Two Poems by Ann Huang

Ann Huang is an author, poet, and filmmaker based in Newport Beach, Southern California. She was born in Mainland, China and raised in Mexico and the U.S. World literature and theatrical performances became dominating forces during her linguistic training at various educational institutions. Huang possesses a unique global perspective of the past, present, and future of Latin America, the United States, and China. She is an MFA candidate from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has authored one chapbook and three poetry collections. Her surrealist poem “Night Lullaby,” was a Ruth Stone Poetry Prize finalist. “Crustacea” another of her surrealist poems, was nominated Best of the Net in Priestess & Hierophant. In addition, Huang’s book-length poetry collection, Saffron Splash, was a finalist in the CSU Poetry Center’s Open Book Poetry Competition. Her newest poetry collection, A Shaft of Light, is set to come out in 2019.


Imagined Life

To wrap your eyes up and close
Under a spot of our moon,
To straighten and to sing
Till the dark night has come
Now run at warm morning
Upon a small hill
While day goes by swiftly,
Bright like you—
That is your imagined life!

To wrap your eyes up and close
Under a spot of our moon,
Sing! Swirl!
Till the dark night has come.
Run at warm morning
A small, ample hill
Day going swiftly
Bright like you!


Stars

You see that you should know
Poems meaningful as stars.
Stars whose energy blink is reign
upon the galaxy’s swirling milky-way;
Stars that wander at humans all night long
And bow lingering eyes to watch over them;
Stars that exist only in wintry cities
A funnel of holiday lights in between their toes;
Against whose shadow their light has shone;
Who publicly dance in and about the snow.
Poems are not taken by folks like you,
And Goddesses rear stars as if their own.

Back Seat Driver by J H Martin

J H Martin is from London, England but has no fixed abode. His writing has appeared in a number of places in Asia, Europe and the Americas.


Back Seat Driver

Seven – three – six
Time to get back on the bus
Time to get back on that wagon
Time to head back around these bends again

With their sun glittered birch
And their empty shelters
I watch them give way – as they always did
To diverted traffic
Which circles and backs up this litter bin mind
With microgram trash and fast fried flashbacks

All of them ghost years and badly smeared stains
Which bear no relation and have no connection to
This pressing window of Monday to Friday
And its Nine to Five

No – that primary school and those blue pallet stacks
And all of these people –
Wrapped up in their parkas and their scarves and their hats –
All of them have their own window to look through
And to see what they see

Here – but still there
Who am I to tell them any thing at all?

Is it January in Tongzi? Or is it Topoľčany in March?

Sat in front of my own self
This back seat driver couldn’t even claim to know that

For now – as it was – and as it has been for years
It’s still stuck on the same street – this faded store front
Which used to sell charm and its cheap knock-off dreams
To anyone fooled by its once filled out frame –

This now fraying seat this plastic fixture
This reflection I see in that iced window pane –

A grey hooded stranger in hand me down clothes
Who loves where he stays but cannot stand where I am –
Back on this bus and back on that wagon
A passenger craving far more than he needs

Snow Angels by John Carnegie

John Carnegie comes from Toronto, and since 1991 he’s lived in Paris, Greece, and Amsterdam with the painter Julie Wyn Summerfield.


Snow Angels

Somewhere far upstream in my bloodline was a Viking who took a fancy to a Scotswoman
ancestral to my father. Took a fancy or simply took, I’ll never know, but one way or
another he dove into my genetic backwaters and pissed in my gene pool.

I like to think about winter, but this globally warmed version rarely delivers what I used
to be used to. So it lives at the back of my memory, a wall of black ice and slush
ploughed to the edge of the parking lot to keep the pavement clear for capitalism.

My mother, at seventeen the eldest, walking the bitter miles of road, snow-cleared by
a thousand-mile wind, to light the schoolhouse stove and explain “Führer” and “Europe”
so the kids would know where all the daddies and big brothers had gone.

And my Oma before her, muttering through the snow in Ekaterina Oblast to retrieve
the severed toes of Opa’s left foot. He hadn’t spoken since the scarlet fever took
his hearing, but he made much noise when his axe went astray on the downward arc,

this kind and silent man who touched my mother’s throat to hear her when she sang,
tapping his short boot in time. But they were safe from the Bolsheviks in Manitoba, and to
celebrate he would wake the children from their brick-warmed beds for one more song.

Somewhere back up my bloodline was a Viking, and I prefer to believe that he actually
fancied that bonnie lass. It may have been in a peat hut under sleety rime,
or under the Pole Star and an emerald sheet of aurora, but I am sure that

they let themselves fall back into the unscribed powder, sinking half-weight and
barely breathing in that great northern hush, saying “Are you ready?” and with their
upward eyes fixed on the pinhole night, they began slowly to fan their legs and arms.

Cut Martian by John Daugherty

John Daugherty is an emerging writer and poet from Houston, Texas, taking creative writing courses from the UCLA Extension (certificate program) and University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education.


Cut Martian

Ceramic feet
Dirty legs
Bulbous butt
Slender frame
Face in bloom
Cut down in
Your prime to
Show my love

Vindle by David Henson

David Henson and his wife have lived in Brussels, Belgium and Hong Kong over the years and now reside in Peoria, Illinois with their dog Annabelle, who likes to walk them in the woods.


Vindle

After watching the wriggling snake rise into the sky, Vindle went inside and noticed smoke wisping from Kangle’s fingertips. She thought she was imagining things, but when she saw tiny flames dancing behind her husband’s ears, she knew what she had long feared had begun.

“I have been feeling a might south,” Kangle said when Vindle felt his forehead. “Maybe some fresh air would repair.”

“Probably wouldn’t harm,” Vindle said, hurrying to the kitchen to pump a stream of cold water over her hand. They decided to take a ride to Clavdon Creek.

Vindle hitched up Old Treb, and she and Kangle climbed into the carriage. By the time they got to the creek, Vindle’s clothes were drenched with sweat from the heat radiating from her husband.

Vindle pulled off her shoes and stockings, hiked her skirt and waded into the water. She started to hold out her hand for her husband to join her then thought better of it.

Kangle removed his shoes and socks and rolled up his trousers. As he eased into the water, Vindle heard a soft hiss and saw steam rising where the water lapped her husband’s knees. “We better go see the Doc,” she said.

***

Kangle sat naked from the waist up, soft blue fire rippling along his arms and shoulders.

Doc Ral shook his head. “You should’ve come sooner. I’m afraid it’s too late.” The Doc took Vindle’s hand. “Try to make your husband’s remaining time as comfortable as you can.”

On the way home from the Doc’s, a breeze flared Kangle and spooked Old Treb. The horse bolted and nearly rolled the carriage at Strack’s Fork before Vindle reined him in.

At their place, Vindle pumped a tub of cold water. Kangle stripped and stepped in. As he lay back and closed his eyes, the water began thrashing around him. “Refreshing,” he mumbled, exhaling a long crackling flame.

Vindle pumped water the rest of the day and most of the night to keep the tub full. Finally she could no longer move her arms. She watched helplessly as the water boiled away and Kangle became engulfed, his face twisting into a scream she would never forget.

Vindle used Kangle’s ashes to fertilize her flower garden. The following summer, the roses were the reddest she’d ever seen.

One warm evening, she caught a chill. By morning, she was coughing up sleet, and frost coated her hair. She didn’t go to Doc Ral, preferring to reunite with her Kangle. She left a note asking to be buried near the flower garden. She thought she and Kangle surely would produce the most beautiful roses in the world.

Neighbors found Vindle a week later encased in ice. They dug up the floribunda when they buried her. Though her roses never blossomed again, when Vindle thawed, she watered and fed the weeds. They grew thick and tall, sheltering chipmunks, voles and, occasionally, snakes, which fattened themselves and made a feast for the hawks.

Noughts and Crosses by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a Sydney based artist, poet, and improv pianist. She has a Masters degree in English and has worked in both media and education. Oormila is a member of the North Shore Poetry Project and performs her work regularly at venues in Sydney.


Noughts and Crosses

Freshly forty. Reinventing.
The world of academia
now a cobwebbed memory
ten years dead,
I don my new avatar-
small time teacher,
sometime comedienne,
chatty storyteller,
at a suburban studio.

I teach six year olds to peel
the whorled hearts of flowers,
Channel the eye of a Georgia O’keeffe,
Plot cornfields and crows and lily ponds.
Skim the skies in Chagall flight.

They hang on the lilt of my every word,
adulation in their eyes,
the front of my apron a Pollock dribble-
smears and spatters of
hands and hugs.

It’s only at the end of class
when I turn cleaner,
Soaping and scrubbing
stains off wood,
That the dolour creeps in,
and my life appears to me
a mesh of noughts and crosses,
more chequered, more scribbled
than the plastic painting mats.

And when some of the parents
look through me,
As their children wave goodbye,
It gurgles rancid, to the surface.
thin and vaporous
as the cleaning fluid I spritz.
I resist the urge to proclaim
in my dark, contralto voice,
Something as idiotic,
and ironic,
as, “ I was the valedictorian
of my graduating class, you know!”
As though that would earn me :
Eye contact,
Worthiness,
Redemption.

When the Swell Breaks by Holly Garcia

Holly lives on the Texas Coast with her husband, teenage son, and three giant dogs. Her adult daughter just moved out, so she must have had her when she was ten. When she isn’t writing, Holly works full time as a corporate photographer.


When the Swell Breaks

This wasn’t how I planned to spend my thirty-ninth birthday, but here I am.

I’ve lived a good life, I think. I never finished getting my degree, but I have a job I love.

Loved.

My home isn’t a mansion, but it’s comfortable and enough. Two children, one of each, boy and girl. Check and check. Loving husband, check.

He’s standing in the hospital corridor now, talking with two of the doctors while I’m supposed to be sleeping. His eyes swing towards the room, and through the hatched lines on the window I can see his face. The last few months have aged him, taken him to that place you can never return from. He doesn’t look surprised that I am awake.  I know it’s time. We’ve known for a few weeks now, that this is the best option, and I’ve already said goodbye to the kids.

At first I was selfish, and heartbroken that they might not remember me. They’re only two and three years old. But after I had more time to think about it, I hope they don’t remember me. Not like this. This sterile hospital room with beeping machines and harsh lights, drowning everyone who enters in its sea of hopelessness.  Away from all of this, and maybe years from now, they’ll be ok.

But William, sweet William. He’ll remember every bit of it, I know him like the back of my hand. He was such a joyful man, and I’ve taken that from him. Me, and this damn tumor that they said would keep growing, taking over my brain like a parasite until I wouldn’t know who I was anymore. Machines could keep me alive for a little while, but I don’t want that for William, or for the kids. They need to be able to move on, and one day they will.

Not today.

William comes into the room with a doctor close behind him. The one who has never done this before.

“What’s it going to be then, eh?” I try to smile but the weight of it all pushes the edges of my lips downward. My voice shakes. “Miracle cure or sleep potion?” I know there is no cure.

Ignoring the question, William lowers the bed rail and climbs in next to me, holding me in his arms. We stare at each other and the swell breaks, pushing tears down both of our faces. He places his hands on either side of my face and kisses me softly. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with him forever.

I turn to the doctor and nod.

Heat by Kellie Haulotte

Kellie Haulotte is a freelance writer who reads too many ghost stories and loves watching French Cinema. She also has been obsessed with reading Anne Rice’s books since she was in 5th grade.


Heat

Scorpion heat!
What do you want for dessert,
melting ice cream or sun kissed cake?
The car broke down again,
here comes the fiery brimstone.
Start walking to that oasis,
full of heavenly ice.
I’ll be behind you,
even if it’s all just fake.
Damn, this heat!

Moving On by Jack Wildern

Jack Wildern is from the UK. He writes short fiction and lives in Hampshire with his wife and two children.


Moving on

She says ‘Thank you for cooking.’ Not, ‘thank you for dinner,’ because that would imply, we were meeting socially. This isn’t social, it’s an argument wrapped into six tortillas. Two for her. Four for me.

‘Did you get the email from my solicitor?’

‘No.’ I did actually but I’m being a twat on account that I’ve heard she’s fucking someone else.

‘Well he sent it to you yesterday.’

‘I’ll be sure to keep an eye on my inbox.’ She looks at me like I had spat in her fajitas. I’ve got the laptop open on the table and she knows damn well Yahoo is running in the background.

‘So, I made a list,’ I say through a mouthful of Old El Paso. She raises an eyebrow that is way more shaped than it was when we were together.

‘A list?’

‘Yeah. Well I thought now the house was sorted we should look at what’s in it.’ She takes a deep breath and exhales through her nose. Her eyes widen just a touch. She’s like a small angry bull but with perfect microblading.

‘We’ve been through this.’

‘No. You’ve been through it in your own head. Half of the shit in that place is mine.’

To confirm the fact, I turn the laptop around. A crappy spreadsheet glares on the screen turning the skin on her face a pale green. Columns with shit like, ‘cushions in spare room’ and ‘Shawshank on Blu-ray’, twitch left to right in her pupils.

‘This is a joke, right?’

I shrug my shoulders and stuff the second fajita down my throat. She hasn’t touched hers. Can’t say I blame her. I always make them too spicy.

‘I just thought it was the fairest way,’ I grab the sriracha sauce and send a couple of good thick squirts into a cavern of over spiced chicken. I want to make this one a proper bad boy. A real gut burner.

‘Fairest way?’ She slams the lid of the laptop down and pushes her chair screeching across the lino. I wonder if it will leave a mark. ‘You wanker.’

‘Now wait a second-’

‘How dare you. Is this why you asked me here?’

I’m acutely aware that my answer will define the rest of the evening. I contemplate saying something like no babe it’s because I miss you. Then again, she’s already pissed off over the email and the shitty dinner so-

‘Well… yes.’

Have you ever seen pure rage? It’s white of knuckle and still as stone. If you look closely it trembles ever so slightly.

‘What the fuck,’ she screams.

One of the two dinner plates I own splits in half as it hits the wall behind me. The guts of my Mexican compadres explode across a magnolia surface which I doubt is cloth friendly.

‘I just thought I could take the PS4 and the forty-six inch.’

‘The PS? You get nothing.’

‘That’s hardly fair-’

‘Then you shouldn’t have had sex with a nineteen-year old.’

It was a hand-job and she was twenty-two. But we believe what we want to believe.

‘Well what are you going to do with it?’

She’s about to go completely mental when her phone rings. The new bf. Has to be.

‘Hi.’

Her voice is suddenly like velvet. Definitely the new bf. I get up and start peeling bits of onion and red pepper from the wall, vaguely aware of my name being slandered in the background.

‘Ok. Yes please, I may need some wine first.’ She giggles and I feel a hot swell of tears behind my eyes. I push them away; I’ve always been good at that. She hangs up and watches me stack the broken porcelain on the work top.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. You can have the PS4.’

I should be grateful. It’s more than I deserve. But then again, I liked that fucking plate.

‘It’s ok. Give it to your new boyfriend.’

I’m expecting an onslaught. I’m wondering how much damage she could do with a bread knife. Instead I get a look. It’s something like how you might stare at a dying dog that’s been in the family for years but won’t stop pissing itself. There’s sadness but it’s mainly frustration.

Her phone rings again three times and goes silent. ‘I’ve got to go.’

            ‘Ok.’

‘Here.’ She opens her bag. I get a waft of perfume as the content of her life gets tossed about. All of a sudden, she’s in my bathroom for the first time. Bottled flowers and makeup overpowering the gym bag deodorant of my room. ‘You’ll need this. I had the locks changed.’ She puts a little silver key on the table. ‘Let yourself in. Take the PS4 and the bloody tv. But do us both a favour and check your junk mail. Sign the paperwork.’

She turns and heads for the door. I can hear her footsteps on the stairwell as I make my way to the window.

Ever seen pathetic? It’s a bloke in his mid-thirties wearing pyjama bottoms and watching the love of his life disappear. If you look closely it even trembles.

My heart sinks as she emerges and runs into the arms of a stubbled face. He’s all muscles. I can see his triceps through his shirt. I can feel my own puffy gut starting to creep out towards my slippers.

He holds the door of his car open and she gets in. I watch it pull away, adjacent to the promenade and the fairy lights that sway green, blue and red between the lamp posts.

Shopping List by M.L. Fenton

M.L. Fenton is an aspiring poet and a full time bus driver. She is a life long resident of the Monongahela river valley of Pennsylvania. The collapse of the steel industry, subsequent deterioration of the of the surrounding neighborhoods as well as the rivers themselves serve as inspiration for her poetry.


Shopping list

She had beautiful penmanship (something
I’ve always lacked)

I thought as I looked at her

Shopping list:
Pudding
Hot dog relish
Bananas (two, ripped from the bunch)
Reader’s digest
Jumbo
Etc.

Me, hurried and slightly annoyed
after work.

Discarding the shopping list in the
buggy, continuing with the minutiae
of my, oh so important life.

later when she’s gone

I’m always looking for those
shopping lists with her lovely handwriting

when my hands touch the cold handle of any shopping cart.