POEM BY C.R. DOBSON

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MY PAREIDOLIA PROBLEM

 

 

 

Inrushing you, into any bidden eye—some unbidden. Always febrile, I.

 

            Perspiring. Hot. Confused comportment. And

you always feral—wilding out from some strange sweven.

 

You’re keen to colonize.

Your clever strettos caroming off irides until

you incur or are granted visa into my fugue state.

 

            My retina: eager for pareidolia. My lenses concentrate

your beam to the backs of my eyes.

 

            The attitude of the image inverted and corrected until I see

you in the stratocumulus or in the dripping, drooling concentricity of wood grains—            a piece of toast even.

 

            I know

you,

            but I forget I do. I forget again.

You are elision.

You are a tesseracting bird folding and shaking flat mountains of space and time.

You are bathos.

You are pap.

You are.

 

 

 

 

C.R. Dobson teaches literature at a university in South Korea. When not teaching or writing, he’s tromping through some forest or other getting dangerously close to wild animals, reading books, or lolling in front of the television with his fiancée and his cat, Momo.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

 

 

 

POEM BY MICHAEL BERKOWITZ  

 

 

 

 

 

DISMANTLED

 

 

All it takes is a whisper and language snaps

back on itself like the anchor-

thread of a spider’s web in the corner

of a new apartment. Suddenly homeless,

 

Anansi moves to Brooklyn

and sets up shop as the god

of narrative poetry. Let’s

 

rewrite the mythology. After all,

isn’t that the point? Of course

 

it almost doesn’t matter: the first reading

of the first draft gets swallowed

by the lawnmower outside the window

 

and blown back, before

you can repeat yourself, cut

back to where

you started. Anansi moves out

 

to the American Southwest.

In the endless, empty

corners he untangles a web

not even the wind,

who knows every story

but cannot tell them, can snap.

 

 

 

 

Michael Berkowitz is a poet, web developer and aspiring trapeze artist living in Somerville, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Sixfold, Eunoia Review and the Rampallian, and is forthcoming in CSHS Quarterly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

 

 

 

POEM BY PIJUSH KANTI DEB

 

 

 

 

 

 

A REGRETTING GREAT MAN
        

       
In the eve of his death
a macro-conscious great man
repents throughout his sub-conscious journey
on the way to his final destination,
realizes his life-long sacrifices
as incomplete, so ineffective
in putting two and two together
to welcome a better sun-rise for the mankind.
Indeed, he regrets from his depth of heart
witnessing the presence of the dirty hearts-
full of garbage of selfishness and cruelty,
those are still left untouched and unwashed
though ever-skilled to pour hemlock
into the nectar prepared by him with great care.
In shame, he becomes a piece of stone
exhaling his last breathing
and the people leave him alone standing
in a public place of interest beneath the open sky.

 

 

 

 

Pijush Kanti Deb is an Indian poet with more than 180 published poems in more

than 50 publications; imcluding: Down in the dirt, Tajmahal Review, Pennine Ink,

Hollow Publishing, Creativica Magazine, Muse India, Poetry Pacific, Teeth Dream

Magazine and others. At present he is an Associate Professor in Economics.