thought. It was a bit like reading Taro, palms and tea leaves. Living with ghosts, ghouls and phantasms of taboo and admitted forbidden passage. It was a shaded talent that Cam would soon excel in, a candle to the myth and misery of past lives, loves and the adversity of universes, conduits in carefully interposed expressions of fear and love. Cam began reading the cards, resurrecting the dead so to speak with the fortune of the morrow and portents unbidden, unsoiled by past failures in chance. He would read and this time it would count for the wont of an unseen force availing the spirits of the newly alive.

Halloween Tea and Jasmine Incense

Ron Koppelberger

Halloween Tea and Jasmine Incense

Hidden amongst the rows of ancient houses, tumble down and ramshackle, lay the tiny abode of Stewart Sparks and his thirteen cats. The perception was that Stewart was insane and in some semblance of convulsive madness. The truth was, in fact, Stewart was an amazing liver of life and all it had to offer.
The tiny kitchen smelled of jasmine incense and the table was set for tea, Halloween tea and boney skeleton cookies. Served in perfect portion, “One for you and one for me, darling spirit.” he whispered in loving calm craving. The jasmine incense burned with an orange glowing tendril of mist and smoke, the aura was perfect and the ambiance was a gentle coquet in the rapture of what would be, what had to be. Stewart sang and danced in desires of elder need and Halloween celebration. The air became a thick veil of gossamer webs and the sky above Stewarts house turned a blazing pumpkin orange, the figure of a dream came to life before his delighted eyes. “Greetings and guffaws, lights and laws, may the spirit of All Hallows Eve be with yer soul and spirit, as ye hear it, be young at heart and may you start the youth of a new day in this, the Halloween way!” He sang and shouted.
Stewart fell to the floor and when he awoke he was in the cradle of youth, vigorous and enchanted by the phantasms of Halloween ghost.
True to this day he is often seen in the guise of an old man trick of treating in gleeful harmony with the nights wonder. The legend of Stewart Sparks declares that if you see him on All Hallows Eve look deep into his eyes and perhaps you’ll find a measure of youth by the glee of a child’s whisper and the cry of tiny Halloween adventurers in costumed array with the evening sky and the dream that is the substance of old St. Sparks and candy corn sweet.

Tempted to Sow

Ron Koppelberger

Tempted to Sow

The inspiration for the crop of wheat was a dream, a dream that eavesdropped on the circle of charmed delicacy. He had dreamed of saffron waves and amber confluences of satisfying wheat bloom. A declared moment of virtue and a proclivity to the garden of ancient ritual, it was the promise of the dawn.
The west end of his twenty acre vista was littered with limestone and granite boulders and in the midst one day he had called, “ Father what lays in wait for the resolute man?” The fields of wheat and saffron rolled before his eyes away from the stones and the guard in seasons of creed and faith in waiting patience for those who would come to the pile of stones, in the midst of the garden. Harrowed faith and harvested garnered cashes of virgin seed were his destiny.
The stones were arranged in an intimate circle, alabaster and streaked with the lines of gray granite. He had dreamed of the spot and of the vast seas of wheat and fluttering saffron advance. The stones seemed to contain an energy, Ancient, dark and light both, like twilight and dawn. He had dreamed and the vision of the stones and those who would come was silenced by the wheat and saffron, the gold and amber seed, the fulfillment of the land and the frayed array that would surround the power of the stones. Saffron and wheat, sunshine and warm blossoms shining with the love of god and the touch of a discerning knowledge.
The stones, he knew something was destined for the scattering of rock, something dark and powerful. In time he would plant the wheat, in time he would sow, the saffron in tandem with the assurance of the east, west, north and the south, with the stones near the center. Deliberately and in an act of contrition for the land, the promise of the best, he sowed the crop and in turn found peace with the harvest to come.

Peter Marra (New Poetry)

 

infamous treatments

some damages were

solidified for a second with

thin music from a dilapidated speaker

sounds for a squirmy background

a comment from outside

a reality sliding crash

as a child sitting on the porch

the windows always so clean

screens also

a child looks out

while nerves tingle slightly

ritualized by causes and symptoms

received in the morning

it died yesterday, by choice

smacking its lips

a cancer of thin memories

of what happened prior

buried in the backyard

under the blue slate slabs

a casualty of a piously stolen summer

couched in black/purple afterthoughts

a false love

and a false touch

lying down with the truth  

they have been lying

a punishing sound for his lies

taking it all away all away

trying to catch them as their

faces come off in his hands greasy with blood

trying to catch them as their

gossamer smiles lie in his palms

walk with hollow sounds

hot channels – active video camera

a twilight conscious

cloned female

is ingesting soma

we went for a ride on

the lightning rod

for immolation and

a flash down below.

it was an evasion not only from predators

but also from victims.

a crawling eye slowly

made its way up the bare stone.

she has a pleasure-burn freeze

as it watches her spying.

octopi were watched by us as i pulled her

to safety

slowly sliding

slowly sliding.

she actively mimicked

she accurately mimicked

the very venomous humans that were

contemplating a new  procedure.

“i’ll spread my legs”

she replied sarcastically

“wait for tissue regeneration,

then we can burn”

she showed me a cerebral cortex

done to perfection.

then she went to bed

contemplating such bodies and arms

sweet sweet smiles

we lay on the seething cot

commenting on the ceiling fan

blurring the air

down a long tube

narrow signs where symmetry is a curse

a warp laughter circling

hands started

we can see cartoon characters thrust

they pushed into her arms, smiled

finally a random predator attacks instead

with withdrawal symptoms white and pretty

she can really feel it

“those psychological concepts involving

the sexual murder of the zombie

that holds the appointment for the false negative”

 (she twists as she

feels it)

  

BIO

Peter Marra is in Williamsburg Brooklyn. His goal is to and find new methods of description. He has been published in many online publications 

Crusade

Ron Koppelberger

Crusade

The spirits of careful animate revolution beguiled the courage of gateway distress and a powerful benediction. A blood value in pledges of novice approval, laudable by the blazon flags of rainstorm mothers and venerated spider weave, souls of sunshine spirit and chambers of shuddering custody.
A thunder of possessed blessing and the crusade of what need and desire give to the love of holy seals and soldiers in quest. The distance between bare compulsion and measurable realms of contemplation in the instant of crusade, the breath of a determined passion. The enduring gain of steep hollows and overtures of fateful vision, the guest in fields of rolling saffron array, in genuflection, a crusade in silent ferment and dandelion wine. The shroud of will in the time of velvet petals and bloody thorns, gone unto the illusory dream of tomorrow and beasts given the rule of restless abandon, a crusade in sated narration for the wont of a purpose and the whisper of a woman in love.