Evening of February 25, 2023

 

I woke up twice on the same page

~Patrick Sweeney

the inevitability of mass cards in bureau drawers

~Patrick Sweeney

as above so the devil in her eggs

~Kelly Moyer

bottomfeeders assigning value to the moon

~Kelly Moyer

honest eye the thumbprint of a weasel

~Kelly Moyer

I knew I 'd gone on too long about Dostoyevsky when she began to clip her toenails

~Patrick Sweeney

their thoughts of me before I arrived

~Patrick Sweeney

the win loss record of the coach who taught me to read

~Patrick Sweeney

Somebody blew up Mars.

Blame the woodpecker at sun-up,

old phone books clogging our landfills,

this electric golf cart without instructions.

Both Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina

deserve special blame.

There are factory worker

jobs as stake, people.

~Richard Magahiz

eggs over-easy but marriage’ll do that

~Kelly Moyer

bullshit knee-deep in rose petals

~Kelly Moyer

 

cringe factor solving for why

~Kelly Moyer

fitting my nothingness into the four-and-a-half-mat room

~Patrick Sweeney

beachcomber   at the fragile conjunction of relentless forces

~Patrick Sweeney

mystical snowfall undermining the recommendation system's algorithms

~Patrick Sweeney

feathering the line between breaking and broken

~Kelly Moyer

still life the absence of echoes

~Kelly Moyer

Evening of February 23, 2023

 

pleasure of snow

in Bali there is none

if you get my drift

~James Penha

February snowstorm—

snow plows rumble, 4 a.m.

over roads of thought

~Wayne F. Burke

melting me snow

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

When all the world seems

To be in love with each other

And I am alone

~Jennifer Gurney

The dog licks

my face to see

if I am breathing.

If I’m not,

she’ll bug her daddy

for food.

~Nolcha Fox

she struggles

to write

just enough

~Sharon Ferrante

high-end church

all its baptismal water

Evian

~John J. Dunphy

a spritz

of extra virgin olive oil

before her date

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

after

the speed

the sound

~Sharon Ferrante

2 men talking out of my

nose as I wake to morning's

gibberish

~Wayne F. Burke

Afternoon of February 21, 2023

 

my toe is still blushing from meeting your foot at the boardwalk

~Nolcha Fox

Song


I'm exile

I'm smoke

I'm long dead in the trenches

I am home

nowhere

alive in the fire

erasing words

with the bone of a crow's wing

I'm alone with a voice

of the blank page

~Alexander Etheridge

Last Change of Address

The earth knows we’ll return‒‒

our few feeble movements 

down under the flowers,

and our names repeated like a song’s chorus 

so the ones left won’t forget 

through all the winters.

Look, moon, sun, and moon and sun again,

the mist coming down 

to the cold lake and the churchyard‒‒

It’ll all be forgotten.

~Alexander Etheridge

Past Life

It’s strange how time falls into itself.

One second I’m here, the next

I’m back in middle school---

the hour is bright, my friends there

are so young.

That long dead day is risen

and my life is gone into 

its white-gold October 

moment, my only

life.

~Alexander Etheridge

She opened her mouth

and swallowed a bird.

She spit out feathers

instead of words.

~Nolcha Fox

my dad

still never says much

ouija board

~petro c.k.

the chug-chug-chug of a party bus

~petro c.k.

no fewer people

could see me

than already did

~Noah Berlatsky

 

Ocean Daybreak Sketch

Fogshifts

and a respiration of inland trees

Unanchored graves

Foot-tracks of light

opening

along the lengths of the tide

~Alexander Etheridge

Retreat


Laundry

Expands to fill

All space. All time. The house

Is worn by clothes and we flap loose

Worn down.

~Noah Berlatsky