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featured poets & artists

 

jae ming jue

Jae Ming Jue has been writing in compulsive spurts since he was a small boy growing up in Chicago's south side. His writing process is not unlike giving birth to children--painful with a long period of time in-between kids. Currently he's germinating poems about various cities he's lived in before arriving in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared at The Banyan Review, Verse Libre Quarterly, The Real Eight View, Erosha, and Circle Magazine with poems upcoming in Pemmican, and Three Cup Morning. Although he has no deeper understanding of Life's mysteries, he feels, he imagines, and he writes. jae_ming_jue@earthlink.net

 

Rain in Los Angeles

Tears of heaven pour
down my body oversaturating
clothes long since expired.

A frozen heartbeat, red
piercing the sodium yellow air
held me fast to this corner.

My flesh pushed down by the hours
did little to break the cold shivers
caressing the marrow of my loneliness.

Neither did the change to green provide me suture
as I cross the wet asphalt, a shadowy reflection
of a thousand angels crying.

I tread quickly on
piss-stained sidewalks glimpsed
 in stark blue flashes of an angry sky of ash.

A pair of black cats cut my stride.
Rain continued to prick my flesh
as I stared back at them.

Not a gentle hand
to sweep aside my matted hair
that I may see her.

I trick myself. Alone I leap over staring eyes.

Up concrete steps, thru a heavy door.
I open my mailbox.
Bills and the like.
Up more steps, two at a time,
down a hall, unlock my door...

Neighbors across the hall
in rhythmic pleasure
punctuated by girlish giggles.

I lay myself down on cold solitude.
Wrapping myself tightly in dirty sheets
with the dark, darker than before.
The blinds whispering softly.

And I stare.

A Flat Tire

Arms waving and men hollering
flip flip flop, flip flip flop.
that sinking, knowing feeling
but i was not particularly bothered
maybe
perhaps
indifferent.

I think to myself
how cool
i'm not angry.

A woman hollers indignation
at me in her driveway.
5 minutes lady
just 5 minutes.
she stands defiant
by her trapped car
staring into my toiling, squat form

Bitch

okay
maybe i'm not so cool.

Tighten the lugs
toss the crowbar
shut the trunk
glare at indignation
with equal defiance.

As i back the car into
a recently vacated space

convenient, eh?

I begin to know
i'm not going to make the wedding.
two replaced tires,
a wheel alignement,
an oil change,
and
$250 later

maybe the dinner

yes

maybe the dinner.

 

Of Remorse

Shadows creep upon the edges of moonbeams
and mishapen night. A glimmer of sullen hope illuminates
thy call to arms by father's dying breath. What war has brought
in jealous haste, must be laid to rest on bloody death.
In the wake of love there is no victor.

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