"This is the Bee, the Honey, the Wax" by Dena Rash Guzman

I do not dip my hands in wax to smooth, to soothe over  the errors in judgment  my elbows clipped stern  and into place like a baby out of tune, grand & swept across a sidewalk  in the city. The city, the urban  urbane city is only  a glow over hills that could be coals left over from the fire we lit to burn away the infected hives.  The last bee left  was the Queen Bee, bereft with her brood.  Collapsed. Honey, hand me a whiskey.  This farming the farm is not for the weak-hearted. -Dena Rash Guzman 

Currently looking for: MANIFESTOS

We are currently seeking MANIFESTOS for a printed pamphlet/ebook/newsletter/chapbook called: "(Insert number) MANIFESTOS"

To be circulated at bus stops and poetry gatherings this summer.  The manifesto may concern itself with anything as long as it is a manifesto.  It might be 1 line or a screen shot or up to 30 pages.  Be angry and poetic and write with a sense of manifesto-know-all.  This is a once in a life time opportunity. Be heard. Don't be a heard. Send your manifestos to [email protected]

And the sailors wore parkas

2 poems by Isabel Sobral Campos

__

Sentience

  #

Opaline simulation

  crossfire 

  a new way out of this functional opalescence

  obscure in the centrifugal dotted eye

  rotating image of the evermore abstracted space

sapped of figures and sound growling like a damp

dismembered figurine

  seemingly burning consuming

worrisome bubbles purple and black luminous

  a slow screen-image

nimbly deriving gladness

  color-grille where I could not distinguish shape from sound or reflection

  #

Stamped ideograph

red dwarf ascending

broken pot under peerless light

the silence that was

memory informing

the trigonometric function of stains and bulks

securely drifting

the memory exists like a pulse

rippling through dark furies

fearful forget-me-nots

sustained in color increments

delightful transfusion of chemical plight

singing through the air vents

ripping through consciousness

  #

Plugging the airways

of our film

  The sailors wore parkas

  On the deck gazing starboard

and the starfish entering a dream

  There “aquatic flowers” later learning

their names –

crinoids

cucumber fish

blue-purple menace

  #

Something of a tremor

Will you drift and sway?

  mechanically

  over under

undecked contraption of light?

  Beams writhing through perforating punctures

of neighboring eyes

  The woman I was waiting in the negative image of the cellular print

ink-block carving the nerve ends somewhat

    Filmic Fungi

  Iridescent rumor

in the silver screen like an imprint

of gauze and filigree

  coaxing pigment filtered through looping breeze

  a palpable winding seaweed

rumoring through tunneled light

  coasting the eyelid

  rims of dark slip

of contoured slip

of random insouciance

of screened slippage

of stalled hug

and demonized gleam

  alphabetized

abandonment

  of steamboat ebony

of carousing limp

  I watch the film from the afar dimensions

of jigsaw soul puzzle

rusticle soul cluster

of fungal night

  un-recog-niza-ble

coloring of phantom night

Mmmm...

The Rich White Girl by Matt Ford

As we walked out the door  Someone spoke about needing their shirts ironed  “hire a Mexican to do it” Said one of the rich white girls I wondered if she thought it was okay That she sounded like a Klansmen in the Jim Crow south 60 years earlier When racism was casual As normal as the cotton fields Would she stick up for Those old racist bastards? Bull Connor’s terrorists on the streets of Birmingham She wouldn’t Or maybe she would because She is their reincarnation with Bleached hair and new trendy clothes Someone should ask her on Martin Luther King Day I wont ask her I’d rather invite her to Southeast Fresno and Leave her there after dark See if a Mexican would help the rich white girl Watch her beg and cry Pull out her iphone to call her daddy  Who got rich by paying Mexicans to pick crops  On the land he inherited  While a nice old Mexican woman ironing clothes Asks her if she needs help Because she looks lost Maybe then she’d learn But probably not Because here Racism is casual As normal as the corn fields So I’d rather take that little rich white girl Down to the barrio and Watch her get the shit beat out of her Watch the racist tears and blood roll down her filthy white face Maybe then she’d learn But probably not