Lonnie Monka‘s poems “Waning & Waiting” and “Erotics of Silence”, included in our Summer 2014 issue, are very brief but very powerful, so without further ado:

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“Waning & Waiting”

BULLETS WHIZ
        past people’s ears
every day
      on city streets;
I have shot
      the same gun
others have used
      for suicide.

The stop signs have
      no gun holes here,
the sun is blocked
      from flirting strands
of light, flickering
      with the rising
& the setting
      of lust-filled days:—
Maybe tomorrow
      I’ll find her,
perhaps I will pull
      hard on her hair.

Every day
      I wake up
a blinded bird
      that craves to fly:
Who can resist
      the savage pleasure
of pushing hard
      against the air?

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“Erotics of Silence”

IF ONLY—OH! IF ONLY THE BURNING,
scorching bits
of I-don’t-know-what
would stop.

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LONNIE MONKA is a U.S. native now living in Jerusalem. He loves the finer things in life, like reading & writing. Lately, he’s been happily hard at work developing Jerusalism, a literary community based in Israel.