"Death Comes To A Small Insect" by Ellen Peckham

Death Comes To A Small Insect

In the garden at 8PM in summer
Fireflies dust the path with light.
One down
Neither flickers nor flies
It's light steady, steadily dimming
Then gone.

Now on the glittering rimed path
My breathing certified by the cold
Aware you are
Steadily
Fading away.


By Ellen Peckham

Ellen Peckham's poems have appeared in The Literary Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Rattapallax, Medicinal Purposes, Visions, Providence, The Amherst Review, NYCBigCityLit, Hayden's Ferry Review and in other literary and scholarly magazines and anthologies, including one published in England called, embarrassingly, Top 100 Poets 2002 (notable for the payment of 50 Brit Pounds). Also that year, her chapbook Ticket Stubs, illustrated with sketches from old travel diaries, won the Medicinal Purposes Chapbook prize.

© Copyright 2007 Ellen Peckham

"Butterfly" by David B. McCoy

BUTTERFLY

Those nights
when you
wrap nearly
all the blanket
around yourself
like a caterpillar,
I half expect--
the next morning--
to be
awakened by
a butterfly
resting on
my chest.


By David B. McCoy

David B. McCoy is “Born Again” as a middle school teacher for horrendous sins commented in a previous life. McCoy is the author of Voices from Behind the Mask; and the Internet book, Buffalo Time.

© Copyright 2007 David B. McCoy

"I Am Not Your Insect" by Larissa Shmailo

I Am Not Your Insect

Your underfoot, your exterminated, your bug...

My unabashedly hairy legs, whose gymnopedes twitching like a chorus for a fatal Sharon Stone, delight in ces movements qui désplace les lines, in the motion, the quiver, the mort, the catch. Your sterile world where no one eats anything but grass is dust to me. Mother Kali, you have made me what I am; feminine, brilliant, a blood without fear. Like my mother, I wait and pray for the prey—that it be there, that it give gore, that I feel it die, that there be more.

By Larissa Shmailo

Larissa Shmailo has been published in Fulcrum, Rattapallax, Drunken Boat, Big Bridge, Naropa’s We among other publications. Her CD, The No-Net World, has been heard on radio stations and the Internet around the world. Larissa translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenych; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. She recently contributed translations to the anthology Contemporary Russian Poetry to be published by Dalkey Archive Press. She is a director of TWiN Poetry, an informal collective of 7,000 audio poets, and public coordinator for Fulcrum Annual. Her chapbook, A Cure for Suicide will be available from Cervena Barva Press in 2008.

Visit her online at:
http://www.myspace.com/larissaworld
http://www.myspace.com/thenonetworld
http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com/

© Copyright 2007 Larissa Shmailo

"Worm" by Hanoch Guy

Worm

Baruch K.Swartz and Franz S. Kafka
having coffee and pleasant conversation.
They feel sleepy.
Wake up to find themselves upsidedown roaches.
They whine and chirp in desperation
for their sisters to feed them.
Nillie and Millie startled by the scratching
rush to the living room,
turn into wasps
sting their brothers with a vengeance.

Annoyed his nap ruined, bald, fat father K,
swats and hits the insects on the ceiling,
kills the wasps in mid-flight.
Sweeps them outside swearing.
The broom hits him hard as an elephant
steps on him, scatters gold teeth on the sidewalk
Turns him into a worm.

By Hanoch Guy


Hanoch Guy spent his childhood and youth in Israel surrounded by citrus trees and watermelon fields he had to contend with swarms of hornets,scorpions and and scary black garden snakes.

He is a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English, Hanoch is an Emeritus professor in Temple University. His poetry in English has appeared in Genre, Poetry Newsletter, Tracks , International Journal of Genocide studies and several times in Poetica where he won an award His poems were also published in Poetry Motel, Visions International and other magazines.


© Copyright 2007 Hanoch Guy

"I'm a Mosquito" by Marvin D. Goldfarb

i'm a mosquito

i'm not an ecuadorian beauty queen named miss quito.
i'm a vicious thing called a mosquito.
i make you stay up all night because of my sting and my bite.
no matter if you're marvin or the emperor hirohito.

By marvin d goldfarb

Marvin D. Goldberg is an author and nature photographer living in Queens, New York. His book is titled OUT OF THE WORDS OF BIRDS. His photos have been exhibited at Lever House, AQA Gallery, Chung Cheng Gallery, Salmagundi Gallery, Federal Hall and Con Edison.

Visit him online at http://www.geocities.com/birdtune/

© Copyright 2001 Marvin D. Goldfarb

"Jack Was" by Donald Lev

JACK WAS

Jack was a bug. He was very compact. He had a sense of space that was even more generous than a cat's. He lived for pleasure, I guess. He enjoyed scurrying up and down surfaces, having a wee drink here and a bit of food there, and he'd communicate with friends and even with creatures not his species. He always felt he could grow by communicating with others, even those called "inanimate." A twig, for instance, you sort of "feel with," he'd say. Anyway, he was DDT'd.

By Donald Lev

Donald Lev lives and writes in High Falls, NY, where he publishes the newsprint literary review Home Planet News, that he and his late wife Enid Dame founded in 1979.

© Copyright 2007 Donald Lev

"Anthem for an Apiary" by Robert Dunn

Anthem for an Apiary
(with apologies to T.H. White)

We buzz, we drone, we wax and wane;
Cross-pollinating from Maine to Spain.
Bzzz-bzzz, bazz-bazz, bzzz-bzzz.

We bring the world its flower and fruit.
Our pollen dance confirms our route.
Bzzz-bzzz, bazz-bazz, bzzz-bzzz.

We serve our Queen through sun and storm
Until a rival cues the swarm.
Bzzz-bzzz, bazz-bazz, bzzz-bzzz.

Irresistible—our honeycombs
To apiarists and similar gnomes.
Bzzz-bzzz, bazz-bazz, bzzz-bzzz.

But hassle us and you will sing
Dirges inspired by Auld Lang Sting.
Bzzz-bzzz, bazz-bazz, bazz-fazz!

by Robert Dunn


Writer/Artist Robert Dunn publishes and edits Asbestos and hosts a reading and open mic by the same name, every Sunday afternoon, at The Back Fence in New York City's Greenwich Village. He has a new CD out, Sickly Minutes and is the author of several collections of poetry including Zen Yentas in Bondage, Horse Latitudes, and Baffled in Baloneyville. He has served as Editor of Medicinal Purposes Literary Review and The New Press Literary Quarterly.

© Copyright 2007 Robert Dunn