Issue 1
Anna Bilbao
Elevator
Pavements retreat like
scuttling beetles, flowers
turn futile heads to the sky.
The anonymous rush to
and fro from the hasty smoke.
We rise like lichen on
headstones, knowing only
death can save us
from all this
artificial brightness.
Anna Bilbao was born in Spain and now lives between Michigan and London, two cities she has a great affection for. She has been writing poetry on and off for some years and occaisionally some of her work makes it to print.
Gavin Brookes
April 1st, 2009
We wait impatiently on streets of kings
Cover the city with dissent,
Seething while they live
Lazily on the beef-red afternoons in
The callous corridors of Whitehall.
The cold state in flesh,
Raging numberless crowblack policemen
Thrashing, kettling
Those to be ruled and damned,
Saving their masters’ entitlements.
Gavin Brookes was born in 1982 in Lancashire. He has been writing poetry since he was seventeen and even read his work in public once. He lives in Manchester with his wife and daughter.
J.D. Ellars
I have spent my long sought life
In afternoons on Indiana Avenue
With scalded sidewalks
And broken curbs
While yesterday’s paper
Lies disintegrating
In the warm August rain.
Jim Ellars has been a middle school math teacher in Indiana since 1966. He is a graduate of the University of Indianapolis and Ball State University. He has enjoyed his “hobby” of poetry composition ever since introduced to the joy of language by his high school English teacher. Some of his poems can be found in the “Notes” section of the “James Ellars” facebook page.
V.S. Oakleigh
Decency
There are hobbies for the well-to-do
women with the polished nails who know
it indecent to be in business of
earning money but rather offering
charity and a model of virtue for
the lesser of the gender to aspire to
and that girl who boxes
and that girl who packs ready meals
and that girl who cleans the offices
and that girl who works the streets
would do well to follow their diamonded
charitable examples and
polished respectability.
V.S. Oakleigh spent ten years as a mathematics teacher in England before moving to Japan to teach English for a year fifteen years ago. She has only recently started sharing the poetry she has been writing for longer than she cares to remember. She currently lives in Kyoto.
Kushal Poddar
The Forsaken
Once a whistling train
passed these rails;
a white-haired porter
pasted the closure notice.
Still at night whistle is a common dream.
My father waits for the train
to return his wife.
I grow up with a singular education:
death is green.
The closed station, rusty rails,
addicted birds, coupling spirits,
snail race
and moss and vine;
death is so green.
My father is all white-haired;
there is no more white one can grow.
He waits for the train to return.
His faith keeps lying,
his wife will come back
riding the train
now abandoned
to this forsaken station.
He never taught me
she had anyone else
in her mind.
Kushal Poddar (1977- ) resides in the city of Kolkata, India. Apart from poetry, he has written fiction and scripts for television mini-series as well. His English poetry has been published in the online and print magazines all over the world like “Shine”, “Apparatus”, “Heron’s Nest”, “Word Salad Magazine”, “Turbulence”,” Birds on line” “Four and Twenty” and “DR. NI’S NEWS” as well as on several other literary web-sites. He is the author of “All Our Fictional Dreams” and been published in “Poor Poet’s Pantry: Collaborative Poems”. The forthcoming book is “Surviving Cyber Life”. Read the rest of this entry »
Iron Fox 