Three Poems by J H Martin


天 性

It’s raining today
But yesterday was fine

The Masters
Know the way of heaven

The green jade melody

Strung between moments
Flushed with the dawn

The sun comes
And the stars go

This is the way of things

To look out of my window
To burn paper with doubt

That is the dew of clouds I lead

Back through the night
Back though the world

Here –
The rain falls harder
On this morning pass

I will not proceed


心

I will not lose you

Not to the illusions
Or to the delusions
Painted on
This fleeting dream

By the white lies
By the colours
By the flower words

No – I cannot
Control the ignorance
And – no – I cannot
Overthrow the suffering

But I can focus on you

Beautiful
Boundless
Forever present
In this eternal morgue

The fire will not burn
And the ashes
Will not scatter this

As above
So as below

Darkness passes to the light

I could never lose you


仙

The sky
May be grey

But that
Doesn’t mean change

Out in the marshes
White cranes will cry

And up in the heavens
New gods will hear

All dew drops of mist

On this –
Imperfect pane


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.
Website: acoatforamonkey.wordpress.com
IG: @jhmartin72 / Twitter: @acoatforamonkey

“David’s Ladybug” by James Barr


When I first met David, I noticed a tiny ladybug embroidered on his denim shirt, just above the pocket. Over time, I noticed that the ladybug moved. On Monday, it was on the extreme left side. On Wednesday, it had moved to the center and by Friday, it was all the way to the right.

David was a Hollywood film director and my ad agency had contracted with his studio to shoot some car commercials. As I got to know him, he was delightfully off-center. The shirt was only the beginning.

When I asked David about the ladybug, his answer made all the sense in the world. He said he disliked trying to decide what to wear each day. So he had seven identical denim shirts made, each with a ladybug embroidered where it fit in the week. The rest of his outfit consisted of jeans and a pair of oversize Herman Munster-style boots.

When we first met, David had flown to my agency in Chicago for a pre-production meeting. This is when the studio and agency put their heads together on the commercials about to be produced. At that time, tragically hip show biz types and creative folks carried a newspaper-carrier-type sling bag. These were always leather and had some fancy designer’s name embossed on them.

David, on the other hand, made his entrance carrying a Greyhound duffel bag, complete with the dog logo. I thought, “I gotta’ get to know this guy.” And so I did.

Weeks later, when we were finally shooting out in the desert, we were awaiting the big name Hollywood spokesperson. All of us, including David, were told that this A-lister was sensitive about being short, his recent divorce and his bald spot. We were to avoid any mention of these subjects at any cost.

David was up high in a crane, blocking out the first shot, when he saw the dusty contrail of an approaching limo. It rolled to a halt in a cloud of floating brown dust and sagebrush particulate matter. When this all finally settled, the chauffeur opened the door and out stepped a short, balding big shot.

David then lifted his bullhorn and announced to cast and crew alike, “Attention: we’ve just been joined by a short, recently-divorced, balding Hollywood fruitcake.” (That “Fruitcake” appellation, by the way, was a term of endearment and we were all called that.)

When David’s amplified echo finished its aural sprint and return from all the distant peaks and canyons, the world became scary silent. Any one of three unpleasant eventualities could have happened, but nobody expected the fourth.

The celebrity looked sternly up at David, then broke into a big smile followed by a roar of laughter. And that was the beginning of a wonderful shoot and a lifelong friendship between David and this short, bald man.

Though David’s gone and sorely missed, I cannot see a ladybug without thinking of him.


Jim is a freelance writer and seasoned creative veteran with 25 years of writing experience at two leading advertising agencies. He’s proud to say that his stories are gluten free and that no artificial color is ever added to enhance their appeal.

“Being Here” by Carl Boon


Just being here,
which is to say the frying
of omelets, the making of coffee,
the daily crossword
and the broken heart,
is almost enough. Today
I folded towels and stacked them
in the closet. I brushed my teeth
and sought magpies
through the window. Today
I held my daughter’s
plastic dinosaurs and watched
the stars she stuck on the ceiling
a decade ago. Today I made myself
glad with the almost,
and read a Neruda poem
chosen at random
and Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room.”
Today I was pretty good,
and pressed my mother’s
wedding dress for no reason.
I didn’t drown or berate the rain.
I ate potato chips.
I drank two beers.
This is the work of life;
this is what it means to be
in silence and await tomorrow’s.


Carl Boon is the author of the full-length collection Places & Names: Poems (The Nasiona Press, 2019). He received his Ph.D. in Twentieth-Century American Literature from Ohio University in 2007, and currently lives in Izmir, Turkey, where St. Paul trode. He teaches courses in American culture and literature at Dokuz Eylül University.

“Lingua Franca” by Martha Kahane


My husband loves languages lavishly: latin, arabic, greek-
a polyglot traveler (hic/ibi), so to speak, as if to seek

more tongues might mend a broken heart
(le coeur) but still kept mine apart-

from inside him- his blood, his passion
(su pasion) my own language still unspoken.

“I am,” he said, “entering the ancients’ home,”
(“kalos/beauty.”) But did he know I could not roam

those woods, the words (lexi, logi) not mine
to understand? I did know how to harmonize

(armonioso, harmonisch): at night alone
in bed with silence, books and poems

until I learned to teach the tongue
he had not heard, had never sung

with me- though even all those years,
frozen, mute with fears,

hiding in translations in his hand,
and crouched outside the lushest land,

I like to think we knew that, even wordless, none
could keep our hearts from being one.


Martha Kahane is a psychologist and an avid choral singer. She misses choral singing terribly since singing in groups has become lethal. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband of forty years.

“I Can’t Stop” by Don Clark


What sense is there in words?
They won’t feed you,
They won’t bathe you,
They won’t cloth you, or keep you warm

They won’t hold you and love you,
They can’t kiss you
Or pay you (believe me),
They certainly won’t provide a comfortable life —

For you children and your wife
(husband, dog, whatever).
They won’t cheat you
They won’t wrong you

They won’t lie, steal, or plot against you,
They won’t even put up a fight —
So what sense is there
In these words?

I don’t know,
but I can’t stop.


Don Clark is a Iraq/Afghanistan veteran and recent graduate from Geneva College. He writes everything in small notebooks he finds at the bookstore down the road, and only writes in pencil. He once saw a space shuttle launch from the top of a submarine . . . that was pretty cool. He hails from Pittsburgh, PA, where he is NOT a steel mill worker.

“Autisms of Subtle Worlds That Do Not End” by Rob Cook


It’s hard to see beyond the drizzling winters.
Restaurants closing.
Apartments falling into the street at night,
without noise.

And after the naming
of the deserted pigeon parks,
the people listen to the anti-
ratflight podcasts:
let the fetuses live,
let them be born and told
there will be nothing
but a life of school followed by a life of hiding.

I always think I hear screams on the moon.
Or the rain that’s lost there.

Maybe it’s where catamites conceive and are born.

Maybe they don’t believe in the Earth,
its gazing wound of snow and wind
that can’t be proven.

An Asperger’s teenager
dismantles the thoughts of the one who said,
“Tell me what you are, I do not know what you are”
upon his shaky walk-by.

And on a world
of subtle lightning mountains
that do not end,
he copies and pastes the spinal foliage,
adding color, thinking he, too, can create summer.

A woman shivers
from the face he uses for “hello,”
and quickly turns away
because she can see them there,

in his shallow troughs of worry,

the only angels left,
scavenging.


Rob Cook’s most recent book is The Charnel House on Joyce Kilmer Avenue (Rain Mountain Press, 2018). His work has appeared or will appear in Epiphany, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, great weather for Media, Rhino, Caliban, deComp, Interim, On the Seawall, Borderlands, Barren, The Bitter Oleander, Hotel Amerika, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. He is currently working on a novella.

“A Plea” and “A Thought” by Gad Kaynar-Kissinger

Translated by Natalie Feinstein


A Plea

I plead my immense fatigue to subdue
Me like the dragon beseeching Saint George
To grow from his fertilized, defeated body a kingdom on the banks
Of the Lethe River and graceful oblivion models will trot beside it
Adorning a wreath of witless smiles.


A Thought

When a thought plummets at my feet
Bruised
I bandage its wings
Which I clipped
Until it revisits me
In faltering
Flight.
I then shoot it again.


Gad Kaynar-Kissinger (70) is a retired Associate Professor from the Theater Department at Tel Aviv University. His poetry was published in major Israeli literary periodicals and supplements, and compiled in seven books, including a bi-lingual Hebrew-Spanish publication Lo que queda (What Remains). For ADHD he won “The General Israeli Writers’ Union” Award (2010). Kaynar is a stage, TV and film actor, and translator of 70 plays from English, German, Norwegian and Swedish. For his Ibsen translations he was designated in 2009 by the Norwegian King as “Knight First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit.”

“Slow Motion Meals” by Mara Lefebvre


I wanted to thank you but you drove off before I could say a word. It’s the last day of an eight day silent meditation retreat and you have sat across from me during every conversation-less meal without a whisper or even any eye contact. Since we are in our assigned seats, I was able to secretly observe you day after day eating your food with complete focus and with a look of secret pleasure on your face.

Our single bowl of rice and vegetables took me little time to finish but you savored each sliver of broccoli, mushroom and bamboo shoot. I was determined to slow down, be mindful of my simple meal and I’ve tried for six days to finish after you. When I thought for sure that I would be the last to leave the table and clean my small metal bowl you started to eat a banana. You put it on a thin paper napkin on the table and gently peeled back one length of spotted yellow outer skin. Then you took your teaspoon and surgically cut it lengthwise precisely down the middle and then carved that into little chunks. Slowly, in almost stop action slow motion, you consumed each piece. I’m struck by your concentration and painstakingly peel my mandarin orange into sections to match you bite for bite.

You taught me with your graciousness to savor and linger.  Like a dancer you moved in the present, seemingly suspending time.

Thank you.


Mara Lefebvre is a writer, visual artist and retreat junkie and has an appreciation of beauty, excellence, and good design in all things. Fascinated with how memory works, she reconstructed her past revealing lies, laments and lunatics. Her lifelong interest in yoga and frequent walking meditations support her creative curiosity. Her studio is in upstate New York in a ranch house with a red door on a dead end street.

“By This Opening, I Know…” by Amber Pierson


The light streaks through the opening,
Taunting me, tugging me, begging me
To explore its edges and push myself
Through, so I can learn what is on the
other side. Reflection fractions, glinting
stabbing and making me squint, but
forward I go. Each splash of light is
distracting, and my eyes wander until
the light in the opening brightens and
catches my breath, pulling me by my
fingertips until I can no longer resist.
I fall, tumbling and tripping into the
New, washing away the old with a
Brightness so fantastic that I must
Relearn how to see.


Amber Pierson writes with the intent to pull emotions with her words.