August: The Superissue

Awww that's so nice, we missed you too.  What we've done is essentially combine July and August issues together into one SUPERISSUE.  So we haven't been slacking.  Don't even think that. 

As far as stickerings go, it's been 100 degrees plus in Omaha as of late, so outdoor venues have been few and far between.  However, as the summer is winding down, it's cooling off significantly and affording me opportunities to hit the University campus and a bit more of downtown. 

We're quite fond of the poems that made it through the selection this time around.  It was a pretty cutthroat deal.  Keep writing, keep submitting, or don't and just enjoy the scenery!

“Fall, A Zoo Story”
By Sean Donahue

In the right light
You can see these stigmata,
And they're coming from the inside out this time.
Little red rabbit holes,
They take me right back to the zoo.
The first time you told me
You wanted my hot hallucinations,
And I let you suck them off the tip of my tongue.
And we fell into a fever forever.
We had sex like captive animals
And then slept in separate beds
Because we didn't share any dreams.
I'd tell you,
"I'm so tired I can't sleep"
We looked like raccoons
And laughed like hyenas.
Spotted like leopards,
Kissing like lepers
With nothing left to lose but our faces.
A condom in one hand,
A gun in the other.
Of course that's a metaphor.
You know we never used a condom.
You never wanted to protect yourself from me.
You wanted me to leave you,
Transparent and with more holes than I found you
So you could be a plastic bag
On an errant wind.
Beautiful refuse
Guided by chance and clusterfucked by confusion.
Crazy as Helter Skelter
In a battered woman's shelter.
You wanted me to hit you so hard
That I'd smack you back to autumn,
Nothing to break your fall but the leaves.

 Secret Level

 Pinwheels

 Pipe at a Hospital

 University Bench

 University Cafe

“Animal on the Median”
~Anonymous~

Your limp, slender grace

Sprays pink sherbet

Foam in death

The ants partake

So you can say that

You gave something back.

 Cameo

 Fire Extinguisher

 Flush

 Rainy Grainy Sorta Mornin'

 WRENCH.

"I Get Drunk And Clean The House"
~Anonymous~

i wake up to rain.
iced coffee. amaretto.
eggs with Tabasco and 90's alternative.

i play Sega until i have to pee.

i get drunk and clean the house
Better Than Ezra is better than anything
on a rumdriven cleanspree.

it's raining harder and i put in a Paul Thomas Anderson
after the first 40 minutes, i'm out.
i wake up for the last scene
and let the thick, stringy credit tracks
accompany my raingaze.

i load the gun and reel in the moment.
when was the last time
i did everything as right
as i did today?

an absent memory
in an empty...
click.

well

today was almost perfect. 

Booth at the DQ

 Stall

 Naptime at the Mall

 Rail

 IN USE ATCH IT IT!

“Paleontology”
~Anonymous~

I’m in a sprawl

Drying out

Letting time stroll

Soaking in

Chin rubbing the carpet

Of the new apartment

Wasting light

Beetles at this level, they’re cows

Elephants, I feel them surviving

Like swelling peaches.

Persisting in massiveness being

Dinosaurs lost and I’m a universe

Big.  Awkward waste of space

Fleshy. Lumpy. Wrong.

Fermenting under soursweet lemon light

Shunning time.

While beetle flashes blueblack and green

Volkswagen on tiptoe

Primed to combust.
 

 Hospital Parking Lot

 Utilities Building Break Room

 A Snide-Looking Mall Sign

 Pump

 Personal Growth

"Veins Poem: EBGDAE”
~Anonymou ~

We re-veined our bodies
Like stringing guitars
Finding chords to strike
With each other.

She had a freeze-pop body-frame
And only one vein to w
eave there within.
She had simple circuitry
Not the typical ricocheting, crochet
Fray to complicate and tangle
And wrongly interweave, bramble-like.
Bomb-like. Just one vain.
Passion and life from end to end.

She stood baby-bird mouthed
Watching the fireworks.

So we started to start over
With our insides.
New veins will bring new blood
Will bring new life
Will bring new love
Will cure our disenchantment
Will make us more like
the girl with one vein.
I mean, hopefully.
 

 THE LAW

 The Sky Is Helping

 Positive Thinking

 Veins Shake Mall Sign

Barricade

Issue 3: Wilderness, Fili, and Love, and Heat

Summer in all its post-pubescent glory is among us!  People are out and about and, Artists, your poetry is getting foot traffic like you wouldn't even believe.  We hit the College World Series- Omaha's local yearly big sports thing- and all sorts of places.  Photographer, sculpture, digital artist, and big, awesome Greek, Anthony Lanza helped us out with some photography this time.  Props.  This is a very pretty batch. 

Artists whom we have published, please leave your deviantart accounts and art page links down in the comments section so readers can go and gush.

Be sure to like our facebook page and deviantart page mainly for the sake of our egos, but there's some good stuff there as well.  Like-minded people and whatnot. 

One other thing:  Grawlix Poetry doesn't care much at all about exclusivity of our published pieces, please do get your art in front of as many people as possible.  With that said, we really wanted to publish some phenomenal poetry by Maureen Kingston, before she had to retract her submissions because they were published in other (not nearly as awesome) publications.  So please please please go check out some of Maureen's poems, she's seriously a brilliant writer. 

Get your friends to submit and keep this little project in mind.  Cheers!

A Touchy Fili

By Kevin Heaton

Boomer babies
have balloon prostates,

& nest eggs the size of acorns.

I’m that lone gray squirrel in yonder

poplar, the one over there above

that field of tall cotton all bolled up

going at it in a cloudburst. I avoid

disinterested exertions & proof all

adversaries of any consequence.

There are those with pedigrees

that fancy themselves discerning

truths for others—others see truth

as the way they live. I don’t consider

myself a bard, but rather a touchy fili,

recalling heroism like a warrior poet.

I smell the coffee, eat slab bacon,

& forage for cold French fries

in discount parking lots with stray

mongrels who write free verse,

& refuse to cringe for the inquisitor. 

 A Touchy Pathway

Stadium Gates

A Touchy Diamond 

 A Touchy Pub

Incompatible Propagations

By Kevin Heaton

I refuse to slander fallen leaves

for simply clinging to dead branches,

then mulching themselves

into the manure of things.

Some flora god recants near-death

experiences through the boughs

of an evergreen tree; feeble attempts

at wheedling the needles into acting

more like pine straw.

Why can’t petulant coyotes let

sleeping dogs lie?

No good can come from swapping

incompatible tissues, or forced

propagations, but I will not confess

my indiscreet graftings
to a divorced

counselor. 

 Stealing Home

 Bleacher

Alley Cat

Stadium Courtyard

The Love Affair
By Kate Hammerich

life slides under the door and
I think about you
not knowing how to love
and touching a person's sleeping eyelids
to change a dream, to lie here with you
under a silent oak tree, the sunlight
has begun to breathe and I am digging you a grave for your past
and your future, I am
holding you here, the trunk of my car open to let the sweet
sound of a song rise into the
air, it is rushing by too swiftly
and I have premonitions
or I just got lucky
or everything means something
nothing vanishes without a trace
I hold despair in the palm of my hand and cannot dance without spilling it
onto the floor, it seeps into the carpet
but you are holding out a towel
and the sound of your laughter is like paper birds settling on the branches of
the tree growing from my ribs.

 Stall

That's a Penguin Sticker As Well

Vanilla

Falls

The Wilderness
by Asmara Malik

Some say:

"I lost my father too,"

as if that sets us together,

lost in the same wilderness,

strange siblings, whispering

"Abbu, Abbu, Abbu"

in the darkness; a call

incandescent as fireflies

gathered upon our

silent lips.

Urban Wilderness

Stairs to the Stadium Gates

Wilderness Fish 

 Yellow Wilderness

These poems also deserve recognition for being flavorful and delightfully provoking.

Issue 2: May

The support you've shown after just one issue is just insane.  Thanks!  I'm brushing up on my photography, getting eyes your poetry, everybody's pretty much winning.  Well done everybody!  Feel free to post links to your deviantart/ whatever creative website pages in the comments section if you have similar ideas to share.

Regarding the poem selection, we created a dreamscape from surreal pieces expressing an eerie stream of consciousness.  We won't necessarily do this every time, but it certainly worked out beautifully for us this time around.  Enjoy and tell your friends!

Salvation

By Ronald Ray

 

Open window, fog seeps in; television 

color dances, lamplight struggles to 

make this place look like more than 

a memory but fails

In a sideways, backwards world that 

should be in black-and-white, r&b plays
Papers folded upon the kitchen table, 

books in the living room, magazines;
all whispering, none shouting, 

sleepy grey fog slipping

I gave up ash for Lent, wore a clown mask to church 

and howled; it was the wrong church.

I was only dreaming, I think, 

but there were no constellations 

to console in the roofless sky

I walked back to my sideways house 

and watched TV without sound.
(Remember to check all the closets.) 

(Ignore the fog.)

Your voice on the phone sounds like salvation.

 Single Line

 Curvy Line

Toxic Waste Barrel 

 Uneasy Lump

Barley Street Tavern (Open Mic fav in Benson area)

Walkway on Dodge

New Trees

Under an Overpass

Siren

By Valentina Cano

 

A voice the color
of a chalkboard rings out,
greeting me at the door.
I don’t know whose it is.
Or why it thrums
with such violence through me.
I just want it to stop.
Pause where it is,
crystal tinkling in the air,
a breath away from smashing.

 

 From Morning Til' Night

 Lake By Graveyard

 Stretch

 Fuchsia Alley

 Please Don't Get Mugged.

 Cafe

Princess Peach

The Circle Of Life

By Ricky Garni

In my dream the piano keys

were teardrops

that gave me nightmares

because they sounded

more like vibraphones.

I didn’t mind the teardrops.

But vibraphones make me cry

real piano keys that sound like

piano keys and I don’t know

where to put them or what

they should sound like.

 Horse O' Clock

Like Passover

 Suspension Bridges Look Like Transparent Mountains

 Poem Wheel

 Happy Putty Picnic Poem

Death In A Box

O! Yeah!  (We have these O! sculptures about everywhere).

I Do Not Own A Lonely Dog
By Ricky Garni

 

Some people say that dogs
make you less lonely.
But all the dogs that I have owned
were so lonely.
I shouldn’t admit this,
but I am not a very good companion.
People say that. Too often, I feel. Clearly, I should not own a dog,
for the sake of the dog.
 But if my dogs could talk,
they wouldn’t say that.
They would never say that.
It doesn’t matter if it’s true.

Dogs are fiercely loyal.
Even the loneliest of dogs
would rather die than be disloyal.
Actually, lonely dogs
like to die all the time.

 Power Box

 Lonely Dog Swing

 Now

 Lonely Cats

Keep Lonely Dogs On Leashes 

Gary Coleman?

 The Mustard Addition

 Overcast Cafe

Death Hast Thou Pockets Full

Anonymous 

 

Don't relinquish this moment

No more shall Death sequester.

His robe pockets, full of wasted time,

But not this moment. This one's yours.   

 

CHEF

 Standing Bear Lake

SPRING! YEAH!  FLOWERS!

 The Other Plumber 

Entry to Memorial Park

Overpass

 Bridge By A School

The following poems also deserve recognition:

Piss It Up
By D.M. Jerman

Sweet and Poison
By James Keane

Geography of the Dark Lobes
By Kyle Hemmings