The Octopus Review #8

Friends!

It's finally here —The Octopus Review #8!  This will be the last Octo Review in this space in this format, and it is a good one!  I will be back soon with news about the new incarnation of the Octo Review.

I think great things are happening in the poetry scene and I've been honored to participate in it with you all. Thank you not just to this batch of poets and artists but to EVERYONE who has contributed to The Octopus Review the past 2 years. You'll never understand what it has meant to me.

Also—I can't believe it but no one submitted any octopus art : )) For the first 3 or 4 issues I received several octopus submissions and I rejected them because, you know, I thought it would be octopus overkill. And this time around? Nothing. Oh well—you guys always surprise me.

**************************************************************************Barbara H. Moore

NEW DAY

Standing on the rooftop, I am Juno, Ceres, 

Victoria, Minerva, Hecate, Iris, Diana – 

wind in my hair, sun rising to greet me.

I contemplate flight over a city awakening, 

scoping out freshly mown territory – 

looking for places to hide in plainest sight.

Simply clad in camouflage, blending in 

with treetops, I am pleased with last year’s crops 

but not content. Over and again, I rise victorious, 

no ashes in sight, with wing expansion greater 

than my own capacity for dreaming. Wise but 

not without faults of jealousy, suspicion, 

my body armor never leaves my sight completely. 

I carry torches and threats to morph you into 

other forms if you double-cross me. I may 

surprise you, arriving when you’re least prepared – 

with cryptic messages and leftover nectar dripping 

from my fingertips. My eyes ablaze like silver moons,

and deadly as my aim is true, I do not suffer fools lightly.

Man Walking by Wayne F. Burke

************************************************************************Andrew Darlington

COURTESY OF ANOTHER EMPTY SPACE

(Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield, February 2017)

I’m in the Hepworth Gallery

where someone’s draped

their coat folded over the chairback

and left their case slanting the seat,

with their tight-rolled umbrella

angled precisely across it,

I’m appraising in indecision

from different perspectives, see

a common on impermanence,

the transience of art and presence,

the outsider nature of being

and nothingness, absence and

what remains beyond leaving,

but no,

not installation sculpture,

just left by another drifting art-geek

in the Hepworth gallery

****************************************************************************Lois Betterton

Gracing the Square

(An Ode to Poetry)

Crowds gather as the ancient sundial tells them what they want to know.

The bells ring, the crowd gawks,

Music fills the chambers as we enjoy their dimensions.

Tea? you ask, and I am charmed,

For your eyes sparkle and we both know what we mean,

And what we cannot mean.

Musicians are everywhere, even in corners we cannot see,

We can hear them only faintly now.

And finally the senses are relaxed as laughter

Spills out from between lips like honey from a golden pitcher.

Time is a man-made invention, a name and a promise

To move forward reliably; though, in reality, time is something

That can neither be contained nor defined. And man is so uneasy

That he gives time a measure that it can neither understand nor obey.

And no one is the wiser.

Untitled by Jim Zola

The ARTist

Fragment Raw Rage Unfinished

Untethered by convention, witnessed,

Unbound by perceived oppression,

Works his ART, visual expression.

Its soul cries out to be unheard, 

Poetry without a word,

A silent tortured naked scream

To his within, fulfills his need.

The ARTificial sacrifice, of life and limb, of modern strife,

The path unbroken, all his Life,

Revealing unseen, unknown truth

He carries from his sacred youth.

Generous now, he shares his view

For there is nothing he won’t do

To see how deeply he can go

I don’t think he can really know

How rare his magic, how his eye

Compels his hand, his raw heart cries

Out to the cosmos, to the Moon

His new work’s heartbeat emerging soon

To live its truth will come alive.

To be itself it must survive.

Releasing thunder, tenderness,

The ARTist’s heart, the gift possessed.

*****************************************************************************Robert Beveridge

ALL THOSE PROMISES

an excess of legs

brushes against your sternum,

orgy of past due notices. the last time

you stood here, Canaveral

was still a cloak. the twilight

casts everything in hues of red

yet the traffic has not found a reason

to stop, you dodge bicycles

on the way to the deli, your chest

alive. bags of cats set you to ponder

the way to succeed. roast beef on rye

with extra mustard and a hint

of sliced olive. you wait for it to move.

Incels in Space by Peter Landau

************************************************************************************Tony Egler

INHERIT THE MOON

It’s life and death every day on the Moon.

Hell, anywhere I guess. You don’t have to leave

Earth to die, plenty of that here everyday.

It’s more than where you live, it’s how.

Like, do you I-me-me-I your way

From relationship to relationship?

Or are you all in?

They said there was no place for us here,

that our lives didn’t matter. Not until someone

believed in us, helped us survive,

taught us how to live again.

First we made the desert bloom, then

we moved to the Moon. They called us Refugees,

but we always knew we were just like you. Free.

Dialogue with Articulated Formation by John Nelson

**************************************************************************************Juliet Cook

What if my most vibrant heart beats happened in the past

 and then my emotions gradually got stoned

 into grey?

Or maybe I'll never dry out all the way.

Today I took photos of my own menstrual blood,

because it won't be long before it stops.

Or maybe it will never stop.

Maybe when I die, the blood will still be gushing

out of my vaginal lines.

Bloodied screw hole.

Bloodied irises

in a flower pot.

Bloodied saint of torn apart poems,

dripping, thrown away, hidden inside 

underwear drawers and

underground dreams.

In which my vagina was a tiny tomb

for broken dicks

whose heads have managed

to convince themselves that I don't exist anymore

and maybe I don't in some mind's eyes.

I mean I'm not the same as I was 

when I was 20

when I was 30

when I was 40

but I do still exist

and I'm still the real me

no matter how much I change.

I want to be able to keep changing

for at least another 40 years, but

can I handle myself?

     ****

When I was a little girl,

my grandma made witch finger shapes

with pierogie dough. She knew

I would turn into a witch with entrails

stuck between dirty fingernails.

My nose keeps growing more and more witchy

and I can't tell if this is sorcery or another ugly sign 

of aging.  It is hard to believe that anyone really wants

to handle these spells. That anyone really wants all of me.

Brimming  with broom legs,

with bruises and veins, 

uneven blood flow, pulsating heart beats

underneath my skin. I cut myself 

shaving again, because the veins 

bulged into the razor blade.

The ever alternating landscapes

of quantifiable feminism.

Blood 

then mental evaporation

then excavation from underneath the cuts.

Woods by Wayne F. Burke

***********************************************************************************Pris Campbell

 burn

hate burns his lips

sets fire to trees

scares off squirrels

he walks in haze

no longer knows color

until the sky bends

to touch him

he has long forgotten seedlings

in spring

redbirds in flight

wildflowers in bloom

this man...

my hunched over grandfather

carries his daughter's torn

underpants in one hand

my barrette in the other

the road to perdition

has many turns

barbed wire holds

shirt fragments

snagged from other

lost men who

tried to escape this route

before him

he cries out

to the god his victims

cried for when his evil

lay so heavily

upon them.

a storm rises

on the horizon

cloaked horsemen

ride its cusp

Untitled by Jim Zola

jukebox

I still smell that war... 

it seeps from my bones. 

Oh praise to the soldiers

lined up on D-Day,

shivering, while the water

turned crimson 

We were so certain 

of our lives together

before Vietnam. 

Bodies pile up

in the Middle East,

a child's broken toy 

beside them.

When the shells 

hit his ship he slipped

further through that rabbit hole 

carrying him away from me.

Return to me,

oh souls of the dead

and the walking dead

for one last benediction

He didn't want me 

to drop braids, kiss a frog, 

or click heels together 

to help him return intact. 

White crosses shine

in the moonlight

at Arlington:

ghosts step out from the Wall.

I watch helplessly 

as he falls further. 

I reach out, but my hands 

grasp empty space.

Our warriors are gone now,

leaving behind those who mourn.

May we may hold their memory dear,

gain peace for what has been lost .

Dead now a year

I still talk to him -

program alternate endings 

into this jukebox called life.

*********************************************************************************Catfish McDaris

THE LAST NIGHT SHIFT

Stumbling outside from the monster

loud shrieking machine madness, the

black slate floor trying to swallow your

feet to the knees in phobic quicksand

A cigarette, a sip of water in a deserted

parking lot, night, like a workman’s

gloves fingers wearing through at the

tips grasping the sun, clutching that

orange red ball to his dark bosom

Quick dozed off leaning against a

concrete wall, he struggled awake

hearing a sound, a lady was playing

trombone with a monkey in a tutu.

What Is A Man? by Peter Landau

***********************************************************************************Matt Borczon

Try ( for Eliza at 10 years old )

Try

to channel

the devil

with your

dance moves

to wake

the dead

with your

screams

to scatter

the crows

with your

icy breath

stampede

the horses

sink the

ship shoot

out the

street lights

with the

fierce energy

of your

youth with

the power

of your

love and

anger try

please try

to change

the world!

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

Andrew Darlington worked as a Stand-Up Poet on the ‘Alternative Cabaret Circuit’ and interviewed many people from the worlds of Literature, SF-Fantasy, Art and Music for a variety of publications. His latest poetry collection is Tweak Vision (Alien Buddha Press), while his new fiction collection A Saucerful Of Secrets is now available from Parallel Universe. His scientifictionnovel In The Time Of The Breaking (Alien Buddha Press) was published in January 2019. 

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.

Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. He’s been active in the small press world for 25 years. He’s recently been translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, and Esperanto.  

Jim Zola is a poet and photographer living in North Carolina. 

John Nelson: “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.“

The two poems by Juliet Cook appear within a chapbook called DARK PURPLE INTERSECTIONS (inside my Black Doll Head Irises), which will soon be published online by Dusie. It can currently be acquired in hand-designed print chapbook format in the Blood Pudding Press shop here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/689260672/new-dark-purple-intersections-inside-my?ref=shop_home_feat_1".

Lois Betterton grew up in Yonkers, New York and now resides in Sarasota’s Historic Rosemary District. 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 in Sarasota that showcases local, free range, organic poets.

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.

Peter Landau draws and writes in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children. His drawing can be seen at https://www.instagram.com/peterlandau/  or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/peterlandau/

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. 

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in The Virginia Normal, Credo Espoir, and Chiron Review, among others.

Tony Egler is an avid Science and Science Fiction enthusiast who for many years has engaged his muse as a spectator, but has longed to be an adept. He has practiced his craft with the development of screen plays, manuscripts and short fiction. He lives in Sarasota Florida with his partner and co-conspirator. His work has appeared in AntiMatter magazine.

Wayne F. Burke:  “My drawings have previously been published in Portland Review, Flare, Grey Sparrow, Red Savina, and elsewhere. I live in Vermont, USA.”