Wild Orphan
.
NEW POETRY
“seeming to derive from other persons”
this is where i start leaving out lines so you understand where i am
coming from with gusts of “speech assimilated during
sleep”
between you and me is
a sky w/o inspiration—morning talc and
mountains dropping off—the flowering afterimages on the street
dubbing —as a second thought everything
troubles me
image trailing exposure
“often so tenuous that open eyes drive it away”
“the more we appreciate our present psychological state of sleep, the more we
appreciate our present psychological state of sleep, the more we appreciate our
present psychological state of sleep, the more we appreciate our present
psychological state of sleep, the more we appreciate our present psychological
state of sleep, the more we appreciate our present psychological state of sleep,
the more we appreciate our present psychological state of sleep, the more we
appreciate our present psychological state of sleep, the more we appreciate our
present psychological state of sleep, the more we appreciate our present
psychological state of sleep, the more we appreciate our present psychological
state of sleep, the more we appreciate our present psychological state of sleep,”
the habit-energy of karma
“like my room understanding lies next to me”
part of my backwash
that leaves my bed for yours
sustained within a second mouth that seems
to rapidly
assimilate a psychological touch
the least upper bound
sleep has been ours
and now nirvana
mountains flowering into clouds losing it
“continuously shrunk to a point"
their
various shapes outliving the sky
“we see different species receive
different forms at different times”
the inference after a slight effort
to repair themselves
“sharpened when we try to ignore”
an orange hue come closer
al-furud “the bright single ones"
sustained points taken out of conversation
clouds trailing days “continuously
shrunk to a point”
illusion regrows the body we set sail on
in your skin
moment’s thought
hangs loose
sequences of the real and imaginary
the substitution of limits
for what we once thought made sense
a closed path
backwash of that sum of residues
a flat breeze
sterns out that sunset
we care not so much for
Arkava Das lives and works in Delhi. Some of his poems have appeared in Blackbox Manifold, the delinquent, Moria, Upstairs at Duroc, BlazeVOX.
The Man of Thought
O riddle from continuous age
Your line is one upon the face
You carry as a bony harp. Here
You sit and slander.
A crest of one but man of thought -
I bargained for I could not talk
And could not seem to muster strength
To hide this cold embrace.
A magpie seems less occupied
With beauty held in front her eyes
As beauty shines from wood
That’s carved just as the man of thought.
Be Bennen Yon my friend of far
Away your voice shall linger here
And stay until I have the chance to
Let it go, and end this year.
Skill is nigh yet is not sought,
This whittled man - the man of thought,
Sits silent in his grace and cries
As craftsmen cut a finger’s trace
Away from all that he holds dear:
A piece of wood, his family near
And far from what he cannot see
Without his eyes, a hollow tree
Has nested, and it goes to sleep.
A swindler stops and opens minds,
What he can’t lose he does not find.
Though he is lost on all mankind
And Serrekund to none.
Nakam I ask to no reply,
This fitful age has lost the realm
To speak as silence greets my cry,
And silent fools don’t pass me.
They sit as they all lack the tongue
I need to satisfy.
You are one without a mouth
So tell me what you talk about
Or sit there on a window-ledge,
The misted man of thought.
Your swollen foot wreaks havoc
On the concept which you come from.
A puncture to the Theban life,
Deny my find or find your sight.
O riddle from continuous age
Your line is one upon your face -
No greater man than I could conquer
Your mis-shapen symmetry.
Your skill is nigh yet is not sought,
O whittled man - O man of thought.
Tristan Gatward is originally from Somerset, England. Proper West Country in everything apart from the accent. Enjoys 80s jumpers, wellington boots and general life. In terms of literary things, his favourite poets are Leonard Cohen and TS Eliot, favourite author/playwright is Oscar Wilde.
ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER AT THE STRATEGIC PLANNING RETREAT
On lunch break you ask why I’ve doodled lopped heads in the margins of my note pad. I tell you it started with the Vikings, the long ref review in yesterday’s game: the helmet rolling again and again in replay. That’s when I started to wonder what would’ve happened if the player’s head had snapped off too. Would the edges have been ragged, like the pickled head in Silence of the Lambs, or clean, like John the Baptist? And why did Salome insist on a silver tray anyway? Wouldn’t a basket have made more sense, like the wicker ones used to capture guillotined heads during the French Revolution? So much hope Beethoven had composing the Eroica. When Napoleon stood for a continent’s desire for change. Before the revolution lost its vision; before it became a headless thing. Maybe no visionary at all was the best course. Like the easel sheet at the front of the room, the one with the most sticker votes. All those atomic orange dots proclaiming our latest five-year plan.
WHERE WAS THE OUTCRY WHEN THE FIGURE 8 DIED? A HISTORY BOP QUIZ
The compulsory school figures. Skaters crouched, tight,
carving S patterns with their dulled blades. The academic
judges on their hands and knees, in formal attire, conducting
close readings, deducting points for shaky rhythms, bulging
metrics, imperfect loops of irony, their subatomic sights
oblivious to the thinning belief in their powers to discern.
With a shape like infinity who’d have guessed it could ever end?
Discipline. Serpentine stanzas. Lutz and bounds.
All the lyric elements in perfect attendance,
yet the audience still spied its watch. The skaters
tried harder than ever to please, championing symmetry,
but revolt was rising in the hinterland, swelling frozen
ponds with heaves of doubt. In royal rinks, elite rules held,
the epic figures safeguarded by gentlemen’s agreement,
the commissars having long since trained their dogs to heel.
With a shape like infinity who’d have guessed it could ever end?
Peggy Fleming’s fault, some say. And television. And all
that came and went with 1968. How a girl became a falcon,
used her talon-blades to slice open the root-balled politesse.
The center could not hold the sublime outrush of her free skate.
Her flame cascading across the cold round table, igniting
Figure 8’s tongue, incinerating Olympic lore from within.
With a shape like infinity who’d have guessed it could ever end?
Maureen Kingston lives and works in eastern Nebraska (US). She is an assistant editor at The Centrifugal Eye. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming inApeiron Review, Constellations, Emerge Literary Journal, Humber Pie (UK), Lily, The Meadowland Review, Psychic Meatloaf, Rufous City Review, Stone Highway Review and Terrain.org.
Scraunched
The longest one-syllable word
in the English Dictionary,
Do you know what that is?
S c r a u n c h e d –
S C R A U
N C H E D
S c r a u n c h e d –
It means to have made a noise
similar to the sole of a shoe
pressing down on the gravel,
Heel to toe,
That crackling,
That crushing, crumpling sound,
that gritty scuff,
that CUH-CUH-CUH
of the loose stone you walk on
on the way to your daily chores
completely indifferent to the fact
that such a lengthy word
of only one beat exists out there -
that word ‘scraunched’
with so many letters bunched up
in such a short space,
most people not giving a damn,
but existing regardless
because the dictionary makes it so.
I think if I was a one-syllable word
I’d feel pretty scraunched too
With all the pressure
Of the world’s shoe on me like that.
Richard Thomas is a poet from Plymouth, UK. Richard has a diploma in Creative Writing and is studying a degree in English Literature and Language. His poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies internationally, a poem of his was shortlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2011, his debut collection of poems The Strangest Thankyou is due out October 2012 through Cultured Llama Press. Richard is the editor of poetry e-zine Symmetry Pebbles and his currently working on his second collection of poems.
ODE TO LADY GAGA’S HIPS
Well, for a long time I’d been thinking they must be fake.
As large and round as Neptune,
The kind of perfect hips that only exist in Brazil.
I suspected that somehow you’d slathered skin-safe adhesive on some bulgy imitation-hips
And secured them seamlessly to your sides.
But my YouTube-watching alter-ego has seen you dancing about
In your leathery leotards,
And she assures me that two things are definitely true:
1. You do not, in fact, have a penis
2. Your hips are real
So my question is, if you are Italian, yet you are endowed with those Neptunous Brazil-hips,
Why can’t I, also part Italian, have such hips?
The reason:
Because you are the second coming of Christ himself.
I have seen the way you shimmer around the edges.
I saw you on the Ellen DeGeneres show,
Cleverly disguising your halo among other golden rings
Until the whole ensemble looked like some mangled planetary hat.
Yes, I know your secret,
And I know that it is only a matter of time before you and your two glorious hips
Come out for what you really are: the holy trinity.
Oh, the Christians will be distraught when they find out
That while they were righteously whispering about my strange obsession with Lady Gaga
And her glorious, holy, Neptunous, Brazil-hips,
I was right all along to worship her!
DEAR SOPHOMORE
What to Expect:
There will be deleted phone numbers,
New haircuts,
And awkward smalltalk over coffee.
There will be lipstick,
And neckties,
And the cruel indifference of the bathroom mirror.
There will be Franco
And Gilman
And Austen
And Astell
And Hurston
And Wheatley
And Judith Shakespeare.
There will be dozens of drafts of
Dear Mom and Dad,
And one craven finger
That always clicks
delete
Instead of send,
But then,
You’ll meet a girl
Who will hold you by your snot-streaked necktie,
Kiss your salty lashes,
And click for you.
And everything will turn out okay.
So Darling,
Don’t fall for those damn commercials
With a quick fix for your
Unsightly upper lip hair
And your beige teeth
And your body fat
And your lumpy scars
And your gaping pores,
Your eyes,
Your thighs,
Your luck with guys,
Because
Surprise!
They’re all lies
And you look like a princess
In your three-piece-suit
And nude lips
And tiara made of thorny reminders
That you’re already lucky to be here.
So brace yourself, Honey,
For the ride from your life
To mine,
And please keep your hands, arms, feet, and legs
Inside the vehicle at all times.
Ella Barstowe recently earned a Bachelor’s degree in gender studies from the University of Southern California, where she also studied creative writing. She is currently living the glamorous life of a grocery checker in Seattle and applying to MFA programs in poetry.
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footnotes of
expository essays
ticking behind
the unstable snare drum beat
albatross
of the stadium lights
silver medals
melt like Dali’s clocks
rust in twilight
into the
velvet desert and
rise up from
broken laptops
and spilling
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teddy bears
stapled over
front covers
hiding pages
of character
after character
(<why do they make me cry?>)
anonymous
photo finish
please
take him away
from here
somewhere where it all
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Jamie Uy is the managing editor of Parallel Ink and her work has appeared in Launch Pad, KidsWWrite, and the ISB Young Writers Award. She was a Commended Foyle Young Poet of the Year 2012, and published an anthology entitled "The 1 AM Astronaut and Other Poems". When she's not writing, she can be found laughing her head off at YouTube viral videos, or making rice krispies in the kitchen.