Month: October 2016

I would like to express my concern (at your organisation’s behaviour) By Amy Engle

Issue 7

As a messenger
of firstly your country (but also of mankind)
that we as people basically programmed by nature
and that our understanding
of almost everything
:: is far too limited.

Images of Mars almost certainly suggest life?

No one seems much interested in anything to do with life.
((As could be apart from bacteria?))
Even Einstein’s theory that time is not linear
would suggest that if life ever lived there (or indeed ever does life there)
it could that it lives there today even if it died
millions of years ago / in linear time.

I strongly feel the image shows signs of life.

That the wheel is a metaphor of a fish almost like thunder after lightning.
That the drill hole may be responsible for damaging life

(in time and space) maybe
dislodging / quanta
                                     ;
or something
like that.

That the life itself is damaged
in a way we simply don’t understand.

The surface itself is arbitrary.
(Arbitrary isn’t simple as to what it means.)

It is important to understand the nature of the mechanisms that make arbitrary woe before measuring
any face that it may show you any more
/ or less /
than measuring
the colour of a cuttle fish without understanding
what made it change colour.

Mars is certainly showing signs of life
(probably real high order life like zebras and big fishes type life maybe even people in my opinion) purely
as an educated citizen with no agenda.

 

Source: An email received by the Public Information Officer for Global Security at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Amy Engle is a professional writer, editor, and digital media/communications specialist based out of Los Alamos, New Mexico. She has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Utah, but is currently the full-time Social Media Manager for Los Alamos National Laboratory and spends her days finding poetry in science.

Metrophobia By Jennifer Rollings

Issue 7

It’s because I couldn’t be there, isn’t it?

So I am leaving you and keeping all of your clothes.

And as I enter this dark country called marriage, I know
somewhere it is summer.

I didn’t know how to explain this one,
so I just said it was about sex.

Some of you in this room know what I’m talking about,
I hope.

I kept dreaming of car accidents,
preparing to leave the East Coast and everyone I loved.

Portland is a very civilized city.
Thank you.

You are one of the nation’s great secrets.
I know that when they say to you
we don’t want those kind of people around
you will say no, because it is right.

Can’t wait to see the poems that come out of this.

Poetry is not dying
and how wonderful you share it with your mother.

I should have gone first.

Peace.

And what are you doing now?

 

Source: This poem is comprised of comments the author remembers from poets and writers during their readings in the state of Oregon between 1999 and 2010. Though it was not possible for the poet to remember the author of each comment, some of which were in the form of book signatures, personal exchanges she had with each writer and the writers’ off-the-cuff commentary during presentations, the authors referenced here include Marie Howe, Suzanne Fisher, Joan Didion, Maya Angelou, Dorianne Laux, Robert Pinsky, Tony Kushner and Yusef Komunyakaa.

Jennifer Rollings is a writer living and working in the Pacific Northwest.  Her work has previously been featured in Clementine Unbound, Every Writers Resource, WordWrights! and the journal Ardentia.  She has also been published in The First Line, and has work forthcoming there again in 2017.

 

Talking With A Mouth Full of Stars By Karen Barton

Issue 7

karen-barton-unlost

 

Karen Barton is studying The History of Art with Creative Writing BA at the Open University. She lives in Wiltshire, close to Stonehenge and her occupations have included magician’s assistant and dancer. She is founder and co-editor of Matryoshka Poetry and her work has been published in The Curly Mind, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Alyss and elsewhere.

Gone now (like something great) By Mark Russell

Issue 7

Chalice-face taught snuff,
remembered reading sherry,
came in poor Driscoll’s ageing aunt,
seemed always mean but beautiful.

Now courage is bowed and black
in the mass queer father house;
the table is wide-awake
sitting quietly with a candle.

Time is tiresome for those
with no soul and little head.
Children took the used night
and found god dead in his chair.

Mr Unremarkable let the day see the dark,
and took two strange friends into the back.

 

Source: The Sisters by James Joyce; Wordled, erased, repurposed, and reassembled as a fourteener.

Mark Russell’s pamphlets are ا (the book of seals) and Saturday Morning Pictures (Red Ceilings Press), and Pursued by Well-being (tall-lighthouse). ℵ (the book of moose) is due out with Kattywompus Press later this year. Other poems, vispo, and asemic work have appeared in Otoliths, Tears in the Fence, Lighthouse, and elsewhere.

Two BlackOut Poems by Brandon North

Issue 7

HAP 14

Hap 14

 

HAP 21

HAP 21

 

Source Text: Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens. Hap 14 and Hap 21 are from a larger project titled, Om On.

Brandon North is a poetry candidate in the NEOMFA program, through which he works for the Cleveland State Poetry Center. His work has recently appeared in decomP. He can be found at centeringspirals.blogspot.com.