Flicker Pink

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Light ambrosia of the sun
is over all of her.
She is shy

the way the flicker
pink of rabbit eye
is shy. Within the

almond hair, cliffs
of cheek round in, where
unifies her chin.

There, two birds meet
before they carry out her smile.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Sweetness and Smoke

Contributor: Brian Baumgarn

- -
He remembered the Ohio of his youth.
Winters of pure, glistening snow. His parents
taking him on wagon rides over the deep,
winding trails of naked woodlands.
Swooping great horned owl, fog-breathed
whitetail deer, and string-like clouds flirting
with a cool, pearlescent cup of moon.

At trail's end, wagons emptying.
Families standing and sitting around a
great, crackling bonfire. Smoke-laden
breath from burning hickory, maple, and ash
stinging his eyes and lungs. Aromatic.
People singing. Warm cider and cinnamon.
Cookies and treats.
The plush fragrance of steaming coffee
that he was still too young to share.
It was all splendid adventure. Afterward,
falling into a dreamless, hibernal sleep
before getting halfway home.

Later in winter. People drawing the
blood of the maple trees into buckets.
He had seen it drip from miniscule
tap-wounds in the bark. As the tree was
alive, he pondered if this hurt?
Workers hauling the sap-laden buckets
toward slat sided shacks hidden deep
within the forest.
The maple's lifeblood being rendered
into the most savory syrup
and maple sugar candy.
Sweet treats and a delicacy
for pancakes and waffles.
Ambrosia, his mother and father called it.

Life was all sweetness and smoke.
Crisp, clear, untried.
His mother and father were so right.


- - -
A 65 year old working with developmentally disabled men. Became interested in writing again after the passing of my mother and father in successive years.

Disguised

Contributor: Wyn Sharp

- -
Blood runs cold from
jagged wine bottles
used to pierce my fragile skin.

Fists beat mercilessly
to semi-consciousness,
my dried blood beneath his nails.

He leaves with a shovel—
to prepare my grave in the peach orchard.

He said I’d make
fine fertilizer for his fruit trees.

The clock ticks;
There is little time.

A mirror reflects a new image
of cropped black hair
that matches my shadows and scars.

There is strength and courage in departure.

He will return and wonder
How I had the courage to flee.

Cracked wine bottles on the floor
will rip at the flesh of his feet.

Tomorrow
I will wear flaming red lipstick.


- - -
Born in MS and raised in TN, Wyn graduated from UNCW in Wilmington, NC in the fall of 2013. She's written poetry and fiction from a early age and can be found on Word Press, Twitter, and other media sites.

I Still Believe

Contributor: Butahn Mirabba

- -
I know you can feel it
When I think of you.
When I put my wings around you
When I reach out to you
Send you
All the light I have in me.

I know you're hurting
I know you don't believe
I know you're trying
Not to think of me
Trying
To forget me

Tell me
The bond between us
Between you and me
Was never meant to be.

Tell me
And I'll stand here
I'll refute it
With open arms
Because I still believe
Because I need you
And I still believe
You need me.


- - -

Five

Contributor: John Ogden

- -
Five years with the first wife
Five children with the last
Five stabs at solace
Thank God the fifth one
Finally worked out.


- - -
John Ogden was conceived of a government form and a passing mailbox. He lives somewhere out in the woods of a rural land more akin to the fantasy realms of literature than real life, and his favorite dirt bikes will always be the broken ones.

Open Arms

Contributor: Jorhan Bivlibny

- -
You run
In my own way, I chase
You cut at the bonds
I stitch the wounds
You flash your blade
You bear your claws
But I offer only open hands
Open heart, open soul.
Cut me, Tiger.
Make me bleed
I'll wear the scars
I'll show them openly
I've been through the fire
I've been burned so many times
I can weather this
I can weather the worst of you.


- - -

I Love The Ocean In Its Calm

Contributor: Randy Stewart IO

- -
Are we not unlike manners of the sea?
Moments of perfect calm
Serene as the reflection Narcissus
Withered in front of, I hope I
May pass the same

Staring into the eyes of something I
Love more than the life
I chanced to have thrust upon my
Soul suspended in infinity
What did I look like before?

A light, a glow, a churning unending
Wheel of energy waiting
To be born of flesh, blood, and bone
Hair and nails and crooked
Teeth, desire to please

And to be? I wondered much as I
Wandered lust searching
For love unknowing what I would feel
Do we always know that
A heart is the center?

Organic Sun, pursuits in all revolve
Around appeasing this
I want to die like a hurricane, violent
And lasting three whole
Acts; rage, intermission,

Wrath of God as I disappear and
Scar the world with my
Exit, but they will be stronger then
And smarter too, even
If wounded by my pass

I love the ocean in its calm, in its
Power to breed and
Its power to annihilate all it helped
To create

An infinite unpredictability.


- - -
Randy is from Decatur, Illinois. He has a beautiful muse/fiancée named Abby and three gorgeous children. He reads, writes, and ponders obsessively.

Damaged Goods

Contributor: Jardin DeMerci

- -
Still my wife
Already his girl.

He harvests her “love you's”
But it's me making her scream.

They plan a happy future with his kids
But it's me planting seeds.

Hope he feels me
When he someday tries to fill
All the spaces I've left behind

Hope he feels me
Finds frustration in his thrusting
Shows his true colors
Leaves them both dissatisfied.

Still my wife,
Already his girl.

But I'm no better.
Another woman
Already holds my heart.

The shadow in my bed?
Just a vessel to fill.


- - -
Cubical poet with a haunted past.

Nightingale

Contributor: Richard Schnap

- -
There once was a blind man
In a torn stained coat
That sang on the sidewalk
As the world passed him by

With a voice as golden
As any on a stage
Till one day he vanished
Without leaving a trace

But sometimes it seems
I can still hear his cry
From an abandoned building
Or a garbage-strewn lot

As if he lives on
To serenade his darkness
Before being swallowed
By the deafening wind


- - -
Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Let Tambourines Begin

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Puerto Rican girl
thin, thin,
let street lights pour

bourbon on your hair,
anise on your skin.
Puerto Rican girl,

thin, thin,
gin one white smile for me.
Let tambourines begin


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

At First It Hurt

Contributor: John Dorn

- -
At first it hurt
But I'm glad she waited
I'm glad she frothed and fumed
I'm glad she nearly threw away
The letter
The sentiment
The apology
Unread.

At first it hurt
But I'm glad she waited.
I'm glad she dated
I'm glad she grew disillusioned
Just in time
To think of me
To think of all I said
To think of all I meant
To her
And she
To me.

At first it hurt,
But I'm glad she waited
As if she knew I needed just a little longer
As if she knew
Gave me the space
Without suffering the pain
Without knowing my affairs were a mess
Until they were already fixed
Until everything was in order
And we could
(At last)
Really be together
Build our house
Build our family
Build up each other
Forever.


- - -

Just Close Your Eyes And Dance

Contributor: Lyla Sommersby

- -
Dance your way through the pain
Dance away
Until you can summon the day
Spin through the fray
Spin work into play
Spin the very clay
From which you are made
Into a blade
Into a blaze
Until nothing dark can stay.


- - -
I am a student in Miami, Florida. Painting is my other love. My first book, Sketches of Someone, is available through Thunderune Publishing.

Closing the Bar

Contributor: Richard Hartwell

- -
Acres of hummocked hillside
strewn with granite and marble;
faded dates, Portuguese names,
some whole families, males, three generations
lost to the querulous sea they’d harvested daily.

Years upon years of heartbreaking toil at sea, while
waiting ashore broke the hearts of their women.

Empty graves for most as the sea
seldom gives up what it takes away;
the deep trench off Monterey Bay hides
more secrets than all the sardines ever canned.

Stone memorials for those who
haunt the shore when surf closes
down the bar into Moss Landing
and window shades are drawn
against the howling of the dead, as
widows rock endlessly in the dark.


- - -
Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school teacher (remember the hormonally-challenged?) living in Southern California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity.

Rainbow Making

Contributor: Linda M. Crate

- -
the red buds
dance on bare branches
against grey skies
and sunshine
but I have yet to see the
rainbow
birthed from all this rainshine,
and as I wait
it seems even the birds have
gone quiet
quivering in anticipation
of the same moment;
all this waiting—
life is a balancing act of holding on and
letting go,
but oft I feel I've held on far too long
just want to spread my wings and fly away
make my own rainbows.


- - -
Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015.

So Mote It Be

Contributor: Klaus Mijastica

- -
Riding in the skin
Of the Magician
I become the High Priest
I become fully Taurus
I claim my Empress
I claim my Virgo
Carry her until we can live
Fully Virgo
Magician and Empress
Living in the house of the Hermit
Together
Forever.


- - -
Tarot reader by trade. Poet for the joy of it.

First Tulip

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Sometimes you sit for days
sucking yourself in
praying the right words
will fall in your ear
toboggan over the whorls
pierce the canal
and settle in your brain,
an embryonic delight.
Sometimes you sit for days
and finally the words come
and they're always a surprise
like the first tulip in April
or a sudden
orgasm for your wife.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Just a Bunch of Stuff about God from Someone Who Makes Lots of Mistakes

Contributor: Ron Riekki

- -
I used to love churches and then I dated a Christian
and she pierced my insides with a spear, so then I started hating
Latin and stained glass and life and carols. It was an eternal time

of drunken birthdays and the great courthouses of loss.
I was pretty much moronic in all those years, where you waste
dancing and collapse on driveways. Life, I’ve found, is something

that rolls away from you, like the tire that ended up going out
into the highway, the cars slamming on their breaks to avoid hitting
1/100th of an automobile, the ghost of a car, gone. I wish

sometimes that I could have been Christ. She would still be
with me in Heaven or Cincinnati. Something like that.
I have a new girlfriend now. She could care less about the politics

of God. She falls asleep at my side during funerals and weddings
and fireworks and plays. I look down at her and think how peaceful
atheists can be when they have given up on debates. She took me

to a cathedral in Lille, France, and I only went inside because she
treated it like a museum. I was ready for something ancient
and forgot that you can walk into some buildings and feel like God

is there, happy, high, up above you in the ceiling, with His own heartbreak
and mistakes. I stared at a statue of a monk who looked so calm
that it was like a feather on my spine, thumbprints of peace and forgiving.


- - -
Ron Riekki's books include U.P.: a novel, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book), and Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1D0-3479#.VKZ4kmTF-PU.

Who Have You Been Kissing

Contributor: Scott Thomas Outlar

- -
withdraw symptoms smash the skull
pressure building…mounting…slaying
dagger to the side
knife in the back
kiss of death delivered
a little bag of silver
to take home and spit shine
with that dirty mouth
that sold the savior out


- - -
Scott Thomas Outlar dances with the waves of the Tao River while laughing at and/or weeping over life's existential nature. His chapbook "A Black Wave Cometh" is available through Etsy.

Look Back

Contributor: John Ogden

- -
Look back, laugh.
Look back two months,
See how scared you were.
See how desperate you were,
How you thought things would never work out
How you thought you would never be happy again
How, when things seemed most hopeless
When the night seemed most dark
Wild with frothing demons
Baying for your blood
A little light came into your life
A little crack came through the black
Expanded so fast
As time and mind
Bent their course for you
Bent their course
And washed away everything in your way
All the shadows
All the illusions
Until nothing but the golden moments
Of a life fully lived
Remained.

Look back.
Look back two months
Look back and laugh
At last.


- - -
John Ogden was conceived of a government form and a passing mailbox. He lives somewhere out in the woods of a rural land more akin to the fantasy realms of literature than real life, and his favorite dirt bikes will always be the broken ones.

War

Contributor: J.K. Durick

- -
Let’s not quibble about numbers
At this point,
Or second guess causes –
Hindsight after all
Lacks the heat of the moment
That sets things in motion.

Let’s not polish up history
The way we like to do.
Let’s not try to justify
Our lapses in judgment,
Our clumsy morality,
Our faulty reasoning.

Let’s not parade our past,
Our mythical past,
To justify the present.
Earlier generations
Did their best, did their worst.
Let’s leave them
To their quiet graveyards.

Let’s forget the slogans
For the moment.
Let’s leave aside politics
For the time being.
Even leave behind religion,
If it keeps us from being
Clear headed, from looking
At what is, as opposed to what
should be, or might have been.

Let’s settle things, somehow.
Let’s bury the dead.
Let’s clear up the debris.
Let’s ask time’s forgiveness.
Let’s apologize to our children
And then move on.


- - -
J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal, Black Mirror, Third Wednesday, Shot Glass Journal, and Eye on Life Magazine.

Lean Years

Contributor: Richard Schnap

- -
I used to ride buses
Past abandoned steel mills
Like the skeletons of dinosaurs
Rusting in the sun

To jobs where I’d raise
Funds to save animals
So that hunters would have
Something to kill

Then at night I’d linger
In the shadows of nightclubs
To watch dancing women
Exorcise their ghosts

Till I left and walked home
To my two room apartment
Beneath stars that never
Seemed so far away


- - -
Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Everything We Don't Need, We Want

Contributor: Linda M. Crate

- -
you want tired eyes
closing for sleep
to tell you that you are beautiful;

we all look for validation in all the wrong
places, trying too hard to push
a square through a
circle—

we are committed to being offended,
tv dinners, and misery.


- - -
Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015.

Plaster'n'bandage

Contributor: d0ll

- -
We speak these words
We sing these songs
Holding hands we chant along
Don’t know the meanings
Don’t care for the thoughts

Smear our faces with lipstick
The colour’s faded
But we don’t care
We say the words
Which are exaggerated
No one knows the meaning
But they’re all there
They stick along

Plaster over the bruise
Bandage over the wound
Baby you will heal so fast
Tonight you’re full of hate
Feeling used
Tomorrow you’ll crave
For love again
So save your empty words
Shut up and dance away
Shut up and dance, anyway


- - -
Student, translator, post punk Djane and DIY enthusiast from Slovakia.

After Burying a Wife

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Were she here with me now,
by the waist I would raise her,
a chalice of wonder.

I’d bellow hosannas
and whirl her around,
tell her again that I love her,

press my face moist
in the pleats of her skirt,
ask her to sprinkle

phlox on the curls
of our children
if they are with her,

ask her to stay a while longer
while I do so much more
were she here with me now.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Over the Fence

Contributor: Richard Hartwell

- -
Evil, dark-brown snake-tangle,
some as thick as your thumb,
naked and bleak in the winter sun,
yearning to regulate the inner fire.

Balled atop an arbor pole
champagne grape vines
await season’s change without
shedding, emerald skin appears.

Blossoms, buds, orbs of
clear tang, bursting from
tangles to be plucked and savored,
sumptuous bulbs of sugared venom.


- - -
Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school teacher (remember the hormonally-challenged?) living in Southern California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity.

Correspondence

Contributor: Ben Riddle

- -
O fey child of Olympus,
son of Ares, not of Zeus,
what have you become?

Sipping coffee in a coffeeshop,
spitting stories of wars you didn’t fight;
of lives you sought to heal.

My traitor son,
you have forgotten
the way of the warrior;

For what reason now
will people remember
your name?

You are no longer my son,
and I have never been more proud.


- - -
A fourth year student of English and Politics at the University of Western Australia, Ben Riddle is a founding member of the Said Poets Society.

Progress

Contributor: J. Yoder-Gorram

- -
One by one
we clear the trees from the land

One by one
we roll the rocks from the ground

One by one
we stop up the streams from the hills

Until there is nothing left
Until there is only room to grow
and no reason left to do so.


- - -

The Bites of Black Widows

Contributor: Wisen Erlach

- -
Aiming for perfection
Aiming high
Aiming for an angel
All shades of blue and black.

Aiming for an angel
Aiming for the one
Aiming for a bladed babe
Who never turns her knives on me.

Aiming for a bladed babe
Aiming for a queen
Aiming for a future
All shades of smiling and dance.

Aiming for a future
Forever falling short.
Aiming for an angel
Always only wakening
To the bites of black widows.


- - -

Dusty

Contributor: Ray Miller

- -
I just don’t know what to do with my self
and it’s seldom I can locate it.
I’m circled on maps but when I stop to ask
a dust has covered the traces.
In living rooms and in limbo,
on all fours and on tiptoe I’ve chased it.
I’ve read the self-help literature,
Bergson et al and etcetera:
the brain is but a filterer
and in theory all can be heard and seen,
what is now and what has been.
The world is on my fingerprints,
its garbage overflows the bins
and I am blown by violins
to search my self to smithereens;
down half-remembered alleyways
the detritus of all the days
has settled on our counterpane.
Let’s fumble locks and zips and lips
too intimately intricate,
let’s laugh and listen to the drips
of a viscous blue percussion.
Let’s steal a ball with a private invite
and dare the world to pursue;
then at daybreak when the dust has flattened
and the great birds hover and squawk,
I’ll shrink smaller than invisible
and beg you to turn on the dark.


- - -

Graduation Poem

Contributor: J.K. Durick

- -
(For Nathaniel)

We don’t ask for days like this
They come to us in due course

Effort, luck, and persistence
Come into play to make the day.

We just finish one thing to begin
Yet another, they all become

Notches to mark our progress
Like the pencil marks we made

In all those kitchen doorways
A way to measure our growth

One overshadows an earlier
Then is overshadowed in turn;

On days like this we smile and
Take pictures, shake hands and

Hug, we cheer and say goodbye
Like tourists off on a cruise, or

Like our ancestors ready to sail
To a new world, or astronauts

About to blast off into space;
On days like this we smile a lot

And promise ourselves that
All the things we did add up to

Important measures, like these
Diplomas, notches, penciled lines

And then we turn to look for any
Friendly faces in the confusing crowd.


- - -
J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Camel Saloon, Black Mirror, Milo Review, Eye on life Magazine, and Leaves of Ink.

Spiritual Essence

Contributor: Steven Jacobson

- -
the spirit moves one to realize the truth,
and the heart propels one to see and become love.
the spirit transcends all earth-like feelings,
and the heart renders one to be joyful and open.
the spirit pushes to ponder the moment,
and the heart yearns to be free, heartfelt by the soul.
the spirit guides away from the mind and body,
and the heart gives and girds in earnest to one another.
the spirit gains and grows giving life cause,
and the heart perceives and pushes one to sail upwards.
the spirit proclaims an abundance for life,
and the heart wishes, waits in the moment forever.


- - -
Steven Jacobson was born and raised in the Midwest. He has attended multiple classes from the Loft Literary Center, promoting all levels of creative writing. His goal is to write a second book. His first book is called “Spiritual Gait” and was published in 2014.