To further distinguish our site from other literary ventures, Logos will no longer be accepting works of prose and verse that have been previously published, whether online, in print, or both, and, from now on, will only accept original, unpublished manuscripts of prose and verse. Excerpts from a novella, novel or poetry collection slated to be published, however, may still be accepted.
prose
Upon Your Arrival & Beyond
by John Grey
The people of America
go crazy –
from fishing folk of the Maine coast
to the California
surfing crowd –
a baby emerges from a deaf-mute’s womb
and it’s still not promiscuous
or willing to kill for a living.
It is watched over by old names
and new slatterns.
Character is born
just like that baby
but with its own blood spilled,
not the mothers’.
Being bathed continually in filth helps.
Job or first love –
numbing terror is not the same as emotion
until it is.
Sadly, a woman being choked
to death by the rough hands
of a stranger
cannot answer your twenty questions –
luckily, the default in every case
is “false.”
And then there’s marriage,
a rash dash
and without cash –
three children are raised
by the state –
on a cross to be crucified
as it so happens.
So a house in the suburbs it is –
but what about the hundred foot giant
trudging through the neighborhood
planting the seeds of strip malls?
A water-pipe bursts –
the truth emerges –
rats too can drown –
they’re just not in it for the water sports.
Everyone is ungainly at ocean’s edge.
You toddle like you’re ten thousand pounds overweight.
Fat red flesh predominates.
You’re prisoner of the economic climate.
If the deal falls through,
you can always go back to bathing in filth.
The mind fantasizes
over hedge fund managers
in a great Wall Street extravaganza
that’s been sent to destroy you.
It is only in secluded places,
far from the trained eye of the television camera,
where anything of sense is being said.
And there’s nobody
to speak up –
and, to make things worse –
the car’s not an automatic –
at no time in your life
were you instructed
how to drive a manual.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review, with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.
Where I Live Now
by John Grey
I’m trying to figure
what it is about this house –
egg yolk sinks
into a ketchup frieze –
squashed ants line the sink,
empty bottles vie with the half-full –
I live between a thankless television
and the doorbell –
I sleep on an old couch
with half the flesh torn out –
wallpaper’s ratty –
spit has congealed –
excuse my appearance –
I was up all night, expecting guests.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review, with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.
Singer
by Gale Acuff
I love Miss Hooker more than I love God,
I guess, which, I guess again, is a sin,
but she’s my Sunday School teacher and she
tempts me so I can’t help myself even
though temptation’s not her fault and I’m not
sure it’s even mine so I’ll blame God, He’s
the One Who made us but if I’d made her
I couldn’t improve on His work, red hair
and green eyes and freckles, more than enough
for three more people, maybe even more.
Miss Hooker’s 25 and I’m just 10
so the chances of us ever getting
hitched are pretty slim but that’s what God’s for,
making a miracle if I pray hard
enough, and I could use Miss Hooker’s help
but I doubt that she’s got it bad for me
–she probably likes grown men, guys who shave
and have hairy chests and legs and maybe
backs, and hair in their nostrils and who speak
like Father speaks, or God in the movies,
in a real deep voice and even have jobs,
money helps when you try to get a gal
so you can pay for the hamburgers and
banana splits and movie tickets and
bring her flowers, which aren’t cheap unless you
pick them yourself and then she’ll think you’re poor
or maybe a little crazy although
some gals like a-little-crazy but not
Mother, she’s all business. I brought home my
report card yesterday and made straight-As
–I’m not bragging, I just know the system
–and only one B, in Conduct, and she
yelled at me, I don’t care how smart you are,
young man, but if you can’t shut up in class
good grades don’t mean a pecking thing. Father
had to sign it because she wouldn’t and
he didn’t even see it, the B, just
said, Not too shabby, boy, not bad at all,
and smiled and winked and I told him about
Mother and before he could say something
I told him that I’m sweet on a woman
but I didn’t say who, or is it whom,
just that she was older and he replied,
Well, it might be a good experience,
whatever that means. I think it means that
I’ll never snag her but I didn’t ask
why because he was reading the Sports page
and I respect that. Yes sir, I said. So
I went back to Mother and asked her if
she was still sore. Thread this needle
for me, she ordered, rubbing her eyes as she
rolled her chair away from the Singer. It’s
on wheels, the chair I mean. Ezekiel
is what I thought of and I’m not sure why
but I threaded the needle and before
she could say Thank you, so I don’t know if
she was going to, I said it aloud,
Ezekiel I mean, and she said, Damn,
I pricked my finger, which was the first time
I ever heard her swear but that’s alright,
she was in pain and when I grow up I
want to be a doctor and married to
Miss Hooker and buy her a Cadillac.
We’ve got an old Ford but it’s got four wheels,
too. Father says, It gets us where we want
to go. He has a way with words because
he’s an Assistant File Clerk and sometimes
when he drives off to work in the morning
his hubcaps look like they’re spinning backwards,
the car’s I mean. Ezekiel went up
and saw everything and came back down
but I forget what happens next. I’m sure
Miss Hooker knows. I’ll ask her next week in
Sunday School but if I forget I can
always bring it up on our honeymoon
if I get my miracle. If not, damn.
Mr. Acuff’s work has appeared in Ascent, Chiron Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry, all from BrickHouse Press: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.
Righteous
by Gale Acuff
I don’t want to die but I don’t want to
live, neither, so what’s left I ask my Sun
-day School teacher but she just folds her arms
and shakes her head and frowns as she looks down
on me, which she has to do anyway
because she’s 25 to my 10 but
now she’s looking even down-er and I
feel even smaller so then I tell her
that I’ll pray about it and next week when
I’m back in Sunday School my attitude
will be changed and she’ll be happy again
but then she starts to cry–that should be me
shedding tears and I’d tell her so but she’d
say that tears are like Christ’s blood. I can’t win.
Mr. Acuff’s work has appeared in Ascent, Chiron Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry, all from BrickHouse Press: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.
Lot Less
by Gale Acuff
I’ll be dead before you know it, before
I know it anyway and maybe then
or I mean afterward I won’t know it
at all, ditto death, I’ll be alive some
-how and maybe waiting for another
life-to-come, maybe another after
that, but all I get at church is that we’re
all in this for the eternal life of
it, I guess by it I mean the life we
know now which is at least one-half of what’s
to be and probably a lot less so
after Sunday School today I asked my
teacher What if we die and there’s nothing
hereafter but she just smiled and said Pray.
Mr. Acuff’s work has appeared in Ascent, Chiron Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry, all from BrickHouse Press: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.
Countdown to Darkness
by Carl Scharwath
Translucent and awake
Lost in broad daylight.
The sun will vanish
Flickering, unseeing.
Blurring at the edges
Darkening, hesitant
And shinning curious.
The light evanesces
In a trace of sadness.
For how long
Will a stranger stop
In a different light
As the end announced.
Looking for landmarks
Talking to himself
At the edge
Of the world.
Insanity feels good.
Carl Scharwath, has appeared globally with 150+ journals selecting his poetry, short stories, interviews, essays, plays or art photography (His photography was featured on the cover of 6 journals.) Two poetry books ‘Journey To Become Forgotten’ (Kind of a Hurricane Press) and ‘Abandoned’ (ScarsTv) have been published. His first photography book was recently published by Praxis. Carl is the art editor for Minute Magazine, poetry editor for TL Publishing Group, a competitive runner and 2nd degree black-belt in Taekwondo.
Hard-Hearted
by Gale Acuff
I want to go to Heaven when I die
to tell God and Jesus how full of it
they are, scheming up history that we
ordinary folks here on Earth never
made but the Father and the Son claim we did,
free will it’s called, I confess I’ve got some,
but not enough to choose to end the Cause
of it all and everything else I might
be leaving out out of ignorance or
stupidity or both but then again
God read minds better than Santa Claus so
He surely knows what I’ve been thinking and
think now and will think–Hell, He knows it all
just like He planned it. Let my people go
Mr. Acuff’s work has appeared in Ascent, Chiron Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry, all from BrickHouse Press: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.
Limerence
by Carl Scharwath
You are alone
I am ashamed
We walk among the lavender, wilting in the heat of our passion. Wisteria releases tears of dew drops on a lover’s pillow encased in short-lived memories. Tattered vulnerabilities, crushed velvet revelations filter through the flower field. This is the territory of asbestos laced pollen. The martyred pathway sinful and filled with misty lies under the shadows while the world is changing.
The end of the beginning
Is the beginning of the end
Carl Scharwath, has appeared globally with 150+ journals selecting his poetry, short stories, interviews, essays, plays or art photography (His photography was featured on the cover of 6 journals.) Two poetry books ‘Journey To Become Forgotten’ (Kind of a Hurricane Press) and ‘Abandoned’ (ScarsTv) have been published. His first photography book was recently published by Praxis. Carl is the art editor for Minute Magazine, poetry editor for TL Publishing Group, a competitive runner and 2nd degree black- belt in Taekwondo.
1959
by Carl Scharwath
Two children plaster forms
A decorum of the 1950’s
Embellishment, quietly grace
The family road trip.
Baseball cards on the floor
Gum under the seat
A façade of happiness
As billboards swoop by.
Telephone wires, a dizzying array of surrealistic lines crossing the clouds and pointing the way. Last chance gas stations, diners with dead end jobs, the radio static filled with a revival preacher admonishing the listeners to repent. Everything turns to Utopia.
Mom in the front seat
Dreams of a new washing machine
Perhaps a new house coat
And a husband who would love her again.
Father, eyes straight forward
Thinks of the next two martini lunch and
An evening rendezvous with his young secretary
In a secret hotel close to home.
Like a thick novel with empty pages-four lives down the highway in a medal casket with tail fins. Route 66 attractions beckon for attention and a sparked conversation. This nuclear family just one of the forgotten many in the proto-industrialization of a historical timeline—a contaminated generation.
Carl Scharwath, has appeared globally with 150+ journals selecting his poetry, short stories, interviews, essays, plays or art photography (His photography was featured on the cover of 6 journals.) Two poetry books ‘Journey To Become Forgotten’ (Kind of a Hurricane Press) and ‘Abandoned’ (ScarsTv) have been published. His first photography book was recently published by Praxis. Carl is the art editor for Minute Magazine, poetry editor for TL Publishing Group, a competitive runner and 2nd degree black- belt in Taekwondo.
My Forecast
by John Grey
Snow falls on snow.
And, in between,
I trudge.
Yes it’s beautiful
but it chills my bones.
It decorates.
It beautifies.
But my fingers freeze
despite my gloves.
I am on my way
to a place
that will offer me
radiance and discomfort
in equal abundance.
The weather forecaster
got it right.
Now it’s down to
the people forecaster.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Plainsongs, Willard and Maple and Connecticut River Review.
The Small World
by John Grey
It’s blanched white tunnels
that tube-worms dig,
swirling around in complex patterns
like the trail of a child’s finger in cake frosting.
Or the emerald gleam of glowworms.
Or tiny scarlet and blue-jeweled crabs.
The world offers small
as much as it does large.
A lizard stares up at me from beneath a rock.
Its eyes are two black pinheads.
There’s a drowsy buzz
where dragonflies feed.
And blenny darters skirt
the limits of a pool,
feasting on midges.
Even the leaves for grass are in on the miniature.
A cricket pivots on one.
A second is free but blustered.
I am on my knees,
immersed in a world.
strong in detail
but thin on drama.
But then a bobolink
claims an unwitting fly.
I spoke too soon.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Plainsongs, Willard and Maple and Connecticut River Review.
/////Logos Literature 