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December 2016 Vol. I No. VI

Not your ordinary poetry magazine!

If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you! Home

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Special 1st Annual ModPo Anthology Edition! Now with Four Full Pages of Poetry!

Better than Starbucks, the Interview,

General Poetry with Suzanne Robinson Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird

Featured Poem of the Month Meditation with a drink Chestnut tree, an empty yard, cheerful music echoes far away with laugh... Melancholic dusk wrapped in clouds whispers secretly.

"Logo" image for ModPo

Momchil Atanasoff, is a musician from Bulgaria, as well as an occasional poet.

Poetry Pages ..from the mad mind of the poet

...and now....

Publisher Anthony "Uplandpoet" Watkins shares his latest thoughts and/or poems about whatever crosses his mind

The BTS Interview with ModPo, in a Manner of Speaking ModPo is short for Modern Poetry, a free online class offered by the Ivy League Institution, University of Pennsylvania. ModPo is the brainchild of Al Filreis, who is not only a master at understanding poetry, even the most complicated experimental poetry, but is also a champion of the unconventional “non-lecture” lecture. If you have $63,000 per year to send yourself or your child to Philadelphia, and you land a seat in one of his courses, you will find that you are responsible for your own learning. Al set ModPo up in class as a discussion, not a lecture. Of course the students have access to his brilliance and his education, formal and through his continuing studies. Al believes we all learn better when we learn from each other. This is as good thing, but an amazing thing is that ModPo has been offered, for free on line for the past 5 years through Coursera. Even more amazing is that the over 200,000 students who have taken the course are able to enjoy much of the “in class” experience through a very active discussion forum and intimate round table “close reads” through professionally produced videos. The class is a 10 week course every fall, but it actually is a year round on line community of 10,000s of lovers of poetry. To help celebrate the 5th anniversary, as well, frankly, to cross promote Better than Starbucks and ModPo, we are opening up our pages to create a special “ModPo Anthology Edition.” You will find most of your favorite regular features, and as many poems by ModPo students as we receive (the beauty of electronic publishing is the zero cost of digital “paper.”) Please follow the link below to enjoy a diverse collection of poetry from the ModPo student body. The BTS Interview will return next month with a major Formalist poet, interviewed by our own Vera Ignatowitsch

ModPo Anthology Poetry

If you know a literary sort, a poet, an author, a teacher of literature, or just a truly all around interesting character, and you think it might be fun to get their thoughts down on "paper". Let us know, if you have contact info, all the better, but we have our ways....

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General Poetry Page with Suzanne Robinson

Use links below to connect to other poetry sections Haiku Poetry with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird

--The Swimming Pool- You are the girl I would have looked up to in high school Vintage tees and broomstick skirts smell of the man who sold them, the one that was with you last night old enough to be your father and maybe recommended by him like good weed a fix that keeps on giving Your friend dragged you from the swimming pool last night where you--like Echo--unwound gauze layers like peeling away their pain when their eyes lick your skin their charred fingers raised poisons kept you afloat a face-down Ophelia with hair in seaweed tendrils She would feel the heavy carelessness of your confidence that someone would love you enough to pull you out of it It's that dancing that keeps your ears clear of the symphonies of phonies you're not trying to hear keep swinging poll center heart center spread dip roll find your center warm chests you press to it's not so different to close your eyes under the lights and feel the love while they stick another dollar bill in your g-string anymore than it was to free fall into that endless ocean blue the chlorinated hue of forgetting that once there was a little girl

Nothing Happened You drove me back home after lust-fueled nights on the basement stair, hands still lingering with the hope of igniting – A deep seeded passion. He was there, waiting for me, on the couch. There they were, accusatory eyes, I could make out – just barely; He wore them well. Soft light from the nearby lamp made humble love to dingy shades, I waited for the questions – the ones in which I planned to evade. It was only hours ago that stale beer had furnished the promise of “bad” decisions, but… Now, those accusatory eyes held mine, and, there were no allegations that trickled from his pursed lips. Instead, an outstretched arm – his – gestured down the hall, toward the bathroom; I suppose that I can wash away the shame. Haylee Massaro Massaro is an English teacher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She graduated from University of Pittsburgh with a B.A. in English Literature and from Duquesne University with her M.S.Ed. She only recently started the foray into creative writing. We are proud to debut her written word on our pages! Her photography can be seen in 805 Lit & Art Journal and Ink In Thirds, a literary magazine. --Recollect- This isn't for the boy who's gonna make it Although I write about him too often To fill that empty heart space with daffodil-scented air when he's gone This is for the one I forgot A passing point of refracted light in the peripheral I read a poem today about a boy who stole things and I remembered that night you called me and offered to lift from Kmart anything I wanted. Watches perfume...you laundry listed all the things This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

with dreams of fairy princes whose white horses took a detour in middle school when they realized it was girls who'd get on their knees for a hell of a lot less than diamonds and you already knew the feel of those carpeted brush-burns the education they sought came from you a fearlessness that was a comfort to the rest of us trying so hard to playact at what we thought we had to be our feelings fragile as loose feathers the pluck and bleed and all our hollowed-out insides that growing up too fast demanded you were a phoenix and we prayed to be like you even as we called you slut whore home-wrecker behind your back our green tongues powdered with secret love we never saw the empty rooms you went home to or the used needles in the kitchen sink or your panties mixed in with stranger's clothing or the diary you kept that said whether or not today you want to live all we saw were the rainbows the scarves the beaded curtain framing your face the wild abandon of your laugh we ignored the urgency with which you threw yourself into that swimming pool. Tabitha Vohn

About the Ads you see for Kelly Writers House and Poem Talk: Two years ago I took a free class on Coursera called Modern Poetry from the University of Pennsylvania's Al Filries. Since then, I have been a Community TA. I credit Al and ModPo with recreating my need to publish again. When we first started, I thought it would look better with a few advertisements, so I asked Al if I could run a couple of free ads. He said yes.

you'd liberated Proud Like a child with Crayola murals on the white living room walls you wanted so badly to impress me You showed up at the family reunion I hated to go to the one where I felt as out of place as you cause why acknowledge the moonshiners and molesters their cans of cheap American beer and dirty mesh trucker caps who threw your Pap away like graying meat? By the creek you picked me up wedding threshold style like I weighed nothing despite that you were slimmer than me the energy beneath your skin like fire brimming in iron chambers with no chimney raging to get out And I was snow white fifteen. And I was afraid of you. I couldn't get you off the phone and wrote my dad a note for once relishing those harsh tones reserved to make me quake I said "say I have to go. Now!" It was the only cruelty I knew more subtle than honesty Of why--at fifteen-- animal wound open I couldn't save myself let alone you I was glad when you stopped calling. I feel like years later my mom said you'd been arrested for drugs or assault or something of the like the devil in me whispered to the angel in me "see: I told you so" the devil in me said "you could never have saved him. He would've eaten your fear like sweet plum colored candy." "Like you," the light in me asks? Maybe it wasn't the trembling or the cowering he wanted. Maybe it was the snow white girl who took walks by the creek and kissed all her stuffed animals at night In a pink bedroom with clean sheets and a mother who didn't drink or scream and a father not as badly broken beyond repair in the picket fence house with non shuttered windows That he found sweet. Tabitha Vohn


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Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Matsuo Basho’s (1644-1694) “Old Pond” haiku is considered the highest example of the form. It is a piece well familiar to any serious student of Japanese literature. Old Pond is treated by many Zen Masters as a flash of kensho insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It is beautiful in its utter simplicity. With just a few words, it accomplished the non-duality of the subject and the poet. The final line, “Splash!” is the demonstration of Big Mind in an awakened being. Due to difficulties translating the verse into English, it cannot be fitted into the familiar seventeen syllable format without damaging the poem’s swift expression of understanding. Old pond, Frog jumps in:Splash! Basho’s career is generally divided into two periods: every haiku written pre- Old Pond and the verses written post-Old Pond. Did the sound of that frog splashing into the water really temporarily liberate Basho from suffering? Who knows? A common white moth Flutters by us unnoticed: The dead bamboo branch. Two stars and the moon, Form a perfect right angle: Light years of photons. -K. McL.

How delicate is our world. Sarah Cannavo’s work points out that “even stars fade,” and that people, considered worthless by some, may truly be precious gems. I admire the range of the poet’s vision. It encompasses the infinite as well as the slight frost of one’s breath on a winter’s day with equal reverence. Possibly Cannova experiences those periods of satori, the “Ah, ha!” moments that enrich our precious human births. In his haiku commentaries, R.H. Blyth stated, “Everything is the same, yet everything is different.” I believe his maxim is well illustrated by Sarah Cannova’s intriguing haiku. Your beautiful eyes Shine like stars in a dark night. But even stars fade. They call him worthless, Heap pressure on him, but don’t Know the gem they hold. In the winter’s cold, My breath steams the chill air: yours Is lost in the forest. The sky swirls black above as The Earth tilts in an endless spin, A speck in the infinite. -Sarah Cannavo

Yet once more I would like to encourage all haiku writers to share their work, their insight into the nature of all things, with fellow poets and BTS readers. For those interested in beginning to write haiku, I recommend you cast back into the BTS archives and reference the September haiku column. It provides a pretty thorough explanation of the basic format. -Kevin McLaughlin, haiku editor


Last month we began to review Joan McNerney’s canon of haiku, each of which exquisitely maintain the inter-being of human/natural relations. McNerney’s work will bring bliss to every true writer or reader of haiku! This carpet of spring To cuddle my toes in. Such a fragrant rug! If I could only Save this bundle of breezes For hot summer days. Hallow mouth of the moon. Clouds cross forming An airy handkerchief. -Joan McNerney I read these three verses by Fabiana Victoria without irony: I simply allowed the “Power words” to deliver the special world view that accompanies haiku. Victoria has a deep insight into human emotions. We will have more of Fabiana’s work published in January. In this morning light I see you for what you are And through my soft love. In a city of rain Where the sun shines, love thunders And we kiss at dusk. Would you help me if I Suddenly said I was lost If I was drowning?

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with Vera Ignatowitsch This month we are once again fortunate to offer two sonnets submitted by Michael R. Burch, editor of The HyperTexts. Many poets have written about aging, but rarely, as in See, with a focus on the unique beauties of the last season of a life. Water and Gold evokes some of Rumi’s (13th century Persian poet) poetry on love, as in ‘Love comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed.’

See See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem like hair at all, but like the airy moult of emus who outraced the wind and left soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes are gentler now; see how each wrinkle laughs, and deepens on itself, as though mirth took some comfort there, then burrowed deeply in, outlasting winter. See how very thin her features are—that time has made more spare, so that each bone shows, elegant and rare. For life remains undimmed in her grave eyes, and courage in her still-delighted looks: each face presented like a picture book’s. Bemused, she blows us undismayed goodbyes. Michael Burch Originally published by The Eclectic Muse

Water and Gold You came to me as rain breaks on the desert when every flower springs to life at once, but joy is an illusion to the expert: the Bedouin has learned how not to want. You came to me as riches to a miser when all is gold, or so his heart believes, until he dies much thinner and much wiser, his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves. You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly; I could not take it in; it was too much. I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly. I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch. I dreamed you gave me water of your lips, then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs. Michael Burch Originally published by The Lyric

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been translated into nine languages and set to music by the composers Alexander Comitas and Seth Wright. Burch’s poems, essays, articles and letters have appeared more than 2,000 times around the globe in publications which include TIME, USA Today, BBC Radio 3, The Hindu, Kritya, Gostinaya, Light, The Lyric, Measure, Angle, Black Medina, The Chariton Review, Poet Lore, The Chimaera, Poem Today, Verse Weekly, ByLine, Unlikely Stories and Writer’s Digest—The Year’s Best Writing. He also edits and publishes www.thehypertexts.com.

a sonnet on change...

Today He Gets Your Hand a rondeau redoublé in iambic heptameter

Slow Afternoon These days of sameness - how were they before, when women trapped for decades looking out on empty prairies yearned and did without? When letters dallied months to reach your door, and books were gifts to savor by the few? when miles were felt as footsores, and the mere long gamut of survival was career? Full circle happens: now one can pursue a passion with a vengeance, blossoming in beds of opportunity, but crave ever more stimuli or tokens, slave to world too much awash in every thing. Yes, one can yawn, stare blankly, stagnate when change is pervasive as the oxygen.

Today he gets your hand, my dear, but in my heart you’ll stay. While you may trade my name for his, my girl you’ll always be, And though you have each other now, I’m never far away. I’ve locked away my love for you and thrown away the key. The music starts, I bow my head; let heaven hear my plea. Your happiness is what I want, my child, for this I pray, And that this man I give you to, loves you unselfishly; today he gets your hand, my dear, but in my heart you’ll stay. A marriage has both ups and downs, like nighttime follows day, but disagreeing doesn’t mean you can’t remain happy. As you begin this brand new life, please don’t forget to play while you may trade my name for his, my girl you’ll always be. A true love doesn’t mean that eye to eye you’ll always see, Or that you’ll never have a fight as you go through your days. Remember that you started out in friendship, you and he, And though you have each other now, I’m never far away.

Lark Beltran

Lighthearted Verse & Limericks... There was a lad in Abu Dhabi whose abode was a hotel lobby. He slept in a chair and always did swear that his nap was only a hobby.

I’ll be right here to guide you back, if you should lose your way, For no one else will ever love you half as much as me and you can tell me anything, I’ll believe what you say; I’ve locked away my love for you and thrown away the key. So take my hand, let’s walk the aisle, and let your love shine free. With faith and patience you’ll get through together, come what may. The truth is, life is more complex than any love story, but if you trust each other, and stay friends, you’ll be okay; Today he gets your hand.

John J Mathews member of DE Navarro’s We Write Poetry Wordshop

I WISH THAT THERE WERE DRAGONS The darkness shot with flaming trails of dragons in the night Sunlit, rainbow flocks of dragons, wheeling glorious in flight Perched on cathedrals crags and castles, magnificent and proud and the glint of tiny dragonets, phut phutting through the clouds Playing hide and seek in thunderstorms, with eagles sure and swift Sleeping scattered on the beaches, like washed up jewel-drifts. Without such wondrous creatures, how can this world be whole? How I wish that there were dragons, to feed magic to my soul.

published by The Society of Classical Poets Journal, 2016 Dusty Grein Dusty Grein is an author, poet, editor and graphics designer. His critically acclaimed novel, The Sleeping Giant, is available in print and as a Kindle Select title. His shorter works and poetry have been published in several collections, including Chicken Soup for the Soul, OWS Inked, The Society of Classical Poets 2016 Annual Journal and The Quarterday Review. An award winning poet, he is a contributing member of The Society of Classical Poets, and sits on their Advisory Board. Several of his how-to essays on crafting classical poetry have appeared online and in two of their annual print collections. When he is not busy writing, he donates a great deal of his time and graphics talent. In honor of his first-born grandson Eddy, lost to SIDS at 13 weeks old, he creates free memorial images for bereaved families with a special focus on infant and pregnancy loss. His blog, From Grandpa's Heart... is followed by fans around the world.

John Shillito


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Translations with S. Ye Laird

-- Translating William Edgar Stafford ( 1914 - 1993 ) http://www.williamstaffordarchives.org/

A Ritual to Read to Each Other If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike. And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.[1] And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider— lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

唱对台戏 by S. Ye Laird 如果我对你一竅不通你對我也一無所知我俩的世界由他人的篤信而成全要是我们还跟錯了救世主闪闪红星也与你我无缘。腦海的如意算盤终究有一丝癮患，一不小心一个恍惚珠機全盘断落。年少气盛时的振振有词，如洪水破堤一往而不可收拾。如同马戏班里的象群一个接着另一个沉重的脚步而行单枪匹马在戏班中很难找到戏路我以为这有點惨不忍睹，亦或是所有悲剧的根源: 只知台词而对戲路不聞不问。[1] 于是乎，我向天籁之音祈祷探求所有生灵的话外语虽然我们习惯于装腔作势，在戏班外的人生舞台，何需暗中假戏真作？关键是明白之人做明白之事若以一言以毙之，岂不只剩混世魔王之徒？所有信以为真的人: 是与非或是或非 -- 必须言从心镜世道的黑暗何其甚乎？

[1]Note: This marks a turning point in the translation when it deviated from the tone of the original. "Not recognize the fact" gets translated as 「對戲路不聞不問」. The English original alludes to a type of unintentional ignorance whereas the Chinese version explicitly mentions it as indifference. On a related note, the translated version perhaps overemphasizes the elephant/circus imagery in the original and takes it all the way to the end of the poem. For example, 「人生舞台」 (life as a stage), 「假戲真做」(loose translation: "acting"out fictional plot lines in real life). - by H.Lee

Two poems by Daniil Kharms (1905 - 1942)

-- Translated by Alex Cigale* «Люблю порой смотреть в окно…» Люблю порой смотреть в окно И наблюдать других людей заботы Люблю порой смотреть в окно Тем самым уклоняясь от работы. Я долго, пристально смотрю В лицо молоденькой еврейки Стараясь прочитать в чертах её лица Законы женских чар I love at times to look out the window And to observe other people's concerns. I love at times to look out the window And through this leave behind my work. For a long time I stare very intently Into the face of a young Jewish girl Seeking to decipher in her expressions The regulations of womanly charms. 1936 - 1937

Я долго думал об орлах и понял многое: орлы летают в облаках, летают никого не трогая. Я понял, что живут орлы на скалах и в горах и дружат с водяными духами. Я долго думал об орлах, но спутал, кажется, их с мухами. I thought of eagles for a long time and understood such a whole lot: the eagles soar above the clouds, they fly and fly and touch no one. They live on cliffs and on mountains and are intimate with water sprites, I thought a long time about eagles but confused them, I think, with flies. 15 марта 1939


Poems by Jan Saturnovsky ( 1913 - 1982) translated by Alex Cigale

Kha and Veh Kharms and Vvedensky. Easter. The forest resurrects. Rust-colored scum— even it again rises. But these two will never wake again. -- July 4, 1967

I am a small man. I write small poems. I want to write one thing and another emerges. The poem realizes itself. The poem itself urges. -- Jan. 26, 1969

As long as intellectual labor provides aesthetic satisfaction let us consider this: what if we turn our attention to the sphere of conscience? -- Feb 11, 1971 In perfect pitch the outdoor brass orchestra, the horns in pace with the concert master, the sound quality ascending to the stars, violins on key - like on his web the spider; and swooning couples stride along the street (as it was written, two of every monster.) -- Yalta, Apr. 30, 1974 Above all else the gall to know this is poetry.

*permission generously granted by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg, editors with http://www.albany.edu/offcourse/issue41/cigale_translations5.html


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The Garters

Phony

Her name is Madison. We were in college at the time. She sat across from me in a workshop, or something. She wore a skirt. Probably a blouse and shoes, too. But they are largely blinded by my memory of the skirt. It was a plain skirt – black. Now that I think about it, the skirt isn’t that important either. The garters are the key to this memory. Madison was seated across from me. She spun on her chair. And for a brief moment – not more than a nanosecond – she spread her legs, and not very far at that. My reflex observations are somewhat sluggish so I must have been looking in just the place, at just the right time. Or maybe I was waiting in anticipation for such a maneuver, but that is something I should save for analysis at a later date. What I saw in that moment was the top of her knee-high black stockings contrasting her white inner thighs. Then I saw the garter straps holding the stockings in place. This is not profound. But I have not been able to shake that image for over fifteen years. And I still can’t determine why. At the time it excited me. And not necessarily sexually. I had no desire for her whatsoever. At least that I can recall. I was simply amazed that she wore garters. I guess I was under the assumption only brides-maids, movie stars, and hookers wore garters. And Madison was none of these, that I knew of. In short, her garters changed my perspective on the world. I became suspicious of every woman I saw, wondering if they too were concealing scandalous garters beneath conservative clothes. I lost my trust in everyone, having witnessed duality for the first time. Contradiction. I decided that first impressions meant nothing. At least for Madison. This timid, red haired girl, nineteen at most, wearing garters to an 8 A.M. class. I quickly superimposed this mystery on everyone I encountered. Even those I’d known for years. I began to question if I really knew anyone at all. Or even myself. I was not cognizant of hiding anything from others. So I began to feel wholly superficial and down-right insignificant. And this feeling, attached to the image of the garters, has followed me like a shadow ever since. Recently, I’ve seen Madison on occasion. Our impromptu meetings are polite but insubstantial. The pleasantries we exchange fall meaninglessly into the well of my mistrust. I think of the garters, and nothing else. I want to ask her about the garters. Tell her about that morning in class. And how that morning has stuck with me and changed my vision like a pair of glasses. Or, more like a pair of glasses I have taken off – the fuzzy unknown replacing clarity. But I can’t. Partly out of embarrassment for the innocent glimpse of her thigh. And partly because I’m afraid her response might return my clarity, thereby dissolving the image of the garters forever. by Michael D. Durkota

I walk by her every day and all she does is beep and ring. Not the usual sort of pleasant sounds that one is accustomed to hearing, but a metallic sort of noise that only her sort of people make. She stands in the crook between the stairs and the wall of a brick office building on 22nd. Every day she’s there, rain or shine, and she never once meets my gaze. I started to notice her kind not that long ago. On my way to the deli on the corner of 42nd and 45th, about two months ago, I had my first sighting. A short squat woman of twenty or so years of age, with large glazed eyes and pale skin. At first glance she was unusual, but upon further inspection, I noticed the sounds. Her hands moved about as though she had no control over her digits. She stood motionless, staring at the space between her two cupped hands, beeping and ringing. A friend of mine, Harry, walked by and caught me staring, but he didn’t seem to understand my alarm. “She’s busy, mate, quit your staring.” “She’s beeping.” He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, as he walked on his way I heard him laugh again. But this time, his laugh sounded… different. I’ve started to call these people “Stacey” because the first one I spotted reminded me of a girl I knew in grade school of the same name. I seem to be one of the few people who can see them, huddled in a corner by themselves, with their eyes illuminated. The only grand movement they make is when they stretch one arm up and out in front of them in a sort of salute. That, and the constant movement of their hands and fingers. My friend Gina was the one to notice their odd gestures. She suggested we take a photo, but neither of us had the means to take one. Gina and I were walking to the movies together when she pointed out an unusual Stacey to me. This Stacey was in some sort of herd, surrounded by several other girls of similar stature, in the typical Stacey uniform of black pants, brown boots, and pink jackets. The Stacey in the center was blankly staring at the space between her hands, while the others milled about around her murmuring barely audible nonsense. “The one in the center is their leader,” I surmised. “They appear to be on some sort of hunt,” Gina mused, “I wonder why the others appear to be powered down?” I didn’t know. It was one of the few times I’d ever seen two Staceys not communicating with beeps and clicks and whistles. We watched them for a moment, and then the herd began to move. It was a slow and almost unnoticeable procession. Each of the Staceysmoved their feet only slightly, in very slow-motion. Yet, the whole group seemed to travel along as one. They drew near to the ticket window, and then suddenly a second herd, this time of male Staceys, began to intertwine with the original herd. The male Staceys all wore navy blue polos, baggy jeans, and white basketball sneakers. Their heads were adorned with various baseball caps, all worn backward and slightly crooked. To my distaste, I suspected none of them played water polo, basketball, or baseball. The three of which would have provided an impressive trifecta of skills. Though not surprisingly, their false advertising seemed irrelevant to the Staceys. The man in the ticket window watched with confusion and ample disgust. “Have you see them before?” Gina asked him. “Far too many times,” the man sighed. “They arrive in a mass, pay in a mass, and never once say a word.” “You mean to say they’re going to watch the movie?” The man scoffed, “No, that would be some sort of blasphemy. They clump in the theater, eyes all aglow, all of them atwitter. They cause such a disturbance. But hey, business is slow, and they pay to get in. I can’t turn them away.” We paid for our tickets and walked inside, a few paces behind the slow crawling crowd. I spotted Harry slumped up against the popcorn machine, his attendant hat askew. We approached the counter to purchase some snacks and immediately heard the sounds. “Harry?” I called to him. “I didn’t know you worked here, mate.” Harry let out a beep, his gaze unwavering. Gina and I passed each other an uneasy glance and stepped away from the counter. (Continued on Fiction Page Two)

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Phony (continued from Fiction Page One) “Poor Harry…” We ventured toward the theater, the ticket collector chirped at us as we walked by. I instinctively said thanks though it fell on deaf ears. Inside the theater, the projector was already in action. Reels of advertisements for movies yet to come streamed across the large screen. “I hate previews,” Gina grumbled, walking the steps up to the middle seats. “Yeah, it’s too bad I didn’t get any candy, to pass the time.” She rolled her eyes. We looked around the theater. It was hard to see in the dim lighting but the seats around us were dotted with clusters of Staceys, and their male counterparts who I’d decided to call Brandons. Brandon was the bloke who Stacey eventually went on to marry. A nice guy but rather dull to talk to. Gina and I decided to count the number of times a preview started with “coming this fall…” Before long it was time for the movie to begin, and the reminders about fire exits and the like began to flash about the screen. The last message to appear was in large block lettering accompanied by a series of bells and rings and a forcefully articulate voice. PLEASE SILENCE ALL PHONES.

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The room erupted into a flurry of cicada-like cacophony. Gina and I clutched at our ears and dropped out of our seats onto our knee, oppressed by the pandemonium. A maddening sea of Staceys and Brandons, whirring about like zombies on a mission, took to the aisles of seats. Their eyes an infuriated blue glow and their mouths agape with a constant chiming. I saw Harry, a bag of popcorn clutched in one vulture-claw hand, winding in and out of the throng. I yelled to him, pleading. His eyes made no contact with mine. The lights flashed on yet the room kept churning. The projector snapped to a halt mid-opening credits. I saw the ticket salesman beckoning to us from the theater entrance. “Gina, we have to go.” And we ran. We reached the man by the door. “You were supposed to go to theater 4,” he scolded above the din. He shoved us across the hall and we threw open the next door. Inside was a quiet bunch of folks who stared at us as though we’d worn our underpants over our trousers. I checked to make sure I hadn’t. The previews hadn’t started here; the lights were on; there was no sound. Gina and I ventured to our seats, for lack of an alternative. A large potbellied man clapped me on the shoulder as we walked by. “You went into theater 3, didn’t you mate.” I nodded. “Been in there once myself with my daughter, it’s a war zone until the film starts to roll.” I nodded again. Gina shivered at the thought. We sat, Gina offered me a stick of gum. The previews started to roll and we resumed our game of “coming this fall…” After the third preview, I absentmindedly looked down at my ticket. In the mayhem I’d nearly forgotten what movie we were about to see. It was some spoof horror film called Revenge of the Hipsters. by Samantha Chasse


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Special 1st Annual ModPo Anthology Edition! Page One Poems posted in the order they were recieved, they are not ranked or sorted by quality. Enjoy! ModPo Anthology Page One

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IN THE DELIVERY ROOM Such a beautiful baby Oh, that's so sweet I'd love one though we can't smoke them in here Is that a defect Look at all those balloons I hear there was a lot of blood My father has those eyes I hope insurance covers it Here's to a happy life Matt Corey is a long-time ModPo CTA who divides his time between Chicago and Atlanta.

A map of the sea He’s gathering virgin crossword puzzles against The storm coming home Cassandra peers inside sees a gold flamingo flying by The shore air warm as the dreaded harbinger The game still within his grasp it can’t reach out forever It can barely circumnavigate its own scope Cassandra shows him some words she’s described Spreading red across the horizon Submerged and held Brutal in an iron grid he’d made. Ken Hay

Cityscape in Winter Drunks sleep in doorways, pigeon poop drips from above, hookers in six inch heels slouch through gray slush, sirens wail in b-flat under my window. Winter winds whistle between granite towers. Elevator doors clank shut, rattle slowly upwards to stop between floors. Trick or treat only as far as neighbors across the hall. Ladies in layers of grit and grime push shopping carts full of clothes, bound for nowhere but pledged to abandon nothing.

Life Cycle of a Rose Bud opening nipped in now flowering open wide any bee will do drunken little tippler pistils pollen stamens full bloom petals fall pudendum, oh the stigma the shame softening fading balding everything going south closing in drooping shrinking middle aged spread hips rose hips rosy swell – see tea's made. Sometimes age is good for you. Christine Coates is a poet from Cape Town South Africa.

Depression darkness all I see can't get off the couch today running the t.v. out of the way no nourishment of the mind life is so unkind spiritually bereft, thoughts are lost to me sleep is my best friend the end of it all I call for the wilderness languish in the pain no gain, no framework no work, no will, no reason sadness the season motivation gone apathy reality please God will you be there for me to see light in the dark recesses I don't care for self health I just let fade fading fast, pain is lasting must get up and go can't get off the couch all days darkness all I know

Margaret Fieland Cristofer C. Lentsch

Poets Poets say What they say In a different way So we May feel And think More broadly Or less widely About Chuck Kellum

Memories. ... Alas ! The forgotten memories, Please do not trouble me this much ! Let me survive peacefully Don't come close again I have some broken stars in my hopes Just some broken stars... I don't know how long, I would be able to live with them I am a true lover Please don't make me feel distressed ! Alas ! Those forgotten memories, Please don't rob me like this After lifting unto the visions Just unto the visions... Please don't call me back , After showing a new path ! After so hard I have stable Don't ruin me again... Oh! Those forgotten memories, Please don't haunt me again..... Pappee

To End to end to end What to end What to End End End to End what End what End to what To what end to What end - Malaika


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Special 1st Annual ModPo Anthology Edition! Page Two Poems posted in the order they were recieved, they are not ranked or sorted by quality. Enjoy! ModPo Anthology Page One ModPo Anthology Page Four





IN AND OUT

You are not my friend

It Should Have Been Me

I'm in my Lexus in the parking lot and I go inside, because the drive thru is jammed and everyone knows that it takes longer. It is cold out, and I go in, and an old man on a wheelchair outside the door, dirty and disheveled, says something, so I lean in and he asks “do you know this town well?” He speaks so quietly and I do not hear him, so he repeats “do you know this town?” “No,” I answer, and go in, even though I live in town. “Not well.” I go in quietly, so I do not hear the quiet laughter of his tomorrows. I put my order in-I buy burgers and fries, and an ice tea. As I am heading out he is sitting in his chair in the night, like a silent question mark. His grey hair peaking from under his baseball cap.

Antonymous poem (Based on “I am your friend” by Lorine Niedecker)

He shouldn’t have died, It should have been me. What did he know of life at twenty-three? Like a brilliant red bud tightly furled, Felled by a flash frost, Never opening to the Sun. Or a chrysalis damaged before the butterfly was fully formed, Never spreading its glorious orange and black wings. He stands on the precipice of life, As those figures on Keats’ Grecian urn,¹ Frozen in time. No beauty in that, though forever young. He should have died an old man, Gray hair, weathered skin, rheumy eyes Surrounded by his loving wife of seventy years, his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, Reflecting upon a life well spent. He shouldn’t have died at twenty-three. It should have been me, It should have been me, It should have been me. Rosalyn Levine Blatt

James Ritter lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two daughters. This is his fourth time through ModPo.

Words unneeded The reentry capsule was jettisoned for splashdown in the Atlantic. No reentry without a hand stamp. Without a word, he took my hand. The astronaut had seen it while we were gawking at the moon. The earth was as blue as an orange. Like a blue marble, they actually said but Eluard, with surreal love, had said it better before. Say it with flowers, no words needed. A beginner's mind has endless possibilities and not enough words. Words in the mind of an expert are too many and possibilities few. A person of few words. Strong silent type. Ears to hear. Leave some white space talking through in Mrs. Thornton's art class. White space talks like white noise. Don't talk with your mouth too full of words. If we use up our all words too soon, we will be condemned to Silence. Holly York has for many years translated and taught French to college students in Atlanta Georgia, USA, where she lives with husband Martin and two Doberman Pinschers. Her poems have appeared in Whitmanthology, Three Drops Get Your 1st Annual Anthology Print Edition from a Cauldron andModPo Word Bohemia.

I am your enemy… I send you raw flesh and the desert locust I abandon your freedom desiccate your goldfish rip through your gloves with an eviscerating knife excise everything including your foot Martin Porter

The First Adventure That shadowy entrance, subdued glint, spark of eyes! You trod all cultures with your classic grace Of posture, figure, profile The breathy touch, so tentative, The answering squeeze All beams and tiptoes as we trod Unspoken message: “The dream’s come true” The curtain nearly volunteered To close itself. I was poised to give the word; Fired by our kisses, you took it from my mouth Each garment spoke surrender as it fell A flower-show of fabrics Adoring those limbs which they had covered; Warm air on new divested skin Near liquid in its heady density Our bodies new-revealed, dreamed up A gallery of art-figures, Our mounting breath Kindled their animation in our honour Those facing entities suffused with mutual nourishment The rising sun the backcloth of our dual climax The bathing epilogue The farewell walk A froth of blossom round our tender steps That fleeting perfection was the purest art Framed in an idyllic memory. David Russell

Cul-de-sac I am trapped in a cul-de-sac There is no way out And I can't go back! Rameeza Nasim

¹John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” May, 1819

Costa café We approach our poetry from different drinks, leaf and bean, complicated processes, similar traits. Conversation over coffee infused with steamed milk, and tea, with a partially eaten Belgian cookie. You speak with measured economy a steady even tone, the froth on your upper lip grins. I am all twisted tongue trying to sound less intense, rescued in a moment’s business: The glass door swings admitting a blast of sea-air reality, rain, and a customer. I feel my flushed cheeks cool thankful for the cold, before it is percolated with ground beans. The cash register is busy tending fair trade profit for all, hot drinks available to go or repose. I speak of ‘Pages’ pretending it doesn’t affect me, my voice does not agree, you smile behind the wide-eyed coffee cup. And time outstays its welcome, a shuffling glance at phone and watch, other commitments timetabled. On Quay street we part on a handshake You wished me well and I wished the wind would spin me, because I wanted to walk with you. James Anthony

These 42 poems by this year's Modpo students collected in "chapbook" form. Price $5.00 S&H $2.00 shipping charge, no This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE

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Special 1st Annual ModPo Anthology Edition! Page Three Poems posted in the order they were recieved, they are not ranked or sorted by quality. Enjoy! ModPo Anthology Page One






Noticing what has changed the way you incline towards the volcano slope to the right, a fire whenever you don’t look averted eyes like fuel feed the flames the sequence of movement all secret though not well kept besides things have to get done whatever it takes to hold back the lava one morning a bird entered a welcome swallow, clearly lost its flight diverted into another world by mistake unlucky symbol though I’ve never been superstitious why start now it finally found the way out a reminder of how fast things change it isn’t just because it’s cold I can’t face another lost bird the soft whoosh of breath deeper now this magma meditation sending back your mantle plume, your scars

Cup This Runneth Over This 's is his this What is this this - this Urge Urged Urging: Wording Worded Word This, This Why, What, Where, When, and Who this This; This Noun this, Verb this, Pronoun this; this Predicate restriction this - Thisness Paratax, Provocate, Denotate: This thising this This poesies thising This it this, It, This it this Adverbially thisally thisiallyinging:

YOU WANT THIS? OK! enough of this thising. The point is: THiS iS ModPo!

This dedication of gratitude is for everyone involved with ModPo. After a few finale, but not too finale, words, we, "Spread wide our narrow hands." David Bender

Magdalena Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer and interviewer, and is the editor of Compulsive Reader (compulsivereader.com). She has been widely published in journals and anthologies, and is the author of several published books of poetry and fiction, including most recently the novel Black Cow, and the poetry book Unmaking Atoms (forthcoming, Ginninderra Press).

Moment first breath last breath in-between, sigh Laura De Bernardi

Laundry day poem I renewed my subscription to Poetry because it was half price. I still haven't read the volumes from two years ago. They end up in the laundry room, discarded, donated to neighbors. Some issues remain in their wrappers - it's hard to write poetry and read it at the same time. Think my next writing project will be a novel. Of course, nothing is more fun than composing haiku in Twitter. Well, maybe Periscope might be interesting - real time, live, in color, and direct to the reader. Can you feel my pulse between the lines? Does the flow of words make any sense at all? Raymond Maxwell


ModPo Acrostics My nights are spent in front of a small screen Over Walt Whitman, Ginsberg, or Ms Stein, Decyph'ring lines well known or yet unseen, PennSound decanting voices like sweet wine. O Poetry, what is your secret? Speak— Inspire my sleepless nights, my dreamlike days, So keen am I to close-read every week, So happy when I have to write essays! Unhinged be all your windows and your doors— Come—show me all the treasures of your Realm, Hidden between the walls, under the floors— For—This—I know: a line may overwhelm, Unbalance, shock, dissemble or disclose— No matter what it does—It is not Prose! Massimo

NUDE DESCENDING AN AFTERLIFE the afterlife was hard to take I’d been reborn so many times since then Once a satyr met the sphinx lunched with Da Vinci ran guns with Girabaldi you know the drill still I refuse to believe in reincarnation though the furniture’s been here for three thousand years cause I stub my toe in all the same places and have reinvented the wheel so many times Pythagoras ran me out of town when I told him it could never be round enough that fiction requires a vacuum and no place is leak proof least of all ancestral palaces teeming with ghosts, cracked tiles, and priceless carvings the best were taken to Berlin by slaves what did they want to lay claim to? didn’t they know you can never go back no matter how many times you’re reborn? yet my aged toes look younger each time and I can almost make a perfect crepe now while this kitchen in its immensity holds too many cooks to count but eventually I’ll become them all Denny Stern

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Special 1st Annual ModPo Anthology Edition! Page Four Poems posted in the order they were recieved, they are not ranked or sorted by quality. Enjoy! ModPo Anthology Page One






Felling Manoeuvre from the tangles of the poppy fields that wrap around you like sea-weed criss-crossing in between your hands, your legs swaying a childhood dream. Your mouth is the opening of a cave A cloud of bats circling as if possessed, your tongue a sea urchin guarding a burning secret, your fingers knitting the clock backwards. The ink runs dry on the paper scroll untouched like the dinner laid out on the table Suddenly, I’m dying -Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla

Paktia Province, May, 2011

ModPo Week 10: Poem Talk episode 47

Green fields poppies and wheat Mountains towering and steep Could you even climb them? Nomads on mountain plain moving higher as summer comes Tents and camels and goats for real Not a painting or old photograph Real people Near a river full with spring runoff Peaks still wrapped in snow But not too close What do they know?

It's late afternoon dark. My big-brimmed Aussie hat and ancient denim jacket are keeping out the rain. The barn cat is sitting in her now usual spot atop the hay bales. She's getting older. Her companion is gone and she now lets me come within three feet of her before starting to get uncomfortable. We talk. Neither of us understands the other but we go back and forth anyway. I put food in her bowl and grab some flakes of hay for the sheep.

Virgil Huston

It's dark enough that the automatic lamp is on in the chicken coop.

(The Beginning of the End) the Morning after gloomy and gray Not much sleep after the speech of Sinking ship or souls to save moving on Together toward a new day. Mary Thompson Hardwick Hardwick, a ModPo Alumni for 5 years and ModPo CTA for 3 years, lives in Conway SC

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A TRUMPET Octopus changes color Blue if it's excited Pale if it feels fear Red if it's angry They release Ink from— Ancient ink— when they feel threatened

On bluetooth headphones kept dry beneath my big hat I'm listening to a podcast about a poem one of the final assignments for an online class. Later, I'll log into a forum and discuss the poem with students worldwide. Somehow I, on a farm on a ridge in the middle of nowhere, have dropped into the future. The sheep do not berate me for being late. They get down to the important business of eating hay before it becomes sodden with rain.

Debra Josephson

Bob Zahniser Zahniser lives on a farm in Yamhill, Oregon, USA with a flock of indolent sheep, three dogs, two goats, two cats, two horses, six chickens, and innumerable gophers. His work has appeared in Belleville Park Pages, Walk Write Up, Filling the Void (anthology), Perceptions, The Portland Alliance, Byline, Paper Gardens, Skylight 47, and the Ottawa Arts Review.

These 42 poems by this year's Modpo students collected in "chapbook" form. Price $5.00 S&H $2.00 shipping charge, no matter how many books you order! (outside USA may add additional shipping costs) Profits to go to Kelly Writers House

The Unknown Magic Since ages, people have been thinking, Keeping mind amazed & their eyes blinking. We do have ever expanding universe, but ideas for it winking, Since ages, people have been thinking..... Beings are created for a reason unknown, Without authenticity, people tend to make clones. Is it really a big question, or a tragic? If they cannot think over it, its Magic! Beliefs become weak, if they don't have a strong sight, Beyond a span,even the thread is unseen for a flying kite. Why in the matter so dark, they have a sun shining so bright? Their senses arouse for the feelings unseen, Tricks they play through their hands so clean... They still prick their heads for the auroras turning green! Magic for them, changes from good to evil, For some its God, for some its devil. For this magic to be known, they tries hard.... Their eyes glared, when they saw the missing card! May be enlightening self with magic is out of bound.... Because this same magic will make you roam round and round!! Saket Penurkar

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan For Tamim Ansary I whisper that this Khan was a whisker in the beard of The Prophet, God bless his memory. Khan copied The Prophet's life of Non-Violence which The Prophet lived fourteen hundred years ago. Khan saw in cold-stone, Kaaba terms that all places shine in Mecca's crack of brilliance and the Call-to-Prayer's source hides in echoes like God’s tear dropping into the ear of the practitioner: "God is the all merciful and the all compassionate." The violent erect governments hidden in States while wearing clothes of belief, which hides true intent. Doers of love, do not say. They do! Do not let those who say, kill in hate. Become doers and not lying slayers. Submit to doing love for the rest of your Non-Violent life. -Don Hagelberg Hagelberg has been active in social justice and civil rights and refused the draft on November 22, 1963, the day on which President John Kennedy was assassinated, serving instead to go to prison for 1964 and 1965. He took creative writing courses (Berkeley, Stanford and Oxford), and in 1974 created, produced and hosted "Live Poets," a two-hour radio program broadcast weekly on a listener-supported Bay Area radio station.


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Special 1st Annual ModPo Anthology Edition! Page Five Poems posted in the order they were recieved, they are not ranked or sorted by quality. Enjoy! ModPo Anthology Page One






The Bride. Her face rested and she didn’t smile. Her lips lingered together stretching in a never-ending line. Her hair was a bird. Flying across the skies. Shiny ornaments flashed light On her kohl painted eyes. Her earrings whistled As the wind passed by She just sat there as cold winds sucked the air dry. Neither did she utter Nor mumble a word. Silence was heard. What more could you do ? When fate betrays you ? Gives you all the happiness in a day and then takes it all away. Shabab Nahian Kabir

Joyce’s Wonder Shirt I hope I will never like her in a wonder shirt so much like something Joyce once wrote only not at all and he knew he spoke of Molly of course and I know not neither who nor what or even if it is true do I hope to never like her in a wonder shirt? Anthony Watkins

“Lord Krishna’s Counsel” I Walk Away Not In Anger Or Spite Nor Malice Yet I have felt all these things intensely And I let them come, And I ponder what am I feeling? Why? How to act? For Myself Is Not Touched The feelings are transient I wait with patience I observe Then The emotions change From anger to fear, Fear to sadness. The emotions speak true. Sometimes I feel angry But as I feel it, I realize it is not anger but frustration. Does anybody care? And If so whom? Time will tell. Words are spoken But words serve the speakers’ purpose. They can be false, untrue. Time Will be the true test of words. Actions are what matters, Time will show In time, we shall see Raymond D. Johnson Johnson is a writer of great patience!

Angleworms in a Bottle When the birch is ablaze with leaves of fire Or bowed with a drape of ice Have we absolute faith that spring will come As we ring around the sun? The bee will gather pollen dust Near the fork of a budding birch Yes, spring will come, as we know it must The phoenix return to its perch Not angleworms in a bottle Although our part is small We persevere, in spite of fear The gravest matter of all

December 13th. Wordless, jobless, penniless. What am I waiting for? What am I writing for? Imagination, vindictive, jealous, keen on fighting, blood and hunting for a monster. I am listening to the Keiros4tet. I know Harmony’s somewhere Behind darkness. I knew the time was useless, It’s gone. A long, long time ago It chose others and abandoned me. I’m just familiar with a room Where the furthest star is glimmering recurrently. Nells Vade Vader claim to be a desperate loser, a lone wolf, a passionate reader, an art amateur seeking an inspiration, still dreaming of travels and miracles, tasting this life. Loves autumn, rain, pies, black and white films, fine wines, and a good conversation. Sensitive for excellent performances. and yet, is anything but!

AN ANGEL CROUCHES An angel, newly formed crouches on the first band of morning Balances there with tears at the ready, but still unwept, and no wings as yet to spread. In the thrum and daze of daylight, a signature of swallows slips silently close to her; close as breath, as thunder. Shuddering, the scissorsharp birds liberate plumage, surrender quills. Finally, in concert, the birds —a flurried involution— arch their gift, lay it tender on the newborn's angel shoulders Haste away before she can think to raise her eyes. S.E.Ingraham

Nevertheless Yesterday the land was thirsty and impatient, it lay belly-up and waiting. Today the pond is brim-full, fish gulp at the fresh sweetness, birds sing of the rain and of bird-news which I do not understand, but I believe it must be better than other news oozing from our ailing land. My doors are thrown wide open, I sit, flooded by the sun -humming my own strange song, which I understand no better than those sung by feathered ones. For in times of hatred fluttering on flagpoles, I cannot imagine why -but it really does not matter, today the birds and I, today we sing. Annette Snyckers joins ModPo from South Africa

Reckless Abandonment Words, deft prodigals side-stepping my brain, slipping away singly or in defiant collectives like truants, leaving my doors ajar to casual plunders, I have your rooms prepared with fresh sheets and flowers.

Soothsayers "Will the cattle soon recover?" asked the Ancient to the Seer. Linda Ireland "Ahhhh, dost thou see the falcons traverse the western stars, the owls that mute their hooted Map of Time songs, the moon - with sun polished Stars, wheeling across the ancient map— blaze - trapping our breaths in icy Points of reference haze. Thus, the signs of gods are clear", When fixed by legend— divined the crystal eyed seer. Transliteration is the key that turns the lock Robin Cohn And spills them out into uncharted waters. "Will the markets see a correction?" Here be dragons, asked the Anchor to the Analyst. Guarding the passage between the known and Impact unknown, "Well, Preventing you from sailing off the edge I drive on this cool morning, The rising swoon of index CNY Of the page perfect sunshine, vacation looms, family in car. reflects capital deepening, Into oblivion, POW catching capital share, Obliteration, Events so fast, tracing true the axiom: Alliteration like stones stepping you back, Jesus Take the Wheel, the song in my head, along bursts of booms shall always persist." with Dad's voice Thus divined This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

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crash after crash, time stands still, car spins in front of us brake, brake, brake—not enough brake I bullet off the road to avoid collision heart gallops, but calm, so calm not realizing memory of this never leaves controls limits Young driver fell asleep at the wheel, lost control, probably on the phone, but afraid to admit it everybody shaken, at roadside now cars whizz by, no one stops to help Mom clutches head, slammed into window by first impact eggshell skull of the elderly trip delayed trip continued trip surreal drag home, car parts pound pavement, sparks fly 800 miles of white knuckles Untaken trips pile up after that constant memory constant fear constant companion reason to avoid highways, fear won't evacuate no protection from random intersections of time, matter, space wrong place, right time body unblemished mind forever marked fear of impact

the crystal glassed Analyst.

Iteration, in the vocabulary of the stars, confirming The spot you marked with your “X”— You were here. You were. (Though just between you and me we know how slippery here and now can be, And how deceptively small the space circumscribed by dragons.) (Map not drawn to scale-Your mileage may vary.)

Roshan Desai

ZEBRA FINCHES CALL AND RESPONSE Sherry Howard It doeS work beneath the eggshell a song an alternative to build on rePeat un-repenting upending any specific classificatiOn. anything you hear an influence of weather what'S more speculatIve Than bIrth lyric master: Our pareNts sOng reversing tactics sustain the oblique music catalogued in our grateFul restraints powerful be-deep beep meep oi ha! eggs synchroniZe with calls soothing thE outside and inner warned the heat of life Before hatching song is not a lineaR dreAm nor dramatic with Finality song Is aN alternative to build on repeat un-repenting upending any speCific family anytHing you think you'vE heard an influence of weather what'S more speculative than birth lyric master In part inspired by: Science Mag: “Zebra Finches Call Prepares Their Eggs For Climate Change” Mary-Marcia Casoly, a native San Franciscan, CA, author of Run to Tenderness(Pantograph Press & Goldfish Press, 2002) Her chapbook, Lost Pages of Bird Lore is part of the Small Change Series (Word Temple Press, 20121) Believes in life long learning, Loves Modpo, incredibly inspiring.

The Lady who loved… She walked everyday, smiling saying ‘hi’ Always asking – How are you. A heart wide and loving, People of all kind Inside was hurt, Inside sadness Covered with liquid That ate away goodness Caring, her garden thrived She did not.

Get Your 1st Annual ModPo Anthology Print Edition Kathy White

These 42 poems by this year's Modpo students collected in "chapbook" form. Price $5.00 S&H $2.00 shipping charge, no matter how many books you order! (outside USA may add additional shipping costs)

Profits to go to Kelly Writers House

Glossary The room was empty and full of sun. Is this a paradox? The womb was empty and full of son. This is a mutation. The difference between paradox and mutation is a line defined by the lines that follow. This is context—not to be confused with contexture, which is closer to conjecture. Therein lies the difference. Information is a by-product of difference. A son is not a sun . . . and yet he warms me. Two sons are brothers, a mother a daughter, a father a son. We grow in this light. Relationships define but transcend time. Which role rises in the hierarchy? Is order temporal? Circular? Questions drift, are drawn to shore. A small change, only a few letters, a few cells. A small mutational change. Evolution? Cancer. Words are illusory. What has this to do with the moon? What has this to do with a crab? How does a word begin to die? Cut out the letter C. What remains? Not an answer. Tautology is a form of rhetoric and subject to abduction. (I run off with rhetoric often.) It is a question of balance, walking the line between reductionism and holism, learning to walk barefoot. Information resides in the distinction between foot and wire. To be misled is to hang in space. I prefer a word—to hold on to. Pamela Joyce Shapiro For Bright Hunter's Moon for bright hunter's moon, stars shining sun-warmed earth slipping through my fingers verdant garden moist with rain for yellow, orange and blue-green squash caramel onion brown butter aromas a golden turkey roasting in an oven stuffed with spicy seasoned day-old bread plated with creamed smashed potatoes & homemade pumpkin pie time's clock stands still I am mortal, prone to faint when troubles come it's these things I remember to Providence I confess and raise a glass in thankfulness for nothing else compares to you Christos Victor

Claudia Schumann Copyright Better than Starbucks 2016, a poetry magazine

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Special 1st Annual ModPo Anthology Edition! Page Five Poems posted in the order they were recieved, they are not ranked or sorted by quality. Enjoy! ModPo Anthology Page One






Page One

IN THE DELIVERY ROOM Matt Corey A map of the sea Ken Hay Cityscape in Winter Margaret Fieland Life Cycle of a Rose Christine Coates Depression Cristofer C. Lentsch Poets Chuck Kellum Memories. ... Pappee To End Malaika

Page Four Felling Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla (The Beginning of the End) Mary Thompson Hardwick Paktia Province, May, 2011 Virgil Huston A TRUMPET Debra Josephson ModPo Week 10: Poem Talk episode 47 Bob Zahniser Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Don Hagelberg The Unknown Magic Saket Penurkar

Page Five

Page Two

IN AND OUT James Ritter Words unneeded Holly York You are not my friend Martin Porter The First Adventure David Russell Cul-de-sac Rameeza Nasim It Should Have Been Me Rosalyn Levine Blatt Costa café James Anthony

Page Three

Noticing what has changed Magdalena Ball Moment Laura De Bernardi Cup This Runneth Over David Bender Laundry day poem Raymond Maxwell ModPo Acrostics Massimo NUDE DESCENDING AN AFTERLIFE Denny Stern

The Bride. Shabab Nahian Kabir “Lord Krishna’s Counsel” Raymond D. Johnson Joyce’s Wonder Shirt Anthony Watkins December 13th. Nells Vade AN ANGEL CROUCHES S.E.Ingraham Nevertheless Annette Snyckers Reckless Abandonment Linda Ireland Angleworms in a Bottle Robin Cohn Impact Sherry Howard Soothsayers Roshan Desai Map of Time Kathy White ZEBRA FINCHES CALL AND RESPONSE Mary-Marcia Casoly Glossary Pamela Joyce Shapiro The Lady who loved… Claudia Schumann For Bright Hunter's Moon Christos Victor


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November 2016 Vol. I No. V


If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!

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Better than Starbucks, the Interview, Erren Geraud Kelly

General Poetry with Suzanne Robinson Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird

Featured Poem of the Month

NEAR FUTURE My life is a floating red feather or wind-blown seed or slowly growing tree trunk or healing wound from a fall feelings waver until feather finds bird or seed ingratiates itself with soil or tree trunk adds another hardy year or the scar doesn't overwhelm the skin around it and then it's love or a hawk's breakfast or the heart of a drought or the blade of a lumberjack or your fingers slicing me open to see what you did the last time. John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry Review.

Poetry Pages ..from the mad mind of the poet

...and now....

Erren Geraud Kelly is a Pushcart nominated poet from Los Angeles and widely published. He is also the author of the book, " Disturbing The Peace," on Night Ballet Press and the chapbook, " The Rah Rah Girl," forthcoming from Barometric Press. He studied writing at Louisiana State University. The BTS Interview with Erren Geraud Kelly BTS: You seem to be a “conquest poet,” not just a conquest poet, but one, none the less. Is that a fair assumption? What is that about? Erren Geraud Kelly: [ laughs, imagines himself planting a flag on the moon !} Maybe I could stop the war in Afghanistan with a sonnet ?… funny you should see it that way…the only thing I ever wanted to “ conquer “ was language..i like to find ways to manipulate it, make it do what I want…paint pictures with words, make music with it..see how it affects others…I don’t consider myself an “extremist,” I have no dogma to beat anyone over the head with..i’m just showing people the world through my eyes; how I see things…I may write about social issues or about love or about my family or about my travels, but I never lock myself into one particular thing. I love it when people try to put me in a box or stereotype me. I always disappoint them :-) BTS: You live in California, but you are from Louisiana. You went to school in Baton Rouge, at LSU. Are you from Baton Rouge? Erren Geraud Kelly: I was born and raised in Baton Rouge. I have a B.A. in English-Creative Writing from Louisiana state University…I spent the first 31 of my 49 years there. My dad was a cement finisher/construct ion worker. My Mother was a nurses’ aide; my Grandparents made me read to the family when I was a kid; I would read the backs of cereal boxes or when I went shopping with them, they would have me point at billboards and read them…My mom took me and brothers and sister to the library when we were kids…My dad gave me a typewriter when I was in college…My first published poem was about that…


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Why Better Than Starbucks? As with so many stories, this literally begins a long time ago in a place far away. In the beautiful land of Shelfari, which is, sadly, no more. In Shelfari the books lay in stacks on the ground, and poets dreamed and professors mingled with housewives, and the air hung thick with the incense of peace and love. Around Christas of 2007, I stumbled onto a group called Brilliant Babes (and Dudes) Who Read Selectively, aka BBD. Rob and Suze were the ring leaders. It was a closed group but a couple of my really smart funny friends were members and invited me. The lot of them were witty, and they tended to read books I liked. Shelfari had, and someday I hope to duplicate it, the truly friendly "cocktail party" discussion threads. I spent the first three months of 2008 thinking I had found a new home, me and my closest 168 friends. But as I, and most folks are wont to do, I let my guard down. I spoke a little more "truth" than I should have. One of the members loved Starbucks Coffee, not only the coffee, but the company. Starbucks, especially then, was doing a pretty good job of convincing the public they were the good guys, they paid above minimum wage, they extended healthcare benefits in a pre Obamacare era. And somehow, like McDonalds, like Budwieser, they took a substandard product, and with very clever marketing, made people willing to pay two and three dollars for a seventy-five cent cup of coffee. Good on them!

A Good Cup of Coffee: According to the resident coffee snob, actually, I am only a half snob, and as such, I think those less snobby than me are fools, and those more snobby than me are nuts: Recently roasted (3-6 weeks is ideal), Medium or Dark whole bean, ground just before the coffee is made, a heaping cup of beans into a 12 cup drip coffee maker. DO NOT leave the heat on under the coffee, either drink it or carafe it, but do not let it sit on heat! There are other ways to drink coffee, but for this snob, all other ways are second best! If you have a favorite brand or style of coffee, send it along to us, and we will publish your post as part of a rant someday!

The problem I have with Starbucks is not really the coffee. (as many times as I have tried, and I must have bought over 100 cups of coffee from them, and I can never drink more than a couple of sips and I have to throw it away) The problem is their business model. They practice the Policy of Triangulation. When there is a successful independent coffee shop. they open three stores a block or two away in different directions, killing off the local coffee shop, and then they close one or two of the 3 and have the local market all to themselves. Yes, this is legal, but I find the taste in my mouth from it is worse than their badly roasted beans. What does this have to do with me? with BBD? and more to the point Better than Starbucks? I made the mistake of sharing that I thought their business policy was as nasty as their coffee. Little did I know, in my Barbarian in the China shop ways, I stood my ground, and she was offended, so the powers that be banned me. (This accounted for my very high bar for banning at BTS) This almost hurt my feelings, but what really hurt was they had a book club, and we were just starting The Painted Veil. I am a huge fan of Somerset's other work and had not read this one. So I contacted everyone I knew and invited them to join me in an open group to be known as "Better than Starbucks". That was the 1st day of April 2008. Within a week we had a few hundred and over the next 8 years we grew to nearly 4000 members. We did eventually have a bookclub reading of the book, and many others. Maybe if and when we get the salon up and running, we can have more. I haven't had much to do with the old BBD folks in years. I wish them well. I hope they found a home somewhere in the wasteland that followed the destruction of Shelfari. Thanks for everything BBD! - Anthony Uplandpoet Watkins


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Who we are Better than Starbucks Founded 1995 as Scene, Arts of the Treasure Coast, Renamed 1998 Abundance, a Harvest of Literature, Life & the Arts Revived 2016 as Better than Starbucks Staff, listed in order of when they joined the staff. Anthony "Uplandpoet" Watkins Publisher, Founder, Editor-in-Chief Kevin McLaughlin Haiku Page Editor, Spiritual Adviser, Poetry Mentor Vera Ignatowitsch Formal &Rhyming Poetry Page Editor, Associate Copy Editor S. Ye Laird Translations Page Editor Suzanne Robinson Poetry Main Page Editor

Why "Better than Starbucks"?

Before You Know it, the One Man Band is an Orchestra For the first four issues, in this space ran a bit about the publisher. At first, this was due to the fact that there was nobody here but the publisher. Now, as you can see, we have added several staff members so that we are a real fairly fully staffed journal. S. Ye Laird is the editor of a now regular feature, Translations, and Suzanne Robinson officially agreeing to the title of what she has been all along, the final judge of what goes on the General Poetry Page, look for a greater depth and breadth than anything I could offer when I was trying to wear all the hats!

Contact us at: [email protected]

Please continue to direct your submissions, questions and thoughts to the main [email protected], but you might want to put your work to the attention of whichever page editor seems most likely to want to see it. We will be looking for submissions of interesting translations, watch S. Ye Laid's Translations page for details. Staff we have yet to find, but are actively looking for! We are still missing a few pieces of the puzzle. At least two, maybe three or four or more. The certain two are as follows: A grant writer (we are not a non profit, except in fact, but not law), we need someone who knows how we might gather funding to first pay contributors, and then, possibly, though none have ever asked for a dime, to the various editors. Second, we need a tech person who can build us the mythical chat room discussion forum from Shelfari, or even something better. The maybes, let's talk: Thirdly and Fourthly, and maybe even Fifthly (is fifthly a word? It looks a lot like filthy.) We are looking for: a book reviewer, a music critic and either an art page editor or an art critic or both.

Mentors, Ghosts, and Spirtual Editors Neither of these wonderful ladies are on our staff, as both are deceased, but they put this little muddy footed boy on the path to a love of the written word.

More than a Mind Full: over a dozen chapbooks from Anthony Watkins, starting as low as $5.95

Even in 1968, at our old home in Shorter, Alabama, the littlest one was the noisiest, nearly 50 years later, I still am.


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General Poetry Page with Suzanne Robinson

Use links below to connect to other poetry sections Haiku Poetry with Kevin McLaughlin Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch Translations with S. Ye Laird

A Decade since Redeployment There are no hills; only distant ridges evoke accustomed landscape. Sun strikes harshly; gradually the new places becomes home as a pair of shoes conforms to the contours of the feet. Morning flight from Rhein/Main hurried hugs at Ft. Dix changing into civvies. Brief flight to new home: reunion with family flurry of interviews careers resumed in unfamiliar places. In time peach orchards tall pines in sandy soil glimpse of distant peaks and mustard-based barbecue tie me to the new place. Arthur Turfa Evening Thoughts The light eases out of the day Slowly Leaving the heat to deflate In the air It circles the sky Nudging the stars into place with its Last breath The voices in my head Are quieter now And thoughts of you creep in Stirred by a found image

Grease Poet Carl the mechanic was the first poet I ever met— livin' at home takin' a few classes at the local CC I think us younger guys in the neighborhood kinda looked up to him because he was sort of a regular guy but when he came out cryin' one day and showed us his first publication he sniffed that he'd tried to show his old man what he'd done and all the old drunk could do was laugh and drip snot all over the pages Carl said this was typical of how people treated poets which was why I knew I'd never be one so I asked Carl to pop the hood of the Charger and show me the spark plugs or something.

Ailing Elder (Previously published by Rain Party & Disaster Society) As the days grow shorter my hopes diminish that I will live to see another spring. The nursing home staff do not care if I live or die, indifferent to my needs, but will not terminate me, as long as I don't cause problems. I know they snuffed that nice woman in room 306 who complained non-stop, then suddenly had a stroke. The food is awful. They rarely change the sheets. The toilet always stinks. They yell at us all the time, even hit us. If we protest we have an accident. They happen all the time. Soon I must decide if I've had enough of what my life's become. - from “Transitions” by Gary Beck, a widely published Push Cart Nominee living in New York City as a theater director, and sometime dealer. He has several chapbooks and more on the way. His work can be found at http://garycbeck.com/

Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best of the Web nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications. How long will this hum drum beat of a love story This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

I was there (Where you're standing) Days ago And I think of timing And connections And different situations And possibilities not yet realized Anne Mikusinski Poughkeepsie, NY

How long will this hum drum beat of a love story push its way through our histories? How many years will be spent in the rise and fall of moments that sink and moments that swim closer and closer and closer and farther we always take two steps forward and nine steps sideways. we never see each other’s hands until they are rowing us farther away. But that silent, aching electricity that flows between our fingers and minds could light up a small town, I believe Love is a blood oath and I was never meant to drag this empty boat around the shore just plug it in, just plug it in, leave the keys in the ignition and walk away again. Cars will row themselves, if you let them. Lauren Suchenski has most recently been published in Picaroon Poetry, Red Fez, Stoneboat Literary Magazine, Vine Leaves Literary Journal and Dark Matter Journal. Suchenski was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2015. About the Ads you see for Kelly Writers House and Poem Talk: Two years ago I took a free class on Coursera called Modern Poetry from the University of Pennsylvania's Al Filries. Since then, I have been a Community TA. I credit Al and ModPo with recreating my need to publish again. When we first started, I thought it would look better with a few advertisements, so I asked Al if I could run a couple of free ads and he said yes.


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Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin Kireji The kireji is a cutting word, a powerful element of the haiku that divides the verse into two parts, parts that can either be compared or contrasted. In the Japanese language there are words that serve as punctuation. In English verse, in lieu of an actual cutting word, punctuation may also serve to achieve the same effect. Kireji are missing from most modern haiku, and are either missing or difficult to detect in haiku’s classical period in Japan. Most writers of haiku are familiar with the 5-7-5 syllable format and the need for a direct or indirect seasonal reference. Few poets are mindful of the kireji. Even in the Blyth haiku volumes, there is little attention paid to the cutting word, the word that frequently is the difference between the verse being merely a pleasant statement about nature and the crafting of a poem reflecting the acuity of the poet’s Zen eye. In standing water, There grows a water lily: The dank smell of mud. -K. McL The cutting word (s) is water lily It compares and changes the focus from the water lily’s purity to the odoriferous mud. Even Basho may have enjoyed this Kireji. It is Zen’s Gateless Gate through which all must pass. As a side note: in the 16 years I have lived in rural Palm City, this is the first time a water lily has sprouted on the property.

Anne-Marie Docherty’s author’s notes correctly indicate all 5 senses are utilized in the brilliant series she submitted. Her vision and her ability to connect natural elements with the Buddha Mind, the soul, the essence of human nature, are deep and beautifully subtle. Of particular joy is her poem based on smell, one that contrasts the earthy woodlands with the freshness of icy air implied in her companion pieces. I disguise myself Living amongst the woodlands, Squirrels, bugs, birds, bees. I nourish the land, Autumn’s blanket becomes crisp, Stark, white, purity. Slowly with magic I single handedly turn The seasons over. I’m fairy nature. Come to collect fall’s leaf wares To wrap up autumn. Ms. Docherty also submitted a 2 line piece that belongs with her set: “Sweeping winds and driving rains, giving nature rest till spring.”

R.H. Blyth wrote, “We are by nature earthworshippers, fire worshippers, waterworshippers. The elements are our teachers, our play-mates, our enemies, these dear, dangerous lords of life. They bring us into beings, and receive us again at the last. No wonder we stand in awe before even the most casual stream when it is swollen and swirling with the waters of spring.” I believe Joan McNerney’s canon exemplifies this human/ nature relationship. This month we will be publishing 3 of her verses. Unless the poet objects, we will continue to publish additional haiku she submitted in succeeding months. Our woods are half dressed In fragile buds as dandelions Sprout from nowhere. An apple blossom Stolen from the park tree at dawn Quivering with rain. A tree waves wooing Birds who fly from branch to branch Looking for a home. -Joan McNerney We end this month’s offerings with an extremely personal and complex piece. This poem could be adapted, and presented in several different formats. I caught a sense of Baudelaire as I was giving it a second reading. Forgive me, all of you. I looked my nemesis in the eye, But I could not swallow it all. -Carl Scharwath Once again, I would like to encourage all haiku writers to share their work, their insights into the “inter-being” of all things with fellow poets and BTS readers -Kevin McLaughlin Haiku editor Tempora Vista 2 photo by Carl Scharwath


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Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch This month we are fortunate to offer two poems submitted by Michael R. Burch, editor of The HyperTexts. The City Is a Garment is an ekphrastic sonnet that imbues a city with vivid life, turning in the final couplet as night ends. For All That I Remembered brings to mind Christina Rossetti’s ‘Yet if you should forget me for a while, And afterwards remember, do not grieve’, painting the beauty of lost love with sensual intensity.

The City Is a Garment A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,— the city is a garment stretched so thin her neon colors bleed into the night, and everywhere bright seams, unraveling, now spill their brilliant contents out like coins on motorways and esplanades; bead cars come tumbling down long highways; at her groin a railtrack like a zipper flashes sparks; her hills are haired with brush like cashmere wool and from their cleavage winking lights enlarge and travel, slender fingers ... softly pull themselves into the semblance of a barge. When night becomes too chill, she quickly dons great overcoats of warmest-colored dawn. Michael Burch Originally published by The Lyric

For All That I Remembered For all that I remembered, I forgot her name, her face, the reason that we loved ... and yet I hold her close within my thought: I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair that fell across her face, the apricot clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan. The memory of her gathers like a flood and bears me to that night, that only night, when she and I were one, and if I could ... I’d reach to her this time and, smiling, brush the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact each feature, each impression. Love is such a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone before we recognize it. I would crush my lips to hers to hold their memory, if not more tightly, less elusively. Michael Burch Originally published by The Raintown Review

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been translated into nine languages and set to music by the composers Alexander Comitas and Seth Wright. Burch’s poems, essays, articles and letters have appeared more than 2,000 times around the globe in publications which includeTIME, USA Today, BBC Radio 3, The Hindu, Kritya, Gostinaya, Light, The Lyric, Measure, Angle, Black Medina, The Chariton Review, Poet Lore, The Chimaera, Poem Today, Verse Weekly, ByLine, Unlikely Stories and Writer’s Digest—The Year’s Best Writing. He also edits and publishes www.thehypertexts.com. Contributor Dusty Grein's haunting conversation: Loud Today a terzenelle in iambic pentameter The voices in my head are loud today, I plug my ears, but still I hear them talk Oh please, oh please just make them go away! I thought that maybe I could take a walk That they would quiet down and let me think I plug my ears, but still I hear them talk I’m trying not to let my spirits sink, These voices drowning out my fervent plea That they would quiet down and let me think I hear them use my mouth. That wasn’t me! Oh please help me ignore their foul demands These voices drowning out my fervent plea I hang my head, then fiercely wring my hands As they tell me to do such evil things Oh please help me ignore their foul demands Pure misery their constant echoes bring, As they tell me to do such evil things The voices in my head are loud today, Oh please, oh please just make them go away! Dusty Grein Autumn Daybreak Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud At dawn, a fortnight overdue, Jostling the doors, and tearing through My bedroom to rejoin the cloud, I know—for I can hear the hiss And scrape of leaves along the floor— How may boughs, lashed bare by this, Will rake the cluttered sky once more. Tardy, and somewhat south of east, The sun will rise at length, made known More by the meager light increased Than by a disk in splendor shown; When, having but to turn my head, Through the stripped maple I shall see, Bleak and remembered, patched with red, The hill all summer hid from me. Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)


The Thanksgiving Turkey The turkey shot out of the oven and rocketed into the air, it knocked every plate off the table and partly demolished a chair. It ricocheted into a corner and burst with a deafening boom, then splattered all over the kitchen, completely obscuring the room. It stuck to the walls and the windows, it totally coated the floor, there was turkey attached to the ceiling, where there'd never been turkey before. It blanketed every appliance, It smeared every saucer and bowl, there wasn't a way I could stop it, that turkey was out of control. I scraped and I scrubbed with displeasure, and thought with chagrin as I mopped, that I'd never again stuff a turkey with popcorn that hadn't been popped. Jack Prelutsky Jack Prelutsky’s first book was published in 1967. He has published over seventy books of poetry. “Your pleasure knows no limits, Your voice is like a meadowlark But your heart is like an ocean, Mysterious and dark.” Bob Dylan

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Translations with S. Ye Laird

Part A. Translating Mao Jing 茅境 (active 2005 - 2008 on internet) ## 你永远无法预测 * The Future is not ours to see You may never know for sure After this gust of wind, There isn't going to be more ... Of course, the wind blows. What I meant to ask is this: What has a gust of wind done to your hair ? Has it knocked you down on the ground? Or has it uprooted you in the mid air, crushed your bones and made your liver, stomach, intestine and lung stormed down like bullets hard hitting on that roof top? ## 乌鸦等我 * A crow waits on me One day, my parents will depart this world, my siblings may travel afar my dear wife, sooner or later, shall desert me as I am hanging on my irresistable downtrodding. But if on that day, there still sits a crow crowing on top of the television broadcasting tower it gives out a sound more piercing and cold than my sneer, then there is hope that people see this ugliest crow takes a sip of water after its long flight, and waits on me.

##祭奠 * Memorial and Thanksgiving Day a pile of bones a pound of flesh stood up, cried out, motherland! a stab of cracked stone a chunk of rusty iron formed an opening - a fountain-head draining down bloody wine the concrete pavement that year it soaked up blood, now it filled with tears, and voices lamenting all year then lamenting all day today in the city of my forbidden palace cold rain, cold wind trivial footsteps in the courtyard walking aimlessly tonight breathless voiceless souls returning home, tonight.

## 影子 * Shadow The Emperor, despise his shadow, 'cause his and commoners' are the same. Commoners, abhor their shadows. 'cause being stepped on is no fun. Somebody has no shadow so he was stoned to death by others they believe he must be a ghost only ghost has no shadow. why not be a ghost? no more being stoned to death by others. why not be a ghost? no more frightened by shadow yourself on the wall, two shadows stacking up against one another is it lover and hater, kissing that missing shadow of a ghost?

## 奴工 * A claymation of immigrant workers he toils in the field he sleeps in the field boundary between human and nature becomes fuzzy and indiscriminatory flesh and soil come together, become your chunk of clay soul and nature indiscernable and inseparable. This clay falls into the jaw of wolves and dogs it turns into human flesh This clay placed under an iron bar it becomes a head over a slumpy shoulder when this clay was lost and died it returns to its earthly form. There are cracks between this clay and that one people rush in and rush out the color of their eyes is the gloomiest kind and I dared to take a closer look it's made, - again out of my native chunk of clay!


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The BTS Interview: Erren Geraud Kelly The BTS Inteview Page 1 BTS: Where did you start writing? Who were/are your biggest influence on your poetry? On your life? Erren Geraud Kelly: College..but even back as far as high school, people told me I could write… Coach Wesley Harris, my Tenth grade civics teacher and father figure told me I had a flar for it; Dude saved my life..he would keep me after class a lot and we would have meaningful intellectual, father and son like talks…Coach Harris, was also an entrepreneur, he owned several properties, and I would help him repair them, mow the lawns, paint the apartments, move furniture..; Coach Harris was also the track and field/ junior varisty football coach and he was working on a Ph.d. He tried out for the New Orleans Saints. He took the time to be with me and listen to me, when no one else did..it blew my mind that a black man could be so successful! A couple of years ago, I saw the movie “ Mr. Hollands opus,” and I was nearly crying by the end, because I thought so much about Coach and the impact that he had on my life…it was disturbing how much influence he had on me. Ms. Susan Ourso, my 9th and 12th grade English teach was another: she predicted I would become a poet. She tried to get me to go to a magnet high school and get more involved into writing, but I was halfway into high school and even though, I didn’t like high school very much and had few friends , I toughed it out and stayed, I had marching band, I had books, and I was just discovering writing, so I gutted it out and I finished it…Ms. Ourso, made me read “ The catcher in the rye,” when I was in the 12th grade…I wanted to read “Hamlet,” and write a paper on it, but Ms. Ourso insisted that I read “Cather In the Rye,” so I did. Many years later, after I had graduated from high school, I wrote her a thank you letter for turning me on to that book. When she told me she predicted that I would write poetry, It freaked me out… When my book “Disturbing The Peace” came out, I made sure she got a copy. When my next book is published, she will get a copy also. BTS: How does Louisiana, and especially your hometown effect your poetry? Erren Geraud Kelly: Southerners love to tell stories. Black people have been telling stories,like, forever, going back to the African Griots. We like to show you our heritage. We are about music and rhythm; we are about culture… we definitely love to eat !…we are about community and struggle and persevering over struggle…we are not afraid to laugh in the face of adversity…I remember when I went home a year after Hurricane Katrina, there was a billboard in the Ninth ward in New Orleans that said “ Blown by Katrina ? “ and right under the quote, was advertising for construction work and roofing…Southerners get knocked down a lot, but we get up and we keep going!…I went to a lot of readings at LSU and around the Tigertown area and in New Orleans, and there is a rich poetic, literary tradition there…check out Mona Lisa Saloy or Kalaamu ya Salaam, two excellent New Orleans poets…Pinkie Gordon Lane, who was from Baton Rouge, was the Poet Laureate of Louisiana and a Pulitzer Prize nominee; Ava Leavell Haymon is a another fine poet …Rodger Kamenetz is another good Louisiana poet…LSU has always been a top 20 MFA English program, so we have a lot to be proud of… BTS: How has California changed you, as a writer and as a person?

BTS: Your Othello has a lyrical quality, and I Othello: The Remix don’t mean exactly Lyric poetry, but actual song lyrics. Do you write songs as well as poetry? I want to break down the fourth wall Erren Geraud Kelly: I read all kinds of poets, I And touch you like Baraka, I like Claudia Rankine, Daurianne Your skin glows, real or imagined Laux and Ai, interest me a lot…slam poetry especially Sarah Kay and Taylor Mali and Saul White skin white noise white girl Williams are also my go-to guys…I’ve only People say my reality written one song in my life, when I was in Is just dreams college. I wrote the words, a friend of mine But my feelings are not named Steve, who took choir with me played Schemes guitar and wrote the music. I do like to read song lyrics, just to see what poetic devices songwriters My life is real use. Jimi Hendrix was a songwriter who could My life is real have easily been a poet, as was Curtis Mayfield.... My life is real Bob Dylan, of course, is a poet, whether he sings or not. I played a trombone in middle school and As your image rolls on high school ( 7 years ) and I took three years of A film reel voice lessons. It has been my “ Bucket list,” In my head dream to learn guitar and play, but fear always You lie on a bed gets in the way…but I’m going to conquer it! But In a white slip I think a poet is a musician, regardless…. I made a Freudian slip BTS: I have a poetry professor who says the Of the tongue form is the message. I notice your longer poems and your shorter poems have a distinctly If I could break down different feel. Do you think form guides the The fourth wall and message, or do you choose the form to fit your Slip my tongue message, or do you not see any real difference? Into your Erren Geraud Kelly: When I write something, Mouth I focus on the content…I’m just trying to get Like I could slip something down on the page…lately, I’ve been My hands against writing poems on my smartphone, which has Your white become easier, but I miss the old way of pulling Slip my hands underneath out my journal and just writing it down…I don’t Your slip and stroke it against your think about a “ sonnet,” or a “ political poem,” or White skin a “ love poem,” I just get down the idea…the poem about “ Othello,” came from watching a I feel the lashes version of the play, that was presented in Virtual Of the whip against Reality ! I just wanted to tell the story through My back the lens of the information/internet age. Once I A virtual inevitability, a get the idea ( what I want to say down on the Freudian slip of the tongue page } then I’ll go back and give it its form, shape it and mold it. It’s probably harder to write a If I could break down shorter poem than it is to write a longer poem; a The fourth wall longer poem lets you expand further on the idea And slip my tongue and really expand on your creativity…but Into your mouth magazines love publishing shorter poems Jcos Like I could slip my hands this is the 8 second attention span/ youtube age. Against your white slip BTS: You once told me you have a soft spot for My hands underneath your slip and stroke subjects and people who are not in the It against your white mainstream. What is the mainstream in Los Skin Angeles these days? WIX.com. Create your own for FREE This site was created using >>

Erren Geraud Kelly: I guess I still see L.A. as Erren Geraud Kelly: Brentwood, Malibu, and A whip against my back an “Entertainment town” …every other person I Hollywood… Echo Park and Silverlake are being Becomes my reality meet here is either an actor or working on their overrun by Hipsters. Beverly Hills is interesting, screenplay, or a musician or singer or a model. though I rarely walk through it; the cops will White skin white breast white girl I’ve met very few poets…I’ve been checking out follow me around. ( laughs ) I like Pasadena… different scenes…there was a writer’s workshop Boyle Heights…South Central has inspired a few Girls fill my reality in Venice Beach that I was sitting in on, and it poems…. Girls fill my reality was pretty cool. There is an open mike called BTS: I notice one of the pictures we are using Girls fill my reality the Da poetry lounge,” that takes place for this interview is you standing in the middle of every Tuesday at Fairfax High School…and “The Paris. I have to confess I spent less than 48 hours Making me virtually World Stage,” in Leimert Park, is famous for in that city, but honestly think I could live I Love sick their workshops and poetry slams…I think the there? How much of Europe have you seen? How biggest California influences on my poetry were has it impacted you and your poetry? White girls Wanda Coleman, whom I read in College and Erren Geraud Kelly: I went to France in 2002, Real and imagined Charles Bukowski; he had a way of taking seeking construction work in the South of Dominate my something complicated and making it simple… France, through an ad on Craigslist. The job Reality recently, I read a upstate New York Poet named didn’t quite pan out, but I still wanted to see Rebbeca Schumejda, who just published a book Paris, so I took the little money I had and stayed Marilyn Jennifer Sandra Amy called “ Waiting at the Dead End Diner,” and it there a month; I did it on the cheap…I couchedJulia Angelina Erin was like in some of her poems, bukowski’s dna surfed, I stayed in hostels, I eat sparingly, but it ran through them…. was worth it! I was in a city that guys I see you and there is BTS: I am not sure it is possible to be a poet of like Hemingway, James Baldwin and William No error in my color and race not figure into your work, maybe Faulkner lived….I went to The Lourve, I saw The Vision it isn’t possible for any poet to not have race Gardens Of Luxembourg, I sat in Shakespeare influence their poetry. How do you see social and Company bookstore, where people like F. You look like a bowl issues, race and otherwise in your writing? Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein hung out, I Of ice cream, you scream, they Erren Geraud Kelly: Like I said, earlier, just made sure I got more than one picture of the All scream because I write about social issues, don’t always Eiffel Tower…People wonder why me, being a When they see us together expect me to always be political, just because I black man, would be such a Francophile? After write about other things, I shouldn’t be expected the First and Second World Wars, when black My hand in yours, a yin/yang to be bound by those categorizes, either….i soldiers helped liberated the French, France Of balance believe that artists have the responsibility to opened its arms to them and accepted them… witness and report, but by no means, should one Miles Davis spent time their and became well But my heart is unbalanced between expect them to be a savior; nor should they be! acquainted with Jean Paul-Sartre and Pablo Heaven and hell When I was younger, this dilemma confused me Picasso; Black Musicians and Artists journeys to because I was still trying to figure out where I Paris, cos they knew they would be treated with You’re such a lovely belle wanted to be in the literary spectrum. I love respect and their creativity and intellect would Amiri Baraka, he is the reason why I became a be valued. The French accepted them ! But no, wait, youre a California poet, but I don’t necessary agree with everything I try to read French poetry, whenever I can Girl he stood for! (I don’t believe in communism; I find it; I like Rimbaud and Baudelaire…I’ve read still have a faint hope that Capitalism still can a couple of books by an Italian writer named California girls work in America) I don’t think every poem I Italo Calvino, whom I fancy; his work has a Are supposed to rock write has to be a" black " poem…Why can’t I just dreamy magical realism quality to it; Pablo My world write about hanging out with my peeps or about Neruda and Federico Garcia Lorca, are two of my Whether real or imagined a girl I saw on the train?…Even when an artist favorite Spanish poets…I’ve read quite a few doesn’t make a statement, he is making a British Writers; David Lodge is one of my White girl white world white noise statement; Bob Dylan was notorious for that… favorites…My Sis In Law, Camelia, turned me on But on the other end of the spectrum, I don’t to Doystoyevsky…I don’t limit myself when it Erupts from your mouth want to be Billy Collins. I am not a safe poet... comes to literature or art; my dad travelled a lot As you lie with me in spendor around the world and saw things; my brother, Kevis saw the world, by way of the military… White noise in a low moan their influences rubbed of on me…I don’t think Like a kitten sweet and Coffeehouse Poem # 160 an artist or writer should contain their world or Tender voice to a single place. The world is getting The girl in smaller, but I want my art to encompass the White noise white world The porkpie hat entire world ! White girl Takes my mind off The fight, i nearly Brianna Got into earlier Her british accent Makes her lovely Everything was fine until I wish L.A. was baptised The rabbit died In an English Rain I met her at a pearl jam concert She was in town from Grad school working on an Mfa Coffeehouse Poem #155 She liked books more than Movies her silicone nipples were She wears tattoos raisins between On her forearms like My teeth Wonder woman bracelets I loved her ice cream scoop size As she walks always Tits, her legs taut from The melody of clicking boots Years of playing soccer Seduces me like A red cape I couldnt keep my hands off Her tight, compacted ass The french quarter became our playpen She told me after grad school A Prayer For My Hometown She wanted to go Walking On The Grafitti Bridge Paris There, we would help each other Lord, please one day to Write poems I time traveled and i didnt render guns as obsolete need a delorian or scotty to as a nuclear bomb Her morning blow jobs were beam me up that rednecks and swag Welcomed like the bacon i just put 1999 in my will be as pointless And eggs she cooked cassette player as a fish on a bicycle Her screams filled the room And i was 15 again, practicing on my and that black and white Like her guitar playing trombone, wondering could i make will be as indistinguishable I opened her legs and the it through another day as the blood oozing from Cut was smooth i saw visions of graffiti bridge my fingers Leaving the only hole that in my head Mattered This site was created using WIX.com. 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" it might not be so bad, if i never went home again..." Gill Scott-Heron, from " Home is where the hatred is."

About the Ads you see for Kelly Writers House and Poem Talk: Two years ago I took a free class on Coursera called Modern Poetry from the University of Pennsylvania's Al Filries. Since then, I have been a Community TA. I credit Al and ModPo with recreating my need to publish again. When we first started, I thought it would look better with a few advertisements, so I asked Al if I could run a couple of free ads and he said yes.

i thought about asking alicia bethley out, didnt care if her brother charles could kick my ass, love can make you crazy and brave a little red corvette sped down plank road i was dreaming when i wrote this forgive me if it goes astray as i waited for the bus my white friends loved r and b, and rap, though ac/dc and def leppared boomed out of their cars i made out with girls, waited for the muse to give me poems and laughed everytime my mama called prince a freak minimum wage was slavery then and still is today but money never matter to me and money wont matter tonight young kids die looking for salvation in purple drink; theyd be better off dancing in the dawn in the purple rain but youth is wasted on the young i know why bible thumpers hate rock music: rap and r and b can control minds and if you can control minds you can control the world even if judgement day came tomorrow and the clocks hit 2000 zero zero death can have me, i'll be Happily dancing, in the purple rain


But she ran into An old roommate who knew her When she was brian And im left in a sidewalk Cafe To finish this poem There was no rabbit She couldnt have kids A Riddle what's black and white and red all over? America. “ Can We All Just Get Along ? “ Rodney King

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The New Exhilarist “Earn Money Writing!” How many freaking searches coughed that jolly promise up every time Sable crept toward the end of the month with the rent due and felt the sick reality of her English degree sticking its dying black tongue out at her in mockery. Surely her debt-bloated degree would do her some good eventually. After a sufficient bout of romantic pain and suffering? Metaphoric starvation? Etc? But how long? Nearly every headline claimed a similar holy land of relief, but they were mostly the same. A bunch of generic writers earning very little, gleaning a few by-lines on generic topics so companies could ride the drive-by advertising. The best thing was the writing practice. But writing about a new line of indestructible Japanese sushi knives, or this season’s new but barely changed smart phone, or how to better hipster style Zen color code your antique book collection, wasn’t up her alley, though she could have faked it for “$75-$125, depending on realized advertising monthly traffic.” Dispirited: The Novel could wait while she paid the bills. Sable was thirty pages down into her search and about to give in to a call for a “Top Five Old Timey Mountain Remedies for Pet Dander” article when she glanced the phrase “Write for The Exhilarists. Change Your Life.” “Are you a writer? Do you desire to change your life and the lives of others while doing what you love? Do you crave random adventure?” Yes. Yes. Hell, yes! “We cater our articles to an elite clientele. We assign you field experiences. You write your blogs. We pay you. It’s that simple. Do you have the interest, energy, and the nerve?” Yes! OK, Where do I apply? Sable was heady with the mystery. Even as click-bait clichéd as it seemed.

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What pulled her in was the application process: “Two-hundred words. That’s all we’ll give you. And let us add, we get hundreds of these, so make it good.” I really don’t need two-hundred words. But thanks, anyway. Until I can actually leave this dried up town, I only escape through my pen. A little cash only goes so far, but that’s not news. In my mind I go anywhere I want. I want real life. Give it to me. I’m a good writer and I trust my writing most of the time. I only need more of the real to write about. Again, give it to me. You want a writer with dangerous blind enthusiasm? A craving for changing their life? Wanting the same for others since “I’ve been there?” All the blanks filled in perfectly with a sarcastic spice? Someone who will gleefully answer a mysterious add on the internet and go to work tomorrow? Hire me, the rent’s due. She shot off the email, daydreamed about its cloak and dagger-ness the next day, but had mostly forgotten about it by that weekend. She answered a ding on her phone Saturday morning: “I’m Richard with The Exhilarists.” Whoa. “I’ll be in town this afternoon. I’d like to interview you if you’re still interested in our position. Could we meet at the café downtown at one? I’ll need to be leaving soon after we’re finished. Does that work with for you?” She answered yes, knowing Fanny’s was the only thing passing for a café downtown. Four hours later she was back at her laptop, the lights shut off, doors locked, blinds pulled. Her lip was split but no longer bleeding. Her gums tasted of copper. She was pretty sure her left eardrum was busted. A chat-box waited in the lower corner of the company website offering, Advice on your project? Sable’s fingers quaked trying to type through the shock of the last few hours. “My interviewer robbed our bank in town today.” There was nothing at first. Then some response. “I’m sorry. Who was this?” “Richard. He interviewed me for a writing position today. Then he walked across the street for some cash and robbed the damn bank with me standing next to him! What am I supposed to do about that! What sort of bullshit is this?!” Hesitation and thinking on the other side. “I’m sorry. We don’t have a Richard on staff. Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m sure! He knock someone up side the head.” Am I? “The man’s last name?”


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Sable paused. She had no idea, did she? He’d never mentioned it. She’d forgotten to ask, she was embarrassed to say. She went back to the email. It was missing. The email she’d gotten setting up the whole thing was gone from her account. She checked the trash. Spam. Vanished. The paranoia was real now. “I don’t remember. I’ve been through a lot. And what do you mean he’s not on staff?” “Hmmm. Sounds like you’ve had a terrible day.” I don’t need patronizing right now. Jeez. “But, I do see you on our roll of content providers, so that’s good news.” Wait, what? “You mean I’m hired?” “Yes, seems so. As of the middle of this afternoon.” Cha-ching. “You know, close calls just like this are very popular with our clientele. It’s not something your run-of-the-mill person experiences every day. Such excitement.” “It was awful.” Hesitation. “I’m sure it was.” She was going to have to clean the dried blood of this keyboard later. “It seems that’s your first assignment, Sable. This terrible experience. It’s due in three days. 800 words. Put the reader in the center of your panic and fear. You’ll be paid when we get it, if we’re pleased with it, of course. You will have no say over the final edit, nor will you see where the piece is published. Our clients have private access to your posts.” This is so damn strange. Is this even legal? “That’s it. Just like that?” No answer. The view across Main Street out of the window at Fanny’s the next day gave Sable a good view for scoping out the closed bank. Its entrance was webbed with yellow caution tape. Plain clothes investigators milled about the front. She sipped her coffee, wincing when the heat touched off the pain of her split lip. The memory of Richard’s fist glancing off her lips and teeth in the middle of the robbery nearly caused her to drop her coffee mug, but she licked the disturbed rust taste across her gums and steadied herself. She had a blog to write. Larry D. Thacker is a writer and artist from Tennessee. His stories can be found in past issues of The Still Journal, The Emancipator, Fried Chicken and Coffee, Dime Show Review. His poetry widely published. He is the author of Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia, poetry chapbooks Voice Hunting and Memory Train, and a forthcoming collection, Drifting in Awe. He is taking his poetry/fiction MFA from West Virginia Wesleyan College. www.larrydthacker.com

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October 2016 Vol. I No. IV



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BTS Grows Again! New Formal/Rhyming Poetry Page Editor Joins Sta

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Better than Starbucks, the Interview

Better than Starbucks is proud to announce the addition to our staff of Vera Ignatowitsch. She will be editing the Formal & Rhyming Page.

Vera has been reading, writing and studying poetry for over 40 years. She brings her love for and knowledge of traditional and rhyming poetry to edit this new page on Better Than Starbucks.

Poetry Pages Featured Poem of the Month

THIRTY JANUARIES PAST A HALF-MEMORY A passing glance at a word, courtyard, transports me far away in time, not to the warm streets of Venice, nor a piazza in Fiesole, not even to a gray stone eminence of bygone Bytown, but instead to Salzburg, to a bleak winter courtyard with one gnarled old tree, spreading its bare black boughs over nothing but dirt and stone. Young men in white parade through the street below. Was there the sound of bells as they approached? Were these "Glöckler"? Were they dancing to wake the seed, to wake nature from her winter sleep? But it was thirty Januaries in the past. I cannot remember. There is no warmth here in this ancient fortress of Hohensalzburg, not even the sound of the aerophone piping its daily song can ease the chill that shivers down my spine. Perhaps the shades of long-dead prisoners still gather beneath this tree, unable to free themselves, the sins against them still holding back the light they need to pass beyond. Carol A. Stephen

..from the mad mind of the poet

...and now....

Tobi Alfier, Co-editor, San Pedro River Review and Moderator of LinkedIn's 30,000+ member group Poetry Editors & Poets group. Tobi has been widely published and is a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee. The BTS Interview with Tobi Alfier BTS: Tobi Alfier, you are both a very widely published and recognized poet, as well as editor and moderator of poetry venues. Did one lead you to the other? If so which one? Tobi Alfier: I’ve been writing for over 30 years (a lot of my work is published under Tobi Cogswell), but I didn’t start submitting and reading until 2005. My (now) husband Jeffrey Alfier, a beautiful poet and photographer, had always had a dream of publishing a journal of poetry and art. When he retired from the Air Force after almost 28 years, I might have bugged him a little bit about following his dream, and very quickly San Pedro River Review (SPRR) was born. He named me co-editor and co-publisher. It was completely unexpected and I was thrilled to work on it with him. With regard to the LinkedIn site – Poetry Editors and Poets - the prior moderator wanted to leave to start a more religiously based site. She felt after reading my posts, I would be a fair and kind moderator. I talked myself into it at the same time I was trying to talk myself out of it. That worked well - all of a sudden I was the moderator. In the last five years we have gone from 3,000 participants to 35,000 participants. I hope people are enjoying the group and learning from it. BTS: How did you first come to publishing? Tobi Alfier: I took a beginning class with Jack Grapes because the “final” was to make a chapbook. I was feeling brave. I liked the work I was writing. I finally was beginning to have my own voice, and I wanted to learn how to make a chapbook. That’s how “Sanity Among the Wildflowers” became my first chapbook. I found out that the printer made a copy for himself and read it on his lunch breaks. I was amazed, flattered, proud, shy, every emotion. I was so grateful that someone actually wanted to read my work. I couldn’t believe it. Since that time, I’ve never stopped.


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Who we are Better than Starbucks Founded 1995 as Scene, Arts of the Treasure Coast, Renamed 1998 Abundance, a Harvet of Literature, Life & the Arts Revived 2016 as Better than Starbucks Anthony "Uplandpoet" Watkins Publisher, Founder, Editor-in-Chief Kevin McLaughlin Haiku Page Editor, Spiritual Adviser, Poetry Mentor Vera Ignatowitsch Formal/Rhyming Poetry Page Editor, Associate Copy Editor

Why "Better than Starbucks"?

Mentors, Ghosts, and Spirtual Editors Neither of these wonderful ladies are on our staff, as both are deceased, but they put this little muddy footed boy on the path to a love of the written word.

Even in 1968, at our old home in Shorter, Alabama, the littlest one was the noisiest. And nearly 50 years later, I still am.

Before our Recent Additions, We Started Out as a One-Man-Band At age 5, I fell in love with poetry, because I could make up my own rules. I have pretty much been living by the self-made rules all my life. In 1995 I started a local print literary and arts paper called Scene, Arts of the Treasure Coast, with a little insert called Sleeping Bear Press. After 7 years of long tiring hours and great fun, I gave it up in 2002. Along the way, it morphed into Abundance, a Harvest of Life, Literature, & the Arts. In the past decade I started a group on Shelfari that soon filled up with a few thousand wonderful people. We are struggling to readjust to life on Goodreads, as they are now merging. We called that site Better than Starbucks. Speaking of Goodreads, I am a three-time winner of the Goodreads Newsletter Poet of the Month!

Contact us at: [email protected]

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I also have a few other publishing credits, but as I usually post my poetry two or three places on line, I rarely submit them for consideration. One of my dear friends on Shelfari pointed me to a class on Coursera, Modern Poetry, from the University of Pennsylvania. It has changed my life and I highly recommend it to EVERYONE. It is led by Prof. Al Filreis, and his able band of Teaching Assistants! As of last year, I have been honored to join the as a Community Teaching Assistant. There is more about me, and I could go on for hours, but nobody but my mother would want to read it, and she passed away back in January. Love to Mom, and I hope you all come to love this “little paper.” Our goal is to offer a living website that combines the old salon feeling of our soon to be destroyed Shelfari group and the old literary journal that served three counties in Florida for 7 years. If you can think of a way you can help make us better, please let us know. I have never been the best at anything, but i have aways put myself foward as a willing servant to do what i think needs to be done, and to take help from any who care to and are able to offer it.


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Why "Better than Starbucks"? As with so many stories, this literally begins a long time ago in a place far away. In the beautiful land of Shelfari, which is, sadly, no more. In Shelfari the books lay in stacks on the ground, and poets dreamed and professors mingled with housewives, and the air hung thick with the incense of peace and love. Around Christmas of 2007, I stumbled onto a group called Brilliant Babes (and Dudes) Who Read Selectively, aka BBD. Rob and Suze were the ring leaders. It was a closed group but a couple of my really smart funny friends were members and invited me. The lot of them were witty, and they tended to read books I liked. Shelfari had, and someday I hope to duplicate it, the truly friendly "cocktail party" discussion threads. I spent the first three months of 2008 thinking I had found a new home, me and my closest 168 friends. But as I, and most folks are wont to do, I let my guard down. I spoke a little more "truth" than I should have. One of the members loved Starbucks Coffee, not only the coffee, but the company. Starbucks, especially then, was doing a pretty good job of convincing the public they were the good guys, they paid abve minimum wage, they extended healthcare benefits in a pre Obamacare era. And somehow, like McDonalds, like Budwieser, they took a substandard product, and with very clever marketing, made people willing to pay two and three dollars for a seventy-five cent cup of coffee. Good on them!

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The problem I have with Starbucks is not really the coffee. (as many times as I have tried, and I must have bought over 100 cups of coffee from them, and I can never drink more than a couple of sips and I have to throw it away) The problem is there business model. They practice the Policy of Triangulation. When there is a successful independent coffee shop. they open three stores a block or two away in different directions, killing off the local coffee shop, and then they close one or two of the 3 and have the local market all to themselves. Yes, this is legal, but I find the taste in my mouth from it is worse than they badly roasted beans. What does this have to do with me? with BBD? and more to the point Better than Starbucks? I made the mistake of sharing that I thought their business policy was as nasty as their coffee. Little did I know, in my Barbarian in the China shop ways, I stood my ground, and she was offended, so the powers that be banned me. (This accounted for my very high bar for banning at BTS) This almost hurt my feelings, but what really hurt was they had a book club, and we were just starting The Painted Veil. I am a huge fan of Somerset's other work and had not read this one. So I contacted everyone I knew and invited them to join me in an openn group to be known as "Better than Starbucks".


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Trees dropping Trees dropping leaves in cooler weather, dim echoes of trees budding into spring, add nourishment to their roots beneath. Take the map that unfolds in concertina, look down the avenues, and you will see , here, trees in full blossom , here, branches bare-naked, raising in-between, fruit and fruit-fall in the breeze. Martin Porter Martin Porter, born in Jersey, studied Astrophysics in London and Leeds, taught Physics in Jersey, before becoming a systems trainer in New Zealand. He is now retired in Whangarei. He has recently had work published in Printed Reality (NZ), Hobo Camp Review (USA), Envoi (UK), and Blue Fifth Review (International). Trees Dropping was first published as Michelle Elvy’s Tuesday Poem choice in Glow Worm (2014). MISCHIEF Last Halloween Eve, you broke my last black heart, the one sewn to vintage bone. The graceful untangling of your breath from the trees was quite commanding, the lunacy of your leer so alight. The jack o’ lantern jetty jigsaw sky spun with helicopters and hellfire, devils, dastard delights. You threatened to take back the tomboy nights from my reckless veins. Your candied treasonous good-bye melted, unsavored, into the marrow of my shadow, became the incubus of every moonrise, the ill-fated starlet in my soul. We always spoke of speaking this way. We always believed in the possibility of morning stars. But never again will we breathe in wind-smoked willows side by side, or even face the delusions of our scars. The volley of our youth has settled into the visage of our mystery, where I will find you waging wars with your eyes, forever breaking black stone angels. Megan Mealor Jacksonville, FL

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Albuquerque, New Mexico I took a left turn like Bugs Bunny suggested But i didnt run into Him or any Nerdy, passive agressive Chemistry teachers , turned Drug lords I ended up at a coffeehouse In the hipster part of town I was halfway into A cappucino When i saw her, My old biology professor From many poems Ago, You know, the irish girl With the black woman ass? Back in college, she wore short Skirts When she taught lectures, And the front Row was almost always Full of guys. She was a girl straight out Of a van halen song; Lightning rarely strikes twice So, i went up and reintroduced Myself. This time, with every Intention of getting her Back into my life Things were going smooth And i was about to close The deal When bugs showed up Out of the blue ( tranported ,maybe ? ) Bugs told me, that me and her Were a good fit, but it takes more Than game and moxie, To score with a woman I noticed earlier, my friend Had a diamond on her hand That had more carats than Bugs bunny's lunch But she said she was single Bugs told me " you have to Set yourself apart from The pack Give her something different Other guys can't And you also need some Loot." So Bugs pulled out a stack Of C-notes And gave it to me It would be enough for A good start Me and the professor Went to a bookstore And stole kisses as We browsed the stacks Then we took a walk in The desert, and she became A perfect irish rose, in Bloom


Translations Translations of a Chinese poem to English (with Chinese between the lines), and a short piece on the philosophy of poetry written by by Dai Wangshu is temporarily replacing Free for All October Section

R.I.P. The Second Amendment Never do we think of things we can do together. Innocent things, a picnic for example, or maybe with handguns take a break into a bank. But however violent that would be, we would at least be doing something together. Never do we let our heads hover above our skulls. If we did, we might come apart like kites killed by shotgun shells dispersed by a mad man talking, really blabbering, about them second amendment rights. Why don't we let the rhetoric between ourselves grow past that. Let's talk about things in a concrete way, like how we once stole from that asshole – you know at the bar – his NRA pin he couldn't stop flashing. Dying in the cold is a good trick to make us shut up. If we insist on talking, just take our clothes, and let us soliloquy away. And as a feather lost in the desert night, we just vanish forever, never to be remembered. R.I.P. The Second Amendment is written by Joel Dittmer. Dittmer teaches philosophy at Missouri University of Science & Technology. Formally trained in academic analytic philosophy, he cares about the relationship between language and experience. In his teaching, in particular in ethics, he works on incorporating the work of creative writers into the academic study of philosophy Albuquerque, New Mexico is by Erren Geraud Kelly. Kelly is a Pushcart nominated poet from Los Angeles and widely published. He is also the author of the book, " Disturbing The Peace," on Night Ballet Press and the chapbook, " The Rah Rah Girl," forthcoming from Barometric Press. He studied writing at Louisiana State University.

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Haiku Haiku’s subject matter is wide open and nonjudgmental. There are no appropriate or nonappropriate topics. Typically, haiku journals abound with moonlit pine branches, the cry of the osprey, dragonflies perched on bamboo shoots, and the reflection of stars in a pond. But a poem could as readily address maggots wriggling in a trash heap as evening rain glistening on a banana leaf. In Zen terms, all phenomena are empty, empty of inherent selfexistence, and, therefore all phenomena are equal. Fat maggots wriggle On the open trash can’s lid: Late afternoon light. I’d arrived home from work the afternoon of a garbage collection day. Trash barrels were lined up at the end of driveways in the residential driveway. Observe the maggots mindfully, with no aesthetic preference. This tradition of seeing beauty in the decaying and in conditions that might to some be repulsive runs throughout Japanese classical haiku. Here is a piece from Matsuo Basho, considered the most masterful of all that nation’s poets. Note the R.H. Blyth translation does not artificially attempt to translate the piece using the accepted 5-7-5 syllable format. Fleas, lice, The horse pissing, Near my pillow. And here is an offering from Issa, another poet revered in Japan. Poor louse! I made it creep upon the fruit, That tastes of my flesh. “But with a little more familiarity, you realize that haiku poetry excels in one of the rarest artistic virtues, the virtue of knowing when to stop.” -Alan Watts One more haiku, this to celebrate Taoist appreciation of Autumn. Autumn equinox, Balance between light and dark: A blue dragonfly. -K. McL

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R.H. Blyth wrote, “Haiku is a way of returning to nature, our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature. It is a way in which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very day in its hotness, and the length of the night become truly alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent and expressive nature.” This month we have the wonderful fortune of having received five haiku written by Vera Ignatowitsch that embody the spirit Blyth described. I have read the poems several times, and admired them more with each reading. Individually, sublime. Together, they are a linked verse joining the seasons. From charred stubs of wood Spirits of searing fire smile Free to stain paper. Lacy veils of frost Pulse with sealing beauty In winter’s living shroud Rivulets melting Into self made crevices Soak and unveil spring. The torn feather floats In tune with a lullaby Weaving a new nest The seminal ant With crowning contribution Is the one you watch -Vera Ignatowitsch

Senryu are a subset of haiku that tend to be concerned with human affairs. They tend to be humorous, ironic, and sometimes poignant. Here are some fine examples we recently received at BTS: Inspiration fail. Today is not going well. I can’t think of a -Sue Barnard In the yard a plump bird hops Through a window pane My son learns the word Robin. A white blossom quivering How windy it is. I hope the birds can keep warm. Not so much brown as ochre, The grass slowly dies. At least I’ll not have to mow. -Donovan Craig. I encourage all haiku writers to submit their work to the BTS haiku column. Share your experience of the inter-penetration of all things and your special images and insight with all of the BTS readers. -Kevin McLaughlin Haiku Editor

Publisher's note: Vera starts our Formal & Rhyming Poetry page this issue!


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Formal & Rhyming Poetry by Vera Ignatowitsch Many love good poetry. Too many are wed to either formal or free verse. Good poetry is good poetry. On this page, we invite your submissions of formal poetry, in traditional forms from sonnets to villanelles, to blank verse, as well as submissions of rhyming poetry. Really good rhyme touches the child in us, and this is a magical thing when the content of the poem also engages the adult, with all the life knowledge and range of experiences gathered through living. On this page, passions and emotions are a good thing. We’re not looking for the sentimental, only for the emotionally authentic. Formal poetry uses conventional forms to evoke a sense of musical rhythm. This rhythm, or ‘music’, is something that I believe we are hard wired to respond to. As with rhyme, the musical rhythm in good formal poetry flows naturally, without tortured or artificial syntax. We will begin publishing selections from your submissions in the December, 2016 issue of Better Than Starbucks. For now, we’ll simply offer two of the most famous and beloved poems, a classic in iambic pentameter by William Butler Yeats, and a villanelle by Dylan Thomas. When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face among a crowd of stars. First published in 1892 youtube reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1yq5vYX37o

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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Published in 1952 youtube reading https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mRec3VbH3w a quote: “My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects - love, death, war.” James Fenton


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Translations

Free for All has been temporarily displaced to share the following translations by S. Ye Laird, born in Shanghai, district of Family Xu's gathering place, survived a quarter century of cultural clashes in America since 1992 Thanksgiving, dreamed of returning to family Xu's burial ground one day, in spirit of the word, if not in bodily form. Dai, Wangshu ( 1905 - 1950) Chinese poet and proponent of all things old or for the Chinese alone in light of new universal ideas during 1930s.

《诗论零札》（一） by Dai Wangshu (originally published in 1932, in a magazine "Modernity") Emptied thoughts on Poetics (I) 1. Poetry should not borrow heavily from music, it ought to rid itself from its influence. 2. Poetry should not borrow heavily from the vantage points of painting. 3. Merely piling up witty and pretty words is pointless in poetry. 4. Impressionists say " Mother nature is like a courtesan, having been penetrated a thousand times." Yet new comers don't know for sure she can't be penetrated ten thousdand times more. Number of penetrations is of no concern to us, we must discover new loving subjects and new paths to Elysium. 5. Poetry's tempo and melody isn't about words' tonal rising and falling, withholding or outpouring, but the emotional fugue carrying within words, or the variations of their intensity. 6. The most importance of free-form poetry is the nuance of poetic feelings, not at all about nuance in words and sentences. 7. Harmoniously uniformed words and sentences can block the flow of poetic emotion, or turn the emotion into monstrous formations. By forcing poetic emotion to suit rigid, superficial and old formality, is like binding one's feet to fit in other's shoes. Foolish or deviant folks chop up their feet to fit in shoes, smarter ones chose suitable shoes for their feet, but the wise creates a pair of shoes that is most natural to his feet. 8. Poetics is not to please one sense but in all sensible beings or transcend all sensibilities.

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9. New form in poetics must have new emotion or new expression of such motion. What we say about formality, is never about superficial orders of words, nor making new definitions by exhaustively sipping and piling up words. 10. It is not necessary to use new things as currents for poetic motion ( I am not against using new things), from old events and old things, we can bring forth new emotion of poetics. 11. Re-applying old classical form isn't apt for opposition, if it grants us fresh emotion and juxtaposition. 12. Do not overtly obsessed with what is exotic and grotesque, for those won't last long. 13. Poetics needs to have its own dialect on originality, but one must also embed it with cosmopolite, both can't be without the other. 14. Poetics is based in reality, polished by imagination, it isn't realistic, nor imaginitive. 15. Poetics must be expressive in one's emotion, moving the other along with compassion, poetics is a living being by itself, not a non-living thing. 16. Emotion is hardly what's captured by photography. Emotion can be etched out by poetic scapel. Retouching of raw emotions enlivened thousands and ten thousands manifestations. 17. Poem written in one language, praised only by those who speak the same language, is not poetry of poetics, that only amounts to linguistic magic at most. Goodness in true poetics lives not in the longevity of one particular lingua.


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The Littlest Bully That was my mama, Mary. She grew up special, in a family of bullies. The only girl, her brothers had each other to push around. Her mama never hesitated to take her husband’s fist to keep him from fixing on Mary, from ferreting out where she’d been sent scurrying to hide. Next day, her mama would be extra rough on Mary, but it never stuck, not after she’d protected her. In a house of loud and aggressive voices, mama learned how to push others around, but she turned out far too pretty and smart not to drench herself in honey first. I know that she loved to party, because she still does. She must have really gone to town in her teenage years. I guess, though, that she never learned to pick a man who wasn’t of her own ilk. Another bully who’d beat her up sooner or later. As we grew older together, they seemed to get meaner; the ‘honeymoon’ kept getting shorter …weeks and even days instead of months. I once went through a list of ‘nice’ guys, one by one, suggesting she try dating one of those. You’ve never seen more eye-rolling. She knew knew that she was addicted to bad boys, to men who could make her fear, make her cringe, after the partying fizzled out or went out of control, but she couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t change. We fled my pa when I was small, but I bet he was not much different from the other guys that kept showing up in our lives. After she licked her wounds, rested and healed, she’d start getting antsy, and there would always be a next one. Every Christmas, we’d spend the Eve and Day at mama’s folks’ house, her and me. Her brothers would bring their wives and kids for the big dinner only, but mama and I would sleep over from the night before. She’d start to change as soon as we got to packing for the overnight, getting pushier and meaner, and then, by turns, a suck up. That cycle, at its most intense with her family, was a lot like her dance into getting beat up by her latest lover. She wasn’t like that during the intervals of just the two of us alone.

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By the time I started to understand all this stuff, I no longer cried for mama’s bruises, her frightened and lost child look made me angry, but she’d always protected me, so I felt I had to forgive her. If she ever noticed my anger, the few times it spilled out, she just took it for a ploy, as though I was practicing to be one of the bullies. Here’s the thing though. It’s like the bully gene skipped me. I know how to do it, being steeped in it by now like a well-used tea bag, but it doesn’t please me like it seems to do them. I always meant to ask mama about that, about whether pa’s family was different, even though I don’t think she knew them. He was from ‘away’ …the Maritimes I think? and I think she told me he headed further ‘away’ after we ran from him, that he won’t be run into or found again. There are really a mess of things I always wanted to ask mama about and now all I can do is sit in the hospital and watch her lying there with machines hooked into every nook and cranny of her soft pillowy body. One evening a nurse came in and found me with my head on her tummy, soaking her in tears, and gave me what for. I’m allowed to hold her hand sometimes and that’s all. The doctor says they don’t know if she’ll ever wake up again. The bad blow to her head damaged her brain and it might not heal. So why can’t I hug her, my sweet and sour mama who loved me even as she was messing up our lives, why can’t I hug her now? Why not, when she might never come back, might might might …die.

She’d had a manicure that day, and it’s growing out looking old, and I can’t understand why it needs attention when it’s been almost two weeks since that blow to her head froze us in time. I was at school when he did it, that latest cussed animal. She was lying on the kitchen floor when I came home. The back door to the landing stood open, and I ran to it and yelled down the alley, “You can stay away, too!””. When I tried to wake her, I couldn’t, and so I finally called 911. Lots of heavy-booted people crammed into out little apartment and then took her away on a stretcher. The nagged me for the guy’s name, but he was a brand new one and I still can’t say I knew it for sure. Brad? Chad? Cad? Mama knew how much I hated those men. She’d sneak the new one in at night and I’d know by the way her bedroom door was closed in the morning that she wasn’t alone. She’s alone now though. Alone as me. Even if they would let me hug her, I can’t reach her, can’t see her eyes, can’t feel her soul. That’s why I was laying my head on her before, because at least I could hear her heart beating. Being the littlest bully was always a disaster waiting to happen, mama. You’re going to be a bully or hang with them you’d better be the biggest and toughest. We’re both alone for real now. Alone alone alone. I swear that when I have my own apartment the biggest roomie I’ll ever have is a cat. Maybe I’ll call her Mary and ask her all the questions that are bottled up forever now.

We hope you have enjoyed this short fiction by our newest editor, Vera Ignatowitsch. No portion of this story may be used without the written permission of the author.


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The BTS Interview: Tobi Alfier

The BTS Inteview Page 1 BTS: I noticed that rust seems to be a "thing" with you, at least in your poems. I recently wrote a poem about the smell of chrome and there was a bit of rust in it, but you wrote a whole collection titled Romance and Rust. What gives? Tobi Alfier: I could say that rust is a way to tell time without saying “days later” and other phrases that I personally don’t appreciate. It shows age, the same way a red car oxidizes in the burning sun. Rust allows a poem, and a person, to move forward in their lives, sometimes gracefully, sometimes less so. But truly? Jeff loves old cars. He loves trains, the desert, cracked pavement and rust. Those have become my loves as well. I want to be clear that we do not write the same way though. For example, I love train cars that smell like old pennies and have graffiti up one side and down the other. He hates graffiti. He may write about the Union Pacific chasing a fiery sunset in Arizona. I write about the sound of the wheels thudding on the tracks as it goes over a trellis high above a river the color of dirt. “Romance and Rust” was made as a celebration of our marriage. It was my first book published with Jeff’s name. The cover is one of Jeff’s beloved old cars. The poems are new and selected romantic, but not mushy. The bio has a picture of us both and it’s not a “standard” bio. It’s very special to me, but as in all things writing, it has an ISBN and is available on Amazon. I’m proud of it. BTS: I read the Color of Ashes, set in a port city in Japan. Have you spent much time in Japan and the Far East? If so, what effect has it had on your writing? Tobi Alfier: Actually, “The Color of Ashes” was really written about San Pedro. Not the San Pedro of San Pedro River Review, but the San Pedro, Long Beach, Terminal Island area of California. Gravel Magazine published it with a gorgeous picture of Mt. Fuji – that worked fine for me but that was their artistic choice. I have not spent any time in Japan and the Far East. If given the choice, I’d go the other direction (France, Spain, Greece and so forth).BTS: I noticed there almost seems to be a theme of emptiness internal as well as physical emptiness in a lot of your poetry. Is that a fair statement? If so, where do you think it comes from? Tobi Alfier: I suppose the obvious answer is I have some mobility issues and that must account for the physical emptiness, but I refuse to accept that. I have been told that my poetry is a lot about “food, loss and failing bodies”. Over the years I have included “sex, music and doors”. I think a lot about redemption, and a lot about grace and mercy. Maybe that translates into internal emptiness, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I can’t get through a reading without crying, because the emptiness is so sad. At the same time, an editor friend said I write the best love poems he’s read this century. My reply was “I don’t write love poems”.

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Maybe they are, and the internal emptiness is like the yellow-flowered wallpaper peeling in the kitchen where a cup of coffee is getting cold at the only place set for breakfast. Who knows where that coffee drinker is? Where’s the rest of the family? Whoever they are, they appreciate the beauty of the wallpaper, even though it’s peeling. I really don’t know. Maybe I subconsciously include emptiness to give the reader room to fill it up, to allow the reader to become invested in my poems. I’m not smart enough to think about that on purpose, but maybe that’s why. “Dear reader, please help me fill my poems with your beauty”. BTS: I would be remiss if I didn't ask" the San Pedro River Review publishes a spring and a fall issue with an occasional special, correct? What are you looking for as far as submissions? Tobi Alfier: Our spring issues are themed, and our fall issues are unthemed. The theme for spring, 2017 is “Backroads and Byways”. Our website (www.bluehorsepress.com) has very clear guidelines, so I would recommend that anyone interested in submitting should take a look. Because Jeff and I don’t write the same, we see different things in the submissions. We always agree on the poems we take, but the issues are beautifully well-rounded, in my opinion, because of our differences. One thing we do, that many journals don’t, is we accept previously published work. If we love it, we want it. Why should a gorgeous poem only get to have one life? We give full credit to the prior journal, we are happy to do so. We do have an occasional third issue. We have had one contest and are planning another in a year or so. We occasionally have a Feature Poet – their name and picture are on the cover, we publish eight to ten poems as opposed to one or two. Coming up we are having a special interview… because we are the only two publishers and editors, we are not beholden to anyone, and we want the journal to grow. SPRR is published by Blue Horse Press. The press also publishes chapbooks and full length collections of poets we love. But we can leave that for the next interview....


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September 2016 Vol. I No. III


If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!

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We are Better Than Starbucks! If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you! Haiku Gets Its Own Page and It's Own Editor

Better than Starbucks, the Interview

Kevin McLaughlin, our former Poetry editor from the 1990's has agreed to share his love of haiku and other short, Zen-like poems. If you love to write or read haiku, or both, please look for this new monthly feature, and feel free to send in your own haiku in for Kevin to consider for publication. Kevin brings his study of Buddhism and an eclectic taste of everything from vampires and vultures to kayaking into his commentary on the sparks of inspiration that create art in around seventeen syllables.

Haiku Page Professor Filreis, with ModPo Teaching Assistant, Anna Strong in a Modern Poetry session at Kelly Writers House

Featured Poem of the Month A Reddish Haze

Nocturne of shadow rise with a Flamingo charmed by a sunrise a reddish haze is here prone upon the pillow cherished teacup pouts hushed morning sonnet whispers at my window. Dreams left to wander my fan begins the day humidity now departing the sea birds serenade. Biography: Ken Allan Dronsfield, poet and author, originally from New Hampshire, now residing in Oklahoma, is the co-editor of the new poetry anthology titled, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze available at Amazon.com. His work can be found in: The Burningword Journal, Indiana Voice Journal, The Literary Hatchet Magazine, Belle Reve Journal, Peeking Cat Magazine, The Australia Times, Bewildering Stories, and several anthologies. Ken's poetry was nominated for Best of the Net for 2016.

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... from the mad mind of a poet

...and now.... I write several blogs, from my personal wordpress sites, to the Pulse on LinkedIn where I as prone to talk about poetry or politics as I am anything close to work related, to my actual business blog for our company website, but this is sure to become my favorite, as there is no place on earth quite as special as the warm, friendly

Al Filreis is the creator and professor of one of the most successful MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). University of Pennsylvania’s Modern Poetry, or ModPo, for short. Enrollment is here: https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo The next 10 week course starts on Coursera, on September 10, 2016, is available completely free of charge to the student and is designed so the student can bite off as small or large of a chunk of learning as he/she is ready for. Most of us are serial repeaters (Anthony Watkins is about to start his third year and sees no likelihood he will stop taking the class anytime soon) To the 30,000 or so of us, who know you primarily through your Modern Poetry classes, it is easy to think your life is consumed by poetry. Given that you not only teach us, but also as the Kelly Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, are Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, and Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. With Charles Bernstein, Director PennSound, a large archive of recordings of poets reading their own poetry. You publish Jacket2 magazine and host of a monthly podcast series called "PoemTalk", it is clear poetry takes up most if not all your time, but you are also an author and run websites on representations of the Holocaust, and on the cultural cold war of the 1950s. BTS: I notice that there is very little pre U Penn publicly available about you. Of course your work there has been substantial, but some of us are interested in what you were, how you got to be who and what you are today. I believe you grew up in Brooklyn. Al Filreis: My parents were both born and raised in Brooklyn. My father’s parents were immigrants (from Poland) and my mother’s side had been immigrants just a generation earlier. I was raised in New Jersey, not far from Newark. I attended an undistinguished public school, then Colgate University where I met a number of remarkable teachers of literature, then the University of Virginia where I got my Masters and PhD, with a dissertation on the life and work of Wallace Stevens.

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confines of Better than Starbucks! God only knows what I am going to write here in future editions. I am an arrogant know it all and I do not mind sharing my opinions. So we will just have to see. We might even occasionally invite guests to rant or even share truly intelligent and This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >>

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Anthony Uplandpoet Watkins Book Page Buy Three Chapbboks and get Depression Enterprse 2009 Howard Park Press 19 poems paperbook at NO CHARGE!!!!

$5.95 Sleeping Bear Press 1995 20 poems, paper back

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$5.95 Barking Dog in the Window Press 2010 $5.95 Sawgrass Writers House Press 2014 13 poems, paper back 26 poems, paper back

$5.95 Howard Park Press 2003 23 poems, paper back

$6.95 Radius Press 2015 20 poems, paper back

Note: All chapbooks ordered through this site are published by Better Than Starbucks Press 2016


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Why "Better than Starbucks"? A

s with so many stories, this literarally begins a long

time ago in a place far away. In the beautiful land of Shelfari, which is, sadly, no more. In Shelfari the books lay in stackks on the ground, and poets dreamed and professors mingled with housewives, and the air hung thick with the incense of peace and love. Around Christas of 2007, I stumbled onto a group called Brilliant Babes (and Dudes) Who Read Selectively, aka BBD. Rob and Suze were the ring leaders. It was a closed group but a couple of my really smart funny friends were members and invited me. The lot of them were witty, and they tended to read books I liked. Shelfari had, and someday I hope to duplicate it, the truly friendly "cocktail party" discussion threads. I spent the first three months of 2008 thinking I had found a new home, me and my closest 168 friends. But as I, and most folks are wont to do, I let my guard down. I spoke a little more "truth" than I should have. One of the members loved Starbucks Coffee, not only the coffee, but the company. Starbucks, especially then, was doing a pretty good job of convincing the public they were the good guys, they paid abve minimum wage, they extended healthcare benefits in a pre Obamacare era. And somehow, like McDonalds, like Budwieser, they took a substandard product, and with very clever marketing, made people willing to pay two and three dollars for a seventy-five cent cup of coffee. Good on them! A Good Cup of Coffee: According to the resident coffee snob, actually, I am only a half snob, and as such, I think those less snobby than me are fools, and those more snobby than me are nuts:) Recently roasted (3-6 weeks is ideal), Medium or Dark whole bean, ground just before the coffee is made, a heaping cup of beans into a 12 cup drip coffee maker. DO NOT leave the heat on under the coffee, either drink it or carafe it, but do not let it sit on heat! There are other ways to drink coffee, but for this snob, all other ways are second best! If you have a favorite brand or style of coffee, send it along to us, and we will publish you post as part of a rant someday!

The problem I have with Starbucks is not really the coffee. (as many times as I have tried, and I must have bought over 100 cups of coffee from them, and I can never drink more than a couple of sips and I have to throw it away) The problem is there business model. They practice the Policy of Triangulation. When there is a successful independent coffee shop. they open three stores a block or two away in different directions, killing off the local coffee shop, and then they close one or two of the 3 and have the local market all to themselves. Yes, this is legal, but I find the taste in my mouth from it is worse than they badly roasted beans. What does this have to do with me? with BBD? and more to the point Better than Starbucks? I made the mistake of sharing that I thought their business policy was as nasty as their coffee. Little did I know, in my Barbarian in the China shop ways, I stood my ground, and she was offended, so the powers that be banned me. (This accounted for my very high bar for banning at BTS) This almost hurt my feelings, but what really hurt was they had a book club, and we were just starting The Painted Veil. I am a huge fan of Somerset's other work and had not read this one. So I contacted everyone I knew and invited them to join me in an openn group to be known as "Better than Starbucks". That was the 1st day of April 2008. Within a week we had a few hundred and over the next 8 years we grew to nearly 4000 members. We did eventually have a bookclub reading of the book, and many others. Maybe if and when we get the salon up and running, we can have more. I havent had much to do with the old BBD folks in years. I wish them well. I hope they found a home somewhere in the wasteland that followed the destruction of Shelfari. Thanks for everything BBD! - Anthony Uplandpoet Watkins


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Click Here for Free for All Page THE HALVED NOTES Just one single scratchy chirp from the bow across the cello string, an octave spills then slides down the tailpiece. It splits in half, one part falls on your fingertip, the other scissors soft blue air, but always either too much when joined, or nothing at all when torn. If you could pluck a thousand days away with light grounds your eyes, and a thousand nights with darkness turns inward the bitter pith, you would tune feverishly under a restless sun and restive moon. It is both a necessity and luxury living within the flesh that churns forever of music, the same way a vat of broth seethes with rich spices. You stir the liquid but know not when the stock is done as the arms start to drag, and just like ripples crossing the lake, you travel on the back of fluid folds, tucking rose-lipped sound of the half-note where your finger wades the water, as its twin leaps from the butterfly wings--fuse together at the middlemost where harmony holds court. Lana Bella Lana is a Pushcart nominee, and author of two chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016) and Adagio (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming), has had poetry and fiction featured with over 260 journals, California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Columbia Journal, Poetry Salzburg Review, San Pedro River Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, The Writing Disorder, ThirdWednesday, Tipton Poetry Journal, Yes Poetry, and elsewhere, Lana resides in the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever frolicsome imps. The Halved Notes (previously published with Chiron Review).

Click Here for Haiku Page Roller Coaster It wasn't about The steady rise, The steep drop. Nor my hands Clenching the rail, Organs straining Beneath bone. It's about this bed Upon which I lie, Eyes fixed Upon the ceiling, Finding comfort In the blur Of a rotating fan. It feels So complete. It was So complete. Kyle Kutz Howell, New Jersey

Beyond There's a hint of something exquisite beyond a thin wall of stinging pain; a wisp, a crescent, the star that's hidden by the twisted light of a liar's moon. A soft curve of your favourite colour a touch to make you gasp and stiffen a chink of excitement and silver hope, a thin cord. A clean breath. Something unseen and unhoped-for but present in an unremembered dream - an un-thing. Un-pressured. A hint of something beautiful just beyond the wall. Maybe. Cathy Bryant From her collection, 'Contains Strong Language and Scenes of a Sexual Nature' (Puppywolf, 2010)

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Odd Thoughts Ever notice a "word to the wise", is usually more than a one word? In fact, it is often more than a few sentences? -anon. To sound important, quote yourself. -anon.


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“Don’t let him have honey,” is the last thing my grandmother told me, catching my eye as she left to run an errand in town, and I nodded. As soon she was out the door my grandfather emerged from his den, away from his precious games of chess, swiftly shuffling into the kitchen. The gas hissed as he turned on the stove and then struck a match on the sandpaper tacked to the wall beside the stove. The teapot chugged as it filled. When the kettle whistled and the water poured and the tea steeped he said “Getch me zeh honey.” I’d turned my back to him, hunching my shoulders, anticipating this. “Grandma said-” “Grenma is gon. And I von’t tell her. Our secret.” He was diabetic. Poisoning yourself seemed like poor chess strategy, and the tea itself was nasty stuff that made my lips curl and my tongue scrunch up when I’d tried it. When she’d denied him the tea itself last Christmas he’d thrown a temper tantrum that validated my own; I was younger than ten, he was over eighty. “Zeh vater is getting culd.” Grandma claimed she needed the honey for cooking, but she’d put it out of reach on the top shelf of a bookcase in the living room to tease him because he was terrified of heights and wouldn’t stand on a ladder to get it. I was going to get the honey for him. His expectant expression, with just the hint of that Battle of Stalingrad stone beneath the silk glove of his better nature told me so. Probably grandma knew it, too. But this way she could feel disappointed in something; the honey in her own tea. Grandpa watched as I wrestled a big, heavy decorative chair from the living room set beneath the bookcase. Crawling up, I sank into the plush cushion. The honey remained feet out of reach and, sighing, I planted my foot onto the nearest shelf of the bookcase and boosted myself up, grabbing onto a higher shelf as I did. He was tall enough to help me but I was fat and he was old and the days of him lifting me were long gone. Like Icarus I climbed. Trying not to look down as the ground got further away, my hands suddenly sweaty, my trailing legs scraping the edges as I alternated them, calves burning as I braced shell topped toes against tomes I couldn’t yet read. Focusing on the looming honey jar. The bookcase wobbled and a fake Faberge egg on the shelf rattled. My breath caught. I stopped moving. “Careful boy. But don’t vory, you are almost at zeh top.” Then I was. I ascended the final shelf and the honey jar filled my vision. The honey inside had separated into a solid jeweled crust of thick crystals with a sloshy amber liquid on top. I could smell it. Grandma had never used the honey after putting it up here. I grabbed it. Nothing. I tugged; the bookcase swayed and the fake Faberge egg rattled and the jar remained glued so I yanked and the bookcase rocked and the fake Faberge egg tipped over. The jar tore loose. I fell over backwards and hit the high top of the chair which tipped over like a seesaw, the leverage pitching me across the living room. I landed on the glass coffee table where grandma sat and played solitaire while grandpa played chess in the other room; her old, oily, ruffled cards still laid out in the game she’d abandoned when she left earlier. She played games of chance while he played games of skill and both thought the lesser of each other for it. The glass table shattered beneath me.

One thick pane of glass laying in the edges of its frame, it lacked a center cross support or my back would have broken. I’d held onto the jar and honey spilled out. That liquid layer was thin and runny like water but still grossly sticky like honey. It soaked right through my shirt, coating my chest, flowing around my flab to my back and down my pants, pooling in the crack of my ass and the hollow of my throat, smearing my cheeks and matting my hair. Shards of broken glass stuck to it, cut me in a million tiny places, fragments glued to the back of my neck, to the backs of my arms, in the creases of my folded elbows. I was a Christmas ornament. “You alright?” A fleck of glass poked my jaw when I looked over at him. At least he looked shocked. The glass mixed into the honey trapping my head to the carpet stopped me from nodding. “Call my mom.” I wiggled my legs trying to sit up but the cocoon held me. Grandpa shuffled back into the kitchen and the portable phone beeped as he removed it from its cradle. He returned, coming into view over me, holding the phone in one hand and his steaming mug of tea in the other. He grasped a tablespoon with his pinky finger. Wincing from the arthritis he knelt beside me, set down the phone and grabbed the base of the honey jar. The tendons in his loose, skinny arms tensed and knotted as he drove the spoon into the petrified honey. It crunched as he scooped out a heaping mound and stirred in into the cup. He smacked his lips, drinking. His eyelids drooped and a smile spread wide as he blissed out over that first sweet sip. Then he called my mom. I never told anyone that little detail, about his spoonful of honey. Because I can keep a secret. Alexander Jones Alexander Jones of Jersey City, New Jersey shared his “Tea Time” was previously published in Crack the Spine, issue 143, March 16, 2015.

"More than a Mouthful" A dozen of Anthony Watkins' chapbooks Order here from $5.95



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Free Poems & Other Creative Matter

Note: All intellectual property used on this page is still under copyright by creator unless otherwise speci ced, in writing, and may not be used without their permission

Alchemist Sing, earth-captured starlight Purest light to touch the earth Purest light to flow through day and night To flood our sense-zone; Sing through my blinking tubes and phials, All potions, never poured; Yet all suffused in afterthought. My litmus-jewels, made one by burning faces, turning suns, That charred the fixed eye, the rooted touch. Bodies I gel, not cruelly liquefy, Nor form from glass-defined portions; I move them, through their opaqueness in my eyes to their own whole frames and shapes; Cast by a mould beyond the maker here, the measurer And yet exhausting first their full extent. Fill out, oneself a phial, Fluted to slender siphoning, a line, a moving; Love-cornering the loving, clinging eye, Love cornering skins in darkness, parched and bleached; Locked in through small breedings in clean-forgotten courses, The moss, the earth-polluted tubes, the same. David Russell -from his collection Speculum David Russell is a singer-songwriter, frequently published online in International Times.

ACADIA the streets switch at midnight and we bounce along the February roads of Wolfville (three tonnes of camper van) in the blink of a cat’s eye we run over a skunk the odour gland explodes upon the back axle embraces the vinyl interior like a song by Halifax we are imagining unicorns and roses Gareth Writer-Davies Letchworth Garden City, Herts, UK

Williams Would Understand So much depends Upon my wife’s bag of Cheetos With its artificial colors— Including yellow 6, Unopened in the brown kitchen cabinet. This is just to say I found them— And addictions cannot be trusted. I know to whom these orange-dusted Beauties belong. Only a puritan could resist Such cheesy flavored tidbits. Yes—it was quite wrong of me to eat them, But they were so crunchy; so insistent. And so generous in forgiveness. Daniel Klawitter

Cover Art from David Russell's Speculum N O L I M E T A N G E R E and now the point in time is a wave washing over THE ME leaving THE ME washed over the pearl of thoughts dry on the skin there is nobody to share empty minded eyes stare ahead empty sounded ears strain into memory below there is nobody to share THE ME feet stay stopped where they were when the tsunami rolled over THE ME being now a breathing automaton there is nobody to share solitude is adventure of the numbing kind where are the eyes THE ME eyes needed for contact where are the hands THE ME skin needed for caressing where is the sound of steps of feet walking beside THE ME the wave catapulted from the sudden realm shock will have an aftermath of pain of suffering of denial of anger of bargaining of dawning of axeptance

This site was created using WIX.com. Create your own for FREE >> Author Bio: Daniel has a BA from the College of Santa Fe in New

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Mexico and a Master of Divinity from The Iliff School of Theology in Denver. A member of the Colorado Poets Center, he is the author of two full-length poetry collections: A Poet Playing Doctor (2015)and Plato Poetica (forthcoming in spring, 2017), both published by White Violet Press, as well as a chapbook of children’s poems entitled Put On Your Silly Pants: Poems for Children and Very Immature Adults (Daffydowndilly Press, fall, 2016). He is also the lead singer and lyricist for the indie-rock band, Mining for Rain: www.miningforrain.com

A Note about Starting Up and the work you nd here on Free for All

The thing is, when Abundance, A Harvest of Life, Literature & the Arts and Sleeping Bear Press were in their heyday (19982002), we received hundreds of submissions, but as we are brand new, we are still in the dozens. Fortunately, we are now listed in Poets & Writers, as a paying market for poetry, so maybe we will start getting hundreds again. The problem is, that as our budget is limited to how much I have left over after the mortgage and groceries, and to the astounding kindness of a few folks who have actuallly clicked on the Donate button. We are not, in any way affiliated with any funding source, we are not selling ads, at least not at this point. The ads you see are all gratis to promote the various enterprses of one Al Filreis and his amazing band of literary gueriellas who have turned the staid ivy league campus of U Penn, better know for its school of medicine and its Wharton School of Business into this hotbed ofall things cretive, and especially poetry. His Modern Poetry class taught on Coursera for free has changed my life, so I like to promote it and the rest of his cool stuff wherever I can. We do want to pay for poetry and we look forward to our tiny contribution to paying for work, but if you want to be part of BTS in the future, you double your chances if you select, please pay, but please consider for publication in "Free for All", too. The poetry that ends up on Free for All is not second class, not the "also rans." though sometimes we might publish something a little more experimental and not exactly to the editor's taste here, because the internet offers nearly unlimited space and because it doesnt stress our budget, but more often than not, they are of equal quality, but we have depleted our funds for the month.

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Wherever local is to you, please send us your local poetry reading venue, be it traditional stand up poetry, slam, spoken word, or even a quiet circle in a living room reading quaint verses. If you know of live poetry anywhere, send it to us and we will post it here!

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new steps will carry THE ME mind along untrodden paths N O L I M E T A N G E R E und nun… der punkt in der zeit ist eine welle die über DAS UNS spülte und DAS ICH bleibt überspült zurück die perlen von gedanken trocknen auf der haut da ist niemand da der mir zuhört geistesleere augen starren hinaus tonleere ohren suchen kontakt mit der erinnerung da unten da ist niemand da der mir zuhört DAS ICH füsse bleiben stehen als die tsunami über DAS UNS wogte und ist nun ein automat mit atem da ist niemand da der mir zuhört einsamkeit ist abenteuer der betäubenden art und da sind die DAS ICH augen die kontakt brauchen und da sind DAS ICH hände die Haut brauchen für zärtliche berührung und da ist das geräusch von schritten von DAS UNS füssen die nicht neben DAS ICH gehen die welle katapultierte aus dem plötzlichen jetzt schock wird ein nachbeben bringen von schmerz von leiden von ablehnen von verweigern von zorn von feilschen von dämmern von annehmen neue schritte werden den neuen DAS ICH geist entlang unbegangene wege führen hewesufa teresa bencinic hewesufa teresa bencinic was born in merano altoadige, italia and has a working knowledge of several languages for she lived in 11 countries.

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These poems, images or whatever are posted for your entertainment without compensation to, but with permission but the creator. Please do not reuse without permission of the creator, and without noting "Published by Better than Starbucks".



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Al Filreis at a poetry event at Kelly Writers House

Al Filreis, the BTS Interview (from page 1)

BTS: Where did you first become exposed to poetry? When did you fall in love with it? How did you end up teaching poetry? Al Filreis: My first significant engagement with poetry was at college. As a sophomore I fell under the big sway of Whitman. It was a juvenile attachment but turned me on. Later, as a senior writing an honors thesis, I worked closely with the language of William Carlos Williams’s Paterson. It struck me as remarkable that poetry—that which I had thought when in high school was about aerie-thin things and moods and flowers and fields—could be in form as gritty and particular as the streets and people of Paterson, New Jersey, a cluttered working-class diverse city I knew. The first thing I noticed, besides the fact that I could not comprehend anything anyone was saying, when I first watched a close reading of a poem (Emily Dickinson’s “I dwell in possibility”), was that you weren’t teaching, then, almost as soon as I realized that, I realized you were teaching in the most masterful way I had ever seen, but you did not use the lecture format. About twenty years ago you wrote that the lecture technique of teaching was ending. Sadly, I note that most of America, especially in the public elementary, middle and high schools have not gotten the message. By letting those of us who are stumbling into the mind blowing experience of realizing the Emily didn’t just write pretty nonsensical lines, or even the more mind exploding words of Gertrude Stein, bring ideas and questions instead having us in a furious scribble while the allknowing Al explained it to us.

BTS: Where did this concept come from? Al Filreis: I discovered this mode for myself in the first few years as a teacher. I found myself quickly bored by my own ideas, repeated each term. I very soon sought a way to find out what other people thought. Then experimental poetry: it was natural and logical that that kind of literary writing would best support my goal of finding out what other people thought, since, it could be said, no one really knows definitively what the poem means. Thus let’s all, individually, take a shot at it. BTS: And how did you have the courage to try it? Al Filreis: I don’t know if it took courage. But I know it was odd and marginal as a classroom activity. My students were afraid of it at first—all that responsibility. But soon they thrived. All people thrive when they sense they are expect to have a point of view. BTS: How did you realize the lecture was “dead”? Al Filreis: Not long after the first time I heard one! BTS: How did you resist the temptation to tell us what the all-knowing Al knows? Al Filreis: It is very very very difficult to keep myself from blurting out what I think. Very difficult. Once, years ago, I was so tempted in class to speak and keep speaking that I literally stuffed my mouth with a towel to keep from making a sound. It was dramatic but my students got the point and were excited by my commitment to letting them speak.

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How to Submit CONTACT email only to: [email protected] Please understand you MAY not receive payment, depending on our budget. If you DO NOT want to be published unless you are paid, please state that clearly! Featured Poem of the Month and it will pay a grand sum of $15.00. There will be other poems, usually one or two that are also paid. These poor souls will receive $5.00-$10.00 for the use of their poem here. The main short story pays $25.00. If you submit and we like it, but not as much as other two or three, we will publish it in the Free for All. If you do not want it published for free, make a note. You are not more likely to end up in the unpaid section because you are open to going there. It just means you have two shots at getting published. We would like to pay everybody, and if we ever get a grant or sell some ads, we will. (most of the ones here are courtesy ads) We do not keep copyright on any work by anyone in this publication. The exception being work published by the publisher, including interviews.

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Submit your poem or story in the body of your email. If you want to add it as a word or pdf you may, but unless the submission is in the body of the email, it will not be considered for publication. Along with your work of art, short story or poem, please send your return address and the name you would like listed for the work and the name you want to check made out to, if different from your creative name. We DO accept previously published work. If previously published, make sure you have the rights to it. Most places do not keep the rights to poetry. We do not, we retain the right to use them in anthologies or promotional material as we see fit in the future, but we do not retain any copyright to your work. Do tell us where it was previously published so we can credit them. If you self publish it or post it to an open group, we do not consider that published, so no mention need be made. We will not send rejections, we will send a notification of publication and will send you a notice when each edition is published. We pay a pittance for up to three poems each issue. We pay another pittance for a short story. If you have submitted work, and it has not been published within 60 days, consider it rejected.

Submit one poem, short story or image or up to one of each. If we like it, we will publish it. If you are a nobel laureate and we dont like it, we wont. Send one submission no more often than once every 6 months. The subject matter is up to you. We rarely publish long poems (over 50 lines). We rarely publish rhyming poems, though we do have a soft spot for limericks (and haiku, speaking of short poems). In fact, we have a soft spot for short poems. We will publish somewhat longer pieces on occasion, but nearly always under 200 words. We will publish any good short story, that we like. Best if it is between 900 - 1200 words. In both the poems and the short story, we arent prudes, but we arent looking for gratuitous sex, violence of crude language. We will accept any of these things if we feel they are important to the story. We will not publish anything that we think can be construed as hateful. That does not mean you cant tell the story of a terrible event, murder rape, beatings or whatever, but make sure you are not glorifying the evil. We love a good story. We love a great poem. Just make sure you dont give us a reason to not like it.


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