Poetry

#finalpoems / [?]

Beyond Our Reach

When the end of the world
failed to arrived on May 21, 2011,
as Harold Camping has predicted,
some people felt betrayed..

The next day I saw him on TV, not in heaven,
eighty nine years old broadcaster,
no trace of embarrassment, still eager
to see it happening, to see it through.

What makes us believe in stories
that cannot be verified, in miracles
that never took place, in prophecies
that will not come true?

Scores of gods have sunk into oblivion –
sacrifices ignored, prayers not answered.
It looks like the end of the world
lurks beyond our reach as well.

Boris Kokotov was born in Moscow, Russia. Currently he lives in Baltimore. He writes poems and short stories. He also translated selected poems of German Romantics and contemporary American poets to Russian language. His work appeared in periodicals, most recently in Allegro, The Bewildering Stories, Boston Poetry Magazine, Constellations, Chiron Review, and The Lake.

#finalpoems / [?]

HARVESTING FIELDS OF REMEMBRANCE AND ALKALOIDS

How your voice fades through
fields of poppy as you work,
thighs surrounded by floral blood.
It is all violent, splatter from earthly
exit wounds. Our mother told us

that poppies are red fish who have
learned to swim on land, in large,

roundabout paths. She says that

they prey on the soil, digging new
roots to lay eggs. We dance in large
circles, creating a home for our

footprints, and providing rows of
toiled earth for the fish-nests. When
you begin to bleed from between your
legs, you say you are feeding the soil

already turned crimson and burst-
vein. Our mother’s best beading protects

our waists that hold the seeds we gather,
while we scuttle like silverfish among
fields of a corrupted sunset—we beg
our mother not to send us home until
the good spirits are everywhere and ready.

But, as soon as hear her whistle from the
porch, our heels turn up dirt as we rush
towards her arms, offering our bounty.

Moira J., or Gaagé Dat’éhe (Quiet Crow), is an Indigenous writer who explores being agender, queer, and biracial. Their writing examines relationships between sexuality, spirituality, trauma, displacement, and family in poetry, origin stories, and creative nonfiction. Moira J.’s work has been published in Girls Get Busy Zine, Naugatuck River Review, Bayou Magazine, and more. They have upcoming publications with Rising Phoenix River, Sea Foam Magazine, The Account, and The 3288 Review. You can keep updated on Moira J. by going to https://moiraj.wixsite.com/home, or find them on Twitter @moira__j.

#finalpoems / [?]

what we are and once were

in the space between one heartbeat and the last
is a miracle

water slipping between our lips as they crash
into and apart like waves on waves
on the way to impossible
a 747 over the international dateline
time travel
from Christmas day to Christmas day
and there’s nothing else but the pressure
on our eardrums and the drop of our
stomachs, an embassy behind us and
something else on the way— a
birth,, of a fixed point in space,
a landmark,
a certainty,
but always misplaced
a circle, and about 22 more
spinning by chance, maybe
spitting out destinies like a slot machine
as the world dissolves as salt
in water, entropy,
returning to the rest of the universe
(a larger body)
and as we all become
part of that something else,
we are somehow,,
complete

Alexis Diano Sikorski is a polyamorous Filipino-American studying English and Psychology at Texas Woman’s University. Her work has appeared in Pour Vida Zine, Mistress, and Sea Foam Magazine. She likes dogs, looking out of windows on airplanes, and caffeine. She is the goddess of whistling. She was probably a sailor in a past life. @sikorskidear

#finalpoems / [?]

TRR

This is my first posting here. I am not an interstellar traveler like most of you. My line of work is construction. I am happy to be where I am having a job and many friends, supervisors like myself. Usually we talk sports. Last time though the topic was TRR – imagine that! I found the subject of that conversation worth of sharing with a new crowd so I put together a few sentences. Now you have a chance to cast a glance at them.

The father of contemporary art, Amadeus Amateur, was a beach sculptor. He created stunning images on an ocean beach using sand as material and a rake as the tool. He had a few hours a day to complete the thing and photograph it before a tide would come and erase it. His followers went further by not taking photographs, while Amateur’s were lost or maybe destroyed by zealots. As result all we have for contemporary art today is empty beaches.

Collections of ancient art, however, still reside in museums, most of which are closed – just like libraries. Working hard three hours a day two days a week we barely have time for tweeting – forget about paintings and books! We do love sports. Watching games constitutes the ultimate delight available to humans. There is wide-spread belief among us that Afterlife is nothing else but endless and uninterrupted games watching.

That is, of course, a simplification. According to the orthodox doctrine Afterlife happens to people when they cease supervising, which, as you know, takes place at the age of ninety. It is the state of permanent bliss. We have the proof of it: nobody has ever returned to continue working! Afterlife is available to all, but what kind of bliss an individual gets depends on his or her Social Security Score. Fair enough, I think.

The doctrine is vague on the subject of differences between Afterlife and Beforelife. These two aren’t the same, that’s for sure. While nobody comes back from Afterlife, everybody comes out of Beforelife, eager to escape it by all means. Still they have something in common; we’re just unable to figure out what it could be. Shouldn’t even try. As one of the wisest Supervisors famously said: What difference does it make today?

I’m almost done with the posting. In a moment a tide will come and erase it leaving the page blank. Tabula Rasa Rules! This is the motto of our civilization, and, in a deeper sense, the motto of the Universe. Look at the sky with many constellations pinned to it. Such a beautiful view! But a gigantic tide will rise and sweep the place clean – no stars, no nebulas. Isn’t that inspiring? I think it is. Let’s not be afraid. Let’s go with the tide!

TRR! TRR! TRR!

Boris Kokotov was born in Moscow, Russia. Currently he lives in Baltimore. He writes poems and short stories. He also translated selected poems of German Romantics and contemporary American poets to Russian language. His work appeared in periodicals, most recently in Allegro, The Bewildering Stories, Boston Poetry Magazine, Constellations, Chiron Review, and The Lake.

#finalpoems / [?]

The End Of the World Did Not Happen…

With children diving under desks
and clouds that looked like angry
balloon animals. From family members
eager to turn your outsides into their
insides. By a souped-up Commodore 128
computer that decided you could be
a delectable source of electricity. Through
a flood of the earth or emotions
triggering mutant powers. During an angry
volcano surprise party under Los
Angeles, angry gods, or angry paratroopers
descending on cornfields with machine
guns. Because of a failing sun or genius chimps
leapfrogging the evolutionary ladder.
Due to asteroids or ozone leaving the planet
with bald spots, tiny dictators in alligator
boots, or time-traveling paradoxes of crushed
monarchs and nations under altered beliefs.
But fear and ignorance could set the table,
a conversation or two, a desire to please,
ash covering the cars of coughing cities,
a step at a time, a castle at a time, a prayer
of blood sky and bowed heads. It could shift
with a moon-sized parable where the one
can save the many. It could be you. You could be
the one.

Martin Ott’s most recent book is a dystopian sci-fi novel Spectrum, C&R Press, 2016. He is the author of seven books and won the De Novo and Sandeen prizes for his first two poetry collections. His work has appeared in more than two hundred magazines and a dozen anthologies.

#finalpoems / [?]

In the Wasteland

The end.
Without you,
I will wander the wasteland
as a nobody
to get me behind me,
and I will fail.

I will ride faster and faster.
I will waste, raid the oceans
for more mermaid meat,
scour the towns for
someone who looks like you
to split in two
again and again.
I will leave a wake of loss,
slay the lady of the lake,
smother hearts with my boredom,
my acid god, my amphetamine jihad.
I will drown more youth in rivers of booze,
suck and fuck dynasties into oblivion.
I will poison the well,
serve shit at the table.
I will string the pearls of grief
I stole back from swooning others,
polished,
and they will shine bright enough
to blind Venus for good through midnight
into my mourning.

It’s all to say:
I don’t know myself without you.
And still, every morning,
every year,
5:01 am,
the gem you left in my chest
wakes me again
and again and again,
again and again,
with the feeling you are about
to call my name.

When he is not polluting fresh minds as a teacher-for-hire, Matt Carney writes prose, poetry and music, and trips graciously but liberally through San Francisco, never forgetting to wear his shit-together-glasses as he watches the sunset. His heroes are David Bowie, Ellen Ripley, and Chun Li.

#finalpoems / [?]

in my last moments i’ll be singing a Weezer song 

almost always there’s a song

morning       so  i was a teenager

again   listening to Weezer

a sanctuary   so

cozy   so  now i

go out (avoid roommates)

lost the garage

where i felt safe

to sing

melanie farley lives in Philadelphia, PA. Her chapbook things we have in writing POEMS (for Z) was published with dancing girl press in 2016, and you can find her work elsewhere, if you do some sleuthing. She almost always wakes up with a song in her head.

#finalpoems / [?]

Two Hearts

For so many years you were my oxygen
My breath
My conversational mate
You made me laugh

My heart inside your heart
My hand inside your hand

Before we knew each other we were lost
Two halves wandering
Steps searching
Traveling toward a place to call home

You found me
My arms were wreaths
My intentions were circles
Our laughter was a room filled with jewels

You spoiled me by listening to me
I spoiled you by laughing at your jokes

I hope I gave you enough
I did my best and that was all I had

You were/are/will be
My everything

Nothing will change
Nothing
When the world comes to an end

Eliza Mimski lives and writes in San Francisco, California. Her work has appeared in Sparkle and Blink, the Lascaux Review, Poets Responding to the News, Fiction365, amid other places.

#finalpoems / [?]

One Bird

There is no way out of the labyrinth, meandering trap.
Language is a circle that goes nowhere, though it entertains the mind;
Scripture calls it God.

The world is not the thing: Table, chair, word, person.
Time only happens in thought, what is seen is not seen,
Space and content.

All of history is a sham, this human construct of box:
Pull the zip tab, see it rip and go up in flame, a puff of smoke.
What’s left is nameless.

Coffee is perking, the furnace kicks on, sunlight creeps through the blinds
Daylight turns to night, breath rises, falls, a pulse beats in the heart,
One truth.

Cardinal red against a cursive scroll of tree branch,
A bird thinks it sees another, but there is only ever one bird,
Singing beneath

A blistered empty sky.

Kelly Thompson’s work has been published in The Rattling Wall, Entropy, Oh Comely, Dove Tales, The Rumpus, Proximity, The Writing Disorder, Witchcraft, Manifest Station, 49 Writers, and other literary journals. Her essay “Hand Me Down Stories” was recently nominated for a Pushcart by Proximity. She is also curator for “Voices of Addiction” at The Rumpus. She is a psychotherapist and has a small private practice. She also works on assignment with soldiers recently returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their families. Kelly lives in Denver, Colorado in the sunshine of the spirit. You can follow her on Twitter @stareenite

#finalpoems / [?]

Arcana 16

We were in a large cathedral
important to those such as us: lovers
of history, lovers of odd
structures of the mind, hippy-types,
wayward. Some took pictures,
others moved toward a green field,
their faces dark from much sunlight,
bodies tight with exercise.

I was watching in a hall. I heard
a shouting outside and when I looked again
the clouds had become aggressive,
moving toward us, a tornadic wind
circling meaningfully
as if to entrance us with its dance.
Some cried out, take cover.
Most could not. The sky darkened.

Lightning began dropping all around.
I was instantly aware I too was in trouble.
The cathedral was coming down, battered
by storm wind and lethal lightning,
flaming from its spires, it’ll
soon collapse. I left with my skin intact,
thinking every lightning bolt

that fell would certainly scour me.
That the picture was similar to the tarot
card was not wasted on me,
that the divination represents a collapse
of environment, a renegotiation
of possibilities, a surrender
of what at one time was all one knew.

I awoke then, feeling strange.
I pictured Rimbaud and a cow on a hill,
thinking of the cow the
separate wisdom of moving slow through
fields one creates with one’s step,
nearer the will, nearer the embrace, the
top of one’s head alit with Christmas tinsel,
and Rimbaud a voice drawn in chalk.

It was a dream, I thought, looking out my window.
The sun shook the trees of its silver dollars.
I wish you could have seen the disarmament
of the trees in noon time as Rimbaud
was drawn upon my voice with a light blue chalk.
It is recovered, I thought,
it is recovered.

Elias Siqueiros is a poet from El Paso TX.  He is the author of the poetry collection The Heart Of An Animal. Work has appeared in publications such as Word Riot, Stirring, Former People, Milk, and elsewhere.

#finalpoems / [?]

determination-in-the-last-instance (DLI), xxvi-xxvii, 117, 119, 124-25, 127, 195, 248n24

Jared Wells is a writer and sound artist based in Auckland, New Zealand.

#finalpoems / [?]

What entitles me to talk about the end of the world?

Humans have had gunpowder and steel for years. Rocks and clubs for longer. Teeth and fists for longer. We’ve been ending worlds for centuries.

I bet trench warfare happened on sunny days. Men pulled pins with their teeth while boys bit into birthday cakes.

Why is my end of the world significant? More than every car accident and earthquake combined? My death won’t be as bright as the fire by the bay in 1906.

We only have a few draws left before the filter. But what’s to say the ember is out? Maybe it’ll be hot enough to light a new one.