One Short Prose by Marco Kaufman
Marco Kaufman is the author of Family Ties of the Tattooed Lady and has had his work published by Glossolalia and One Real Story. He is currently working on a themed volume that he hopes to publish in book form, as well as a novel. A native of New York, he lives in Philadelphia. |
Monte
by Marco Kaufman
After Harry moved to the city, he was walking home one day and
saw a game of Three-Card Monte. He knew the dealer always
palmed the queen; it was a standard short con. What bothered
him was that one player was blind. This seemed to make a
harmless confidence game really sinister. Harry went home and
called the police. When they arrived, they arrested the dealer. I
don't understand, Harry said to the cops. The dealer has to make a
living, but why take advantage of the blind? He's doubly
handicapped. Triply handicapped, one officer said. The dealer's
blind too.
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A collaboration by Bernard Alain and Ira Lightman
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UK conceptual poet Ira Lightman and canadian contemporary poet Bernard Alain
collaborated on a double-column poem recording. A melding of the metaphysical as Ira
blends a poetry collage with Mallarme.
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A BRONZE horse rears
in a susurrus
of familiar maples
stone
giants sleep
beneath mossy patina
copper
clad hats
the carillons
of autumn past
crisp
as leafy zephyrs
monoliths awaken
in a stream
of urban ink
vapor
of a stallion
erupting
in nostrils
of city streets
to a tango
of hailing cabs
and foxy haste
[Bernard Alain]
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THE ARCHED EYEBROW of
clear notating you
affect it always reduced
my style of riff,
in its mid-st
is, as code, flabby
and "merely"
dust-bedecked
I might shake
all off & ape your
god who's nakedest;
total sun lavishes:
bright feats I can't chew down
in stunning shucked blouses
with which glaziers live to do;
wife and child,
and paper plate,
of sandwiches taken
to the pithead
shall have held him
up to punctuate in that
in world
of being wedded.
[Mallarme]
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Two Poems by Don Schaeffer
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Don Schaeffer established Enthalpy Press and has published 5 chap books including "Time Meat" and "The Word Cow and the Pig O' Love." ISBN series: 0-9687017 Recent poetry has been published in The Writers Publishing, Lilly Lit, Burning Effigy Press, "Understanding Magazine," "Melange," "Tryst," "Quills," and others. His first book of poetry, "Almost Full" was published by Owl Oak Press early in the summer of 2006. Don's most recent books include "Body Event" and "Notes of Digital Ghost" and published by Publish America. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from City University of New York (1975) and lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba with his wife, Joyce.
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Two Dialogs with Someone a Third My Age
by Don Schaeffer
1.
D : Whats new?
L : nothing new.
D: no new glories?
D: Are the old ones getting stale
L: yes
D: uh oh. You need a new glory, fast, maybe today.
L: I was joking.
D: I know so am I. A half joke.
L: It's still a joke.
D: There is no such thing as a joke. A joke is a time eraser.
L: yes it is
D: Thats like a perpetual motion machine. It can't exist in physics.
L: Here you go.
D: baaaaaaarooom im taking off.
D: (this is going to become a poem--warning).
L: I know.
D: Sorry. I'm learning something.
L: What is that?
D: I am not a saint.
L: lol. Nobody is.
D: So they say. Why not?
D: Is a saint like a joke,
D: or a perpetual motion machine?
2.
D: Its not as if we know each other and talk every day
L: Of course we do.
D: ghost to ghost
L: yes
L: lol
D: Across the vacuums, across the voids.
D: You cant imagine the distance between us, miles of rock and water and forest and wind,
D: and years of age.
L: Yes.
D: This is unimagininable. Yet I know as much about you, I bet, as your mother.
D: lol (a false joke designed to make you laugh).
L: My mum doesn't know things that you know.
D: You didnt laugh. Well she knows a lot i dont know too.
L: Yes.
D: I popped into your life and passed through you like a ghost.
L: But that time I needed her more.
D: I guess thats the advantage of having your own ghost.
L: yes
D: I am a magic mirror.
L: yes.
D: I can be that for you as long as my computer works and you need me.
L: Aww thank you, d.
D: Please understand as I do, that I'm not a saint.
D: I get stale to my friends. I decay.
Social Instruction
by Don Schaeffer
Phase 1.
Talking to me
is no different
than playing with dolls
or imagining pirates
or Peter Pan.
Phase 2.
Now listen!
That arm you
gently curl over your face,
once it enters
my eye
is mine.
One Poem by Joy Leftow
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“Poet Laureate” of Washington Heights, Joy Leftow is a double alumna at Columbia University and has her second Masters from CCNY in Creative Writing. Joy’s style is - in your face reality.
When Joy is not busy doing people & cat rescues, she meets her muse & reflects on relationships with more sarcasm than you’d get in an entire season of Seinfeld.
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A Freudian Slip ...
by Joy Leftow
Do you suppose - it’s an accidentally on purpose mistake - a Freudian slip? Do you want to throw rocks or count sins, and then who’s will you count first, yours or mine?
Inadvertently 5 years of saved emails were erased. I can’t understand how these things happen in our cyber world lives. I use a convenient excuse. It happened as a side effect from my most recent software upgrade. These upgrades appear while I’m on the computer no matter what I’m doing. Soft grade available here for your computer. Click here for more information or to upgrade now - I’m instructed.
As the result of my last upgrade, my computer desktop divides itself into pretty pixilated boxes, slowly disappearing as I click on various parts of a document, website or photos, so I can finally get my desktop back. You see how far this has progressed that the computer screen has become my virtual desktop and is where I store everything. As I click on the pixilated boxes, my document slowly appears like magic out of nowhere.
Now do you think it’s inadvertently or purposefully that I’ve deleted emails stretching over back over 5 years. They have sublimely and subliminally disappeared forever, gone in a millimeter flash of one second, 5 years of stored memories. In my universe my mails have disappeared from society’s grip.
I want the solace of a moment of silence, a reprieve from the stampede of your judgments stalling my way. Do you think that’s why I tossed them coincidentally, transcendentally removing the spirit of lost words to whence they come?
Yo, it’s rough on a sister out here. My neighbor says to me as I pass her by, “Nice to see you. People don’t make their judgments of important life events on temporary situations.”
“Good to see you too,” I said. “I’m so glad it’s an existential society.”
“What?” she said, mouth agape.
“You know,” I said, “we have the power to recreate ourselves continuously.”
“Oh she said, I don’t get it, your life is so unreal to me, like a story.”
“I know, I said, “I’m so blessed to be living it.”
“People were different back in my day,” she said authoritatively.
“So glad to have entertained you,” I said making my way back into my lonely apartment hiding space.
I am back to my original thesis; do you think I deleted 5 years of emails accidentally on purpose? I feel like I’ve erased 5 years of my prior life. And really, don’t tell me. Is it that easy? Don’t be offended now when you say to me don’t you remember and I tell you I no longer remember some long forgotten email I’d previously valued which is now destroyed and only exists in some alternate cyber universe.
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