How the Poem Labors

to fill black and rusted cauldrons
between witches cackling
on the Rorschach test,
to fill Greek urns,
of incense-breathing musk
between handles curving inward.

How the poem labors
to fill trenches of severed heads,
the abandoned helmet my sister wore;
to fill mental miles
on the long road rutted,
to linger in orchids forever bound,
to fill coupling
with the tiredness
of love and doubt.

How the poem labors
with button-shirted words;
wearing gauze bandages
to salve the wound that never heals.

Appears in Curbstone Review

How Long Do Others Speak if We Have Already Spoken?
Title after Neruda

Get beyond it, my newly-found cousin says,
while my fork and knife remain
in the air and I  feel like the poached
salmon on the flowered plate,
the lemon bleeding citrus
through its skin. It’s hard to get
beyond having no grandparents,
aunts,  uncles, not even a birthday card
while your mother cruises,
your father dies, and your sister
goes craaaaaazy.  So I say,
“you’re absolutely right,”
before I lower my cutting tools.

Appears in In the Tunnel

Author’s bio: Lucille Gang Shulklapper has been a workshop leader for The Florida Center for the Book, and workshops facilitated through the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. She writes fiction and poetry and her work appears in numerous publications, as well as in four of her poetry chapbooks, What You Cannot Have, The Substance of Sunlight, Godd, It’s Not Hollywood, and In The Tunnel.

WHY NOT READ A POEM FOR BREAKFAST?

Why not read a poem for breakfast along with your oatmeal
and your bacon and eggs? After perusing The New York Times
satisfy your intellect on whimsical rhyme. Politics with poem-
we serve up the best, orange juice and sports verse, dress and undress–
poets sculpt as the muse. Any subject that’s in the news…

Refusal to Forgive

Would I  know you
with green whisperings for hair,
cyber-space eyes, your bones
white remains of obligations?

Do you still wear our father’s face?

I have become Mother,
with corseted morals and hair dyed mink.
My blue eyes turned brown like yours,
shoveling the pungent refuse
left by your husband’s dirty dealings.
Where is the brass marker
with our family’s name? It is gone
from our seats in the synagogue.

Your locker at the country club
has also been removed.
The city folded your name
into an origami bird and burned it.

You will find me by the sea;
wearing a hair shirt of grief and guilt.
Seeking me will be a slow hot secret,
like a snail trailing a crack.
Hot sand will grind calluses on your tender feet.

We will meet in an angry embrace,
crabs scuttling envy and greed,
still snapping blue at Maryland.

Butterfly curses will rise from your lips.
Praise will fall like anvils from my mouth.
Stinking like dead fish, we won’t get
close enough to resolve anything.

Alpha / Omega

They say: “everything comes to he who waits”
Age – definitely
Wisdom- still open for discussion
Happiness -intermittent

How did we get here so fast-
deep into the third third?  Time,
desire and decisions directed us forward.

Life is like a canoe, (narrow as a birth canal,)
buoyant in placid water, and then
rushing over unforeseen rapids of pain;
devastation, swamping us with negative surprises
(life jackets are not always provided).

Friendship is a reward for staying the course.
The paddle, thin, lovely and strong; but misunderstandings
sometimes make it a blade of destruction.

Now the journey is becalmed, but we
are still friends, hand in hand
waiting for the end, together .

Author bio:

Magi Schwartz is an independent poet writing in South Florida for thirty years. She gives readings, and conducts an interactive poetry workshop called “Imagine That” in both the public and private sectors of the community.

She is vice-president/ treasurer of the Hannah Kahn Poetry Foundation. Schwartz is Poet Laureate of Hollywood, Florida since 1992. Her chapbook, Pieces of Glass, features poems about women.

Night Poem

This poem can’t sleep.
It slips in and out of bad rhyme.
The lines bump, run on
come up short.
It hears explosions between syllables.
Smells death in the distance.
The poem blinks, rolls over
on its back.  Its lover
tucks her head on its shoulder
and the poem thinks, oh yes
now I can count my breathing
finish it in the morning.
But the poem can’t listen.
It keeps seeing faces
blank faces, white nothing
and silent screams keep the poem
running after itself.
Something, someone is dying.
The poem dodges looking for a place to hide
a fox hole, a haiku, a villanelle.
It just can’t sleep with all the goings on
all the young faces, the bodies blowing up
in darkness and repetition, all the bruised
words, the onomatopoeia, alliteration
gods, tyrants, poetry flags and enormous bombs
shaped like poems for the flash
and forget, of what is, or not
that keeps it awake this time.
Maybe a glitch, the poem thinks.
Maybe start over, free itself
find another truth in what ever
Godforsaken hell flashes
in the poem this time.

Mendocino Sky

For Bobby Markels

You are the matriarch, the muse..
Gymnast for moon people.
Ring master for effervescence.
Leap Frog for night turtles and rooster girls.
We cheer.  Rabbits wag their ears.
Mice are hula hoops in disguise.
We wait for the aha..
The song called Wind.

Author’s bio:

David Plumb’s new book is, Poetry on Strings with marionette maker, Pablo Cano.  Writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, New College Review, Homeless Not Helpless Anthology, St. Martin’s Anthology, Mondo James Dean, 100 Poets Against the War, Salt Press, UK and his weekly blog,Notes from a Wavering Planet Will Rogers said, “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” David Plumb says, “It depends on the parrot.”

Water in the Air

I fly alone
in a steel skeleton,
covered with delicate rainbows,
moving in and out of the currents
through the water in the air.

I have disappeared into
short-lived sculptures
that have formed and  hang below.
I touch the pane
knowing…

I want to step out and feel
the airy softness that surrounds
the black and white shapes-
floating  horses and knights
protecting their castles,
just as when I was a child
and lay on the sidewalk looking up,
guessing the patterns,
I start to remember …

I tear away the steel
with the awareness I will fall
into the invisible mist,
separated by the two planes.
And yet, I paint new colors
to protect my weathered wings,
knowing the clouds cannot carry me,
knowing the currents will not end.

I fly into the clear stillness,
beyond  Zeus’s fury,
feeling high,
drifting beyond the sun’s half eye,
as my tears bleed water in the air,

I turn
to descend,
and before landing,
I know the child again.

Bio:

Karen Herzog, a journalism/film teacher for the past twenty years in Miami, Florida, is a Media Specialist at Braddock Senior High.  She writes poetry, screenplays and is currently writing a Y/A novel. She has taught at Miami-Dade College and on the graduate level at the University of South Florida. Herzog holds the following degrees: BA in Fine Arts (painting and art history) from Florida State University,; BS in English and MS (English Education, minor in creative writing Florida International University; an MFA in Communications and Screenwriting from University of Miami, and an MLS in Information and Library Science from the University of South Florida. Herzog’s interests include reading, politics, film, social issues, painting, and photography

MY FIRST CAR

At an auction late one afternoon in August, I assume ownership of what I think is
an awesome automobile. At first, it appears to only have an ailing air
conditioning system. After replacing a lot of A/C parts, the accelerator pump begins acting            abnormally by not accurately assigning the amount of acceleration needed. The

balance in the braking system is off, making stops below par. The car bounces when I
bear down on the brake pedal, which

could lead to a collision on the causeway, causing my car to become a crushed
catastrophe. My

Dad decides to dedicate all of today to doctor-up my driving dilemma. He disassembles  the
dashboard and discovers the devices causing the death-rattle when the engine  decelerates.           The hood does not

enable the driver to see the engine nor the emission controls from inside the vehicle,
which would have ensured that Dad could evaluate the problems easier. My

father shifts into fifth gear by fidgeting with my four-stroke, fuel injected, four-cylinder
engine for a fifteenth time. I still can’t figure out what the

gauges on the dash panel mean. I grovel before the gizmos, gadgets and gaskets that
gangle across the ground. He gets a gantry from the garage to

hoist the horsepower out of the hull of the vehicle. He wants to overhaul it, generate more
horses. I hypothesize that my hard-headed father is

ignoring the original issues of stopping and going as he disconnects the idiot-lights on my
in-dash instrument panel because he wants to increase the indicated horsepower. I
feel my car is becoming

jerry-rigged because Dad’s jacking up the front-end, generating a real job for himself.
Jerking out the engine will justify the future judder that jolts while joy riding. The

key to understanding this conundrum is to know that my father wants to kick the car up a
notch so it can get to 100 kilometers quickly even though it is a

labor intensive job. Later, he leaves a litany of Leggo-like parts all over the lawn. What

makes matters even more morose is that he manages to maintain this methodical mess in
a mechanic’s toolbox under the mango tree.

Nevertheless, he knows he’d never neglect a nuisance like this novel piece of junk. The
part that

operates the odometer is obsolete so he figures out that the car can now only operate in
overdrive, otherwise it would stall out.

Peculiar as it may seem, the parking brake pawl is perpendicular to the position of park,
posing another problem to perceive. The

quietness of the exhaust is quaint, never quarrelsome, but

really not race-worthy. So Dad reluctantly relies on a resonator to resolve the problem.
Also, he randomly reasons that the relay for the radio is wrong, which causes a

short in the power supply sooner then he suspects, so he selectively searches the entire
system for something else. He

takes time to think about the torque coming from the transmission, transverses the drive
shaft, which totally takes up the rest of the day.

Usually, my Uncle Udell underestimates the usefulness of many parts in the
undercarriage, ultimately undoing the parts underneath, but today it’s up to Dad. The

vacuum leak causes the exhaust to make VROOM-VROOM sounds, which vexes our
valiant mechanic. Not to mention the vibrations it creates. Its volume makes the

windshield wipers wobble so badly they won’t wipe the windshield washer water off.
The exterior of this car isn’t too bad, except for the

X-shaped scratches on the trunk. The interior has many extras such as XM radio, but
even it, on occasion, makes extremely loud buzzing.

Yellow is not my favorite color for this year car, but it’s better than rust. The steering yoke
is very loose, but Dad says it’s still safe despite its yielding. This car really turned out to be a

zero since it no longer has any zip or zoom. Even if it was painted with zany zebra stripes
and  came with a zillion air fresheners, I still couldn’t get zilch if it sold. Amazing!

Bio:

Laura McDermott, a true native of South Florida, studied creative writing at FSU and received her MFA from FIU while concentrating on poetry in her studies. Currently, Laura is a full time instructor on temporary status at Broward College – South Campus, as well as a part-time instructor at Florida International University and Johnson and Wales University.  For the past five years, she’s served as the Festival Coordinator of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival.  Because of her dedication to higher education and writing, Laura received recognition as a 2008 Conference on College Composition and Communication Professional Equity Project Grant Recipient.

And Then We Knew

Eons of unspoken dialogue

spun unto a shimmering silvery thread

a geometric genre of sounds

hidden feelings

powerful

just below the horizon

of stillness

both undefended souls

and then we knew

The repartee disclosed the pages

a reverberation of expectancy

alive with possibilities

ideas

unhindered play

sensual whispers

as time ceased

distant from its

recognition of the familiar

and as we wandered inward

we knew

We knew then

that we knew

and now emboldened

within the prism

of a memory

a disquieted mind

an erroneous hope

that the passion

of what was

was certain

and alive

a creation beyond us

And as the days become,

our certainty becomes

uncertain

as our glee and

our passion

was what we knew then

what we knew then

Laura  Schultz is a freelance writer as well as President and Primary Psychotherapist of “Counseling at Your Service” in Los Angeles.  As a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, she has been assisting individuals and families in crisis for 25 years both in private practice and in the nonprofit arena.

Schultz is a regular contributing writer to www.next2eden.com , Runway Magazine and has her own advice column entitled “Counselor on Call”. A new column called “Ask Therapist Laura” is on her website at www.lauraschultznow.com. Currently, she writes book reviews for the New York Journal of Books. Her poetry has been published in Forth Magazine, empowerment4women.com, and mainstreamerotica.com

Returning to 757 Empire Blvd.

A gloom smears the yellow brick of the old
apartment building. I search
for the slat of cracked light that shone on father
when he scooped me into his left arm, right
laden with a bag of Charlotte Russe:
round little cakes wrapped in cardboard cups,
to smudge my face
with whipped cream and sugar,
for his fleeting smile.

The Artist

He was about to show
at MoMA, but they changed their minds
and said, You aren’t the one;
it was the other one of you
that made a difference,
the one that painted red and purple triangles.

But he had moved on to small interdicted circles
unlocked with keys that opened
all the sticky figs he had eschewed
inside his fragrant brushes,
not what once he made,
but new blue circles.

Cut down by caprice, he mourned his almost
fame, pierced his paintings,
brushed ashes into the slashed canvas.

Some sonofabitch from Georgia
painted a sequence that twitched between rectangles
and toilet paper rolls. “A tour de force,” the critics said.
MoMA gave him three big rooms.

The artist in his hole dug further.
Now then, he thought, I’ll hang myself
from a gargoyle at the church’s eaves
around the corner from the museum.
And did. And had

his show, performance art,
hanging with the best of them.

The Artist” is in the Southampton Review

Bio: Rosalind Brenner holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems appear in The Cortland Review, Poetrybay, The Southampton Review, Long Island Sounds, Walt’s Corner in The Long Islander, Taproot Journal, PPA Journal, and many local publications. She has performed her work for audiences at a variety of readings, including many years in Poetry Repertory Theater. She has won Honorable Mention in a Gertrude Stein “look-alike” contest, second prize in 2007 in The North Sea Poetry Scene contest and second prize in Farmingdale’s Long Island poetry contest. In 2008, she won Honorable Mention prizes in the New Millennium national contest, one for essay, one for poetry. Currently she  is working on her first full-length book of poems.

Brenner is a visual artist in the mediums of stained glass, painting and collage. In March she and her partner opened a Bed and Breakfast in their home, which provides lots of inspiration for new art and poems.