Featured Poet: Juliet Cook

"Juliet Cook is a poet and the editor of Blood Pudding Press. A few of her recent publication credits include ‘DIAGRAM’, ‘OCTOPUS’, ‘Spooky Boyfriend’, ‘Taiga’ and ‘blossombones’. Some of her print chapbooks can be acquired via www.BloodPuddingPress.etsy.com

. Her first e-chapbook, ‘Projectile Vomit’, is forthcoming from Scantily Clad Press—and another print chapbook, ‘Gingerbread Girl’ is forthcoming from Trainwreck Press. Her first full-length book is slinking around, mewling and hissing and seeking a peculiar home." SLUMBER PARTY SCANDAL 1. cheerleader/lawnmower mishap she used to be a cheerleader now she’s a gimp dragging that past behind her like some parasitic umbilicus disguised with pink nail polish dragging that hacked-up left leg behind her like some pep rally back of skirt menstrual blood blurt phantom limb of a split jump off that human pyramid period in which his fingers slid into her panties as she tried to keep her balance on the top feeling like some tainted christmas tree angel burnt cookies slimy salt lick when they were expecting a sugar cube trail (in the dreams the girls are dogs with coagulated fur and blood-stained nails straining against choke collars baring their teeth barking at her in the dreams his fingers are blades at first she thought the girls were barking CUT HER! like a threat but they were really barking CUTTER! like an accusation as if she sucked his fingers in there on purpose with her whirring underside with the burning rubber of her flesh) now it’s gingerbread house crashing and all the other girls at the slumber party neatly file to the restroom to purge the pieces of her out of their aerosol halos even their vomiting is petite saccharine sweet a hushed chorus of whispered secrets she wears the smallest bra she doesn’t know how to use tampons her golden brown tan is fake she doesn’t even know how to put on the brakes she slips some nail polish remover into the lemon cupcakes To a Modern Dance Soundtrack Another ballerina malfunctions and her pointe shoes send shards of pink shrapnel into the crowd. Her toes couldn’t take the pressure. Our voyeuristic vitreous humor streams down cheeks, soaks the plush velvet of theater seats until we are sitting on red sponges, gumming soggy popcorn, no longer able to see her suppurating stumps, her sequined tantrum— puppet strings jerking mutant limbs. A pervert’s eyeballs pop like a soft atomizer squeeze & the whole auditorium fills with the aroma of wormy cheese. Her phalanges twitch every which way. Little sausages splitting out of casings. Recombining in different forms. Recombinant DNA, gene splicing, string theory, finger sandwiches dangling from tiny nooses, fingering of crumbs from puckering eyeholes. During intermission we will be fitted with our 3-D glass eyes and mind boggling electrodes. The better to watch her die. Smoosh How did that sticky gaggle grope its way out of its crimped-tight packaging? Don’t they know they can’t escape the hue of artificial fruit and spoiled milk? Just who do they think they are, getting carried away in this queasiness-inducing parade: Circus Peanuts with centipede legs, Circus Peanuts with tiny fright wigs, Circus Peanuts in heat, trying to mate with the crayfish of the murky creek bed, with the sickly sweet roil of fake banana etouffee. Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just smuggling a Circus Peanut injected with human growth hormone? Are you linked to the black market trade of glowing Circus Peanut Fetal Pigs, planted into the bellies of Visible Woman Model Kits (with Pregnancy Option included) so that grade school kids can pluck them out and practice a new breed of dissection? Scythe off their ooey gooey heads— so chewy, so plush, so stuck between teeth like a sugary snuff. How does that taste, little girl? Like a squishy orange polliwog bluff, they keep giggling and squiggling in increasingly iffy incarnations, growing too legion for the ranks of transparent anatomically correct female abdomens. Now we’re substituting Visible Horse Anatomy Model Kits or Transparent Roswell Alien Models for the pregnant women. Just who do these in utero mutations think they are, or maybe it’s the conniving uteri themselves, popping out Circus Peanuts with nipple clamps and decorative ruching or are those surgical incision scars? Circus Peanuts with club feet and tiny crutches or are they Circus Peanuts AS tiny crutches? Either way, we can’t risk a Circus Peanut insurgency. This Circus Peanut infestation must be stopped. Do you want Circus Peanuts leaving their gelatin droppings inside your designer high-heeled shoes? Do you want to give birth to a slime-encased Circus Peanut, then be tempted to cannibalize that malformed marshmallow fluff? Do you want to turn into a fat orange frump, a sugar-laden shapeless blob, a cheap candy nightmare spawn with engorged Circus Peanuts where your heart belongs?

Featured Poet: J.H. Hobson

"J H Hobson is, dear readers, a poet of many faces. One of which is green with blobby pink features. You may find J H Hobson's work in many great and respected poetry journals. Then again, you may not."

J. H. Hobson doesn't give a fuck about being in journals or having his poems shoot through the hierarchical tubes of the publishing world like so much waste through a sewage system. Why? Because he's a bowling ball with a pink playdough face.

O Ow

Cow should rhyme with snow

So

I say now

I'll say snow:

Snouw.

*

Outlaw Gunslinger Poem,

Showing Crime, Punishment and Remorse

Bang!

Hang.

.............dang.

*

Surprise

A saltine cracker,

broken and crumbled,

inside the box.

What's left of it

looks like the head of

a tan and toasty hobgoblin

and

reminds me that no matter

how far we go,

no matter how brightly lit the tables

are of the kitchens

where we eat our dead and processed foods,

there lurks--

at the root of it all,

still alive in the shadows,

and in the boxes:

our ancient

and lightly salted past.

Featured Poet: Alfonso Colasuonno

"Alfonso Colasuonno is a 24-year old native New Yorker. He is a graduate of Beloit College with a BA in Creative Writing. He is currently working as a special education teacher in the New York City public school system, while simultaneously working towards his MS in Adolescent Special Education at Long Island University within the NYC Teaching Fellows program. In his creative pursuits, he primarily works within the mediums of screenplays and traditional prose, but is currently experimenting with poetry. " Editors note: Alfonso, a good friend of the OSFR editorial team and new poet, absolutely tore it up at the OSFR reading as a last minute replacement for Robert Voris, who was unable to attend. Alfonso's poetry represents a lot about the spirit of this site...he doesn't write lots of poetry, but he gave it a try, and then he was given a platform on which to stand and share it. It's too bad other poetry journals don't do that. Too bad indeed. Social Significance This poem is not socially significant. This poem won't make you think about the human condition. This poem won't alter your perceptions of reality like a drug that comes on slowly and then swiftly rushing into your bloodstream at 2 AM on a Saturday night in a nameless Midwestern college town surrounded by fields of wheat after a couple of rounds at the local pub that doesn't check IDs with the shamrock lit up in front with the Budweiser insignia on it. This poem is NYC since Rudy G. phallic skyscrapers piercing grey sky cunt delancey without ebon faced teenage hookers bensonhurst without sallow Mafiosi Williamsburg without tall bearded Israelites in fifties hats and suits alphabet city without heroin thin leather jacket mohawks. Hopelessly 21st century white out-of-touch with the streets male middle-class goyish upbringing bar hopping suit wearing upright citizen obama loving liberal arts college lack of culture useless dreck waste of time waste of space banned from the canon. An exercise in hopeless vanity. Art for commerce's sake. This poem is not (so)cially significant. I Hate Poetry Boring depictions of natural life flowers gardens pastoral settings classed mentality. What relation does that have to us in the city selling souls punching clocks? Woolf wrote beautifully. But works can't speak without a voice. Or any semblance of plot. College lecturers continue teaching to vapid careerists in lecture halls seating 500 Staring bored blank-eyed blasted by the ejaculated cacophonous voices making up this public circle jerk. A Creative Writing degree means that you have successfully learned how to type mediocre drivel. But it rhymes! It rhymes! Iambic pentameter. You can follow conventions You can join the work force Fight in wars Be a cop. Wear ties with smoking twin towers and "We will never forget" looking down at Art history philosophy degree from Reed Antioch Evergreen Oberlin Grinnell Carleton Beloit at job interviews in soaring office towers. It rhymes! A Love Poem to RJ Reynolds (8/15-17/08) Marlboro Lights are like smoking air. Marlboro Reds are as harsh as unfiltered Lucky Strikes. Winstons are addictive as hell. Nat Shermans are smooth but expensive. American Spirits are for hippies and you have to double puff. Parliaments have funny looking filters. Pall Mall Reds are decent but I feel like my grandfather when I smoke them. Basics USA Golds even Dorals are way too cheap tasting and burn too fast. I can't roll my own cigarettes and Drum tastes like crap anyway. Camel Lights Camel Filters Camel Turkish Gold as long as it's not mentholated. The mix of Virginia and Turkish tobacco creates a new race. All the cool kids artists writers fashionistas baristas college dilettantes smoke Camels. Joe Camel is a wickedly funny mascot stared at by students with lopsided grins on rich kid day old laptops in prison cell rooms in glorified bomb shelter dorms with trash bins filled with smashed Keystone Light cans and bottles of Carlo Rossi filled with cigarette butts. Camel, of course. If I had never smoked Camels I would have quit a lot sooner.

Featured Poet: Gene Wagendorf III

"Gene Wagendorf III is student and grifter from Chicago. He loves the beach, but hates water. On a good day his work smells like bowling alleys and sounds like old typewriters. When he's not writing he spends his time complaining about the city-wide smoking ban, working with Write For A Change, and trying to find poker games full of flounders. His work has appeared in issues of Kill Poet, Word Riot, Vowel Movements, Robot Communism and Verve." Technically, we're all dead "Technically we are all dead this is my own thought! a hail of hell! Saint Dionysius reminds us of flight to unknowable Knowledge the doctrine of initiates completes the meditation!" - Phil Lamantia Born under the liberal western sun A 1927 son of magic and myths Spawned under Pan's gleaming eye Let loose on a world aroused enough To inspire you with a View of Dali And allow a laminated playground for creation A supermarket Adonis toting cucumbers and pears Sneaking snaps of onion in the backrooms Of Blue Collar cathedrals Scribbling looping words on thin trees Mapping out phosphorus kisses Winking feedback soaked sockets Conjuring up surreal whipped portraits Of existence and the nuts and bolts of the world You boarded the most challenging platforms in search Of a new perspective for thought Another angle at which to consider the business Of human life Muddled by the tension between earth’s aches and The simple and elegant beauty of private moments Your words soared across sand-speckled pomegranate skies And creaking saline floors where ancient secrets Manifested into hallucinogenic dreams of children As of yet unbaptized by the terrors of absurdity Never a spoken word caught in its own meat saying nothing You both pulverized and delicately wielded The velvet lips of time And rubbed the innocent belly of the universe With the affection of a mother wondering where her child will go in the world And the universe wondered back And your travels have been crimson dyed in the burning gas giants of heaven And you've left us with a silent legacy of inspection And an unmasking of societal insanity And the overwhelming joy of floating in no current What I hope you find now is a cloud to sit on Some honorable place in the afterlife with a telescope to watch When five years from now a kid discovers you Creeping in some narcotic night Sneaking glances from behind melting monuments of lust And separation Finds himself glued to the pages you dropped along your path Eating every peyote syllable Digesting and sizzling from every pore of his body Without the background required to miss you When the kid yammers about meeting you And reads your poems to his friends in a forest at midnight Burning the tips of his fingers with matches to see Every spot of ink on the page Hissing and crackling like holy fireworks Splashing bliss before the open curtains Of his eyes Another voluntary synesthesia The head shaking youth bubbling glow Of the eternal life of language pouring out of someone new And how you've captured them And how you project through every questioning body To pick up a copy of Sphinxes In this I think you'll beat what was meant a compliment The day they hailed you as "a voice that rises once in a hundred years" Because every time a kid doesn't know you don't exist But you do And the slippery English thaws into his brain Or tumbles out of his clumsy mouth Your voice volcanoes up And bridges the gap Between the dual personalities of the world you struggled to paste together And the generations lost inside it ... anything is not right so layitonme i'm elliptical moonshine light glowing before you stop what? yr doing b r e a t h e cancel remarks, abstain- bad sex bad sex bad sex sexsexsex boom... tinker with machines long enough and they'll blow quack and cover puritan bombs exploding bemoaning belittling bewitching just bitching the fire is going out and with it the (inner)light i cannot wield this pen(is) without comparison to dead language dead men dead laws dead ideology putting a hand over my mouth and a bleep in my speach my dotdotdots lay stagnant as i watch a zombie christ parade down michigan avenue and nobody says anything (worth saying) i've given up rather be in bed late nights planning out later breakfasts a she and a mattress making a sandwich of me all ham&cheese and saving some for the poor youknowthere'

schildrenstarvinginchina? in hell (just down the street) ink can't scratch out spoken word and i've no podium if ignorance is bliss than instant gratification is patriotism so just jot me down for another dotdotdot and don't tell me twice because i've heard it all before Dorothy yr grim face in mosaics like a stalking tiger watching me teeth gnarled and anxious yr eyes sizzling discontent wincing in pain, brows furrowed cringing at being as if there's no place like home noplacelikehome noplacelikehome noplacelikehome

Featured Poet: Pamela Tyree Griffin

“According to her mother, Pamela Tyree Griffin has been reading and writing since the age of five and has been unable to stop. Pamela's work may be found in many online and print publications. Her finest work? Her children.” As always, Mother knows best. But what Mother doesn't know is that the O Sweet Flowery Roses editorial staff does not care about attachements or poems in the bodies of emails. Please do either. All we ask is that you send it in a word attachement or within the body of an email, no wacky other formats. O Sweet Flowery Roses is hitting the biggest strides of its short lifespan. Our first reading was an intimate and awesome event; the poets were fantastic, the space was cool, and the entire thing was taped for public access here in NYC. Stay tuned for artist compilations from that reading, which will be available on Youtube! Yes, the easiest and best way to see videos just got a little more sweet, flowery, and O. And roses. Please enjoy Pamela's poems, and keep sending. Something else that needs to be mentioned: the volume of submissions is at an all time high. If you don't see your poems on the site within a week, be patient! They will make it. Everyone makes it in this journal. We wouldn't have it any other way. HIS STRAWBERRY DAY Before he died he asked for a bowl of strawberries. He knew he should not have them But he said "What the heck - Death is coming no matter what I eat." So I went down by the woods at the edge of our property - just where the sun touches the fallen pine cones and the soft breezes bend the tall grasses before dusk. No bucket - so in My crisp, white cotton apron I carried as many strawberries as I could pick. My hands were stained red- my mouth too because I ate almost as many as I carried. I returned to the house, dumped them unceremoniously into the kitchen sink to wash. He said, "Did you get 'em?" In response, I brought him a large bowl filled to the overflowing. And so before he died, we ate those strawberries, slowly through one silent hour. When months later, he was gone- I thought- Everybody should have a strawberry day before they must leave this world. ANNE Sometime during the 1500's, King Henry The Eighth had his wife Anne Boleyn beheaded. Had I known, that serving your desires would have meant the surrender of my own, would I have so calmly given my soul before your sturdy throne? Had I known that the cost of becoming Queen, would not equal any finely tapestried wall, sturdy hewn floor, or meal of quail and pheasant, would any one thing have changed? Had I known that my end would come with my bowing before the waiting axe, it would not have mattered. I, despite your rough handling of my heart, would still have come to you. EMMA Emma called it a wind chime. "See?" she said and showed us a bunch of gnarled twigs knotted together with bits of discarded yarn and bottle caps stolen from the rubbish. She perched near the top of a swaying tree. "See?" she said, hanging it there. Then teetered Emma in its branches and chirped, "See?" she said pointing to her object d’art just before she toppled down to earth. Her chimes became the scratching song of things invisible.

Post-Reading Fallout

The first OSFR reading is all over! And the dust has settled on a kick ass time, great poetry, and the foundations for a new reading series. And the best news? PUBLIC ACCESS NYC! OSFR is leaping into this new age of televisied vision, or TV for short. A compilation of our first reading is in the works with NYC public access. Stay tuned for more. Thanks to Christine Hamm, David Tamura, Sean Frasier, and last minute additions Alfonso Colasuonno and Branden Morel for a helluva reading! Stay tuned for more poets, more expansion, and more flowery revolution! -Russell

Featured Poet: Rose Kelleher

"Rose Kelleher grew up in Massachusetts and lives in Maryland. She has worked as a technical writer and programmer, and authored four computer books. Since rediscovering poetry in recent years, Rose has published poems and essays in a variety of magazines, including Anon, Atlanta Review, and the Dark Horse, and been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first book of poems, Bundle o' Tinder, won the 2007 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and will be published by Waywiser Press this fall." Luny Terzanelle for Orwn The Sea of Nectar, darling, it's so beautiful this time of year! Just play it safe--stay at the Ritz. The Marsh of Mists? Too late--I fear it's gone downhill. It used to be so beautiful this time of year. Lacus Mortis? Goodness me, it's deadly dull, a crashing bore. It's gone downhill. It used to be delightful! Now it's just a chore, like Palus Nebularium. So deadly dull! A crashing bore. Palus Epidemarium? You must be mad! It's even worse than Palus Nebularium! (But if you go, do bring a nurse.) The Sea of Nectar, darling, it's the best, though hardest on the purse. Just play it safe--stay at the Ritz. Resistance Unfletched an arrow flies but rarely hits the mark; restrained it goes directly to the heart. It’s in gripping the bow and tightening the slack the archer makes an art of hold- ing back. Submission Having just slain the dragon in its lair, he’s slick with sweat and blood, and striped with weals where fiery tongue met iron mail. His hair is singed, he’s dizzy with fatigue, he reels and almost passes out, but doesn’t dare. Instead he lays a sack of bullion down, as much as he could carry back; reveals the password, but no word of his ordeals; and begging the forgiveness of the crown, lowers his eyes before the queen, and kneels.

What's this? Rose gets ONE MORE POEM? WHY? Well, because it's a onesie twosie, our first one not written by Becky or myself. They Keep Biting His Ears lucky mosquitoes

Featured Poet: Barry Frauman

“The workshop director of Chicago’s NewTown Writers, Barry Frauman has written numerous short poems, as well as longer verse narratives, which include WEST-EAST AND SHORTER POEMS, a gay male romance between an American and a Taiwanese, published in 2003 by Xlibris Corp, and the self-published SONS OF NEW TOWN, celebrating life in the area of Chicago for which NewTown Writers is named. He is working on a verse narrative LIONHEART, on England’s crusader King Richard.” Just one poem here from Barry Frauman, but it’s an epic. We embrace all kinds here, from epics to Onsie-Twosies. And that reminds me: don’t feel shy to send attempts at poetic constraint games and activities you see on this site. T Minus 6 days to the reading… .

Featured Poet: Nathan Logan

"Nathan Logan is the editor of Spooky Boyfriend and a MFA candidate at Minnesota State University Moorhead. His work has appeared in/is forthcoming from Literary Tonic, No Posit, The Scrambler, Sir!, and Superficial Flesh." Spooky Boyfriend is an awesome, hip, kick-ass journal and I suggest everyone read it, memorize it, and commit revolutionary acts, citing it as the catalyst. Please enjoy the poems. And the reading is SATURDAY! $2 CHEAP! Florida A cream-colored llama stares at me from under a string of non-blinking white Christmas lights, so I know the neighbors are home. That llama is only outside when Betty and Ted go to Dutch Delight Party House, which is the safest swingers club in the state. Their kids are cool with it apparently, but they’ve got issues too. Their oldest runs an alligator beauty contest from the middle of the Everglades. (The winner becomes a nice pair of boots.) The second child haunts Daytona Beach in the spring, tries selling vibrating condoms and seashells to the oily, overexcited Midwestern co-eds. As if they need the help; all kinds of shit, palm trees, tangerines, etc., take to the air whenever hurricanes get lonely for people. …But it’s A Dry Heat Conquest is a type of quest, Tori hardly explains. We’re both standing in the bedroom, her hand clawed over my heart. It doesn’t sound like a nice kind of quest, I tell her. An overhead fan spins, the sheets sputter. Her little Pomeranian sits motionless outside the door, waiting. Waiting for what? A jeep cruises past the window, pounding some beats into our bloodstreams. Palms across the street wave goodbye. At 12:47pm on June 15th, 2004, in Gilbert, Arizona, I get what is meant by “dry heat.” The Grapecrushers The grapes have grown grim. Grapecrushers around the county are sad. With no grapes, they spend their daze in the beauty salon remembering "the good 'ole days," whatever those were. I don't remember any time in which grapes were happy, danced off their vines under moonlight, enjoyed fancy cocktails downtown. Maybe the season has made the grapecrushers delusional, altered their memories so that they think that at one time, forty years ago, they enjoyed their work and relished any occasion to get dirty among the rows of succulent fruit. They're so convinced of this, I almost forget the truth myself: there are no grapes in Howard County. Only squash patches.

Featured Poet: Michael Lee Johnson

"Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. He is the author of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7. He has also published two chapbooks of poetry and is presently looking for a publisher for two more. He has been published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Turkey, Fiji, Nigeria, Algeria, Africa, India, United Kingdom, Republic of Sierra Leone, Nepal, Thailand, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Finland, and Poland internet radio. Michael Lee Johnson has been published in more than 240 different publications worldwide. Audio MP3 of poems are available on request.He is also publisher and editor of four poetry flash fiction sites--all presently open for submission:http://birdsbywindow.blogspot.com/ http://www.poetriclegacy.mysite.com/ http://atendertouch.blogspot.com/ http://wizardsofthewind.blogspot.com/Author website: http://poetryman.mysite.com/" Besides doing a little extra-cirricular shilling for Michael Lee Johnson's salvo of blogs and web pages, I have managed to pluck these poems from his submission of more than three, which may or may not have been culled from dozens of different countries spanned through hundreds of auditory and visual communicative realms. Nevertheless, there were other poems I liked, but I had to make the final call as Editor ULTIMO. But these three were my favorite...and I absolutely could not NOT publish a poem beginning, "I'm going to take Islam where their God has not before-" Remember, readers. Everyone gets three. You want three more, you gotta submit again. In the Garden Where the Flowers Grow I'm going to take Islam where their God has not been before- to the garden of Jesus, olive oil presses, Gethsemane-- trees, flowers, fruits, vegetables didn't poison anyone there. Passion was sweat on the ground and brow. There weren't darts of hate, misconception or terrorism; children on their knees five times a day brainwashed to hate. Christ didn't lead them astray nor make them pagan pink. There is no God apart from Allah, and Mohammed is the Prophet, but it's Jesus who makes the garden grow with or without water. Then and now the apples grow in my garden of forgiveness. Figs trees grow far away where I can't reach them but believe in them. Like the Tamarisk tree, Christ is a source of honey, manna and wafer, a taste so sweet in the desert so dry. You don't have to be a scholar to write poetry, religion, or understand the Eucharist; but you need to be a real saint to know the difference. Islam, is Judas Iscariot among your converts nose pointed toward Mecca today? I'm going to take Islam where their God has not been before- to the garden where the flowers grow. The Christians Arrived Salvation Army and the Christians arrived today, Christmas, like every other Sunday morning feed the homeless, chasing the rats from the bathroom, basement, kicking the dead flies out of the corner spots where the cat used to lounge- clean the toilet bowl, a form of revival and resurrection. I privately pastor to these desires though I myself am homeless. I forgot what it's like to be a poet of the cloth, savior in street clothing with a warm home to blend into. I watch them clamp the New Testament in one hand, And pull a cancer stick out of the pocket with the other. It's all a matter of praising the Lord. Everything is nonsense when you're in a place where you don't belong. Even praying to Jesus from a dirty dusted pillow seems strange and bewildering. Someday I will walk from this place and offer spare meals by myself to others; feed the party in between the theology, the bingo of sins and salvation. I forgot the taste of a Stromboli Sandwich with a 6 pack of Budweiser with or without the Chicago Bears--it would make every Sunday a Salvation Army holiday. Today is a fairy creating miracles from the dust of the floor multiplying fish and chips, baked ham, ribs with sauce Chi-Town type, dark color of greens and veggies tip me to the Christian clock on the wall peeking down on lost and unsaved. I feel like a fragment. A birth date the way again to begin, fragmented. Pinto beans mixed with graffiti fingers, Christians arrived on Christmas day- they always do every Sunday morning. I pastor to these desires. It's all a matter of praising the Lord. The Christians arrived today. Tiny Sparrow Feet It's calm. Too quiet. My clear plastic bowl serves as my bird feeder. I don't hear the distant scratching, shuffling of tiny sparrow feet, the wing dances, fluttering, of a hungry morning's lack of big band sounds. I walk tentatively to my patio window, spy the balcony with detective eyes. I witness three newly hatched toddler sparrows, curved nails, mounted deep, in their mother's dead, decaying back. Their childish beaks bent over elongated, delicately, into golden chips, and dusted yellow corn.

Reading in Williamsburg 10 days away! Pictures from my last reading there!

FROM TOP TO BOTTOM: A singer/songwriter sings/songwrites. I read some poems. Note the awesome slideshow in the background The crowd enjoys itself.

698 Flushing Ave. #1F

(1 block from Flushing stop on JMZ, 2 from Flushing stop on G)

Brooklyn (E. Williamsburg/Bushwick) Tell your friends! Tell your folks! Come early and come often.

Featured Poet: William Doreski

"Hope the poems below have some fun left in them." Well, what he lacks in bio, he makes up for in fun, which required very little wringing because it was not so that there was little fun left in them; rather they were vessels of fun that were spilling fun and enjoyment everywhere, and I had to choose just three of the six poems he sent! O Sweet Flowery Explosions are happening on the site, with a greater volume of submissions than ever before. Don't worry; if you have submitted, you'll make it on. But things may have to change a bit. First, a reminder: Please remember to include a bio if you would like anyone to know about yourself or your style or thoughts or ANYthing, and remember to send three poems. If not, I will choose the three poems which go on the site. It's a bad idea to put anything on OSFR that you are trying to get published elsewhere; other journals may not be happy with simulinaity. Don't publish things here that you have done so elsewhere, either. No one here or on your end wants to end up getting sued over a poetics site dedicated to fun. Village Roaster Twenty different coffees roasted on the spot. No latte, no mocha, no yuppies served here. Debbie with her silver gray mane tucked under her cap doles out coffee to Democrats and Independents, fusses over dogs who come to join her Biscuit Club. She talks down her nose at Republicans who hate small business, who cozy to corporations big enough to devour small towns whole. The coffee, fresh from the roaster, makes its own way in the world. Columbian, Costa Rican, Sumatran, Kenyan, Honduran. Pour yourself a cup and relax outside under the umbrella and let the flavor plumb you, annulling all your complaints. A Naked Man Behind the funeral home the sea crests up to the parking lot and rattles a pebbly beach. As Jenny wades in the shallows with her skirt tucked around her waist I skip a stone toward the wharf, a blackened, half-collapsed wreck. A gray car pulls up. A door opens. Big and sweaty in the driver’s seat a naked man leers at Jenny. He looks so familiar I almost shout his name, but instead fling a stone that rackets inside the car and frightens him away. Only a stink of exhaust remains when the cops arrive. Jenny can’t identify the man, her expression simple as phlox, but I remember voting him into office twenty years ago when the surface of the planet felt smoother to the touch. The cops sigh because they knew it was him. The sea also sighs because Jenny has put on shoes and sits ladylike on the pebbles while organ music seeps from the draped room where her father lies flatter than he ever lay in life. Time to escort her to whatever rites will resolve the sudden absence of a soul. As we enter we note the naked man seated fully dressed among her father’s other friends. Of course he has eyed Jenny all her life although she barely noticed him and now she’ll always remember how colorless he looks in his skin. The ritual begins with a Baptist minister pronouncing death good; but I hear the sea rattling stones in derision, lapping Jenny’s thighs as she wades with her skirt up— and the naked man appeals to her with a gaze that rhymes with the slop of waves and a silence only a favorite obscenity can fill. Sharon Stone Naked Up late watching a movie featuring Sharon Stone naked as a caryatid, I’m afraid I won’t make my seven-thirty doctor’s appointment, the dawn obscured by the pearly rain combing the summer forest. Too late to go to bed and hope for sleep enough to sustain me through a day of obscurities. The doctor will numb my eyesight with tropicamide and peer so deeply into my retinas I’ll feel ashamed of having them. Maybe she’ll note some problem to necessarily alarm me; maybe she’ll grunt and scrawl illegible notes and dismiss me without a hint of diagnosis. Sharon Stone wields a knife. Maybe she’ll cut the heart from our hero and leaving him steaming like an Aztec sacrifice. Maybe he’ll survive to make a sequel. I’ve seen this movie before but refuse to remember how it ends. The rain won’t abate for many hours, its imperative as personal as my desire to see Sharon Stone reveal not only her skin but her motive, a dark psychosis that transcends gender to fill all available psychic space. I fear going blind. Maybe that’s why I’m staying up all night to see whatever this movie can show before something darker than dark decides to replace it.

Featured Poet: Felino Soriano

" Felino Soriano is a Californian philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. His chapbook "Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes" was published by and is available through Trainwreck Press, 2008. The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation. Recent poems appear at BlazeVOX, Sugar Mule, Unlikely Stories 2.0, Apt, Wilderness House Literary Review, among others. Visit www.felinosoriano.com for a complete publication history and for more information." Trance Strange world to the unobservant, the mind blind unimaginative whose contoured ability to escape critical thought toward other than reality, excites, stimulates. The spider dangling in golden slanted light, drawing tremors with truncated hands holds musicality within paused excerpts of exerted existential glistening through open window functionality. Too the arrow shaped avifauna overhead headed directionally for mapped landing of feeding mannerisms, escape from weather envelopes. Said of maintaining sightless interrogation of nearby manifestations, the mind deteriorates, finding itself, the egoist explained only within mirrored paradoxes.

Societal Gap Word graffiti appeared across a once silent wall, now shouting à la mode language images lacking drawings to depict what the mind of which some ascertain as Defacer, composed prior within the mind and ensuing atop the once silent and now verbalizing wall. Psychologists would delve into perhaps a childhood intertwining with now's such behavior, environmental influences. The positing wind with faith our eyes blind to its visible vast slithering body may howl and perseverate that the glorified graffiti to a culture denouncing a culture wanting to hide a generation wishes only to harmonize a blend of future with societal pleasantries. Partial Entity Torn the numbness of day's ridicule clambering against thought process patterned brought into needling exhaustion, the mimic up and down sounds like the exact visual dedicated to the moon spilling atop the lake's wounded belly.