Gloom Cupboard

Poem titles that start with “and” have a lot to live up too, and the ones featured here do just fine.

On a separate note. If you’re going to address the head poetry editor by first and last name in your submission, I guess it would be detrimental to not know his name, or to spell it wrong. My name is Luis Rivas. Not Louise. Not Louis. Not Rivera.

I mean, you can call me Mr. Fucktard Sanchez Shit Sandwich but if you have awesome words that are arranged perfectly as poetry, then fine, you win. Call me what you want. But if it’s subpar, you’re shit out of luck.

Hey, let’s change it up a bit. What’s everyone’s opinion on making the poetry issue have a new theme each month? Maybe for July we can have poetry on being fired from a job, then for August have a theme on fire/burning things/people. Sounds good?

Yours truly,
The Poetry Editors
Lewis Rivera Rodriguez Flores-Magon & Henry Ajumeze

—

And Roads…
By Ananya S Guha
There is a way to traverse roads.

Roads are uncanny. They lead you

to paths strewn with rice, paddy fields

and mud. This is in India. But home is here

and roads reckon that and take you to abyss

of myths: mosques and temples.

Forts and minarets. Somewhere the mast flies.

Somewhere it does not, but roads are omniscient with children

as playthings and hutments as barriers.

Roads then, are forbidden.

They become loquacious and prattle.

The noise is incessant. Only when there is a storm

are silent. And penurious.

Have you heard their lament or the snipers which assail them,

in Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt?

Mortgage these roads, but don’t banish them into crusades( of war).

You will understand plenitude, volatile war, love and what takes

to make a land, a country, a nation.

And Roads.

 
and history
By David McLean

and history is a sort of metal
memory, like inquisitive mothers watching
or a slimy suspicious psychiatrist
who was not as cultivated as Lacan might have wished
but still listened, like water falling
in a silent and inauspicious night,

like history pretending to come from life,
a blind man who didn’t approve of eyes

 

BIO: David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there on a small island in the Mälaren with woman, weather, boat, dogs and cat. In addition to six chapbooks, McLean is the author of three full-length poetry collections: CADAVER’S DANCE (Whistling Shade Press, 2008), PUSHING LEMMINGS (Erbacce Press, 2009), and LAUGHING AT FUNERALS (Epic Rites Press, 2010). More information about David McLean can be found at his blog here: http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/

 

Fumes
By F. S. Symons

 

An old car arrives, leaks

in its exhaust system,

holes in the rusty floorboards.

Inhaling carbon I cough in the lube pit and

shout, turn off your engine. Through the floor,

I see the driver’s long pale legs, inches

above me, safe in the pleats of her khaki skirt.

 

Years ago, my friend Kyle

had been wearing a khaki shirt,

in our classroom turned shooting gallery,

bright red oozing out of the bullet

hole and  dyeing the cloth.

 

Too slow to unscrew the oil pan plug,

I scald my arms with the car’s spewing

black oil. The mechanic’s blowtorch

points at me for a second. I could be

incinerated in this pit, shaped like a coffin.

 

The woman’s car is dead now.  It

disgorges differential fluid.

I pour in a serum, molasses brown

to nurture it back to life.

Her engine oil stinks of burnt carbon,

unlike the new gold blood I inject.

Her coolant oozes out pinkish  and

 

I replace it with orange liquid, but first,

curious, I lick a drop.  It is

sweet.

 

I finish the job, wipe the oil

off black greasy cuts on my hand,

wounded like my faith.

 

I observe the woman as she sips her milky coffee.

 

Her car roars to life, the nutrients flowing.

She pays, the wind nips her

receipt out of her hand and

 

she’s gone, just a customer, a piece

of receipt paper now,

carried away like a voice in the wind,

like Kyle, like the fumes of this pit I live in.

 

The City of Creation

By Austin McCarron 

 

In deepest morning

I eat for breakfast the

crust of my soul, rich

as the butter of the poor,

to whom I offer my food

and blanket

in a city of empty rooms.

 

Ghost of life, scavenger of

polluted stars,

I rise like stone of my sound

and place in

each hand a night of wounds.

 

On branches of towers and scaffold

of abstract windows,

where people with wooden engines

gasp for air,

the wind struggles

like the witness to a troubled birth.

 

River of tides, city of mounted rain-

drops, of trembling fingers,

of carnivorous flames, of blood and

light, of skin

crushed with grey geographies, let me

climb higher than death

and untie my blind

mouth with kisses of impossible gold.

 

Finding Color
By Daniel Becker

We grow older
and lose our colour
the beat of your drum
will grow somber

We need money
and a place to live
goodbye home
time to get our own

Out in the ether
where the cool kids trip
the bad boys drink
and the weak ones sip

Smoke some dope
to see the light
the good old times
only come out at night

Back to the grind
moving brick by brick
He said, “Go on boy
bring me something that sticks”

I brought black coffee
and a cigarette
I said, “I hope you’re happy
‘cuz this is all life is”

He could have fired me
or kicked and shout
but he brought the coffee
up into his mouth

He said, “I hope you see
it’s not what you drink
but who sits with you
and what you think”

His face seemed soft
and his words seemed sure
then he said to me
“fucking get back to work.”

To An Erection
By Shayne Benz

Lamentation over pulsation

of a tiny blue river

streaming south

I watched you in a bacchanal

of swollen promise

old growth redwood

prince and

I bowed to your brief kingdom.

And as you desperately wane

and fall like a new fawn

I am reminded of the

indifference of nature.

 

Throwing Snowballs at Cars

By Paul Hostovsky

From our little redoubt
up on the hill
we lobbed our redoubtable

arsenal of white
handcrafted ordnance
one by one over the hedges

and listened
for the gratifying
thunk

on the roofs and hoods of the passing
innocents
who mostly just kept trundling dumbly

along
through the purely perfect-for-packing
driven snow. But once

an innocent in a beat-up pickup
stopped. And stayed there. Idling. Fuming.
We froze, our fingers and toes

twitching, our hearts racing, our noses
running. Finally he drove off, but he doubled
back around, and routed our little

redoubt. And there’s no doubt
he would have beaten the shit out of us
if he caught any of us–

but we dispersed
like a burst snowball ourselves,
and melted into the neighborhood

like so many scared shitless
snowflakes, no two of us exactly
repentant.