Collage

Posted on November 5, 2014November 5, 2014 by Oddball Magazine — Leave a comment

Poem by Colin Dardis

Kissing an Eel

Boil her lips
and let the flesh congeal,
skim off the skin and see
what a meal this makes.

Physically defective,
kissing an eel.

How does it feel to kiss this eel?
Black and slime,
wet coal,
a clump of turf
soaked by the rains of Ireland;
pressing your tongue into a dark bog land

with your lack of emotion
portrayed in a Tupperware heart.

Colin Dardis is a poet, editor and arts faciltator from Northern Ireland. He edits the online journal FourXFour, and is the founder of Poetry NI. His work has been previously published in numerous anthologies, journals and zines in Ireland, the UK and the USA.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum and The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Since 2007 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 160 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. He currently teaches art to retired public school teachers at The United Federation of Teachers program in Brooklyn.

Poem by Jessy Bissal

Lebanon: Not Enough Lubrication
dedicated to Lebanon and any other country suffering from sectarian strife

It starts.
Inexperienced pioneers
lust
over the volumes of
girth
their escapades will add
to their reputation;

a head of command
guides
his tools
penetrating through
the layers and layers of
unchartered fertile land
in search of a serviceable
kind of pleasure
of a quantifiable quantity.

It continues.
riots break out
exacerbating the endemic
effervescence
causing soldiers to rush in
and fill the entire field

while winds carry
waning whispers
of la petite mort
on the battlefield;
during which
conglomerations of contracts
ejaculate
a bit too prematurely
in absence of
contraceptive cases
that could protect this
ancestral womb
from a recessive pregnancy.

It ends
an eschatological eulogy
laments a once euphoric rapture,
reduced now, to a ruptured ring
chafed and charred
as its victim screams-
aware for the very first time,
that she is bleeding.

Jessy Bissal is a 24 year-old Armenian Lebanese. She holds a minor in Creative Writing and a BA and an MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. She teaches English at various institutions in Lebanon. “[I] write poetry on the side when the words suffocate me and force me to spit them out.”

Posted on September 24, 2014September 24, 2014 by Oddball Magazine — Leave a comment

Two Poems by Joan McNerney

I planted my garden

on the wrong side
of moon forgetting
tides of ocean
lunar wax wane

only madness
was cultivated
there underground
tubular roots
corpulent veins

flowers called
despair gave off
a single fruit…

I ate it
my laughter
becoming harsh
my eyes grew
oblique.

Methuselah Speaks

Living in shadows I scarcely stir.
Each motion brings pain with fear
of falling, breaking brittle bones
or bruising my spider web skin.

I see so little. Sunlight blinds my
rheumy eyes. Night dims my world
leaving just vague outlines.

Food is stale, bitter. Thirst savage.
No liquids quench me. My bodily
functions often fail befouling me.

All these years weigh down my soul.
Hearing faded, everything in whispers.
My breath is raspy, without strength.

My mind dull with defeat. I count only
my losses and remember nothing
but the dead. My memory is pain.

I cannot celebrate births. My great
grandchildren died so long ago.
Why must I always wait here?

God, have you forgotten me?

Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Blueline, Spectrum, three Bright Spring Press Anthologies and several Kind of A Hurricane Publications. She has been nominated three times for Best of the Net. Poet and Geek recognized her work as their best poem of 2013. Four of her books have been published by fine small literary presses and she has three e-book titles.

Posted on March 12, 2014March 12, 2014 by Oddball Magazine — Leave a comment

Poem by Valerie Loveland

I Haven’t Worn Pants Since 2001

Thanks to the womens’ bike designer, my skirt retains
its draped shape. My legs: bundled as a bunch, not wrapped
individually. Even my bathing suit has a skirt.

When I was a kid, I climbed the jungle gym in a dress.
Another kid: “Little Girl, I can see your underwear.”

I must monitor my underwear, the wind billows skirts.
I grip my skirtsides, put on two skirts to compensate. No matter
how many I put on, I still have the same problem.

My legs need a chaperon.

Men upgraded the mirrors on their shoes to tiny cameras.
An up-skirt pervert, Oliver Clothesoff, tried to get my underwear
to sign a release to act in its own internet video.

I see posters of my underskirt around town. My underskirt
has a fan page on the internet.

I agree to swing dance so my underskirt can star
in its own musical–it twirls, and I join in. This time,
when it catches on air, we both float.

Valerie Loveland is the author of Reanimated, Somehow (Scrambler Books, 2009). Her poetry has been featured in Dzanc Book’s anthology Best of the Web, and the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. She enjoys running, audio poetry, and open courseware. The above poem first appeared in The Scrambler.

Allison Goldin is an artist living in Cambridge. Her work is a collection of spontaneous drawings from the imagination. The most common link throughout her art are the semi-recognizable creatures scattered amongst and bringing together the surrounding doodles. She is currently studying Illustration at The School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.