Alicia Mathias

CAN YOU HEAR THE CRIES

of families 

caught 

in the middle

of their own 

city 

while it burns 

still beautiful,

he says

as memories float 

over rubble

and in-between 

ash

and while 

digging 

through 

they uncover

a child's

teddy bear 

now missing

one 

eye

then framed 

photos 

splintered

into 

fragments

of glass 

their favorite 

books

charred 

with half 

the words 

left 

dangling

from their 

pages

and ghosts

of close 

friends 

who once gardened

with them

on blue 

skied

sunny

days

and held 

them 

lingering

in what feels 

like another 

life 

Scott Ferry

 Please click on images to enlarge them...

gia civerolo

 hollywood dreams deferred

The look on her face

asked before she spoke-

“Do you have any

dreams I can borrow?”

She proceeded to precisely

pick at the reasons, like a scab,

Why her load had gotten so heavy

No matter how hard she tried to balance it,

she couldn’t seem to carry her dreams anymore.

She asked again, a little more politely-

“Please, do you have any dreams

I can borrow?

Just for today, or for a little while.”

She held her tears in her eyes

I lost track of what she was saying,

entranced by how her tears never

fell down her face.

They puddled in her eyes where

I saw a reflection of a me that I wasn’t so

sure I liked.

She asked again-

“Please, do you have any dreams

I can borrow?”

Her voice was more desperate,

out of breath. She had

climbed the hierarchy of hope,

letting her down time and time again.

When she made it to the top,

they only asked her to dust the light fixtures.

I became fidgety and searched

through my pockets, knowing

there weren’t any dreams there,

pulling out change in the

hopes that it would be enough.

She only batted them away

saying, “I don’t want your money.

I made it clear, I want to borrow

a dream!”

I watched the coins as they rolled down

the sidewalk, neglecting to pick them up,

like extra dreams

to give away.

She angrily spit out the question again—

“Do you have any dreams I can borrow?”

Her blistering beliefs continued.

She had worn high-heeled, glittery, ghostly glass slippers

that shattered into thousands of shards

She darted and dodged but still managed to get cut

deep into her toughest skin soul

No one was there to sweep the pieces away

I looked to the sky in hopes the clouds would take

shape in an answer

or that a rainbow would

spontaneously appear like a miracle I could point to

as a dream, but it was a gray LA day.

I tried to cough up words, but I sounded

as though I was choking on smog.

“There are dreams all around here for the taking.

This is Hollywood, after all.”

She laughed hysterically and said—

“I asked if you have any dreams I can borrow,

and the best you can do is produce platitudes and cliché?

You think you are full of happiness?

Watch how the taste becomes bitter,

like this moment. You’re wasting my time. And your own,”

She declared as she walked away from me,

her head held high like one black high-heeled

shoe tossed on the corner of Hollywood Blvd.

where graffiti stars, too easy to stepped over,

names that stopped meaning

anything to anyone

a long time ago.

I stood still, stunned silently,

wondering, “Where did it all go wrong?

Where did dreams go for her…

maybe even for me?

A stranger walked by and I asked him —

“Do you have any dreams I can borrow?”

hollywood nights

  

I remember the band screaming their loud songs

I remember they lit the Hollywood Bar like a firefly igniting feelings of all possibilities

I remember the sheer, black-and-white polka-dot shirt I was wearing with a black, laced bra and a white miniskirt uniformed fishnet hose ending in combat boots

I remember you were wearing a 40s paisley tie with a black shirt and black pants, your hair slicked back 50s style with matching sideburns and blue, blue eyes

I remember sitting on top of a cigarette vending machine with my legs crossed and a bird’s-eye view

I remember you were quick with a light and a smile

I remember my black cat-eyes liner smeared when I looked in the graffiti-filled bathroom’s cracked mirror

I remember I had a crush on your friend who seemed like my type 

Shockingly I was his type, too (no one ever thinks they are someone else's type)

I remember the smoke-filled room made the bodies dancing seem like Impressionist paintings

I remember shouting my story though no was listening but you

I remember you helping every band load their equipment

I remember knowing then you were cool and thinking (not for the last time) “Just hurry up!”

I remember our friends who were there, and still are, and feel sad for the ones who are gone

I remember you and I talked and talked and talked

I don’t remember what we said

I remember thinking you were a “nice” guy

I don’t remember knowing then that you would be my forever

climate change

 

It had not rained hard

since 1986

LA deluge. You. Me.

Michelle Smith

City Living

Is a  freeway underpass

Inhabitants in  forest green tarps 

or in Dodger blue 

build makeshift tents the City of LA 

welcomes you

And their worldly  possessions

may be their last

On the gray slab of the concrete

Anyone can lay down for free

The cement is cool in the day 

and cold at night on the body,

who will fight, flight, or sadly freeze?

My wooden gray apartment floor

envelops a breeze that inflames my

knees arthritis, stiffening joints and I

can turn on a heater and blanket at a moment 

Instead of competing for the nearest space

and huddle with another human for warmth.

This is America home of the free and brave.

So many unhoused rather than say homeless

Since the wording is more cliche they say.

Lori Wall-Holloway

 

Patricia Murphy

CITY

Living in the City of Los Angeles

Where I was born in California

Has become a tragedy.

The cost of living is extremely high.

Rents are outrageous.

Food costs a fortune.

Gas prices continuously rise.

Interest rates go up at a moment's notice.

Inflation is on the rise

Like a high rise compound.

Travel is expensive

And it keeps going up.

Hotels are outrageous.

Just getting by on a daily basis

Is a travesty, an accomplishment.

At best 

It's an uphill climb

To the top

Of the mountain

Which is steep, and deep.

CITY LIVING

City Living in the city of angels

Has become a city of plights.

In our fight to achieve

We forget to believe. 

In the power of love.

For to rise above

We must forgive 

And live life to its fullest.

The dream is to succeed

Not in greed

But in creed.

For we must have a plan

With a man.

We can stand against time

As we climb above a line.

We can find

Our hopes and dreams

In our wildest desires

Of the heart

If we are not apart.

Only time will tell

What's in your soul

Are you whole?

One does not know.

But we can grow.

Wyatt Underwood

sandy rest

red rowboat

a little shabby with age

sits on a Brasilian shore

now and then an adventurous wave

lifts its stern

reminding it of trips over the waves

forewarning it of those to come

red rowboat waits

oars ready in its oarlocks

Rick Leddy

Let Love

 

The city screams smoke and desperation

Drought-laden concrete sizzles hard and hot under unmerciful skies white with anger and promise

Shadows move within shadows while hidden refugees pray in converted theatre churches

Let Love Prevail

Wind-burned and sun-stroked lives

A Babel-tower of languages speaking volumes in cacophonous mix

Vendors beckon beside the mountainous and chaotic weight of the American Dream

as Mothers hide beneath ornate and rusted matinee idol overhangs

their children impossibly asleep in strollers amid

the perpetual pounding urban Sturm and Drang

Genuflecting against banshees of violence and poverty

and crying to the heavens

Let Love Prevail

Walking among the hip and hopeless

My vision burned and blurred by the searing stream of passing lives

Buildings rise and crumble

Living, dying and resurrected memories unfold

The city of a million hopes and stillborn dreams

Laid before me

My mouth dry, my lips cracked as Valkyries swarm the desert stolen city sky

My heart howls and my blood-filled ears pound

As I implore to the echoing madness and beauty

Let Love Prevail

 

Too Many

I'm walking on the Boulevard of Too Many

Too many Italian suits of specious provenance

Hanging wrinkled on browned mannikins

Too many Skittle-colored suit cases

Crammed into hurricane-induced merchandizing

Too many plastic neon Jesus sculptures

And Mother Mary votives awaiting wax-fueled Pieta moments

Too many people speaking in Babelous tongues

While those I comprehend talk only to themselves

Too many shops smelling of leather and benzene

Blaring white-noise distorted mariachi trumpets

Too many near-death flashing whiz-bang gizmos

Working on entropy an hour at a time

Too many merchants with hollow eyes

Staring longingly at rushing humanity like winter-elk kill

Too many shrink-wrapped sneakers

Guaranteed vacuum-sealed Nike freshness

Too many things to take in

Sights and smells and sounds

Rattle Puree in my brain

Floating motes here and gone

I close my eyes against the barrage

Spirits of goods like ghosts dance grey against eyelids

Where do they all go, I wonder

These too many things

Where do they go

 

Little Town

 

In the dark

At Griffins of Kinsale

Drinking slow dark Guinness

As Van Morrison resurrects ancestral memories

That resonate in Irish bones

Couples in shadows

Eyes locked with knowing smiles

Whispering secret places embraces will later unlock

Reverse Edward Hopper painting

On the Inside looking Out

My Little Town

Awnings frozen in time

Red lights flash and gates fall

The train a screeching banshee

The Pretty Blonde Waitress

Approaches and asks:

Another?

I want to say

Just wish me Happy Birthday

Then kiss me on the cheek

And I will keep a

Special place for you

Among my pedestal memories

and imagined conquests

But I do not

Because my wife called me

To tell me her father died suddenly in her arms tonight

A thousand miles away

Instead I say

I will think about it

As U2 thrums

The Edge plaintively wailing

Hold Me Now

Sadness and Hope

Vibrate within this weary Irish marrow

Like a tuning fork

I finish the ebony liquid

Feeling a shade darker

And stand

Leaving without saying a word

Never so melancholy

Yet never so glad

To be alive

PJ Swift

Thanks Pop

Thanks Pop, for coming to our crappy side of town and going to the best restaurant that no one around here can afford, and bringing along your two young princess daughters and your young pampered wife and ordering everything from the menu that they thought they wanted but only picked at anyway as you chowed down several courses, washed with beer, before driving a couple hundred meters from the parking lot, through the closed pedestrian zone, nudging woman with baby carriages and the elderly leaning on their walking sticks and whoever else was walking in your way, with your ladies preciously buckled up in the shiny SUV, staring at their girly-bedazzled latest-edition smartphones, so that before you all sped off across the country to your weekend resort, you could ring me up on my clunky old fold-up to come running down to the sidewalk to pick up a plastic bag from that over-priced restaurant full of your leftovers so that I would not go hungry and actually have something to eat over the weekend. Thanks, Pop, and bon appetit.

Layer after layer

The city has layers upon layers and layers within layers. It is ancient but ever changing, as time and age keep changing. Each new phase of modernity doesn't just bring the new but a change in what is now old and revered and how it is viewed and preserved. The new may get a chance to grow old itself, or simply disappear, fading away forever in future iterations of modernity. Because the city is so old, it is the most reliable and constant city. Because the city is so old, it is the most changeable city, churning, mixing, evolving with layer after layer.

Yelling

In his dream S. was yelling so loudly at his neighbor that he woke himself up, finding himself mumbling in a rage. He paused to gather his senses and sat in silence save for his own heavy breathing. But now there was a pounding on his wall.  His neighbor was angry at the disturbance, yelling at S. to keep it down for f*'s sake. He was so distraught, he continued yelling, causing other neighbors to cry out as well.  At this point, S. woke up again, in a cold sweat, silent, trying to regain his bearings.  He cried out, yelling.

R A Ruadh

Suffer the children

Children’s bodies lie on the street

Motionless

Clothing burning

Still believing in help, hands outstretched

On which side of that thin line called

Us vs Them

Did their mothers fall

If they look like us it is

A crime against humanity

If not

We sigh with guilty relief

Dodged that bullet

Those children

Can go to heaven or hell

Without us

Plague physics

As we parted ways

on the busy street

you reached out your arm

pulling me into a

friendly embrace

In this time of distance

it had been months

(four months one week five days to be exact)

since the last time

I had been held close

with comfort and affection

My knees felt weak

as if I had just returned

from the vacuum of space

gravity and human touch

pulling me to earth

Strange and wonderful

to know I have existed

all these months

(four months one week five days to be exact)

I am not my imagination

after all

Mark A Fisher

pangs

the old man

was living

out his life

in a cabin

built of logs

taken from

his forest

of might-have-beens

Walk in Beauty

I have watched

as the city has crawled up and peered

over my back fence.

Once empty fields

spout developers signs like

invasive star thistle.

when we settle down

Ravens give way to crows

as the wild drifts steadily

further away.

Coyotes howls fade away

into twenty-four seven

traffic noise.

Landscaped deserts

uninhabitable save by people

and their pets.

when we settle down

All mornings that come after

are shadows of mornings

from our youth.

While the children

seek out other voices

to fill up their emptiness.

when we settle down

Radomir Vojtech Luza

City Living

God left Los Angeles

Like a mudslide

All earth

Unlike a natural birth

Jesus did not smile

During this unholy while

Dying a little

In the middle

This city

We must not pity

Going down in flames

Like G. Gordon Liddy

Homeless vets

Bipolar debts

Suicidal sets

Mayor frets

Naked malls

Dirty bathroom stalls

Perverted halls

Raw 911 calls

Corrupt cops in flip flops

Driving slobs for Bobs

Sideway dubs

On a one-way rub

Hollywood dead instead

Actors leaving

Gangs careening

Victims grieving

Tears streaming

Pixies dreaming

Who are we?

Where are we?

No more orange groves

Old-fashioned stoves

Tower Records

Kit Kat Club

Busy subway hub

Theatre scene

Streets clean

Talent not lean

Gridiron scheme

City green

Center mean

Fellini dream

City Living Pt. II

A struggle to pay the rent

Dollars disappearing through the vent

Thank God for Lent

My money is now heaven sent

Like a proper gent

Too many smash and grabs

At top name stores

Looking like whores

L.A. far away

Always gray

Never staid

Movie stars and prison bars

TV screens and brown beach scenes

All the talk

None of the walk

Chickenhawk

Bling and bang

Not sing and sang

I need to go

Before I sink low

Let my soul go

Heart overthrow

In this town that on

Romeo and Juliet frowns

Wearing see-through gown

On female clown

Who likes to lay down

Dean Okamura

Dream in the city of Camagüey, Cuba, 2017

[1]

Sitting on a train.
Conversation like rain.
Car stretching, contracting.
We pass the same stops in the same order.

 

We are moving, repeating.
The familiar routine.
The repeating meeting.

 

Same faces changing places.
Repeat, again.
Nice to see you, again.

 

Up the hill.
Down the hill.
Dining car.
Well-worn menu.

 

The usual, por favor.
Back to my seat.
Sitting on a train.

 

We pass the same stops in the same order, but
this time, we get off at a station.
Fog cloaks the platform, and …
she smiles.

Our phones show
*** No Service ***
no city maps,
no guide apps,
we're on our own.

 

We hear distant music.
Música tropical,
Quizás, Quizás, Quizás …

 

What does Quizás mean? – she asks.

 

I answer – Quizás means maybe.

 

We sing the words
in Spanish or fake it.
With each note,
the city lights get brighter.

 

There is a table with a drawer.
Inside is a piece of paper.
It has a list of activities and a map.
We look at each other,
surprised that we can explore
a world outside the train.

 

Should we get on the train? – I ask.

 

She answers – No, I always wanted to do something different.

 

I agree – Me, too.

 

---

[1] Advent, Martha Jimenez, 2016.

Jeffry Jensen

ALL A BIG BARE-KNUCKLE SNOOZE

no shirt, no shorts, no socks, no shoes

the city on a hill has blown a cultural fuse

vengeful rumors bubble up some horrific clues

while everyone who is anyone lines up in twos

for what may be a brainless biblical cruise

as streets buckle under the weight of mystical taboos

is this all an apocalyptic ruse?

for the remaining Christians, Muslims, and Jews

do the living or dead have more to lose?

LA keeps spreading out in order to confuse

all two-legged, four-legged, and no legged views

and it may all come down to one big bare-knuckle snooze

that is one part ramshackle salvation and one part satirical stew

Jerry Garcia

 

Not Even St. Christopher

Crosses the Boulevard Safely

 

Clouds of dust bring scooters, three at a time

they swerve along sidewalks

bumping citizens like bowling pins,

jumping curbs onto the motorways

crossing solid yellow lines.

Automobiles twist and swerve

around the dangerous fun-riders.

 

From the far side of the street 

Stranger Things-like preteens

pedal in a blur of spokes and gears

scooters can’t maneuver, fall over.

Knees scrape on gravel,

heads meet concrete.

Imaginary stars animate

like a Chuck Jones cartoon.

 

This situation calls for news coverage.

Had they even thought to pray for safe passage,

St. Christopher would have found it difficult

to bless this rowdy wheeling crowd.

Battle of the Bands

 

Unreasonable heat

of solstice days

blasts the promenade.

 

Jimmy Java grits

yellowed teeth

at simmering, sand-pitted air.

 

Stringed instruments

reverberate like rubber stretched

between telephone poles.

 

Percussion rains

like cats jogging on the hood

of a Chevy Corvair.

 

Guitar solo winds

a rosewood fretboard.

Jimmy’s finger bleed.

No rooster crowed this morning

 

I punch the tinny radio alarm with a thousand dogged blows for

every moment of lost sleep

 

I wander through broken neon – liquor stores – gentlemen’s clubs

Roaming gum-stained sidewalks                   

condensed city

shadowed by high tension lines adorned

with billboards owned by Angelyne

 

Motion picture

crane straddles

chunky morning sky

Sun rises like a floodlight   

               challenges strung-out eyes  

Camera distinguishing vagrants from actors who play vagrants where dreams dry like spent condoms

in a nightclub back alley

 

Cloud hallucinations foam:

beer steins        whiskey jiggers          swizzle sticks  

 

Dirty tee shirt rousts locals    

ketchup-stained rock n’ roll epithet blurs

on chest of dispirited stoner

 

pigeons flap and scatter bird shit patterns

 

Restless swagger through deficient streets 

            boarded building boulevards

cardboard Spanish

 

Once wonder boy       

Now super sidekick

to the fearful and needy                     

lost in creases of degraded pictures 

a mother’s bleached photograph.    

 

Hedy Habra

At the Violet Hour 

 

Star-crossed lovers unite as the city slips into slumber. I alone long to be swept by the swelling wave, feel it rolling me in its indigo fingers cooling me into a ball of blue ice, a maddened dervish whirling layers and layers of waves and azure, sea and sky, ignore these black leaping flames rising out of hatred and envy, a bonfire lit with rolled parchments filled with lost dreams and rosemary, its flickering sparks scattering yellow poppies in a cerulean field. How I wish you could see the timid evening crescent nest inside its golden case.

First published by Parting Gifts

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)

 

 

Eating Pizza in a Renovated Hammam in Granada

 

was the closest I’d ever get

to that sensuous space envisioned

by Gérôme & Ingres.

 

Sunrays filtered through

star-shaped skylights

cast geometric shadows

over the tables,

broken lines drifted

across the dark marble floor,

a floor where odalisques’ bare

skin was revealed by

the artist’s brush,

the way Gauguin

unclothed his vahine.

 

The furnace once used to heat

water was perfect for baking,

the owner said ¡A pedir de boca!

 

I was told as a child

the real story

behind these arched doors,

how after their ablutions,

families rested over

carpet-covered benches,

drinking dark tea & sampling

the same pastries my Aunt Zekiye

brought yearly

in her luggage,

all the way from Damascus.

 

Private spaces where mothers

could find a bride for their sons

making sure their curves

weren’t fake,

measuring the fullness

of their chest

& the width of their hips.

 

First published by Sukoon Literary Journal

From The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019)

 

 

 

After Twenty-Five Years

 

I came to Beirut to retrace my steps but its warmth enveloped me in its ample mantle through streets I didn’t recognize; mushrooming bridges and roads led me to Phoenician bronze letters gracing the Corniche railings. I caught glimpses of a façade’s laced arcades vivid in my dreams, its twin sister’s face disfigured by bullet holes.

Here and there, a jogger runs along the Promenade. Steeped in lost footsteps, the water seems darker as though hiding painful memories. Only the vendor of crisp sesame breads makes me feel at home; with a smile, he fills my kaak with fragrant zaatar. We won’t linger in a café to sense the sea’s mist suffused with bitterness, hear the stories of the wind; instead we go to the new Friday’s. 

I wish I’d pace the streets to gather some crumbs of what I miss the most, the traces of a city hiding within a city hidden under my eyelids. This is not what the heart remembers, I say to myself until the jacaranda’s blue light anchors me back, whispering, yes, it’s here, deep inside, fluttering like a dove’s wings.

 

First published by Sukoon Literary Journal

From The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019)