No Poetry Express 12/25 and 01/01 Holidays

12/25/2017 NO PE H A P P Y    H O L I D A Y S !

01/01/2018  NO PE -- H A P P Y    H O L I D A Y S !

Michael Caylo-Baradi Features Dec 18

12/18/2017 Michael Caylo-Baradi​ hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Outer" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)

Michael Caylo-Baradi's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Galway Review, Blue Fifth Review, Blue Print Review, The Common (online), Eclectica, elimae, Eunoia Review, FORTH, Galatea Resurrects, Ink Sweat & Tears, Local Nomad, MiPOesias, Otoliths, Our Own Voice, poeticdiversity, Philippines Free Press, Poetry Pacific, Prick of the Spindle, and elsewhere.  An alumnus of The Writers’ Institute at The Graduate Center (CUNY), he has also written reviews and essays for New Pages, PopMatters, and The Latin American Review of Books. 

http://mcaylo.blogspot.com/p/poetry.html

How to purify the air

Re-align the universe in the direction of your gaze. This is
breathing unhinged from dysfunction, clawed with need,
panting for Narcissus.

A bedroom is an occlusion that sharpens visions drooling for its
prey crucified in surrender. The howling beyond the yard
intensifies the season,

feasting on rituals that clarifies the philosophy of fangs. Wings
fluttering by the window are prayers, searching for
maps away from the city,

now submerged in bodies of lights illuminating an aftermath,
of hands intertwined, gasping for morsels of God,
to resuscitate the air.

Poem URL at OTOLITHS 43: 

https://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/michael-caylo-baradi.html

Mary Mackey Features Dec 11

12/11/2017 Mary Mackey hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Fame" or for that matter, "defame"-- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)

Mary Mackey is a bestselling author who has written fourteen novels some of which have appeared on the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller Lists. She is also the author of seven volumes of poetry including Sugar Zone winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence. Mackey’s novels have been translated into twelve languages including Japanese, Russian, Hebrew, Greek, and Finnish. Her poems have been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Marge Piercy, and Dennis Nurkse for their beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. Garrison Keillor has featured her poetry four times on The Writer’s Almanac. Also a screenwriter, she has sold feature-length scripts to Warner Brothers as well as to independent film companies. Mackey sometimes writes comedy under her pen name “Kate Clemens.” She has a B.A. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The University of Michigan and is related through her father’s family to Mark Twain. At present, she lives in northern California with her husband Angus Wright. ” Lowenstein Associates recently published her novel The Village of Bones, a prequel to her bestselling Earthsong Series.

Kin

We were related to everybody in Crittenden County

literally everybody

judges and lawyers and county clerks

and barbers and druggists and soda jerks

and moonshiners and farmers and ferry boat captains

and the rich people in the big white houses

and the poor people down by the slough

Total strangers would come up

as soon as they saw you on the street

throw their arms around you and say

my great grandma is buried next to your great grandma

or I'm your cousin 17 times removed on your third uncle’s side

or

my   my   my   you look just like your daddy

has he ever got out of prison?

                  Mary Mackey

                  from The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams (coming in 2018 from Marsh Hawk Press)

Clark Kent (an alias, of course) Features Dec 4

12/4/2017 Clark Kent hosted by Jan 12/11/2017
(Need a prompt?Is Superman a Golem? A golem is an animated anthropomorphic being that is magically created entirely from inanimate matter (specifically clay or mud). -- you don't have to use those words.)

Clark Kent claims to have been forever maligned by the myth of Superman when in fact he has just been another bat in the belfry of life, seeking justice and peace in this troubled world. The comics who rule have long gotten Clark wrong, presuming Kryptonite to be his Achilles heel when in fact that radiant mineral is found within every person he meets.  That singular force travels the short divide from them to him, dispelling the dark forces of narcissism, rendering Clark human, vulnerable, and capable of poetic expression.

Longing For Kryptonite

Zarathustra hides in a polar ice castle,

flies to the moon, leers at women with his X-ray eyes.

He is stuck in a rut waiting for earthquakes, sinking ships,

meteors on course to destroy the woman he avoids.

Each wood-pulped, flattened day he is summoned,

pulls phone booths out of thin air,

strips to pectoral splendor.

His speedo modestly bulges

as he rescues Lois Lane yet again,

again, again, again.

Old pages yellow and crack

until he longs to be a real Clark Kent,

Kryptonated, unbound,

a nakedly human man.

Elizabeth Alford Features Nov 27

11/27/2017  Elizabeth Alford  hosted by J. D.
(Need a prompt? "The light in the basement" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)

A longtime fan of short poetry, Elizabeth Alford (Hayward, CA) usually writes on her laptop, but in its absence will settle for her cell phone. Her work has recently appeared in print in POETALK, and various online venues such as brass bell: a haiku journal, haikuniverse, and the cherita: your storybook journal. Please visit her author page @ Facebook.com/ElizabethAlfordPoetry

Heaven is My Mother’s Apple Pie

by Elizabeth Alford

Once a year 

(and only under the best 

possible circumstances) 

my mother makes 

her apple pie, and that first 

bite—oh! how buttery 

and crumbly the crust, how 

spicy the forbidden fruit 

filling still warm from the oven 

and swirls of cinnamon, 

sweet and tang waltzing to flavor 

on the ballroom floor 

of my tongue—is almost enough 

to make me sing praise 

to a god I don’t believe in, 

even though I know 

deep in my heart 

and in my stomach 

that if there is an afterlife, 

it is after Thanksgiving dinner 

and that my mother 

is a god of gods 

who can bake the whole 

of the universe 

into a pie.

Phyllis Meshulam 11/20

11/20/2017 Phyllis Meshulam,  hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Capture" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)

Phyllis Meshulam first went to Italy, where her father had been stationed during World War II, at not quite five. Threads of those journeys are woven into her newly-released book of poems, Land of My Father’s War, from Cherry Grove Collections. Joy Harjo, winner of the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, said of Meshulam’s book, an “urgency of spirit has emerged eloquently here in these poems of perception and even prophecy….” Meshulam is also the author of Doll, Moon (Finishing Line Press), Doors (War and Peace Press) and Valley of Moon (d-Press). She is a veteran teacher for California Poets in the Schools and coordinator for Poetry Out Loud, and has been a presenter at the nation-wide writing conferences, AWP and Split this Rock.  Her work has appeared in magazines from Earth’s Daughters and Phoebe to Teachers & Writers and Tikkun.  Meshulam has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. For CPitS’s 50^th anniversary, she edited, Poetry Crossing, which Poetry Flash called “a truly joyful collection of lessons, inspirations, and children's poems.”

Southeast Asian Rain

Above and Beyond Exhibition, National Veterans Art Museum, Chicago

The breathing space within the gallery

is sliced by fifty-eight thousand fine strands,

(not the usual chains). Each current

makes pendant metal tags glint,

ringing each other like a wind harp,

or sun-scattered rain on the roof

of a Quonset hut. What’s

in a dog tag? Name, blood type. A small mirror.

Each is labeled. B positive,

or be excluded or dead. O for negative,

or zero. O for other. Each belief

system reduced to one of a few

graced faiths. P for protestor. C,

 for catharsis. J for jungle. An identity –

forgotten tiger, lamb, or forest fire.

11/13/2017 Yuyutsu Sharma features

11/13/2017 Yuyutsu Sharma hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? How do you explain your position on the planet? -- you don't have to use those words.)

Yuyutsu R D Sharma has  published nine poetry collections including, A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems (Nirala, 2016).  He has translated Irish poet Cathal O’ Searcaigh and Hebrew poet Ronny Someck into Nepali.  Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Twenty-Five Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma is his most recent publication.  Yuyutsu’s work has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovenian, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch.  Yuyutsu is the Visiting Poet at Columbia University, New York and has just returned from China where he had gone to read at Beijing International Book Fair.

Mules                           by Yuyutsu Sharma

On the great Tibetan

salt route they meet me again

old forsaken friends ...

On their faces

fatigue of a drunken sleep

their lives worn out,

their legs twisted, shaking

from carrying

illustrious flags of bleeding ascents.

Age long bells clinging

to them like festering wounds

beating notes

of a slavery modernism brings:

cartons of Iceberg, mineral water bottles,

solar heaters, Chinese tiles, tin cans, carom boards

sacks of rice

and iodized salt from the plains of Nepal Terai.

Butterflies of 

the terraced fields know their names.

Singing brooks tempests

of their breathless climbs.

Traffic alert

and time-tested, they climb

carrying

dreams of posh peacocks

pamphlets

of a secret religious war

filth

of an ecologist's sterile semen

entire kitchen

for a cocktail party at the base camp

defunct development

agenda of guilty donors

the West's weird visions

lusting for an instant purge.

Stone steps

of the mountains embossed

on their drugged brains,

like lines of aborted love

scratched

on the historic rocks of waterspouts.

Starry skies

of the dozing valleys know

the ache

of their secret sweat.

Sunny days

along the crystal rivers

taste

of their bleeding eyes.

Greatest fiction

of the struggling lives lost,

like real mules

clattering their hooves on the flagstones,

in circling

the cruel grandeur

of blood thirsty

mule paths around the glaciers of Annapurnas.

Charlie McCauley features Nov 6

11/6/2017 Charlie McCauley hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "Heavy upon" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)

C O McCauley is a retired naval aviator, has fronted a rockabilly band and performed in community theater.  His songs and poetry about growing up southern, the Viet Nam War, and  Native American culture have appeared in The Tule Review, California Quarterly, The Aurorean, Blue Unicorn, and Soundzine.  He resides in Martinez, California.

Yuyursu Sharma 11/13

11/13/2017 Yuyutsu Sharma hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? How do you explain your position on the planet? -- you don't have to use those words.)

Yuyutsu R D Sharma has  published nine poetry collections including, A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems (Nirala, 2016).  He has translated Irish poet Cathal O’ Searcaigh and Hebrew poet Ronny Someck into Nepali.  Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Twenty-Five Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma is his most recent publication.  Yuyutsu’s work has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovenian, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch.  Yuyutsu is the Visiting Poet at Columbia University, New York and has just returned from China where he had gone to read at Beijing International Book Fair.

Mules                           by Yuyutsu Sharma

On the great Tibetan

salt route they meet me again

old forsaken friends ...

On their faces

fatigue of a drunken sleep

their lives worn out,

their legs twisted, shaking

from carrying

illustrious flags of bleeding ascents.

Age long bells clinging

to them like festering wounds

beating notes

of a slavery modernism brings:

cartons of Iceberg, mineral water bottles,

solar heaters, Chinese tiles, tin cans, carom boards

sacks of rice

and iodized salt from the plains of Nepal Terai.

Butterflies of 

the terraced fields know their names.

Singing brooks tempests

of their breathless climbs.

Traffic alert

and time-tested, they climb

carrying

dreams of posh peacocks

pamphlets

of a secret religious war

filth

of an ecologist's sterile semen

entire kitchen

for a cocktail party at the base camp

defunct development

agenda of guilty donors

the West's weird visions

lusting for an instant purge.

Stone steps

of the mountains embossed

on their drugged brains,

like lines of aborted love

scratched

on the historic rocks of waterspouts.

Starry skies

of the dozing valleys know

the ache

of their secret sweat.

Sunny days

along the crystal rivers

taste

of their bleeding eyes.

Greatest fiction

of the struggling lives lost,

like real mules

clattering their hooves on the flagstones,

in circling

the cruel grandeur

of blood thirsty

mule paths around the glaciers of Annapurnas.