ROTTEN LEAVES Magazine » POETRY

Submissions are CLOSED…for now.

rottenleaves — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:03:15 +0000

Submissions are now CLOSED for the time being. While we don’t want to use the word “hiatus”, the fact is that all three editors are busy either polishing or finishing their respective novels. Meaning we’re hellishly busy.

On the good news side – there may be something wonderful in store for Rotten Leaves.

It sounds like “sprint”, especially if you remove the first letter.

But more on that either in August or September. In the meantime, ya’ll have a fantastic summer, filled with sun and drinks and good fiction.

The Clown, by Edward J. Rathke

rottenleaves — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:28:47 +0000

jimmy was a friend of mine

every night from the rodeo

wearing clown paint

a blue dress vest

pink oversized pants

jimmy watched with black sharkeyes

looked like a walking corpse

nothing but grey skin

yellow decaying teeth

and jagged bones

jimmy looked a childs nightmare

he sounded like he ate nails

a voice like sandpaper

like breathing smoke

like drinking glass

jimmy smelled like graveyards

never showered or changed

dried paint on his face

wrinkled filthy clothes

an imminent death echo

jimmy was a friend of mine

but never told his name

he sat smoking menthols

occasionally talking

drinking jim beam

jimmy loved to drink nights away

every night on the stool next to me

painted smile on his face

knives in his pockets

whiskey in his hand

jimmy stabbed a suited man

he spent months in jail

offered no reason

showed no remorse

just a painted smile

jimmy was a friend of mine

he felt like rotting clocks

despised the future

loathed the past

repulsed the present

jimmy lived in dadaistic nightmares

he complained walls screamed

was suspicious of shadows

saw ghosts everywhere

spoke to scarecrows

jimmy staggered into chaotic implosions

lived with a constant gun in his mouth

an unstable landmine

willing to kill any thing

a masqueraded guillotine

jimmy was a friend of mine

jimmy was a clown

jimmy was a demonic mystic

a hateful degenerate visionary

a nightmare revolutionary

jimmy was a friend of mine

but mostly

jimmy

scared the shit

out of me

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edward J. Rathke is a wandering sort who spends his time making bad decisions and trying to not die. More of his words and life can be found at edwardjrathke.wordpress.com.

Venus Di Milo, by Jessica L. J. Smith

rottenleaves — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:38:52 +0000

Upon matriculating, her parting gift was a pair of combat boots.

Artemis was jealous, Athena loathed her.

Off to war she flew on a comet of enthusiasm.

While other women danced heady in full bloom,

sweating through the darkest part of the night,

She laid low, hair pulled back, breasts pushed flat

against her chest, bathed in cold sweat and dust.

At first light the rocketing sounds of the machines

tore through her delicate maternal fears.

Her empty womb sliced painfully at her brazen heart.

She was resolved at dusk, when she saw the vacant bodies of

children, sprawled out, broken.

Athena had no sympathy, fate blew the boots clean off.

Blood and limbs flayed, her eyes closed, parallel with the horizon.

Empty days and nights pass in black silence,

She woke to sound of the tidal moon, the aching of her womb.

She reached out with nothing.

An echo of her arms, with itchy, ghostly pain—sheered off at the Humerus and

Acromion bones—was jarring and ominous.

The first thing she mourned was the idea

of never holding a child.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aspiring writer, adequate human, loyal friend.

Don’t Try This At Home, by Ian Hunter

rottenleaves — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:57:58 +0000

Heard in the limbo of the waiting room

at Accident and Emergency

from the excited tones of two boys

It happened

It really did

That when old Granny Mutchie

was a little girl she was scared

to go to the dentist

on account of the drill

that killed her big sister

but that’s a different story

This one is about the awful

toothache she had

pain throbbing in her jaw

making her cry

when she bit anything

but still she wouldn’t see the dentist

In the end she tied the tooth

to the door handle

Bribing her big brothers

to pull the door shut

as hard as they could

So hard it yanked her skeleton

out of her skin

making them run away screaming

and now she lives beside us

in the rundown house

with the wilderness garden

If you go there on a dare

to ring her doorbell

after an eternity

four boney fingers will pull

back the lace curtain

and her face

will make you scream

that’s what they said

those two boys

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ian Hunter lives in Scotland, and is a member of the British Fantasy Society (and poetry editor for their magazine “Dark Horizons”), as well as being a member of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers Circle and the Ghost Story Society. He is author of three children’s novels – “The Dark Knight’s Blade”, “Lipstick Lass” and “The Magic Mousehole”, and the guide to the alternative Glasgow they didn’t want you to know about “Fantastic Glasgow”. His poems and stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK, the USA and Canada.

His website is www.ian-hunter.co.uk, and he is a founding member of the Scottish writer’s collective Read Raw, www.readrawltd.co.uk

Attention Deficit, by Matthew Dexter

rottenleaves — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:21:44 +0000

I witnessed the most gifted and brilliant children from the richest families in America reduced to penniless addicted degenerates,
sniffing white miles, pink piles of crushed up Ritalin through hollowed out Bic pens, into congested crimson nostrils,
up bloody noses, hemorrhaging copiously like demented rats in
the most hopelessly twisted of sadistic experiments, always searching for that endless line of cheese at the end of the maze, they roamed the nation’s greatest
campuses alone and despondent, relentlessly yearning for that next fix,
spinning razorblades in rapid circles on the tips of their tongues they cut through cartilage pharmaceuticals
with meticulous purpose, driven by intricate precision,
aspiring plastic surgeons performing emergency rhinoplasty on deviated septa,
forging prescriptions, stealing skillfully from friends and family, buying pills from neighbors,
breaking into pharmacies in the middle of the night,
we watched white clouds of residual powdered prescription smoke flow freely from greedy mouths before expelling the chronic cough induced from flooding the lungs with millions of milligrams of this unknown concoction,
this golden new gateway drug of the 21st century,
affluent sons and daughters of the planet’s future reduced to junkie rubble,
through the pervasive abuse of medications their parents happily supplied,
all in the pursuit of perfect grades, and that infamous admissions letter to that famous college,
to produce the ideal image of the picturesque American family in the eyes of indispensable social circles,
they had actually destroyed everything for nothing,
leaving their sacred heirs and heiresses nameless, blind, naked, desecrated,
forgotten,
arrogant sons and daughters of prominent United States senators, lawyers, doctors, and presidents of the
world’s largest pharmaceutical companies have turned their own grandchildren into nothing better
than convenient test dummies
for the next generation of fortunate delinquents,
I watched as this experiment went terribly wrong, and the catastrophic damages spread beyond control,
inevitably these innocent privileged children eventually graduated from legal American prescription stimulants to Brazilian cocaine and Mexican amphetamines,
as the companies and politicians got richer in the name of pills, powder, and blood,
showering downward from the ones who could have made the most difference,
if they were only given the decision to survive.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matthew Dexter is an American anomaly living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. He writes novels, memoirs, poetry, journalism articles, and short stories. When Matthew is not writing he enjoys life by the ocean; beautiful beaches, breathtaking views, reading, and being inspired. But never candlelit dinners on the beach. He’s afraid of Pirates.

Poetry

rottenleaves — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:19:08 +0000

Prose and verse poetry.

“Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.

One evening I took Beauty in my arms – and I thought her bitter – and I insulted her.”

Arhur Rimbaud