ISSN 1529-0832  Vol 3 No 1 – October 2011
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FOREWORD


Locust Volume 3 is hitting the road today, and this–perhaps–makes Locust Magazine one of the oldest online mags, which has been strutting around–although not always in excellent health–for over thirteen years. Its heartbeat is highly irregular, and a single issue a year seems to be the norm now. Perhaps LM doesn’t have enough exposure; perhaps it is undervalued, and–as someone once said–it should really deserve a wider readership, but that is just the fate of most small press magazines, which fortunately hides a great consolation. The consolation of most small press magazines! You go on barely surviving in the hope that, despite your depressing lack of popularity, one day you’ll find out that your work has contributed to the majesty of universal literature more effectively than the whole work of all those money-ravenous top-notch publishing houses. Yes, effectively and gloriously… And here, freely quoting words already uttered on a more lucrative stage… for all those about to rock and shock, we salute you!

October 2011

 

YOU DON’T NEED TO CLIMB Mt KILIMANJARO
A Poem by G. David Schwartz


you don’t need to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro
you can just say you did
and if anyone denies you did it
tell them to go prove it
and to add a little incentive
tell them you left your glasses
and they can go get them

 

BETWIXT ’65 AND ’75
A Poem by Michael Cluff


Haiphong metal resounding
the past tags and jumps
ahead of the future
into something that looks
akin to clothes and catapults
from previous dashing eras.

The droning bees sip saliva
from a corpse decorated in pea green
roar to the hibiscus in Hannah’s Houston
daydream garden
when hope from Hanoi
is just a Nineveh prelim.

Yesterday the new pecuniary rain
touched down in Moline
and the middle of the country
saw war come home foot
and faceless for a long change.

Iola sups upon treacle and curds
the weight stays on
the umbrella hides
no waiting shards
they spill betwixt the metal spokes
and go
unheard.

She will marry Thursday
and the bongo man skips
a gatoraded beat.

 

CALIFORNIA WAITING
A Poem by Shel Bockman


Adjusting now and then his cap
To shield his eyes from the early
Morning sun, he leans against a
Telephone poll drinking his coffee
From a pure white Styrofoam cup
Hoping as do his compadres that
The driver of the next car or pick up
Truck will stop and offer him a job.
But as the July sun begins to soften
Its glow, while his dreams pass him by
He turns away; yet he remains unbroken.

 

STILL ON FIRE
A Poem by Abigale Louise LeCavalier


Shakespeare in a sugar bowl,
a coffee grind
with left-handed scissors,
this is what I think about
when she’s not around.

Putting milk in a wine glass.

The mood
is not so relaxed,
nor the moon;
desperation with quickstep breaths,
I can’t find the note she left me.

She left me.

Better, I figure
too be buried in Camus,
thick papers of old ideals
idling for the most part,
but still on fire.

Still.

On.

Fire.

And I can’t say I’m happy waiting,
I mean, really waiting!

Because I haven’t met Juliet,
YET!

Broken String

Sleeping through Saturday
a keep-safe under blankets,
no longer feeling like velvet.

Peering out from dirty sheets,
letting loose a subtle moan
in soft dull tones
wilted in wax,
covered head to toe
in violent convolutions
of desperation
color blind;
ill in the thought
of sophisticated satisfaction,
generating gray emotions
emoted.

Just getting one foot on the ground
would be a nice
first step.

The second
is the real test;
reality blurs in shivers,
burnt ends of cheap tobacco,
the room smells like it looks
in a roundabout sort of way.

Sitting up in frustration
sharing the seconds of the clock
with calloused fingertips,
tired of playing passionately
for no one.

A separation
from the machine
unwinding.

Like the broken strings
of the old guitar
she used to play.

 

THE RESOURCE
A Poem by Anne Babson


Beneath the wet drill’s dripping whine, the marrow of
The rock waits tastily. The next gusher rushes
Beneath the surface. Not even geologists’
Stethescopes record the pumping that gyrates the
Nougat center heart of this quarry. The best is
Yet unmined, but the drill unwittingly inches
Its bit closer, closer, and the piping hisses.
Instead of the slapping against the shale, we hear
The hollow knocking of the antechamber wall.
We are at the edge of the moment just before.
The hinges of the sarcophagus creak. The seal
Melts off the yellowed parchment. The thing beneath us
Trembles–The pulse of a captured bird. Our cat tooth
Presses toward the jugular of it; dinner time.

 

TWO POEMS by Christopher Barnes

 

STOPWATCH


                                                  4 Corners of a makeshift

                                                  00
                                                  A Santa hooters
                                                  Sonics to the operating theatre.

45                                                                                                                        15
An AIDS baby is warmed in Obstetrics.     SAS-intuitive nightwatchmen
                                                                              Defend Marks And Spencer.

                                                  A something-for-everybody juggler
                                                  Excites love
                                                  Bracketed by giant vol-au-vents.
                                                  30

 

STUNTED


Off guard our hands
dekinked to twiddle
expose warmth, skin to fingers.

But you’re heart’s ectopic, fugitive
in an Action Man’s air-pocket
of a body.

I’m self-referenced thunder,
a porcelain doll’s unsound mind.

 

TWO POEMS by Haris Chand Adhikari

 

A DOWNPOUR


A downpour came
like hell
over the leaky straw-roof
in Gairi Gaun, and
Dhanbahadur and his wife lamented          their only son’s sudden death
in a two-way encounter,
Sukhini, their daughter in law,
fainted on the floor, wailing.
Nothing was heard          except the gushing rain outside.

 

MY LIFE IS A THREAD OF IRONIES


For Sanjeev Singh

My life is a thread of ironies, my friend,
I have my tools, my clutches
I have my skills, my life
I have my wife, my courage
I have my kids, my joy
and I have an ocean’s strength to care for my family
but even then, I am a failure!
Yes, my life is a thread of ironies
that goes stitching, day and night,
the clothes you would wear.

I had thought my fruit would ripen someday, but
it remained all the same all the years passed,
and see! I’m nowhere now.
Still it’s sour, no matter how much I sweated.

I came to Kathmandu, yea, that’s right, twenty years ago
and I made a small space for myself,
Years later I made the space a little bigger
now it’s the biggest for me, and this very space is eating me up!

I had thought I would make a life in this city
but this city made my life how it is now,
I’m in an empty room with nothing:
neither have I time nor any progress,
nor sufficient touch with my relations–
I’m really enclosed within myself.
So, one after another bitter things swallow me up
just the same a bright day is engulfed by a dark night
and a wonder it is, there comes no dawn, nay!

I have lived a shriveled vegetable life–
really unlivable, in this city
I lack freshness which I left behind
and I don’t know where I belong.

Life is very complex, my friend,
in this cursed nation.
When everything is upside down
you can’t do much.

I’ve not been able to sew my own torn pockets
and what I do? I sew
the clothes you would wear!
Interesting, isn’t it?

Now getting older I am
I don’t see well, and sometimes
I heavily pierce my fingers with pins and needles
but I should know what they are to me!
So there is very little choice, my friend,
except taking things as they come.

 

GIVE A HAND
A Prose Piece by Jerry Vilhotti


“So Byrom Hoover Bush, you say you now want to take the road to be a writer who makes millions of dollars like Vuckner did! That shows how the elite have brain washed you into an endrun dead end; making you think you could do what they are the most afraid of–becoming a thinking person! Why do you think the super elite who will decide who will be your next leader have fabricated the notion that there is a so called free education and you will be able to serve your country with your brain when they made sure your brain would have water drowning it from putting in two thoughts together to intercourse with pleasure One on the Other to come out to a Tea Party understanding? That’s why they keep hate alive by having races and ethnic groups calling each other hateful ugly names. Were your normal school teachers like priests allowed to marry? No because that would have cost money and that’s the real god in people’s hearts and if there is a true God he will compassionately say all you hypocrite vucking bastards must go to the poet’s ninth and fourth circles for you have betrayed yourselves and most of all others who trusted you! Did you ever read Luis Bunuel’s words where he said: ‘In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a writer or painter cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of nonconformity alive. Thanks to them, the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is very important. When power feels itself totally justified and approved, it immediately destroys whatever freedoms we have left, and that is fascism’. Raw capitalism eats everything on the table and then themselves! You know my dear Byrom Hoover Bush your great country is now in the dry vagina of all that with no enjoyment. You and all the phonies are being swirled down a toilet bowl into Dante’s fourth circle. If your bull-merd religion believed in the sanctity of life wouldn’t it say all life is and why do you Alice in wonderland fools deface all of God’s creations? And Mister simple minded Bush if Adam Smith’s invisible hand was up your vucking ass you would know it as do billions of people I hope realize!” Olivia said using all her accent in the womb of the languages German, French and Italic. How he admired this older woman with the almond shaped eyes.

Locust Two - April 2012▶