October 30, 2014

Quick Note



This is the sixth issue of Misty Mountain, celebrating experimental pieces of poetry this time. There are fourteen poems by nine poets from different lands.

We welcome you, our readers and contributors, to read and give comments. Thank you all!

Happy reading!

One poem by Art Heifetz



Shenandoah

the higher you climb
the more the summit
seems to recede
like an unobtainable dream
in the end you're scrambling
over bare rock
at times skirting a granite wall
on a narrow ledge
searching for handholds
at others hoisting your large frame
over smooth boulders
and squeezing between them
until finally you stand on
a small plot of level ground
and the view opens up
like a feast spread at your feet
the clear ribbon of the river
the toy houses and barns
the interstice of small roads
winding through
the green and golden fields
and you carefully store
the details in your mind
saving them up for
the cold spare days of winter
which you know lie ahead


Art Heifetz teaches ESL in Richmond Va. He has published 140 poems in 11 countries, winning second place in the Reuben Rose competition in Israel. See polishedbrasspoems.com for more of his work.

Two poems by Todd Mercer



Union Station

Almost every person ever to appear on Earth
is off into the great beyond, the void, heaven,
the next life. I’m out of here myself, depending
on what year you’re reading this. You’re gone too,
likely sooner than idealized. The drum
beats time away, always going, no exemptions.
Evolved thinkers trick themselves
to be cool with the temporary state.
Welcome to the transfer depot,
fellow footnotes of history, fellow blips
on the wider consciousness.
Hope to see you
before your ride leaves.


Counsel from the Cloud
  
When you were alive,
we had fewer arguments.
Once your ticker stopped,
your voice took up residence
on-going critique, advice.

We’re not really gone
while someone hears our echoes.
We’re still chiming in,
our breathing proxies shouldered
with such devils and angels.



Todd Mercer won the first Woodstock Writers Festival’s Flash Fiction contest. His chapbook, Box of Echoes, won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press contest and his digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, is forthcoming from RHP Books. Mercer's poetry and fiction appear in Apocrypha & Abstractions, Blue Collar Review, The Camel Saloon, Camroc Press Review, Cease, Cows, Cheap Pop, Dunes Review, East Coast Literary Review, Eunoia Review, Falling Star, 50-Word Stories, The Fib Review, The Lake, The Legendary, Main Street Rag Anthologies, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, One Sentence Poems, Postcard Poems and Prose, Postcard Shorts, Right Hand Pointing, The Second Hump, and Spartan. Mercer bounces between Grand Rapids and Antrim County, Michigan.

Two poems by Kerry Furber



I am the Wal-Mart

Sainsbury's, Tesco, Carrefour, Costco.
Aldi Lidl Germans come for you
But they are the shed men
They are the dead men
For I am the Wal-Mart
Boom Boom Ka-ching!


Blind Fate

The sea, the salt, the silt, the swill
in permanence, 
eroding.

Meanwhile,
a multitude blinks 
its instagram eyes,
and snap-shoots
the revolving door
ahead -

yet fails to see 

the turning.



Kerry Furber, aka Kezz, is a 56 year old writer and musician from Bath, England.  He has had a number of poems published in anthologies and journals by Forward Press in the UK.

Two poems by Kevin Lynch



Mind so vinyl

sit in space,
in solitude

wind whispers a new song

seat one self
high or low
duckling ink
will fill
then flow

be by a tree
be by a seed
be by high-rise wheat
be by the source that tickles you
from head and to your feet

nature caresses temples
surrender so unseen
of hip and
utter hopelessness 
that shares us
ever seen


Appalachi

In Appalachi 
it snows light

we are many
writing our names in the sand
there are words on our breasts
verbs between our thighs 
language spilling from crowns

we call it water 
and in one whoosh 

we are new


Kevin was born and currently lives in Cork, Ireland. A poetry enthusiast and published musician of an original work entitled 'Chrysalis', Kevin found himself becoming more and more drawn towards writing poetry with musical layers. He is currently working on his first book of poetry.

October 29, 2014

One poem by Shaun Leonard



Vinegar

she spenns time trine-a
fine-a apple ih me
n seedn ih n all
n alla time i be catchin flies
n cider by the roadside her
eyes waterin n she always makin fer the plans to grow
n why’m i nah? n i only lover n i
only vinegar
buh dohn blamey fer dah
she wooden, so wooden
she nah? so she nah
so why shud we?



Shaun Leonard, an MFA Poetry candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is originally from Ireland, where he competed in a number of slam poetry competitions, winning the Cúirt Festival Poetry Grandslam in 2012 and the North Beach Poetry Grandslam in 2013.

Two poems by Hem Raj Bastola



Petrification

Humid dreams
On a slanting garden
Waiting for the wind
To carry away
The fragrance.

Buried
Underground
Silent, but still present:
Deactivated breath.
Drag out my helmet
Visor off
Poor visibility
Blurred: my vision
Rough.

Let hidden sea
By the sand fathom
Sleeping ammonite
An expired life
Debunked on stone.


Dinner

Far off
I hear echoing
Approaching my ear.
The wind-transporting
Frequency of the air
Ripples of a lake
Gently disperse
In a quiet and stagnant
Water surface.

Jumping fish
Broken silence.
Twilight that lead
Rowing oar a boat
Fisherman returns
The day is done.
Her eyes are waiting
His weary way
For dinner.




Hem Raj Bastola is currently working as a freelance local tour guide in and around Pokhara Valley, Nepal.
He has worked as a Guest Service Agent at the Hotel Pokhara Grande, as a cave guide, inside the cave area for all tourists as well as office assistance in Guptshor Mahadev Cave, as a substitute representative for Sita Travels, as a freelance trekking guide for tourists to the surrounding Annapurna range and as a book salesman in Annapurna Stationary Center.
Hem also enjoys writing poetry, listening to music and collecting stamps.


Two poems by Bibek Adhikari



teachings of my guru

my guru came to my place once
banged on the door, walked inside
and slumped down on my arm-chair
flickered through the books on my table
and asked me the difference between
a phrasal verb and an idiom
i gave him the answer--honest
but he made his face and turned sour
for he wanted to fathom the depths of my knowledge
with a question as stupid as a lamb
he then drank the water from the bottle
and laughed a hysterical laugh
he happened to see my poems
out of the blue, in my blue-diary
"You write great. You are a genius." He spat out.
Got up
looked at me with eyes full of envy and hatred
(even in all of my nights his eyes frighten the hell out of me
as i see them up in the ceiling
when i lay on my bed to sleep)
then
he walked out and slammed the door so hard
that i felt the ground beneath me
crumble and swallow me up

i had the desire to burst into tears
surging up within me.
(and a desire to kick his goddamn ass
so hard that he would never slump on my chair again)


Life

My body, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping,
But, if it were cold . . .

And lay in the silence of my tomb,
Would it haunt your days?
And chill your dreaming nights?

I wish my own heart ran dry of blood
So in my veins,
Red life should never stream again.



One poem by Tony Press



Anniversary

it is time
seal his lips

beside him
the beveled glass table
an empty paper cup, a straw,
journals, letters,
a magazine that once printed his poems
what once he knew

note the faded photo
discolored Kodachrome

then he was twenty
hair brown, eyes green
a maple leaf in spring
a wren taking first flight

no longer bound
to pleasures
to pain

no birth without death
brilliant dawn to solemn dusk
each breath an anniversary

decades of faith, fervor
grit and grace,
and fear
fear of solitude
fear of being known

fear no more



Tony Press lives near San Francisco and tries to pay attention. Sometimes he succeeds. His poems and stories can be found in about fifty journals, both online and in print, including The Lake, 34th Parallel, SFWP Journal, and JMWW.

One poem by Nabeela Altaf



Suicide Note

Dear Mom
I'm sure you were a child once
But even then I guess
You'll never understand
the discomfort
of filling 15 year old shoes
in large corridors
pushing you out
an insignificant piece of shit
Wrestling papers spilled with a "bump"
A white sneaker in an isle
threatening to spill your insecurities
all over the playground
Cat-calls and cat-jeers and cat-whatever's
a sleeping serenade through a sobbing night
but I really am sorry
for changing the white tiled bathroom floor
into a crimson crime.



Nabeela Altaf is a 3rd year medical student from Pakistan. Although she secretly harbors a dream of opening up an animal hospital someday, her poetry writing is quick to turn into a full length book in the near future. She likes reading books and cats.