OCTOPUS REVIEW #7

Hey y’all!! It’s finally here!

The long-awaited Octopus Review #7! 

As always it is jam packed with words that will slice your soul (in a good way) and stunning images that will slice your eyeballs (also a good way!)

I’m so excited to have this ready a little early. Last month’s mercury in retrograde was a monster (& I don’t usually put much stock in the backslidings of minor planets). 

Before you scroll onto this magnificent issue, I just want to let you know I’ll be doing one more of these here on blogspot.  This has been such a fun project I want to continue doing it in a different space. I’m taking my blog —The Octopus Diary — in another direction and I want to give the Octopus Review its own platform. Where that platform will be? I don’t know yet.

I am gathering submissions for issue #8 already & though I don’t usually subscribe to “themes’ I’m going to make the last one about The Arts. And octopusses, of course.

Now….   ENJOY the Octopus Review #7!!!

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Breadcrumbs

Her mother ill with cancer, my dentist,

my friend, drills a hole into her heart

to release the grief, bonds her spine

to hold up against the fatigue

from taking her mother daily to visit

the dragon machine that fires at the spawn

left by that stinking beast slinking

its way through her body.

My own mother's death came like

a thief, blindfolding me, whispering

that she would survive her heart

suddenly gone wrong, would chase

away the hovering dark clouds, but

the rain filled her lungs, drowning 

her in ten days. My hands, warm

on her cooling, left my imprint, marking 

her with memories.

My dentist stands now in my shoes.

Hope mixed with fear.

Oil and water sloshing about in a barrel.

If a dinosaur's tail can be preserved

in amber for billions of years perhaps

we'll see our mothers again, glowing

in a fossil bed where those who are lost

gather to sing songs as breadcrumbs

to guide the ones left behind.

                                      — Pris Campbell

Photo by Chandra Alderman

Ruminations On My Previous Death

In that stanza before the coda,

that last homage to the symphony,

with no time to redo mistakes, 

I write my suicide note

and head out for my finale

by boat, note on my bed,

loaded gun for the sinking.

Through the brooding water

parted by the search boat,

I see your face elongate, 

pale to a rippling sheet

in your search for traces of me 

among unraveled rope splices,

boat parts and shifting sea glass.

Seaweed webs through my hair.

Fish bend to pray at my glowing hem.

Breaking away from your latest infidelity,

as always, you long for what you can’t have -

me, with my legs wrapped around your waist again,

turned now into a lost Orpheliac lover 

more suitable for finned playmates of the deep.

In a brief flash of regret, plus lust,

I drift up through the fathoms, 

press ectoplasmic lips to your warm ones, 

drawing you down with me

until Sirens circle to bear me  

where not even you can go.

                                          — Pris Campbell

"Unfurling" Acrylic/oil pastel on illustration board by John Nelson

………………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………….

The last poem

of mine

my wife

read was

about PTSD

and pain

I wrote

about feeling

like I

was drowning

and dragging

her and

the kids

down with

me

she wrapped

her arms

around my

neck and

kissed me

tenderly

on my

head and

said you

always

forget how

well I

swim.

      — Matt Borczon

Photo by Chandra Alderman

To my new VA psychiatrist

If

you

had

400

horses

and

I

took

400

pills

could

we

put

400

ghosts

on

their

white

backs

slap

their

flanks

and

watch

them

run

into

the

distance

skeleton

fingers

wrapped

in

thick

manes

we

could

watch

without

rubbing

the

dust

off

our

skin

or

out

of

our

eyes.

     — Matt Borczon

Photo by Chandra Alderman

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You And I

I shoot from the hip --

my tongue unwavering, direct.

Your words circle, left of center,

obfuscating

complicating --

chilly truth undressed.

                                —Barbara Moore

                                                   

                                           Boom 

                                   

                                   My throat constricts. 

                                   Irregular gasping

                                   overworks my heart 

                                   rashly pummeled --

                                   well on its way 

                                   to detonating.

                                   I’ve been cautioned 

                                   not to voice 

                                   my hyperbolic 

                                   take on things.

                                                   — Barbara Moore

"Asteria" by John Nelson (collab w/ Leonard Maffet)

   

         Quick Studies

  We learn from pain. One size fits all.

  Fastball connects without warning.

  Pain is like that. We suck it up.

  We learn without tutorials.

                                      — Barbara Moore

"Tentacular Splatter" by Juliet Cook

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

I Danced with Death

(for Meadow Pollack, age 18)

I  

In Her Voice

Death is not what you think it is.  The human spirit does not end with death.  

I am alone now, that is all that I can see. I am just a shadow now, that’s all that I can be. 

Caught in the cold absence of anything alive, while noticing that I can only see through memory’s¬¬¬¬¬¬eyes; backward is my only view, my memory’s all that’s left of me.

¬¬¬¬¬I’m shot!  I’m jolted upward, feeling tangled and alone, and I remain suspended there, when everybody’s gone.  Everything went black and then a light returned again, and everything feels different now, my wounds no longer burn.

No one can here can see me now, a lifeless marionette, engulfed in senseless violence when the terror finally ends.

Bullets flying furiously, they sound like violins, plucking pizzicatos on invisible strings, as bullets catch us, carefully aimed, flying in the fray, and my tomorrow never comes, I won’t see another day.

Now suddenly I feel so stiff and oh, so very cold, as we’re all executed as our gruesome deaths unfold.  Out of nowhere he just came at us in a calmly raging rush, that crazed young gunman, weapon aimed, mowed us down and slaughtered us.

II  

In My Voice

I imagine they all had to know with their last gasping breaths 

this was their end, and in a flash the only victor, death.

Imagining young Meadow as she fell to shield a friend.  She tried to save a student as her life came to an end.  They say she did it valiantly while barely still alive, but sadly they were both plowed down and neither one survived.

Imagining a whisper from her young departed soul, my mind drifts through the unknown realms of lost-forever souls, the might-have-beens, their futures gone so brutally struck down - seventeen attacked and lived, seventeen would live no more.

Now all that we can do today is honor who they’d be 

if they had been allowed to live and die with dignity.

Let’s send them all a Valentine to warm their souls today,

and wish them peace at this remembrance of their final day.

                                                                                           — Lois Betterton

                                                                                                    2-14-2019

"Squiggle Duster" by Juliet Cook

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...

On Time and Exposure

Suck it up or breathe it in. Move on or stay put.

Our naturalists still have a line of goods to sell. They must, or there'd be fewer of them.

I never said that we'd been overrun.

As the song goes, "I fumbled with the buttons, then I threw my new tuxedo down the well."

The first time we hear it, we hold our breath until the next line's rhyme connects: something will have fallen, something will have been spoken or perceived, something will have rung, something will have gone to Hell.

Being naked outdoors is as much a dismissal of time's steady march as clothing is a product of factories and schedules.

Conversely, the hunter's elaborately layered system of pockets demonstrates progression with each dead squirrel.

Like a lens they open up to the illuminated world for a prescribed amount of time.

Eventually, daybreak gives way to nightfall. They huddle around the fire or seek out jeans and hoodies. 

They remember the water as vibrant, the day not as stagnant but as slowed to a vegetal pace.

                                                                                                          — Glen Armstrong

     

Photo by Chandra Alderman

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End of the Year Party

"if I'm not out before 5:00, I'll be so pissed,"

co-worker looking peripherally to make sure I heard

yes I know, I'm going to haul ass

so you can make it to the end-of-the-year party

will I be going? some ask

by the sight of my mounting responsibility

no, and the fact that I have to drive back to Saginaw, nada

my knees are sore, my bunions are throbbing

I've been slaving since 9:00 am

to appease the pecking vultures

I have dried sweat on my hair line

that feels chalky

and raccoon eyes from the excessive heat

melting my cover up

I want to go home and wash my face

and dust my eye glasses, eat

I've been receiving electric shock

all day so much I'm getting acquired to its jack-in-the-box

way of zapping me

"there will be prizes"

if you do not socialize and sip wine

with everyone's spouses present

you will forfeit your Christmas bonus essentially

which is probably just a t-shirt with the company logo

anyhow

                                    — Jennifer Behling

"Ri3M" by Keith Winkle

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The heart is ready.

The mouth has shut.

The wisdom is bursting at the seams.

But, there is a fire inside 

That is blocking the way

And I don’t know what it means.

                            — Jill McKee

Photo by Chandra Alderman

************************CONTRIBUTOR BIOS***********************

Chandra Alderman’s work has been published by Nightballet Press, Crisis Chronicles Press, The City Poetry, and Thirteen Myna Birds. She haunts northeast Ohio in search of images and the perfect bowl of soup. See more of her work at https://www.facebook.com/peggy.honeydew

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has two chapbooks forthcoming: Simpler Times and Staring Down Miracles. His work has appeared in Otoliths, Conduit and Reality Beach.

Jennifer Behling: I am a recent graduate of Saginaw Valley State University. I studied English literature and art. My poetry has also been featured in the Haight-Ashbury Literary journal.

Lois Betterton grew up in Yonkers, New York and now resides in Sarasota’s Historic Rosemary District Florida. She began reading and writing poetry as a young child and has embraced the written word all her life.  She founded and hosts The Word Show at The Reserve SRQ in Sarasota that showcases local, free range, organic, Poets.  Publications include ‘Dr. Alfonz Lengyel, RPA China Connections, US-China Review Winter 2010 Edition,’ her poetry blog ‘New Words,’ and edited ‘GUANYIN The Art of Compassion – Guanyin And the Welfare of Sentient Beings:  Images from The Medieval Period of China’ by Dr. Chang Qing.

Matthew Borczon is a poet and navy sailor from Erie, PA. He publishes widely in the small press. He has published 6 books of poetry, the most recent The Smallest Coffins Are the Heaviest was released through Epic Rites Press this year. He is the father of 4 kids and he works way too many hours to survive. He also holds a degree in fine arts from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.

The poems of Pris Campbell have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including PoetsArtists, Nixes Mate, Rusty Truck, Bicycle Review, Chiron Review, Pulse, and Outlaw Poetry Network. Nominated four times for a Pushcart, the Small Press has published nine collections of her poetry and Clemson University Press a collaboration with Scott Owens. My Southern Childhood, from Nixes Mate Press is her most recent book. A former Clinical Psychologist, sailor and bicyclist until sidelined by ME/CFS in 1990, she makes her home in the Greater West Palm Beach, Florida. 

Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com

Barbara Moore is a New York poet and author of the slim poetry collection “Dancing on Broken Glass” (Nightwing Publications, 2014.) Her poems have appeared in numerous online and in-print poetry journals/anthologies. Barbara admires the ability to access the flip side of tragedy and believes it’s humor that keeps her afloat. An avid Bob Dylan fan, music is one of her greatest pleasures.

John Nelson Cleveland born, Sarasota-raised, professional guitarist and, for 30 years, a custom framer, John Nelson moved to Asheville, NC in 2007, trading hot days in the Florida sun and late nights with the band in smoky bars for cool, creative nights in his mountain home studio.

Besides earning him a living for his family, framing design gave John an outlet for his right-brain tendencies. But his fascination without textures, color relationships, the use of positive and negative space and the use of art as a catalyst for emotional response drove him to create his own art as well.

“ My paintings employ design to generate tension, and I use color for a release of that tension. I enjoy watching the art reveal itself layer after layer using newly discovered techniques while eliminating subject matter. Having no formal training , I can create in a manner that knows no bounds. “

Keith Winkle: Visionary? Yes. Artist. Hell no. But I love art and I try to create when I feel the pull. I was born in Ohio but raised on the offshoots of Jupiter. I graduated from Ms. Elkis’s art class, Riverview High School.