Elan Barnehama | Red Box

Google Maps Street View
1516 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles, California 
Image Capture December 2017  
Map Data ©2022 Google

RED BOX

I turned into the parking lot of the 7-11 on Lincoln Boulevard. I’d been living in Venice Beach for a month and had made a lot of progress on my new novel but had not made any headway on new friends. I knew how to get dates online, but I had no idea how anyone made new friends. Especially anyone past fifty.

When I first arrived, I tried coffee shops, but no one talked in Venice coffee shops. They just worked away on laptops. I kept going to coffee shops to write by myself in the company of the silent. But at night I hit the boardwalk where I eavesdropped on conversations just to hear people talk.

I wore my ear pods and nodded my head, so it looked like I was listening to music and not being creepy. If someone said something interesting, I pretended that I was part of the exchange, part of their story, and I added my words in my head. I imagined that the nice people were my friends.

I’d spent the earlier part of the evening on my favorite benches along the boardwalk watching the sun disappear in the Pacific. My best listen that night was the woman who told her date that to be genuinely from Venice one had to stay AWOL. Always West Of Lincoln. I’d been AWOL without knowing it.

There were three homeless guys sitting on the pavement in front of the 7-Eleven as I pulled into a parking spot. My plan was to get snacks and sit in my car in the parking lot and eavesdrop as people entered and left the store. I hit the jackpot with a spot in front of the Red Box. I liked listening in on conversations about what movie to rent.

I shut the engine and this guy, a small guy in his twenties, tapped on my window. I hadn’t noticed him coming over. He almost fell onto my window. He was clearly wasted. I got out of my car slowly, backing him away with the door.

He asked me for a cigarette. I told him I didn’t smoke. That made him angry. Maybe he thought I was lying.

I knew him. Or kids like him. He looked like one of my students from when I taught at community college back before I decided to leave the classroom and Boston and head west. They never got older. But I did. I looked at the kid and wondered if I wanted to be a teacher again. I did not. He was twisted and irritated and that made him dangerous. Besides, I had no advice for him.

I locked the car and headed inside without saying anything. He started to follow me into the store. Inside, I grabbed some cashews and a coffee. When I went to pay, the kid was mouthing off to the young woman behind the counter. Funny, she looked his age and she didn’t.

I felt bad for her. I didn’t need to. She kicked him out of the store with ease and grace. As I was paying, she told me that he was looking to either get the shit kicked out of him or get shot. Or maybe, she added, he just wanted to get arrested so that he’d have a nice place to sleep for the night.

I was too sad to stay and listen to the couple in front of the Red Box trying to pick out a romantic comedy. Who even had a DVD player anymore?

I gave the cashews to one of the homeless guys and got in my car and drove home.

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Elan Barnehama’s new novel, Escape Route (Running Wild Press, May 2022), set in New York City during the late 1960s, is told by the son of Holocaust survivors, who becomes obsessed with the Vietnam War and with finding an escape route for his family for when he believes the US will round up its Jews. Elan was the flash fiction editor for Forth Magazine LA, has taught college writing, worked with at-risk youth, had a gig as a radio news guy, and did a mediocre job as a short-order cook. “Red Box” is based on a section of Elan’s current novel in progress. It originally appeared as “Listening In,” in Rough Cut Press, Issue 11: WELL THAT ESCALATED.

Talena Lachelle Queen | Vin Rouge

Vin Rouge

 

 

Je parle vin

Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot

as long as it is red

Zinfandel, Syrah, Shiraz

with meals or alone

wine is the secret dream of the grape

none want to wither on the vine or jelly.

The grape wants to be loved

Malbec, and Pinot Noir,

Desire to be held on the palate for a while

They like the swish of the tongue

and flutter of the eyes

Just before swallowing.

le vin c'est la vie

 

 

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In addition to being Poet Laureate of Paterson, New Jersey, since 2018, Talena Lachelle Queen is founder and executive director of the Paterson Poetry Festival, now in its fifth year. She is also founder and president of Word Seed, Inc. a team of literary artists who organize community outreach programs. Her publications include a forthcoming poetry collection How Do I Tell Them? (Poets Wear Prada), Soup Can Magazine, POETS UNiTE! The LiTFUSE @10 Anthology (Cave Moon Press), and When Women Speak (ed. Ameerah Shabazz-Bilal). A sought after artist, Queen has performed at many places including the NJ Governor’s Mansion, Hoboken Historical Museum, and with NYC Men Teach Hip Hop Cypher.

Carrie Magness Radna | Red (A Ghazal)

Red (A Ghazal)

 

 

A smear of lipstick glazes your favorite coffee cup —  Passion Red.

 I’ve not been a coffee drinker, until recently, 

when I  started wearing makeup again, after your last yahrzeit — and red.

Passion was one of your favorite colors, but you hated the stain it left on your face.

Things keep changing since you’ve gone. I don’t sleep anymore. I gobble up red

meat, every meal. I wear leather, velvet & lace — chains by the bed.

I speak out. I shout. Your girl has grown up. I remember you with fresh red

roses every Wednesday — Daddy would surprise you, after work.

When will I feel okay again? Will I find the answers to life, traveling? I miss the red

clay of Oklahoma, where you once told me you would never leave. Momma, what a liar you are!

 

 

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Carrie Magness Radna is an audiovisual cataloger at New York Public Library, a choral singer and a poet who loves traveling. Her poems have previously appeared in The Oracular Tree, Mediterranean Poetry, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetry Super Highway, Walt’s Corner, Polarity eMagazine, The Poetic Bond and First Literary Review-East. Her latest poetry collection, In the blue hour (Nirala Publications), was released in February 2021. Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press) was published in December 2019. Her fifth volume of poetry, Shooting myself in the dark (Cajun Mutt Press), will be published in early 2023. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie lives with her husband in Manhattan.

Sarah Sarai | A Thousand Deaths

A Thousand Deaths

 

Jack’s in Wisconsin with a girlfriend

whose father is down one cow,

which I become in its death,

the wandering-off cow Jack finds

“out in the woods with its legs sticking /

straight up to the stars.”

Its unborn calf is by its side.

Eight dead cow-legs point out

two escaped cow-souls.

And so I become animal mother

sorrow, my eyes aching and red,

searching night skies.

My legs pointing to the endless.

I am galled by the up and

down of love, a boulder

hard-shouldered every day.

 

Quote from “Thinning the Herd,” I Have No Clue by Jack Wiler (Longshot Press, 1996)

 

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Photo by Amy Holman

Sarah Sarai has published two to three poetry collections, depending on how you reckon, and a bunch of short stories. A native New Yorker, she lives in the big city, where she is an independent editor of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Susan Justiniano | Raspberry Kisses

 

 

 

Your kisses taste of raspberry

Tiny chills along lips swollen and red

slide down my throat

melt each nerve as they pass into me

 

the sexy — the want — I feel

hidden beneath lashes against flushed cheeks

pulse skips as your lips travel along my neck

 

our fingers slide

search to touch places

that make the sun jealous

 

threads of our clothes — prison bars! —

struggle to find escape

from liberated sensations

too inebriated to have names

 

sleeve pushed from shoulder

buttons undone by a nimble touch

raspberry kisses color of fire

brand bare flesh

 

hints of the enduring myth of heaven

paradise in your arms

give me rapture with each kiss

absorbed into layers

 

silhouettes dance under cotton covers

spread out on heated current

friction of flesh against flesh

 

our mouths explore one another

discovering delicacies uncommon to mortal man

 

there — that taste —

raspberry

tart

sweet

juicy

 

Elixir easily coaxed

Cherished fruit

To bear fruit

O wondrous raspberry kisses!

 

 

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Susan Justiniano aka RescuePoetix is the first Puerto Rican and the first woman to serve as Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey. She is a self-taught, bilingual poet with a deep love for knowledge, music, coffee, food, dogs, and the color red (not always in that order). Words are embedded in her life. Her passion for them started at age nine with a dictionary, notebook, and the latest paperback she could get her hands on. Like a bad penny, you can find her everywhere: https://linktr.ee/rescuepoetix.

Robert Mueller | Winebibbers Go Home

Winebibbers Go Home

 

 

A crimsoned valuation

picks the motors of pentaculated

runners on a field of display

a hoax or an alarm.

 

It used to be the columbine

attracted hummingbirds and star-clipped

in a summer’s hottest tranche.

Now wintry spotter’s net

must catch a feathered red

 

to charge against the wickets

of a ghostly bricolage

a breach to ease the canted branch.

If weakly cardinal in cold

well stretches light’s delights

temptation ardently to spar

with gloom’s adherents snipes.

 

Where seeking bred of seeing’s heart-

flash if a stranger to an anger

braised the coals the scarlet

sparks not in the day played in the dark.

 

A tang to spin the spangled manger

underlay the helicopter hats amid

the gladiolas and poinsettia.

They drew the straws but kept

away the cats. A sanguine sprat

 

could stir the faintest blush

so let us taste the lips’ best rush

of comfort in the common claret

all ablaze and brandishing the fadeaway.

 

 

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Robert Mueller is the author of Hereafter Knowing in Sonnets and Their Similars, an adventurous undertaking in literary history and critical interpretation under the signs of philosophy and theology. Other recent writings to his credit include a poem in And Then, poetry of an unusual stripe in Home Planet News Online and, in Spinozablue, a group of poems focused on the topic of our precious wetlands as well as an essay titled “Petrarcan Naissance.” Robert has earned multiple academic degrees, a PhD in comparative literature from Brown University, an MA in classics from the City University of New York, and a BA from Yale University. Among his major publications are essays and reviews found in Jacket2, American Letters & Commentary and ELH.

Belle Koblentz | Tulips

In New Jersey, after the evening rain, the daffodil green tips are popping up among the remaining brown leaves of fall. The cherry trees will be next, their blossoms filling the air with pink snow. Tulips should avoid the unpredictable weather of March and make their entrance in April. Spring is beautiful, I await it impatiently.

Tulips, digital photograph by Belle Koblentz © 2020 Shot with Nikon D80

Once, I was a painter, a colorist. Today, I am a photographer, a digital artist, who approaches the photo image from a painter's perspective and with a painter's vocabulary. Color is still foremost in my consideration of the elements of a piece. Nature is my muse. I transform my original photo, pushing saturation, hue, value and contrast, to abstract it from a photographic reality to a painterly space.

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Belle Koblentz is a New Jersey artist living in Colts Neck and a member of the Art Alliance of Monmouth County. She received her BA in Visual Arts and an MA in Aesthetics from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Bruce Whitacre | What Is Fire to Me, or, Sailor’s Delight

What Is Fire to Me, or, Sailor’s Delight

 

 

Wood smoke lingers aboard the LA plane

that just flew down a burning West Coast;

New Mexico’s blue skies are veiled in talcum —

these warming sunsets — candescent red.

 

Facing west, we eat at a High Plains café;

the dock probes a receding reservoir’s extended shore;

cottonwood seeds blizzard pink in twilight —

these warming sunsets — simmering red.

 

Bryant Park is sticky with a strange haze;

our tongues salted with the cremated West:

lodgepole pine, mule deer, and mountain lion —

these warming sunsets — radiant red.

 

Coast to coast, the signs rain down from heaven,

launched by scarlet, canyon-scorching flames,

cataclysm of pyrocumulus sky fall —

these warning sunsets — alarming red.

 

 

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Bruce E. Whitacre’s recent publications include Hey, I’m Alive; Nine Cloud; Pensive; Diane Lockward’s third volume on craft, The Strategic Poet; and the 2022 anthology I Want to Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe. Work here was nominated for Sundress Publications’ 2020 Best of the Net Anthology. A featured poetry reader at the Forest Hills Public Library, he has read his work at Poets House, the Zen Mountain Monastery Buddhist Poetry Festival, Kew Willow Books, Lunar Walk, and other venues. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and has completed master workshops with Jericho Brown, Alex Dimitrov, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Mark Wunderlich. Bruce is a native of Nebraska and lives in Forest Hills, Queens, with his husband.

Lynne Shapiro | I’ve Read the Room

I’ve Read the Room

 

 

The photo of me in a velvet dress I wore ice skating with my mother at Rockefeller Center when I was small.

 

The little coat in Shindler’s List.

 

The neighbor’s hair (more towards the orange) of which I was jealous.

 

Stella’s 30-year-old, slider turtle “ears.”

 

My favorite pair of readers.

 

One of two loomed Lithuanian bookmarks that grace my writing desk.

 

The two-toned spine of Yi-Fu Tuan’s Passing Strange and Wonderful.

 

The 26 (times two) luminous leaded squares of the Dutch stained-glass doors that lead to our garden.

 

The timid male cardinal (due to his stand-out hue?) and his less timid, subtly colored spouse.

 

Brilliantly backlit, at times, the dot of color that informs us the male downy woodpecker is at the suet.

 

Rooftop peppers that punctuate the winter palette, strewn throughout the garden by squirrels.

 

Kitchen jars filled with smoked and sweet paprika.

 

The ristra I strung from shishitos that changed color at summer’s end.

 

The speckled comb of my mother’s folk art rooster that’s come to our house to stay.

 

 

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Lynne Shapiro has been a writer-in-residence in England, Morocco, and Spain. An arts educator for many years, she worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art and was once an assistant to Susan Sontag. Lynne’s first chapbook, To Set Right, was published by WordTech Editions (October, 2021). Her book, Gala, is forthcoming from Solitude Hill Press (March, 2022). She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey with her husband and elderly turtle. For more information and upcoming events, please visit her website; www.lynneshapiropoet.com

Carrie Magness Radna | The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line

 

 

You searched for oceans

while we lived in the desert.

The strawberries, now,

freeze-dried in my mouth.

 

The southern tip of the sun

glows beet red.

I saw that abnormality,

on a red-eye flight, alone.

 

Should I leave an apology

after the tone?

Red lipstick stains on coffee cups;

What else did I do wrong?

 

Did we go too far?

All I have left

are a few good pics,

of us, on my phone —

 

All I want is to fall

apart in your arms,

but you rode away

in your red Jaguar.

 

& I never saw

the thin red line,

that breakup line,

until it was too late.

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Carrie Magness Radna is an audiovisual cataloger at New York Public Library, a choral singer and a poet who loves traveling. Her poems have previously appeared in The Oracular Tree, Mediterranean Poetry, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetry Super Highway, Walt’s Corner, Polarity eMagazine, The Poetic Bond and First Literary Review-East. Her latest poetry collection, In the blue hour (Nirala Publications), was released in February 2021. Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press) was published in December 2019. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie lives with her husband in Manhattan.

E. Penniman James | Seeing Red

 

Photo Credit: Matthew Hupert

E Penniman James lives and writes poetry in Brooklyn, New York. His poems have appeared in the anthologies Pluto 1 (Propoetsy, 2022), Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (great weather for Media, 2019), and Lyrics of Mature Hearts (Gordon Bois Publications, 2020), as well as several online publications.