POEM OF THE DAY BY RHIANNON DICKERSON

When a body in motion comes to rest, it feels like it’s still moving.



Your friend is disenchanted. You can tell by the way he sits.
By the way he leaps onto familiar objects like the table. He
bends his knees a bit; takes a hunter’s pose; interrogates

the horizon for signs of movement and raises a phantom
spear over his right shoulder and throws. He didn’t used to hunt
in the living room and you think it’s strange that he’s doing so now.

You’re a good friend, mostly, so you walk him to his room, pat him
on his back, and bring him a glass of tepid water and place
it on his bedside table.
A lot of folks are coming back this way,
Lord knows. There’s a pirate in the ballroom, a ghost with a lamp-
shade on his head, a robber in the bank. I saw a lion in a parking lot
just the other day. A lion! There’s a crab apple tree where my fica used
to be.

What kind of space is reality if we must come back to it? Tell your
friend not to fall apart. We all see the dark shape shifting in the distance.


-RHIANNON DICKERSON

POEM OF THE DAY BY EZHNO MARTIN

Soldier On


There aint nothing wrong
with having bad luck -
and knowing it -
as long as you couldn't give an infinitesimal fuck

and soldier on
smiling like a hungry drunk
holding a free bottle of booze.

Speaking of war;
how would you like to get pushed out of a plane
moments after hearing
“I won't lie to you,
most of you are about die”

and fall through the sky
facing fire
thinking of your pregnant wife?

You better believe I'm not making this shit up
so suck in those tears

There's a lot of people in wheel chairs wishing
they could take that long walk
through the neighborhood

moaning about how they just lost their job
or their girlfriend might just break their heart's
or they were just too short
or too fat to make it

and I'm sure they wouldn't have too much sympathy
for someone too stubborn to get over themselves
and try their hand at something else

so,
soldier on

knowledge-bomb
you're gonna hafta
one of these days
so what's the use of feeling sorry for yourself?

Now, I don't blame if you wanna get real drunk first;
only an asshole would deny themselves sleep
before a long day ahead
and it's just as well
to crawl into a bottle
as it is into bed
but
soldier on

any hopeless drunk
hornier than a donkey with five dicks
will tell you getting laid
is just as easy
as sticking around till closing time
on just as many days
as it takes

soldier on

any writer will tell you
it's about making a list
and crossing off the names
till you've fooled a publisher

soldier on

anyone who feels ancient will tell you
luck -
good or bad -
is all about being in places
that aren't your bedroom
alone

it's all about failure
even when you succeed

so,

I don't wanna hear your story
unless you hand me a drink

cause I could use one
to soldier on


-Ezhno Martin

POEM OF THE DAY BY STEVE BRIDGENS

ALL NOW SUNK AND LONG AGO


I started hearing stories about the sea long ago
about the Phoenicians sailing everywhere fearlessly
in their little lateen rigged ships of olive wood and
Syrian cedar, trading with the lost tribes

I heard about Odysseues and his long journey home
after the mythic little war and Aeneas and Jason,
I heard about them, they shipped out, leaving Troy
and Carthage in flames

I heard, too, about Cleo and Tony, the young lovers
it didn’t turn out so well for them at sea, as I recall-
those crazy kids, thinking they could get over on
the evil empire

They almost had it made until she turned tail at
Actium, rowing home to Egypt where she took the
little asp to her breast as it all fell apart, abandoning
Tony to twist in the dry Egyptian wind that still blows
in from that wine dark sea

And, as I said, the big ships with the big guns like
the thousand that Menelaus sent after Helen (that
little bitch)

all now sunk, and long ago gone, like me, trapped,
burning and drowned in your tawny tiger eyes


-Steve Bridgens

POEM OF THE DAY BY SHAWN PAVEY

At The Waffle House

“Behold, I show you a mystery;
we shall not all sleep
but we shall all be changed”
--- 1st Corinthians 15:51

Out of beer and out of time,
last call puts Tyler and I in a place
where mysterious blendings of caffeine and nicotine
work our Budweiser dulled brains awake,
where redneck jukeboxes full of whiskey voices
lament great losses of the true ones
and how we all get stomped
flatter than lonely Texas highways
complete with tumbleweeds and dust devils
simply by love.

So where are the rest of those Hank Williams poets
whose tears fall to the ground like rain
making puddles only bleary-eyed drunks
drinking their way through their blues can see?

When thy cup is empty, it shall be filled.
When she gets around to it and isn’t bellowing side orders
of bacon with those hash browns.

So go ye then on down to a place
where things somehow come to short order
in those small hours before dawn
through fogs of conversation
rambling through coffee steam
and cigarettes piling dead in testament
to a new faith healing
busted hearts in confirmation

that you will never be the same.


-Shawn Pavey

CENTERING YOUR CHAKRA

Nothing especially tragi-glamorous
or hardcore blue collar neo-beat
about cracking a beer at 10:30
on a Tuesday morning while
watching the 700 Club,

nothing world-wearily decadent
or anti-romantically nu-kowskian
about not having filed a tax return
for who knows how many years, now,

nothing in there that’s gonna net you
an honorable mention (or even
a minor addendum) in anybody’s rolls,
records or register of highly conspicuous
anti-socials (except maybe
your own, of course).

And it looks like it’s
a Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull, this time,
and maybe a pull off the Old Overholt Rye
(what some of us around these parts like to call
“Old Reach-Around”),

maybe even one or two more (of each)
to facilitate the (Lordy, Lord, I must say)
much-needed shit, shower and shave routine

and all before I’ve even had my coffee
and/or some semblance of breakfast
(really, Mr. Ryberg, what can you be thinking?).

And, whereas I can fully understand
how and why my mother might not quite
be able to wrap her brain around this
(only occasional and, I suspect, primarily
male) ritual and might even recoil in
low-to-mid-level horror and disgust
and maybe even cry a little later
when she thinks about what’s
befallen her once beautiful baby boy
(or, more likely, what he be fallen into),

surely the Old Man wouldn’t begrudge me
this momentary indulgence or judge, too harshly,
me and the lifestyle that I swear I somehow
just seem to have woken up inside of, one day.

Surely he must have had a few days
like this special-delivered from the wrong
side of nowhere to the ground-zero/crosshairs
of his world, back in the day when he
was a free-wheeling bachelor about town
(despite our fairly divergent paths,
worldviews and ways

and maybe also the fact that he was a charming,
good looking jet-fighter pilot with the classic
little black book of numbers and names,
a Corvette Stingray and a Jack Kennedy
haircut you could set your watch by).

Surely he wouldn’t overly depreciate the idea,
despite the differences in our lives,
that it’s just something you have to do,
every now and then, to locate your zen,
“center your chakra” and/or
get your head right again
before paratrooping back out
into the not my job/not my problem,
I got mine/you get yours,
what have you done for me lately?,
corporate, confederate, theoligarchy
of these Distended States
of AmurKKKa, Inc.

p.s. They say the Lord is coming.

Better look busy.


-Jason Ryberg, 2012

POEM OF THE DAY BY JEREMY O'NEAL

If you Can’t Stand the Heat



Life is all too often a recipe for chaos
with unpredictable steps emerging
from an obscuring murk, forcing you
to fly by the seat of your pants-
to continually compensate off the cuff.

Perhaps this is why, at the most hectic of these times
I crave the kitchen like a starving man.

It is there that I can undoubtedly carve out
a bastion of meticulous order,
a place where well laid plans
very rarely go awry- unlike life.

Laying out each ingredient is catharsis
as I run the courses through my brain
and with the aid of fine, German steel
fabricate garlic, onion and herbs,
peeled and minced into tidy piles at first
then arrayed within pristine bowls
like order incarnate upon my counter.

Several skillets heat, the oven warms
as my marinade’s acidity tenderizes the meat
and in intricate, layered increments
the meal begins to take shape.

Sautee, proof, broil and bake,
stock simmers for the sauce,
roux browns to finish it off,
custard sets in its water bath,
a final whip emulsifies the vinaigrette,
skirt steak hits the pan to sear.

I dance through this routine
without fear of calamity-

a heart attack won’t kill my entrée,
the birth of this meal won’t be met with a medical bill,
I will not have to rush a fallen soufflé
to the hospital for stitches,
the crème brulee won’t be fired
and evicted from its ramekin
or subsequently cause its marriage
of flavors to dissolve.

In the kitchen I am in control,
king, ruler-of-all, dictator if need be.

I am intimately aware of the variables
and can vastly influence the chance disaster.
In life I am left no recourse
but to chant this simple mantra,
and never could I say it enough:

order,
order,
order,
order…

order up


-Jeremy O'Neal

POEM OF THE DAY BY JOSE FAUS

SHE SAYS


She says it has always been a blues town
even when it was a jazz town
but she is wrong it is a food town
because I can’t choose between
costillas en chile verde up on Summit
or samosas piping hot on Lexington
scalding pho in the market
dumplings on 39th street
chicken spidini on fifth
gyros falafel and pizza at the curb
I don’t want to argue Gates Bryant’s Jackstack LC’s
Oklahoma Joe’s or your granddaddy’s all night long
Italian and Austrian in the freight
peppercorns above the trains
peaches from the tree or
double cheese & grilled onions on Broadway or Baltimore
or taquitos along Independence or central Avenues
greens in Eden’s garden
strutting chickens north and south
pollos ricos shrimp biryani sashimi
roumalade ooh la la mix the bunch
and bring me iced sweet tea
and bourbon on the side.


-Jose Faus