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Featuring
Melissa McEwen
Edward Nudelman
Amy George
Michelle McEwen
Terry Lucas
Coleen Shin
Adam Fieled
Art by
Jeff Filipski
Laura Orem
Didi Menendez

March 2009
Dark
Thought
Thoughts s That
That
Illumine
These are the ways they move:
in waves and particles, comingled
in barely recognizable quanta,
bursting or battering through thin sheens
and tough coats, each little blinking photon
making its wispy way through what’s left
of cohesiveness, through what used to be
the way it was, coming in on boats
and busloads into your blockhead
brain, bending neurons like Beckham.
After months of distraction in the moment’s
stasis or decades ruminating on something
tough- you’ve got to admit, it’s a welcomed exchange
for this your blessed ennui, for all this fritter
in front of Idol and Network Dancing.
So gear up and fight the flow.
Status quo only works if you’ve got nowhere to go.
Open your gills and take a dunk.
Here they come on wheels and winds
through open windows or backdoor breaches
snakelike on paths or trampling through bushes
green-eyed with bushy tails on springs and flexors
or floating in as gossamer as your
half-witted feather brain.
Inexhaustible, incomprehensible,
on half a wing, under radar, dodging bullets,
sprawling through pores,
 EDWAR
EDWARD
ARD
NUDELMAN
tripping switches, riding the wake
on their own slick waves: angel, demon,
cloud, birdsong.
Let the retro’s fire and park your rocket
in your own backyard right under
the shocking firmament.
You’ll thank your lucky stars
for your sacred second messengers:
white hot, razor sharp,
cutting open your sutured eyes.

EDWARD
_____’s Girl
MELISSA MCEWEN
In Junior High School, I wanted
to be owned

by a possessive
noun, owned by a noun—proper,

the correct way: a hickey

on the face so the whole school could see

that you were his baby, like a wedding ring, like a tattoo
of his name on your left breast, like having

his baby and giving it his last name

or whole name if it were a boy, like

the girl who had all of the above

by the time she finished high school. I

remember in chemistry class

how the hickey on her cheek

shined under the classroom’s light

like she was stung or bitten and we

all knew who did it. I couldn’t look

away, wanted to possess it, peel it off

and stick it on me, study it

at home in front of the mirror

in the bathroom with the lamp

with no shade.
feline friends in
field of red
Jeff
FIlipski
Red Velvet
I always caught the gleam
of worry in your mother-eye
when I would run, unwashed/half-dressed,

through the kitchen and out the door

instead of pulling up a chair
to watch, to take in the leveling

of baking powder, the separating

of eggs, the pounding of meat. Aunt Minnie’s
girls were there already— taking turns

making whole dinners. But you needn’t

have worried, I was always aware
of the oven’s heat, quick and warm on the back

of my legs as I ran by it. No heat has

ever come close to matching that heat
except maybe the heat of lovin’ and it’s

this remembrance that has finally

dragged me into the kitchen for keeps,
unafraid— even with the recollection

of daddy demanding his breakfast

Cake
be ready by the time he set foot on the
bottom step. I have yet to master

that art: the art of turning big pots & cast iron
skillets into a dinner for four, but I can bake
my ass off: red velvet cake, golden

harvest muffins, banana nut bread. Your

mother-eye says men need real food. But
you don’t know my men— they skip meals,

prefer dessert.

Michelle
McEwen
the habits
of prey and
carnivore
We long for a diversity,
engendered with the feminine sweet
the masculine urge to eat what falls from the sky,
lands at our feet, an alien angel.
How long does it take to flip it over,
make an inquiry- are you human, friend, meat?

Swallow?

How hollow a homograph, the smile, a wreath

the tender trace of velvet sheath
along the wing where the sun has melted the wax
and yet it begs an answer, a brave peep.
To often, silent and shining the speak.
It is there in the eyes, embattled beneath

I am your love, devour me.

COLEEN
SHIN
Portrait of Blake

Pastel on paper
Didi Menendez
Front cover portrait of Sina also by D. Menendez
LAURA OREM
At Night,
All Cats
Are Gray
Adam Fieled
Redness
Beyond objectification
is an object of maleness
that admits to frailness.
I have this weird feeling
like I'm a xylophone
being struck repeatedly,
all some weird minor
scale, or a whipped cat...
a dreamer of pictures
could never have made
you redder. Or as much
of grass in your eyes as
there is. Or poignancy
of words meant to hurt.
All this is a way to flirt.
Yet your redness tells a
story of consummation,
becomes the sine qua non
riveting me to black coffee.
Some Days
I Find Myself
Terry Lucas
Some days I find myself

sitting at my desk

for fifteen minutes without thinking

about dying.

Or about the sun,

the feverish sun hoisting itself up

the back-lit eucalyptus trees

outside my window, how its

malignancy even now is forming

a swilling tsunami, how one day

it will engulf the entire family

of squirrels racing along

the wrinkled bark, the dolphins,

elephants, bees—every violin

will scream as music melts,

along with all the crumbled roads,

the massive missives written

from sagging motel beds, golden

Gideon Bibles, packages of Trojans,

buzzing neon signs, naked candles

dancing behind brown luminarias’

parchment, Mona Lisa’s smile, curled-up

toes of shoes in Salvation Army stores.

But tonight I watch the moon’s thin shadow

the way a child watches an abused mother

sitting at the kitchen table, half-lit

pock-marked scars shining like coins,

like runes, waiting for the father’s eclipse.

And now it is sleeting in the streetlights,

ice particles sighing through spaces

in the spaces, before the white noise hits

cement like tongues against teeth, or fists

Some Days
I Find Myself
against a whorled-grained desk,

and I find myself again

thinking not so much about death,

but rather listening for the sound

of claws skittering up the eucalyptus trees,

fellow fugitives from the enormous fire

that gave us birth, even now flexing

flaring arms to embrace us.

Terry
Lucas
The Poem That Nobody Wants
I am writing the poem AMY
that nobody wants...
the sentimental, mushy GEORGE
one about the boy who
had a dog and who
lost his birthday balloon
and whose mean sister
pointed and laughed
while cartoon horns
sprouted out of her head.

No editor cares that

it floated over a wheat field
in Kansas above lowing
cattle beside junked out cars
with rusting skeletons,
burning in the echo of the sunset,
that two lovers watched
while holding onto each other.
They don't want to know
how it drifted like a cloud
bathed in moonlight
as soft as a kiss or how the trees
reached out with arm-like branches
and snagged it.

It will hover for a while,

like a lost spirit,
then burst sometime
during the night,
just like my bubble
when I open the rejection letter.
 MiPO a community of sorts...
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This publication is an online community chapbook.
Listen to the poems while you flip through the pages.

© 2009 Created by Didi Menendez

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