Published by Poetry Editor on June 9, 2015. This item is listed in Editorials, Introductions, Issue 26, Issue 26 Poetry

Introduction to Issue 26 Poetry

by John Mannone

This issue’s slate of fine poets opens with the gripping poem, “Tread With Me” by Anna Autilio (Boise, ID). Form serves function well here.

“Heliopause” by Barry Charman (Harrow, Middlesex, England) goes beyond poetic science, it is lifted into poetry with a series of appositives extending beyond the page.

“One Persistent Eye” by Darrell Lindsey (Nacogdoches, TX) continues with that edge of space in the previous poem. Again, it says a lot more that is apparent. This almost-sonnet, with it’s well-placed volta in the final couplet, answers an arguably implied question.

“The water babies amuse themselves” by Melanie Bell (San Francisco, CA) is an surreal/bizarro poem, it is as much an experiment with image as it is with sound.

“illusions of man” by Deborah Guzzi (Monroe, CT) has it’s own kind of surreality. The poem is meant as a tribute and elegy for a gifted but troubled artist who had passed. The sawtooth structure lends itself well to perhaps an interpretive glimpse inside the mind of this artist with the overlapping, but jagged associative lines.

The selection closes with another “list” poem of sorts, but with its own measure of surrealism. “Five Doors” by Darrell Lindsey (Nacogdoches, TX) may be a short poem, but will linger a long time off the page.

Now, go enjoy these gems.

• Continue Reading

Published by Poetry Editor on June 8, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Poetry

Illusions of Man

Deborah Guzzi is a healing facilitator specializing in Japanese Shiatsu and Reiki. She writes for Massage and Aroma Therapy Magazines. She travels the world to expand her knowledge of healing and seeking writing inspiration. She has walked the Great Wall of China, seen Nepal (during the civil war), Japan, Egypt (two weeks before ‘The Arab Spring’), Peru, and France during December’s terrorist attacks. Her poetry appears in Magazines in the UK, Exsistere in Canada; Tincture in Australia; Cha:Asian Literary Review in China, Vine Leaves Literary Journal in Greece; and Travel by the Book, Eunoia, Silver Blade, Liquid Imagination, The Wilderness Literary Review, Illumen, and others in the USA.

• Continue Reading
• 1 Comment

Published by Poetry Editor on June 8, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Poetry

Five Doors

Stranger’s shadows
and blue angels appearing
in a broken mirror.

Snow in the long hair
of a one-armed hallucination
bringing us firewood.

The nearest distant mountain moving
like the nimble fingers
of a pianist.

Our daughter playing with a doll
that has lost its hair
and has a trembling voice.

Crows filling the front yard
with a pregnant answer
that locks all the doors twice.

Darrell Lindsey is the author of Edge of the Pond (Popcorn Press, 2012), and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2007) and a Rhysling Award (2014). He won the 2012 Science Fiction Poetry Association Contest (Long Form category), as well as the 2014 Balticon Poetry Contest. Most recently, he had two poems published in Outposts of Beyond (January 2015 issue). He loves the imaginative leaps found in good speculative poetry.

• Continue Reading

Published by Poetry Editor on June 8, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Poetry

The Water Babies Amuse Themselves

I planted a water lily in the bathtub
to keep myself company.

Watched it bob between the atolls of my knees
its rhizomes wormed beneath me.

On the third day it had children,
thumb-sized bodies tumbling out.

They filled the bathtub’s crevasses with mud and pebbles.
They went geo-cacheing in my navel.

Watched sinister blue-pelted puppets sing on television,
the Ritz cracker crackle of static.

I couldn’t budge to turn it off.
A fluid pooled in the lily’s curled center.

A glinting junebug crawled out pollen-backed
sauntered into my chest cavity.

The flower children watched and cheered,
admiring the bug like confetti.

Wings unwrinkled from its body.
Clicking noises echoed from me.

The children multiplied like grubs, like seeds in spongy berries.
The lily clung to my thighs. Petals browned and drooped.

The children learned the alphabet from song-honking puppets,
furry and scurrilous. Drank it as soup.

They giggled at my clicking voice, my mud-caked stomach,
my scum-tinged roots.

Melanie Bell is a writer and Enneagram teacher from P.E.I., Canada, who currently lives in San Francisco. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications including Art Animal, The Island Review, qu.ee/r, Jaggery, CV2, and Grain, and she is a past Managing Editor of Matrix Magazine. Her work can be found at MelanieBellWrites.com.

• Continue Reading

Published by Poetry Editor on June 8, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Poetry

One Persistent Eye

In the throes of that almost lost day,
telescopes became blind
to the infinite spirals
at the edge of existence,
yet one persistent eye
along the winding river
mirrored the velocity of colors,
gathered an array of galaxies at twilight
without so much as a blink.
I leaned into the face of the future,
saw shapes of dreams
come together like a jigsaw puzzle
no longer owned by ghosts.

I stepped out of the helix,
and only weighed a melody.

Darrell Lindsey is the author of Edge of the Pond (Popcorn Press, 2012), and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2007) and a Rhysling Award (2014). He won the 2012 Science Fiction Poetry Association Contest (Long Form category), as well as the 2014 Balticon Poetry Contest. Most recently, he had two poems published in Outposts of Beyond (January 2015 issue). He loves the imaginative leaps found in good speculative poetry.

• Continue Reading

Published by Poetry Editor on June 8, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Poetry

Heliopause

A borderland
barrier of atoms dancing
under the last pull of the sun

The rush of silence
like a favorite song
skipping for the first time

The reach of our yearning star
that’s stretched and strained
until finally it’s time to tear away

Go beyond the boundary
past the discord
of trans-Neptunian noise

And listen
to unimagined symphonies
bind unknown spheres

Where the interstellar threshold
beckons the limit of imagination’s
capacity for fear

There has never been dark like this
nor beyond, such light

Barry Charman is a writer living in North London. He has been published in various magazines, including Ambit, Popshot, Bare Fiction Magazine, Firewords Quarterly and The Alarmist. He has poems published online at Every Day Poets and Postcard Poems & Prose. He has more recently had poems published in The Leading Edge, and Lunar Poetry.

• Continue Reading

Published by Poetry Editor on June 7, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Poetry

Tread With Me

I stumble
on a snake
and smile.
Flicks of rocks
shoot through grass,
dart over sand
like breath:
a lean form
between the patterns
in the pebbles.
To be startled,
then aware.
To surrender my
sphere because
the snake’s home
is in the apple tree.
But lord I know
the same damned
life pumps in him
as does in me.

Anna Autilio graduated with a B.S. in Animal Science and a minor in Creative Writing from Cornell University in May 2014, where she won two awards for poetry and fiction. She has work in Rainy Day and The Fine Line. She has also published her graduate research on avian scavengers, including a coloring book, “Caracaras of the World.” She currently lives in Boise, ID, where she’s pursuing a Master’s degree in Raptor Biology, and volunteers at the World Center for Birds of Prey.

• Continue Reading