Prince Albert

It's Prince Albert
looking
over the vast dominions,
offshore balancing it is,

or is it just a can,
rusty,
red,
long discarded amongst the pines,
East Texas pines,

still a hint of tobacco,
long smoked
when the train still pushed through.

By Benjamin Nash

Bedtime

8:00 p.m. Still light out. I hear them
playing, their shouting and laughter.
Not me though, sent to bed on schedule,
(and not even tired!) sighing and twisting
in cotton sheets Mom dried on the line.
Lawn mower blades churn—Mr. Harrison, next door?
There’s Kelly McGrotha two doors down,
tossing a baseball with his big brother.
Is that Ann Swenson bouncing her
red rubber kickball against their garage door?
Miss Lillian Matson is yelling for her Pekinese,
Yen-Tu, to come in for the night.
And me, alone and apart, stuck inside
this solid safe trap of a house.

By Terry Martin

Pavement Sprout

Why do you spray the pavement sprout?
He lives in cement, he doesn’t need this!
Your thumb will get sore choose you to
Continue your spraying of the
Pavement sprout.

How hardy he is, smiling for
The sun’s return. You should admire
His simple pleasures! What ease of
Mind comes to you through a wilted
Pavement Sprout?

By Matthew Pelletier

Burning

Every pore of my diseased skin is
open this evening when
mid-April feels the way mid-August
used to.

The vinca is done and the
forsythia is done and the
lilacs, as of today,
are blooming.

My sister once dreamed
of an iguana sitting in her lap
while we swam outside in winter.

Listen--this is not a metaphor.
My skin is really full
and burning.

By Christian Reifsteck

Dinner After My Dad's Furneral

"Repast,"
I said to my grandmother
91 and almost deaf

"They call these funeral dinners repasts."

"The past?" she kept saying.

"Repast!"

Yelled
My depressed aunt
grey hair short,
                        parted like
                        Audrey Hepburn
"He said repast!"

The table
got quiet.


By Bill Nicholas

While Another Black Hole Eats a Star

In my earlier foolish marriage,
my husband thought it best to confess

everything.
This made cicatrici (scars)—

natural debris from attempts at healing.
When he tried to make up with gifts

like pearls, they turned into mermaid’s tears—
small plastic pellets that poison the seas.


By Susana H. Case

Learn more about Susana here!

Assembly Required

In bits and pieces
they fall from heaven,
disassembled snowmen,
one flake after the other,
strewn about the countryside,
discovered by those young at heart,
and with a dash
of imaginative insight,
they roll a gleeful creature
in their own image.
No directions needed.


By Michael Keshigian

To learn more about Michael, click here!

Moonlight

It delivers a promise from the sun
upon a slender shoot whose spiky tip
slices black windows.
Yet night still penetrates,
an ink stain upon linen,
and the owls, ever vigilant,
stare wide eyed into the deep darkness
of our shadowed insecurities.

By Michael Keshigian

To learn more about Michael, click here!

Mouthful

Some words are bigger than others.
They take up more air, give more lip,
use many more of the mouth’s muscles.
They take longer to say, often unpronounceable,
with unexpected twists, hidden syllables,
extra letters tucked away in some dark corner.
The type of word favoured in spelling bees,
the students stumbling over their tongues;
as if they’ve been given a trick question.

The kind of words rarely used, being difficult,
the foreign speaker wondering ‘why and how’,
my thesaurus baffled, the dictionary mum,
proving some things are better left unsaid,
how some truths are best unspoken.

By Bruce McRae

To find out more about Bruce, click here!

Georgetown, Colorado

The gold-red omens of the frost
Still spin and scrape across the asphalt streets
And come to rest against the playground walls.

The copper light of afternoon
Transforms the town and sets aglow
A yellow house (still hidden from the road).

The flickering aspens line the path,
Where evening slides into an autumn world.

By Jan Whitt

Slow Clap

One hand clapping sounds
the one man band then
the crowd’s crescendo
into one celebratory moment.

By Chris Butler

Hanging Rock

I play a game with the moon. Like the game where you say a word over and over until it loses its meaning, I look at the rising moon again and again until it too becomes nonsense. A thing that hangs there in space, unattached to this world. Painted on a canvas sky, it would make more sense, but a floating rock? And when I remember that we too are hanging rock, the game is over.

By Phillip Barron

Woods Song

In the morning I walk in my pajamas to the perimeter of the woods.
No one hears these birds but me. Singing. Calling.
I stand still. Take it in. My birds. God's birds.

Remember the notes and trills. Stay this moment. Remember.

In the evening I walk the path to the creek. Down hill through the
weeds and poison ivy. Canopy overhead. Fewer songs.
Trees whisper. Squirrels still. I try to hear the deer.

Remember the forest sounds at end of day. Breathe it.
Remember.

At night I sit on the porch. Frog calls at the creek give a bass note to the quiet. Cicadas sing.
The owl may hunt tonight. She'll wake me. I'll know when she eats.

Too soft the passing of time. Too short to waste this glory. Remember.

In the dark I rest inside. I hear what I am tuned to hear. The folds of sleepy air
curl around and rock all but the night hunters. I hear the owl, then nothing.

By Janice A. Farringer

To find out more about Janice, click here!

Black Ice

Sitting in my car ass-backwards in a snow bank,
the explosion of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
not to be compressed into the crescendo of my fate,
I was reminded of the dual nature of snow,
gravity, and left curves. How destiny is a
snow plow not too worried about oncoming traffic.
Even after a near collision there’s little to do but drive,
knowing well enough the cold silence of passing, the chills
that run through the spine, the black ice beneath our feet.

By Ryan Lappi