Contents ◊↔◊↔◊↔◊
Poetry / Viral Media / Short Films / Paintings /Screenplays / Music Reviews
♥ poetry. poetry. poetry. poetry. poetry. poetry. poetry. poetry. ♥
"Tipping Off" ............................................................... Tiffany Slotwinski
"Apart" ...................................................................... Justin Debrosse
"Open Jars" ................................................................ J.D. Marshall
"Stoshu, Oil Painting" ................................................. Tiffany Slotwinski
" A Woodsman's Tale" ................................................ J.D. Marshall
"We Sip" ..................................................................... Justin Debrosse
Review of "When I Had One Kitten Remix" ................ Marie Wills
"A Desperate Day, Searing Night" .............................. Justin Debrosse
"Dinner With An Ass" .................................................. Danielle Schechner-Kanofsky
Review of "Flatmates" ................................................ Howard Cohen
"Stabboard Bird" Feature Screenplay Excerpt ........... Tiffany Slotwinski
Tipping Off
Sonorous egg carton, yellow life boat gliding across stormy waves and disaster-prone bodies. Pop of the shark snout.
Salt water sticking, barely sliding down parched throat.
Oscillating ocean line and eel tricksters bathe
in mad harmonics.
Tipping off dinghy for a cool cigarette break,
the hip bone blasted cephalic meaning, drowsy
and shrouded in blood.
Apart
Sway of the moon's tidal pull Flowing into the crest of cavern We stopped to pull ourselves apart A visitor from beneath The wet seal anchored his head Stared through my chest, lifted his head And abruptly fled towards ocean deep
Open Jars
My father would wander along beaches, brack wind whipping sand against his sun-broiled neck, gathering shells under the buzz of microscope eyes.
A biologist. Stepping gingerly over clumps of rotted marsh grass, he would stoop and pluck a conch half-submerged in a heap of horseshoe-crab carrion, shaking his prize clean of their primal guts and scattering a swarm of black-flies.
At low tide we would wade deep into the bay, the muck nursing our toes. His arms splay to catch the gust, eyes piercing the murk, he would swoop and thrust, surfacing with a squid squirming between his cradled fingers.
When I peer into his study through wisps of pipe-smoke, I see shelves of labeled jars, the rows aligned precise as a microscope's lens. Inside are all manner of miniature sea-creatures, each calibrated and frozen in formaldehyde -- locked forever by his calloused hand. I want to open jars.
poetry. poetry. poetry. poetry.
A Woodsman's Tale
I came upon him hanging off a cliff,
His fingers dug into the rocky salt;
Beneath him foamed a sea of broken glass,
His sinewed arms had always there held fast.
The sky was now ablaze in stubborn dusk,
And wanted nothing less than Nyx's throne;
But soon, I knew, would shiver and collapse,
And sink into the depths--a wind-snapped mast.
"Here" said I and cupped my firmest grip,
And spoke he without one breath's brooding halt:
"The dirt against my palms is all my past,
And never could I loose its gilded cast.
Better, then, is life upon this cusp,
Where both the blade and sky are easily known,
For out there in the teeming woods of Mask,
I wouldn't know from where to see my path."
At that I wept and couldn't calm my fit,
That seemed to drink the dead Sun's still-hot heart;
So struck I blows of madness on his grasp
Until he dove into the jagged bath.
Impaled upon a crest of speckled dust,
He shattered fast and mingled with the foam.
Unleashed, his soul did rise into the black,
Where in the Moon was suckled by the Crone.
We Sip
Nourish we sip
Love's ship we sink
You bleed in time
Word grieves small spaces
Come after now
Hand in root
Mind uncover
Recover new
Fortune still
Waking eye
Find not
Sweating sands
But crashing
Crews