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  • We Go, Departing to Dusk by Emily Strauss

    Odd that earlier we existed,
    felt our own substance before
    disappearing to despair,
    sometimes gone by nightfall.
    We may linger awhile but
    the lamp will be snuffed out—

    and unless we steel ourselves
    to loss, our own and more,
    moons will dispel around us
    like a vase of flowers with wilted
    stems sinking into cloudy water—
    then we will lose our grasp.

    Surely, this early today, there
    remain the skins of opaque ghosts
    not yet torn from our ribs
    though we may remember the feel
    of yesterday’s body extinguished
    in our blood, lingering at daylight.

    —

    Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college Over 300 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies, in the U.S. and abroad. The natural world is generally her framework; she also considers the stories of people and places around her. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.

     

  • sleep(less) night by Nicolette Daskalakis

    I woke from a dream I didn’t have
    from a sleep I didn’t fall
    into,
    and I asked you:
    What did you dream of?

    Nothing.

    I dreamt of nothing too.

    So as we laid in the silence
    of an unconscious night,
    I pictured someone
    hovering
    over us in the dark,
    mouth open,
    eating dreams
    we never had.

    —

    Nicolette Daskalakis is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and multi-media artist residing in Los Angeles. She received a BA in film production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and a minor in Intermedia Arts from the Roski School of Art & Design. Her first book, “because you’re now banging a French girl,” was published in 2015.

  • Prophylactics by J.T. Whitehead

    The interesting thing about him was that he never used to shared too much of himself.  He made it clear to others who went fishing in him that they could catch nothing but his very chilly cold.  He despised it when they shared too much information.  Then he paid back.  Once, a woman at an office party said she used to take her husband to a cottage down South, but that he was not the first man she took there, only the first that she knew she would be with.  He paid that woman back with: “That’s a wonderful story, Ann.  I lost my virginity at a drive-in theater in a train.”  She never shared anything with him again.  He considered himself liberated from her.  After that happened, we were stuck together on an elevator.  I sensed discomfort.  I asked him, “How are you?”  I didn’t want an answer, really.  But I sort of cared.  He answered, “Terrible.  I’m going through a divorce.”  “That’s terrible,” I said. “Yes,” he said.  “She fucked the Regional Director.”  This time I knew it was the truth.  He wasn’t saying it to keep me away.  He wasn’t making it up.  He wasn’t paying me back.  His wife must have really fucked the Regional Director.  His eyes had been scooped out.  They were melting in some one else’s cone.  It must have been the Regional Director’s.  I had belief.  This was truth.  “Why did you tell me this?” I asked him, as nonchalantly as possible.  “Two reasons.” he said.   “First, if people know that I’m going through a divorce, and I don’t tell them I was the cuckold, they will think that I was the Regional Director, the fucker, in all this.  Second, every time I tell someone, it’s like pulling a feather from a bird . . .”  I said, “How?”  He said, “I’ll have a naked chicken.  Like one of those rubber chickens they used in those old vaudeville acts, to hit someone in the face.”  I asked him, “Did anything come of this?”  He said, “No children.”  I said “Well . . . in a manner of speaking.”  Then he hit me in the face.  With a rubber chicken.  And laughed.
    —
     
    J.T. Whitehead has had over 160 poems accepted for print by over 75 publications.  He is a  Pushcart Prize-nominated short story author, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, and a winner of the Margaret Randall Poetry Prize. He is the Editor in Chief of So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.  His first full length collection of poetry, The Table of the Elements, (The Broadkill River Press, 2015), was nominated for the National Book Award.
     

  • Hinting at Eternity by Bruce McRae

    My stars, if I may be so familiar,
    what’s with the silent routine, the timeless aplomb,
    this whole ‘distant and aloof’ business?
    You are, en masse, incorrigibly gifted,
    dripping with syrupy mysteries, and these
    suggesting inner depths and untapped powers.

    It is we who’ve endowed you with abilities
    never stated, and never intended.
    We say you are birds just released
    or souls or goddesses or burning sands.
    We ponder our existence as compared to yours.
    We dabble in sophistry, just because we can;
    we who are instilled with awe,
    infused with the wonder of beauty.

    —

    Pushcart nominee Bruce McRae is a Canadian musician with over a thousand poems published internationally, including Poetry.com, Rattle and The North American Review. A new book has just been released, An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy, and his first book, The So-Called Sonnets, and both are available on Amazon. To see and hear more poems go to ‘BruceMcRaePoetry’ on YouTube.

     

     

  • Seeing a Picture of 2 Guys I Knew 40 Years Ago by Jeanne DeLarm-Neri

    I knew them like fluid,
    like we were all connected,
    linked by our roaming molecules,
    like we shared the same skin cells,
    bumped arm to arm in sparks.
    Like cigarettes lit, glowed, burned,
    light one with the suck of the other.
    You could smoke in the diner then,
    and at night we sat in a bar
    which burned down last year.
    Drinks included crème de menthe.
    Its sweet child body slipped down cool
    and came up hot and undigested,
    baby puke, no bits of stomach lining,
    no pieces of the pulmonary system.
    Though as I inspect the picture of these two,
    slender, hair to the shoulders,
    dressed in chinos and moccasins,
    one smiling under a mustache
    and the other worried, keys in hand,
    I believe that a cardiologist
    may detect a nick or two
    missing from my aorta—
    pieces of me left behind
    on an Ohio lawn, should a machine
    be invented that could measure
    the weight of a moment lost.

    —

    Though Jeanne DeLarm-Neri has written poetry and stories for her entire life, she also earns a living in other fields, particularly as a bookkeeper at a private school, and as a vendor of antiques. Her poems and short fiction have been published in two anthologies (In Gilded Frame 2013 and Poems Of The Super-Moon, 2015), and several literary journals, one of which, Slipstream, nominated a poem for the Pushcart Prize. In 2014 and 2015 she was a contributor at the  Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She’s currently working on a book of poems and a novel.

  • Sister Earthworm by David P. Miller

    An earthworm breaches the surface
    of the pitched hillside where a boy
    sits, knees up, sneakers braced
    against a grass-stained slide
    to the street. The creature stops
    the boy’s breath, not from fright
    but from greeting. Child zoologist,
    his glass-jarred toad dreams in alcohol.
    A real cat’s skull from a specimen
    catalog reigns on the shelf. Today
    the surge of a worm to his side.

    The boy runs to his room
    knowing this joy could be written.
    Some exact words about sister earthworm.
    Grasping pencil, he turns into a child
    too consciously thinking himself as a child
    inspired to write what a child
    would write if a child were inspired.
    He gapes at the paper. Writes nothing.
    Goes back outside.

    For five decades he wonders what he could say
    for a single stray earthworm in spring,
    unaware of him, both above ground
    in the shade.

    —
    David P. Miller’s chapbook, The Afterimages, was published in 2014 by Červená Barva Press. His poems have appeared in publications including Meat for Tea, Ibbetson Street, Painters and Poets, Fox Chase Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Oddball Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Incessant Pipe.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Infinity Dance by Derek Piotr

    When you cut the root,
    thick and yellow from the earth,
    the root regrows immediately
    purple edged and defiant,
    fed by underground rivers
    and searching endlessly
    while April rain nails blooms
    sideways to the saturated lawn.

    In this you find the infinite,
    the mouth of something in
    something else, feathers
    where there ought not to be,
    a moment of dissonance
    bringing clarity to the dying
    elms, a single crane cutting
    the sky with its bowed wings.

    —

    Derek Piotr is a Poland-born producer and composer based in New England, whose work focuses primarily on the voice. When he has free time, he likes to write. His work with sound has been nominated by the jury for Prix Ars Electronica (2012), and featured on Resonance FM and BBC, and his written works have been published by The Broome Street Review, Hanover Press and The Newtowner.

  • A New Spring by Pijush Kanti Deb

     

    When a pool is bloomed
    in a desert
    and a blossom on a rock,
    an unknown thirst crawls
    in my body
    informing
    a new spring is nearby.
    When the sky
    gets down to land
    and the dozing fate
    from its bed,
    an optimism traverses
    in my mind
    announcing
    a new spring is nearby.
    When the prayer is cared
    by someone divine
    and the ashamed gap
    by someone I love and care,
    a purity evolves
    to sterilize my soul
    whispering
    a new spring is really nearby.

    —-

    Pijush Kanti Deb is a new Indian poet with around 261 published or
    accepted poems and haiku in around 90 nos of national and
    international magazines and journals. His best achievement so far is the publication of his first poetry collection, Beneath The Shadow Of A White Pigeon, published by Hollow Publishing.

  • Woman, Please Poetry Prompt

    Woman Please Prompt
    From Washington State University, Fine Arts Page

    Since about the mid-twentieth century, feminists and historians have gradually, and, sometimes painfully, worked to restore the voices, images, and contributions of women and reinstating them, incrementally, into history and the literary canon.

    While it’s long been understood that women are as instrumental as men in the making and destroying of empires, whether domestic or of a grand scale, their contributions have consistently been relegated to dark corners and back kitchens.

    In time, perhaps women’s roles will be as obvious and as representative as those of men, and to that end, I offer today’s prompt, which incorporates two distinct approaches to poetry: ekphrasis and persona.

    Ekphrasis, in simple terms, is a response to a piece of artwork. Contemporary poets often stretch this tradition to include popular culture, music, television, movies, and every day objects, in addition to traditional or contemporary art.

    Persona, on the other hand, is stepping into another’s shoes and telling a story from their unique perspective. This approach takes a great deal of imagination and is often tweaked to fit a poem’s purpose.

    You are probably familiar with the novel, Wicked by Gregory Maguire, which explores the untold stories of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West, and Girl With the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, which reinvents the female subject of Vemeer’s painting of the same title. Both stories respond to existing works of art and both consider the perspective of withheld or otherwise down-played characters to create a compelling story.

    For today’s prompt, consider works of art which were created by or feature women. Think expansively and include in your perusal everything from ancient art to modern Hulu favorites. Your piece of art may be a song, a hand crafted item, carefully prepared food, a character from mythology, or even an image as recognizable at the Mona Lisa. Don’t give up too easily; instead trust that you will know the right subject for your poem when you see it.

    For further inspiration for today’s prompt, check out “Women Defending Castle With Bow and Crossbow” by Christine Stewart-Nuñez  over at Verse Daily. 

     

  • Mouse Heaven Richard King Perkins II

    The exterminator has taken away
    the small carcasses
    and left the smell of Lysol
    and coiled snap traps
    baited with peanut butter.
    Your eyes mourn
    those tiny missing lives
    wanting there to be
    a mouse heaven
    free from human dominance.
    My laughter makes you wince
    and cry even harder.
    I hold myself open to you
    but even
    in my most comforting arms
    you cannot find
    the slightest hint
    of comfort.

    —

    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 nominee and a Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.

  • Rules for flying by Allyson Whipple

    Be early, though you’ll inevitably be late. Don’t forget
    to tip whoever drives your cab, your shuttle bus. Tolerate
    children. Your passport photo will never be flattering,
    because you are not allowed to smile. Bring liquor
    or melatonin or antihistamines or whatever sedatives are legal
    these days. Sleep to avoid jet lag, or exhaust yourself to avoid
    jet lag, or don’t bother with either, because they won’t work.
    Gum won’t stop your ears from popping. Say Bless your heart
    to flight attendants and ticketing agents and mean it. Think
    Bless your heart to TSA and customs agents, but don’t say
    anything, because it might come out wrong. Observe
    how Earth is only a map when you’re 30,000 feet up. Accept
    the loss of control, admit you’re at the mercy
    of mechanics, logistics, weather.

    —

    Allyson Whipple has an M.A. in English and a black belt in Kung Fu. She is currently studying poetry through the UT-El Paso Online MFA Program. Allyson serves as co-editor of the Texas Poetry Calendar, and is the author of the chapbook We’re Smaller Than We Think We Are. She teaches at Austin Community College.

  • Change of Season by KB Ballentine

    Locust tree etches the sky –
    lime green pooling into blue.
    Bumble bees have begun to lumber
    over winter’s parched, crumbling remains.
    These are the days when dawn shimmers,
    North Star singing away the night.
    A robin chirps from the brush line,
    and bluebird ripostes, rusty breast swelling.
    Dew pearls grass, irises spearing the earth.
    Where do we go from here?
    A line of spider web shivers in the breeze.
    Ants march the porch railings.
    I am frozen in yesterday’s words,
    morning light on your empty chair.

    —

    KB Ballentine’s work has appeared in numerous journals and publications. A finalist for the 2014 Ron Rash Poetry Award, she was also a 2006 finalist for the Joy Harjo Poetry Award and was awarded the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize in 2006 and 2007.  Fragments of Light(2009) and Gathering Stones (2008) were published by Celtic Cat Publishing. Her third collection, What Comes of Waiting, won the 2013 Blue Light Press Book Award.

     

     

  • Inventing the Shadow, 1899 by Catherine Anderson

    Illuminator of delicate foot bones
    and dental caries, my father’s machine flashes,
    then disappears into the blur of folklore.

    A switch sent crackling waves between
    two wires, then voila! a spirit-print, an X-ray.
    Found in the cellar, decades later: sheets

    of skeletal arms and hands shelved in dust
    like Freud’s dreams of his own anxiety—
    forgotten, then recalled—the dream

    of leaving home naked,
    or of teeth falling out like hail stones.
    High on a shelf rests my father’s invention,

    a tango dance of round coils in a box
    of black bakelite and red mahogany,
    the grain polished so deep I could show you

    the original forest growing within.
    Get to know your shadow he would tell me
    through ringlets of smoke.

    None of us in the whole of our lives
    will ever be seen for who we are.
    Once, in an experiment to see what

    could happen next, I tore up my shadow, then
    pitched the little pieces out the window
    just to watch them scatter,

    lit like snow in moonlight,
    my naked shadow—
    hissing and swirling in the dry black.

    —

    Catherine Anderson is the author of The Work of Hands (Perugia Press) and In the Mother Tongue (Alice James Books). Her third collection, Woman with a Gambling Mania, appeared in 2014 with Mayapple Press and was named as one of the Kansas City Star’s top books of the year.

     

  • Living Poetry Prompt

    Misc iPhone 2015 004

    It’s amazing that we are here at all.

    What I mean is, we human beings are a complex mix of resiliency and vulnerabilities. We take risks dashing across busy streets, regularly travel great distances over vast oceans in planes and boats, forget and leave the oven on, encounter dozens of harmful germs and bacteria while moving through our lives, and still manage do out best to help others every day. We survive heartache, bounce back from job terminations, mourn the death of loved ones, and still, on a whole, manage to get up every morning and, more or less, do it all again.

    Maybe we deal with insomnia or indigestion, maybe our cholesterol is high and our metabolism is low, maybe we get depressed, and maybe we drink too much, but were’ alive, damn it, and as long as we are, we remain determined.

    For today’s prompt, write a list of every near miss you’ve had in your life. Include the time that guy in the red Corvette DIDN’T hit you when he ran the red light, or the time you THOUGHT you were drowning but really just got water up your nose. Also include those near misses you don’t distinctly remember but which likely happened, like surviving 300 consecutive days of rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles, or something like that. Get fantastical, get lyrical, and make your list long, true, doubtful, and outrageous.

    Once you’ve compiled an impressive list of near misses, which may or may not have really occurred, use them as inspiration for a poem.

    If you feel up to a challenge, include every singe item on your list, even though the resulting poem may feel contrived. It’s OK, you can always revise.

    Otherwise, just pick and choose the most interesting, significant, or unusual instances on your list and use them as motivation to write your next AMAZING poem.

    And don’t forget to revise.

    When you’ve finished your draft, take a look at this finsihed poem by Laura Kasichke, which is all about “Near Misses.”

  • Fault by Kit Zak

    FaultSummer 2013 398

    each other

    like plankton on the tides
    conversations mundane
              leftovers sound fine
    I paid the mortgage bill

    feelings trenched inward
    no gulf stream warming
    vast plains of deserts
    (no path through)

    unspoken … hidden
    in our crusts

    until Jan phoned: it’s Jim
    we fold together outside intensive care

    between petitions and sobs
    we draw a cross on each other’s forehead
    mutual pardon

    —

    Kit Zak, formerly a teacher, considers writing poetry a political act. Her main topics include corporate exploitation of workers and the environment. She publishes in the few protest journals like Newversenews, The Blue Collar Review, as well as Avocet, California Quarterly, The Lyric, The Broadkill Review and numerous anthologies.