Lady Named Philosophia
by RL Greenfield
She stood on the threshold
Of dazzling white velvet
We drank our black French coffees
In the cool California night
That first night at table
The moon bit into me like a bison
Then I tracked her down
I tracked her down
This gaping hole in my chest
Is of the moon bison
The glow in my bones
Her eyes made.
Bio: RL Greenfield lives in & loves Los Angeles, California. Recent work online: Stride Magazine ( 4 poems, Aug. 2010); Poetic Matrix ( 3 poems Dec 2010); Flutter Journal, January, 2011; Sein und Werden, Jan. 2011; Red Fez Publications, January 2011; 9 January & 1 December 2009---Reviews of Charles Wright’s Littlefoot and Russell Edson’s See Jack; review of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, November, 2010, Gently Read Literature. Forthcoming poems & prose Red Ochre, The Denver Quarterly, Chiron Review, Nether, Eunoia Review, Write FromWrong, & Zouch Magazine. Numerous other publications in national reviews such as The New York Quarterly, The Minnesota Review, Poetry/LA, The Wallace Stevens Journal.
RLG received NEA fellowship in literature for mss of poems in 1995. Created television program that year The Greenfield Code & produced & hosted 150 one-hr shows in Santa Barbara featuring local & national writers & artists. It was a splendidly successful & thrilling experience that transformed his esthetic forever.
39th Street Starbuck's
by Lola Nation
The table by the entrance
keeps the conversation close to the door,
He hasn’t seen her since he’s not sure just
when, sometime between the last kiss
and the last of the furniture he carried to her car.
She cut her hair, as they always do and is making small talk
about couples who are still together, did he meet them?
Does he remember? Of course, he does...
She sold his art an auction to his silent dismay,
he no longer hangs largely in her living room, stark white
walls, she can’t bear to decorate, not yet. He sips
black coffee, while she stir-sticks her papercup, smiling
nervously, talking incessantly to fill the empty
space that used to be considered one
true love.
The table by the soon to be inconvenient sound of
the coffee grinder has an nervous man, looking at each
woman who passes through the door, yes, he could,
he thinks. Then she finally comes, zeros in and walks
right up to the empty chair, drops her magenta coat, revealing
a hot pink sweater and plaid ankle length skirt in matching
stitches of off the rack color. She is twenty to thirty pounds more
than he imagined, her picture dated from what he’d seen.
They discuss work, alcohol and snipers. Voices above
their regular octaves, speaking faster than verbally comfortable,
hurrying right along, pausing only between Christmas blends
bagged for regular customers or the fire station donation basket.
The foaming madness behind them overshadowing
the caffeinated banter of meeting for the first time.
He was wearing a pin striped suit when he walked in,
The jacket is by the chair, but from the last glance he has changed
into jeans, still wearing his Stacey Adams interview shoes
and his shirt now loosely unbuttoned, lost the tie in the
messenger bag he carried with him as he reads
the local news.
The homeless man is back, picking up the scraps
of scones and folding newspaper paper boats. Maybe it will
rain and he can sail his ships down the 39th Street gutters.
Understudy
by Lola Nation
I know I'm pretty, I know I'm smart
but tell me why does the other girl
always get my part?
Bio: Lola Nation is a poet originally from Venice Beach, California and now resides in Kansas City, Missouri. She writes short stories and poetry.
Lady with ermine
by David Raymond
She and the ermine look to their left
Beyond the black space that
Intensifies the bright edge of her shoulder.
Her black necklace an affection of circumference, draping over
Her breasts behind her hand and fingers touching
Almost not the shoulder and neck of the little beast
Whose snout is framed in the dark green folds
That fall from her left shoulder over her red dress.
Her hair wraps under her jaw
Like paint; her smile is sister to her hand.
Bio: David Raymond is a sculptor and painter and professor of fine arts at Merrimack College in Massachusetts. He is also a contributing editor and art writer for Art New England Magazine. He lives in New Hampshire, but would be happy to relocate to Italy with a modest stipend and a Fiat.
