Night Music That Does Not Shut Up by Daniel de Culla

Daniel de Culla is a writer, poet, and photographer. He’s member of the Spanish Writers Association, Earthly Writers International Caucus, Poets of the World, (IA) International Authors, Surrealism Art, and others. Director of Gallo Tricolor Review, and Robespierre Review. He participated in many Festivals of Poetry, and Theater in Madrid, Burgos, Berlin, Minden, Hannover and Genève .He has exposed in many galleries from Madrid, Burgos, London, and Amsterdam. He is moving between North Hollywood, Madrid and Burgos.

 

NIGHT MUSIC THAT DOES NOT SHUT UP

With good or bad music comes Night
When the Sun is below the horizon.
Black cloak as clerical cassock
It’s covering the city
On their roofs of houses and blocks
Referring to Mozart’s music
To Strau’s waltzes
To rock or rap.
The Moon flies over the clouds
With his head peeled and a scarf around her neck.
Little by little, night is singing its music
That does not shut up
In harmony or melody of sounds
Or both combined
And, when it’s quiet, butterflies leave the clouds
And come towards the light to burn their wings
Introducing more or less deeply
In the lovers’ bedroom
With vain talk, stories, gossip
Where one organ enters the parts of another
Adhering to its surface
Like the cat at the snout very thin
The very long tail
And the very gray hairs of the mouse.
Mischiefs, traps, perfidies
Coronate musical notes
From a nocturnal dream that soon begins.
Stigmas, infamous notes, like Bingo’s cards
Are coming out of a sack, from an urn
Or of any other similar deposit.
Tokens, balls or any other similar objects
With the names of the people
That they have to leave with luck.
Later, to the point, Dream
With its sad or gentle serenade
Between handfuls of cotton
Jumps without rhyme or reason
In corners and between sheets
When networks are building
For unsuspecting flies to produce sounds
On string instruments, wind instruments
Percussion, keys, and so on
That makes them boast of themselves
Making march to the melodious Night
At its dawn
With music elsewhere.
-Daniel de Culla

The Accidental Nudist by Christian Bot

Christian Bot is a happily disgruntled writer from Ontario, Canada with a passion for poetry, short fiction, and essays (all while juggling two jobs.) A graduate of the University of Western Ontario’s history program, much of his work contains historical and philosophical themes. He has been published in The London Free Press, southwestern Ontario’s leading daily newspaper, and Areo magazine.

 

I awoke one morning inexplicably consumed by a rather curious obsession. I desired to become a nude model for art classes at the local university. I paid little attention to the origins of this desire, insofar as there can be said to have been any beyond the vague suggestions of a dream. I cared only to fulfill my new ambition. I craved to bare all in a manifesto of contempt for the tyranny of clothes. I wished only to be free, and openly so, feeling the exhilaration of a lion released from the zoo and left to roam at will. I fantasized the crisp air of the air conditioner breathing on my flesh unhindered by stifling raiment. I longed to return to the state of nature that triumphed before Adam’s fall.

To that end, I snatched my laptop from the jungle of clutter in my bedroom and visited the university’s online job board. I was not yet finished scanning the first page when I struck the coveted gold vein, encountering this listing: “Now hiring: art models, male. For nude posing in undergraduate art classes. Must be willing to shave most body air. Part-time, $35/hour.” My good luck left me euphoric, perhaps more elated than some people will ever be. I began to fill out the application without a picosecond’s hesitation. I scarcely even questioned the demand of a topless photo, presumably to verify the metrics of my anatomy. Several more mundane fields followed, and my application was complete in fifteen breezing minutes. I celebrated with a banana milkshake (enhanced with whey powder, obviously) as I treated my hulking biceps to a tender, Mediterranean kiss and pounded on my pectoralis major with all the vigor of a certain colossal Hollywood ape.

The call for an interview came three days later. I dressed for the occasion in a semi-formal uniform consisting of a white dress shirt, deliberately and unmistakably tight, a tie, and black dress pants. I was met in the inner sanctum of the department of visual arts by a dour-faced gentleman of about sixty. His hair was ghastly white, having long since neutered its last remaining trace of gray, and parted at the middle. His face, hardly less pallid, bore a pair of wide-rimmed glasses. His appearance and demeanor attested to a disgruntled, sexually frustrated bachelor whose last recourse was to the tedium of academia. I found his pessimism a tad intimidating, but I was able to resist the full force of his powers. Externally, at least, my virulent optimism was not dented in the least.

“This way, please,” intoned the professor with a clear motioning gesture. When we were both seated, he began to read from a prearranged list, as if he were stammering through an early rehearsal of a Realist play. “This position involves posing nude. Are you comfortable with that?”

“I find nudity quite liberating,” I confessed, really quite unembarrassed about my distaste for clothes.

“Good,” the professor murmured more or less nonchalantly, so fixated on his formulaic script that he seemed unbothered by my bohemianism. “Now you may have to work with female models, also nude of course. Is this something you can handle?”

“There’s little that I’d find more delightful,” I beamed, still shamelessly risqué in my responses.

“I don’t doubt that,” the professor quipped, jolting his head back up at me and breaking the spell that the script had cast upon him. “But the fact of the matter is that the students deserve to focus on the contours of your shoulders rather than the girth of your erect penis. If you find a dangling pair of breasts so titillating that you can’t focus on your work, there’s no point in having you here.”

I had to suppress a laugh at the professor’s stunning bluntness. More to the point, his honesty filled me with appreciation for him. He was right, of course, but I was not prepared to let his manifest rightness dampen my ambition. As the infant inklings of amusement marked my face, I replied, “I admit it, sir. I’m just as lustful as the last man you’ve interviewed and the ones you’ll interview after me. I’m weak against the allure of naked women, and I won’t bother to deny it. But you see, that’s not why I want this job. I want the liberty of unencumbered skin. I want to feel freer than I’ve ever felt before. It’s emancipation, not copulation that inspires me.”

My words left an indelible impression on the professor. He was frankly startled by my honesty, but still more impressed by the purity of my ambition. It was apparent that he had seldom come across an applicant encouraged not by the allure of money or the pleasures of women, but by the thrill of nudity itself. “That’s something I’d really like to hear more often,” he confessed, and as we stood up to shake hands in parting, he endeavored to conclude the matter quickly and offered me the position on the spot. I accepted unhesitatingly, and was promised shifts beginning in a week. As I departed, I shot the professor a jovial smile, supremely satisfied that my sudden but genuine impulse would soon yield a rewarding harvest.

 

 

How to Fry Okra by Clare Chu

Clare Chu was raised in Malta and England, and has adopted Los Angeles as her home. She is an art curator, dealer, lecturer and writer who has authored and published twelve books and numerous academic articles on Asian art. This year she was a participant in San Miguel Poetry Week. Her poetry is featured in a continuing collaboration with Hong Kong-based calligraphic and landscape painter Hugh Moss, in which poet and artist expand traditional media boundaries. Her poetry is published or is forthcoming in The Comstock Review, The Esthetic Apostle, The Raw Art Review, Cathexis Northwest Press and 2River View.

 

How to Fry Okra

Last weekend, Sabiqah couldn’t gather her words,
reluctant to admit she was homeless again,
their ‘Welcome’ mat covered by a blanket of ash,

that after his third stroke, her husband Frank
came home from the hospital
with a hankering for fried okra,
just like his MeeMaw made,

that she refused him,
because she was angry he’d been back to hospital,
because in Bangladesh she’d always made Dharosh Bhaji,
because this was the South — his home,

that Frank was petulant with her,
went downstairs to the empty apartment
where her mother, lately converted, newly passed,
had lain for a week in the scorching heat,

that he fried a skillet of okra,
dipped in buttermilk, dredged in cornmeal,
managed to set the pan alight,
poured water on flaming peanut oil,

and with enthusiasm — or so it seemed to Sabiqah —
burnt their house down in its entirety.

 

 

Huge Stone by Mitchell Grabois

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and. was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. To read more of his work, Google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA. 

 

Huge Stone

I passed a huge kidney stone and brought it in for my doctor to have analyzed. When I took it out of the envelope in which I had placed it, his eyes widened. He said: That came out of you? He brought in all the other doctors in his practice, all the nurses and receptionists, even the insurance lady, to show them. No one had ever seen a kidney stone that big.

You are an American Hero, my doctor said. He had previously been a medic in the Army. Any other man would have been brought to his knees in pain, but not you. For you, it was only discomfort.

I said: No, sir. You may not remember, but both my parents were mentally ill. I became used to bearing pain. Then, in the war, I became a prisoner and their torturers had their way with me. You think a lousy kidney stone can perturb me?

He saluted, and all the employees went back to their duties. The sexiest of the nurses stopped on her way out and secretly handed me a card with her name and phone number on it.

Two by Bryan Edenfield

Bryan Edenfield was born in Arizona but has lived in Seattle since 2007. He was the founder and director of the small press and literary arts organization, Babel/Salvage. He hosted and curated the Glossophonic Showcase and the Ogopogo Performance Series. His writing has most recently been published in Mantra Review, Meekling Review, Dryland, and Plinth. He is currently one of the Jack Straw Writers for 2018 and the host of the Hollow Earth Radio program, Glossophonics.

 

Graffiti: 

The self is a sinister work
of architecture full of hidden
chambers. These are places

uncharted and may
house monsters.

 

Hidden space:

There is an empty pool,
an unfinished onramp,
an old newspaper stand,
a parking lot. There is

a dark garage,
a trash filled alley,
a mound of dirt
on an abandoned lot.

There is a burned house,
an inaccessible rooftop,
a road no one uses,
the construction site on
a Sunday. There is

the neglected front lawn,
the unrented apartment,
the gas station at 3 am,
the freeway at 4 am,
a long tunnel. There is

the perpetually unfinished tower,
the solitary square of undeveloped
land, the courtyard with a dry
fountain. There is

dead space.

Never Take Your Child to Scully’s by D. M. Kerr

D. M. Kerr is the writing name of a Canadian writer currently living and working in Singapore, where he teaches game design and business. His work has been published in Blank Spaces, Eyedrum Periodically and Birch Gang Review. He can’t afford to eat at Scully’s, not with the money they pay teachers these days.

 

“I’ll book a late lunch,” Verlane said, “at Scully’s.” He was proud of Scully’s, of its wide white plates, white cloth napkins, burnished cutlery and haute cuisine. Late lunch was even more of a delight there: by a curious alignment, sunlight reflected off the surrounding office towers to bathe its stained-glass roof, and, through it, the tablecloths, the pale oak floor and the conversation of its patrons with a lambent rosy hue.

“I’m downtown,” Scorea had just told him, over the phone, “St. Michaels. My Gynie checkup should be finished by one. Can we do lunch?”

Verlane and Scorea had little chance to see each other after she and Jake had moved to the suburbs. Verlane had chosen to stay in the city, close enough to their mother that he could check up on her regularly. The money he saved from not owning a car he spent on expensive places like this.

Even with the sunlight, Scully’s was not busy in the early afternoon. They got a good table. “Try the sliced black pepper ham,” Verlane told Scorea. “It’s delicious.”

Scorea smiled. “I’ll take a salad instead.”

They didn’t talk much, even after the waiter delivered their choices. Their sibling relationship was like that. It needed only the occasional, innocuous question to add a bit of flavor to the arrhythmic background ambience of the fine restaurant.

But that ambience was suddenly pierced by the primal, anguished wail of a child: “Mooommmeeeeeee!” The “eeee” part of the wail, a sentence in itself, spoke of pride injured beyond repair. “I want! Now!”

The patrons of Scully’s were too polite to break their chatter. Verlaine glanced up once, as he continued to cut the slices of his ham. Scorea didn’t appear to have heard: she was moving her fork through her salad to pick out the less exotic bits.

The cry had come from behind Verlane, close enough that he could hear the woman’s taut, whispered response: “Graham, if you don’t shut up right now, I’m never taking you downtown again.”

The boy responded with another deeper wail.

He’s got her now, Verlane thought. She’s made a threat she can’t carry out, and he knows it.

“Here-” the mother said, angrily. Perhaps something was passed over, Verlane didn’t know, but the boy’s wails subsided immediately into sniffles. The chatter, which had by now, in fact, paused, like musicians waiting out an impromptu solo, returned to its original arrhythmia.

Verlane looked over at his sister. She had not paused plowing the greens of her salad bowl. The sharp lines of her face were beginning to soften. A glow of country freshness radiated from her cheeks.

O Scoreana! he thought. What will your child be like? Will you and Jake cocoon him in your house? What idle threats will you make when your children turn public places into weapons against you? What negotiations will you try, and fail?

Scorea raised her head, as if in response to his questions, and smiled gently. But she wasn’t smiling at him. Her eyes focused somewhere over his shoulder. Verlane heard the squeak of stroller wheels on the oak floor, and the faint whimper a child makes when its head is nestled somewhere warm.

“He’s so cute,” Scorea said.

 

Creation Story and More by Karlo Silverio III Sevilla

Karlo Sevilla writes from Quezon City, Philippines and is the author of two poetry collections: “Metro Manila Mammal” (Soma Publishing, 2018) and “You” (Origami Poems Project, 2017). He was a runner-up in Submittable’s 2018 National Poetry Month poetry contest and one of his poems is nominated by Ariel Chart for the 2018 Best of the Net Anthology. His poems have appeared in Philippines Graphic, Eclectica, Milk + Beans, The Broken Cassette, Scarlet Leaf Review, and others. He currently studies for the Sertipika sa Panitikan at Malikhaing Pagsulat sa Filipino (Certificate in Literature and Creative Writing in Filipino) program of the Center for Creative Writing of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

 

creation story

before the beginning,
it was decided
that it would be
a chiaroscuro.

and it was pure
entertainment
ever since.

 

alone in a forest, midnight

you cup your hands around an ember, to sustain it
and hope it rises again into the bonfire it was moments ago.

a cloudless sky, and the stars are out in full force. yet,
their collective light is wanting; they are too far away.

always too far away.

 

forest clearing at dawn

a sunray
breaks and multiplies
through the branches

a fairy
pirouettes
on the nose
of a fawn

a nymph
seated on a stone
strums the breeze

a dew drop
on a leaf
trembles

drips

Two by Pratibha Kelapure

Pratibha is the editor of The Literary Nest. Her poems appear in Plath Poetry Project, Ink & Nebula, Foliate Oak, The Lake, miller’s pond poetry, Akitsu Quarterly, Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-Po Listserv, and other literary magazines.

 

At This Very Moment

At this very moment
Someone is taking her last breath
I should be thankful I only have
a twisted knot in my heart
and not bullet in my head
or a shrapnel from a bomb blast
I will take another breath and yet another
until the knot becomes
gnarled beyond repair
and the smile on my face
becomes the witch’s crackle

 

Night Snowfall

night snowfall
a yellow porchlight
kindling hope

Poetry by Lauren White

Lauren White currently resides in Orlando, Florida and is a full-time engineer. She writes poetry on the side as a therapeutic outlet. For more writing samples, follow her blog at https://hellolaurentms.com.

 

The Winds

looking at my lone
reflection and feet in the puddles
in the morning hours
hail cab to next adventure
on the fickle winds of time

 

Out at Night

Riding my bike through
New York night shimmers and glows
People watching to
My heart’s content oh
How the freaks come out at night

 

In the Right Light

In the right light,
No one notices anything
The shadows run away
to play at the edge of perception
In the right light,
I am resplendent
You look through my wild eyes
Both glorious and glistening
But they see through you
Your armor is dull
You are charmless
In the right light,
Blindness is our friend
We relish our ignorance
When the shadows tire of their play
The mind’s eye can see again!
Our fear is realized
The magic was a trick of the light

Leopards by Ella Syverson

Ella Syverson is a junior at a project based charter high school in northern Wisconsin where she is able to pursue her passions: creative writing and social justice. You can find her previously published work in Youngzine, 101 Words, Shady Grove Literary, and Silver Pen’s Youth Imagination.

 

It’s dusk. Maybe I should call for a ride. The streetlights are off. That means it’s not quite night yet. In fact, it’s not even that dark. It’s only a few blocks. I’ll take Edge Street so I don’t pass the skate park. No need to call.

Shit, someone’s coming. He’s not too much bigger than me. I could probably take him. What the hell are you thinking? It’s just a guy. Eyes down. You don’t owe him a smile. You don’t owe him anything. Stop holding your breath. He’s passed now. Don’t look back. Stop getting so worked up over nothing.

Home now. Breathe.

“Hi, honey! Did you have fun with Courtney? Next time text before you leave, ok? Just in case.”

“Is Jason back from practice yet?”

“No, I let him stay late for conditioning, but Caleb’s here. I thought we could watch a nature documentary. There’s one about leopards that sounds good…”

“Sure, Mom. Whatever.”

Mumbai now holds the largest concentration of leopards in the world. These deadly cats stalk the city streets, preying on livestock, and occasionally even attacking people.

“Oh my god. Imagine walking by yourself at night. That would be totally terrifying.”

Caleb. Little does he know.