Art-istic

I was the open shirt

and the journal palm,

not a pair of wings,

the recorder of passersby.

They did not know what

to do with me. I strung

together metaphors while

they talked about baseball

cards. While they volleyed

juvenile experiences of lust,

I read the thoughts of

expatriate Parisians, sarcastic

polarizing prophets, and poems

balanced on an image. Popping

in compact discs, I imagined

the world I might one day

engage in, sketched in pencil.

JD DeHart

Tennessee, US

All entirely normal

The outlines in the dark
Were of no interest to you
But to me it was a mystery
That rocks could soar suddenly
Bigger than a tower block
Blocking the horizon
Even at night

I’d seen such things in books
And on 625 line TV sets
But not these giant silhouettes
Taunting us
Warning us to stay away
Sneering at our lack of size

The coach slid
Scattered snow into chasm
The driver reversed
Then went forward
And then reversed
And then went forward again
As though it was entirely normal
To slide on the side of rocks
near oblivion.


Anthony E Miller,
Croydon
http://www.pearshapedcomedy.com/A_E_Miller_Poetry.html

The Good Liar

He knows how to spin
his yarn so that the truth
is hidden under a golden
hue, desiccated stories

Reworked so that the horror
he was is now the hero,
re-spoken so that the old 
bones are not yet grown that
way, reset and shooting forth

In another, unexpected way,
trying on a new voice instead.


J 'Ash' Gamble

Ham

Mother brought the ham,
the one I was supposed to bring,
she's always good like that.
Mother is dressed in the smell
of lavender and other fine oils,
she is the movement of sheets
in the wind, pinned up on the line
father erected for her.
Mother is the smell of that ham
and other kitchen odors, the feeling
of an ice pack on my bleeding head,
the tsk-tsk-tsk sound when I know
I've really messed up my life,
the needle and thread putting me
back together again, after it all.


Kaitlyn Park
Salem, Oregon,
US