Ma Yongbo

 Line by line retranslation of Ashbery

Waiting makes time democratic, you just said so

Then a white horse ran by, repeatedly running back and forth

Like a messenger passing straight through various rooms from the front door

Out through the back door, I waited like this for twenty-seven years.

Initially it was the honey of distortion brewed in the rooms distorted in your convex mirror

And that gesture was both an invitation and a refusal

Unfolding for me a moment that fluctuated incessantly

A crack that exists, the circulation of water in the ocean

A ring formed by a self-devouring serpent in motion

In between is the void filled with power

This mirror of others reflects oneself at the same time

Allows all the images of leaves stacked in the depths of the mirror to remain

Like a demon in a bottle floating on an infinitely transparent surface

Longing for the light of your face, symbolic stones

They only stop temporarily in order to focus

Forming some kind of meaning, then they are quickly swept away

By the randomness of a hasty retrospective flood

This is more like a dream that a person struggles with but still cannot wake from

Maybe he doesn't really want to wake up

Finding himself in an uninhabited street

In the silence just as the last bus leaves

In the steam, the taillights flicker dimly

This is a climate without scenery, it is something nameless

Moving, appearing and disappearing, erasing some, and then adding some from the void

Adding something, originally the messenger and the message were one

How to receive the infinite return of the Möbius strip

What you have experienced, you know nothing about

And poetry is an understanding of this pain, and also a forgetting

Whether the reward is a reed flute, or separation of body and head

It will all enter a distilled space

Like bees living in the nest of the sun

And these, whether they are enough for me

Pretending that nothing happened, continue to sing

This may be the barbarian plundering in Rome

Defined safe zone, several temples scattered on hills

Let us continue with determination

Tell others the symbolism, and show the mystery to ourselves

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964,Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry,and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry.He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included 7 poetry collections.He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Williams and Ashbery. He recently published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over half a million copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.

Alison Bell Miller

An Affair on Lombardy Street

The landlocked Airbnb has a nautical theme and an irregularly shaped board nailed to one wall that might work if they installed hooks, I offered to the man I’ve loved for 24 years before we kissed and carried each other into the bedroom.

The backyard is at this time off-limits to guests, though we are encouraged to dispense of our trash there due to an ant problem for which we may be charged. Renters may also be charged for using acne products immediately prior the towels.

Likewise, silicone lubricants are prohibited. The Airbnb sits a block and a half from the marketwhere my cousin and I used to buy croissant sandwiches when the jazz bar closed where the man I’ve loved for 24 years used to play.

The Airbnb has a keypad for a lock and I give him the code. I wake to his face for the first time in years. I send him home in a shirt wearing wrinkles and the perfume my ex-husband sayssmells like my mother.

My hosts have left two thick, hooded robes hanging in the closet. When the man I’ve loved for 24 years leaves, I draw one around my naked shoulders step in front of the mirror on the bathroom door. I look at my flat belly, my limp curls, and see who I was always meant to be.

Alison Bell Miller (she/her) is a writer and sex educator. She has published two chapbooks, Flowering, (adj.) by Weasel Press and blink by BarBar Press. Her work has also been published in various literary magazines including Hobart Pulp, Anti-Heroin Chic, San Diego Poetry Annual, and Cultural Daily. The owner of sex positive adult boutiques in Richmond, Virginia, she currently resides in San Diego.

William Doreski

Trespassing Aloud

Listening to the wind misspell
my name I sense desperation,
a bruise of waxen yellow flesh.

The wind explores the ruins
of a factory abandoned decades
ago, a complex of smokestacks

and oil tanks, brown weathered brick
and rusting machines the use
of which no one alive knows.

Why is the wind taunting me
with its private misery when
grease stains almost eighty years old

still offer comforting stinks.
I shouldn’t be here exploring
private if useless property.

I should go home and practice
spelling my name correctly
in case the wind has influenced

my flimsy sense of myself.
The factory closed after the war.
Not even mice find sustenance

or aesthetic pleasure in noting
the aloof geometry, purposeful
and rigid enough to warp the wind.

I pocket a large rusty bolt
and declare myself a petty thief,
giving voice to all this loss.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Cloud Mountain (2024). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

Mark Danowsky

Our Most Vulnerable

Maybe the phrase has
always meant to misdirect

A gunmen is taking aim
at shadows in dark corners

It must be someone’s job to ask
after each life still here

I was once someone noticed
each must consider

No fear I know like alone
awake & shaking

Losing all my grounding thoughts
with no protectors left

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author of four poetry books. His latest poetry collection is Meatless (Plan B Press). Take Care is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in 2025. His poems have appeared in many journals including Right Hand Pointing, The New Verse News, Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Summerset Review, Alba, The Healing Muse, and Gargoyle.

Ken Cathers

skin


this skin has started
to fray

reveals a torn elbow
a tattered knee

a body stitched up
too many times.

I tug at stray threads loose buttons
watch my days unravel.

this is a poor material
to work with
the weave all wrong

a coat grown thin
and faded
     a patchwork blanket.

I wait for the scars
to harden

a fresh skin to emerge
pink, beautiful

become new, grow
from the inside out
but I have slid

from silk to denim
become a worn fabric

that cannot be shed
there is a wound

that doesn’t close
a bruise that never heals

when the night is cold
I am a cheap cloth

that will not mend

Ken Cathers as a  B.A. from the University of Victoria and a M.A. from York University in Toronto.  He has just published his eighth book of poetry entitled Home Town with Impspired Press in England. He has also recently published two chapbooks, one entitled Kiefer by broke press and the other entitled Legoland Noir by Block Party Press. His work has appeared in publications from Canada, the United States, Australia, Ireland, England, India ,the Netherlands, Hong Kong  and Africa. Some of his recent work has appeared in Plato’s Cave, The McGuffin, Acta Victoriana,  Zoetic Press, The Carried Away, Wild Words and The Blue Unicorn. He lives on Vancouver Island with his family in a small colony of trees.

Charles Rammelkamp

Doped with Religion, Sex and TV

“Working class hero, my foot,” Darleen spat.
“Pampered British rock star’s more like it.
He don’t know nothin’ about no working class,”
she sneered, “and that Jap witch he married.
She’s probly the one who put them ideas in his head.”

Darleen and I worked on the assembly line
at the Capitol Records plant, putting fresh-pressed LPs
into sleeves, the packaged albums into cardboard boxes,
the boxes onto pallets for the forklift guy
to take them away to the loading dock.

“I used to like some of them early songs.
‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’
but you can have this stuff. Working class hero!
Who does he think he’s kidding?”

I stuffed my impulse to defend Lennon,
point out his poverty in postwar Liverpool,
the broken family, the absent sailor father;
mainly offended by Doreen’s naked racism,
pitying her for the misogyny she’d absorbed
from generations of farmers on the prairie.

I was a college student, working part time
while carrying a full course load.
She was a farmer’s wife, supplementing
the household finances; in the same boat, really;
only difference was I read books and she didn’t.

What do they say?
Never argue about religion, politics, or music.
“We got many more Plastic Ono Bands left to package?” I asked, ignoring her diatribe.
I’d like to take a cigarette break.”

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner. Another poetry collection entitled Transcendence has also recently been published by BlazeVOX Books and a collection of flash fiction, Presto, has just been published by Bamboo Dart Press. A collection of poems and flash called See What I Mean? will be published later this year by Kelsay Books.Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner. Another poetry collection entitled Transcendence has also recently been published by BlazeVOX Books and a collection of flash fiction, Presto, has just been published by Bamboo Dart Press. A collection of poems and flash called See What I Mean? will be published later this year by Kelsay Books.Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner. Another poetry collection entitled Transcendence has also recently been published by BlazeVOX Books and a collection of flash fiction, Presto, has just been published by Bamboo Dart Press. A collection of poems and flash called See What I Mean? will be published later this year by Kelsay Books.

Karl Koweski

retaliation

it was two weeks
after you returned
from rehab, dad
I found the first
vodka bottle,
a Smirnoff pint,
stashed beneath
the driver's seat
of your Ford.

I propped the
empty on the
dashboard like
a bobble-head.

I didn't tell you
this then, but...

going into my room
and leaving my
dog-eared copies
of Penthouse on
my pillow next
to the Vaseline...

that was a
pretty good comeback.

Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Day now living in a valley in rural Alabama. His latest collection of poetry from Roadside Press "Abandoned By All Things" is out now.

A.S. Coomer

black coffee blues

all the cups we carry
the sloshing of pell-mell life
like drunks on the last ferry outta town

montage of deja vu
whipping neck down
to check steam rise

the careful setting
of the same vessel
of the same sun & moon

backdrop drips indigo
a river of black coffee
drought stricken
gone too soon

A.S. Coomer is a writer & musician. Books include MEMORABILIA, BIRTH OF A MONSTER, SHINING THE LIGHT, THE FLOCK UNSEEN, THE FETISHISTS, & many others. He runs Lost, Long Gone, Forgotten Records, a "record label" for poetry.

Robert Witmer

 Business 101

 

When I was a kid, I built an ant house. That was before I ever saw one of those ant farm contraptions. I made everything small – the chairs, the tv, the Bible on the end table, even the room where you do number one or number two. After I finished, I showed it to my dad. He kind of laughed and said something about my mom’s goofy sister, Aunt Esther. That night, I put my ant house out on the patio. I kept looking through my bedroom window, waiting to see them arrive. First, just one or two, to check the place out. Then more. Until finally the place was on the map. Of course, we couldn’t let everyone in. We had to be selective, keep an eye on the bottom line. Reputation, after all, is everything.

Robert Witmer is an American who has lived in Tokyo, Japan, for the past 46 years. His poems have appeared in many print and online journals, including Lily Poetry Review, The Main Street Rag, Bacopa Literary Review, New Verse News, Parody, Shot Glass Journal, and Stone Poetry Quarterly. His first book of poems, "Finding a Way", was published in 2016. A second book, "Serendipity", a collection of prose poetry pieces and haiku sequences, was published in March 2023.

M.J. Arcangelini

TED KACZYNSKI'S CABIN

As my country goes collectively more mad

every day, I keep thinking that Ted had the right

idea with that cabin; get away from everyone,

live off the grid, quietly, in the wilderness

with only that which is required for life,

that which gives one pleasure and sustenance,

then see to it that no one can get to you.

The bombings are where he went wrong.

He could have continued living securely

in his cabin if he hadn’t started killing people,

if he’d been able to settle for writing about

the rising evils of technology and what he

thought needed to be done about them. But

writing it all down was not enough for him.

Ted's dead now, suicide in a prison hospital,

his cabin no longer tucked away, decomposing

in Montana. The FBI has carefully dismantled it,

like London Bridge, then reassembled it at their

headquarters in Washington, DC; a trophy,

a stuffed marlin, a mounted stag’s head, antlers

to hold hats and coats, Mardi Gras beads.

ELEGY FOR LAMB CHOP

How perverse of Shari Lewis to

call her cute little hand puppet,

her alter ego, Lamb Chop.

Was it some kind of sneaky

memento mori for us

unsuspecting kids? Hinting that

we too may become someone’s

favorite dinner some day?

Did that really fly right past

the parents, who should have

known better, who should have

protected us but probably

thought it simply cute and

didn’t understand Latin anyway?

Or were they just not paying attention?

Why did it stop with Lamb Chop?

Why not a pig puppet named Bacon?

Or a cute cartoon cow called Hamburger?

Let’s teach the kids about real life,

not hand puppets and cartoons but

wars of bloodsucking greed, despots,

corporations christened as persons

by a collaborationist supreme court,

legally sanctioned rape and plunder

endorsed by your favorite religion.

Why not teach them that?

The fist clenched within the sock puppet.

M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania. He has resided in northern California since 1979. His work has been published in many magazines, online journals, over a dozen anthologies, & 6 collections, the most recent of which is “Pawning My Sins” from Luchador Press, 2022.

Corey Mesler

 The Party of Special Things to Do

The Band was singing Kingdom Come.

Freddy was there with his colored balls

and his glass half fulfilled.

Judy took off her blouse. Randy

took off when the cops arrived.

There were other women suffering

things our eyes hadn’t seen before

or since. Jay had a jay the

size of a carrot, diamond bright

like a night with Angela.

The party wound down when the

Catholics started chanting like

airport saints. Rich asked me if I

wanted to see Robin’s underwear

but that bird had flown. And

that meant I was sleeping in the bathtub

again; my prayers would be filled with

cleansing like the ethnic washday.

I love you, I told the woman I woke

up with. She turned slowly to salt

and I used a pinch of her in my bloody

Mary, which I had with the eggs

from the communion tray. All day I

replayed the party like it was Safe

as Milk. All day I was a sucker

but I loved myself almost as much

as I loved Meghan’s tights, and

her gams, lush like the fields of the Lord.

COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 45 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, Cock-a-Hoop, is from Whiskey Tit. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis. 

Drew Pisarra

 Pillow Talk

My boyfriend hands me some necessary med.

I think I’m quite sick. I’ve got a bad flu

that’s warping my thinking, that fucks w/ my head,

a sickness that makes me wish, I were dead.

An illness can plant such an idea inside you.

My boyfriend hands me some necessary med:

a plain pink pill; a capsule half yellow, half-red;

and one other one, two distinct shades of blue.

“That’s warping my thinking. That fucks with my head,”

I tell him. I’m pretty sure that’s what I said.

He holds out the glass. I know what to do.

My boyfriend hands me some necessary med

then patiently sits on the side of my bed

as I pop the four pills then drink up. My temp is 102.

That’s warping my thinking, that fucks w/ my head.

There’s a stain on the pillowcase where I’ve bled

‘though I’m less sure what’s caused this bad bruise.

My boyfriend hands me some necessary med

that’s warping my thinking. It fucks w/ my head.

Drew Pisarra is the author of two poetry collections, Periodic Boyfriends (2023) and Infinity Standing Up (2019); two short story collections,You're Pretty Gay (2021) and Publick Spanking (1996); and two radio plays, Price in Purgatory (2023) and The Strange Case of Nick M. (2021).

Jim Murdoch

My Wife’s Back

The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed – only converted from one form of energy to another.


I was lying in bed this morning with my back
pressed against my wife’s back (she has a very warm back)

and I started writing a poem (not this poem)
about my wife’s back and how much
I was enjoying lying against it

I should’ve got up and started writing the poem immediately
(I’ve been at this game a long time; I know the drill)
but my wife’s back was so warm and I was so cozy

I decided to lie on a while.

When I got up I wrote this poem
and as I did I felt my wife’s warmth leave my back.
I wonder how much wound up here.

Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct magazines and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Lake and Eclectica, that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and (increasingly) next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels.