Wednesday, August 12, 2009

— Poetry & Lyric —
Poems! We’ve Got Poems!

Public Display

Little teenage couples
walk around
attached
hugging and kissing on each other
exploring sensual relationships
for the first time

Old people scowl
at the shameful
display
knowing that it’s only proper
to hug and kiss
in the dark

Richard F. Yates is a poet, short-story author, and artist living in Washington State, U.S.A. He is married and has two daughters, works in the writing center at Washington State University @ Vancouver, and his work has appeared in such places as: Mad Swirl, The Salmon Creek Journal, Words-Myth, Word Riot, and Vision? Nary! Magazine. He was a featured presenter and workshop instructor at the Raymond Carver Writing Festival in 2008 and 2009, one of the winners of the 2007 Ooligan Press Flash Fiction Contest, and served as the poetry editor for the 2005 issue of The Salmon Creek Journal. He is a member of the Washington Poets Association. For more information, please check out his MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/richardfyates.

Ode to the Spork

J.D. McGregor

Oh unsung hero of hot lunch
How you get us through our
Green beans and apple sauce
You are truly the companion
Of a plastic-wrapped napkin
You give so much of yourself
For you have so much to give
But how will you compensate
For a knife?

J. D. McGregor is the pen name of Y.P.R.’s foreign correspondent, currently residing in Jerusalem, Israel, where he is studying Torah and learning to bake a kickass kugel.

Spork!

The Robot Speaks of Rivers
(with apologies to Langston Hughes)

Katelyn Sack

The Robot Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:
Zbroaiek;ltst.

I’ve gotten wet in ancient rivers, older than the
flow of gigabytes in a;lksklvcioewkl.

My hard drive has grown fragmented like the rivers.

I saved documents in the Euphrates when kj;lsfd;a;sd.
I built my spreadsheets near the Congo and it lulled me to saf;dkzvio.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the power cords above it.
I streaming-downloaded the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and ;lkalmvzcxoiv;jlkqmf;oisdnlkgvakldsv;oamklsd.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky z;jkvm.

My programming has grown ;lmkqeoivjhz;lkv’asduogqnrwkfv;qlkwmer like the rivers.

Katelyn Sack is a writer, musician, and painter currently residing in Charlottesville. Her art has been displayed in numerous venues, and her writing has appeared or is pending publication in Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Science Creative Quarterly, and Opium Magazine. She would like a book deal, please.

Some Nature Haiku

Ryan Mazer

The Tree
The proud, burly tree
Rests on the now crashed TV
Thanks a lot, nature

Bees
Bees dance in the air
Merrily they dart about
I’m stung eighteen times

Bees and the Tree
I tend to my stings
With aloe from the felled tree
But it doesn’t work

Afternoon
The stings are swollen
Causing pain TV can’t ease
As a tree’s on it

Night
All over I bleed
30 Rock should be on now
I wish I were dead

Nature’s Lesson
Life is meaningless
The universe is empty
Do not go outside

Ryan Mazer—Birmingham, Alabama, 5’9”, green eyes, stock build, looking for young soul. Previously, Ryan submitted a similar personal ad to an online literary journal as his bio. Had he known his attempt to be clever would so irritate everyone that it would force him to write actual personal ads as his only hope for companionship, he would have thought twice before sending. But now he sits alone by a rainy window, weeping to the score of Requiem for a Dream. Despair. Anyway, he’s great fun and a load of laughs!

If Jackson Pollock Wrote Poetry

Caleb Powell

Splat.

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Caleb Powell believes Milan Kundera had it right when he wrote, “Happiness is looking forward to repetition,” and therefore beats to death Bukowski’s “we must bring our own light to the darkness/ no one is going to do it for us.” Ever since creating the phrase “I swear on the Booble,” Caleb is driving his wife crazy. On the writing front, he is the author of The World is a Class, a reference guide drawing on his experiences overseas. He has placed essays, stories, and a novel as finalists in the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Writing Competition. His work has been published or is forthcoming in flashquake, elimae, and Descant. Visit him at http://calebpowell.wordpress.com.

Third Reich

Joseph Reich

Judaism

mother, disco dancing at my bar mitzvah
with her gynecologist, then the guy
who delivered me
cutting in …

World Series Tickets

“i had manny
lean on mushkin …”

What You Did When Your Wife Left for a Little While to Visit Her Mom in the Bronx

rearranged crooked pictures on the wall
couldn’t find the cocktail sauce, the brillo
i used to really like that song “rhinestone cowboy” by glen campbell…

Joseph Reich is a social worker who works out in the strange state of grace of Massachusetts: A displaced New Yorker who sincerely does miss diss place, most of all the Thai food, Shanghai Joe’s in Chinatown, the fresh smoothies on Houston Street, and bagels and bialys of the Lower East Side. He has a wife and a handsome little son with a nice mop of dirty blond hair, and when they all get a bit older, he hopes to take them back to play, to pray, to contemplate in the parks and playgrounds of New York City. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in such literary journals as Poesy, Dispatch Detroit, Falling Star, Color Wheel, Bareback, And Then, Grafitti Rag, Main Street Rag, Bouillabaisse, Decanto, Rogue’s Scholar, Poetry Motel, The Beat, The Potomac, Poetry Super Highway, Panic Brixton Poetry, Istanbul Literature Review, The Taj Mahal Review, Stirring, Sugar Mule, Juked, No Record, Inscribed, Glass: A Poetry Review, CC & D, Down In The Dirt, Ascent Aspirations, Right Hand Pointing, Why Vandalism? The Cerebral Catalyst, Cause & Effect, Subtle Tea, Yippie, ESC! Magazine, The Oak Bend Review, Opium, Problem Child, Sein Un Werden, Denver Syntax, Paradigm, Paradigm Shift, Mad Swirl, Houston Literary Review, Words-Myth, Literary Mary, Side Of Grits, Gloom Cupboard, Motel 58, Cherry Bleeds, Poet Works, Jukebox, Neonbeam, Burning River, Third Wednesday, The Philosophical Society Of England, Gold Dust, The Battered Suitcase, The Iguana Review, Spot Literary Journal, Breadcrumb Scabs, Semaphore, The Delinquent, SALit, The Wichita Falls Literature & Arts Review, Ottawa Arts Review, Mirrors Magazine, Puffin Circus, Scawy Munstur, River Poet’s Journal and The American Drivel Review.