Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
January 1, 2016
Cover Art: Harvest by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submission are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
January 1, 2016
Cover Art: Harvest by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submission are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
When Bone Ships Sailed the Stars
When they approached the cliff
there was no turning back. It’s then
they carved a ship from the hollow bone
of a great sea serpent’s skull,
fashioned sails from its skin
before the creature rotted,
bleached by sun and water by the sea.
With each passing day, with tools
once forged in zero gravity, they worked,
etching runes and circuitry,
the rotting smell enough to make
the starving hurl their stomachs on the rocks.
At night in a cave, on an oak table
they unfolded all the stars in the milky way
and spread them like a map
lit by harnessed sun and candle light.
In them was a spirit not destroyed and they would gather
by the hot tide pools tempered by the sea,
and search late summer skies for answers,
make up stories for the questions that still remained.
Their solar barque was fitted with the tiny bones
of all the animals they loved, fingers from children
who’d died too young, and the long thin shanks
of the wasted ones who once had brought them home
in woven baskets and swaddling clothes.
They drew messages on the polished surface of the hull--
arc of the moon, a rising sun, studded holes punched
into a black night sky. They knew of ghost ships
that could appear out of a foggy night, or from around
a cluster of debris afloat and held in space.
They knew the danger waiting there. They knew
not to listen to the Sirens call that came from deep in time.
There were some who stayed, grounded, and wrote
of ancient floods and arks preserved on mountain tops,
but the carvers knew from beyond those histories,
that those stories were caught up too much with words.
And when they left—a great rising up of oars
and sail to catch the solar winds—with regret
they watched those who could not escape,
watched them fashion stone shapes of great ship hulls
in meadows as a message to draw them back,
watched them paint on rock walls with fingers dipped
in blood and berry juice in flame and shadows, and
watched them with mathematics lay out huge stones
as signs on the desert sand. Regret they knew
for their great bone ship was destined
only for the stars.
Previously published in Wrestling with Gods, Tesseracts 18, 2015
David Fraser lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, on Vancouver Island. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry, and in Tesseracts 18. He has published five collections of poetry and is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. His next collection, After All the Scissor Work is Done is forthcoming in March 2016, published by Leaf Press.
To a Street Girl I Saw
Your permed hair
and gaped mouth
still do I remember.
Between your dried lips
there were the brownish stained teeth
that never gleamed.
You had made your home in a grey corner
of the scruffy pavement
and a companion in a skeletal puppy.
The torn out frock with its receding thread
attached to the thin figure of sickly constitution.
The sputter of a coin or two
in your stained, discarded sardine tin
was your sole communication.
Eyes fixed upon you
pupils in them dashing up and down,
while the night gorilla hurried
amidst the street buildings,
your soft whimper heard by nobody.
At times you were beside a public dustbin
scavenging leftovers amidst a heap of cellophane.
Your still eyes, I know, bore an expression
and they revealed everything.
Indunil Madhusankha is from Sri Lanka
Dark Light
Mother, the moon is dancing
in the Courtyard of the Dead
- Lorca, Danza da lua en Santiago
Don’t let them tell you there’s no light.
Don’t walk the streets blind to what
earth permits.
Look about and you will see.
You will discover the moon watches over.
Moon in its hard cold carapace dropping
through the dark to lay soft hands
on the bodies of the dead,
so many.
Walk among them in their stone bouquets
and count the names of the ones you
spoke love to, together shared the wine
and cheese, the salted venison, long talks
through the nights as though death
held no purchase on the living.
Attend the painted stage where shadow
and torchlight weave their tapestry
of passion and oblivion, pas de deux
caught up in swirl and step of the
flamenco.
Here the night is long and thick,
seasoned with song and the guitar’s
sharp thrust and wail, sweat of
bodies rich in blood
and the journey’s pain
as now in such lush seeding
the dead and the living meet
below a moon’s stony gaze.
They count no numbers, recite
no texts.
They become one another
in the moment, the hard
unwritten moment.
Doug Bolling's poems have appeared in Water-Stone Review, Wallace Stevens Journal, Redactions, Poetry Pacific, Posit, Agave, English Journal, and Hamilton Stone Review among others. He has received several Pushcart nominations and a Best of the Net nomination and is working on a collection for early 2016 publication. He lives in the greater Chicago area.
God of the Gaps
The traffic god. The gods of euchre.
The goddess of sewing poorly.
You’re talking about the heaven next to heaven.
The afterlife that comes before death.
That small pension of billowing angels.
You’re talking about the minor gods of mooing
and their fall from the high table.
The godlettes of dreamy antics.
The owls-stealing-souls gods,
with seashells for eyes and shotgun-buttocks.
A very personal goddess,
the mote of love in her eye.
The webbed deities tarantulas worship.
The lipstick goddesses, mouthy and sore.
You’re talking veiled Valhallas and the hotels of hell.
Oh, you’re talking about blue-lipped cherubs
and the former Harpies’ bitchfest.
Or you’re just talking . . .
Gods made of greasy string and flowery stencils.
Composed of used tissues and tyrannical sadness.
Of bubbles and scars.
It’s their teethmarks on your candles.
Their flaxen hairs in our banana cream pie.
Their voices calling from the septic tank:
“Goodnight sweet world, if not goodbye.”
Because nothing dies.
No one is ever truly forgiven.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand poems published internationally. He has performed across Canada and the U.K., and been on a number of CDs, performing both music and poetry. Coming to poetry later in life he has received a Houseman Society special mention award and had a poem selected by Paul McCartney and Tim Rice for a collection honouring Buddy Holly.
A hundred word play was also chosen by the Royal Court Theatre in London for display. Bruce is still involved with music and is an avid songwriter, as well as editing poems of other writers and native folk tales and legends.
Enkidu
Bread and beer,
Emblems of the wild man’s arrival.
He scrapes his face with copper,
Then drinks and eats too much.
His stubble is wet with vomit.
Observe the Temple Tower
(Its facing bright like copper!);
Hear a story of the wild man
Tamed--four beats to the measure;
Observe a swollen corpse
Bobbing on the swollen river.
We seek to know
Not so much how it was
As how it felt:
Closer to the edge of iron, bronze, or copper.
Sun chapped,
Ice bit,
Sickness nested in the bowels,
Copper split the skin--
All inescapable, a given there.
We seek but stumble, safe in our studies;
No knowledge here,
This comfortable supposing;
Safe so far--
Distant for now the edge
That finishes and defines,
That makes us matter
For another story.
By Aaron Evan Baker
ablegal1960@hotmail.com
Aaron Evan Baker was born in Chicago, Illinois. He studied Ancient History at the University of Chicago, and has a Ph.D. in Classics from Brown University and J.D. from Northwestern University. He is an attorney and college teacher, and lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife, Stephanie, and their daughter, Laura.
Ten Thousand Tastebuds
At exactly 5 o’clock, the commuter flight takes off every day. It delivers stock brokers, lawyers, physicians, playwrights, and lovers
(with eyes dark as Moroccan water wells)
to the places where they take off their shoes and groan into the atmosphere. They will bend towards something that bends toward them and they will count their homespun
minutes one griefstrike at a time. What master holds a knife to these hearts and why are
these rooms filling up with emptiness like an audience of ghosts? Ice tinks in squat
tumblers and, when real people enter, they note a contagion in the air, a darkness of
overwhelming proportions. The noblesse oblige of the stock broker, the lawyer, the physician, the playwright, the lover
(with eyes dark as blood pudding)
will dine on crabmeat and ciabatta bread with olive oil and garlic followed by coffee and fudge cake crowned in thick brown frosting and, after that, Nonino or Drambuie and a
folding of newspapers. They will search for the bedrooms for what is haunting the bedrooms. This is it, you see. Behind the scissored movement of their eyelids
(wishing for water dark as ancient rains)
they know that to acknowledge this life is not enough. They dream of textures on the rebound, supple winds, hopeless raptures. After a while the sky shudders.
Awake they imagine the 8 O’clock commuter plane, on time, banking, bellowing,
bringing them back to the garden.
Martina Newberry’s books are Where It Goes, Learning By Rote, Not Untrue & Not Unkind, Running Like A Woman With Her Hair On Fire, Lima Beans And City Chicken: Memories Of The Open Hearth. Her work has been widely anthologized and published in the U.S. and abroad. She lives in her beloved Los Angeles with her husband, Brian, a photographer/web designer, and their fur-baby, Charlie T. Cat.
The traffic god. The gods of euchre.
The goddess of sewing poorly.
You’re talking about the heaven next to heaven.
The afterlife that comes before death.
That small pension of billowing angels.
You’re talking about the minor gods of mooing
and their fall from the high table.
The godlettes of dreamy antics.
The owls-stealing-souls gods,
with seashells for eyes and shotgun-buttocks.
A very personal goddess,
the mote of love in her eye.
The webbed deities tarantulas worship.
The lipstick goddesses, mouthy and sore.
You’re talking veiled Valhallas and the hotels of hell.
Oh, you’re talking about blue-lipped cherubs
and the former Harpies’ bitchfest.
Or you’re just talking . . .
Gods made of greasy string and flowery stencils.
Composed of used tissues and tyrannical sadness.
Of bubbles and scars.
It’s their teethmarks on your candles.
Their flaxen hairs in our banana cream pie.
Their voices calling from the septic tank:
“Goodnight sweet world, if not goodbye.”
Because nothing dies.
No one is ever truly forgiven.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand poems published internationally. He has performed across Canada and the U.K., and been on a number of CDs, performing both music and poetry. Coming to poetry later in life he has received a Houseman Society special mention award and had a poem selected by Paul McCartney and Tim Rice for a collection honouring Buddy Holly.
A hundred word play was also chosen by the Royal Court Theatre in London for display. Bruce is still involved with music and is an avid songwriter, as well as editing poems of other writers and native folk tales and legends.
Enkidu
Bread and beer,
Emblems of the wild man’s arrival.
He scrapes his face with copper,
Then drinks and eats too much.
His stubble is wet with vomit.
Observe the Temple Tower
(Its facing bright like copper!);
Hear a story of the wild man
Tamed--four beats to the measure;
Observe a swollen corpse
Bobbing on the swollen river.
We seek to know
Not so much how it was
As how it felt:
Closer to the edge of iron, bronze, or copper.
Sun chapped,
Ice bit,
Sickness nested in the bowels,
Copper split the skin--
All inescapable, a given there.
We seek but stumble, safe in our studies;
No knowledge here,
This comfortable supposing;
Safe so far--
Distant for now the edge
That finishes and defines,
That makes us matter
For another story.
By Aaron Evan Baker
ablegal1960@hotmail.com
Aaron Evan Baker was born in Chicago, Illinois. He studied Ancient History at the University of Chicago, and has a Ph.D. in Classics from Brown University and J.D. from Northwestern University. He is an attorney and college teacher, and lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife, Stephanie, and their daughter, Laura.
Ten Thousand Tastebuds
At exactly 5 o’clock, the commuter flight takes off every day. It delivers stock brokers, lawyers, physicians, playwrights, and lovers
(with eyes dark as Moroccan water wells)
to the places where they take off their shoes and groan into the atmosphere. They will bend towards something that bends toward them and they will count their homespun
minutes one griefstrike at a time. What master holds a knife to these hearts and why are
these rooms filling up with emptiness like an audience of ghosts? Ice tinks in squat
tumblers and, when real people enter, they note a contagion in the air, a darkness of
overwhelming proportions. The noblesse oblige of the stock broker, the lawyer, the physician, the playwright, the lover
(with eyes dark as blood pudding)
will dine on crabmeat and ciabatta bread with olive oil and garlic followed by coffee and fudge cake crowned in thick brown frosting and, after that, Nonino or Drambuie and a
folding of newspapers. They will search for the bedrooms for what is haunting the bedrooms. This is it, you see. Behind the scissored movement of their eyelids
(wishing for water dark as ancient rains)
they know that to acknowledge this life is not enough. They dream of textures on the rebound, supple winds, hopeless raptures. After a while the sky shudders.
Awake they imagine the 8 O’clock commuter plane, on time, banking, bellowing,
bringing them back to the garden.
Martina Newberry’s books are Where It Goes, Learning By Rote, Not Untrue & Not Unkind, Running Like A Woman With Her Hair On Fire, Lima Beans And City Chicken: Memories Of The Open Hearth. Her work has been widely anthologized and published in the U.S. and abroad. She lives in her beloved Los Angeles with her husband, Brian, a photographer/web designer, and their fur-baby, Charlie T. Cat.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
January 15, 2016
Cover Art: Woman by Kushal Poddar
Friday's Poems
January 15, 2016
Cover Art: Woman by Kushal Poddar
Early Morning Poem
Blue Jay chirps off-tune
Hip hopping like rap-gangster
Learning life’s rhythm
A.D. Winans is an award winning poet and the former editor and publsher of Second Coming Mahgazine/Press. He is the author of over 60 books and chapbooks of poetry and prose.
https://www.amazon.com/author/a.d.winans
Http://winansfansite.blogspot.com
http://ackerawards.com
Lamentation
Two swans gliding the inlet glass,
life-paired, unconscious of
time’s benediction or threat,
with silence a promise.
One swan now where the tide insists,
comes and goes as the water wills,
feeds where the shallows allow,
mute by the wrecked and empty nest
where a terrible silence presides.
If we hold to each other, assured somehow
that in knowing, we too may be known,
or in holding, be held
in loving, be loved,
let us hold nothing back from today,
for tomorrow that silence impends.
Derek Peach has been a teacher and traveler for almost 50 years and has recorded those experiences in poetry and prose along the way. He continues to experiment with verse and creative non-fiction in his retirement in Victoria and has been published in local periodicals. As well, he has self-published four books of poetry including the Canadian Stories 2013 award winner One Room & a Penknife, co-authored with his wife, Beverly. Although his writing has yet to make him a rich man, Derek realizes that neither have his hobbies of fly fishing and magic, nor his engagements with cats and local politics. Philosophical reflection and good scotch soothe the frustrated spirit.
a stigmata poem
keeps asking if i’m
sorry but won’t tell me
what it is i’ve done
won’t open the door
tells me stories about
when she was happy
about the sunfilled days
before we met
says it’s important for me
to admit that i’m wrong
says forgiveness is
all she can offer
John Sweet: new work now playing at Burning Word, Yellow Mama, The Ireview and Gyroscope Review, among others. latest collections include The Century Of Dreaming Monsters (2014 Lummox Prize winner) and A Nation Of Assholes W/ Guns (2015 Scars Publications).
Kushal Poddar, our cover artist, is widely published in several countries, prestigious anthologies. As an artist his arts were part of Academy of Fine art, Kolkata annual exhibition and were represented by Woven Press. He is presently living at Kolkata and writing poetry, fictions and scripts for short films when not engaged in his day job as a counsel/ lawyer in the High Court At Calcutta. He authored, The Circus Came To My Island and A Place For Your Ghost Animals. His forthcoming book is Knowing the Neighbourhood.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
January 22, 2016
Cover Art: Dancing with the Sun by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems
January 22, 2016
Cover Art: Dancing with the Sun by Patricia Carroll
Tantric Acquaintance
Did you know your name is written across the blank whiteness of my skin,
a quiet reminder of the magical entry you made into my life in that highway coffee shop
where our eyes linked as I marched behind a row of java hunters, while no one else existed on my mission to the table which held you reading that sexy novella
with the nude woman on the front, upright in your paternal prowess, black jacket and ribbon of kindness in gestures under your neckline as you stood upon
my arrival, a greeting rarely performed by a twenty-first century man. I figured
you were properly raised in the hills of France, goats in one hand and a bottle
of Burgundy in the other as without hesitation and probably without your knowing,
you quickly pierced and peaked my psyche in a way you could never take back
as without you knowing it, I jammed that moment into my designer purse
slung on that coffee shop chair and then while sipping java and staring
into your bubbly blue eyes wondering if you were the man of my dreams
or of the imagination I am accused of while all the passersby
remained powerless beside your six-foot frame as I questioned
if you really read the words in that book
while I dove into your arms, the ones which
tangled me in their desire within
the magical encounter in our very veneered world.
Diana Raab, Ph.D., is a memoirist, poet, blogger, psychologist, workshop leader, thought provoker, and award-winning author of 8 books and over 500 articles and published poems, including her most recent poetry collection entitled, LUST. Her passion and expertise is writing for healing, transformation and empowerment. She regularly blogs for Psychology Today, The Huffington Post, BrainSpeak, and PsychAlive. For more information, visit: Dianaraab.com
Twitter @dianaraab
https://www.facebook.com/DianaRaab.Author
close, sultry afternoon
a windmill daydreams of its
rain-bowed multi-winged hero
flitting, scrabbling dragonfly
ayaz daryl nielsen, veteran, former hospice nurse, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs) lives in Longmont, Colorado. Editor of bear creek haiku (26+ years/130+ issues) with poetry published worldwide and online at: bear creek haiku poetry, poems and info.
tanka set - on being a poet
read other poets
only that way can you see
what is left to be said
pen poised over paper
waiting for the right words
doing good
may be doing good
or may be harmful
but a good poem is
always a good poem
poets notice things
new cushions in others’ houses
first grapevine buds
the signs of friends aging
young spiders bursting their sac
continuing to write
rubbish about the cherry blossom’s
beauty
is fine for some haijin
I prefer to tell of its transience
Naomi Beth Wakan is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Nanaimo (2013-2016). She has published over 50 books of personal essays and poetry. Her most recent book, A Gabriola Notebook, is a homage to the small island on which she lives. Naomi is a member of The League of Canadian Poets, Haiku Canada and Tanka Canada. She has recently been made the Federation of BC writers inaugural Honorary Ambassador. Her husband is the sculptor, Elias Wakan.
www.naomiwakan.com
Did you know your name is written across the blank whiteness of my skin,
a quiet reminder of the magical entry you made into my life in that highway coffee shop
where our eyes linked as I marched behind a row of java hunters, while no one else existed on my mission to the table which held you reading that sexy novella
with the nude woman on the front, upright in your paternal prowess, black jacket and ribbon of kindness in gestures under your neckline as you stood upon
my arrival, a greeting rarely performed by a twenty-first century man. I figured
you were properly raised in the hills of France, goats in one hand and a bottle
of Burgundy in the other as without hesitation and probably without your knowing,
you quickly pierced and peaked my psyche in a way you could never take back
as without you knowing it, I jammed that moment into my designer purse
slung on that coffee shop chair and then while sipping java and staring
into your bubbly blue eyes wondering if you were the man of my dreams
or of the imagination I am accused of while all the passersby
remained powerless beside your six-foot frame as I questioned
if you really read the words in that book
while I dove into your arms, the ones which
tangled me in their desire within
the magical encounter in our very veneered world.
Diana Raab, Ph.D., is a memoirist, poet, blogger, psychologist, workshop leader, thought provoker, and award-winning author of 8 books and over 500 articles and published poems, including her most recent poetry collection entitled, LUST. Her passion and expertise is writing for healing, transformation and empowerment. She regularly blogs for Psychology Today, The Huffington Post, BrainSpeak, and PsychAlive. For more information, visit: Dianaraab.com
Twitter @dianaraab
https://www.facebook.com/DianaRaab.Author
close, sultry afternoon
a windmill daydreams of its
rain-bowed multi-winged hero
flitting, scrabbling dragonfly
ayaz daryl nielsen, veteran, former hospice nurse, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs) lives in Longmont, Colorado. Editor of bear creek haiku (26+ years/130+ issues) with poetry published worldwide and online at: bear creek haiku poetry, poems and info.
tanka set - on being a poet
read other poets
only that way can you see
what is left to be said
pen poised over paper
waiting for the right words
doing good
may be doing good
or may be harmful
but a good poem is
always a good poem
poets notice things
new cushions in others’ houses
first grapevine buds
the signs of friends aging
young spiders bursting their sac
continuing to write
rubbish about the cherry blossom’s
beauty
is fine for some haijin
I prefer to tell of its transience
Naomi Beth Wakan is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Nanaimo (2013-2016). She has published over 50 books of personal essays and poetry. Her most recent book, A Gabriola Notebook, is a homage to the small island on which she lives. Naomi is a member of The League of Canadian Poets, Haiku Canada and Tanka Canada. She has recently been made the Federation of BC writers inaugural Honorary Ambassador. Her husband is the sculptor, Elias Wakan.
www.naomiwakan.com
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
January 29, 2016
Cover Art: At the Window by Clinton Inman
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
January 29, 2016
Cover Art: At the Window by Clinton Inman
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Emily
Come away from that second-story window,
Emily. Lay your white dress across
the chair. I have read your poetry
and love you. Let us make this afternoon
a new life lasting long as we may live,
and you will know I love you for the beauty
of your soul and the way it fills my heart.
Copyright 2016 by James Robert Campbell, Midland, Texas
The Lottery Ticket
In the Harvard Square Starbuck's
he pops a prescription.
The coffee has long
gone cold.
A swirl of sour milk
pocks its surface.
His tickets
have been scraped
of any value.
And the Herald
crossword
is still
a puzzle.
Every hour or so
he asks me to watch his seat
and he comes up
with another ticket,
and looks out the window
at a boutique square
his wasteland now.
He's got the itch
so he scratches again
only to reveal
a dead-on-arrival number.
Another trip to the urinal
but hope springs eternal
and as he has done for years
he scratches
he scratches
at the
surface.
Doug Holder teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College and Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. For over 30 years he has run poetry groups for patients at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. He is the arts/editor for The Somerville Times, and the director of the Newton Free Library Poetry Series in Newton, Mass. His work has appeared in Poesy, Ratlle, Cafe Review, the new renaissance and many others.
Nelligan
He must be read
in a snow-filled spinney
beside an ice-thick stream
where all is cold, empty and still,
bird-abandoned deer-deserted
no twig trembling in its winter sheath.
Then will the cliffs become
his bristling deserted ramparts
with spectres massing, threatening,
ancient bells will shake to sound within you,
his fever possess you
with the bitter beauty of a god-riven
god-abandoned world,
trailing shreds of the forsaken
the mysteries of dissolution,
a savage view of a mad earth
filled with a passion you can never retain,
dare not interpret.
Katherine L. Gordon is a rural Ontario poet, publisher,
author, judge and reviewer. She has many books, chapbooks, anthologies and collaborations with fine contemporaries whose works inspire her.
Come away from that second-story window,
Emily. Lay your white dress across
the chair. I have read your poetry
and love you. Let us make this afternoon
a new life lasting long as we may live,
and you will know I love you for the beauty
of your soul and the way it fills my heart.
Copyright 2016 by James Robert Campbell, Midland, Texas
The Lottery Ticket
In the Harvard Square Starbuck's
he pops a prescription.
The coffee has long
gone cold.
A swirl of sour milk
pocks its surface.
His tickets
have been scraped
of any value.
And the Herald
crossword
is still
a puzzle.
Every hour or so
he asks me to watch his seat
and he comes up
with another ticket,
and looks out the window
at a boutique square
his wasteland now.
He's got the itch
so he scratches again
only to reveal
a dead-on-arrival number.
Another trip to the urinal
but hope springs eternal
and as he has done for years
he scratches
he scratches
at the
surface.
Doug Holder teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College and Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. For over 30 years he has run poetry groups for patients at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. He is the arts/editor for The Somerville Times, and the director of the Newton Free Library Poetry Series in Newton, Mass. His work has appeared in Poesy, Ratlle, Cafe Review, the new renaissance and many others.
Nelligan
He must be read
in a snow-filled spinney
beside an ice-thick stream
where all is cold, empty and still,
bird-abandoned deer-deserted
no twig trembling in its winter sheath.
Then will the cliffs become
his bristling deserted ramparts
with spectres massing, threatening,
ancient bells will shake to sound within you,
his fever possess you
with the bitter beauty of a god-riven
god-abandoned world,
trailing shreds of the forsaken
the mysteries of dissolution,
a savage view of a mad earth
filled with a passion you can never retain,
dare not interpret.
Katherine L. Gordon is a rural Ontario poet, publisher,
author, judge and reviewer. She has many books, chapbooks, anthologies and collaborations with fine contemporaries whose works inspire her.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
February 5, 2016
Cover Art: Watercolour by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
February 5, 2016
Cover Art: Watercolour by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA.
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Eve Speaks
Although just one snake is well-known
in that so-called paradise, actually
there were tons of them.
When we ran away, I was never so
happy. My feet no longer touching
swarms of mushy poison.
Fruit smelled to high heaven in Eden but
berries tasted yum yum good as we filled
our faces hurrying happily to the east.
Adam replies
She’s so beautiful. I would have
followed her to the ends of earth.
I am her captive then and now.
Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary zines such as Camel Saloon, Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Blueline, Missing of the Birds, and included in Bright Hills Press, Kind of A Hurricane Press and Poppy Road Review anthologies. She has been nominated three times for Best of the Net.
Sylvia Bar
A girl sets a candle in a glass holder on each table,
votives for the resolutely godless
nursing their drinks.
The couple at the next table have been married a long time.
His body turns away as he speaks to her,
You’re not listening Mary.
What I’m saying is…
Outside, a crow paces
between curb and car tires,
tossing dry leaves
with patient devotion.
The sky turns indigo,
fall has finally resolved to end it all with summer--
those amber afternoons, the street trees throwing
long shadows across the warm grass--
it shuffles towards winter
waiting
with its grey streaks, the threadbare housecoat
it sometimes wears all day,
its endless diatribes
of rain.
It’s not that I’m not listening,
it’s just that I’ve heard it a hundred times before.
The crow flies off to the next line of cars.
The woman deep in a thick novel
looks up briefly.
On the bay
deck lights burn
into the flooding darkness:
freighters like an abandoned armada
twisting on monstrous chains,
without intent, as if un-implicated
in the squander of commerce.
Riding high and empty, waiting
for us—all of us--
the drinkers, the out-of-towners,
the solitary readers
to deliver our cargo--
our hapless scavenging
and scuttled faiths,
our seasonal affective disorders--
to their holds.
Alison Watt is an artist and writer who lives on Protection Island, Nanaimo, BC. She has two books, The Last Island, a Naturalist's Sojourn on Triangle Island (Harbour Publishing) and a colletion of poems, Circadia, published (Pedlar Press.)
Visit her website www.alisonwatt.ca for more information.
Frau Goebbels: Berlin, 1945
Tenderly as a lion licking fresh
kill, she combs her children’s cow
licks down, bids them tidy bunks
and toys, they may choose one to
bring along, dress smartly now &
hurry, your father will be back any
minute. There’s no time left, none
at all for any of her customary in-
dividual admonishments before
she must administer the spoonfuls
that will lay them all down to sleep
forever. Helga, Holde, Helmut,
Heide, Hedda and Hilde. So pretty
to be raised like porkers, pink for
slaughter.
Activist poet, performer and playwright, Penn Kemp, M.Ed., is a League of Canadian Poets Life Member and winner of their 2015 Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Spoken Word Artist of the Year award. She is the inaugural Poet Laureate for London Ontario, with twenty-six books of poetry and drama published; six plays and ten CDs produced as well as award-winning videopoems. See www.pennkemp.wordpress.com and www.mytown.ca/pennkemp.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
February 12, 2016
Cover Art: By Patricia Carroll
www.patriciacarroll.ca
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
February 12, 2016
Cover Art: By Patricia Carroll
www.patriciacarroll.ca
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
God Made Navels
God made navels,
or mamas did,
connecting us
then disconnecting us
collecting lint or
roping into old age
God made mamas
and their navels too.
God made absolutely everything.
Louie Crew Clay, 79, an Alabama native, is an emeritus professor at Rutgers. He lives in East Orange, NJ, with Ernest Clay. They will celebrate their 42nd anniversary on February 2nd.
As of today, Clay has written 2,564 published manuscripts. The most recent is Letters from Samaria: The Prose and Poetry of Louie Crew Clay, with a foreword by Phyllis Tickle and an afterword by Bishop Mary Glasspool. NYC. Seabury Press, November 2015.
Clay been a fellow at the Ragdale Foundation and at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Crew. The University of Michigan collects Clay's papers. Reach him by email at louie.clay@comcast.net
Alternate Universe
If suddenly I were gone, a massive
heart attack
or abducted by aliens
would she miss our life together –
musicals and museums, Shakespeare and opera
or would she immediately find
another man on one of those
internet dating services, develop
a keen interest in boating, camping,
hiking and whitewater rafting
leaving me rolling over and over in my grave.
Michael Estabrook:
Retired now writing more poems and working more outside just noticed 2 Cooper’s hawks staked out in our yard or above it I should say which explains the disappearing chipmunks.
I Will Never Be Part Of Any Work Of Art Now
Vincent Van Gogh awoke to the sound of the crowing cock, and painted till the light of day began to fade, afraid he'd never capture that hue of blue or that subtle indigo shade.
When the artist
started a painting of me 'nue',
I was no model, and didn't know
what I should do.
So I folded clothes
and hose,and simply
set them upon the chair by the head
of the bed.
Then lay down,
taking up a supine pose
upon the eiderdown
of rich ruby red.
At first I browsed then,
lulled by the sound of rain
on the window pane,
I dozed.
But Vincent, never satisfied with his work,
was irked,
and in a rush,
took up his killing brush
and in a swipe, or two,
wipes me
from his latest work of art,
leaving but the part
that shows a sparse bare room
that enfolds
and holds
him in it's confines
like a womb.
Anne Séité was born in the North East of England at the beginning of World War Two, but has lived very near the sea in Western France since her marriage in 1967. In 2010 she wrote her first poem since her school days , and now posts poems and haiku regularly with constant encouragement from Sue Littleton, a talented writer, who is a huge fan of Ascent Aspirations Magazine.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
February 19, 2016
Cover Art: Searching By Patricia Carroll
www.patriciacarroll.ca
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
February 19, 2016
Cover Art: Searching By Patricia Carroll
www.patriciacarroll.ca
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Crows
They go unnoticed overhead
Above the supermarket malls and cities
Countryside
Suburban fields and meadows
Watching
Airborne gangs dressed in black feather jackets
Fearless wise guys with a raucous comment
For the goings on below.
Bruce Louis Dodson is an American expat living in Borlänge, Sweden, where he practices photography and writes fiction and poetry fifty-one weeks a year. The remaining week is spent in Amsterdam where he attempts to escape reality. Some of his most recent work has appeared in: Pirene’s Fountain, Kind of a Hurricane Press, Buffalo Almanac, Vine Leaves.
http://brucelouisdodson.wordpress.com
5 Scifaiku
capsule in the sand
CHINA almost scoured away
still a star or two
*
every thousand years
we inspect the planet Earth
not recovered yet
*
I cannot recall
what the saucer people said
after don't forget
*
prime numbers looping
endlessly a signal once
we were not alone
*
Earth too small for us
we pursue the luxury
of infinity
Anna Sykora has been an attorney in NYC and teacher of English in Germany, where she resides with her patient husband and three enormous cats. To date she has placed 388 poems and 142 stories in the small press. Writing is her joy...
femme fatale
“innumerable ingenues in immemorable films”
“how often they undressed me, those stranger eyes”
“for so many years I was good enough to eat”
“man is the criminal that uncovers fault”
“you must have propped his eyelids with a nail”
“don’t be cruel, dog”
“admit the straight skinny”
“love’s a further departure”
“twisting blood from an orange”
“the dogs are fierce & wild : dried ferns litter the floor”
“dead? they told you I was dead? oh, saggy prison of flesh!”
“in the teeth of it, days count off as squared frames of celluloid”
“when the bright light dies, who misses you?”
Stan Rogal’s work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US and Europe, including: Rampike, Grain, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse... The author of 19 books: 4 novels, 4 story and 11 poetry collections with a new novel coming out in May 2016. He is also a produced playwright.
They go unnoticed overhead
Above the supermarket malls and cities
Countryside
Suburban fields and meadows
Watching
Airborne gangs dressed in black feather jackets
Fearless wise guys with a raucous comment
For the goings on below.
Bruce Louis Dodson is an American expat living in Borlänge, Sweden, where he practices photography and writes fiction and poetry fifty-one weeks a year. The remaining week is spent in Amsterdam where he attempts to escape reality. Some of his most recent work has appeared in: Pirene’s Fountain, Kind of a Hurricane Press, Buffalo Almanac, Vine Leaves.
http://brucelouisdodson.wordpress.com
5 Scifaiku
capsule in the sand
CHINA almost scoured away
still a star or two
*
every thousand years
we inspect the planet Earth
not recovered yet
*
I cannot recall
what the saucer people said
after don't forget
*
prime numbers looping
endlessly a signal once
we were not alone
*
Earth too small for us
we pursue the luxury
of infinity
Anna Sykora has been an attorney in NYC and teacher of English in Germany, where she resides with her patient husband and three enormous cats. To date she has placed 388 poems and 142 stories in the small press. Writing is her joy...
femme fatale
“innumerable ingenues in immemorable films”
“how often they undressed me, those stranger eyes”
“for so many years I was good enough to eat”
“man is the criminal that uncovers fault”
“you must have propped his eyelids with a nail”
“don’t be cruel, dog”
“admit the straight skinny”
“love’s a further departure”
“twisting blood from an orange”
“the dogs are fierce & wild : dried ferns litter the floor”
“dead? they told you I was dead? oh, saggy prison of flesh!”
“in the teeth of it, days count off as squared frames of celluloid”
“when the bright light dies, who misses you?”
Stan Rogal’s work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US and Europe, including: Rampike, Grain, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse... The author of 19 books: 4 novels, 4 story and 11 poetry collections with a new novel coming out in May 2016. He is also a produced playwright.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
February 26, 2016
Cover Art: Mountains By Patricia Carroll
www.patriciacarroll.ca
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
February 26, 2016
Cover Art: Mountains By Patricia Carroll
www.patriciacarroll.ca
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
October Snow
There was an ocean here once
where this October snow
tumbles and melts on the black road.
Megladon swam in the deeps
devouring whale-pups, crushing
their bones into fine, white sand.
It was hot then and wet; ferns
grew a thousand feet into cloud
swirling sky. I am reading about this
in the library, which is built of stone
quarried from bones of an ancient earth.
I breathe particles of a million dead
species, I am made of mud. I am
water and dust, a bowlful of elements
spit into space by the nuclear furnace of stars.
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared worldwide, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Expound, The Muse: India, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Voices Israel, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize (including three in 2015). Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press) and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein (Kind of a Hurricane Press). His new chapbook, The Li Bo Poems, is forthcoming from Flutter Press.
buds
luk up eyes vast yull c a flare
init u b an ass spyrin prformair
stage rite u tumblout right ur mass
say sum sass b fore u stumblout
off ess-zag w/o rest
ragin jest d fryin o d fag
sum dam rout no mor 2 do
sep shout out zis buds 4 u
This poem was written, as if by Riddley Walker, as a response to (and interpretation of) the poem BODY by American poet James Merrill. Riddley Walker is the name of the main character in the book of the same name by Russell Hoban. Riddley lives in a post-apocalyptic Britain and writes in a “unique idiolect” about his “unriddling” of “the puzzles of life and history.”
Roy Adams is a professor emeritus from McMaster University who has written extensively about labour and human rights in both professional journals and popular magazines (such as Canadian Dimension) and newspapers (The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Hamilton Spectator). In recent years he has focused on writing poetry, memoir and short stories publishing in Tower Poetry, Verse Afire, the annual anthology The Bannister, The book No Such Thing as a Free Ride and the internet publication, Quick Brown Fox.
Log Cutting, Queen Ant Burial
I have brought these trees
almost to a final dimension,
the two-brick span of my flue.
And from the shatter
of one oak wedge
I spilled a home
of carpenter ants
thick as blueberry pie.
Black-guard legionnaires,
in a frenzy of revolutions,
merry-go-rounded
about the queen.
She was the eye
of a small universe,
a little storm;
thick as my thumb,
she trailed out
two gossamer capes
like gauze hackles
of a trout fly.
I shoveled her,
her lovers, her sons,
her terrorist henchmen,
into a green bag.
Underfoot at the town dump
they start out again,
tunneling up through
a plastic vault,
looking for the root
of a home, a simple
cavernous boudoir
for a dark progenitor.
---
Tom Sheehan has published 22 books and has poems/fiction in Ocean Magazine, Rosebud, Linnet’s Wings, Serving House Journal, Eclectica, Copperfield Review, La Joie Magazine, Soundings East, Vermont Literary Review, Literary Orphans, Indiana Voices Journal, Frontier Tales, Western Online Magazine, Provo Canyon Review, 3 AM Magazine, Vine Leaves Journal, Nazar Look, Eastlit, Rope & Wire Magazine, The Literary Yard, KYSO Journal, Green Silk Journal, Fiction on the Web, The Path, Faith-Hope and Fiction, The Cenacle, etc. He has 30 Pushcart nominations, and five Best of the Net nominations (and one winner) and awards from Nazar Look for 2012- 2015.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
March 4, 2016
Cover Art: by Marianic and Jean-Pierre Parra
http://www.parra-art.com
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
March 4, 2016
Cover Art: by Marianic and Jean-Pierre Parra
http://www.parra-art.com
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Silence unguarded
you force
tamed by sleep that leaves
the cry
into the dust of death
Marianic and Jean-Pierre Parra
http://www.parra-art.com
Stomping Gratitude
Gratitude
A new day
Seagulls and Crows
Stomping on my roof
A hummingbird
The size of
The leaves of the tree
It is in
Resting
Robin Louise Pile has returned to Nanaimo after teaching overseas for over 10 years. She has edited a novel and short stories for Proverse Publishers Hong Kong but has not yet published anything she has written.
She has lived on the west coast for years and was raised a suburban child of Toronto, with lots of wilderness time north of Toronto.
Still Uneven, This Dirt
Still uneven, this dirt
was built from leftovers
that never dry, smoothed
then fills your chest
with salt, used again
as shoreline and thirst
though you lower your lips
for the finishing touch
not yet swallowed in anger
--what you bury is the Earth
this time in pieces, unsure
where the mouth goes
once made into a rain
already dust
that doesn’t bother anymore.
Simon Perchik’s poetry has also appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker and elsewhere.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
March 11, 2016
Cover Art: by Clinton Inman
See Bio at bottom of he page.
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Clinton Inman has an interesting background which adds to the depth of his paintings. He currently teaches drawing to seniors in an art league, having recently retired from Lennard High School, and has been an educator all his life. Born in Walton-on-Thames, England and graduated from San Diego Satate University, Clinton brings his varied experiences to his beautiful watercolors. A Renaissance man, Clinton is multi-talented in painting, drawing, poetry and is also a classical pianist. His paintings have appeared in many magazines and his work is often featured on covers of art and poetry magazines. His poems have been published in magazines and internet publications. Currently Clinton lives in Tampa Bay area with his wife, Elba.
I Have No Allegiance
Heart under hand, hand under heart
I don’t know what they want from me.
I was forced into those schools
with their flags and red brick
principal’s offices and special ed. class.
They wanted something I could not bleed.
My heart beat Red Cloud and Crazy Horse
my heroes didn’t wear shirts and shoes
not bound up in clothing
I was all hair in the wind
back seat free as bare horse back
cantering through fields
standing in the back of pick up trucks
leaves from trees raining down on my face
my church in the green.
I have no allegiance
don’t know what they want from me.
I was eight when we drove south
got an Indian doll at the roadside stand
In the back seat of the white station wagon
the white wale we inherited from Grandpa
I learned the word reservation.
A word like projects and penitentiary
I wondered what are they reserving.
What is the project they work on.
I could not understand. I would not.
My stubborn hands on the doll’s perfect black hair,
brown skin, buckskin dress.
My favorite T shirt was orange,
Red Cloud warrior arms raised to the sky.
And I never pledged allegiance
to the country
that took away my heroes.
Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra is a two-time Pushcart nominee and Literary Death Match winner. She has published online and in many print magazines, such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, Chiron Review, Stone Boat Review, and Great Weather For Media. A full-length book of poetry Wet Reckless was released to good review from Manic D Press May 2014. In the past year she authored Bad Sandy (Lucky Bastard Press), Pearl Tongue (Be About It Press), The Water Wars (Pedestrian Poets Series), On Sunday, A Finch (Nomadic Press), and most recently Armadillo Heart (Paper Press) with MK Chavez.
From a Library Window, Swansea.
Squint at the sun, low overhead the sea
has changed to sepia-tones to signify
day’s close. Lone negatives of walkers fade.
The last dog runs from seagull-littered waves
that wash the graves of rag worms lately dug.
Her quietude disturbed, a man sits near,
his laptop open. Open-mouthed he sighs
and sighs and presses keys, his mobile beeps,
he interrupts her flow, her pen and brain
are idle now, her idyll truly spent.
She spins her chair away from this intrude
of space, to watch the evening cyclists speed
along and joggers pace each other round
the track. She smacks books down defiantly
before she loudly packs her things and leaves.
Wendy Holborow was born in South Wales, UK, but lived in Greece for fourteen years where she founded and co-edited Poetry Greece. She has won prizes for short stories and poetry some of which have appeared in QWF, Agenda, Envoi, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Roundyhouse, and many others internationally. She is currently studying for a Masters in Creative Writing at Swansea University. Poetry Salzburg have recently published her pamphlet After the Silent Phone Call (2015). She is a member of the Literature Wales Writers of Wales database.
Jazzy
You were jazzy,
tempered drummer's pitter-patter
on Transatlantic window screen,
knocking to-and-fro on wingspan
bathing in blue cabin light, taking on
a carcinogenic haloing.
You were off-trilling,
when I something flourish
in primes of stolen letting,
leaving pound pints to their task,
the dancehalls in North of England.
You were balladeering,
when could have passed,
nothing more than train announcements'
placeless drawl atop bleached clatter.
When could not have been but
falling's immortal melody in lullaby:
you were.
Carter Vance is a student and aspiring poet originally from Cobourg, Ontario, currently studying in the Social Work program at Algoma University in Sault Ste Marie. His work has appeared in such publications as The Baird's Tale, (parenthetical) and F(r)iction. He received an Honourable Mention from Contemporary Verse 2's Young Buck Poetry Awards in 2015. His work also appears on his personal blog Comment is Welcome (commentiswelcome.blogspot.com).
Clinton Inman has an interesting background which adds to the depth of his paintings. He currently teaches drawing to seniors in an art league, having recently retired from Lennard High School, and has been an educator all his life. Born in Walton-on-Thames, England and graduated from San Diego Satate University, Clinton brings his varied experiences to his beautiful watercolors. A Renaissance man, Clinton is multi-talented in painting, drawing, poetry and is also a classical pianist. His paintings have appeared in many magazines and his work is often featured on covers of art and poetry magazines. His poems have been published in magazines and internet publications. Currently Clinton lives in Tampa Bay area with his wife, Elba.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
March 18, 2016
Cover Art: The Broken Column by Frida Kahlo
Courtesy of The Frida Kahlo Foundation
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
March 18, 2016
Cover Art: The Broken Column by Frida Kahlo
Courtesy of The Frida Kahlo Foundation
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Chimera
For Frida Khalo who without Diego Rivera was a chimera
without a path even when she was walking her own steps.
Phantoming the pain
in each rib
in the long scar
that touches your small sensual waist
your breast so round like a lemon
juicy like a ripe orange
ready to splash its nectar, a lace of rainbows
for that man, Diego Rivera
the one who loved you in his mandragora way
the one who protected you with everything
from everything and before everything
the one who played you . . . his cithara
but scattered his fluids among open legs
of beautiful manikins for whom he let himself be stolen.
And you crying with no cry
tears fell
like morning drizzle
dawning
like volcanic lava
that explodes then retracts
another time another time
even once more.
You and he together
painters, fusion of two and more.
You and he separated
spouses, lovers of others, reclusive carnivores
in the silence of souls that do not feel flesh that does not see.
You and he intermeshed
creators, spiders of colored webs.
And you living each instant
to its end.
Frida, torrent of shooting stars:
while falling
you rise to the sky.
Beatriz Alba Del Rio: bilingual poet, lawyer, mediator, member of the New England Poetry Club. Beatriz’ awards: 1st Prize 2002 Octavio Paz International Poetry Contest, 3rd Prize 2003 Pablo Neruda International Poetry Contest, 2004 1ST Prize Cambridge Poetry Award ( “Masks over masks” category “female erotic poem”) and finalist with poem “Black Crows” category “female love poem” and the 2007 3rd Prize New England Poetry Club Diana Der-Hovanessian Translation Award. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies and literary magazines. Beatriz’ inspiring muses are Chejov, Borges, Paz, Neruda, Gelman, Jorie Graham, Franz Wright. Beatriz’ poetry guru is Ottone Riccio/Tom Daley is his successor. Her contemporary poets ingnite Beatriz’ light and darkness to write. Beatriz believes in the oneness of us all. badelrio@comcast.net
Excerpts from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations: Twenty-First Century Edition
V.32
"Why do unskilled and ignorant souls
disturb him who has skill and knowledge?"
Because of mistaken notions about equality
VI.13
"outward show is a wonderful perverter of reason"
and thus
a wonderful enabler of advertising
VI.21
"he is injured who abides
in his error and ignorance"
and
he does not even realize that,
while in this state,
he can infect others
Michael Ceraolo is a 58-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had one full-length book, Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press) and a few shorter-length books published, plus numerous magazine publications.
A Murder Of Equals
For now, she has not
taken a knife to his sleeping body,
stabbed him through the eye.
That mass of fat
and lumbering anger
sinks deep into
the warm palm of the mattress
as if nothing can harm him.
She could slice off his nose.
Or his ears. Or the lips.
Or, better yet,
dispatch him with one
thrust of a blade
into what passes for a heart.
And she has thought about it
many a time.
While the days see her friendless,
by night, she and the handle and
the blade have become quite close.
But she holds off. And why not.
She enjoys the way the power
passes from his muscle
into her imagination
once he turns off the light
and his eye-lids collapse.
She sits in the kitchen
fondling the knife.
But he has never hit me,
she tells herself.
At least, only with words.
So I won't kill the asshole.
At least, only with thoughts.
His anger wounds him deeply.
Her need for revenge is a bruise
that won't heal. Each gets in the way
of the weapons they brandish.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and the anthology, No Achilles with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag and Spoon River Poetry Review
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
March 25 , 2016
Cover Art:
The World of Norman Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
March 25 , 2016
Cover Art:
The World of Norman Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Country Song
You wanted a life less angry.
But the blue-collar job got you the big screen TV
and a loud diesel truck to mask your insecurity.
You wanted the plastic surgery celebrity wife.
Instead you got the
white trash Pandora
who wanted a bigger ring
and a massive mortgage house
to fill with bigger things.
You both lived the dream attainable through loopholed credit lines.
This is where you submit to your fate.
So follow the example you learned from the men in your life:
lock the kids in their room
keep the wife at home
turn the twangy music up
drink the light beer
drive your brand new truck
down a windy country road
forget for a second about the life you took on but couldn’t afford
hate your job
and don’t forget
to keep the family American.
James Prenatt is a Baltimore-based writer who likes art-house movies and bad puns.
At Night in the Shaker Village
Ghosts light the whale oil lamps,
light the candles
in the meeting hall,
for the brothers
and the sisters,
segregated by sex;
even married they
never touch
though their spirits
desire
all those nights they are
compelled to dance
Alan Catlin has been publishing since the days when mimeos reigned supreme. His latest full length book is Last Man Standing from lummox Press. Forthcoming, American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press. He is poetry editor of misfitmagazine.net.
A Haibun
I gaze at her and wonder sadly at a fate so cruel that a creature so fair should flutter into a prison of cement and glass, to expire far from the cool aura of dew-laden plants that would have eased her thirst and her slow dying. The next morning I find her stiff and beautiful in death. I turn her over tenderly and study the pale yellow counter-markings, stippled with black, a design of blue and orange across the smaller set of wings, equally exquisite in reverse.
unchanged by death’s throes
black marked yellow wings spread wide
sleeping beauty rests
Sue Littleton
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
April 1 , 2016
Cover Art: Figure by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
April 1 , 2016
Cover Art: Figure by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
You Carry Your Flab
chained
a scarlet F on your chest
cause some guy
pointed at you
coming out of the movie theater
squinting in the sudden light
brushing your popcorn littered shirt
Daaaamn she got fat
says this guy
who knows your ex boyfriend
you did not ask for this
to stick with you
in your sucked belly
in your plate glass reflection
causing you to run into parking meters
watching your chunky image mirrored
or when another ex
tried to convince you it wasn’t his fault
the sex was so bad (minute man)
it was just that he wasn’t used to being with
someone soooo big
This is piled in your hurt locker
of mom comments
her reports on who lost weight
how great they look
she believes all problems solved
thinner
When you are naked under adoring eyes
when you get naked milk to thirst
it mutes those voices
rubs them salve on old scar
your thickness revealed
and squeezed in a way
that says I have waited all my life
to deserve as much woman as this.
Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra is a two-time Pushcart nominee and Literary Death Match winner. She has published online and in many print magazines, such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, Chiron Review, Stone Boat Review, and Great Weather For Media. A full-length book of poetry Wet Reckless was released to good review from Manic D Press May 2014. In the past year she authored Bad Sandy (Lucky Bastard Press), Pearl Tongue (Be About It Press), The Water Wars (Pedestrian Poets Series), On Sunday, A Finch (Nomadic Press), and most recently Armadillo Heart (Paper Press) with MK Chavez.
Zen Christian Moment at the Sikh Temple
In the temple I try to meditate
and chase a thousand stray dogs
through a black spruce forest
starting with the phone bill
and ending with the chill draft
falling on my neck.
Opening my eyes I see
the mechanic’s son
his hair bunned into a black stocking.
On the hard swept carpet he drives
a tiny tow truck around the cross-legged people,
his face relaxed but rapt,
one-pointed on the task at hand.
In his mind he steers calmly
through heavy snow.
His lips deliver his motor’s mantra,
a steady “brrrrrrrrm-brrrrrrrrrm”
as one by one he finds the stalled cars:
a minivan half buried in the mall parking lot,
an SUV dead at the liquor store,
a pickup out of gas
at a rest stop on the highway.
Patient as a saint,
he hooks a tiny silver chain
onto their bumpers
and drags them into a circle
at his father’s feet,
And his father seeing all
the tiny cars waiting to be fixed
touches his son’s cheek with such love
I feel I would have lived my entire life
as an orphan
sleeping in the back seat
of an abandoned limousine
if not for the father
next to me now
so close
I can feel him
breathing.
Derek Hanebury is a Vancouver Island writer who fell through the language of an
e.e. cummings poem back in 1981 and thankfully never recovered.
Ciudad De Los Angeles Caidos
Abandoned spirits crowd these streets.
They wander off to the destinations
they missed while alive. They cross lawns
and parking lots like stray thoughts.
They’ll not help you pick the winning numbers,
nor guide you to your life’s work.
They wander off to the destinations
they missed while alive. Their tears are
traces of obsidian, nearly invisible at night
except for the glints they gather
from the stars. They emerge from the
trickle of water in the Los Angeles river,
whisper among themselves
in all the city’s languages. They are shadows
and eyes, blown hair, mindless hands.
See how they hunger for human attention, touch?
You can’t call them back. They were never
here. They cross the plaza near Union Station.
The broken tiles, bits of grass and old wood
speak of friends lost, years lost.
They smell the trains and buses.
The nighttime, says, “Go back,”
and they do They wander back,
turn away from the destinations
lambent with time’s pearl grain.
Martina Newberry’s books are Where It Goes, Learning By Rote, Not Untrue & Not Unkind, Running Like A Woman With Her Hair On Fire, Lima Beans And City Chicken: Memories Of The Open Hearth. Her work has been widely anthologized and published in the U.S. and abroad. She lives in her beloved Los Angeles with her husband, Brian, a photographer/web designer, and their fur-baby, Charlie T. Cat.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
April 8 , 2016
Cover Art: Hello by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
April 8 , 2016
Cover Art: Hello by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
renting amens without saddles
pray for the transient lovers
they never stay in one heart for very long
always that urge to run
to find a new town to cry in
they missed while alive. The sun comes
up and their silhouettes are brushed,
or laugh in
and a significant other willing
to let them move in with a temporary lease
on life's affections
pray for the transient lovers
surprisingly settled for emotional nomads
they take a drag on the Camel
and then ride off to the sands of change
emptying their canteens of emotion,
then dying of a thirst for acceptance.
Jacob Erin-cilberto, originally from Bronx, NY, now resides in Carbondale, Illinois. erin-cilberto has been writing and publishing poetry since 1970. He currently teaches at John A. Logan and Shawnee Community colleges in Southern Illinois.
His work has appeared in numerous small magazines and journals including: Café Review, Skyline Magazine, Hudson View, Wind Journal, Pegasus, Parnassus and others. erin-cilberto also writes reviews of poetry books for Chiron Review, Skyline Review, Birchbrook Press and others. He has reviewed books by B.Z Niditch, Michael Miller, Barry Wallenstein, Marcus Rome, musician Tom MacLear and others. Erin-cilberto’s latest book demolitions and reconstructions is now available through Water Forest Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. His previous three books an Abstract Waltz, Used Lanterns and Intersection Blues are also available through Water Forest Press Barnes, Noble.com and Amazon.com as well as Goodreads. erin-cilberto has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry in 2006-2007-2008 and again in 2010. He teaches poetry workshops for Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
The Light We All Carry
That morning when I enter the room
your eyes hide behind a pallor of gloom.
Grim-jawed, you ask Was there enough coffee?
then switch off the TV with the remote.
I sit on the chair by the dresser,
notice the red cardinal on the cup beside you,
the one I gave you for Christmas just weeks before.
Up early from a restless sleep, you tell me,
thoughts spinning about boxes to be cleared,
the second eye operation,
how you’ll manage once I’m gone.
Yet in the telling, knots untangle
like dark birds let loose from their small cage.
Your face softens, a glint returns to your eyes
and when we hug, the warmth
of your shoulders against mine offers
the unexpected: a knowing you’ve found
a bough from the light we all carry.
Previously published in The Blue Halo, Leaf Press, 2014
Lorraine Gane is a poet, writer, teacher, and editor. She is the author of Even the Slightest Touch Thunders on My Skin (Black Moss Press, 2002), The Blue Halo (Leaf Press, 2014), and The Way the Light Enters (Black Moss Press, 2014). Lorraine is working on a new collection of poems and a memoir, as well as completing a book on writing. She mentors writers through workshops, online courses, coaching, and manuscript editing. www.lorrainegane.com.
(What We Talk About When) We’re Not Talking About Rice
1.
I forgot to put the rice in the fridge again.
Some people say six hours out of the fridge is max.
But people are saying more ominous things about leaving rice out.
Being afraid to eat it makes me want to give it away and not waste it.
This is another problem for me to deal with.
Is it identifying information to say I am not in the state you are in?
Well, I would like you to come get the rice.
How do I do that without giving you my address?
2.
I am afraid to eat your rice.
What if it's too much rice?
What if you packed it down deceptively, so it looks like less rice, when you know it is more rice than I eat?
I will need to bring my delicate little scale, and weigh the rice, grain by grain.
Also, I am afraid you already did this, and put your fingers on each grain of rice, grain by grain, and counted out the heavy grains, more grains than I would ever eat, and mashed them down, so when I show up and say "let me see the rice," you would show me and it would look like almost no rice.
I only eat almost no rice.
I'm trying to trust you, but you probably have too much rice.
I'll only take all your rice if you guarantee it makes me sick when I eat it.
Also, quit looking at me—I have no time to decide if your eyes are making decisions for me.
But they are bigger than my little stomach.
Aria Riding is a name once used by my sister. I started using it, in her memory. I then started using the name to help publish the stories of friends of mine who burned too brightly, who could not grind themselves into the submissions process. Aria Riding is now the invisible face of several writers of different genders, persuasions, mental health states, and ethnic backgrounds who have become one, as a solidarity project. Through this experiment, she eclipses the blind spots of a single perspective, becomes the author of a more complete world view. Recent publications include Gargoyle Magazine, Atticus Books, The Adirondack Review.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
April 15 , 2016
Cover Art: Sun Through Wisteria by Barbara Ruth
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
April 15 , 2016
Cover Art: Sun Through Wisteria by Barbara Ruth
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
A Dedicated Trail
I want to walk
a dedicated trail.
Not a street
not a congested artery
not a former passage overgrown by brambles
not a path that disappears.
The movement of my body
by my feet
such accomplishment
such privilege.
I do not assume
these feet will do tomorrow
what they can do today.
May I walk with intention
not to know where I’ll end up
but to know that I am present
in this body
a dedicated walker
on her dedicated trail.
Barbara Ruth dances with precarious grace in Silicon Valley, a location in which she often feels like a Luddite and dreams of being a saboteur. But where to throw the shoes to halt the startups that contribute to Bay Area homelessness, including her own? When in doubt (and she is usually doubting something) she writes. Her work is widely anthologized and appears in QDA: Queer Disability Anthology; Tales Of Our Lives: Fork In the Road; Barking Sycamores Anthology; The Spoon Knife Reader; Biting the Bullet: Essays By Women Of Courage; Lunessence: a Devotional For Selene; Les Cabinets Des Polytheistes and Garland Of the Goddess.
First Fish
From the boat dock
my seven-year-old daughter,
barefoot in a tee shirt and shorts,
casts a line into the water
and catches her first fish.
I net the fish,
and put it, flopping,
into our pail filled with water.
She says, “What if
it’s some mommy fish’s daughter?”
and asks me if I feel guilty.
She throws her hands in the air
and shakes her head.
I turn to our bait bucket
and look back, smiling,
in time to see her grab the fish
and throw it back.
Mel Goldberg taught literature and writing in California, Illinois, Arizona and was selected as a Fulbright Exchange Teacher to teach at Stanground College in Cambridgeshire, England. He quit his teaching position and moved to Sedona, Arizona, to complete writing his first novel. There he also met his life partner, professional artist, Bev Kephart They bought a small motor home and traveled throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico for seven years, working at RV parks. They chose to settle village of Ajijic, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, and join the small ex-pat artist and writing community. Mel’s writing has been published on line and in print in the United Kingdom, United States, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia.
Nights It Was Too Hot to Stay in the Apartment
We drove to the lake, then stopped
at my grandmother’s. The grown ups
sat in the screened porch on wicker
or the glider whispering above the
clink of ice in wet glass. Spirea and
yellow roses circled the earth under
stars. A silver apple moon. Bored
and still sweaty, my sister and I
wanted to sleep out on the lawn
and dragged out our uncle’s army
blankets and chairs for a tent. We
wanted the stars on our skin, the
small green apples to hang over
the blanket to protect us from bats.
From the straw mats, peonies glowed
like planets and if there was a breeze,
it was roses and sweat. I wanted
our white cats under the olive green
with us, their tongues snapping up
moths and whatever buzzed thru the
clover. For an hour the porch
seemed miles away until itchy with
bug bites and feeling our shirts fill
with night air, my hair grow curlier,
our mother came to fold up the blankets
and chairs and I wished I was old
enough to stay alone until dawn or
small enough to be scooped up, asleep
in arms that would carry me up the
still hot apartment stairs and into
sheets I wouldn’t know were still
warm until morning
Lyn Lifshin
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
April 22 , 2016
Cover Art: Field of Flowers by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
April 22 , 2016
Cover Art: Field of Flowers by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Anew Again
The lawns roll up their snow upholstered sleeves,
Exposing driveway tar, that black harbinger of spring.
Birds dare sing the frosted morning to awaken,
Throw off its winter blanket, and slip
Into the flowered sundress of spring.....
I am a believer caught in the cycle of the season,
That zany eclipse of time that floods
The blood, and even frozen hearts
Thaw and flutter.....
Joyce Petit-Collier: Freelance Maritime writer and poet, now living near Ottawa. Previously published in various publications including the Northern Light, the New Brunswick Herald, the Ottawa Citizen, the Argument Section of the Globe and Mail, and the Ultra Best Short Verse 2014.
Wild Life
You said she was the janitor.
More like a doe peering
Around the corner of trees into a clearing
of words.
Caught floundering with her dust-cloth
outside our cubicle of poetry.
Your voice
reached her all the way down the hall
where she’d been polishing
the bezels of office.
You were reading a poem from an old
contributor’s copy.
It spoke to her. She tiptoed in,
sat down to listen, twisting her dust-rag
to the meter, the turns of line.
At last she rose
to a verse of her own, rocking
into the rhythm, the rarely heard song
of a doe.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. Her poems are included in the anthologies California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara Univ) and Villanelles (Everyman's Library). Her latest book is Uplift (Cold River Press, 2016).
Homeless Man in Downtown Cheyenne
head
protected
by a red
motorcycle helmet
he sports
a ragged plaid shirt
cutoff jeans
and orange
flip flops
while balancing
a backpack
holding a silver
baseball bat
that deters
invaders
of his space
Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas. She graduated from South Dakota State University. She has had over 5,000 articles, stories and poems published, including fourteen individual collections of her poems. She is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee.
For longer credits listing see Sheryl L. Nelms at www.pw.org/directory/featured
The lawns roll up their snow upholstered sleeves,
Exposing driveway tar, that black harbinger of spring.
Birds dare sing the frosted morning to awaken,
Throw off its winter blanket, and slip
Into the flowered sundress of spring.....
I am a believer caught in the cycle of the season,
That zany eclipse of time that floods
The blood, and even frozen hearts
Thaw and flutter.....
Joyce Petit-Collier: Freelance Maritime writer and poet, now living near Ottawa. Previously published in various publications including the Northern Light, the New Brunswick Herald, the Ottawa Citizen, the Argument Section of the Globe and Mail, and the Ultra Best Short Verse 2014.
Wild Life
You said she was the janitor.
More like a doe peering
Around the corner of trees into a clearing
of words.
Caught floundering with her dust-cloth
outside our cubicle of poetry.
Your voice
reached her all the way down the hall
where she’d been polishing
the bezels of office.
You were reading a poem from an old
contributor’s copy.
It spoke to her. She tiptoed in,
sat down to listen, twisting her dust-rag
to the meter, the turns of line.
At last she rose
to a verse of her own, rocking
into the rhythm, the rarely heard song
of a doe.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. Her poems are included in the anthologies California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara Univ) and Villanelles (Everyman's Library). Her latest book is Uplift (Cold River Press, 2016).
Homeless Man in Downtown Cheyenne
head
protected
by a red
motorcycle helmet
he sports
a ragged plaid shirt
cutoff jeans
and orange
flip flops
while balancing
a backpack
holding a silver
baseball bat
that deters
invaders
of his space
Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas. She graduated from South Dakota State University. She has had over 5,000 articles, stories and poems published, including fourteen individual collections of her poems. She is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee.
For longer credits listing see Sheryl L. Nelms at www.pw.org/directory/featured
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
April 29 , 2016
Cover Art: by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
April 29 , 2016
Cover Art: by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
at Loew’s Hotel in Santa Monica
flunkeys in white…
pacific breeze cool
like ice
melting in a McDonald’s
soda cup…
a world of echoes
and turquois water
touching the spoiled
thighs and skinny
asses
of those on whom
the lucky god
has smiled…
Norman J. Olson was born in rural Wisconsin in 1948... Since publishing his first poem in 1984, after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in literary publications in 15 countries and all over the usa... he lives in Maplewood, Minnesota.
web site: http://www,normanjolson.com...
email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
a google image search for "norman j. olson" will get lots of hits of recent publications of art...
Flowering Grassheads
...A first frost
and now this new moon
casts long shadows
across an old field...
Two flowering grass heads, bend
to rise
brush
and part:
nothing lasts forever,
nothing, except the perpetual change: that
stillness before
and after
each moment of movement;
Was it last night, -or in another life,
--or in a dream--
you leaned
toward my mouth,
& shocked my lips
with yours?
William Waters is an associate professor, associate chair, and director of composition in the Department of English at the University of Houston Downtown. Along with Sonja Foss, he is coauthor of Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation. His research and teaching interests are in writing theory and practice, the history of the English language, linguistics, and modern grammar.
Mourning Dove
Not the image
of sadness.
Sadness itself.
Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. He is a contributing writer at Verse-Virtual. In 2015 he was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices (August) and at year's end received Pushcart Prize nominations from Provo Canyon Review and Blue Heron Review. Other poems will be found at Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
May 6 , 2016
Cover Art: by Clinton Van Inman
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
May 6 , 2016
Cover Art: by Clinton Van Inman
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
After they’ve gone
She would give them order. She would create constellations.
Thomas Pynchon
for good, for
the usual reasons
our young voluntarily
vanish
into the wired and wicked city streets
(such a hard lesson for us to learn,
soft as they are
and so transparent)
yesterday is forgotten
is today
as loneliness is
tomorrow
is whatever happens after
they’ve gone
for good, for
the usual reasons ...
K.V. Skene’s work has appeared in Canadian, U.K., U.S., Irish, Indian, Australian and Austrian magazines, most recently in Crossing Borders, (Canada), Acumen, REAL (USA) Obsessed with Pipework, Envoi and Orbis Her latest chapbook, Under Aristotle Bridge, was published this year by Finishing Line Press (USA).
Survival Tips
When fear’s got you cornered,
teeth barred and fur bristled
Know this –
Only its Master
can call it off.
***
Guilt is a grisly affair –
Hang around too long
and it’s bound to take you down.
The scat is your warning –
Don’t wait for the roaring.
Hold fast to your wits;
If caught, you’ll be mauled,
gnawed to the bone.
Just its nature.
No use hiding –
It will find you out,
having tracked your scent.
Your best options are these:
avoid, or amend –
It beats playing dead.
***
Rage unjustly curfewed,
grounded
finds its ways of sneaking out –
Has a whole life you’re unaware of
beyond the reconnaissance
of dreams.
Stealthy at first,
ear to the ground;
It grows increasingly
rebellious,
careless with growing appetite.
Anything could happen –
Without proper guidance,
it shacks up with fear,
spawns chaos that can’t be swaddled –
A life that won’t be soothed
by any amount of rocking.
***
Tears born of grief
are distinct from other tears –
those coaxed by allergies,
dirt in the eye.
Their chemical composition
holds different proteins.
Slow release –
the sting, more forgiving.
They know where they’ve come from;
they don’t deny their roots.
They have something to say
in the still point quiet
of surrender –
Our purpose is still
to cleanse.
Michelle McLean is a clinical social worker with addictions and mental health, a mother of two spirited and amazing daughters and has written poetry for most of her life. Her work has found homes in a handful of publications, including Ascent Aspirations, Quills, Open Minds Quarterly, Toward the Light, Arborealis, Emerging Stars, Other Voices, Understory, Lamp in Hand and is forthcoming in Joypuke.
Fight
You and I never fought. My friends said you were the right sort of girl for me. Emphasis on girl. Emphasis on younger, simpler, blonder, readier to disrobe.
I imagined this life. That we could compartmentalize our more serious selves and frolic.
Sampling strange pizza toppings, puzzling through jungle gyms made for children of smaller proportions, tangling in your sheets when your roommate—God, you shared a bedroom—was away.
We went to an eighties cover band concert. You wore your hair in a side ponytail. I wore a thrift-store-Ferris-Bueller-leopard-print vest over a white T. The band played a serviceable cover of The Beastie Boys.
Call and response.
You’ve gotta fight…
for your right…
You did not sing with me, to paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarty!
You said, I’ve never heard this one.
Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and is currently an MFA candidate in creative writing at Oregon State University. He won the $1,000 2014 Jim Knudsen Editor’s Prize for fiction from the University of New Orleans and has previously published fiction and poetry in over twenty journals including Bayou Magazine, The Rappahannock Review, and The Pacific Review. In his sparte time he blogs about a cappella music and professional wrestling.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
May 13 , 2016
Cover Art: by Norman Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
May 13 , 2016
Cover Art: by Norman Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA.
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
The Coldest Day
Silence falls along a road
that dips and turns and disappears
where a mountain’s breath
has turned to ice.
A creek bed bites
hard into the earth
packed tight and cold beneath it,
and the sky
comes down to brush
against the gnarled extremities
of sycamores cut
from frost. When a deer stops
the peak behind her reflects
in each eye as she looks
back toward
the path she has taken. Her bones
thaw into movement. All else
is too still to disturb the boughs
on which
the Cedar waxwings rest
who came down with the snow
as it was falling.
David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications on- and off-line, and reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. His most recent book, A Field Guide to Fire, was his contribution to the Fires of Change exhibition shown in Flagstaff and Tucson in Arizona.
three haiku
naked orchard
late snow and a frozen
red apple
‘nam veteran trading
size 11 right army boot
never worn
recipe for disaster
blend a cracked ego
with a fried id
Sterling Haynes writes most days in his 88th year. Sometimes he writes humorous essays and sometimes zany poetry. Haiku helps him crystallize his thoughts and focus his ideas. His poetry and stories have been produced recently in magazines edited by Rogers & Co and the BC Medical Association as well as locally.
Curtains on the Alley
Sometimes I peek
With a slight shift of the
Curtains in my room,
At the misery foaming
In the alley below:
Curled pee fermenting
In the papers and footprints
And shopkeepers’ trash.
Someone hoping to find a shoe.
Someone dead on a blanket.
Someone peeking from above.
Anastasia Clark is the author of several poetry books, including a chapbook, Confetti Stampede (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Her worked has appeared in Ascent Aspirations, Red River Review and Subtletea among others. She served as Broward County, Florida Poet-in-Residence for six years. She leads workshops and serves as a judge for poetry contests. www.anastasiaclark.com.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
May 20 , 2016
Cover Art: Jade by David Fraser
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
May 20 , 2016
Cover Art: Jade by David Fraser
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
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Choosing Partners From a stranger’s garage, one by one, I carried each puppy from his known world, around the front of the house; clipped a leash to his collar; explained in a new language, “this is your chance.” Then “heel” which means, dance with me. I rolled a thrift-store baby’s ball away: “get it!” “bring it!” Four pups looked at their chance and yawned. The fifth brightened, danced the porch-boards with me; delivered the ball to my hand as if it were magic and I knew the spell. I took him home. The ball disappeared. The magic danced into his eyes. Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. Her poems are included in the anthologies California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University) and Villanelles (Everyman's Library). Her latest book is Uplift (Cold River Press, 2016). Hedonism on the rocks Saigon, shit: it’s Saigon, it’s jet lag, and I’m not a big Valium fan, or of counting sheep (or of reading Conrad), and I don’t feel like loving myself with just my hand in the middle of the Apocalypse, so I go down to buy at a lolitas store, to the five and dime on the corner, something new something old, something borrowed and something blue, so I chose Wo, without any more name or love or background or last name, just Wo, for, minutes later, stars under the Sheraton’s rain (electric delirious spongy strong soft): Vietnamese shower, previous lack of pumping and, after navigating the Leviathan together, Sitting Bull I have finally died: I go to the room for my wallet, I pay her and I pour myself some verses of Johnie Walker over the cubic solidity of the water: God is all around. Tomás Sánchez Hidalgo holds a BBA (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), a MBA (IE Business School), a Master in Creative Writing (Hotel Kafka) and a Certificate in Management and the Arts (New York University). His works have been published in magazines like, among others, Otoliths, By&By, Poems-For-All, Clementine, The Unrorean, Alien Mouth, Haggard&Halloo, Trascendent Zero, Crack the Spine, The Bitchin´ Kitsch, Rat´s Ass, The Commonline Journal, Epigraph, Botsotso, and streetcake Magazine, and he has been the winner of prizes like Criaturas feroces (Editorial Destino) in short story and a finalist at Festival Eñe in novel. He has developed his career in finance and stock-market. To Open the Sky Three birds breached that barrier between the seasons.... tore through the grey fabric of a fitful March sky, made swift passage to still familiar trees and home again at last to me. Fickle travelers I grieved for, their music so missed in silent winter, flip of saucy feathers in barely budding bush. And on this day they bring me spring, far too early, though I trust that unlike me they understand the light. Katherine L. Gordon is a rural Ontario poet, publisher, author, judge and reviewer. She is an award winning writer whose works have been published internationally, translated into several languages. Her books may be found at Craigleigh Press, Passion among the cacti Press, Hidden Brook Press, Serengeti Press, Melinda Cochrane International, Cyclamens and Swords Press, as well as many anthologies, books and chapbooks with fine contemporaries whose works inspire her. |
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
May 27 , 2016
Cover Art: For Crack the Spine by Allen Forrest
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
May 27 , 2016
Cover Art: For Crack the Spine by Allen Forrest
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Allen Forrest:
Born in Canada and bred in the U.S., Allen Forrest has worked in many mediums: computer graphics, theater, digital music, film, video, drawing and painting. Allen studied acting in the Columbia Pictures Talent Program in Los Angeles and digital media in art and design at Bellevue College (receiving degrees in Web Multimedia Authoring and Digital Video Production.) He currently works in the Vancouver, Canada, as a graphic artist and painter. He is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University's Reed Magazine and his Bel Red painting series is part of the Bellevue College Foundation's permanent art collection. Forrest's expressive drawing and painting style is a mix of avant-garde expressionism and post-Impressionist elements reminiscent of van Gogh, creating emotion on canvas.
Spring Comes After A Long Winter Drought
Driving down Mahoning Avenue
I smell the burned flesh of chicken, beef,
Turkey, and probably even horse.
Restaurants dot the side of the road
Like drone honey bees
Outside a hive. I feel good.
It’s the advent of spring
And I drive with my windows down.
The scent of fresh petrichor
And beads of water on my windshield
Make me feel refreshed.
I’m taking a book back to the library
And then, to where, who knows?
It’s the best way to plan a trip,
After all. Not having any idea
Of a destination. Drizzle dampens
The street and simultaneously,
A beam of light from the sun
Breaks through a cloud like some
Descending angel. Hello.
So nice to see you. Glad you’re here.
Samuel Vargo has written poetry and short stories for print and online literary magazines, university journals and a few commercial magazines. Mr. Vargo worked most of his adult life as a newspaper reporter. He has a BA in Political Science and an MA in English (both degrees were awarded by Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio, USA). Vargo was a curator and editor for a string of eight commercial online magazines for almost a year, but this summer, he gave this up to work on his own writing pursuits. Vargo was the fiction editor of Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, Ohio, for 12 years. A book-length collection of Vargo's short stories, titled Electric Onion Head and the Rotating Cyclops of the Month, was published by Literary Road and had a web presence for five years. His poetry and fiction appear in the following: Antithesis Common, Ascent Aspirations, Blue Fifth, Boston Poetry Magazine, Censored Poets, Centrifugal Eye, The Circle, Clark Street Review, Connecticut Review, Crack the Spine, Daily Kos, Dandelion, double dare press, Drunk Monkeys, Edifice Wrecked, Electric Acorn, Elegant Thorn, Eye On Life Magazine, Glass - A Journal of Poetry, Guideposts, Gypsy Blood Review, Higginsville Reader, [in parentheses], Late Knocking, Licking River Review, Literary Hatchet, Lynx Eye, Mastodon Dentist, National Lampoon Humor Network (College Stories, Daily Comedy, Dead Frog, The Fat City Review, The Frown, The Gambler Mag, The Phat Phree, Points in Case), The Spoof, Two Cities Review, Two Words For, Maudlin House, Meat for Tea, Medusa's Laugh, nthposition.com, Ohio Teachers Write, OpEdNews.com, Poetry Motel, Projected Letters, Red Dancefloor, Reed, Revolver, Scholars & Rogues, Small Press Review, Stymie, The Cynic Online Magazine, The Literati Quarterly, The Nocturnal Lyric, The Spoof, Two Words For, Verve, undergroundwindow.com, Why Vandalism?, Window Lit-Mag, Word Riot, Yasse, Z-Composition, and other presses and literary journals.
The Sinaqua Built Many
small field houses
some slept near their crops
at times, woke in the night,
listened for animals
in the blossoms
It was almost like music
hearing stillness
in the cornleaves
some sang blessings
before lying down to sleep
Lyn Lifshin: New books include Knife Edge & Absinthe: the Tango poems; For the Roses, poems for Joni Mitchell, All The Poets Who Touched Me; A Girl Goes Into The Woods; Malala, Tangled as the Alphabet: The Istanbul Poems. : Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle; Malala and Femina Eterna: Enheduanna, Scheherazade and Nefertiti; Stained Glass, Maple Leaves. web site:www.lynlifshin.com
coming soon Degas’ Little Dancer , The Silk Road, Winter Poems and an update to my Gale Research Series LIPS, BLUES, BLUE LIPS:ON THE OUTSIDE, and aliveasaloadedgun
I’m Getting Up Early To Pay For Air
I’m getting up early to pay for air.
I’m getting up early to pay for electricity.
So now I’m praying for this food.
Praying for the utensils I hold in my hands.
For the napkins and my aunts at the picnic
So we can all have peaceful assembly.
So that defective cars will go back to their owners.
So that banks will remove the shim sham chakra
From the middle eye of the good old dollar bill.
That spook mandala that vibrates a moolah mantra
From the cosmos of the bank vault.
Sometimes I want to spit dead center into the eye of
Commerce. This false skin. This fading hope.
To obliterate its power over you.
To remove cash and greed and bucks and doe
From your vocabulary.
Wipe the word economy from the slate of the mind.
Wash away the rusty tariffs, burnish taxes
From the realm of the coin.
Wash the world clean from all this nonsense.
Everyone should be endowed with the power
Of the pocket. Big and bulging and generous.
Everyone on the planet should be able
to rub two dimes
Together and make the silver sing.
If that is indeed the last blurry vestige
Of the American dream.
Denis Robillard was born in Northern Ontario in 1966 and now teaches high school in Windsor, Ontario. For the past 15 years several of his poems have appeared in the small presses and on line magazines across Canada, The USA and England and Scotland. He has over 220 publications to date. Some of those include: Rattle, Rampike, Word Riot, Nashwaak Review, Algoma Ink, Cliff Soundings (Michigan), Sidereality, Orange Room Review, Dogzplot Magazine, Dusty Owl, Dufus and many more. In 2011 Robillard was published in Windsor Review and Bolts of Silk. His poems were also featured in a Black Moss press War of 1812 Anthology called An Unfinished War. He is also an avid photographer and traveler. In 2015 he published The History of Water with Cranberry Tree Press.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
June 3 , 2016
Cover Art: Underwater by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
June 3 , 2016
Cover Art: Underwater by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Found in Shauwkiwan Station of the MTR
https://www.dropbox.com/s/erfknm9h4vdeynb/Found%20in%20the%20Shaukiwan%20MTR%20Station.mp4?dl=0
Click on the photo, or the title or the html link
Louie Crew Clay, 79, an Alabama native, is an emeritus professor at Rutgers. He lives in East Orange, NJ, with Ernest Clay. They will celebrate their 42nd anniversary on February 2nd. As of today, Clay has written 2,564 published manuscripts. The most recent is Letters from Samaria: The Prose and Poetry of Louie Crew Clay, with a foreword by Phyllis Tickle and an afterword by Bishop Mary Glasspool. NYC. Seabury Press, November 2015. Clay been a fellow at the Ragdale Foundation and at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Crew. The University of Michigan collects Clay's papers. Reach him by email at louie.clay@comcast.net
Be Wary of True Believers
Be Wary of True Believers !
No such thing
As a novice
With no vice !
No such thing
As a disciple
with principle !
And--
Nothing falls lower
Than a follower.
Tom Deiker’s 70 plus articles, essays, short fiction and poetry have been published in several dozen publications. Of his 120+ stage/screen/radio/television scripts, 61 have received 96 productions in 19 states.
Civilized
The only difference between living in the feral jungle and living in the rest of the world, is that in the rest of the world, the grass is cut!!
Arthur C. Ford,Sr. was born and bred in New Orleans,LA.. He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree from Southern University in New Orleans, where he also studied creative writing and was a member of the Drama Society. He performed the lead role in Ossie Davis’s “Purlie Victorious.” He has visited 45 states in America and resided for 2 years in Brussels, Belgium(Europe).His poetry(lyrics) and prose have been published throughout America, Canada,etc. He travelled for 30 days(July,2011) to various cities in the country of India.
He presently resides in Pittsburgh,PA., and continues to write and publish a quarterly poetry newsletter called “The Pen”. (http://thepoetbandcompany.yolasite.com(click on guidelines); wewuvpoetry@hotmail.com
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
June 10 , 2016
Cover Art: by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
June 10 , 2016
Cover Art: by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA.
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
White Trash Matters
She does hair 4 days a week
her whole body is a
tattoo
she says she's a child of
the sea
or maybe patsy cline
was her mama?
She plays her music so
much
tells me if she doesn't see
the dentist
soon, she may pull the
tooth herself
her hair is candy apple
red
and she has rips in the
front and back legs
of her jeans
her double-f' breastesses are as
big as my
head
she's 39 and chasing a
little girl around
satan's angels are doing wheelies
in her front
yard
she told me she grew up on
a fishing boat
i say,
who needs to go to
the circus?
Erren Geraud Kelly is a Pushcart nominated poet from Los Angeles. He has been writing for 25 years and has over 150 publications in print and online in such publications as Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine(online), Ceremony, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Salzburg and other publications. His most recent publication is in Black Heart Literary Journal; He has also been published in anthologies such as Fertile Ground, and Beyond The Frontier. His work can also be seen on Youtube under the " Gallery Cabaret," links.
He is also the author of Disturbing The Peace published by Night Ballet Press and the chapbook, The Rah Rah Girl Forthcoming from Barometric Press
Reflections Upon the Minoan Ruins at Gournia
Impossible to hold fleeting glimpses of you
Tripping lightly among serene illuminations
Engendered by the ever-changing light,
And then laboring under the noonday sun
Over a landscape incapable of mercy.
You’ve lain breathless down on blood-red earth,
Sat struggling among the wizened stones,
Reflected over the wreckge on the passing away of times,
And reaching out for meaning, you’ve found it
On the occasional good day.
You seek unattainable truth,
Turn away from mere perceptions,
Curse limitations and your own ineptitude.
Indeed --
You retreat to matters practical: olives and wine,
And how to block out the syncopation machines
That blast the skies when the sun drops into the sea.
Wiser to have sought a quiet abode in Kritsa
With its simpler village charm,
Or in the Valley of the Dead with its shadows and ghosts,
For here in this adolescent town flexing its biceps
Rise the numerous signs of holidaymakers,
Celebrating progress that is all-inclusive.
Will centuries hence
Some rummaging traveller like you
Marvel at the rubble of concrete and steel?
Will guidebook writers still have a bias,
Still have only tourists in mind?
Reed Stirling lives in Cowichan Bay, BC, and writes when not painting landscapes, or travelling, or taking coffee at “The Compass,” a local café where physics and metaphysics clash daily. Work has appeared in Maple Tree Literary Supplement, The Nashwaak Review, The Valley Voice, Island Writer, Out Of The Warm Land II and III, StepAway Magazine, PaperPlates, The Eloquent Atheist, Senior Living, Green Silk Journal, Fickle Muses, The Fieldstone Review, Hackwriters Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, and The Danforth Review.
Les Chansons Tristes
№ 1
she
sadly packing winter clothes in the closet
trying to remember
where has she lost the past year
which was the first and last for many things
he
leaning against the bed
writes meaningless pathetic verses which do not even rhyme
but actually trying to remember
how and where the heck did he lose the past year
he comes closer to the window it’s spring time
the street is dark and there is no more light, golden and grainy, from the wooden pole
that light that smells of fresh warm bread
and of winter
do you remember that some time ago we planned to travel to paris
and we still haven’t gone
together
you say your tea is getting cold
it’s good to write poetry
you always have at hand a little piece of paper on which you can put the seeds from the cherry dumplings
Dušan Gojkov
Grand Hotel, short stories, seventeen editions 1993 - 2013;
Slepi putnik, novel, 1994;
Evropa plese, radiophonic essays, 1995, 1996;
Fotografije glasova and Utuljena bastina, documentary-dramatic radiophonic essays, 1997;
Une nuit (un jour) d'une vie, collected essays, 1997;
Passager clandestine, novel, 1998;
Opsta mesta – jedan paraliterarni herbarijum, novel, 1998;
Album fotografija 1991 – 1993, novel, 2003;
Laka, crna zemlja, duodrama, 2005;
Pisanje po vodi, novel, 2006;
Other People’s Memories, poem, 2012;
Dying Words, poem, 2012;
Potištenost, novel, 2012, 2014, 2016;
Tužne šansone, collected poems, 2013, 2015.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
June 17 , 2016
Cover Art: by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
June 17 , 2016
Cover Art: by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Dichotomy On the Sunshine Coast
this is a rough and rocky point
timbers from a long-gone wharf
stand sentry in the divided sea
on one side
the surf pounds
the wind blows cool
on the other
a quiet bay
a warm refuge
the way down to the safe place
is more difficult once settled
I note the stench of still water
Franci Louann flouann@telus.net circa 1980
Shoreline – Water Poems CUC* chapbook 2007
*Canadian Unitarian Council
Also published in The Canadian Unitarian when I retired as its poetry editor.
West coast nature water analysis irony
Franci Louann was included as Fran Workman in Dorothy Livesay's last anthology, in the 70s. Her current passion is Poetic Justice, which she co-founded in 2010.
www.poeticjusticenewwest.org. Tour the 'PJ' site to meet other volunteers.
Haiku
engraved plaque
resting
on hopes of eternity
garden sprays
again
rainbows falling
beach town
even my driving
slows
As well as contemporary poetry, short fiction and non-fiction, Elizabeth Crocket enjoys writing Japanese short form poetry.
Elizabeth's chapbook collection of haibun "Not Like Fred and Ginger" published by Red Moon Press, was shortlisted for the Haiku Foundation's Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. She has had haiku published in Mayfly, The Heron's Nest, Modern Haiku, The Asahi Haikuist Network, Shamrock Haiku Journal, NeverEnding Story and many more.
http://elizabethcrocket.wordpress.com/
Tongue Speak
The tip of my tongue
holds your attention.
You slip into my rosewater
kindness recalling
the golden dust of lilies
from an earlier time.
You have come home
but still I can’t find you anywhere.
Not in the envelope of this muddy silence
where I wait with my hand beaten grief.
You clasp a different package
against your bruised chest
as though the wrapping can keep you safe.
Now it's summer mornings
that smear my sibilant sorrow
with the quiet hum of sweet grass
held in small relief.
You hide in the stomach of a lion
the distance between us
is only a swallow
a slip of rings and promises neither of us
can keep.
Jude Neale is a Canadian poet, vocalist, spoken word performer and mentor. She publishes frequently in journals, anthologies, and e-zines.She was shortlisted for the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize (Ireland), The International Poetic Republic Poetry Prize (U.K),The Mary Chalmers Smith Poetry Prize shortlist (UK), The Wenlock International Poetry Prize (UK), The RCLAS International short story and Poetry Competition (Canada) where she placed second in both categories. She was long listed for the Canadian ReLit Award and the Pat Lowther Award for female writers for her book Only the Fallen Can See (Canada), shortlisted for Editor's Choice, Hurricane Press (USA), highly commended for Sentinel International Poetry Prize (UK) she placed second in the prestigious 2014 Pandora’s Literary Collective Poetry Competition and was highly commended in the Carers International (UK). She achieved honourable mention in the Royal City Short Story Competition and and was shortlisted twice for The Magpie Poetry Award (Canada).Jude was published in A Kind of Hurricane Presses Best of 2014 Anthology (US). Her latest book, A Quiet Coming of Light, A Poetic Memoir (leaf press), is shortlisted for the 2015 Pat Lowther Memorial Award (best poetry collection by a Canadian woman) and two of its poems were nominated for the coveted Pushcart Prize (US) by two different publishers.One of Jude's poems from her forthcoming manuscript, Midsummer Bewilders the Dog Star, was chosen by the 2015 Guernsey Literary Prize by Britains' Poet Laureate (UK) and will ride with thirty three other winners around the Channel Islands on public transit for a year. The Magpie International Poetry Competition chose one of her poems as a finalist by Vancouver's first Poet Laureate, George McWhirter. She has just finished producing, creating and performing a three person show with Rachel Rose (Poet Laureate) and Thomas Beckman (Violist). From this she made a professional EP.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
June 24 , 2016
Cover Art: Waiting by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
June 24 , 2016
Cover Art: Waiting by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Old Men Walk Funny
Old men walk funny with shadows eating at their heels.
Pediatric walkers, prostate exams, bend over, and then mostly die.
They grow poor, leave their grocery list at home, and forget their bank account numbers,
dwell whether they wear dentures, uppers or lowers; did they put their underwear on.
They cannot remember where they put their glasses, did they drop their memory on route to some place.
They package old bones, dry dreams; testicles empty, and giggle choking on past sexual fantasies.
Mogen David madness accesses 100 BC concord wine, all remaining parts sit down-
waves go through their brain as if broken cylinders float undefined travelers.
At night, they scream in silent dreams no one else hears, they are flapping of monarch butterfly wings.
Old men walk funny to the barbershop with gray hair, no hair; sagging pants to physical therapy.
They pray for sunflowers above their graves, a plot that bears their name.
They purchase their plots, pennies on a dollar, beggar's price a deceased wife.
Proverb: in the end, everything that is long at one time is now passive, cut short.
Ignore those old moonshiners that walk funny, "they aren't hurting anyone anymore."
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He is a Canadian and USA citizen. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. He has been published in more than 880 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites. Author's website http://poetryman.mysite.com/. Michael is the author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom (136 page book) ISBN: 978-0-595-46091-5, several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems. He also has over 85 poetry videos on YouTube as of 2015: https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos Michael Lee Johnson, Itasca, IL. nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry 2015. Visit my Facebook Poetry Group and join https://www.facebook.com/groups/807679459328998/
ROSE
when it’s behind my knees
you’d have to fall to the
floor, lower your whole
body like horses in a field
to smell it. White Rose,
Bulgarian rose. I think of
sheets I’ve left my scent in
as if to stake a claim for
someone who could never
care for anything alive.
This Bulgarian rose,
spicy, pungent, rose as my
16th birthday party dress,
rose lips, nipples. If you
won’t fall to your knees, at
least, please, nuzzle like those
horses, these roses, somewhere
Lyn Lifshin: New books include Knife Edge & Absinthe: the Tango poems; For the Roses, poems for Joni Mitchell, All The Poets Who Touched Me; A Girl Goes Into The Woods; Malala, Tangled as the Alphabet: The Istanbul Poems. : Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle; Malala and Femina Eterna: Enheduanna, Scheherazade and Nefertiti; Stained Glass, Maple Leaves. web site:www.lynlifshin.com
coming soon Degas’ Little Dancer , The Silk Road, Winter Poems and an update to my Gale Research Series LIPS, BLUES, BLUE LIPS:ON THE OUTSIDE, and aliveasaloadedgun
Dead End
We seem to be in the same
black hole of which edge
has something like asphalt
flowing in hot
Forget these lines
in case I'm generating
a dead end,
but I'm anyways
terminally ill with lust
so I can write what
I normally don't
leaving any decorations
out of the text
such as daffodils painted
in pale lemon with colour
and water which, once thick
with ash, will smother the fire
with careful avoidance
of spilling over the rim
A native Slovakian, Katarina Balazsova emigrated to Canada from Nove Zamky in 2004. Living in Vancouver she is working as an aesthetician, performing artist and photo model. Writing has accompanied her all throughout her life: it is the thread holding her life together and the glue between her European and her Canadian persona.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
July 1 , 2016
Cover Art: William C. Crawford
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
July 1 , 2016
Cover Art: William C. Crawford
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
William C. Crawford is a writer & photographer based in Winston-Salem, NC. He was a combat photojournalist in Vietnam, and he later had a long career in social work. More recently, he developed a new photography genre, Forensic Foraging, with his colleague, Jim Provencher, from Sydney, Australia.`
Poem for Ingmar Bergman
I too have dreamt of death
He was lying next to me on a blanket
With fine imprints of roses and daisies
And perfect weeping children all dancing in step
The sky was a grayish blue
And Death was holding my hand
Asking curiously,
not to play a round of chess, but
if I would like a glass of lemonade
to cool me off
Joseph Spinelli is a 25 year old artist born and raised in Long Island, NY. After reading Rimbaud's "A Drunken Boat" at 19, Joseph decided to start writing poetry as another form of creative expression. He had his first poem published in Ascent Aspirations Magazine back in 2014 entitled "Tigers Former Wedding Vows" and hopes to write a book of poems in the future. Joe is also an actor, musician, and singer/songwriter currently working on his first EP "Certainly the end of something or other" that he is looking to release in September of this year. He currently resides in Brooklyn.
Sunday Silence
I grew up in the kind of home
Where no one spoke of unpleasant things.
If we didn't discuss it, it didn't exist.
Everyone's family is like that, you tell me.
But I assure you that my growing up
Was different.
In my house we pretended not to notice
That the dining table levitated
When someone argued during dinner.
My mother would just press
Her pale and freckled hand
On its dark wood, and the table would sink down
To touch the floor again.
In my house no one mentioned that
The spiders wove graffiti, Charlotte-like, into their webs.
Faulkner would have envied sentence structure
Like these talented arachnids scribed in silk.
Tell me - did anyone in your house
Fling a flowerpot at someone else's head
With just a glance?
My sister broke her bedroom window
Thirteen times
While sleeping.
Her nightmares stopped when Mother brought
A blue-eyed white cat home one day.
And now the cat spends Sunday
Afternoons translating verse for spiders.
Previously published in Chizine, 2016
Robin Mayhall is a public relations professional with 20-plus years of experience in business and feature writing. She lives in Louisiana, writing speculative fiction and poetry in her "spare time" with occasional help from her two cats. Mayhall’s poetry has appeared in print and online publications such as Scifaikuest, Astropetica, Strange Horizons and The Shantytown Anomaly. She is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and has seen two poems nominated for the Rhysling Award.
The State of the World
Esmeralda’s chickens are protected,
a wire fence and a cement base
dug deep into the ground and yet –
she worries. Overhead, a hawk, a turkey vulture,
a fox just up the hill always a threat.
Just last spring, a pack of wild dogs
killed most of a flock of sheep.
The chickens lay their eggs at ten and two,
adapted to Esmeralda’s rituals,
are used to her rhythm, her singsong voice,
her hand reaching deftly beneath them
for warm eggs. Her smile of thanks.
Esmeralda frowns on cannibalism,
places smooth pieces of rose quartz in the nests
to hurt their beaks and dissuade them.
When the chickens get broody, picking feathers
from their breasts to line nests for chicks,
Esmeralda picks them up and croons “Clair de la Lune,”
tells them everything will be alright.
Mary Ann Moore is a poet, freelance book reviewer and writing mentor who lives in Nanaimo, B.C. In 2014, Leaf Press published her book of poems: Fishing for Mermaids. Mary Ann’s latest writing circle offerings are at www.maryannmoore.ca. She writes a blog at www.apoetsnanaimo.ca.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
July 8 , 2016
Cover Art: Nature's Story by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
July 8 , 2016
Cover Art: Nature's Story by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Carla Safer Visits
Carla, the poet, takes on
a four pronged stag
on a an early refreshing walk
on a misty morning a la Bowen
when he interrupts
a calming bird song
as he springs from hiding
in gnarly alder trunks
as the question of the day
wafts from grey payment:
“Whose road is this anyway?”
Carla loudly snaps open
her garish maxi umbrella,
waving colourful faces: female poets,
Emily Dickinson, Margaret Atwood…
they can stare down any male!
This was all before a cafe patio
lunch complete with ukulele serenade;
Carla returned, inspired to create
beside flowers well
inside a high deer fence.
Bernice Lever is a prize winning poet and an English teacher, dedicated to improving the writing skills of teenagers and adults. Now she is a freelance editor for poetry and prose manuscripts. She has given numerous successful readings, talks and creative workshops.
Born in Smithers, BC, Canada, Bernice now resides on Bowen Island. She has a BA and MA in English from York University, Ontario as well as teaching certificates and experience in British Columbia and Ontario.
Her travels led to poetry readings on 5 continents, and especially her three years in England, have given Bernice opportunities to discuss language education with other English teachers. In 1989-1990, she developed her text, The Colour of Words. It has 15 chapters in 240 pages, with exercises and examples.
Things I’ve Learned from Watching TV
when you’re stripping a corpse, first slit the skin
until you reach the fatty layer directly underneath. slice
between the skin and this fatty layer, first
and the skin will come off more easily. removing the skin
will make separating the muscles and tendons from the bone
that much easier.
this is a lesson I can apply
to any dead body: the neighbor I need to dispose of
the bird I’m preparing for dinner. I watch
my hands dispassionately cut down the front of the dead chicken
with a pair of sharp scissors, my fingers
scraping out the organs, quickly, efficiently, imagine
if it would be this easy for me if I
was a detective like the lady on TV
if I was a killer like the guy
the lady on TV was trying to catch
would it really be this simple?
Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minnesota since 2000. Her published books include Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar All-in-One for Dummies, Piano All-in-One for Dummies, Walking Twin Cities, Insider’s Guide to the Twin Cities, Nordeast Minneapolis: A History, and The Book Of, while her poetry has recently appeared in New Ohio Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle. Her newest poetry book, Ugly Girl, just came out from Shoe Music Press.
Lost Items
They are only shadow people—these poems that pass,
mist in the mind, remembered worlds from a friend’s laugh
or an enemy’s smirk. Cruel as the death of a child they are
bubbles of gas that come up through earth’s crust.
Visitations from creatures you can’t quite identify they pass
so quickly by the window that you only know them
by what is left behind:
- one last star in the morning sky
- a comment partially heard while falling asleep
- a copper bracelet dropped in grass never to be found
- a residue on finger tip after touching the bark of a fir tree
Take whatever you can with you—nothing can be returned,
all sales are final;
the words fade on the page
even as they are written.
Andrew Brown is a retired teacher and active writer and actor living in Qualicum Beach, B.C. He has been published in several literary journals in Canada and the U.S. and has published two books through Gravity Press in Vancouver: Crow’s First Word (2007) and The Stone Inside A Man’s Heart (2013). He is currently at work on his third volume of poetry and micro fiction, titled Share The Road. Andrew enjoys reading and performing his poetry at a variety of local venues.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
July 16 , 2016
Cover Art: Happy Hour by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
July 16 , 2016
Cover Art: Happy Hour by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Staying Alive
Occasional exploratory in wardrobe
for casual jacket or formal two piece
disturbs the once white now ghost grey suit
like a memory at the back of the mind.
Catching disco fever in his 30s,
dance classes to learn the moves,
Burtons to buy the Travolta suit,
Saturday nights hitting Canterbury’s own Studio 54,
bumping, pointing, strutting into early hours.
Easing into his 60s in chinos and crew neck,
he takes night classes in local history
but still a glitter-ball glint in his eye
when hand Freudian slips dial from radio 4 to 2,
and as Bee Gees sound sashays out,
his toes twitch inside Clarks’ slip-ons .
Fiona Sinclair is the editor of the on-line poetry magazine Message in a Bottle . Her sixth collection of poems will be published by Lapwing Press later this year.
My Last Poem
is here
shivering in the wings
of pop culture
There's no death in it
no sadness
no Dickensian heartache
There's no old man
searching for God's approval
and no young man
hungry for the
jazz of life
I'm only ready now for sleep anyway
sleep that beckons
on some hazy horizon
My eyes shutting out light
My breathing labored
My fingers too weary
to hold a pen
I hear my muse urging me
to surrender to the
lure of slumber
She's telling me
this is not my last poem
and sings me to sleep
on this soulless April night
Vernon Waring, a native of Philadelphia, is a former newspaper reporter and public relations consultant. His poetry has appeared in Nerve Cowboy, DARKLING Magazine, WestWard Quarterly, The Great American Poetry Show, and on the Prairie Home Companion website. Ascent Aspirations has also published several of his short stories. He lives in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Laugh Track
Is it not the American Way
To ignore the violence
Turn off the news
Look away
Get a pedicure or
Pour another glass of merlot
After all, things happen
And that’s half way across the globe we’re talking about
They’re somebody’s children, just not ours
We hardly have enough to feed our own
Don’t be silly, no one would do that to another person
It’s make-believe, the latest horror film
As unlikely as genocide
Why don’t we have another bowl of popcorn
Find a spot on the couch
And listen to the laugh track
From another Seinfeld re-run
Before calling it all good
Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans, and the author of I’m Not Supposed To Be Here And Neither Are You out now from Unknown Press. You can also find him at lenkuntz.blogspot.com
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
July 22 , 2016
Cover Art: The Horror by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
July 22 , 2016
Cover Art: The Horror by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
My Father Tells Us About Leaving Vilnius
On the night we left Vilnius, I had to bring goats
next door in the moon. Since I was not the youngest, I
couldn’t wait pressed under a shawl of coarse cotton
close to Mama’s breast as she whispered “hurry” in Yiddish.
Her ankles were swollen from ten babies. Though she was
only thirty her waist was thick, her lank hair hung in
strings under the babushka she swore she would burn
in New York City. She dreamt others pointed and snickered
near the tenement, that a neighbor borrowed the only bowl
she brought that was her mother’s and broke it. That night
every move had to be secret. In rooms there was no heat in,
no one put on muddy shoes or talked. It was forbidden to leave,
a law we broke like the skin of ice on pails of milk. Years from
then a daughter would write that I didn’t have a word for
America yet, that night of a new moon. Mother pressed my
brother to her, warned everyone even the babies must not make
a sound. Frozen branches creaked. I shivered at men with
guns near straw roofs on fire. It took our old samovar, every
coin to bribe someone to take us to the train. “Pretend to be
sleeping,” father whispered as the conductor moved near. Mother
stuffed cotton in the baby’s mouth. She held the mortar and
pestle wrapped in my quilt of feathers closer, told me I would
sleep in this soft blue in the years ahead. But that night I
was knocked sideways into ribs of the boat so sea sick I
couldn’t swallow the orange someone threw from an upstairs
bunk tho it was bright as sun and smelled of a new country I
could only imagine though never how my mother would become
a stranger to herself there, forget why we risked dogs and guns to come
Lyn Lifshin: New books include Knife Edge & Absinthe: the Tango poems; For the Roses, poems for Joni Mitchell, All The Poets Who Touched Me; A Girl Goes Into The Woods; Malala, Tangled as the Alphabet: The Istanbul Poems. : Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle; Malala and Femina Eterna: Enheduanna, Scheherazade and Nefertiti; Stained Glass, Maple Leaves. web site:www.lynlifshin.com
coming soon Degas’ Little Dancer , The Silk Road, Winter Poems and an update to my Gale Research Series LIPS, BLUES, BLUE LIPS:ON THE OUTSIDE, and aliveasaloadedgun
Reading Catullus
at the Roxboro Library, 1988
After breakfast
I too, like Catullus
The petrified poet have
Discovered my tree
Of life risen joyfully
This morning like
A mad chirping bird
Tearing through my jeans
Impatient to be with you.
My legs and arms
Are alive between
The ghost white sheets
Waiting for the skin miracle
Of morning.
Denis Robillard was born in Northern Ontario in 1966 and now teaches high school in Windsor, Ontario. For the past 15 years several of his poems have appeared in the small presses and on line magazines across Canada, The USA and England and Scotland. He has over 220 publications to date. Some of those include: Rattle, Rampike, Word Riot, Nashwaak Review, Algoma Ink, Cliff Soundings (Michigan), Sidereality, Orange Room Review, Dogzplot Magazine, Dusty Owl, Dufus and many more. In 2011 Robillard was published in Windsor Review and Bolts of Silk. His poems were also featured in a Black Moss press War of 1812 Anthology called An Unfinished War. He is also an avid photographer and traveler. In 2015 he published The History of Water with Cranberry Tree Press.
When the Mountains Disappear (2)
Just as trees encroach upon mountain views, buildings swallow cityscapes. In the 1950's, through the west-facing windows of my wife’s cousin’s apartment, you could see a fat slice of the Hudson River. Meanwhile, the windows facing north framed a generous chunk --perhaps the top third-- of the Empire State Building. (My wife and her cousin did the math.)
Since then, the city has suffered wave upon wave of construction, or, you might say, never-ending ripples. Up sprang brick apartment-monsters, followed by glass-bodied giants, commercial and residential. Put all that together, and, abracadabra, the river is a sliver, the ESB, a gleaming needle.
Essential to clichés about urban canyons are the mountains that frame them. Does anything really change? More mountains? More canyons? Real change will arrive when some visionary fills in the canyons with new buildings, chock-a-block, by then made of who-knows-what. When that day comes, cars, taxis, buses, trucks will have to learn to fly, or else, like moles, take to the subways, underground.
Poetry by Ron Singer (www.ronsinger.net) has appeared in many publications. His collection of Maine poems, Look to Mountains, Look to Sea (River Otter Press, August 2013), won an award and was nominated for a Pushcart. His eighth book, Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with Pro-Democracy Leaders, was published Feb. 1, 2015 (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press), and can be found in about 100 university and other library systems.
Previously published in the Earl of Plaid Orange Anthology, 2016.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
July 29 , 2016
Cover Art: Aerial View by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
July 29 , 2016
Cover Art: Aerial View by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Snow blind
for Karen Duke
we speed across Saskatchewan
Trans-Canada highway, a river
running through Swift Current Moose Jaw Regina Indian Head
fence posts, fields, old farm house roof tops, winter sky
white and still
telephone poles mark distance, time
we are not stopping here
like so many years ago
in youth, pliant and bold
we looked for a chance to cross
fields, borders, boundaries, seas
to lives
that waited
somewhere else, not here
foxtails poke out of frozen marsh
hard stubble spikes up from hidden soil
hoar frosted trees and scrub brush
whiteness so uniform that
for awhile
the sky and fields become one
and go on forever
Lorna Carley is an emerging fiction writer with publications appearing in Grain Magazine, The Globe and Mail, and on-line. She holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Saskatchewan and an MBA in Finance from the Haskayne School of Business. She is at work on her first short story collection. Lorna and her family divide their time between Calgary and Canmore, Alberta.
To Shoot For
It’s okay shooting darts on a Tuesday night
drinking cheap beer from a forty-ounce bottle illegally--
no paper bag even, but who the hell’s gonna check
here anyway? It’s not like we’re in New York
City or somewhere big, right? Let’s face it:
this bar is in the middle of nowhere--
and who cares if a bunch of guys are shooting
darts once a week, having a little good time
after work and filling up some dead hours.
Hey, you’re up—shoot your two points and sit down!
“Alright”
First dart—second dart—third dart: three points!
“Hey wise-ass—look at that!”
Wow—a three—that won’t happen again for six months!
“Like hell it won’t”
Going back to the bottle is the concern now, ’cause
that guy’s beliefs are no concern of mine. I’m on a role.
Now, if I could just get out of my parent’s house and find
a decent job, that’d be even better than shooting a three--
or even a white knight—a nine—and maybe a free shot
from Donny the bartender, who’d think that a rare
event, even on dart-league nights with experienced throwers,
their nerves calmed by cheap liquor of choice or habit,
where a four or five—not bad—was the usual occurrence
or even the best of the night.
John Zedolik: For thirteen years John taught English and Latin in a private all-girls school and in 2010 completed my Ph.D., in which he focused on the pragmatic comedy of the Canterbury Tales. Currently he is adjunct instructor at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. He has had many jobs in his life including archaeological field assistant, obituary writer, and television-screen-factory worker, which—he hopes—have contributed in positive ways to his writing. He has had poems published in such journals as Abbey, Aries, The Chaffin Journal, Eye on Life Online, The Journal (UK), Poets’ Espresso Review, Pulsar Poetry Webzine (UK), Straylight Online, U.S. 1 Worksheets, and in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He also has numerous poems forthcoming this year.
Finding Shade
He knows only that there are trees.
He does not see lumber camps
or feel the strength of men
in black checkered shirts.
He cannot touch their red leather skins
or smell their hot whiskey breaths.
He does not see logs on the river.
I have tried to speak to him of Indian canoes
and rafts on the Mississippi.
I have tried to share leaf scents
and wood-burning fires
when everything is cold outside.
But he is content to just find shade
by the northeast window.
There is no adventure in him.
Vernon Waring , a native of Philadelphia, is a former newspaper reporter and public relations consultant. His poetry has appeared in Nerve Cowboy, DARKLING Magazine, WestWard Quarterly, The Great American Poetry Show, and the Prairie Home Companion website. Ascent Aspirations has also published several of his short stories. He lives in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
August 5 , 2016
Cover Art by Elena Botts
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
August 5 , 2016
Cover Art by Elena Botts
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Elena Botts grew up in the DC area and currently studies at Bard College. She's been published in fifty literary magazines over the past few years. She is the winner of four poetry contests, including Word Works Young Poets'. Her poetry has been exhibited at the Greater Reston Art Center and at Arterie Fine Art Gallery. Check out her poetry books, "we'll beachcomb for their broken bones" (Red Ochre Press, 2014), "a little luminescence" (Allbook-Books, 2011) and "the reason for rain" (Coffeetown Press, 2015). Her visual art has won her several awards. Go to o-mourning-dove.tumblr.com to see her latest artwork.
Make Up
I tell her to make up her lips
the colour of her nipples; her
eyelids baby blue; her toenails
like dark cherries on the ground;
and to tie her hair up tight as if
gripped by my invisible hand.
Julian O’Dea is a retired government scientist who began writing poetry a few years ago. He has had haiku and other poems published in a range of online and paper journals. He lives in Canberra, Australia. His main interest is in lyrical poetry.
Thirteen Lines
My parents
are OH and C
who begot me.
What a strange
state came of their union.
.
How could
an aware thing
be mixed in the
crucible of rocks only to fade?
.
Why do we cling to life so hard?
Are we just
borrowed jewels?
What is the rest of time like?
Don Schaeffer has previously published a dozen volumes of poetry, his first in 1996, not counting the experiments with self publishing under the name "Enthalpy Press." He spent a lot of his young adult life hawking books and learning the meaning of vanity. His poetry has appeared in numerous periodicals and has been translated into Chinese for distribution abroad. Don is a habitue of the poetry forum network and has received first prize in the Interboard competition.
Pine Children
Do you remember
our backyard’s teal
tree house, old
sandbox on roots?
Do you see my blood
from rusty swing set
cuts, taste rabbit
ears and clovers
from the garden,
feel vibrations
of splintered bridges
as we stomp to
the field, stream
trickling, woods
growing? We
saw foxes, once
in a while. We
deemed pine trees
forts; needles were
carpets; twigs were
swords. Fallen trunks,
on the trail, were
balance beams.
Lee Echard Boyle, born in Portland, Oregon, was raised in East Palestine, Ohio. He has been published in a variety of poetry journals and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His influences include Kenneth Rexroth, Clifton Snider, Barbara Guest, William Carlos Williams, and Anne Sexton. He is in a long-running Indie Pop band, Third Class, a comedy troupe, Bullskit Productions, and he runs a creative-Ohioans podcast, Nursery Podcast. He earned a BA in English at Kent State University.
Art Work by Katie Campbell (Lee Echard Boyle's niece)
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
August 12 , 2016
Cover Art by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Land of the Dead
All night we sailed east
away from the Land of the Dead.
Or so we thought until our compass
went awry. We were given a bag
of winds, we were told to stuff our
famished ears with wax. All night a song
broke against our nerves. We watched
the naked goddess as she rose from foam.
Our eyes were burned from inside out.
Sea birds called at dawn, and the sun
ignited water that flamed around our hull.
We were never so far from home.
In the end, we deserved nothing.
On the island beach we ate and slept,
red juices rolling down our foolish breasts.
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems, both from Flutter Press, and Family Reunion, forthcoming from Big Table Publishing.
A Tourist, I Came...
A tourist, I came, to the land of the dead,
renting an Airbnb in the bowels
of Brooklyn, “one b.r., w/k.” Not the best,
but near Green-wood Cemetery. Don’t smile!
What with films (not “movies”), museums, concerts,
I exhausted myself coring the Apple.
Jet-lagged in Rome, I’d run into trouble
at the Acatollico, home to Keats,
August von Goethe, the savant’s only child,
and numerous other greats and near-greats
--plus hordes of feral cats, who hogged the marble
benches, keeping me from badly needed rest.
Graveyards, you’d think, would be perfect for rest.
Though my guidebook was old, a palimpsest,
it enthused about Green-Wood: “bucolic.”
The dead, I read, co-exist with animals:
squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, flocks of small parrots.
Alongside a pond full of phantom turtles,
I napped, a zephyr sweetening my rest.
Waking, though, I recurred to form: Tourist!
“Do they take reservations?” I chortled.
This jest revealed a lack of self-respect,
and scant regard for the inoffensive dead.
An earlier poem about Green-Wood Cemetery, “The Dead Were the First...” can be found in Sleet, 2013.
Poetry by Ron Singer (www.ronsinger.net) has appeared in many publications. His collection of Maine poems, Look to Mountains, Look to Sea (River Otter Press, August 2013), won an award and was nominated for a Pushcart. His eighth book, Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with Pro-Democracy Leaders, was published Feb. 1, 2015 (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press), and can be found in about 100 university and other library systems.
green is my favorite color
she fumbles behind a cheap ikea room divider, all jitterflies. inside her chilled dorm room, cubed and concrete, at the end of the hall. the door is locked. her college roommate is out. snow has recently fallen in upstate new york. she. so many memories start with ‘she’.
in the chilled cube. smooth legs, twenty-two years old, bare and kerfuffling toward me. clean feet step lively over bras and scarves and wet boots. college textbooks, barely opened.
i am the freshman. she is the resident assistant, sworn to uphold the professional accountability of the polytechnic institution.
examine those reddened cheeks, from emotions, or the cold, or the heat. reading glasses are left next to the dorm keys. examine her face. her face is a promise.
she is still clothed, barely. a victoria’s secret thing. no diamonds, no pearls. her left hand hikes up the spaghetti strap over her right breast, the color of the lingerie striking me, its immediacy.
a warm pause. i am now caught between her and a bunk bed ladder, sitting on the third rung. we didn’t really have a word for it then, but this is my first lapdance.
the softest, sweetest thing. verdant fields. my name is juvenilia.
Previously published by Peeking Cat Journal in May 2016
Jake Tringali: Born in Boston. Lived up and down the East Coast, and then up and down the West Coast, and currently in Los Angeles. Runs rad restaurants. Thrives in a habitat of bars, punk rock shows, and a sprinkling of burlesque performers.
Throughout 2015, publications include Catch & Release, Boston Poetry Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, and twelve other fine journals.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
August 19 , 2016
Cover Art: Obscured by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
August 19 , 2016
Cover Art: Obscured by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Precognition, Or….?
My husband and I wade thigh-deep in the lake
within his dream. A whir, a break in clouds.
He points skyward, dark spots, soon a flock,
a troop, Bald Eagles, ride in vector-shape
(like geese, but eagles flocking in a V?).
Circling fierceness makes us cower like mice.
Two leaders plummet, yet no talons tear.
Instead their feathery cape of wings wraps round
our heads, our shoulders, lost in soft embrace,
such gentleness, the strange largesse of power.
Weeks later our dog slaughtered by a truck,
daughter’s car totaled, our house vandalized.
We wonder how this emissary dream
held precognition, consolation—awe.
Susan McCaslin has published thirteen volumes of poetry. Her next, Painter, Poet, Mountain: After Cézanne, is forthcoming from Quattro Books in Oct. 2016. Previous volumes include The Disarmed Heart (The St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2014) and Demeter Goes Skydiving (University of Alberta Press, 2011). Susan has also published a memoir, Into the Mystic: My Years with Olga (Inanna Publications, 2014). A lover of poetry, visual art, trees, mountains and the sea, she divides her time between Victoria and Fort Langley, British Columbia.
Carbon
Uncertainty, the heart moving
around in the chest as it beats--
Places with unpredictable weather:
Children don’t have enough food to eat
Animals sleep in empty houses
Me--
Do I doubt?
My thoughts permeate the
air as red embers that fall
on trees and
burn
I wish I was bolder
I wish I could ask for things
I am afraid of
The color blue--
A frame,
an outline;
A place that surrounds me
and holds my molecules together
until,
as a phoenix, I turn to dust
Kristin LaFollette received her BA and MA in English and creative writing from Indiana University. She is a PhD student in the English (Rhetoric & Writing) program at Bowling Green State University. Her poems have been featured in West Trade Review, Poetry Quarterly,Lost Coast Review, Slipstream Press, The Light Ekphrastic, The Main Street Rag, and River Poets Journal, among others. She also has artwork featured in Harbinger Asylum, Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Spry Literary Journal. She lives with her husband in northwestern Ohio. You can visit her at kristinlafollette.blogspot.com.
Forgive And Forget
I think there is enough forgiveness
in the world that I don’t need to,
let alone forget. Someone must
decry the villainy; someone must
scream at the blows others strike
on the backs of children,
on the cheeks of wives,
on the knuckles held out to nuns,
the feet bastinadoed, the bellies
of unwanted pregnancies.
Someone should hold accountable
mass murderers who cannot
just be absolved by a confession.
I’ll take the job, though not willingly.
I might as well—I who have witnessed
and endured abuse; I who sit
weeping at the nightly news.
Dr. David B. Axelrod’s 22nd book of poems is All Vows: New & Selected Poems (Nirala Press, 2016). He is co-author and editor of Merlin Stone Remembered (Llewellyn Worldwide), winner of the Gold Medal for non-fiction in the Florida Book Award competition. A three-time Fulbright Award winner, he served as the first, official Fulbright Poet-in-Residence in the People’s Republic of China. Dr. Axelrod is Volusia County Poet Laureate for 2015-2019. He was also Suffolk County, Long Island, Poet Laureate. He is founder of Writers Unlimited Agency, Inc. (www.writersunlimited.org) which he directed for over thirty years, also publishing Writers Ink Press. He has shared the stage with such notables as Louis Simpson, Galway Kinnell, William Stafford, Robert Bly and Allen Ginsberg, performing at the United Nations and around the world. He has been translated and published in fifteen languages. As director of the Creative Happiness Institute, he now lives with his wife, Sandy, in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Email: Axelrod@poetrydoctor.org
Website: www.poetrydoctor.org
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
August 26 , 2016
Cover Art: by Norman Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
August 26 , 2016
Cover Art: by Norman Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA.
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Once Upon The Tree Limb
once upon the tree limb
of an old box elder in a
woodland I remember,
I was a boy, a careless
and happy boy, singing
a hymn to my future
yes, I remember, and
it comes back to me now
yes, it comes to me now
ayaz daryl nielsen, veteran, former hospice nurse, ex-roughneck (as on oil rigs) lives in Longmont, Colorado. Editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/130+ issues) with poetry published worldwide, he also is online at: bear creek haiku poetry, poems and info
Flight of the Eagle
From the dawn, dusty skies
comes the time when
the eagle flies--
without thought,
without aid of wind,
like a kite detached without string,
the eagle in flight leaves no traces,
no trails, no roadways--
never a feather drops
out of the sky.
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He is a Canadian and USA citizen. Today he is a poet, editor, publisher, freelance writer, amateur photographer, small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. He has been published in more than 880 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites. Author's website http://poetryman.mysite.com/. Michael is the author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom (136 page book) ISBN: 978-0-595-46091-5, several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems. He also has over 91 poetry videos on YouTube as of 2015: https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos Michael Lee Johnson, Itasca, IL. nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry 2015. Visit his Facebook Poetry Group and join https://www.facebook.com/groups/807679459328998/ He is also the editor/publisher of anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530456762
https://www.createspace.com/6126977.
I’m Your Nick Carraway
Hey listen
because I want our names
to be more than a sharpie scrawl
on a lipstick stained starbucks cup.
You said
I’m a celebrity for hanging out
with all of the wrong people
and I rushed to grab my pen.
I wrote
what you said while the band
dedicated a song to you entitled
they oughta name a drink after you.
I see the green light flashing on your phone.
Amber Morrison
- b. 1986.
- Vancouver Island University student, major in Visual Art and minor in Creative Writing.
- Lives in Nanaimo, BC with her Siamese cat, Rothko.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
September 2 , 2016
Cover Art: Directed Disorder by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
a drunk, just like your mother
it's been the two of you for so long.
all your other friends drifted away, into marriages, children, lives,
but he hung close, for no reason you could imagine, just waiting,
and it took you longer than it should have to realize,
he was waiting for you.
so it's hard to believe it could be over, just like that
and it's easier when you give your brain a moment,
blinking your eyes like snapping fingers,
not just like that, a long time coming,
an inevitability, like death.
it's late afternoon, the middle school playground,
stumbling slow to take the swing beside him,
the only text you answered that day,
ignoring vaguely familiar numbers with vaguely familiar notes of concern and disappointment.
you stretch your lips into a smile, trying to reassemble the one he used to know.
he doesn't give his back, and the sneer he tries doesn't fit his face,
but the disgust is real and moving.
so it must have been a terrible drunk,
the last night you can't remember,
it must have been different from all the other last nights you can't remember,
when he pulled you up, brushed the hair out of your eyes
and got you home before something life-changing could happen
it must have been something monumentally different for this boy
who loves you and wants you more
than anything you've ever wanted in your falling down heap of a life to give you that sneer.
it hits hard, the finality of failure,
you've done it this time, let him see too far inside you
right down to that bottle shaped heart that never fills,
and it's you waiting now, holding your breath.
the quiet crawls between you until he says one thing, just one thing
and it hurts too much to ask why.
maybe later you'll want that back, the knowledge of the final straw, but now--
he steps away, leaving you with nothing but a hangover to keep you company, and a song,
a drunk just like your mother, a drunk just like your mother
you'll never get it out of your head.
as you watch him move too far away to touch,
you decide to punish yourself, and look up, seeking some kind of absolution,
opening your eyes as wide as they will go,
the sunlight searing in and washing out the green,
the blue, the rusted metal of the swing set.
running your tongue across your lips,
you try to catch some vague dim taste of him, something to hold.
it’s no good.
you’re alone on the playground, the shadows of the monkey bars slicing across your chest,
wondering how long you’ll have to stay out here before someone misses you,
before anyone comes to get you.
you wait almost two hours, the sun melting down behind the fence.
you’re crying when you finally get to your feet; no one cares.
Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art. She resides in Graham, North Carolina with her two cats, Janis Joplin and Charlie Chaplin.
The Abyss
It’s the way oblivion carries you in its quilted sarcophagus.
No use for a rung underfoot or a roof overhead. One night
you were loved, the next night you forgot how to read,
found only soap operas on television. I’ve learned
to seek non-being. Luge into the boggy void, yank up a frog
by its raggedy leg and kiss it. Though it’s difficult to sit in, the abyss
is a sacred state. Your mind no longer bloated with ribboned
gifts, purpled apologetics, recipes for the butterfish--
You have to fight to keep it empty—Lay out its light
behind clouded glass. At least you can always name
nothingness: Dishpan Dun, Indigo Neon, Gun-metal Chevrolet--
or that shade of lipstick you wore in grad school,
Wine With Everything.
Deborah DeNicola has authored 6 books, most recently her poetry collection, Original Human (Wordtech 2010) and an Amazon best-selling memoir The Future That Brought Her Here. (Nicholas Hays/Ibis Press 2009) Deborah edited Orpheus & Company; Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology (University Press of New England 1999). Among other awards, she has been a recipient of a National Endowment Fellowship.
Boxes Everywhere
Boxes ubiquitous --
little boxes, big boxes,
enormous boxes,
boxes made of cardboard,
shipping and receiving,
sealing and ripping open,
to be carried out of the building
with personal belongings
when you are fired;
cubicles to work in,
if you manage to keep your job;
office buildings shaped like
giant rectangular boxes;
"little boxes made of ticky tacky"*
out in the suburbs;
surrounded by boxes,
buried in boxes.
Last night, deep in sleep,
I dreamt I had become a box;
when I awoke, it was true.
*from Malvina Reynolds, "Little Boxes," 1962, 1990
Howard Stein, a psychoanalytic, applied, medical, and organizational anthropologist, is author of 28 books, of which 9 are books or chapbooks of poetry. His new poetry book, Light and Shadow, will be available in fall 2016. He is poet laureate of the High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology, and professor emeritus in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK, USA. He currently serves as group process facilitator for the American Indian Diabetes Prevention Center, Oklahoma City.
He can be reached at howard-stein@ouhsc.edu .
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
September 9 , 2016
Cover Art: Directed Disorder by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
September 9 , 2016
Cover Art: Directed Disorder by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Suburban Malaise
By your side in the chilled darkness I lie,
my left leg thrown over yours, like an X marking gold
or a signed contract. Your feet,
like narrow tombstones, lie pale
under the remnants of the window pane.
My right arm is a hook curving
under your head, cradling it,
and my left weighs on your chest holding you
in our fragile home made of sticks
like the woods that guard us, keeping us
in until we bind or burn.
Outside our window the moon,
silent in its certainty,
illuminates the cracks and slats
threatening to splinter us,
and the shards of glass that cast
a pale shadow over your head.
Becca Naylor is a recent graduate of Anderson University in Anderson, South Carolina, with a B. A. in Creative Writing. I live in the upstate of South Carolina.
Salt
In the shade of the pergola, I eat
lunch, observing how the jay struts
in sunlight that clambers across the open
path. Place where acorns bunch and crack,
dropping out of tree’s scissored heart.
Dazzle of spiderweb flails out, prism
on a long twine of desire.
There’s a fly caught in violent
death spasm. Blue-sheen back,
bulbous busy eyes, see-through wings.
Its drilling death-buzz. Helpless.
Not a lot of difference between me and fly.
Green canopy salted over, leaves flip
on the sturdy vine, a moving, shady
well my sight sinks into. This food, olives,
rye bread. Sustenance. Days still stretch,
so far as I know, into red morning, blue noon.
Long before I hear the buzz that will drop me
into deeper color.
Grace Marie Grafton: Six collections of poems by Grace Marie Grafton have been published, most recently Jester (2013). Her poems recently appear in West Trestle Review, Your Daily Poem, California Quarterly and others. She has taught thousands of children the art of writing, through her work with CA Poets in the Schools. She lives in the hills of Oakland, CA, near redwoods, oak and bay trees, salamanders, skunks, squirrels and wild turkeys.
Eroded Red Rock Looks Like Bone
Eroded red rock looks like bone,
red rock swirled, wheeled and scored,
tipi-pinnacles, pots and cones,
red rock swirled, wheeled and scored.
Roadside cairn, a hitchhiker;
his knees, his pack, slouching hat.
Beside the road, a hitchhiker,
crouching cairn beside the road.
Tiny ruins cling to a cliff,
tiny ruins on massive rock,
dots and lines, a motherboard,
dots and lines cling to a cliff.
Eroded red rock looks like bone,
crouching cairn beside the road,
dots and lines cling to a cliff,
tiny ruins on a motherboard.
--Originally published in Windsor Review, 2002, these poems were also featured in New Works Review, Fall 2008, and in Poetry Atlas (2015). In 2016, composers Barbara Ullman and Aaron Siegel both set the poems to music. Aaron Siegel has recently finished setting the Navajo Manner poems, and this piece will have its premiere in NY City on Sept. 22nd.
Poetry by Ron Singer (www.ronsinger.net) has appeared in many publications. His collection of Maine poems, Look to Mountains, Look to Sea (River Otter Press, August 2013), won an award and was nominated for a Pushcart. His eighth book, Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with Pro-Democracy Leaders, was published Feb. 1, 2015 (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press), and can be found in about 100 university and other library systems.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
September 16 , 2016
Cover Art Photography by Eleanor Leonne Bennett
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
September 16 , 2016
Cover Art Photography by Eleanor Leonne Bennett
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Surreal Estate
surreal estate --
a shit box will fetch a mill
in Vancouver now
real estate so dear
folks sell their Vancouver homes,
fly float planes in
gotta coupla mill?
no? good luck finding a condo...
a dog house maybe
basic bungalo?
try an outhouse
with a light bulb
move over, Rover!
even Jimi couldn't afford
a pine box here
***
Bio Note
Richard Stevenson recently retired after a thirty-year gig teaching English, Business, Technical, Creative Writing, and various literature courses at Lethbridge College. He will be moving to
Nanaimo when his wife retires in a couple of years. His most recent books are two haikai collections: Fruit Wedge Moon (2015) and The Heiligen Effect (2015),and a long poem sequence on the Clifford Olson serial murder case , Rock, Scissors, Paper, forthcoming in 2016.
After Franz Schubert
So thin a membrane
between lyricism
and its twin,
outbursts of terror and despair.
With the lovely miller’s daughter
comes the death of a maiden.
Melody cannot conquer death.
Winter journeys do not promise spring
My love, shall I pluck you a flower,
then dig you a grave?
Mine follows soon.
Joy on the meadow;
a volcano erupts from beneath,
spewing ash high into the sky.
Quiet meadows do not last.
How much darkness
can this light dispel?
Lyricism triumphs
only for the moment;
melody is miracle.
Courageous Franz, tell me:
How could you live your brief life
poised at the edge of a cliff?
Previously published in miller’s pond, 2016
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Oklahoma City, OK USA;
Interdisciplinary Seminar facilitator, American Indian Diabetes Prevention Center (AIDPC)/Adjunct Professor, Department of Health Promotion Sciences, College of Public Health, OUHSC, Oklahoma City OK; Research Associate of the Center for the Study of Organizational Change, University of Missouri, Columbia.
Doubting Adam
After a sleep
like death,
Adam found
Eve risen from
the tomb
of his body …
… doubting,
he put his hand
into her wound,
and believed.
Julian O’Dea is a retired government scientist who began writing poetry a few years ago. He has had haiku and other poems published in a range of online and paper journals. He lives in Canberra, Australia. His main interest is in lyrical poetry.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
September 23, 2016
Cover Art: Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
September 23, 2016
Cover Art: Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Three pollage poems in 0475
Ellaraine Lockie
Pollage info:
My one-of-a-kind pollages combine my three passions of poetry, papermaking and collage. I use lifetime collections of handmade papers, postage stamps, charms, milagros, buttons, shells, rocks, feathers, pressed leaves and flowers, rubber stamps, travel memorabilia and magazine clippings, etc. to illustrate the embedded poems.
My pollages have had a one-woman art show as well as positions in juried nation-wide art shows. They exist in private art collections around the U. S., and they have or will be featured in The Centrifugal Eye, along with an essay on their origin, the Rio Grande Review and the Homestead Review. They are the subject of an extensive online interview in the Winter 2016 Issue of Sein Und Werden in England at: http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/winter15/page26.html.
I’m the author of the book, The Gourmet Paper Maker, which is published in six languages.
Hearts of Stone
Saffron feathers fall from my thesaurus
Souvenirs of the last visit to my daughter's house
where a cockatiel confines in a cage
An injured-winged gift left partially opened
by some cat in the middle of a street
Survival of the fittest and no just cause
for the stone of sadness that moved
like a blood clot through veins to clog my heart
when someone left a canary
at the dump locked in its cage
Or because pipes of fat are shoved repeatedly
down a duck's throat at a foie gras factory
Or owners attach steel spurs for a cockfight
I place the feathers back in the book
to mark pages bearing words
like maleficent, facinorous and belluine
Disguises that the brain bequeaths the heart
Woman walks through woods
Crow nose-dives her curly head
Twine and twigs frame nest
Injured wing flaps on
bird in full summer sunlight
Steam rises silent
Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded author of poetry, nonfiction books and essays. Her eleventh chapbook, Where the Meadowlark Sings, won the 2014 Encircle Publication’s Chapbook Contest. Her newest collection, Love Me Tender in Midlife, has been released as an internal chapbook in IDES from Silver Birch Press. Other work has received the Women’s National Book Association’s Poetry Prize, Best Individual Collection from Purple Patch magazine in England for Stroking David's Leg and the San Gabriel Poetry Festival Chapbook Contest win for Red for the Funeral. Ellaraine teaches poetry workshops and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh.
The Airport
I eased myself into numbness overnight
through sleep
and dreaming
of something other than you.
The planes flew in and landed at Boston
and I waited for the plane to take me home,
home where you lived temporarily and I forever
and home where I couldn’t hide from the reality
the reality of you.
My hair was frizzed.
I wore no makeup
and no contacts
and no ambition.
“Have a good flight, Harvard,”
the man at security said
to an empty husk in an Ivy League sweatshirt
that used to be the girl you loved.
Julia Carson is a student at the University of Pittsburgh, where she studies English. She dreams of moving to London and writing novels in a flat by the Thames. Julia currently lives in Pittsburgh with two roommates and, sadly, no cats.
A Poem for Frank
“I will write you a poem,” she said.
And to his blank stare added,
“Because I don’t have patience for a novel.”
And so she wrote his future twenty years ahead.
Wrote how they would barely remember this night
Standing at the festival doors
Exchanging anecdotes of past performances
And former professors.
Each story grander than the first.
Wrote how three kids in the back of a hybrid SUV
And three more years left on the mortgage
Would leave him blankly staring at a notebook
She left behind, when there was
No more patience for poems.
© Carla Stein
Carla Stein started painting pictures with words about the same time she discovered crayons and tempera. At the age of 16, she won her first poetry award. Her love affair with words later morphed into a career in broadcast and freelance journalism, which included sharing her stories on both CBS and CBC radio. Carla recently had her art and poetry published in An Anthology of Nanaimo Poetry.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
September 30, 2016
Cover Art: Waterlilies Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Gold-Rush Snap-Shots
My iPad camera shows me
the disturbed reality of Monet’s street-
lamp angels – his failing eyesight
as discovery, shatter-vision.
I see two rough hands shaking a gold-pan
of gravel in a water-trough –
aboveboard how-to demo at the fairgrounds.
My iPad transforms it
to swirls of golden sun rippling
pan to trough with peach-aqua-flesh-
tone rainbows.
Now I trust my lens against the hard-
rock truth of crystal mining on this hilltop –
a heap of dug-out tailings –
to illuminate one loaf of native stone
glitter-smooth as an angel’s hand.
As if a master artisan raised it by yeast
of earth, a miracle
I almost missed,
but for a click of that trickster lens
which seldom lies.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and serves as El Dorado County’s first poet laureate (2016-2018). She’s included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman’s Library) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University). Her latest book is Uplift (Cold River Press, 2016).
A Convenient Falsehood
I’ve laid the table,
dusted the rooms,
am icing the cake,
and basting the roast.
We’ve shut out the news,
chucked electronics,
unplugged all phones,
and locked the doors.
Within these walls songs
pianissimo float.
Diffusing aromas
softly sedate.
Snug in our bubble
with clasped hands we sing,
entranced in laughter,
enveloped, we dance.
Beyond all the fray,
shrouded from storms,
we mutter our prayers
and sigh
poor world
good-by.
Barbara Lefcourt grew up in Brooklyn, New York but moved with her young family to Waterloo, Ontario in 1963 and continues to live there. She has enjoyed dual citizenship for many years. Barbara returned to her field of education as a teacher of Adult Literacy in midlife. She has traveled internationally many times, especially to Australia and Japan where her two sons live. She started writing poetry about fifteen years ago, became a member of The Ontario Poetry Society and The Cambridge Writers Collective and has enjoyed see many of her pieces in print. In June 2016 she received one of the two poetry awards given at the Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts in Cambridge, Ontario. Much inspiration comes from travels overseas and many summers spent at her Manitoulin Island cottage.
634-5789
For decades
the security apparatus had been planning to implant
a chip into every person soon after birth
to enable tracking (disguised as safety),
but
they had been thwarted by civil libertarians
Then,
in a matter of just a few years
implants became completely unnecessary
Everyone had an external tracking device
they carried with them at all times
so that it might as well have been implanted
And
libertarians and corporations
and all in between, but for a select few,
not only raised no objections,
but
willingly paid for said device
Michael Ceraolo is a 58-year old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had one full-length book, Euclid Creek from Deep Cleveland Press, and a few shorter-length books published, plus numerous magazine publications.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
October 7, 2016
Cover Art: Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA.
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Probation
After a decade in the slammer
dismantled my black on black life
grocery checkout with less fresh produce
than when I was still inside
gas fill-up line with jalopy had to beg to borrow
to get to 4 job interview
fast-food/ carwash dead-end charades for convicted felons
my new PO arranged
then pronto return to the projects where Mother let’s me crash
on their ratty couch
until I land on my feet -- that’s where I find swarms of yawny cops
rifling our stuff
hunting for drugs or any f-ing excuse parole’s violated so they can shoot
this ape back.
Gerard Sarnat is the author of four critically-acclaimed collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016). Work from Ice King was accepted by over seventy magazines, including Gargoyle and Lowestoft Chronicle, and featured in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords and Floor Plan. For Huffington Post and other reviews, reading dates, publications, interviews and more, visit Gerard Sarnat.com. Go to Amazon to find Gerry’s books plus Editorial and Customer Reviews.
Harvard and Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails as a physician, built and staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO of healthcare organizations and Stanford Medical School professor. Sarnat's spent decades working for Middle East peace, including being a member of the US’s longest-running Jewish-Palestinian dialogue group and serving on the New Israel Fund international board. Married since 1969, he and his wife have three children and three grandkids with a fourth on the way.
The First Time
The first time my father almost died was a hot and richly green summer day. I was nine, scrambling my room to find my glove and cap for practice at Cooper Park by four. Dad took coaching seriously, and we were often the first ones there and the last to leave so no kid would wait alone.
Sitting downstairs in the cushy TV room next to the kitchen in the front of the house, I thought it strange that so much time was passing. Alternately fidgeting and admiring the handiwork and oiled leather of my Wilson “Ron Guidry” – model glove, I looked up to see Dad in his green team hat coming through the kitchen toward the door leading to the garage, strangely supported by Mom, who was struggling under the weight. Without looking at me, Mom said, “Dad isn’t feeling well I’m taking him to the hospital.” I mooned in the window, watching the baby-blue Ford back out of the drive and disappear around the corner like a shark into shadow, wondering how I would get to practice…..
When Matthew P. Varvel is not teaching, he is usually still working. His journey has taken him to the midwest, the southwest, and to Texas, where he has lived for 29 years; 11 were spent as a radio personality, and 11 as an educator. He cherishes reading and classical music.
She Left
It was west
I knew she had gone west
I don’t know why I just felt it in my skin
Crept under like a dirty spider
I was to head west
And if I found her
If I found her would I love her again?
Would I touch her again?
My feet drip after one another
Scraping the sand
Letting it wisp into my mouth
Body aching for water
No Car
Shoes two sizes too large
Blisters
And yet
There was no other plan
She spoke of the west once
She liked the cool breeze
The idiot I am ignored her desire
Living in oblivion
Not always bliss in the end
Now without her I would lie in bed and stare at white walls
Count the cracks in the ceiling
Count the stains smirked across the surface
There was potential in a friend calling
Ever now and every then
Tea, wine and despair
I bore them with my desperation
And all I knew it was all gone without her
I noticed that morning
She had left no keys
Maybe she could come back in the night
Crawl into bed and whisper her sweet apologies
I would cry into her breast
Forgiving everything, there is no strength
Hope, hope kills me
If she came back
I could breathe again,
No more staring
Flies itching at my dried eyes
Their legs tickling my lids
I let them play
At least one of us has entertainment
And I walk West step after step
Long empty roads ahead
And in the far distance then I see her,
An Illusion?
I don’t care at this point
The wind drifts her misty scent
I run
Step after step
Excitement throbbing in my chest
And yes
The head is always right
Just a delusion through the hot air
Idiocy
So I continue to wonder
Would she allow me melt into her smooth arm’s?
Collapsing from exhaustion
And of course
Will he be there?
Smirking at me
Knowing he won
I doubt, I doubt everything
If I couldn’t touch her anymore
If I couldn’t feel her soft thin lips
Her rough small hands
Her greasy hair, her wet under parts
What would I do?
Stop question
I beg myself
She packed a small bag
She took my favorite shirt
That bitch
I have so many shirts
Does he know its mine?
Does she smell me in secret?
She kissed me goodnight or goodbye
Left at god knows what time
She would have looked around our hallways
Maybe she cried a little
I hope she took a photo of me
She should have, we have thousands
Bound to be one photo she liked
I hope
Chelsea Ingram is an Australian actress from Brisbane Australia.
www.chelseaingram.org
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
October 14, 2016
Cover Art: Lyra at the Reflecting Pool by Anselmo J. Alliegro
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
October 14, 2016
Cover Art: Lyra at the Reflecting Pool by Anselmo J. Alliegro
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Anselmo J. Alliegro studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and he gained a scholarship to Parsons School of Design in New York City. Alliegro has exhibited in galleries and benefits in the US and internationally, and his art has been widely published.
Dear Sacagawea,
If you knew what came next
would you do it again?
Would you translate Lewis’s lies
or let him stammer and sweat?
Would you forage for herbs and roots
or let Clark die of scurvy?
Traded your beaded belt
to give Jefferson a fur robe?
Would you have tended to anyone else
but your dear little half-breed papoose
and maybe his bristly bigamist father
who won you rather than wooed you?
If you had been able to read in your dreams
the petroglyphs of the future –
rivers drained, mountains drilled,
bison ghosts ranging land
scarred by iron horses
crying louder than eagles,
pig-faced profiteers
pasturing, pickling your people –
would you have been the caregiver,
Mother Earth helping mankind,
no matter his customs or color?
Maybe you would, being that good.
Maybe you had other reasons.
Maybe even a birch canoe
full of Sacagawea gold coins
couldn’t stop a woman like you
from doing all she could.
Respectfully Yours,
Witness
J.C. Elkin is an optimist, linguist, and singer with a mammoth memory for minutiae. Her collection World Class: Poems Inspired by the ESL Classroom is based on her experiences teaching English to adult immigrants. Other poetry and prose drawing on spirituality, feminism, travel, and childhood appear domestically and abroad in such journals as The Delmarva Review, Kestrel, Angle, and Your Daily Poem. For more information, please visit her website, www.jcelkin.net .
Mondo Cane
When the world
tottered on a turtle's back,
when God could give out virgins,
and stars were holes
in the ceiling of His palace,
we didn't know
how the continents
floated on
oceans of liquid iron.
We didn't know
how clouds of suns
painted themselves
in patterns
deep in the sky.
.
Vasco De Gamma and Polo
didn't say how
in steamy places
that never see winter,
the brave men
tease the largest black spiders
out of their tenebrous
caves in the sand
and stack them in
piles of legs and empty
eight-eyed carcasses
in the marketplace
along with the limp
bodies of monkeys
Don Schaeffer has previously published a dozen volumes of poetry, his first in 1996, not counting the experiments with self publishing under the name "Enthalpy Press." He spent a lot of his young adult life hawking books and learning the meaning of vanity. His poetry has appeared in numerous periodicals and has been translated into Chinese for distribution abroad. Don is a habitue of the poetry forum network and has received first prize in the Interboard competition.
Sanctuary
Though when he began leaving on the light
so the neighbor could come if she managed
to slip away, the atmosphere of the
house immediately changed. We always
waited for the door to open then, for
her to step in out of breath, glancing back
to see if she’d been followed, unable
to orient herself, circling the out
side of the room like a shark, lifting the
edges of curtains for furtive looking.
Every dawn we clustered at the table
in the kitchen, the back window dark, but
she never arrived. Still, my father flicked
the porch light onat dusk each night, left the
door unlocked, gave her someplace safe to go.
Sandra Kolankiewicz’s poems have appeared in Crannog, Bank Street Review, Empty Sink, Bellingham Review, Pamplemousse, Mud Season, and Prairie Schooner.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
October 21, 2016
Cover Art: Heidelberg House by Michelle Brooks
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
October 21, 2016
Cover Art: Heidelberg House by Michelle Brooks
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Michelle Brooks has been published or is forthcoming in Threepenny Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Iowa Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Natural Bridge, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection, Make Yourself Small, was published by Backwaters Press, and her novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, was published by Storylandia Press. A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit, her favorite city.
Almost Empty
Nudging my filmy Toyota down 70th Street
to a strip mall Quick Stop
wedged between Clean your Blinds
and a Cuppa coffee shop.
A boy in a green Ninja shirt, straggles by her rear fender.
Thirty-something, in teeny shorts, with a cocoa pony tail,
she bobs from her sandy Chevy to him by his cloud-grey Datsun.
Romantic. Bumped into at a Phillips 66.
Thirsty fuel swallowing, levers flipped,
they dip toward one another, he grinning,
his blue tee a wrapper to his slim chest, slept-in, need-me jeans.
He lifts his shadowed chin.
“Your house or mine?”
“Mine. You know how to get in?”
“Yeah,” he tosses.
She catches, sliding onto a vinyl hot seat
that airless sultry, summer afternoon,
as the boy drops his soft, “Bye Dad,” following her,
and her tires crunching over asphalt, she sings, “Text.”
Clipped like cliché lives swept off feet
that turn sail and run, passing in the night,
as blank-faced sons and daughters,
flags from no particular country,
ripple, caught in their wind.
Maureen Wallner: A Canadian-American of Montréal, Québec, degreed in English literature, Maureen’s poetry and fiction, some of it prize-winning, has appeared with her non-fiction and creative non-fiction in magazines and newspapers. These include Literary Arts, Lucidity, Ascent Aspirations, Left Curve, New England Writers Network, and Le Forum, a Franco-American publication from the University of Maine. Currently her memoir, Up the Down Side is being reviewed by Kore Press for a contest open to English language female writers.
Seeing Venice
Leaving, even after a short visit, can be as good as arriving
There’s that feeling of discovery, everything, as old as it is, was
New to us as we walked around, like the careful tourists we are
Toured San Marco Square, we took all the expected pictures,
Looking up, the Basilica, the bell tower, the pigeons and
Panhandlers, the endless crowd crowding their way into place,
But that was yesterday, now we sail away, it’s night, and
The cruise ship follows along, and we get to see the Venice we will
Always want to remember, the lights give us towers and steeples,
Give us domes and street scenes, give us the square once more,
A few people left over, the magic of colors coming to life out of
The darkness, out of that day we spent and now we have seen Venice.
J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Social Justice Poetry, Record, Yellow Chair Review, Madswirl, and Haikuniverse.
On A Winter's Afternoon
Close to sleep on a winter's afternoon,
but hearing the liquid sounds of garden
birds singing to my ageing memories;
and remembering the soft watery light
on your dark hair and eyes like pools at
night, and how we have kept the seasons
sweet together; and enjoying a reverie
of dream honeybees gathering pollen
for whatever tomorrows may yet come.
Julian O’Dea is a retired government scientist who began writing poetry a few years ago. He has had haiku and other poems published in a range of online and paper journals. He lives in Canberra, Australia. His main interest is in lyrical poetry.
Nudging my filmy Toyota down 70th Street
to a strip mall Quick Stop
wedged between Clean your Blinds
and a Cuppa coffee shop.
A boy in a green Ninja shirt, straggles by her rear fender.
Thirty-something, in teeny shorts, with a cocoa pony tail,
she bobs from her sandy Chevy to him by his cloud-grey Datsun.
Romantic. Bumped into at a Phillips 66.
Thirsty fuel swallowing, levers flipped,
they dip toward one another, he grinning,
his blue tee a wrapper to his slim chest, slept-in, need-me jeans.
He lifts his shadowed chin.
“Your house or mine?”
“Mine. You know how to get in?”
“Yeah,” he tosses.
She catches, sliding onto a vinyl hot seat
that airless sultry, summer afternoon,
as the boy drops his soft, “Bye Dad,” following her,
and her tires crunching over asphalt, she sings, “Text.”
Clipped like cliché lives swept off feet
that turn sail and run, passing in the night,
as blank-faced sons and daughters,
flags from no particular country,
ripple, caught in their wind.
Maureen Wallner: A Canadian-American of Montréal, Québec, degreed in English literature, Maureen’s poetry and fiction, some of it prize-winning, has appeared with her non-fiction and creative non-fiction in magazines and newspapers. These include Literary Arts, Lucidity, Ascent Aspirations, Left Curve, New England Writers Network, and Le Forum, a Franco-American publication from the University of Maine. Currently her memoir, Up the Down Side is being reviewed by Kore Press for a contest open to English language female writers.
Seeing Venice
Leaving, even after a short visit, can be as good as arriving
There’s that feeling of discovery, everything, as old as it is, was
New to us as we walked around, like the careful tourists we are
Toured San Marco Square, we took all the expected pictures,
Looking up, the Basilica, the bell tower, the pigeons and
Panhandlers, the endless crowd crowding their way into place,
But that was yesterday, now we sail away, it’s night, and
The cruise ship follows along, and we get to see the Venice we will
Always want to remember, the lights give us towers and steeples,
Give us domes and street scenes, give us the square once more,
A few people left over, the magic of colors coming to life out of
The darkness, out of that day we spent and now we have seen Venice.
J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Social Justice Poetry, Record, Yellow Chair Review, Madswirl, and Haikuniverse.
On A Winter's Afternoon
Close to sleep on a winter's afternoon,
but hearing the liquid sounds of garden
birds singing to my ageing memories;
and remembering the soft watery light
on your dark hair and eyes like pools at
night, and how we have kept the seasons
sweet together; and enjoying a reverie
of dream honeybees gathering pollen
for whatever tomorrows may yet come.
Julian O’Dea is a retired government scientist who began writing poetry a few years ago. He has had haiku and other poems published in a range of online and paper journals. He lives in Canberra, Australia. His main interest is in lyrical poetry.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
October 28, 2016
Cover Art: by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
October 28, 2016
Cover Art: by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA.
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Men’s Central Jail
Simple misdemeanants
don’t pay parking tickets
sixty crowded in a cell
meant for fifteen, all of us
just trying to disappear
among a coupla handfuls
of loud proud more complex
miscreants who made
-- or didn’t make -- terrible
decisions which led
to wasted lives and provoke
excessive force in here.
Gerard Sarnat is the author of four critically-acclaimed collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016). Work from Ice King was accepted by over seventy magazines, including Gargoyle and Lowestoft Chronicle, and featured in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords and Floor Plan. For Huffington Post and other reviews, reading dates, publications, interviews and more, visit Gerard Sarnat.com. Go to Amazon to find Gerry’s books plus Editorial and Customer Reviews.
Harvard and Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails as a physician, built and staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO of healthcare organizations and Stanford Medical School professor. Sarnat's spent decades working for Middle East peace, including being a member of the US’s longest-running Jewish-Palestinian dialogue group and serving on the New Israel Fund international board. Married since 1969, he and his wife have three children and three grandkids with a fourth on the way.
Summer’s moon
a slow eclipse
your lonely tears.
At night
the ghostly sycamore
under the full moon.
Whispers in the dark
a reminder that you care
shadows fill tonight.
Jane Stuart is a poet from Greenup, Kentucky.
Margaret, December 1971
On the snow I hold my arms out wide like the angel above my brother’s crib. Mr. Harris will be mad at me when he knows I’m missing from his class. He’ll call my mom and she’ll be mad at me, and we’re moving on the weekend; Uncle Bobby’s helping us. When Mr. Harris finds me in the snow, I’ll tell him how last night I held my baby brother, how blue he was, how quiet, like my doll with her missing arm, how I didn’t tell my mom ‘cause she was busy with Uncle Bobby, banging the bed against the wall. I won’t tell him how I carried my baby brother with me to the school, how I made angels for him in the snow, how I made a crib and tucked him in behind the bushes by the steps and made more angels to keep him safe. They thought he was a doll. I won’t tell Mr. Harris how each night I want, not to cry, just stay warm, like my baby brother now, wrapped up in his bed beneath the snow.
Previously published in the poetry collection, After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016.
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, Vancouver Island. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016.
http://www.leafpress.ca
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
November 4, 2016
Cover Art: Mountain Haven 1 by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
November 4, 2016
Cover Art: Mountain Haven 1 by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Formation
from Rocky Mountain Poems
A mountain backdrop, generic
I heave another mountain into the foreground
Next to a lodgepole pine
Snow heavy
Crowned by a pitchy raven
Unbeckoned
a secret bird flies against
the sudden sky
and tilts.
Its wingtip cuts a cross
-section
into the treesoilrock
I peel back
the mountain's
skin
to
layers of limestone and shale, pitchy ravens perched on snow heavy pines, jagged glaciers melting in the global warning scenario, a snowshoe of wood and sinew, a snowshoe of aluminum, a metaphor of wind whispering, simile like a lonely wolf, bear-claw-scratched metonym, hot-spring-sprung alliteration, a broken heart, a marmot bounding out of season, an ice-ravaged climber naked inside a log cabin built by a white-bearded surveyor in a trilby long buried, an elegy to a carabiner smashed and lost, odes to Canmore, Parks Canada, Brian Mulroney, a snowflake, three snowflakes, an avalanche, a ski binding, a ski, me
Vivian Zenari has published in The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature, Qwerty, and The Bloody Key, among other publications. She lives, works, and writes in Edmonton, Alberta.
Sheffield Steel
Even in the 70s Sheffield’s steel crucible
forged only macho men.
So you witness protected your identity
behind long strides in black Doc Martens,
wiping dirty hands on brown overalls,
hunching over roll ups in navy donkey jacket.
But weekends deployed gay spy-craft:
whispered Polari ,
keys coyly slung from belt loops,
gold neck-chain’s glint,
leading to stomach churning cottageing in gents,
palm prickling pick- ups in blind eye pubs,
heart racing rendezvouses in suburban bedsits.
Hastily pulling back on your butchness
for the late bus home,
drunken lads still saw beneath
to the pansy, queer, fairy,
crouching inside and dealt with you.
Then the flit to London, in Soho’s sanctuary
released inner camp gene genie,
with nature Kohled eyes, mocha skin, lean body
you swanked in tight white tops and tight white jeans,
watering mouths following your Marilyn wiggle
down Old Compton Street.
And shaking your booty in ‘Bang’
added rock star notches to your bed post.
Kept your tongue Sheffield steel sharpened
as you deposed killer Queens.
Outside the Soho ghetto still set upon on underground,
but took your beating with ‘Whatever’ bravado.
And weekends in 6 inch pink diamante stilettos,
scarlet mini dress, Blondie wig,
you waved your purple feather Boa in society’s face
sprinting across the concourse of Victoria Station
en route to find heaven in ‘Heaven’.
Fiona Sinclair has had several collections published. She is the editor of the on line poetry magazine Message in a Bottle.
Morning Walk
trees in the strong wind
leaves and branches
on this path
most of my
fastenings unfastened
just about enough
bewilderment
---
away from strands
of distant sunlight
violet clouds
dipped in twilight
hang from the sky
clinging to an evening’s
blossoming emptiness
--
words for the poem
just seem to appear
in my mind, a mind
of stored antiques
genuine existence
within a one-sided
conversation
ayaz daryl Nielsen: veteran, former hospice nurse, ex-roughneck (as on oil rigs) lives in Longmont, Colorado. Editor of bear creek haiku (26+ years/135+ issues) with poetry published worldwide, he also is online at: bear creek haiku poetry, poems and info
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
November 11, 2016
Cover Art: by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
November 11, 2016
Cover Art: by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA.
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Too Late the Warning
We walk the concrete of cities
no longer remembering
why we gathered together
in earlier times,
protection against nomads,
tired of wandering,
a stable food supply.
And we built walls
to keep out undesirables.
But we no longer have walls
and undesirables proliferate
polluting the landscape,
threatening the safety of the road,
streets clogged with the mentally ill
as we lack time, resources, caring
to heal the disturbed
.
And as tourists course the shopping lanes
they do not know the blind despair
that taints so many citizens
deprived of jobs, homes, hope,
expectations dwindling
except for the children of privilege,
for the wealthy have forgotten
the pledge of our forefathers
for equal opportunity,
So the offspring of the poor,
denied the tools
to build a better life,
despite talent and potential
to enrich a failing society
are callously discarded.
Too many turn to crime, drugs,
the only beckoning avenue
to obtain valued goods,
brand name sneakers, jackets,
earned illicitly,
the money not more tainted
than Wall Street bonuses,
though acquired differently.
And as most of us fade
from the once bright promise
alternatives evaporate
and the people know fear,
but do not know how to prevent
impending disaster.
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks and 3 more accepted for publication. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions (Winter Goose Publishing). Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings and The Remission of Order will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). Resonance (Dreaming Big Publications). His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press), Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing) and Call to Valor (Gnome on Pigs Productions). Acts of Defiance will be published by Dreaming Big Publications, Sudden Conflicts by Lillicat Publishers and State of Rage by Rainy Day Reads Publishing. His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.
Empty Nest
broken feather
striped like a shirt
broken seeds
tossed like toys
open hole
cold like a door
broken bone
shaped like a heart
Richard Arnold lives on beautiful Vancouver Island and teaches English at VIU. He has published widely in print and electronic journals, including ASCENT ASPIRATIONS. He has published one collection of poetry, a chapbook from LEAF PRESS.
Winter Walks Out On Spring
The washerwoman wind sorts clouds into bundles,
Spring rains scrub them clean.
The air is crisp as new celery;
trees gleam in a hundred shades of green,
birds declare territorial rights in exquisite trills
and endless coos.
Nothing new, yet ever renewing, ever glorious,
one season departs with chilly huffs and puffs,
another dances onstage in a flutter of petals
and sunlight.
Scowling Winter
sulks and pouts beneath Spring’s laughing embrace,
shrugs and slams the door as he leaves,
secretly relieved.
Let the hussy flirt with that debonair Don Juan,
bare-chested Summer--
Nothing new, same old story,
She mocked Winter, lusty Summer will leave her
in tears.
Doesn’t he always?
Invierno Abandona A Primavera
El entusiasmado viento trabaja como lavandera
y sortea las nubes para limpiarlas;
Bella Primavera trae sus lluvias para fregarlas hasta
son suaves y blancas.
El aire es crispante y dulce,
los árboles muestran cien verdes diferentes,
los pájaros establecen sus territorios
con exquisitos trinados
y arrullos agresivos.
Se va una temporada llena de bravura y frío
y la siguiente aparece sobre el escenario
en una cascada de pétalos y alegre luz del sol.
Mal humorado, con la frente fruncida,
Invierno rechaza el riente abrazo de Primavera,
encoge sus hombros y golpea la puerta atrás de él
cuando se abandona el tablado,
secretamente aliviado.
¡Deje que la desgraciada coquetee con aquel Romeo,
ese Verano seductor, pecho al aire,
abrazos robustos, besos engañadores!
Nada nuevo, siempre la misma historia.
Primavera hace burla del arisco Invierno,
se desvanece en los fuertes brazos
del apasionado Verano,
quien juega al amante brevemente,
pero se aburriría de sus caprichos
y la dejaría llorando--
como siempre.
English and Spanish Versions of these poems by Sue Littleton
We walk the concrete of cities
no longer remembering
why we gathered together
in earlier times,
protection against nomads,
tired of wandering,
a stable food supply.
And we built walls
to keep out undesirables.
But we no longer have walls
and undesirables proliferate
polluting the landscape,
threatening the safety of the road,
streets clogged with the mentally ill
as we lack time, resources, caring
to heal the disturbed
.
And as tourists course the shopping lanes
they do not know the blind despair
that taints so many citizens
deprived of jobs, homes, hope,
expectations dwindling
except for the children of privilege,
for the wealthy have forgotten
the pledge of our forefathers
for equal opportunity,
So the offspring of the poor,
denied the tools
to build a better life,
despite talent and potential
to enrich a failing society
are callously discarded.
Too many turn to crime, drugs,
the only beckoning avenue
to obtain valued goods,
brand name sneakers, jackets,
earned illicitly,
the money not more tainted
than Wall Street bonuses,
though acquired differently.
And as most of us fade
from the once bright promise
alternatives evaporate
and the people know fear,
but do not know how to prevent
impending disaster.
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks and 3 more accepted for publication. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions (Winter Goose Publishing). Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings and The Remission of Order will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). Resonance (Dreaming Big Publications). His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press), Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing) and Call to Valor (Gnome on Pigs Productions). Acts of Defiance will be published by Dreaming Big Publications, Sudden Conflicts by Lillicat Publishers and State of Rage by Rainy Day Reads Publishing. His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.
Empty Nest
broken feather
striped like a shirt
broken seeds
tossed like toys
open hole
cold like a door
broken bone
shaped like a heart
Richard Arnold lives on beautiful Vancouver Island and teaches English at VIU. He has published widely in print and electronic journals, including ASCENT ASPIRATIONS. He has published one collection of poetry, a chapbook from LEAF PRESS.
Winter Walks Out On Spring
The washerwoman wind sorts clouds into bundles,
Spring rains scrub them clean.
The air is crisp as new celery;
trees gleam in a hundred shades of green,
birds declare territorial rights in exquisite trills
and endless coos.
Nothing new, yet ever renewing, ever glorious,
one season departs with chilly huffs and puffs,
another dances onstage in a flutter of petals
and sunlight.
Scowling Winter
sulks and pouts beneath Spring’s laughing embrace,
shrugs and slams the door as he leaves,
secretly relieved.
Let the hussy flirt with that debonair Don Juan,
bare-chested Summer--
Nothing new, same old story,
She mocked Winter, lusty Summer will leave her
in tears.
Doesn’t he always?
Invierno Abandona A Primavera
El entusiasmado viento trabaja como lavandera
y sortea las nubes para limpiarlas;
Bella Primavera trae sus lluvias para fregarlas hasta
son suaves y blancas.
El aire es crispante y dulce,
los árboles muestran cien verdes diferentes,
los pájaros establecen sus territorios
con exquisitos trinados
y arrullos agresivos.
Se va una temporada llena de bravura y frío
y la siguiente aparece sobre el escenario
en una cascada de pétalos y alegre luz del sol.
Mal humorado, con la frente fruncida,
Invierno rechaza el riente abrazo de Primavera,
encoge sus hombros y golpea la puerta atrás de él
cuando se abandona el tablado,
secretamente aliviado.
¡Deje que la desgraciada coquetee con aquel Romeo,
ese Verano seductor, pecho al aire,
abrazos robustos, besos engañadores!
Nada nuevo, siempre la misma historia.
Primavera hace burla del arisco Invierno,
se desvanece en los fuertes brazos
del apasionado Verano,
quien juega al amante brevemente,
pero se aburriría de sus caprichos
y la dejaría llorando--
como siempre.
English and Spanish Versions of these poems by Sue Littleton
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
November 18, 2016
Cover Art: Landscape by Clarissa Jakobsons
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
November 18, 2016
Cover Art: Landscape by Clarissa Jakobsons
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Clarissa Jakobsons
Artist, instructor, book artist, she was twice featured poet in Paris, France at “The Shakespeare and Co Bookstore.” Sample publications include: Tower, The Lake, Hawaii Pacific Review, Glint Literary Journal, Cave Moon Press, Touch: The Journal of Healing, Ruminate, Qarrtsiluni, Ascent Aspirations, Van Gogh’s Ear. Recently she enjoyed a residency at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.
Somebody Shot President Kinney
My brother and I are opposite;
Our sister is at the end.
Sent home from school early, we are kneeling together,
All three of us, like a horseshoe,
Our little elbows resting on the coffee table.
Confused, we can hear each other’s quiet breathing.
This is Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
It is November 22, 1963.
“Maria Santissima. Pray!”
We wonder how to act on this latest of our
Mamma’s stern and strange commands today.
Her face is a wetted, red smear of grief;
A mask of knowing but unknowing despair.
A grey duster sits beside her where she
Leans back on the couch at an awkward angle.
She is temporarily undone.
Brodo with orzo simmers thickly,
Unattended in a pot on the stove in the kitchen.
It is a quarter past one. Non abbiamo mangiato nulla.
The TV screen flickers blue, its changing darks and lights
Reflected in the table’s just-polished surface.
The familiar, vaguely appealing scent of Pledge
Rises up with the light, a chimera of false hope.
I see my sister mouthing something silently,
Her brow furrowed in a caricature of archetypal, childlike piety.
Her hands are held together flat but low, the way the bishop does.
The TV continues to murmur assassination coverage in the background--
My sister’s eyes, and my brother’s, are sealed hard shut.
My brother is the one at last to break the silence, whispering:
“Please God, make President Kinney be alive again.”
“Kennedy,” I correct him.
He opens his eyes, just a bit.
“And, please God, make the police catch the bad man
Who shooted him,” my sister adds, opening hers.
Mamma nods gently. Her own eyes remain closed.
Faith temporarily shaken, head tilted back,
Her whole body is pinned to the couch
By the weight of a newly broken America,
Of a newly broken world.
This weight she must bravely bear alone, at least
Until Papà gets home from the steel mill at five-thirty.
P.W. Bridgman writes short fiction and poetry from Vancouver, Canada. His work has been published in Litro UK, Litro NY, Grain, The Antigonish Review, The New Orphic Review, The Moth Magazine, London Grip, A New Ulster, Easy Street, Section 8 Magazine, The Mulberry Fork Review, Aerodrome and other literary periodicals and e-zines. One of his stories was short-listed for the 1994 Canadian National Magazine Award for Fiction; another placed first in the Pottersfield Portfolio short fiction competition in 1998. More recently Mr. Bridgman had a piece of his work short-listed for the 2010 U.K. Bridport Prize (flash fiction category) and two of his short stories placed in the Leonard Koval International Fiction Competition (in 2012 and 2014) and were published by the Irish publisher, Labello Press, in its Gem Street anthologies for those years. His Standing at an Angle to My Age—a selection of short fiction—was published by Libros Libertad in 2013. You may learn more about P.W. Bridgman by visiting his website at www.pwbridgman.ca.
Niobe
Her children, nine days dead:
A burr of blood’s copper,
A sweeter sting of shit,
A darkest thrum of greening meat--
And her townsmen, turned to stone.
She ate, they say,
And lie who call this comfort:
This rote reduction,
The grinding of her teeth
And peristalsis of her bowels;
Merely a fated spasm
Before she turned to stone.
Here find our conclusion:
Seems dissipates like pyre-smoke,
Is greets us at rock-bottom.
No abatement, no release
Except one turn to stone.
Aaron Evan Baker was born in Chicago, Illinois. He is an attorney and college teacher, and lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife, Stephanie, and their daughter, Laura.
In Good Shape
This old man--
regular as clockwork,
ambling along, now enters
the swimming pool,
and says to me
in more than jest:
“The last thing I want to do
before I go is
to be in good shape.”
Cyril Dabydeen: Published in over 70 lit mags and anthologies internationally, e.g. The Critical Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Canadian Literature, Oxford and Penguin Books of Caribbean Verse, etc. Twenty books. Former Poet Laureate of Ottawa. He teaches writing at the U of Ottawa.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
November 25, 2016
Cover Art: Wild Iris by Clarissa Jakobsons
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
November 25, 2016
Cover Art: Wild Iris by Clarissa Jakobsons
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Clarissa Jakobsons
Artist, instructor, book artist, she was twice featured poet in Paris, France at “The Shakespeare and Co Bookstore.” Sample publications include: Tower, The Lake, Hawaii Pacific Review, Glint Literary Journal, Cave Moon Press, Touch: The Journal of Healing, Ruminate, Qarrtsiluni, Ascent Aspirations, Van Gogh’s Ear. Recently she enjoyed a residency at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.
Artist, instructor, book artist, she was twice featured poet in Paris, France at “The Shakespeare and Co Bookstore.” Sample publications include: Tower, The Lake, Hawaii Pacific Review, Glint Literary Journal, Cave Moon Press, Touch: The Journal of Healing, Ruminate, Qarrtsiluni, Ascent Aspirations, Van Gogh’s Ear. Recently she enjoyed a residency at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.
That Summer
That summer when the sauna was too hot,
the pool too cool, huddled on the patio,
by a gas heater, under a breezeway wreathed
with climbing roses and clematis twined,
their leaves attuned to the slightest breeze,
summoning some thing invisible, cunning,
unnamed; uncovered in tiny bits and pieces
arranged in the cryptic patterns of a tiled floor;
that summer I remember so little
worth remembering, and so much
better forgotten, the details of all
those optional routes to mayhem
and release. At least that was what
I thought I’d found, on the re-bound
from the latest bounder, homeward
bound on a round-about somewhere
on the highway round about the north
shore of Lake Superior;
That summer when it all began
unravelling into bright glittering
threads that wound around both
eyes, and mouth: little molecules
of oxygen; little golden figurines
weaving memes and anagrams
through strands of amethyst and
copper, elastic shields, expanding,
thin enough to be seen
through
—as I see through you,
spinning tales out of hand-me-downs
and thefts—as all the best tales are
fabrications of an animated tapestry--
you don’t fool me any more
than necessary for us to agree
that summer was the end
for both of us.
Elizabeth Rhett Woods has published six books of poetry, most recently, Woman Walking: Selected Poems (Ekstasis Editions, 2009), and three novels, the latest being Coyote—A Tale of Unexpected Consequences (Ekstasis Editions, 2011) Her radio plays and poetry have been broadcast on CBC Radio. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
Fashion
Makeup like two bruised eyes;
or like she’s been crying; as if
she’s a silver alien; blusher or
rouge like a shamed whore or
a painted doll off an assembly
line; lips thin and pained like an
inflamed gash; or syrupy like
candied fruit.
Julian O’Dea is a retired government scientist who began writing poetry a few years ago. He has had haiku and other poems published in a range of online and paper journals. He lives in Canberra, Australia. His main interest is in lyrical poetry.
into the dream of ordinary shame
you should believe in
messiahs conceived by man
you should believe
there will be an end to poets
an end to words and to politicians
and we will be here in this empty house with
nothing between us but the corpses
of the disappeared
we will consider the moment where christ
clenches his hands into
bleeding fists
the moment where the sun reaches
its highest point and the power fails and
the prisons are all filled with
nothing but priests and widows
and i have seen myself reflected in
the windows of abandoned buildings and
i have turned away
i have called my lovers by
the wrong name and then laughed
and listen
whatever you write is meaningless
you save no one but yourself
and even this is questionable
remember
god isn't a lie
but a punishment
think about whatever it is
you've done wrong
John Sweet has been writing for 20 some years now to varying degrees of success. His recent work has appeared in THE FLATLANDS, FAMILIAR, ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE, WHINO. He is married, a father of two, overeducated, underpaid, and deep in debt. He is a believer in writing as catharsis, and in the government as excess fat.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
December 2, 2016
Cover Art: Forest Women published as cover for The Outrider by Allen Forrest
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
December 2, 2016
Cover Art: Forest Women published as cover for The Outrider by Allen Forrest
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Allen Forrest: Born in Canada and bred in the U.S., Allen Forrest has worked in many mediums: computer graphics, theater, digital music, film, video, drawing and painting. Allen studied acting in the Columbia Pictures Talent Program in Los Angeles and digital media in art and design at Bellevue College (receiving degrees in Web Multimedia Authoring and Digital Video Production.) He currently works in the Vancouver, Canada, as a graphic artist and painter. He is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University's Reed Magazine and his Bel Red painting series is part of the Bellevue College Foundation's permanent art collection. Forrest's expressive drawing and painting style is a mix of avant-garde expressionism and post-Impressionist elements reminiscent of van Gogh, creating emotion on canvas.
Cover Art--
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/06/art-on-cover.html
Art between the covers--
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/04/art-between-covers.html
Commissions--
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/04/art-commissions.html
Artist Interviews/Articles
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/12/artist-interviews-and-articles.html
Coffeehouse Poem #164
so much depends on
the redhead in
a black dress
whose walk is a
samba
the hibiscus in her
hair, moaning billies'
blues
Erren Geraud Kelly is a Pushcart nominated poet from Los Angeles. He has been writing for 25 years and has over 150 publications in print and online in such publications as Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine(online), Ceremony, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Salzburg and other publications. His most recent publication is in Black Heart Literary Journal; He has also been published in anthologies such as Fertile Ground, and Beyond The Frontier. His work can also be seen on Youtube under the "Gallery Cabaret," links.
Five O'clock Whistle
It blows, and suddenly the pavements are filled
With men and women going everywhere,
But none are going anywhere.
Women in pretty dresses are not going to dances.
Yesterday was long ago
When tomorrow set shimmery curls in their hair
And summer slipped a diamond on their fingers.
Men in soiled denims are not going on safaris.
Yesterday was long ago
When adventure held the scent of salt-air
And their names were on the roll-call of ambition.
The whistle is a smokescreen,
And somewhere, on the other side,
Lies the "Open Sesame" of youth.
Vernon Waring , a native of Philadelphia, is a former newspaper reporter and public relations consultant. His poetry has appeared in Nerve Cowboy, DARKLING Magazine, WestWard Quarterly, The Great American Poetry Show, and the Prairie Home Companion website. Ascent Aspirations has also published several of his short stories. He lives in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Looking Down On Me
Sometimes I look in the mirror.
After I get done vomiting,
I look again and reflexively command aloud:
“Somebody get this asshole out of here.”
Reflexes are the only means by which
I can handle myself
when I am conscious of my own presence.
I am so sick of me
and it is chronic.
Luther Koch lives in Ohio. He holds advanced degrees in social sciences, but has not formally studied literature or the humanities. He is passionate about writing. George Carlin and John Kenneth Galbraith are two of his favorite wordsmiths. He believes there is no substitute for good writing.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
December 9, 2016
Cover Art: by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
December 9, 2016
Cover Art: by Norman J. Olson
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA.
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com
Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Momentum
He texts me, I can’t do this. I can’t
stop crying. I’m in the bathroom
at work. I was at my desk for fifteen
minutes and somebody said hi to me
and I just lost it. I don’t know
what to do. I do what everybody
does in this situation; I make
it worse by trying to help. When’s
your appointment with the psychiatrist?
He says it’s two days from now,
but insurance won’t cover it. She’s
out of network. There aren’t any
psychiatrists in network. If she puts
him on meds, he won’t be able to pay
for them, and they won’t start working
for a few weeks. If I leave, I’m going
to get fired. I tell him if he can just wait
it out, it’ll get better. It’s so thin of a lie
neither of us acknowledges it. Find something
to distract yourself. Count ceiling tiles. Breathe.
It will pass. The truth is, it’ll never
get better. Not really. He’s a thousand
miles from water and all he can do
is walk. The sun is high. One foot, the other,
repeat. Eventually, there will be mountains.
Maybe he can build up some momentum
and at least die at their peaks.
CL Bledsoe is the author of a dozen books, most recently the poetry collection Riceland and the novel Man of Clay.
build a wall
build a two car garage
one for your b-mer
one for her s u v
use automatic door openers
so your exits
will be swift and anonymous
build a third garage
for your only child
who will turn 16 any day now
and has her eye on a vintage vette
plus you will need
a tall deep garage
for your big mobile home
your his and her harleys
your speedboat your jetskis
and a powerdriver and hammer
now build a threshold with
a front door with a peephole
to one side of your garages
never mind a doorbell because
you should expect anyone
you want to see to text ahead
now build a house
behind the door behind your garages
email your boss to confront him
about your security in human relations
never mind your stocks have tanked
just take out a third mortgage
everything will turn out ok
The Poet Spiel: satire noire, social commentary painter, poet/writer
Back Principles (14) : Keats & Rilke coming up again (& damned Spicer, too)
Who sees into me
… has mine heart?
Too easily tossed
(on a heap, on
a mound)
This inning is
future time
(grace time …?)
I would take
a pitcher
of you
Drink it, bat it
out of here
−−whatever
it takes
I lose myself
completely, am
struck dumb
in your
buddha
love
Where is my
ground, where
is my Heysus
spinning to
now
This (heady) gain
is nerve loss
(also)
It is mystery
one enters
−−terrified
(& possibly
alive …)
Witless &
spooked,
& unafraid
to say so
(god help
me)
Look in mine
eyes & give
me your
strength,
I have none
that doesn’t
shake the bases
loose in the
night
Look in mine
eyes, I have
forgotten how
to see
Stephen Bett has had eighteen books of poetry published: Un/Wired (BlazeVOX Books, Buffalo, N.Y., 2016); The Gross & Fine Geography: New & Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2015); Those Godawful Streets of man: a book of raw wire in the city (BlazeVOX Books, Buffalo, N.Y., 2014); Journal for Breathing Arizona (Ekstasis Editions, Spring, 2014); Penny-Ante Poems (Ekstasis Editions, 2013); Sound Off: a book of jazz (Thistledown Press, 2013); Re-Positioning (Ekstasis Editions, 2011); Track This: a book of relationship (BlazeVOX Books, Buffalo, N.Y., 2010); SPLIT (Ekstasis Editions, 2009); Extreme Positions: the soft-porn industry Exposed (Spuyten Duyvil Books, NYC, 2009); Sass ’n Pass (Ekstasis Editions, 2008); Three Women (Ekstasis Editions, 2006); Nota Bene Poems: A Journey (Ekstasis Editions, 2005); Trader Poets (Frog Hollow Press, 2003); High-Maintenance (Ekstasis Editions, 2003); High Design Refit (Greenboathouse Books, 2002); Cruise Control (Ekstasis Editions, 1996); Lucy Kent and other poems (Longspoon Press, 1983).
His work has also appeared in well over 100 literary journals in Canada, the U.S., England, Australia, New Zealand, and Finland, as well as in four anthologies, and on radio.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
December 16, 2016
Cover Art: Winter Threat by Patricia Carroll
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
A Blind Boy, on the Solstice
A blind boy whose father dies finds no comfort
in a picture of him standing by the roses.
The musk, maybe, of an old sweater he used to wear,
but that will fade. If only the boy had saved
a few of the voicemails his father was always leaving,
all the times and places they would meet.
We never know what we really need. Here, let me
take you down to the banks of the swollen river.
Let me take you to where the river has begun to flood.
Every winter at the solstice we walk among
the muddy leaves. Every winter at the solstice we listen
for the high thin notes of the kinglets foraging
in the upper branches of the oak, with the chickadees, too,
and the yellow-rumped warblers: tsee tsee tsee.
Their quick, sweet, tumbling chatter. I will teach you
what to listen for. You can count on this: the solstice
always comes and the kinglets always fuss,
high in the bare trees, and every winter the river floods,
it thickens and swells and increases in volume
and increases in force, sweeping up branches and trunks
and carrying them along. Let me try to describe it.
The river is rising now. It’s beginning to race. It’s thick
and brown and wide. If we wanted to keep up
we’d have to run, faster than we’ve ever run before.
Chris Anderson is a professor of English at Oregon State University and a Catholic deacon. He has published a number of books, and poems in a number of places—including in Ascent, and he has a new book coming out in October from Eerdmans, Light When It Comes.
Bristlecone Pine, Great Basin
Silent triumph,
sustained by harshness,
attuned to desolation,
perfect fit
of gnarled arms,
shallow roots,
high desert’s killing sun,
deep winter,
and precious little rain.
Despite its trials,
the bristlecone pine
refuses to die.
Previously published on The High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology website: http://hpsfaa.org/
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Oklahoma City, OK USA;
Interdisciplinary Seminar facilitator, American Indian Diabetes Prevention Center (AIDPC)/Adjunct Professor, Department of Health Promotion Sciences, College of Public Health, OUHSC, Oklahoma City OK; Research Associate of the Center for the Study of Organizational Change, University of Missouri, Columbia.
The Flower
It has nothing to do with the flower,
which is just a fragrant curiosity,
a ruse of the hidden hunger
that beckons the precious flesh.
It has everything to do with the flower
because, after the flag is set aside,
after the beast is filled with blood
and the body bored with bolder business,
it begins to yearn to make another flower.
Jim Strope is a software engineer, playwright and man-about town living in the SF Bay Area. He runs www.sfsalvo.com, a lit site where writers are welcome to submit their work.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
December 23, 2016
Cover Art: Charlie Parker from his Jazz Series by Allen Forrest
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
December 23, 2016
Cover Art: Charlie Parker from his Jazz Series by Allen Forrest
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Allen Forrest: Born in Canada and bred in the U.S., Allen Forrest has worked in many mediums: computer graphics, theater, digital music, film, video, drawing and painting. Allen studied acting in the Columbia Pictures Talent Program in Los Angeles and digital media in art and design at Bellevue College (receiving degrees in Web Multimedia Authoring and Digital Video Production.) He currently works in the Vancouver, Canada, as a graphic artist and painter. He is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University's Reed Magazine and his Bel Red painting series is part of the Bellevue College Foundation's permanent art collection. Forrest's expressive drawing and painting style is a mix of avant-garde expressionism and post-Impressionist elements reminiscent of van Gogh, creating emotion on canvas.
Cover Art--
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/06/art-on-cover.html
Art between the covers--
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/04/art-between-covers.html
Commissions--
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/04/art-commissions.html
Artist Interviews/Articles
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/12/artist-interviews-and-articles.html
Cover Art--
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/06/art-on-cover.html
Art between the covers--
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/04/art-between-covers.html
Commissions--
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/04/art-commissions.html
Artist Interviews/Articles
http://art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/2014/12/artist-interviews-and-articles.html
Queen
(After Bruce Springstein)
The way she priced those sirloins
like they were incidentals.
The way her poppy white collar sheltered
passionate moons smoldering the dawn,
banana shirtsleeves' white undersides
folded & buttoned above tanned biceps.
There must be more than this; otherwise,
I'm in love with the queen of the supermarket.
'57 Chevy 283 4-barrel fueled by pheromones
plus the excitement any current war stirs
in a young man’s heart, wounded
by shrapnel, waiting for his second wind.
In August 2015 Alan Britt was invited by the Ecuadorian House of Culture Benjamín Carrión in Quito, Ecuador as part of the first cultural exchange of poets between Ecuador and the United States. During his visit, he participated in venues all across the country including the international literary conference sponsored by La hermandad de las palabras 2015 in Babahoyo, Ecuador. In 2013 he served as judge for the The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. His latest books include Violin Smoke (Translated into Hungarian by Paul Sohar and published in Romania: 2015; Lost Among the Hours: 2015; Parabola Dreams (with Silvia Scheibli): 2013; and Alone with the Terrible Universe: 2011. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.
New Message
i am mad at Summer
She told me bleeding scream at first
remember bleeding scream
it was you coming as
I changed my mind
i punched out a tooth A baby tooth.
Paige Simkins is a poet who lives with her dog, Sir Simon Theo Wujcik Salvador Dali McBride Simkins, in Tampa, Florida. She received a Bachelor degree in English (CRW) and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science. She works as a Public Librarian and is very passionate about poetry, libraries, VW Beetles, and visual art. Her poems have appeared in the Tulane Review, Convergence, Literary Juice, Burningword Literary Journal, The Wayfarer, Bluestocking Magazine, Furious Gazelle, Crack the Spine, and Stepping Stones Magazine.
cast off road show
add the shoes
new cast offs add them
even if at this moment they smell
wrong
of someone else's feet
but that changes as it did with all the rest
in the nest that huddles around
the cast off shirts and trousers
learned to smell like you in record time
and even though shoes (cast out or not) are persistent
in their stink
you have infinite measurements of time for your pheromones
to sink into the soles
because you wear every cast off
out and down to the nub of frayed existence
last bursting stitch until the explosion
into nothinghood because you must or
be naked
and woefully there are none lower
to cast to
Peter Bracking tells tall tales. Earth point: a tropical metropolis.Words have been published from ocean to ocean to ocean by some really great literary mags in a growing number of countries on half the inhabited continents.
The only occupation is being a beach bum. Peter is the artistic director of Utter Stories.
Self aggrandizement: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017AFRGEK
http://utterstories.wordpress.com
(After Bruce Springstein)
The way she priced those sirloins
like they were incidentals.
The way her poppy white collar sheltered
passionate moons smoldering the dawn,
banana shirtsleeves' white undersides
folded & buttoned above tanned biceps.
There must be more than this; otherwise,
I'm in love with the queen of the supermarket.
'57 Chevy 283 4-barrel fueled by pheromones
plus the excitement any current war stirs
in a young man’s heart, wounded
by shrapnel, waiting for his second wind.
In August 2015 Alan Britt was invited by the Ecuadorian House of Culture Benjamín Carrión in Quito, Ecuador as part of the first cultural exchange of poets between Ecuador and the United States. During his visit, he participated in venues all across the country including the international literary conference sponsored by La hermandad de las palabras 2015 in Babahoyo, Ecuador. In 2013 he served as judge for the The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. His latest books include Violin Smoke (Translated into Hungarian by Paul Sohar and published in Romania: 2015; Lost Among the Hours: 2015; Parabola Dreams (with Silvia Scheibli): 2013; and Alone with the Terrible Universe: 2011. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.
New Message
i am mad at Summer
She told me bleeding scream at first
remember bleeding scream
it was you coming as
I changed my mind
i punched out a tooth A baby tooth.
Paige Simkins is a poet who lives with her dog, Sir Simon Theo Wujcik Salvador Dali McBride Simkins, in Tampa, Florida. She received a Bachelor degree in English (CRW) and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science. She works as a Public Librarian and is very passionate about poetry, libraries, VW Beetles, and visual art. Her poems have appeared in the Tulane Review, Convergence, Literary Juice, Burningword Literary Journal, The Wayfarer, Bluestocking Magazine, Furious Gazelle, Crack the Spine, and Stepping Stones Magazine.
cast off road show
add the shoes
new cast offs add them
even if at this moment they smell
wrong
of someone else's feet
but that changes as it did with all the rest
in the nest that huddles around
the cast off shirts and trousers
learned to smell like you in record time
and even though shoes (cast out or not) are persistent
in their stink
you have infinite measurements of time for your pheromones
to sink into the soles
because you wear every cast off
out and down to the nub of frayed existence
last bursting stitch until the explosion
into nothinghood because you must or
be naked
and woefully there are none lower
to cast to
Peter Bracking tells tall tales. Earth point: a tropical metropolis.Words have been published from ocean to ocean to ocean by some really great literary mags in a growing number of countries on half the inhabited continents.
The only occupation is being a beach bum. Peter is the artistic director of Utter Stories.
Self aggrandizement: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017AFRGEK
http://utterstories.wordpress.com
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
December 30, 2016
Cover Art: Photograph by William Crawford
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Friday's Poems
December 30, 2016
Cover Art: Photograph by William Crawford
Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open.
Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Blue Denim Hat With A Hint of Spring
William Crawford is a writer & photographer based in North Carolina.
William Crawford is a writer & photographer based in North Carolina.
The Mad Girl Wants To Get Out While The Getting Is Good
She always said when she couldn’t
do ballet to slip poison in her tea,
that when she couldn’t wear
leather minis, it was time to say
goodbye. Still slim, with long hair .
From her back you might think
her in her 20’s or younger. She’s
terrified the day will come
she can’t reach pills she’s kept
for that special last day. She
imagines a blue translucence,
a lull of rage, a dream video
the Argentine tango with
a last bolero that no one
will forget
Lyn Lifshin: New books include Knife Edge & Absinthe: the Tango poems; For the Roses, poems for Joni Mitchell, All The Poets Who Touched Me; A Girl Goes Into The Woods; Malala, Tangled as the Alphabet: The Istanbul Poems. : Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle; Malala and Femina Eterna: Enheduanna, Scheherazade and Nefertiti; Stained Glass, Maple Leaves. web site:www.lynlifshin.com
coming soon Degas’ Little Dancer , The Silk Road, Winter Poems and an update to my Gale Research Series LIPS, BLUES, BLUE LIPS:ON THE OUTSIDE, and aliveasaloadedgun
Scanty With Straw And Crepe Myrtle
Bantams jerk around our house on Paul’s Hill.
Knotholes in the planks air little biddies.
The mother always seems dazed in hedges.
Her nest she fluffs with leaves of crepe myrtle.
Shelby Stephenson is Poet Laureate of North Carolina. Recent books: Elegies for Small Game (Press 53), Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl (Bellday Books), Steal Away (Jacar Press) and a reissue of Fiddledeedee (Press 53). A Distinguished Alumnus of the English Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina-Pembroke, serving as editor of Pembroke Magazine from 1979 until his retirement in 2010. He lives at the homeplace on Paul’s Hill, where he was born, near McGee’s Crossroads, about ten miles north of Benson.
December
If it weren’t for ..
the iceberg in the chimney
(its cold a knife between
continents of brain flab) that
weeps into the seepier parts
of sinuses and head cavities
when I drink red wine and
Christmas cheer is lit from
below. If it weren’t for the
small skeletons of birds
trapped in that ice in the chimney–
the gritty detritus I can hear
their bones crack when I turn
my neck– If it weren’t for...
the rat the size of a small
dog in the rafters with jaws...
gnawing spaces of unoccupied
thought I might enjoy December.
Gillian Harding-Russell is currently a freelance writer and editor working for a number of magazines, among them Event’s Reading Service She has had three poetry collections and five chapbooks published. In 2016, a sequence "Making Sense" manuscript was awarded 'best suite by an established poet' in Exile’s Gwendolyn MacEwen chapbook. A chapbook Fox Love is coming out in The Alfred Gustav Press series in 2016.