GAS Featured Poet: Andrew Wilson

 

Andrew Wilson still works part-time as a factory manager in Bradford, West Yorkshire and when not working, writes for pleasure. He has been a signwriter, painter, architectural draughtsman as well as a restaurateur and other food management roles. Working in many roles is a source of inspiration and as an early adopter of reinvention every few years, his philosophy is use it or lose it…

Andrew is indebted to his AWA Writing Group and it’s facilitator – Deborah Bayer for their nurture and encouragement…

A Warning To the Witless

Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss
We mourn the loss of freedom taken from us

Supporters held in thrall, dismayed as truth hits home
Democracy is murdered as those fools stand by – witless
Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss

We poets must respond and fight with sharp-edged poems
Not just to mourn our lost love, blazon our distress
But as a call to arms for all to rise and seek redress
Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss
We mourn the loss of freedom taken from us…

 

Blood from a Stone

Hani Mahmoud is starving
his face has presented the afflictions of Gaza
on Al Jazeerah throughout the conflict 
but now, shrinking like a prune
his face tells its own story

Today he covers the shortage of blood
blood is life and however much iron
Gazans fortified their souls with
there is not enough iron in their blood
for it to be usable and besides
they are too weak to be able
to give blood without fainting

Israel calls a special meeting
of the UN Security Council
to complain about the starvation 
- the starvation of hostages
and calls it an act of propaganda!
No doubt there was a time
when hostages were looked after
as the bargaining chips they are
but now there is not enough food
even for the captors…
whatever sympathy he may feel for
the family member who voices the complaint
and pleads for the return of his relative,
the Palestinian Ambassador ripostes
that Israel is starving a whole people

In other news today
it is eighty years since the destruction of Hiroshima
by a bomb so small that some today dare to classify it
as merely tactical and threaten to use such on their enemies

So much for the "War to end all wars"
and we are come to live in the moral wasteland...

GAS Featured Poet: Justin Hollis

 

Justin Hollis has an MFA from Hofstra University and currently teaches language and literature at Palm Beach State College.  His work has appeared previously in the Querencia Press Quarterly Anthology, Action, Spectacle, and The Chiron Review.  

These poems are from a manuscript entitled “Dream Economy: Prose Poems,” a collection of sixty surrealistic fables in the tradition of Russell Edson, Charles Simic, and Carsten Rene Nielsen.

There’s a miniature sabretooth tiger thawing from an ice cube on the counter and a wheelchair with a warm drink.  There’s a rat gnawing at the wheelchair tire, its air-bloat belly.  Inside the ice the tiger flexes a muscle; the rat floats up towards the ceiling.  There’s something prehistoric about the apartment, the guests swaggering simian-like, swigging their beer bottles then swinging them like caveman clubs at the rat’s primeval piñata: and there’s a woman outside the window looking in, thinking just this.  Though this could just be the woman, who wasn’t invited to the party in the first place, sulking in her bitterness.  Because, honestly, aren’t you too even a little curious?  The drink left on the wheelchair, now on the verge of tipping.  The sabretooth tiger, it’s story….

 

 

My son is telling me about something that happened on the class trip or at the Little League game or about Tuesday’s math test that he completely forgot to study for and so would I please just sign above the D before mom finds out.  I’m tuned out, drowning my thoughts in a cool bowl of Frosted Flakes.  Because “They’re Great,” says the Tiger.  My psychiatrist says it’s perfectly normal for a man of my age and middling social standing to indulge in occasional delusions of fancy.  But my delusions take the shape of a blue goldfish swimming among the soggy flakes.   “And then,” my son says, “right there in front of the entire class, Miss Gumble slipped…”.  I’m slipping now, deeper into the blue goldfish, happy to be a blue goldfish, happily swimming among the sparkling clusters of malted corn.  Tiny islands on which one could pull up a lounge chair and bask in the gauzy blue light that lights all my best memories.  Goldfish, you know, only have a memory span of about 9 seconds.  So I guess I have only 8, 7, 6… to explain to my son about his father, how at just around his age he learned to grow fins and breathe underwater, swim in the looming presence of a cartoon Tiger who for all I know is about to pounce off the front of the box and chase him out the kitchen, and me happy, forgetting.    

 

GAS Featured Poet: Vernon Frazer

 

Vernon Frazer's thirty-plus books of poetry include Mantic Pandemic, Memo from Alamut, IMPROVISATIONS,  Nemo under the League and SIGHTING. He is a member of the C22 Experimental Writing Collective. His fiction includes three novels and a short story collection. His jazz poetry appeared on three recordings, then extended into multimedia presentations viewable on YouTube. Frazer lives in Central Connecticut. He is widowed.

Payback in Training

fury starter 

vibrato slim crawl cadet 

    derision outpost

trouble pastiche

sharpened calico rudeness

emerging

              easily acquired

     monetary reality

     a discursive grogginess

     forking green

looming exchanges

before the argument

shaded 

            a gray run

one bored pose unfolding 

     the stress footage

     sweat of gratuitous exchanges

     breaking rhetoric vesicles

           provoked would be

           sizzle to invoke disposal

           where brackets hide

                    truthful excess learning

                           its mat commando skill

On Cue

coming from the corner

carom bulge collision spray

a rolling spread toward 

shoes and motor shores

clenched like an island rotary

cuffed against the cushion 

bounced balls into pocket

pool back turned to get 

its quiet corner action

rafting back a new score

numbered oddly to even

foreign fats and slims 

back to brag and green

against all angles boast

as competition collects

numbered table covers

sliced to carry where home

returns to its own pocket

Impact Statement Missing

animus hurled a hammer

at a vagary charge in action 

clipping a contact deflector

in trademark disposal

vacant once rummaging 

friction cathodes vacate

pineal findings extend

with plumage stashed dark

courage past the attention

the coastal menace forgot 

crises the witnesses displaced

near the lizard photoplay

diners howl dull oratorios

while the glittering dinner

honors a turnpike caddy

GAS Featured Poet: Alan Britt

Alan Britt poems have appeared in Agni Review, American Poetry Review, The Bitter Oleander, Cottonwood, Kansas Quarterly, Midwest Review, Minnesota Review, Missouri Review, New Letters, Osiris, andStand (UK). His latest books are Garden of Earthly Delights and The Tavern of Lost Souls, from UnCollected Press and Červená Barva Press respectively. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

 

US & THEM

 

Thank god for mulligans;

some would say, heaven sent.

 

But the memes floating around

like spaceships

& sometimes like a heavenly ray

of dawn with quantum flecks

of our lives broadcast all

over the place—one could enter

these timeless atoms being transported

to another dimension

including the one where some of us

have a bad reputation.

 

Anyway, thought you might want

to hear that before you

make your next move.

THE STAIN

 

We are nothing more than a gray stain on a worn sidewalk.

 

Stain that began dark as thunder but over the years became Rorschach from a tropical storm.

 

The sidewalk also contains pink gum turned into tar, plus political jesters ground into dust.

 

If I had a ladle, I’d lift the shadows from that sidewalk like they were crawdads escaping 

a cast iron Nola pot.

 

But I wasn’t born with a ladle, & I wouldn’t boil another lifeform while it was still alive 

as long as I’m a member, such as that is, of the human race on this blue gyroscope called 

by its terrestrial name.

 

Oh yes, the stain. 

GAS Featured Poet: Sreeja Naskar

 

Sreeja Naskar is a young poet based in India. Her work has appeared in Poems India, Crowstep Journal, ONE ART, Ink Sweat and Tears, FRiGG, The Chakkar, and elsewhere. She believes in the quiet power of language to unearth what lingers beneath silence.

kissing with the news on mute

the apartment smells like garlic & rain.    

    we eat pasta off chipped plates  

 while gaza buries its children beneath the rubble.  

     you kiss me like there’s no ash in the air  

 and the water running through our pipes  

      didn’t skip someone else’s throat to get here.  

 

           you say: stay.   

           & i do, because the world is too loud 

 

 we turn the tv on, just for the light.  

     the anchor's mouth moves, silent.  

 i think about a girl with red barrettes,  

     found under concrete. i think about  

         the mother who washed her with bottled water.  

 i think of my own mother, folding towels  

     while the country she left burns slower  

         than the one she fled.  

 

           (sometimes survival is shame  

           that learned how to walk upright.)  

 

 my shower runs hot.  

     i cry into the tile & say, it’s cleansing.  

 i scroll past headlines, donate five dollars,  

       feel righteous, then kiss you again.  

 my body forgets how to hold grief  

     so it folds into yours.  

 

            (what language do we use  

             for pleasure that costs someone else’s breath?  

 

 outside, the rain keeps falling.  

     somewhere, a city turns off its sirens.  

 you whisper my name like a prayer  

     and i want to believe it’s enough.  

 i want to believe loving you  

     isn’t the most selfish thing i’ve done today.  

 

           (but the water runs hot  

           and the sky, for now, is whole)

 god works in immigration

denied my mother’s visa three times—  

    each refusal a prayer unanswered.  

i watch the clock punch holes in our grief,  

     stamped with expiration dates,  

the smell of waiting rooms stale as old promises.  

 

           (he never learned how to say my name.)  

 

god sits behind a desk cluttered with files,  

     his hands folding paper dreams into ash.  

my father’s papers lost somewhere between  

     midnight and the next form,  

i lost faith the day they lost his identity.  

 

           (there’s no heaven here  

           just endless lines and locked doors)  

 

i call god by the wrong name,  

     curse him in the language he forgot.  

my mother folds towels with hands trembling—  

     each crease a silent protest  

against a god who trades in red stamps, not mercy.  

 

the walls listen but do not answer.  

     outside, the city breathes without us.  

i fold my grief into a suitcase,  

     tuck my name inside like a secret,  

hoping god forgets how to open it.

 diaspora is a scam

  my aunt says it over bitter tea—  

     how they sold us dreams wrapped in passports,  

  promises folded like cheap paper planes,  

     crashing somewhere between here and nowhere.  

 

          they told us it was freedom,  

          but freedom never comes with baggage fees  

 

  i learned to speak two languages that don’t quite fit,  

     my tongue a clumsy translation of home and exile.  

  my mother’s cooking tastes like memory and loss,  

     the same dishes nobody knows how to name anymore.  

 

         (we are strangers in maps we didn’t draw)  

 

  every flight ticket is a wager on belonging,  

     but the currency is too high—  

  a lifetime of waiting rooms,  

     missed birthdays,  

     empty chairs at tables still warm with absence.  

 

          diaspora is a scam  

          sold by those who never had to leave  

 

  my father’s laugh is thinner now,  

     stretched between two countries,  

  one that forgot him,  

     the other that never fully claimed him.  

 

          and i—  

          caught in the middle—  

          wonder if home was ever real  

 

  i hold my heart like a visa application—  

     folded, stamped,  

     always pending.

GAS Featured Poet: Arvilla Fee

 

Arvilla Fee lives in Dayton, Ohio, teaches English for Clark State College and is the lead poetry editor for October Hill Magazine. She has published work in over 100 journals and magazines, and her poetry books, The Human Side, This is Life, and Mosaic: A Million Little Pieces are available on Amazon. Arvilla’s life advice: never leave home without a snack (just in case of an apocalypse). Arvilla’s favorite quote: "It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~ Henry David Thoreau. To learn more, visit her website and check out her new poetry magazine: https://soulpoetry7.com/

How to Eat An Over-Easy Egg

in Front of Your Ex

 

carefully,

deliberately,

fork cutting

straight down the middle,

yolk pooling

like a daisy-yellow pond,

perfect for dipping

butter-covered toast;

fold the bread,

drag it along the plate

in slow, circular motions,

absorbing,

never dripping—

never leaving the table

with egg on your face

Momma Needs a Moment

 

just five minutes to close my eyes,

to allow my chest to rise and fall,

to let my mind go blank.

Put your badgering on a shelf,

tuck those questions under your arms,

and just let        me         be.

I cannot answer the rapid-fire requests

that press into the gray matter of my brain

like bullish thumbs against a tender wrist.
I cannot tell you what’s for dinner.

No, I don’t know where birds go

when they leave their nests.

I don’t know why the store

was completely out of grapes.

Just let me have this bubble;

I’ll close my eyes and imagine,

if only for a moment

that I have all the space I need.

I’ll stretch my arms over my head,

yawn,

listen to the coo of doves,

step into the sun’s warm orb,

and measure my brief autonomy

in the beat of a hummingbird’s wings.

The Air Between Us

 

without the mixture of my molecules

and your molecules, the air is clearer,

fresher somehow, with a hint of jasmine,

pine, and tangerine—

 

without the verbal bullet holes and

the cock crowing, I can take a breath,

can spin around without hitting your ego,

fragile as it was—

 

without the rumbling of your empty

thunder, the sky has returned to me,

a prodigal piece of blessed haven,

draping me like a prayer

The Mad Librarian

 

Everyone said he was crazy,

my grandfather,

but I liked to think of him as

                  unconventional.

OK—so maybe the five hens

that slept in old milk crates

on his front porch was a little crazy.

Maybe the life-size garden statue

of Edgar Allan Poe with a raven

sitting on his head was—

well, odd at best.

But the pinnacle of his peculiarity,

according to the wholesome folks in town,

was his insatiable love of books.

Having converted his 1920-something

house into a massive library

when I was just a kid,

I found the rows and rows of bookcases

perfectly normal! Little books, big books,

books that smelled like the earth itself,

books with water marks and wax seals.

Books with red covers, brown covers,

no covers at all—tattered pages clinging

desperately to the threads that bound them.

Grandfather often sat in a winged back chair,

a book perched upon his knee, a book open

on his lap, a book held between two gnarled hands,

his gold, wire-rimmed glasses perched smartly

on the end of his thin nose.

I stepped on his glasses once, breaking both lenses,

but he kept reading with them anyway,

said it gave him a whole new perspective.

And it’s those glasses, sitting demurely on the last stack

of books he read that now waver behind the salty film

of tears in my eyes. I blink twice, put the specs on my face,

trying to see through Grandfather’s eyes.

Hazy Days

 

Clouds stretch thin

like prim Puritan lips;

the sun pouts

from behind the sultry veil,

searing the soil with her breath.

I stretch out on a lounger,

sweet tea glass to my forehead

icy condensation dripping

down flushed cheeks.

The bees fly in slow motion,

tipsy on pollen,

This is summer’s sweet spot,

the arc of time where days stretch

like melted salt-water taffy,

the radio scratches out Beatle songs,

and I forget about everything

except a raspberry sorbet

in the freezer.

straight down the middle,

yolk pooling

like a daisy-yellow pond,