FEATURED WRITER OF THE WEEK: KARLA FLETCHER

It's

It's the smile on my face when I see you 
After being apart 
It's the way I laugh when you're around
How sad I get when you are gone
When all my tears fall to the ground 
It's the way my heart skips a beat 
It's how I feel every song within my feet 
It's like a first dance or a first kiss 
Everything is fast, everything is bliss 
Love is not for the sensitive or the weak 
It takes time 
More than just 1 week 
It's the way my eyes light up 
Every day 
It's peaceful like the first snowfall 
On a chilly winter day 
But like the seasons we change too 

fall becomes winter into spring 
Our love too shall blossom 
Like rose petals open to the sun 
Many adventures soon to come 
Many memories we shall make 
Many pictures we will take 
It's not easy 
Most of the time it's hard 
But it's all worthwhile 
It's the way you look at me 
At the end of the night 
It's the way you ask 
For a kiss goodnight 
It's all a compromise
It's give and take 
It's how we work together 
Even when we need a break 
Sometimes we argue, sometimes we fight 
But never go to bed angry at the end of the night 
Love is not easy, it's not for the weak 
Love is work love is time 
Love is having you 
Love is the way I feel about you 
Its the way we kiss it's the way we smile 
It's the way we plan 
It's what we are it's what we do 
Love is me 
Love is you

Karla Fletcher is a 24 year old poet who has been writing poetry since she was very young. She is currently writing on a children's book, as well as publishing a collection of her own poetry. 

FEATURED WRITER OF THE WEEK: STEVE KLEPETAR

Teasing Out the Strands

Last night she walked in the moonlight until

exhaustion drove her back to bed. Her brother

climbed a mountain in her mind, always bent

upward toward the damp, hanging mist, silent,

inexorable as a shadow with no face. Maybe

his legs burned, but he never spoke, just toiled

up the path of that rocky slope. Somewhere

an ocean roared to an audience of sand and stars.

She drank the wind, made it last and tease her

thirst. She wrote to him, an essay in letter form,

teasing out the strands of their commingled blood,

held a mirror to his stony back, which cracked

and sent the usual shiver through her aching arms.

Each jagged shard she dropped into a black crevasse.

Sky Burned Above Her

and she swam

through milky flame and her tongue burned

hopeful and free, gliding the tree line, eying

crossroads and nests.  Dust and devils of wind

and emptiness stretched across red sand. 

She hugged her name to her chest

that vivid spell on her lips, wide mouth a river

meandering across the meadow of her face –

tree above her a last pale word, a web of shade

and a language of cloth and tongues

a gift found with a blind hand, house with a chimney

and bell, musical shrub  rope braided with golden sparks

tossed into the careless sky, a falling woman tumbling

like rain down into the mirrors of my own drowned bed.

What Do You Mean?

What do you mean when you say that time

does not exist, that light from dead stars

reaches our eyes as harbingers of laughter

and sparkling bubbles of wine? 

Yesterday at the gym, you climbed the wall

slowly, gripping red and purple stones,

humming an old lullaby to quiet your

thrumming nerves. All the pretty little horses

and then you are two, with a yellow blanket

shoved in your mouth. Tomorrow you may

hit a home-run into the tennis courts, startling

the players or you may fall from an oak,

break your wrist. The sea lies speechless on

summer nights, waves have been rolling,

crashing on sand forever, as the sun, bloated 

and wild, consumes your madly spinning earth.

Steve Klepetar’s work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, including three in 2014.  Three collections appeared in 2013: Speaking to the Field Mice (Sweatshoppe Publications), Blue Season (with Joseph Lisowski, mgv2>publishing), and My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press).  An e-chapbook, Return of the Bride of Frankenstein, came out in 2014 as part of the Barometric Pressures series of e-chapbooks by Kind of a Hurricane Press.

FEATURED WRITER OF THE WEEK: CASSANDRA DALLETT

Big Black Buck

Eating noodle soup under the TV

a black man’s murder looping and looping through the meal

I am not brainwashed enough

not immune to this inoculation

every murder a loss no matter how they point to criminality.

We walk the lake under confusing sky

sunshine glaring between dark clouds

blowing by surprisingly fast rain then shine

then shining in rain I yell, “where is the rainbow”

two sisters on a bench smile all dazzling teeth and natural hair

cubes of buildings hug the choppy lake

and blush flowers hug the Masonic buildings.

The wind has pushed pools of green sludge to the sides

and I wonder at the spectacle, the piles of black bodies

we witness, and witness, stew into a frenzy but cannot stop

Broadcasting photos of Kenyan students face down bullet ridden

like the boy on the news will not bring them back or honor life

it will not help the mainstream to see this is deliberate.

This barrage of bodies, the reading of autopsies, the dissection of black flesh

are they always surprised at the pink humanity revealed

we all bleed the same but we don’t die the same

heaping holocaust piles of black bodies inhabit the news

if they are reported at all

those students barely made the evening rundown

the news channels too busy repeating themselves

about fallen planes full of white folks

burning up the Swiss alps.

Broke on Valentines

There was Dre

but we broke up every week

me shrieking and smashing glass

silently crushing me

There was Anthony

who stomped me into the Emergency room

because I didn’t tell him

I was throwing a gum wrapper out the window

for his passenger

at least that was the only reason I ever heard

before his voice turned into monster

and he chased me down

his full weight pushing my face into the ground

still I cried when February 14^th rolled around

him in jail and me alone  

too bruised up to date

Dre resurfaced only to rip me off

in some phony check scam

he needed studio time for his budding rap career

After that would come Vano

he was in Prison every Valentines day and all the holidays

and I was in furlough on gun charges by the end

of me and him I fled the state

Back East Valentines day my lovers spent with real girlfriends

Steve Lee was the first one I called my own

mostly I was drunk-tripping filling his mouth with words

my paranoid mind could pick a fight with

him just young wanting to drink with his friends

but I would not be seconded by Crazy Horse and them

so I left him for Johnny Walker

John was older a more vetted alcoholic than Steve

we flirted before Christmas and fucked by New Years Eve

snuck around till I couldn’t keep the secret

moved him in

in a mess of fist fights and knives thrown

cops called and my head split open by the cordless phone

Bleeding for it I fought John constantly

and unlike Steve he didn’t hesitate to hit back

my forehead opened on the damned door jamb

I threw the iron and hammered out his windshield

while he tried to run me over

and we were done    before Valentines

Again I ate my heart out

a paper box red and empty

I cried into forty ounces of beer

I didn’t have another man till JB

back in Cali knocked up round and horny

he slid though late nights off the block and hopped up

speed balls snorted off my dinner plates

his slim frame chocolate lean

needle pin eyes gravel throat drawl

they call that heron dick

and we could fuck all night long

He got back out of jail when my son just made one

and paroled straight over to my place

after all the money was spent and job lost

the hustle ground us down

my jealousy about losing him back to the streets

he was gone by MLK Day

my head reopened with the same ass phone

he took the car and all the shit he’d given

left me      stripped down and starving

the sky relentless   like my tears    in the year of El Nino

Valentine’s Day rained down

found me broke and alone

walking home soaked to the bone.

Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra is a Pushcart nominee and reads often around the San Francisco Bay Area. She was the winner of the March 2015 Literary Death Match. In addition to six chapbooks, she has published online and in many print magazines and anthologies such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, The Bicycle Review, Chiron Review, This Is Poetry: Women of The Small Press. A full-length book of poetry, Wet Reckless was released to good reviews, from Manic D Press May of 2014. A new book Bad Sandy will be released on Dangerous Hair Press in spring of 2015.

FEATURED WRITER: REGINA VITOLO

ENDED AS ASHES

I heard the gunshot, felt the bullet enter his brain,

remembered how he raced the humid winds along

Montgomery Street, the soft stutter of his carefully

chosen words, the echo of my mother’s opinions,

his emotionless green eyes, his perfect roman nose

I envied, his sensuous lips, golden hair, smooth skin,

the silence of his judgment, the empty apartment

with photographs of horses, the Dresden figurines

our mother collected, the heart medications on

his end table, the telephone that rarely rang,

the male lover whose murmurs my brother would

never hear again, the collapse of his body, my

ungainly brother who hid his pain, barely occupied

space on this earth, left no footprint of his life,

ended as ashes, mailed to me by a Florida coroner. 

GRAY UPON GREY

written while listening to Gustav Mahler’s

Symphony #1

  

a scraggly column of stick figures,

shoes too large, striped uniforms

gray upon grey, marching through

mud and muck

truculent winds beating against backs

bent forward, hope as dismal as the dirt

footprints swerving, breathing stench

the slaughterhouse

waiting, a phantom building, steel mixed

with concrete, windowless, a writhing

coffin to confine these creatures, once

men, less so now

living a permanent toothache, the agony

unaccompanied by ecstasy, relief denied,

cavities prodded and pried open, privacy

throttled by malice

the stars blink, the moon bleeds, a meteorite

flashes, ashes rise to clog nostrils impervious

to odor, while death licks lips and dries tear

ducts, cataracts film eyes

roadside camp fires fail to charm, crouching

figures transform into fierce wolves, fangs

bared, gnashing hungrily at putrid air, a cello

haunts the night,

the darkest of hours shrouding mankind.

Regina Vitolo was born in Brooklyn near the Bond Bread Factory and Ebbets Field. One YA novel published in 1984, mostly poetry published since. She has evolved, even though the world has not.

FEATURED POET OF THE WEEK: EDWARD RADKE

garnet from her pantry

gale garnet filters in

from her pantry

but the sunshine she eclipsed

like the trick he

pulled on her telescope

but much more adept

she channels the song

but she doesn't know

she's in the sequel

about two years behind her

her daddy's third verse advice

let the scavenger hunt commence

pointing out nuance, you know

can really further your

southern spiral advance

wonder if compasses are

boxed in the strata

in the realm of love

there is no chance

 _______________________________________________________

 scripts

 religion the safety valve

the old world scripts

and the fearful are wise enough

not to come off of them

where did the balance tip

when we went towards

mass cooperatives

steam powered fever dreams

that created the farm

the first reservation

how can we tip the

pyramid on it's point

trying to extend downtime

towards that base in the air

the forest as with

all forms of darkness was there

for your entertainment

wonder and protection

were they really happy

before she tasted the fruits

of that apple picking harvest

beyond any labor

in the first fall

which brought annulment

and eviction from above

this is what we get

when the dreamer

sobers up and awake

during the night

atheists were asked to

leave the field crew

easterners grow heavy

with a western relocation

 _______________________________________________________

 if and when

if and when you tire of

waking up next to whomever

was somehow blessed

by proximity at least

the night before

will you still call

oddly a touching line

was somewhere in there

whether it is him or

someone closer with more to lose

tragic and devastated might

be more than the

flip of some silver

kindred spirit or the

mate of another ship eternal

even if in similar spheres they sprint

and keep the same company

had she answered

another sign in another house

on a different page

he wouldn't have to answer

write or direct like this

reading through the verse and line

with the threat of a larger

stronger chemical throng and presence

crashing the dance floor downstairs

between the syllable stress

and the heavy accents

a tiny apocalypse

some say ain't there

but feel those ghosts run cold

on the nape between the blades

and across the range of your shoulders

 ____________________________________________________

 dear john (a how to)?

he had seen enough to provide

experts as references

to ladies and gentlemen alike

first things first

for those who find electronic communication

too cold and impersonal

but the sound of the human voice

a risky persuasion back to the fold

and face to face a bloody mess

are you travelling alone?

is future well being a concern?

or is it current self preservation?

 _____________________________________________________

 the first of april

three doors wide

to the first of april

him unhinged, and the

chiltonville first congregational

two who shall remain nameless

came back with the mule

no finely brushed charger

to herald your arrival and rule

in to this jerusalem

your river, your reigns

and this light course

infusing and flowering each stem

gladly your fool suffers

a soldier against doubt

a child in your glory

a transmission never over or out

once just mud before

your wheel, your kiln

and your chisel

a disciple now forever more

standing on his knees

in blood and crushed glass

a shivering mosaic

your instrument by soft decree

how laughable

when the ordinary presumes

it may come before you

trying to speak to you on the level

 ______________________________________________

 three views of her in reverse from this current vantage

barbed today on this

sky of cumuli

she is these circles of wire

once the sky itself

that put the spheres of razor foreground

softly out of focus

and further back once that chickadee

perched so agile at dawn

upon these slinkies spiked and stretched

 _____________________________________________

 Edward Radke is a poet, freelance writer, artist and photographer from Plymouth MA.  His work has appeared in numerous online public and print publications, and he is co-founder of DreamMiners Publishing and Creative Arts Services.

Submission Guidelines

Submission Guidelines

DreamMiners Publishing is always looking for talented writers and artists to feature on our blog and in upcoming print anthologies.  We accept submissions year-round. We choose 2-3 writers a week to feature on our site.

 Submissions can be sent as an attachment to dreamminers@aol.com. Please include your full name (or pseudonym), a brief bio (max. 150 words), and an email address we can reach you at.

We accept previously unpublished poetry, prose, artwork and photography. We do not have restrictions on content. Artists and writers can (and are encouraged to) submit more than once each year, and we may publish your work more than once.

ARTWORK & PHOTOGRAPHY:We accept submissions of color and b&w art and photography. We ask that you submit each photograph as a separate .jpg file attachment along with the name of the photograph. We will accept up to FIVE pieces of artwork and/or photography per contributor per issue.

PROSE:You may submit up to THREE pieces of prose. This may include fiction, non-fiction, memoir, flash fiction, or essays. No longer than 3,000 words. Each piece should be sent as a separate attachment.

POETRY:We accept poetry of all forms and styles. Please send each titled poem as a separate attachment. We will accept up to FIVE poems per contributor per issue. You may submit up to five poems at a time; anything beyond five will not be considered.

ACCEPTED WORKS:
You will be contacted within one month of submitting your work via email if we have selected to feature you on our blog or in an upcoming anthology.

By submitting to DreamMiners Publishing, you grant us one-time rights to publish your work online and to promote your work through our site and social media. 

EXCERPT FROM CALIFORNIA DREAMS, A NOVEL BY JEAN ZAHN

“Alice is here?” Angela asked. “She wants to see me?”   
“A sister’s love never dies,” Rory said. “Just like a brother’s love, Angela. There might be some bumpy roads, but all roads lead back to home. The bond can never be broken, no matter what.”
  “I want to see her.”
“Okay, I’ll go get her.” 
Paul and Rory left the room. Rory told Paul it would be best if Alice and Rory saw Angela together, and he agreed. Alice and Rory went in silently. 
When Angela saw Alice, she smiled. “Hi Alice,” she said. Alice bent down and hugged her. 
Once again, they each took a hand. They talked quietly for a short while. Alice left the room. 
“Angela, are you hungry?” Rory asked.
“No, I couldn’t possibly eat.”
  “Not even a turkey, bacon, and guacamole sandwich?” 
She smiled again. “You remember.”
“I’ll never forget,” Rory told her. “You were my first real love. You taught me how to love. I didn’t know how before you, Angela. Don’t you know how special you are?”
“I messed everything up, didn’t I?”
“We’re not going to worry about that now. Let’s worry about you getting better and getting you out of here. Paul is worried sick about you, and so is your father.”
“You know, Rory, I still love you.”
“Yeah, I know, and I still love you, too. But who I think you really love is Paul. I’m cool with it. I wasn’t at first, but I’m good now.” That was sort of a lie. Rory still wasn’t one hundred percent good with it, but his life had changed so much in such a short period, and Angela’s had stayed the same. Maybe this was how it was meant to be. 


To  read more, order California Dreams on Amazon today! Kindle and paperback copies available!

Order here! 

CALIFORNIA DREAMS BY JEAN ZAHN: 

Twin brothers Rory and Paul Brock have everything going for them. Handsome and popular with the girls, they are also blessed with family wealth. They are living on the wild side. Paul is the sensitive one and Rory, being the conceited one, lives for the moment. He meets his match when he meets Angela Star.

The Star family moves from California to the small town of Lakeside, where the Brocks live. Tom Star becomes a law partner with the twins' father, Steve Brock, at the Brock's law firm. The twins meet the Star sisters. Angela Star is seductive and bewitching. Rory has never loved a girl before in his life, but he finds himself head over heals for Angela. And Paul finds himself drawn to Alice Star.

When Rory is offered the chance of a lifetime, he decides to take adventures to New York City and California. He meets new friends his conservative family certainly would not approve of and builds a career he never dreamed of.

But how long will it all last? Angela bewitches both twins. Who does she end up with? Will she break their bond for life?

FEATURED WRITER OF THE WEEK: MARK FOGARTY

Rebecca Lobo's Eyes

I looked into Rebecca Lobo’s eyes once.

If I stretch an inch we are just the same height.

So when I glanced up outside the Affinia Hotel

As she stood between two teammates

I got a decent look at her.

She has steely eyes, variable,

Impatient I was standing

Between her and Madison Square Garden.

I look at her with a poet’s gaze,

Bred from thousands of years

Of the liberties of bards.

Rebecca Lobo has champion eyes,

Fierce as the finishing move to the basket.

Mine don’t miss much either, especially close up.

I watch the tall women move in the Elite Eight,

Brackets of women with an affinity for the rim.

Rebecca is done playing for the Liberty.

She says her children now stretch her towards infinity.

She towers over the coaches, asking the questions,

Her pursed lips just visible in the picture.

The producers tell her to smile for the camera.

Tell a hawk to smile. She tries, but she can’t.

_____________________________________________

The Tall Women’s Dance

The tall women twist and twine and turn

The bonds that hold the world in place.

They are getting ready to lift and fly.

There are laws of the universe

That no longer will apply.

The crowd catches on. It’s an invitation

To rise and land in another space

Unthought of in the world’s rotation.

The mascot dances with a little girl.

He dances to Rocky, with oversized gloves.

He bangs a drum. He dances to a tune

That everybody loves.

The tall women are deep oceans

That never have been frozen.

They are watched by women and girls

Who already know the lesson.

They clap their hands, rejoicing.

My pen races over the ticket

So fast I can barely read it.

The basketballs are particles

Bouncing for each horizon:

Neutron, proton, electron.

Dancers zoom in by the dozens,

An acrobat team of weightless teens.

Old women, too, and tiny girls

And everything in between.

The ribbons in the arena flash,

Tail lights of a starship.

Gravity loses all its traction.

What holds us together

Is only human attraction.

Every one who can

Dances to the Jump Cam.

The tall women flit around like birds.

There are no wires, no walls, no remarks.

They are beyond words, past time.

There is only liberty, and sparks,

And two small girls with basketballs

Singing “We Are Family.”

This isn’t a game they’re playing.

It’s the ownership of being.

_____________________________________________

 Brittney Griner is Beautiful

Oh, I disliked Brittney Griner.

Bully girl, jockoid, dead stare.

No poetry. Coasting on her inheritance

Of six feet eight and sharp elbows.

I changed my mind though

When they drafted her first.

She wore a giant white suit, like George Harrison

Or a dude owning his wedding day.

The tears poured down her cheeks

And she didn’t bother

To blot them back. How wrong

I was! Brittney Griner is beautiful.

There’s a frictionless world for everyone,

And Brittney Griner was finally seeing hers.

She grew up a giant, a freak,

Kids calling her gay before she even knew.

She hooped for a school

That hated the way she was

But would look the other way

As long as the buckets fell.

Brittney grew tall enough, at last

To see her way over the bullshit.  

I like how Brittney Griner unfolds

Like a calendar of the mountains,

How no couch she sits on fits her,

But she convinces them they do.

That's poetry.

I like her untangled braids

And her angled cat head.

Her skin is beautiful. The ink is vivid and tender.

She lopes like a jaguar coming home for the day.

I would walk her down the aisle

On her wedding day, beautiful girl.

When I see over the shit, some day,

I will go first in the lottery.

______________________________________

Mark Fogarty is managing editor of The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow and emcees the Red Wheelbarrow Poets’ monthly reading series at GainVille Café, Rutherford, NJ. His poetry has been published in Hawaii Review, Viet Nam Generation, Journal of NJ Poets, Brownstone Poets Anthology, Exit 13, Unrorean, Eclectic Literary Forum, Cokefishing in Alpha Beat Soup, TEA Newsletter, Footwork, Artemis, Bohemia, City Lit Rag, Instigatorzine, Spirits, Inspire the Planet, Passaic Review, Pink Moon, Side Effects, Lyndhurst Literary Magazine and The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow. Work is forthcoming in Exit 13, Paterson Literary Review and Red Paint Hill. He is the author of three collections of poetry: Myshkin’s Blues, Peninsula, and Phantom Engineer.