Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://poetrysuperhighway.com/pshffa.html
Not a poem but an awesome idea for sharing more poetry with the world…

I have a major re-certification exam next Friday and have been studying more so there are no more posts for this week, please stay tuned for next week…

Indiana Crime Edited by Murphy Edwards and James Ward Kirk and Durable Goods Issue 61 Edited by Aleathia Drehmer

Indiana Crime 2012 is an anthology of poems, flash fiction, short stories, and art focusing on the crimes and horror stories of the Midwest. Edited by Murphy Edwards and James Ward Kirk, there are gruesome tales as well as heartbreaking hard-luck tales within its pages. Below, I’ll share a couple of poems and a review of one of the stories:

Murder in greasepaint
By: Brian Rosenberger

A painted smile
can hide many things
some longer than others
but nothing forever

Matchless mirth maker
and member of the
fun bunch
in good standing
Harry the clown
had a hole in his heart
as red as his nose

Morganna, mistress of the high wire
and Harry’s bed
was found in repose with
the dead harlequin
wearing the clown’s oversized shoes
and a matching wound

The lovers’ final performance
went largely unnoticed,
save for one

Esmerelda, wife to Harry
and resident sword swallower
bit off more than she could chew
a victim of her own devices
after dispatching the adulterous pair,
she choked hiding the murder weapon

And that marked
the last time
the circus
came to town.

A tale of circus performers caught up in high-stakes of a different kind, this poem is entertaining and tragic all at once. For the sword swallower to choke on the murder weapon is a morbid twist of fate for seeking revenge on her adulterous husband. I enjoy seeing such a story as a poem instead of as a short story tale, taking the skeleton of it and setting its bones for the reader to fill in their own picture of the scene.



Pulp City
By: Roger Cowin

1. Welcome to Fat City

The city is a vampire that bleeds
the vitality from the soul, breeding
its own infestation of violence, greed,
hatred and hopelessness,
leaving only half animated corpses
wandering the brutal streets
looking for their next fix,
the next big score,
the next sure bet.

Welcome to Fat City,
city of suicide dreams and wasted lives,
of sterno bums, junkies, thugs
and ten dollar whores,
of cop killers and killer cops,
of dime store hoods and degenerate gangsters,
a city populated by the living damned
where being down and out is a way of life,
and every cockroach that crawls out of the sewer
has its own story to tell.

This poem actually has six sections and so I share with you its introduction. The description of the city as being a vampire sucking the life out of you is vivid and straightforward enough to let the readers know that only bad things happen here. The following sections showcase miscreants and mishaps, it is riveting and well worth reading.

The Kill Stand by Larry D. Sweazy is a short story of a man who served in Vietnam and is now working a blue collar job killing turkeys for a living and must confront the fact that he must work a third shift regardless of the fact that his granddaughter will be performing in the local church and wants him to be there to see her. It is a heart-breaking story that people can relate to more nowadays than ever before in an economy where jobs are scarce and you must sacrifice time with family to keep whatever job you can. The ending fills the reader with uncertainty and hope that I cannot spoil here. All I can say is if you have every worked long hours and had to face tragedies in family life that effect your ability to keep a job while slogging away then this story will shoot you like an arrow through the heart.

This collection of poems, stories, and artwork is a well-rounded collection of tragedies and hard luck that I highly recommend reading. If you enjoyed this review you may obtain a copy of Indiana Crime for yourself for $12.48 through Amazon of Indiana Crime by using this link below:

http://www.amazon.com/Indiana-Crime-2012-James-Ward/dp/1468146718



Durable Goods is a microzine edited by writer Aleathia Drehmer and issue Number 61 landed in my mailbox recently. Similar in size to the small journal of Lilliput Review, the issue arrives in your standard letter-sized envelope and contains several poets’ poems within. Inside this issue there are poems that describe the daily items of life such as magazines, Dixie cups, clothes you hang on the clothesline, and the feelings that overwhelm us amongst our every-day life existence. Since there are so few poems I will only share one of them with you:


A Lack of Color
By: Jesse Bradley

This couch is like a gondola, spines of
magazines brushing against it
when I almost trip over them;
airbrushed areolae, stomachs
almost break my neck. I drink just
enough for your number to melt
from my thumb. I build a wedding
chapel out of used red Dixie cups
after impregnating your voicemail. I
slap it apart in the morning when
the right side of the bed feels like
the last days of autumn.

I love the imagery in the poem, the couch as a gondola floating among the mess of magazines and Dixie cups in the living room, the idea of a wedding chapel made out of those cups. I’m not sure exactly what the inspiration behind the poem is but I picture the aftermath of a party and the hostess waking on the couch alone and realizing she has filled an ex-lover’s voice mail from drunk-dialing. Jesse Bradley’s poem is enticing in its potential story lines and I hope she sees this post and sheds some light on her poem, even if my interpretation is completely wrong.

If you enjoyed this short sample you can subscribe to Durable Goods for an entire year for a mere $12.00 with an issue being sent your way every two weeks. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful change from receiving nothing but bills in the mail, too? To find out more, send an e-mail to Aleathia Drehmer at:
Windwitch27ATyahooDOTcom


Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Michael Wells’ Blog Stick Poet Superhero

Insights into poetry, poets, and art, all irresistible, can be found at the also irresistibly titled Stick Poet Superhero at:
http://stickpoetsuperhero.blogspot.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for two poetry reviews…

Anti Open Submissions

I have copied-and-pasted straight from the website for you:
Submission Guidelines


Send 3-7 original, unpublished poems as a single attachment (Word .doc or RTF) to antipoetry@anti-poetry.com. Either in the file or the body of the e-mail, include a cover letter with your name, contact information, a contributor-note biography of 50 words or less, and a statement of 50 words or less on what you’re against in poetry. This statement can be general or specific to your submitted poems, serious or tongue in cheek, broad or ridiculously minute. It needs to be something you want to appear on your page if we accept your work. Poems will be considered for both issue and featured writer slots.

The Fine Print
We are open for submission throughout the year, with occasional short breaks that will be posted here. Be sure you’re a reader of contemporary poetry. We love simultaneous submissions as long as you notify us if a poem is accepted elsewhere. We consider translations if you can provide the original version as well (and we will consider exceptions for good reasons). We ask for first serial rights, and copyright remains with the author. Anything that has appeared in an online or print journal is previously published. Posting drafts to an online workshop or blog is not previously published provided they’re removed prior to submission. Anything the editor can Google is previously published. Please do not send work more than once per six months unless we request otherwise. Please send a file attachment as requested above, not a link to a saved file. Don’t ever send revisions of work still under consideration. Revisions to work already accepted are at the discretion of the editor. Please feel free to query if you do not hear back from us within two months. If your first impulse reading these guidelines was to ask if we pay, we are likely not the place for you.

To learn more about Anti and to explore their website and poems, go to:

http://anti-poetry.com/guidelines/



Good luck to all who enter, please drop in again next week…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://juked.com/2012/04/youknowwhat.asp
You Know What by Dennis James Sweeney

http://anti-poetry.com/hainesan1/
Love Song of the Starving Chick By Anne Haines

Thanks for clicking in, please drop in tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

Nick Courtright's Punchline

Nick Courtright’s collection of poems, Punchline, has been published by Gold Wake Press and is a riveting read. Nick Courtright was born in Ohio and currently lives and teaches in Austin, Texas and is also the interviews editor for the Austinest. His work has appeared in journals including The Southern Review, the Boston Review, and his chapbook, Elegy, has been published by Blue Hour Press. Punchline is a philosophical collection of poems that reaches into the large and the small, from the universe down to the atom. It is a living, breathing collection and I am happy to share a few poems with you:

Freedom Evolves

You at outside the old house and there

Learned of paint
and shelter and the meaning of roofs

when they reveal their feelings about being

shield against the rain, a protector.

.


Now the sky is a wide cloth above

and the moment outside
has become me. It will rain so hard

the whole idea of wet will change—

we are all being waited for, we are all the analogy.

.

You believe in free will

and then one day so does

one atom of the gum-covered underbelly
of a forty year old desk

and who is affecting who?

.

Maybe that one atom is responsible
for the whole room around it

as a human is for the galaxy, the awful galaxy.

In that case, slow down,

little everything.

I think this is a beautiful poem. Mr. Courtright introduces us to the concept of shelter by way of an old house and then the meaning of shelter against an open sky which becomes a wide cloth which is another version of shelter. Then we come to free will and our choice to be in that open sky and how free will may be within a single atom. That single atom can effect the entire galaxy, something so small against something so large. In this poem we get to contemplate the stars and the sky that we seek shelter from and how small things have an impact on larger things.



Wake

The room is full of flowers,

the flowers are on the wallpaper,

they subsume the walls into flowerness,

there is a person watching the flowers,

I watch the flowers.



Tomorrow, thank you for existing.



So many people are waiting in line, so many people

for all eternity waiting,
so many waiting people.

In this poem I can picture the poet sitting and observing the room around him at a funeral home. The flowers from loved ones blur into flowers on the wallpaper, the thought of tomorrow with the deceased absent and the words “thank you” strike me. Especially when the next and final three lines are about people waiting, perhaps waiting to join the deceased in the afterlife. Here the wake inspires the poet to observe his surroundings and contemplate the idea of people waiting their turn to view the deceased one last time or perhaps waiting their turn.


Connection

The seawater sloshes relentlessly
against the green pier, calling God under its breath, God,

God, God,

and nothing changes.


I have a feeling
if I moved
even a bit—

if I could move—

it would be like the loose thread on an old argyle sweater

which, pulled, sends
the sweater

spiraling into non-existence.

The poet observes his surroundings and imagines changing, shifting, the universe. I love poems like these because I can picture myself lost in thought, too, listening to the ocean waves and thinking about life, death, and the universe. This poem does and creates a backdrop for us to imagine ourselves in, a view of the green pier and the water sloshing in such a way that it seems to be talking. This is another beautiful poem.


If you enjoyed this sample you may purchase a copy of Punchline for $12.95 through Barnes and Noble and published by Gold Wake Press go to:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/punchline-nick-courtright/1104063553?cm_mmc=affiliates-_-linkshare-_-tnl5hpstwnw-_-10%3a1&ean=9780983700128

To learn more about Nick Courtright please visit his website at:
http://nickcourtright.com/about/

Thanks for dropping by, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Shark Forum Blog

This blog encompasses art and poetry reviews, two of my favorite things. Stunning visuals abound, in addition to features on music, design, and more so check it out at: http://www.sharkforum.org/blog.html Thanks for clicking in, please drop by tomorrow for another featured poet…

Alternating Current Open Submissions for Poiesis

  Leah Angstman of Alternating Current is looking for poems for Poiesis #6, you may send up to five poems via e-mail to:

 altDOTcurrentATgmailDOTcom

Please, no simultaneous submissions, make sure you write Poetry Submission/Last name in the subject line and include contact information in the body of the e-mail.  

Good luck to all who enter, please drop in again next week…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

https://sites.google.com/site/rhpissue50/john-grey
“Empty” by Jonh Grey 

https://sites.google.com/site/whiteknucklechaps/stephani-schaefer/2-steph
“Kinship” by Stephani Schaefer

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

Full of Crow

This journal has all kinds of good things, notes about poets, fiction writers, events and readings, chapbooks, and more.  Check it out at:

http://www.fullofcrow.com/blog/

Thanks for clicking in, please drop by again on Wednesday…

Strange Machine Site

I stumbled onto this press through etsy.com and I am very intrigues.  You will be, too, check it out at:
http://www.strange-machine.org/main.cfm

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Chicago Review Open Submissions

Please address your envelope’s first line to “Poetry Editors.” You may submit three pages of poetry, simultaneous submissions are discouraged, via snail mail with a self-addressed stamped envelope enclosed. Please include a cover letter. You may send your submission to:

Poetry Editors
Chicago Review
5801 South Kenwood Avenue 
Chicago IL 60637

For more details, go to:
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/submit.shtml"

Good luck to all who submit, please stop by again next week…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://glitterponymag.com/issue-13/poetry/Heather-Christle/ “Saturday” by Heather Christle http://glitterponymag.com/issue-13/poetry/Megan-Leonard/ “Looking at Les Raboteurs De Parquet in the Musee D’Orsay and Thinking About Wood Floors” by Megan Leonard Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

Keeping Even by Sheila Sanderson

Sheila Sanderson’s collection of poems, Keeping Even, unites two sides of the country that reside within one poet: Her upbringing in Kentucky and her life now in Arizona. Add to the two different landscapes the happenings of family and tragedy, wonder and memories and you have a collection that makes you yearn to solve your own life’s dichotomies. Sheila Sanderson’s poems have appeared places such as Alaska Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, Cimarron Review, and more. Ms. Sanderson teaches American and World Literature courses and poetry workshops at Prescott College in Prescott, Arizona. Below I am happy to share a few poems:

High Desert Arizona

Like an old-timer
easy with hard luck
will roll up pantleg
and shirtsleeve
to show what
a snapped cable
or a black widow
can do,
the land here
bares its stories
about where wind
makes its rounds
on rock,
has taught ridgeline
junipers to twist;
about where water goes
by habit
and by fancy,
where water went
and changed its mind,
where a scrub oak
wanted so bad
for water,
it lay down on
its side and
cracked granite
to have it.

This poetic picture paints the stark desert landscape and describes a scene I have scene myself out in the desert: where plants are so eager for water they grown back down to the earth any way they can to collect more water for its own livelihood. I like this poem because it reminds me of my own hikes in the desert.

Spendthrift

Like gainsay, a word always to be looked up,
a word that might have liked
to have meant its opposite;
or hereafter, a word that might have liked
to have it both ways.

like my father who, come late spring,
spends everything he can put his hand to
and borrow against whatever he’s got left
and spends that.
He whistles while he works.

One year he filled the backyard with Volkswagens
and wouldn’t but one in seven run
when he got them,
had the six towed out to the house;
another year it was lawnmowers;
another, houd dogs.

This year,
old metal flake fishing boats,
three generations of motors.

A little fixing and she’ll run just
like a new one, or cut or hum good
as she ever did.
But she never does.

Like the good eating that can come
from an evening’s fishing for crappie,
of treeing a mess of coon, for that matter,
cooked up so to get the wild out.  

Only the good never comes
because come late fall, he’s spent,
the desire to see something fixed doesn’t fix.

Somehow the pay-out he loves
strings out into beyond flat busted.  
He’d just as soon let fish
go rotten on the stringer,
take his coons by the ringtails
and fling them in that field out yonder
as to clean them.

Because even something in the bring-home
misfires someday late fall,
and he’s seeing in all he loved,
what misfits he’s gathered,
who lays up in the bed then for months at a time
moaning his treasury.

who will not even go out to the mailbox,
who will not eat,
give up the ghost of a word or a dollar
for nothing or nobody,
like he’s saving himself up
for what swells in spring
while his boats founder with rainwater,
breed rust and mosquitos.

This poem fascinates me in regard to the human condition. I have relatives who I can picture acting like this poet’s father spending every dime they have on some scheme they have in mind that fails miserably every time. The relative who spends every dime they have as soon as they receive it. The relative who claims they’ll fix a bunch of this, that, and the other only never does. For me, this poem describes my own quirky family members only they are all rolled into one fascinating character: the poet’s father. I think all of us can relate to such a person being in our lives and I love reading and re-reading this poem.

The Future Arrives As Pneumonia

Now the end keeps its promise.
Now he will not make it to thirty.

Now he will drown
like farmhouses below the dam,

like bottomland inherited
and tended by grandfathers,

porches swept by grandmothers,
certain revered shade trees.

Drowning in his inheritance,
he says, grinning at the nurse

as he begins a backstroke
on the bed.

He confesses to doing what
the dying always do,

to dreaming the dead ones close,
and dreaming himself

a kid among them
who they took to what was

land between rivers
become land between lakes, 

and up to Devil’s Walking Stick,
the hill from where

they’d watched it flood
back in the forties.

They kept talking about the house
down there, the barn, he says,

and they kept pointing
into the water and he kept looking

down into the water
but couldn’t see any barn or house,

and none around anywhere.
Not a single solid structure.

Not a single solid structure,
he says,

arms stretched out
as if now he were floating.

As if now he were at home in water.

This poem makes me wonder who the poet is talking about. Brother? Husband? Mrs. Sanderson confirms this poem is about her husband. The reference to water and drowning triggers my own perception of what is happening. Where I work, we explain to family members that “the heart is drowning in fluid” if the diagnosis is congestive heart failure. I picture the loved one in the poem imitating the backstroke as a way to lighten up the subject of what is happening to his body consumed with pneumonia, the family gathered around trying to keep brave faces. It is a sad poem as the water consumes the minds of the entire family, the dream of water swallowing up and hiding everything that is real.

If you enjoyed this sample of poems, you may purchase a copy of Keeping Even by Sheila Sanderson for $10.74 on Amazon by using this link below:
http://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Even-Sheila-Sanderson/dp/1936205424

Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

antantantantant blog

Chris Gordon’s haiku and one line poems can be found here, they are enjoyable reads so check it out at: http://antantantantant.wordpress.com/ Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for another featured poet…