INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Silvia Scheibli
'Deji W. Adesoye
Chris Lord
Ali Znaidi
Paul B. Roth
Umm-e-Aiman Vejlani
Lyn Lifshin
Laszlo Slomovits
Naim Kelmendi
Richard Kostelanetz
Anton Gojcaj
Duane Locke
Jennifer Burd
David Ishaya Osu
Steve Barfield
Miguel A Bernao Burrieza
Richard Gartee
Violeta Allmuca
Alan Britt
Fred Wolven
Ilire Zajmi
Running Cub
Donal Mahoney
Fahredin Shehu
Peter Tase
Nahshon Cook
Al Ortolani
Alex Ferde
Anton Frost
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Lazlo Slomovits & Jennifer Burd
Karyn M. Bruce
A. J. Huffman
Michael D. Long
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2014
Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
------------------------------------------------
staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
AN AGING COMPLAINT
No more alone than the deepening shadow a milk pitcher shapes on a candle lit wall. No more alone than flambuoyantly colored thread curled up beside straight pins on a department store changing room floor. No more alone than a rock’s sharp edge or a sunflower’s sprout jutting green above a late April snowfall, than a maple leaf’s brittle stem strengthening its tack in deep snow against a high wind’s frenzied momentum, than hands adopting prayer positions that white bunches of flowering Cuban basil or the breasts of one’s lover might require, and certainly no more alone than the plastic chair off which you’re sure to one day slip unexpectedly down a nursing home’s shower drain right where your sour whispers, as the scent of things to come, do nothing more than sweeten death’s appeal.
TORREDEMBARRA
Before dawn he makes little noise rekindling a small fire for tea and warmth for his cold hands. Kept dry his many teas when mixed and brewed reminisce his taste of time. Some recall for him how peaches once washed by sea waves with salt from the swollen cheeks of the drowned were equally sliced into quarters on sky blue plates for his guests. Others recall how much he loved sharing his admiration for local vintages with friends by toasting grape bunches wherever they hung to overflowing with bottomless pleasure. Come dawn, his eyes always spoke the same sea’s turquoise from shore that a tossed net had caught and released for centuries but which now, at the rising of the sun in his wrinkled face, barely glazes over the transparency of a much lighter skinned grape.
NO TIME TO BLINK
The instant ice sinks, lips speak their lies
The instant water’s
stilled truth hatches from eggs,
polliwogs gel there
The instant a garden
snake, the envy of every waning moon,
slithers through deep grasses its brilliant mustard green
The instant a similar but full orange moon without sunglasses peaks over your neighbor’s roofline
The instant it’s
recognized
as the cast-off placenta of earth it’s always been
The instant earth
stops dead
and its faint whistling’s outdistanced by the wind itself
The instant space
takes over what’s measurable
between everything and nothing with no numerical value
The instant itself, missing in action
1949 COUNTDOWN
To begin
the countdown
must have
conjugated
its open-ended
emptiness
and then
without once
stopping
spun infinity
atop a straight pin’s
pointed end
Paul B. Roth, Fayetteville, NY