Paper mill town closed down.
Sporting goods store the big draw.
Hunters shop for camouflage,
a new barrel gauge. Deer season.

Six months here,
I’m in a red chair with a red number,
clutch a California driver’s license,
my ID for forever.

Insurance says I have to turn myself in,
time to cheer for the Saints, the home team.
I watch a stray cat spread its claws,
lick its orange striped paws.

In the office, cell phones ring the blues.
A man calls my number from his booth.
It’s painless. He checks my birth certificate,
tells me to take two steps

back for a picture next to a flyer,
a raffle to raise money for school kids.
The prize, a Stoeger 3500 28-inch barrel,
a shot gun and hunting rifle.

I’m handed a new license.
Not a bad shot. On the way out,
the stray brushes against my leg,
poor thing limps on a square peg.

Left that small Welsh mining town,
walked on, turning questions over,
got down to a winding unknown river,
watched a strong rush of waters
fallen from our slow far off mountains.

Starlings flying by, a few,
(no portent, just being themselves)
coming down to strut and feed―
adept, made to trust their normal trust.

White waters, exciting, dangerous.
And I thought how salmon, crowding there,
homing in after wide ocean years,
(for safety of their spawn, not themselves,)
how fine salmon must leap to trace their vital weirs.

Gerald Solomon was born in London and studied English Literature at Cambridge University. After a short spell as sales assistant at a bookshop in London’s Charing Cross Road, he worked as a producer at the BBC. Subsequently becoming engaged in education, he helped found General Studies courses at Hornsey College of Art, and this led eventually to an enjoyable period teaching poetry courses at Middlesex University. He retired early in order to paint and write. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines in the USA and UK as he prepares his first collection. He is married, with four children, and lives in Manhattan.

She is a refugee.
She is a woman.
In her country if she speaks the truth of her government’s violations of her most basic human rights, she can be imprisoned, beaten, tortured and possibly murdered.
Every day she faces the reality of rape, assault, and other forms of abuse because of her gender.
Her body is treated as a battle field upon which man’s war is waged.
She is raped because men believe that honor and pride rests in a woman’s body, and if the enemy’s women are raped then the enemy himself will be decimated.
Her body, her spirit, her soul, her essence is the price paid for war waged; yet according to international law her gender holds no recognition in her refugee status.
She is a refugee woman.
The pain and suffering she has gone through is untold and unknown.
It is overlooked, neglected, refused, denied, and unrecognized.
She comes to your shores seeking asylum, yet you call her names and deny her a safe haven to rest her brittle body.
You tell her she is a queue jumper and an illegal immigrant.
You frown upon her and tell her to return to her country.
You tell her she is a criminal and treat her as such.
She is your mother; your sister; your daughter; your bride.
She is a refugee woman.

Disobedient Cunt
By Noushin Arefadib

She was intoxication and mouthfuls of sex.
Wild locks left you high for days.
She blinked not once, not twice, not at all as she looked you straight in the eye.
She told you how she liked it as she ripped flesh off your back.
She left the lights on and didn’t hesitate to pin you on your back.
Inhibition and shame came to greet her, but she stood undefeated.
She was not a whore.
Not a slut.
Not a skank.
She fucked, as some would say, like a man.
Take your sexuality and your right to pleasure somewhere else.
Here women hide their cunts in their husband’s treasure chests.
Demure. Soft. Gentle. Shy.
These are the qualities we want in our wives.
You wear your loud slutty orgasm on your sleeve, when the only sex
you should be having is to conceive.
How dare you try to assume a man’s role and take away his right to control.
Put your shameful passion away and give way to your instinct to obey.

Woman
By Noushin Arefadib

It’s a strange thing this being a woman, strangely beautiful.
I always looked forward to my mother’s touch that dried even my most stubborn of tears.
Mother said she farmed to feed the masses.
Mother makes love and gives love with her heart, her body, her voice, her inner most everything.
They say women hold up half the sky, but women in my life, you have held up each blue sky, all of my orange sunsets and every sun kissed smile.
It seemed a beautiful gift, this gift of being a woman.
But woman, why do you hold poverty’s hand?
Where is my mother with her healing gaze?
Why do I look away when your body that gave me life is left shades of blue and black?
They say women hold up half the sky, but it feels like you are being pushes deep underground.
My head bows in shame for betraying your loving hands.
They said your word is worth half that of a man’s, that your birth is a burden, and your spirit a commodity to be sold.
They say woman, give birth to my child, give me food, a place to call home and loving arms.
But don’t you dare stand against my militant stance.
Woman, it seems they have forgotten how you held up all their skies.

Noushin Arefadib is an Iranian-Australian poet and human rights activist currently living and working in New Delhi, India. She would like to dedicate these poems to her most beautiful friend, Farzad, who has recently passed away but will always remain in her heart.

And if you happen to be in Southern California, we’d love to see you at the first ever Radius showcase reading:

Radius Showcase
Editors Victor D. Infante and Lea Deschenes feature, with guest appearances by Radius contributors Carlye Archibeque, Deborah Edler Brown, Brendan Constantine, Daniel McGinn, Jaimes Palacio, Steve Ramirez, Sam Rees and Pam Ward.
Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
681 Venice Blvd.
Venice, CA, 90291
7:30 p.m. Sunday, May 5, 2013

Hope to see you there!

I like a poem with bullshit. And flowers.

I purchased several journals at AWP Boston and, oddly enough, I submitted to most of them in the past as well as recently. Rejection, rejection, rejection! But never mind that, because this is not about me. Well, mostly not about … me. Rather, this is about a poem with bullshit (the poem itself, not actual bullshit, but you probably figured that out) and flowers. If there is any reason to read a literary publication it is to discover voices we may never have heard existed in the first place. Like this one.

“Elevator Love Song” by Melissa Culbertson appeared in Flyway volume 10, issue 2 in 2006. Out of the twenty or so journals and books I purchased at AWP, this is poem captivates me, and continues to drag my attention back to page sixty where it lives and breathes between the covers of a beautiful journal. Culbertson created something I wish was my own, and damn, I wanna be the girl in this movie:

I speak fluent Chinese fingertrap dirty talk,
and not just with the bottom-feeders, the trough-eaters.

A killer opening couplet that immediately suggests, The joke’s on you; fingers playfully squirming, one possibly desperate to get out to escape the intense sexual gestures meant not only for those mooching off the ocean floor, but those piggies hanging at the trough, taking without giving. This girl is street smart, sexy and bold. Who wouldn’t want to be her?

I am the jam to your jelly, loverboy,
and I write you bullshit love-letters on restaurant menus and
           bathroom stalls.

I am the fruit and you are the juice — two like-minded edibles similar, but different in consistency. She, in charge and dominant, writes everything he wants her to say; all the wonderful, loving terms of endearment with bedroom eyes about the size of his shoes and the overwhelming (likely fake) orgasm he gave her. Excrement! Isn’t that always the way? Someone professes a love or longing for you and once you give in to intimacy, it is over. I often look back on past relationships and reconsider the language and delivery only to understand it is a crumpled napkin beneath the table. Not even the busboy will look twice to pick it up. And as for written tokens of admiration, only strangers read bathroom stalls, and only couples that frequent an eatery will notice the bullshit between the lines because they’ve been together long enough to know it’s there. I like this girl, she keeps secrets, has a way of knowing things presented in life through intuition and experience. Culbertson has a wonderful, declarative style, a bit ‘in yr face.’ How liberating … at a cost:

I hear the change in your pants pocket, can nickel and dime
           your libido
as skillfully as any back-alley Aphrodite– I’m your ‘x marks
           the spot,’ baby.

Whether intended or not, a little Marxism goes a long way and Culbertson does it well. Coins jingling in the pocket, the left over change from paper bills returned after purchase, and she will take him for all remaining cents, leave him completely broke and broken, a class all his own. She is the new-found treasure, whether for exchange or discovery and after he digs deep and realizes she is gone, he will exert the greatest level of human force to find her again, but only come up with an empty bank account. Aphrodite was adored by many, but she herself, unhappy in marriage, left Hephaestus for other men. I can see the temptation. If I had a magic girdle I may be inspired to use it. But our girl isn’t just an Aphrodite. She is a portrait of many:

My brilliance as a schoolgirl rebel debutante
would stun you.

The emergence of ‘role’ is modulated yet multifaceted. In order to be a ‘schoolgirl rebel debutante’ you are youthful and innocent, that stereotypical ‘girl-next-door’ who also possesses the need to sneak out after bedtime, defy parental orders and still show up beautifully coiffed for society to behold. The ability to transform quickly from one female identity to another is desirable to me; I don’t like spending a lot of time picking out clothes, painting my face (which I don’t anyway), or styling my hair. I want the automatic appeal Culbertson is selling! I want to embrace the challenge of good girl vs. bad girl. But what happens when your lover stops looking your way?

I ride the motion of the ocean the way we ought to,
i.e. on my own. A menage a moi, really, but I don’t mind.

The undulating rhythm of masturbation coupled with internal rhyme humorously takes us straight to the shoreline where no one know’s a woman’s body better than the woman herself. At the same time there is turn in tone, a statement of near reluctance with “but I don’t mind.” To say “I don’t mind” is like saying, Sure, I’ll do it but I’d rather be doing something else. Is this boredom? Disappointment? Rejection? It is hard to believe that a girl like this could ever be bored, or experience a let down in her life. Girls like this have it all, don’t they?

I can’t complain:
I’ve been able to trace your hidden wallet, even when you
           stash it in the damn freezer.

Hmmm. Maybe I am wrong. Her voice stumbles, slows down, turns passive: “I can’t complain:/I’ve been able to…” Her hot and heavy love life is slowly disintegrating. I imagine her sitting on a stoop, head in hands, looking at her feet with pure boredom and dissatisfaction. Maybe even concern that he is seeing someone new: “trace your hidden wallet” meaning all the expense receipts and time spent with someone else. Love is a labor theory, who knew? But with all the time spent seducing and sleeping with her lover, memory is a concrete structural value. Memory of what was once had in whatever type of relationship that existed between the girl and her lover are memories frozen and mixed with another saved in the “damn freezer” with no passion to dispel the cold, reinvent the heat that once existed between them.

It’s gratifying that I can always
wake up before you, slide out from your side of the bed, down
           the fire escape.

I know where you are, how long you sleep — we’ve been together for so long now, that I can crawl over you with no disruption and leave without sneaking around. I have thought long and hard about this, but I cannot leave you completely. Sometimes we love more when we recognize something is gone in the age of our lost energies.

Soon, an early morning liquor binge, white sun breaks out,
I roll over on my ego. I am atomic, so radiant that I melt your
           eyelashes.

But it’s okay — I convince myself that I am still attractive, I still have what it takes to make you see me like a sexual being and I pursue you rampantly, without a precursor for denial.

I’m a siren humming filthy lullabies in your ear. An enigma
           of my age —
but I don’t have to be.

Yes, I am still enchanting, and without warning I will guide you to the rocks, destroy you; there is no need to ignore me. I still “speak Chinese fingertrap dirty talk.” Who cares about my age? Why should that factor into a woman’s beauty and prowess to begin with? But there is always doubt, or the want for what we used to look like, and what our relationships used to be.

A few years ago
I saw you, leaning against my apartment building, swaying
           like a broken ladder.

Love falls apart, break-ups happen, time moves forward. I run into you, see you broken, but within reach of my window. If I touch you know I too will clang against brick walls, dangle by a single bolt.

And the night before last you pinned me to the wall, plucked
           orchids from under my skirt,
my thighs buzzing, neon lights; your calloused hands, rough as
           the sidewalk we stood on.

Remember all those nights, exciting, breathtakingly new when we were still discovering each other’s bodies — we are orchids, love and beauty, bilateral symmetry. I miss you. We can’t let bullshit get in the way.

Someday, archeologists will uncover the door of our home, make wild guesses
about the exact placement of the house number, and how
to read the characters that make up our address, write papers based upon theories
impulsively grasped at our lack of a doorbell, deduce our financial state
at our time of death by the words scrawled across the tacky dimestore doormat.

Someday, the clay ashtray I keep at the table next to my bed will become
a relic in a well-guarded museum, complete with a plaque attempting to decipher
the chicken-scrawl imprints made by kindergarten hands, the paint blob
on the inside that only I know is supposed to be a heart. Children like my own
will stare, bored, into the glass case, led by some museum docent, loudly announce
to each other that people from the past were stupid, that they
could make a pot as good as that one
in an afternoon.

Someday, future hands will stroke and catalog our furniture
wonderingly, mutter incessantly, much as we as we do now, at the way
we must have contorted our bodies to fit comfortably on chairs
too short for you and too tall for me, and on the way
no one piece matches another.

Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who teaches needlepoint classes in the Minneapolis school district. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Worcester Review, Broken Pencil, and Slipstream, and she is the recipient of the 2011 Sam Ragan Poetry Prize from Barton College. Her most recent published book is Notenlesen für Dummies Das Pocketbuch, while her novel, The Trouble With Clare, is due out from Hydra Publications in 2013.

Rapper 50 cent was passing through my hometown,  Baton Rouge, on the way to New Orleans, to see his friend, Eminem, perform at the Voodoo Music Festival … 50 stopped at  Serranos’ Mexican Restaurant that was right across the street from the  coffeehouse i hung out at  regularly  and gave an interview for a local radio  station

when guys like 50 cent show up here
you know baton rouge is not a hick town anymore
throughout the radio interview
his white teeth shine
you are almost fooled into thinking
that money can buy you happiness
i’m less than ten feet from him
the people around me hold up their
cell phones, digital cameras and cameras
to take his picture
50 is soft-spoken, articulate and intelligent
the thug persona is just an act
during a break in the interview
50 stands in front of the stage and poses
for us
more white people show up in the crowd
whites make fun of black music, black art, black fashion
and black culture
but a cnn anchorman gets into trouble
when he said the clintons “pimped out” chelsea
for hillary’s presidential campaign
carrie bradshaw on television  sex and the city wears
doorknocker earrings (popular with black women)
the james bond theme has a hip hop beat
and white jewish girls write scholarly books on rappers
and teach english classes on hip hop
at white universities
more whites buy rap music than blacks

when 50 leaves the interview
i don’t stick around to get his autograph
when rap music actually has something positive to say
i’ll start buying it again …

Erren Geraud Kelly is a poet based in Chicago, by way of Louisiana, by way of Maine, by way of California, by way of New York City. He has been writing for 21 years and has been published in Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine (online) and anthologies including In Our Own Words, a Generation X Poetry Anthology, Fertile Ground and Beyond The Frontier. He received his B.A. in English-Creative Writing from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Ah! Grandpa Chinua, who
Could have ever known the soil of
Ogidi could fashion out

A seer, you’re a man of the people,
For sure I know, but like you said,
We’ve been shot with the arrow of

God, and find it impossible to walk
On our bare feet. The boys are
Clutching guns to kill hunger,

Girls are at war, because that’s the
Only route to survival. Our world is
No longer at ease. Where is the

Philosopher king who knows it all?
Where is the novelist, who can
soften our hardship with his

fictitious verisimilitude? Like
your death is incorrigible, our
World has fallen apart.

D.M Aderibigbe is a Nigerian undergraduate, studying History and
Strategic Studies in the University of Lagos. His poetry and short
fiction have been published in journals across 10 countries around the
world, including Word Riot, Cannon’s Mouth, Red River Review, Ditch,
Kritya, The Applicant, Thickjam, Cadaverine and DoveTales among many
others.

For them, and for that city, we offer all the prayers we can muster. Our hearts are with you.

As to the attacks themselves, we’re not prone to speculation, but we’re acquainted with violence enough to know this: When someone — be they an organized group or a psychotic individual, whether it be a Timothy McVeigh or a Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other sort of lunatic — does something like this, the goal, underneath any flimsy ideology, is to stir a darkness in the hearts of all who watch helplessly on their televisions, to drown reason and nobility in the acid wash of fear and outrage. To force the viewer to lash out, like a cornered animal. To make them less than human.

Someone, somewhere wants to take something from you. Don’t let them. Don’t let them have that piece of you. It’s too valuable.

Our prayers today are for the wounded, and for the loved ones of the dead. Our prayers are for all of us, who have to live with this violence seeping into our hearts.

Our prayers are for a better tomorrow, for all of us.

Pain cries policeman to sleep—patrolman,
retired, 35. Philadelphia. Back problem.
Bullet problem, lodged like muzzle flash
memories, traffic stop shots. Philadelphia.
Officer down. Officer up. Out. Decorated.
News for 35 microwave minutes. Lead
spear lodged near spine, permanent squatter.
Pain doesn’t retire. Retired police patrolman,
just turned 35. No Fresh Prince: Officer
OxyContin. “North Philadelphia born
and raised. In a Pamper, is where he
spends most of his days.” Incontinence,
his continent. Pain cries nights to sleep.
Pain calls doctor to script relief, holds
for 35 minutes, 3 ½ centuries in blues years.
Tired, retired Brotherly Love man, finally
gets through. Receptionist whips spit
through phone. Dr. Busy, busy, patrolman
told. Appointments do not hop like hares
from hats, Smith & Wesson polishing
policeman told. Doctor, busy busy. Too
busy to three ring scheduling acrobatics
for you, and You need to stop calling here
every Damn day. Pain pulls cane, coat,
cap, from closet, neatly. Pain hails taxi,
makes conversation, pleasantly: Yes, 35
degrees is practically heatwave for Philly
winter…No, can’t say that Iverson was
better than Irving…ring…hall…fame…
helicopter arms. Dr. J, all day long. Pain
smiles warmly, leaves driver good tip.
Pain carries revolver into doctor’s office,
plunks it down on receptionist’s desk.
Politeness springs from receptionist’s
desk. Free samples sprout from clown
cars of her pockets. No $35.00 co-pay
necessary. No further waiting required.
Philadelphia. 3:05 p.m. Man thanks
doctor for un-busying his busy, busy day.

50 Meters Tall
By Truth Thomas

Godzilla feels small as lips of ticks,
yet he roars — thespian, charlatan,
father. This he doesn’t know

we know. His overcompensating fire
is kindled from abuse. Child of
family detonations, his abuse

is nuclear now, for us. He doesn’t know
we know, but hidden under scales,
his secrets kick and scream

until they rocket launch from dreams—
tanker loads of “don’ts” from
innocence capsized.

Now, he will do the overturning. The
remembrance of monsters has
made him more monster

than monster — skyscraper reptile
of nightly flame throw touches.
It doesn’t matter that we

know. What matters is
we burn.

It’s Alive
By Truth Thomas

The monster roams the countryside,
            inside cities—out,
                         classless, tear

trigger of equal opportunity, singing
            the “Star Spangled
                         Banner” for NRA

fund-raisers, in jackets made of
            children’s skins,
                         covering the

“National Anthem” in blood. But there
            will be no barks
                         unleashed to

corner him, chase him into castle fire.
            Though some will cry
                        at his snuffing out

of angels—our angels. His hunchback
            lobby is loaded. His
                         lawyers’ muzzles

carry extra clips. He is the castle here,
            the bullet church,
                        our god, and he is

faithfully worshipped, like the switch
            of lightening used
                         to turn him on.

Truth Thomas is a singer-songwriter and poet, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, raised in Washington, DC. He studied creative writing at Howard University under Dr. Tony Medina and earned his MFA in Poetry at New England College. His poetry collections include Party of Black (2006), A Day of Presence (2008), Bottle of Life (2010) and Speak Water (2012). He serves on the editorial boards of both the Tidal Basin Review and the Little Patuxent Review and is the founder of Cherry Castle Publishing. Most recently, he guest edited the ground-breaking Little Patuxent Review Social Justice Issue (Winter 2012). He is formerly Writer-in-Residence for the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo), and currently serves on the HoCoPoLitSo board. Thomas’ work has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His poems have appeared in over 70 publications including The 100 Best African American Poems (edited by Nikki Giovanni).