Category: Poetry

That summer I wanted to

take off all my clothes.

Be naked under the sun.

Tango all over warm grass,

so warm, warm.

 

Noontime perfumed berries

and lush grass.  Beneath honey

locust through hushed woods

We found this spring,

a secret susurrus disco.

 

My feet began two-stepping

over slippery pebbles.

Threading soft water, the sun

dresses us in golden sequins.

 

Your hand reaches for me.

 

---

Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary zines such as Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Blueline, Halcyon Days and included in Bright Hills Press, Kind of A Hurricane Press and Poppy Road Review anthologies. She has been nominated four times for Best of the Net.

The room whispers to itself

in a hundred subtle tones.

Your dress hangs in a closet

in a panorama of sighs.

The ordinary light can’t ease

 

the sorrow of the bedclothes

crumpled to suggest the ghosts

that smoke from the graveyards

every resurrection eve.

Maybe after the moon rises

 

and wood fires sizzle in houses

enlivened with small children

the dark will seem less daunting.

Today I walked a dozen miles

in a forest devoid of birds.

 

The silence so inflated me

that like a great parade balloon

I arose from the leaf-litter

and assumed a posture ripe enough

to propel me into a future

 

in which absence is no longer news.

You preferred a day of books

thicker than legs of lamb and

almost as meaty. I assume

you learned something angular

 

so you shed your dress in a huff

and crawled into bed and wept.

Now the seams in the sky open

to reveal that pearly undercoat

we’ve always hoped to acquire.

 

But instead of consoling ourselves

in each other’s bodily aura

we pose on the cusp of extinction

as if enjoying this moment

of competing shades of musk.

---

William Doreski’s work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently A Black River, A Dark Fall (Splash of Red, 2018).

A circle-jerk of historical names —

Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt —

divvying up the Baltic pie,

the three stooges, out of necessity,

together on the same momentous stage

and about to exercise their penmanship

après le deluge, the shell-shocked

gun-shy ex-soldiers slurrying home

to be de-mobbed back into civvies,

a book for signatures spread-eagled,

blank as Franklin’s expression,

Winston pugnacious, Uncle Joe

quasi-smirking, the pen delicately

balanced, like many things, over a page.

---

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So–Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press) and Like As If (Pskis Porch), all available via Amazon.

 

The welding-fused wendigo

creates itself from city dust, salt and clay. From my bed, I hear it mewl out a newborn cry down

the block. My eardrum holds the sound. Robotic. Crackly like a fingernail chipping a painted

wall naked. Youngstown is the womb, and we all are the guilty party—the ones who thrusted the

seed. Every light flickers—the moon skips a beat. Scrap, old wire, and two bowls of molten steel

earthworm-inch to the bastard cell. A clomp. A shimmy. A sear. This life—this baby—grows

seven feet tall, sucking in city junk, gaining mass, clanking down my street with its fire eyes in

its fleshless hands. Hiding behind my bunk, I see it trying to suffocate itself in its own chest, hear

its motherless moans. It shoos itself away into nothing, into the city’s black, escaping the

haunting thumps of heartbeats that it can’t help but perceive in every direction except down

below its own chin.

---

Dom Fonce is an undergrad English major at Youngstown State University. His work has been published in, or is forthcoming in, Junto Magazine, The Tishman Review, 3Elements Literary Review, Obra/Artifact, COG, Blacklist Journal, Ohio’s Best Emerging Poets: An Anthology, West Texas Literary Review, GNU Journal, Fourth and Sycamore, Great Lakes Review, and elsewhere. He can be reached at [email protected].

 

Like a plate of food, my America

is

collards, black eye peas

cornbread, and sweet potatoes

but mostly all around

it is like a dessert

on a saucer

a slice of sweet apple pie

says the poet

I serve to each and everyone, that

is America, the light of liberty like

a fork.

---

Danny P. Barbare resides in the Upstate of the Carolinas. His poetry has recently appeared in Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review. He attended Greenville Technical College.

 

Take me in before the frost

Fragrances in a vase

That slowly fade

Winter is a crime

Spring, so full of plants

Summer doesn’t have enough time

And Fall; our last chance

---

Luke Samra is from Kalamazoo, MI.  His work appears in: The Tipton Poetry Journal, FishFood Magazine, Local Gems Press (Bards Against Hunger), The Charleston Anvil and Flying Island.  Luke is a tennis instructor and musician.

Webbed appendages would be useful.
I might, with them,
be able to dart through the folds
of traps you’ve laid in the room.
I might speed away
from the words that ricochet like shrapnel.
Propelling myself through the waves
of fuselage into the deadest of seas.

---

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or writing. Her works have appeared in numerous publications and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web. Her debut novel, The Rose Master, was published in 2014 and was called a “strong and satisfying effort” by Publishers Weekly.

A raft of keys

fanned out

across your desk,

each one built

for some door somewhere.

You know

about locks,

tumblers, picks,

but you won’t go

to that black room

until you

make a guess

you can’t take back.

She will stay trapped—

unseen,

unseeing.

No riddle

needs to be solved

but your certainty

must go.

Leap or fall

blind.

Burn your books

and forget how words mean.

 

Random notes

dropped for you to read:

The keys

guard staffs

and open melody.

She waits

for her own theme

to rise,

for you to sing

in spite

of your untamed voice.

Doors will swing

wide,

paths appear

but you may orchestrate

nothing.

She arrives,

hearing what she sees.

---

Mark J. Mitchell’s latest novel, The Magic War just appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work has appeared in the several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. Three of his chapbooks— Three Visitors, Lent, 1999, and Artifacts and Relics—and the novel, Knight Prisoner are available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble..  He lives with his wife the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster and makes a living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco.

A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/

 

 

Tonight seems rigged to be nearly endless—

highly deceptive minutes

a jangle of black fabrication

crouched and trembling.

It’s sad that you’ll never be able to transcend your suffering;

you’re just not that good at being human.

Folding blissfully

you’ve become the force you refuse to believe in—

and you don’t understand it;

why spring became excited when you entered the world

taking advantage of you by the thoughtless sea,

your bright neck and your reckless idiot breasts

and still you value the most fantastic lies

and misadventures of mind.

This was my idea—

the gradual wriggling of darling, thumb-like things

I built it all on my own

and if I love you it’s only because you’ve given me

fleeting access to your introverted visions;

an atmosphere of no resistance

unleashing five toe-swept vivas

into the emptiness of space

bubbles of deletion bursting in your brain.

---

Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best of the Web nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.

 

they had known married life

for many years

had grown old together

grown used to each other

grown apart

they hardly needed to talk

anymore

so they rarely did

 

he would complain that

she always had plenty

to say

when the game was on

just

to his mind

never anything important

 

she loved knitting,

working in her garden,

cooking, and

taking care of her house plants,

that he felt crowded the kitchen

he hated those damn plants

 

his devotions were

scotch and soda,

Tony Bennett on vinyl,

and baseball on tv

then one day

she was gone

 

after the funeral

his grown daughters

carried away most of her things

he figured she would have

wanted it that way

now

he sits alone at night

he no longer drinks

she always hated his scotch

he still watches baseball

but he cannot concentrate

on it anymore

he tries to remember

all those silly things

she talked about

 

he sleeps on her side of the bed now

walks the house in her robe

watches all her favorite shows,

shows he could never stand

before

most importantly

though

he waters

those damn plants

---

Matthew Longerbeam is a native of Maryland. He was a victim of violent crime in the 1990s and has spent most of his adult life in recovery. Matthew is currently working on a degree in Human Services at HCC and lives in Williamsport, Md with his wife Tabby and his cat Hobo.