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Epiphany Magazine - epiphmag.com Issue 12
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ALESSANDRO CUSIMANO
Excellent Madman
I have an iron will
proof that the gimmick can work
from the human to the animal
from darkness to light
in my note-books I sketched the abyss
the dung heap of inequality
the beast moves into the mire of Eden
nevertheless
my personality is fading away
rubbing the impalpable
overcoming my resistance
insistently
able to live everywhere
to improve in the everywhere
policy and carelessness
skinned apartments
rotten wood of worm-eaten chairs
shackling is a form of burial
reason and unconsciousness
my devotion to these two grim sisters
if only I could find a way
to deal with them
without turning away from myself
from the unreasonable friend
from the excellent madman
towering above
locked up
bestial
image finds truly exceptional mirrors
revealing the animal to the same beast
at least for the time of a glance
the taste of a ripe melon
is the meaning of a moral dilemma
everything at once
BIO: Alessandro Cusimano was born in Palermo, Italy, on July 2, 1967. He lives in Rome, where he is writer, poet, translator. Anarchist and visionary, painful and surreal, his works reflect on anxiety, crush conventions and illusions, proclaiming, with a barrage of words, that life is, by its nature, a scandal. Appeared recently on the international literary stage, some of his writings have been published by The Cynic Online Magazine, Decanto Magazine, The Recusant, FOLLY Magazine, Exercise Bowler, Streetcake Magazine, Bewildering Stories, Numinous Magazine, Deadman's Tome, RED OCHRE Lit, Orion's Child Magazineand Black Cat Poems.
JUSTIN HUSKEY
A Shattered Mind
I witnessed the day that my poor mind shattered
The slivers spread as they cut away from the form
I watched as the pieces did scatter
Shards of memories tossed away by the storm
Each one a window
Each one a view
Each one a different color
Each one a different hue
I crawled about, but the fragments, I could not gather
Held firmly in time, the remnants stayed
No reason they had, but that they would rather
On this, they would not be swayed
I pleaded to them as my sanity slipped
But they would not hear my plea
If only they were to just reassemble
Then from this hell, I would surely be freed
BIO: Justin Huskey is in his late twenties and I hails from Morristown TN USA. " I love poetry dealing with loss and the darker side of human nature."
MICHAEL CLUFF
Molasses Trees
Grow in not so odd places
yet seldom marked
in a lingering way
they caught what is needed
to get themselves through the day.
People live within the trunks
use them to hide
only capture what pleases
let the unwanted be buried
and the remaining guilt never teases
Camouflage is their limb
heart leaves
needed price.
The Saltina Tree
Created by the weeping
and sobs of the plain
it reaches to insure
the patience of the gods
is extended for as long
as the inhabitants
keep it
steadily growing.
BIO: Mike Cluff is a full-time English and Creative Writing instructor at Norco College in southern California.. His forthcoming book "Elegant Worry" is scheduled to be published in late 2011. He has recently been published in Sparkbright, The Inlandia Journal , The San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly and The Toucan Magazine. In his free time, he paints and acts in community theater throughout Southern California.
"Together"
Photo by Lauren Tyler-Smith
Top of Page
NICOLAS GRENIER
3 Untitled Poems
Snow, in the air taken, dizzy,
To the origins quite coming back.
(White cloud falling back
On the landscape, silently.)
As a vast dream lying
You stare at the sky
Back to the air, fleeting.
Between sky and earth,
Snow, as a Beauty
Which is changing
Every moment
The form of the landscape.
BIO: "I am french young poet.
I am published in fifty literary rewiews and worked with a former Minister. I am professor at HEC too.
You find these three poems with a translation of Emmanuel Cheiron."
DOUGLAS NORDFORS
Before The Breakup
The second movement of Spring made us cry.
At intermission, in the filled concert hall
lobby, we stood alone. In so many words,
we said we could feel Vivaldi
walking up to us and breaking our skin
and never arriving. Four seasons, each
with three movements, were gone along with
the candles dripping with old tears we held up
to our eyes in the middle of Spring, the
period striving for grace, death, and life.
I forget what the orchestra played next.
Maybe before they played it, they formed a half-
circle, and bowed to us whom they had moved,
basking in the sound of four hands clapping.
Whatever happened, after the music began
a second time, we sat together, and
in listening lost ourselves: not even
childless minor composers, not even
by a few good strains
survived.
The Half-Moon In TheWindow
Looking out at my life so far, I wish
my human heart and every mistake
I've put into it won't fall away
and rise again clean and clear
and relatively shapeless:
the window in the half-moon.
BIO: " I have an MFA from The University of Virginia (1991), and have published poems over the years in Quarterly West, The Iowa Review, The Seattle Review, Poet Lore, The Evansville Review, Poetry Northwest, and others. My book of poems, Auras, was published in 2008.
"
"Enlarged Heart"
Art by Dan Williams
Top of Page
ZANDRA CASTILLO
5 Haikus
Drops of dew refresh
Awaken flowers gently
Hummingbirds stop by
Wind whistles trees dance
Rays of glory brighten the day
With their golden glow
Crimson red roses
Rubies dancing in the breeze
Bumblebees delight!
Rays of Sun pierces
Blessing all of creation
Filling hearts with cheer.
Delicate wings spin
Curious Hummingbird says
"Where is my nectar?"
LISA WILEY
Fine Lines
You always return when black-eyed susans
bat their lashes, when tiger lilies flirt for the best bees.
Heavy air, threat of storm don't keep you away.
You need to touch the ground you once called home.
This midsummer reunion, carefully casual.
No birds of paradise here. We wait for a patio table,
sweet refrain I'll soon forget - piano lessons,
corner offices, baseball? I will remember the fine lines
around your dark eyes. Proof your wife makes you laugh,
all that really matters. When I remove my sunglasses,
I notice you check my eyes too. A vulnerable spot
for a woman. Realizing I'm happy, you spy
those tracks of time. Funny, how I used to think
you'd be the one to put them there.
Farmer's Sink
Generous, smooth, apron front, I insisted upon it,
although we have no land, no fields.
Spacious enough for canning I'll never do.
Roomy enough for a baby I'm not planning.
Legs like egrets, too lengthy to fold
into this bath now. Yet I can see her towhead face
turn towards me - those eyes, seas of trust.
Rubber band wrists splash the water, reach for me.
I wrap her in terry cloth, a hooded towel and absorb
so much romanticism in classic white porcelain.
BIO: Lisa Wiley is an English professor at Erie Community College in Buffalo, NY. Her poetry has appeared in Earth's Daughters, Beyond Bones, Word Worth, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and The Buffalo News.
BRUCE McRAE
To Lie In Judgment
"I am a tree," said the poem to the poet, he who thought he'd
composed a fine verse. "But I created you," the poet remarked back,
"You are no more a tree than my leather sandal is a cow." The poem
sat silent, the poet seeing now its many flaws and weaknesses. Soon
he despaired of all his poetry, the quality of every poem, he thought,
found to be wanting. So badly did he feel that he slouched off into the
forest, with just a bit of rope, determined to end his life there and
then. As he tied the rope to a high tree branch he heard the tree say, "I
am a poem." Hearing this, and so moved, the poet returned to his
home, seeing his poems then as if for the very first time.
Time's Up
The baby's making strange.
There's a voice in the well.
Truth is lying.
Time to start writing
the names of the lost,
a list of Christ's crimes,
the reasoning behind purple.
Time to quick-sketch
harebells and lace trumpets,
draw eyes in the margins,
doodle winter.
We exist on the outer reaches.
Time fizzles
in the drizzling rain.
Earth's hair is burning.
Then it's time . . .
Time for more hysteria,
to set the wolf pack free
from under your bed.
Time to chew nachos
and take up country fiddlin';
the world a pigeon cooing,
the world a girl
with a loaded gun
and a hankering for celery,
the world a gnawed insect
or Hemingway's pen.
Because there's no way out
except the way you came in.
Because the light giveth
and the darkness taketh away.
Because truth is dying.
Long live the dead.
BIO Canadian Bruce McRae has had almost 600 publications in the past 12 years. Originally
from Niagara Falls, he has moved extensively, currently residing in Vancouver BC. A
musician, who has recorded and toured, many of his poems have been set to music
receiving airplay in the UK, U.S., Canada and Australia. His website is
bpmcrae.com. His first collection, The So-Called
Sonnets, was written in London between 2002 and 2006.
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