Cities – Page 11 – THE CITY KEY

Two Poems by Danny P. Barbare

The City of Charleston, SC

I like the old city. It fills me full
   of ghost.
How the horses still clop on the
   cobblestone.
A clipper ship floats in the harbor
   as if it has cross and bones
when the only lantern seems to
   be
   the moon
as steps draw nearer, between the
the shadows and the Spanish moss.

The City at Christmas (Greenville, SC)

These buildings are a little
smaller
the sidewalks no longer run
nor the lights so many and
magical
but I know they are there
somewhere in the
moonlight’s little coat.

Danny P. Barbare resides in the upstate of the Carolinas. His poems have recently appeared in Blue Unicorn and Ethel. And his poetry has been nominated for Best of Net by Assisi Online Journal. He has been published locally, nationally, and abroad.

Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for this poem.

“Man Sold Separately” by Danielle Keiko Eyer

It was one of those houses that had been dumped on the side of the street, meticulously equidistant from the houses on either side. It was one of those houses where the hot water never ran out in the winter and the air conditioner never broke down in the summer. The neighbours in the similarly-shaped houses shared gossip and borrowed cups of flour and pretended to like each other until the door closed and the lock clicked and their sincere thoughts came to light. It was a neighbourhood with the level of superficiality typically found in the suburbs.

Continue reading “Man Sold Separately” by Danielle Keiko Eyer

Three Poems by James Croal Jackson

Writing a Break-Up Album in the Underworld of Los Angeles

parking garage stone and yellow emergency
the microphone’s metal web against my lips

to vomit last year in haphazard dollops
of song, wolf, and waterfall dry music

career in loneliness this lifetime achievement
many-tailed and thick porous semiconscious

rambling strummed brown fingernails clacking
away at my hard reverbertion of longing the car

window closed to keep the sound in

Passing Claudia

in this city is a familiar intersection /
brick / unlike the old: stone / spotted
your doppelganger waiting the stoplight
/ stalled behind a truck and called your
name / as I drew closer / turned green
you waved back / could not halt my car’s
slope southbound after hello / goodbye
all acquaintances become ruins / friends
who shift faces / places to call home first /
my mother’s / my skeletal wandering to
belong / shell possessing consciousness
beneath acacias / humid summer of moss
between the cracks of historic buildings

in this city my heart is polluted

driving in circles everyone talks
about the same thing love weather
politics rain this summer gone
in a flood another day awash
in the lust pitter-pattering
off the black hot concrete
incalescent the days we
drive in circles around
each other, lip symbols
tiny trinkets the tiny purple
piggy bank I bought for you
from a quarter-slot machine
in a mall outside Youngstown

download

James Croal Jackson (he/him) has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and poems in Pacifica, Reservoir, and Rattle.

He edits The Mantle (themantlepoetry.com). Currently, he works in the film industry in Pittsburgh, PA. (jimjakk.com)

“Escalate” by Caroline Sipio

The escalator pulls me above ground,
a maudlin monotony of movement
that cycles
tens
hundreds
thousands
of times a day.

I wait for the moment
the ridges of the moving stairwell
will halt the tips of my boots
so I can fall on my face.

What would it be like
to have strangers walk over me
or crack my spine like a book?

II.

The reel of you and me
runs through my thoughts
a faucet running on full strength,

relentless.

Are we filling the sink
or getting pulled down the drain?
Either/or
we’re drowning.

III.

Just
Beyond
The
Doors
I
Cannot
Reach

Words are written in black
against a yellow backdrop of caution paint:

WATCH THE GAP

The lettering is half-faded,
a mantra
that’s reinterpreted each day
to fit my mood, a horoscope
that I’m convinced will change my life.

csipio (1)

Caroline Sipio is a writer and bibliophile from the Philadelphia area with a penchant for coffee and imagining different arrangements of words. She has a Bachelors of Arts degree in English from Saint Joseph’s University and a Masters of Arts degree in English from Boston College. She has previously been published in Crimson & Gray. She currently works at Villanova University’s Falvey Memorial Library where you’ll find her happily surrounded by books. Caroline loves to celebrate Halloween year round and watch her miniature, wire-haired dachshund named Lemon play in the leaves.

Two poems by Jeff Nazzaro

Smiles

Needed a place to rest my bag,
had something to put in,
something else to take out.

Crowded Red Line train, stood
in the middle, one empty aisle seat,
beside an old woman

who slept, scarved head on the glass,
worldly possessions at her feet, on her lap.
Pilled blanket cradled slumped shoulders.

Blessed courtesy not to hog both seats,
she stirred when my bag touched down.
Unwelcome intruder, I worried.

I bent to put my phone in the special
padded phone pouch in my bag. Her
stirring roused the blanket, her clothes—

the odor hit me in the face like morning breath
from a generous lover. She turned her head, opened
her eyes, lifted them up, so close.

Still bent, I struggled to liberate my e-reader
from my bag’s special padded tablet pouch.
The first thing that old woman saw

when she unstuck her tired eyes
was my pale bespectacled face
and the smile I spread across it to greet her.

She smiled back, and it was warm,
and her eyes were open, bright, and big,
and then she pushed up her sleeves

and scratched and scratched the insides of her arms
up at the crook, first one, then the other,
etching lines of piqued white into the dark brown,

muttering about all those uncalled-for
things all those foregone people had said,
all the way to Pershing Square.

Post-Post-Post-Modern Poetry

I’m standing in the doorway
of the Metrolink train much
too early because this is the door
that opens right at the top of the stairs
that lead down into Union Station.

I’m much too early because the word
is out and this space fills up fast,
and if you wait too long in your comfy
blue polyester-and-Naugahyde seat
you’ll get stuck on the stairs behind
all the slowpokes and miss your next train.

I’m reading Alone and Not Alone,
by the poet Ron Padgett. See, I put my phone
away and took out the book, having borrowed
it a few days before from the university
library. The cover creaked open
with a virginal moan.

In between poems, my eye is drawn
to a middle-aged woman playing
some iteration of Candy Crush
on her phone. The colors mesmerize,
the action titillates, congratulatory
messages burst forth on the screen.

I look around and realize I am surrounded
by screen swipers and tappers, our poetry
being again rewritten, even as I put the Padgett
away and reach for my little black notebook
and ballpoint pen.

NazzaroPhoto

Jeff Nazzaro lives in Riverside and works in West LA. He commutes three hours each way using Southern California’s wonderful public transportation system and swears he loves every minute of it. His poetry has appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Ekphrastic Review, Cholla Needles Magazine, ClockwiseCat, and Thirteen Myna Birds.

Two Poems by Diane Grosse

Somnolent on the 1374

Floating bodiless over
a spectacle of color
crowds in harlequin regalia-
exaggerated bodies with
noses casting shadows
three feet long-
grotesque faces emit deep laughter.
The mind dances with sequined
guests as we glide on tiny smooth wheels
rolling through

a breezy meadow with
fluttering bouquets of butterflies.
Run and tumble, arms feathering
through multicolored daisies-
giggles catching in wispy fine hair

at a place of work
a familiar feel of tension-
the looming figure snatches
pages spitting from the printing mouth
waiting for approval.
Crinkles snake across
their forehead

Fordham
This is the local train to Stamford.
shift awake-

Tickets please.
force the ungluing
of eyes to produce the ticket
for a conductor
holding a slender cream baton
keeping time
gliding metal
starched white gloves
in flawless motion-
a kettle drum reverberation
lull

Days Before Winter Solstice

Shuffling office papers thirty feet up with windows
nailed shut for your safety, a barely traceable
scent of food turns a head, eyes settling past traffic lanes.
The bar’s picnic tables are un-hibernated, as are its patrons,
taking advantage of this seasonal mixup.
College gals lean forward, spilling out among themselves
(plus one); Overloaded straps about to ping.
Finger-combed hair is pulled back and
high in unison, piling to top knots –
All alike dolls.
Pitchers dribble. The girls follow,
washing down the gold.

Diane Grosse has been writing since childhood – spilling memories, desires, and fantasies onto paper. She has spent her professional life in the publishing industry, surrounded by words. After receiving a Masters in Writing, she upended her life, leaving her beloved New York for the South – and new sources of inspiration. Her first publication and award was for the poem, translated to Spanish as El Trovador, durng high school. Her writing has been published sporadically over the years in journals and newspapers. Most recently, her poetry was published at naturewriting.com, and an essay has been accepted for inclusion in a collection of works on the topic of human/animal interactions, forthcoming.

Three Poems by Jeff Nazzaro

June Afternoon

But on a Friday afternoon,
first real scorcher of the year,
forgiving that January El Niño
aberration, they’re out

and about in the city. In a backyard
the size of an Orange County
bathtub, on the stoop, the sidewalk,
fire escape, passing a blunt

like a baton in a relay race. In the
street, old black mutt wobbling by,
a fresh-faced young mother,
husband at her side, presses an infant

into a minivan window for a final
grandma-grandpa kiss goodbye,
as a hunched old man pushes
his ice cream cart towards

Roosevelt Park, looking to cash
in on the vibe and the heat,
trading cold and sweet
for cold and hard.

Red on the Green

We’re all together here on the Green Line
this morning—Asian, black, white, brown, and all.
The man to my right sports a red knit cap.
In the bike space a man supports a pair
of boxing gloves around his neck, the laces
suspending the red leather mitts. There are
three red backpacks on shoulders, hands, and seats;
there’s a red lunchbox, too. This woman in
a tight red sweater just got off at Harbor
Freeway, maroon bag matching the torn shirt
of the large man asleep and snoring, matching
the ’68 Collegiate Tourist’s frame.
The vintage owner shifts the vintage bike
as needed, off the train and on the platform,
then back onboard. Original black grips
and pedals worn thin, worn black leather seat,
smooth-clicking 5 speed thumb shifter, brass Schwinn
nameplate screwed tight. The fenders steal the show,
polished chrome arcs reflecting LA sun.

Just Sayin’

Obviously cold and syrupy sweet,
the grown man in the Dodger cap
can’t wait to scoop it up into his mitts,
spoon it up into his mouth, having
stood in that parking lot in the shadow
of the Dollar Tree and the WIC office
and watched those strong little sun-bronzed
hands grip the blade, scrape the solid
block of ice perched on a red cart
beneath a rainbow-pie beach umbrella
to overfill a foam cup with cold shavings,
then ladle one, two, three full splashes
and a little dip, for just a skosh more,
of golden syrup into the golden setting sun
of a late afternoon, late October
in the twenty teens in the high nineties
on Washington Boulevard, downtown LA.

NazzaroPhoto

Jeff Nazzaro lives in Riverside and works in West LA. He commutes three hours each way using Southern California’s wonderful public transportation system and swears he loves every minute of it. His poetry has appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Ekphrastic Review, Cholla Needles Magazine, ClockwiseCat, and Thirteen Myna Birds.

Two Poems by John Grey

ENCHANTED EVENING

Back alleys, dye works,
factory-crawling brown river,
drunken melancholy of the bars,
loneliness of traffic jams,
flashing sign with three letters missing,
burnt-out tenements,
shuttered grocery-store,
hookers and junkies
and beggars
and homeless hunched together
underneath the overpass –
and still the stars come out.

EIGHTH AVENUE, FIVE A.M.

On a trip to the city,
I walk through
early morning
subway fog,
pass an old beggar
with an empty cap,
women, painted, formless,
against a concrete stoop,
trace the light
of late shift traffic
to its natural conclusion –
a young girl’s waking face
in a basement window,
hear distant sirens
like wolf howls
deep in the skyscraper woods,
and muffled voices –
shadows speaking
and then slowly speaking less.

File0005 V3 (2)

John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia College Literary Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review

“Pot It’s Not” by Linda Romanowski

One of my Grandfather’s greatest pleasures and talents was his green thumb, which, because he was so tanned, I’d jokingly refer to as his “Italian Brown Thumb.” In the mid-seventies, when he came to live with us in Roxborough, my father and uncles made a small garden patch for him at the side of the house, and every inch yielded vegetables, plants, and flowers – there wasn’t a seed which wouldn’t grow for him. Grandpop’s favorites included the Italian herbs, oregano, parsley, basil, and rosemary. His summer harvest yielded far more than we and our neighbors needed, so he decided to dry the herbs and bottle them for use during winter months. He’d methodically cut the herbs, wash them gently, and then string each leaf with needle and thread in a long strand, hanging them on the clothesline, rigged up from our garage door to the end of our driveway. The herbs which dried best were oregano and basil.

Continue reading “Pot It’s Not” by Linda Romanowski

Editor’s Post: City Escape

The suburbs aren’t the place
for those searching to find somewhere,
someplace where everything isn’t the same.
Yes here, everything’s mundane, even rainbows dull,
sun burns golden but then subdues and
Spiritus Mundi’s disappeared.

Voices which won’t synchronize
are silenced by blusters of conversation
surrounding incomes, cars, and houses
where every sentence uttered is an
unwelcomed show of dominance
in which the unwilling are forcibly invited.

What if the conversations could instead,
while walking down Prospect Park or gazing
up at stone buildings or metropolitan blocks,
revolve around one’s innermost thoughts,
scars, or saving the world-at-large?

Ayesha F. Hamid is a poet and creative nonfiction writer published in Blue Bonnet Review, Philly Flash Inferno, Sheepshead Review, and Rathalla Review. Her full-length memoir The Borderland Between Worlds is available through Auctus Publishers at Barnes and Nobles and Amazon. Ayesha also has a full-length poetry collection called Waiting for Resurrection. She is a Poetry Editor at Ran Off With the Star Bassoon and an Assistant Poetry Editor for The Night Heron Barks. She is the Editor-in-Chief at The City Key.

Ayesha holds a Bachelor of Arts in French and A Bachelors of Science in Sociology from Chestnut Hill College, M.F.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in Publishing from Rosemont College. She also holds an M.A. in Sociology from Brooklyn College. Aside from writing, Ayesha also loves film, travel, and photography. You can find Ayesha on twitter @ahamidwriter

Ayesha is a lover of cities, big and small.