Write for Us

Prelude To Zero (7) | Nate Maxson

Tamara Woods Leave a comment

Maybe I shouldn’t talk about the 20th century any more, maybe it’s all in the past but if it’s in the past then it’s possible that I, having been born as it ended, never stood a chance and am still in the past

Still expecting a happy ending though the only place that happens nowadays is in shady massage parlors, our happy ending is the moment one machine rams full speed into another

Hindenbergs in time like icebergs in the Mississippi river, all in time: the coastlines shriveling so I see Debussy’s ship escaping into the gray havens (one of the few fictional promises I can understand perhaps due to its inherent bitterness) never to touch an instrument (navigational or otherwise) again

Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. He is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently “The Age Of Jive” from Red Dashboard Press. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Universe (You, in verse)

Tamara Woods 1 Comment

Noel Fielder

You see with two moons,
orbs that orbit around all to which they’re attracted
and you circle everything.

I orbit you as a fixated, free-falling asteroid
observing your cigarettes and shrugs,
the glittery hugs,
the mug of the moon man glistening above.

I write this in the dark because you are the light,
a moon that appears to me in phases
reflecting the glow of everyone
about whom I care.

Noel Fielder is everything at different times, but most frequently an insomniac and student living in New Jersey. He has been published with ‘The Interstate Oratorical Association’, ‘The Kansas City Star’, and the ‘Love and Forgiveness in Governance Project’. Noel’s favorite color is all of them.

Match Point

Tamara Woods Leave a comment

 

Match Point:  Wimbledon Center Court  From a photograph of Boris Becker by Adam Stoltman at Wimbledon 1985

Right after the yelling
screams, roars of adoration
spurs as trophies flash
in the servers eyes, wiping
brow as camera focuses
closer he bounces his rival
two time champion waits
for can opener lifting
the ball

as the audience gasps, ready
for the ace, with loudest grunt
forewarns. One swing before
the tears or will his fate bring
cheers rallying heads bobbling
back and forth on grass, grasping
center court on grass attention
match point strikes the tension
of 40 love—

not waiting for the shout
of the ball’s epic
first flight
to land on the grass,
soft hands, curves the grip
for his backhand returns;
this grinder dives reaches out,
the ball paints the line
as the crowd ignites—
all the racket hits is nerves.

Nothing but strikes as he swings
The only sound, his shoes
squeaking on center court.
Through the net, breath
caught, withstanding all
between the sweats, forgoing doubt
no time to confess, reaching
for an upset as the ball fades,
as the crowd
gasps too still to shout;
falling towards the chalk
line, match point, landing
fast— will it be
in or out?

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is an L.A. poet whose work appears in the new True Romance Poems collection, 1000 Tankas for Michael Brown, The Lake Poetry, Edgar Allen Poet Journal # 2, Fukushima Poetry Anthology, The New Verse News, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, Spilt Ink Poetry, Erotic T Magazine, Luna Luna Magazine’s Latino Poetry Project, Love Poetry Lovers, Silver Birch Press, Transcendence Magazine, Ealain Literary & Art Magazine, ZO Magazine, Thick With Conviction, Oddball Magazine, The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, Men’s Heartbreak Anthology, Purrfect Poetry Anthology and in Poetry in Motion’s collection Poems to Fuck to. He is currently enrolled in the MFA Graduate program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

In Rhythmic Awareness of Eiru, the Celtic Earth Goddess

Tamara Woods Leave a comment
Write for Us poetry http://thereveriejournal.com

Circles break apart, time seeds scatter. St. Brendan’s ship sails away.
The sweep of time moves fast; the visible half circle arch matched with its half heard bellow below.
Time flows leaves or comes, emanates from the stones laid across the lands.
And the poets’ hands hover; feel the energy where she comes, where she leaves
Before the first fall,
we Irish  danced  on Eiru’s body reciting psalms and prayers.
Time passes, stones sit. Crumbs of language fall astray;
come and leaves again while we clean bone debris.   Chimney birds sweep the dust under the family
room rug where mounds grow unencumbered. And always the wars and spills of red blood. The stain
cannot be rubbed out.
Our  shadows  rise and fall. The bright shine of hard cinder truths rubbed out from our sleepy eyes.
Brown and black sheep wait to be washed clean, wait to be made white. We try to keep clean and
peaceful and
yet the battles go on and on.
During the famine times Eiru’s body became torn and rent while pretty purple flowered potatoes
Turned  rotten. More ships sailed away and American bricks were sometimes found not be gold.
And slow go the poets, neither this nor that, sweep the words out in the open over
the rim at the edge of the world where at the blank edge of space they fall through the sun and burn.

Mary C. O’Malley MSW,MFA is a poet and retired Social Worker. She had many poems published in the last ten years. You might have read one. This poem is in honor of the Irish pagan side of St. Patrick’s Day.

Jiving with Chives

Tamara Woods Leave a comment

It moves herky-jerky
I watch it go
round and round
second-hand time
and try to think of
something to write
about garlic chives
in a flower pot
painted by
Vincent van Gogh
but the tick-tock
has gotten into my head
and I’m thinking
I’ll never see that second again.
A sweeping arc
and before I’m ready
sixty of them
have flown away
like the passenger
pigeon, extinct, missed,
ill-used and no more
but not forgotten…
like the painting of
a common thing
yet now immortalized…
perhaps in this poem.

Debi Swim lives in West Virginia. She write daily and most often to prompts from various wonderful poetry blogs.

TRAPPED!

Tamara Woods 3 Comments

We have the youngest poet to debut on our page. Give her a warm welcome!

She could feel the walls closing in,
Slowly suffocating her to death
She could feel all her senses going numb
As she slowly ran out of breath
She knew she could run, but never hide
From those voices that hunted her down
She was trapped in a labyrinth, confused and lost
As she struggled for a way to escape
Waves of nausea and panic overcame her
As she tried to find a way out, from the eternal maze,
That unleashed her deepest and darkest fears
And trapped her in her own nightmares

Anonymous Indian is a happy 15-year-old girl who lives in the beautiful country of India. She loves to write and considers blogging to be the perfect platform to express her creativity.

Ashes

Tamara Woods 11 Comments
Poetry on The Reverie Journal blog.

To sweeten the dish, add salt. To bear the pain,
render the insoluble. She envied

the past its incursions, yet the past yields to all,
avoidance to acceptance, trees to smoke.

My mother brought to this country a token of her death to come.

Now it sits on my shelf bearing implements of music.
In her last days I played Sakura on the mandolin,

trusting that she might find comfort
in the blossoms fluttering through the failing notes,

a return to mornings
of tea and rice, of
warmth and paper walls and deep laughter.

Today the rain spells forgive

and every idea becomes form, every shadow a symptom,
each gesture a word, a naming in silence.

Scatter me in air I’ve never breathed.

 

Robert Okaji lives in Texas. “Ashes” was featured on Extract(s) and is included in his chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform, to be released in April 2015, as Dink Press’s first offering in its National Poetry Month Series. You can find him at his blog.