Afternoon of September 25, 2024

the name of silence

on the tip of the tongue

we never knew how to say

goodbye properly

~Mykyta Ryzhykh

upside-down birds fall up

~Mykyta Ryzhykh

snowflakes you also sailed here

in silence and melted under my feet

~Mykyta Ryzhykh

egg-balancing

her uterine tilt debunked

at 23.5 degrees

~Kelly Moyer

shadow work

sorting the seeds

of her 8-ball zucchini

~Kelly Moyer

raindrops on glass

alien planets

and moons

~Melissa Dennison

the look of love

a spider sneaks

into the house

~Melissa Dennison

two steps

a cockroach escapes

my wrath

~Tejendra Sherchan

Kolkata before and after 2024

jading

jades

jade

jade.

~Partha Sarkar

Fuel dies- goes back again dead to pyre.

~Partha Sarkar

On Display

Barbs on the barbed wire fence

pretend they’re blackbirds

clinging to telephone lines

paralleling the road except

nothing startles barbs into flight;

they remain attached

frozen like dead blackbirds

on museum display.

~Diane Webster

Driftwood

Beached sun-bleached tree

abandoned atop the sand dune

squiggled with sand waves.

 

A millennial shore

of memory postcards

mailed along the way.

~Diane Webster

Disappearance

Car tracks in snow

drive off

into the sky’s horizon;

snowflakes lay a mantle

across the road;

trees witness nothing.

~Diane Webster

Return Answer

A road curves through

a canyon of buildings.

 

Does it go the distance?

Does it fall off the flat world?

Does it flow into the gutter

and disappear down the drain?

 

Will someone return

with an answer?

~Diane Webster

one catastrophe,

another this haunted place—

but how vivid now

~Aaron Anstett

rocks trapped in a stream

singing a song home

one grain at a time

~Sam Calhoun

morning comes cloudy

waiting for the pistol snap

the sun never rises

~Sam Calhoun

chronic illness

i don

my invisibility cloak

~Kelly Moyer

existential dread

a slug

in the ant trap

~Kelly Moyer

eyes wide

as the saucer she flew in on

the poet’s kitten

~Kelly Moyer

 

Morning of September 25, 2024

 

city bus

every tragedy

taken

~Patrick Sweeney

listen man, no one here cares where the electrons are

~Patrick Sweeney

looking for a place to put yesterday's pink crayon moon

~Patrick Sweeney

China white stars

the mysterious conferences

of crickets

~Patrick Sweeney

jelly shoes, and after all, we're in space

~Patrick Sweeney

his advice was to hang onto whatever nothingness you've got

~Patrick Sweeney

horror

at the manor

only the butler survived

~David C. Kopaska-Merkel

plague of hippos

thank God most of them

only have one head

~David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Seems to be a curse

The call of distant strangers

Never will be meet

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

Sunbloked face

Getting packages

At the door

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

The backbone of the poet has vanished

'Only backbone makes differences..'

Once wrote the poet.

Wheels on the Time

With the injustice committed by the ruthless state

And protests against it most of the fire in rain.

Only the backbone of that poet has vanished.

~Partha Sarkar

missing moon

the parts of me

I fail to resurrect

~Mona Bedi

mid-summer

we add a dash of lemon

to our conversation

~Mona Bedi

 

dirt road

a honey crisp apple

falls off the cart

~Mona Bedi

meditation

a housefly wiggles

through my hair

~Mona Bedi

Below the Empty House

Assembled from the trash

that face

In the cellar's darkest corner

tumbled bones

The narrow cobwebbed stair

steeply descending toward

a congeries of murmurs

The flashlight dies

warm sibilant breaths

~David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Thunderstorms and fireflies

Childhood summer spreadsheet-stolen-

Too hard to monetize

the uncaged green

~Ennis Rook Bashe

acidrainwashedjeans

~Debbie Strange

magicisafootlonghotdog

~Debbie Strange

how astronomical the dawn

~Debbie Strange

lobbing the ancient cannonballs of rhetoric

~Debbie Strange

mosquito thunder bouncing off mountains of tents

~Debbie Strange

 

Afternoon of September 24, 2024

The Fate of a Tender Heart

~Kelly Moyer

photos available here

hard lux the search for the god particle

~John Pappas

later life tango at dawn in red heels

~Katherine E Winnick

butterfly effect a sonata of ghosted notes

~John Pappas

a sunbeam slowly hardens into thought

~Vijay Prasad

door slam the slippery lizard loses his tail

~Katherine E Winnick

secrets swept under the carpet bombing

~John Pappas

sandpipers cast toothpicks to olive moons

~Elliot Diamond

ink bleeding the light from a dying star

~John Pappas

rumors of war

a moon too full

to carry

~John Pappas

people who

double click their car fob

just to hear their horn beep

~Jennifer Gurney

dogs in purses

dogs in restaurants

dog days of summer

~Jennifer Gurney

The size of the sky

 

Measuring the size of the sky

on the scale of cloud speed

~Marie Derley

condemned convict's last meal

he asks to write

a yelp review

~John J. Dunphy

drought

shrinking river reveals

more guns

~John J. Dunphy

as we had been told

our guns were useless,

useless

~Richard Magahiz

no claws no teeth

no eyes not even

a proper mouth

~Richard Magahiz

asleep

at wheel

in worst things

how directly

culpable

am I

~Jerome Berglund

 

Morning of September 22, 2024

 

 

golf course sniper

aiming to make

a hole in one candidate

~John J. Dunphy

monsoon night

a cockroach has eaten

my m & m

~Tejendra Sherchan

moon in virgo

looking up

vaginoplasty

~Adele Evershed

what we believed to be our fairytale eggplant

~Kelly Moyer

misogyny

a twist of salt

on the lyme

~Kelly Moyer

cost of living

a crisp

two-dollar apple

~Kelly Moyer

midlife romance

the ripeness

of discount nectarines

~Kelly Moyer

beyond the veil

all the reasons

to become a nun

~Kelly Moyer

the world

waits

in the inbox

~Noah Berlatsky

yarrow leaves

I almost went

to law school

~Joshua St. Claire

 

Evening of September 18, 2024

 

And So the Ego

~Kelly Moyer 

Photos available here

Jazz Trio

glorm-glorm-glouourm-gle-

gl-glee-gl-glee-gl-glorm           gling

glee-gl-gl-gl-glorm 

boum ba-ba-boum boum

ts-tss boum ba-boum boum tss

ta-ts-tsss-ta-ts

glorm glorm glorm ba-boom

glorm glee ba-boom ta-ts-tsss

ta-ts-tsss ba-boom

~Morley Carothers

before and after his white lies heat mirage

~Hifsa Ashraf

dried lilacs her illness in a nutshell

~Hifsa Ashraf

soccer kick the parabola of adrenaline rush

~Hifsa Ashraf

political rhetoric winding up the wireless fidelity

~Hifsa Ashraf

full house

too many hearts

I fold

~Olinda Ninolakis

Statistically speaking frequentists seem a little too flippant

~dan smith

the collapse of to-do lists survival instinct

~Arvinder Kaur

after the tunnel the mountains’ open arms

~Arvinder Kaur

vast blue

the loneliness of a cirrus

just like mine

~Arvinder Kaur

The aberrations of too much tripe

and not enough treacle

~Kathryn Lasseter

 

 

 

sweat from my brow

adds salt to bubble tea

August heatwave

~Patricia Carragon

Far and Bare

night squalls.

snakes bite.

~Kathryn Lasseter

Vertigo

Mound of art.

Ants in the belfry

~Kathryn Lasseter

Maleficent

make eyes at varmints

transact tempo

~Kathryn Lasseter

a crapulous man with a crapulous Poe on his tee-shirt

~Patrick Sweeney

a C-note says he talks to the hovering dragonfly

~Patrick Sweeney

queasy with complex prognostications, we let the thriller come to a confusing end

~Patrick Sweeney

fire in the top of the silver maple, I've come to my algebraic limit

~Patrick Sweeney

dirt between her toes

she walks in the way

of sun-faced buddhas

~Patrick Sweeney

 

 

 

 

See Our Five Fleas Merch

Morning of September 13, 2024

 

Please, Take a Seat

~Kelly Moyer

Photos available here

sleepless night

a tiny version of me

in the freezer

~Emil Karla

the owl

on the lookout

for dragons

~Emil Karla

generation gap

missing cow's milk

with my coffee

~Melissa Dennison

first bite

a baby leech

on my ankle

~Tejendra Sherchan

lightning can strike twice —

the second wife

also a psychopath

~Stacy Taylor

total eclipse —

people don’t see

what they don’t want to see

~Stacy Taylor

a spiritualist

in dark shades

smiles at the eclipse

~Robert Witmer

certitude

to be lost and to find

your own footprints

~Robert Witmer

psychedelic moon landing

I fantasize...

all of those small steps

we never took

~Joana Figueiredo

lost deeper

in the static blackness

we stare

at the turned off TV; we are

nothing more than

shadow silhouettes; trapped

on bare screens

~Joana Figueiredo

in need of a hug runaway train

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

in the city of self-pity knowing the residents by name

~Joana Figueiredo

these pebbles in my hand

far older than I will ever be

                          yet

~Tom Blessing

who i was

i am not

who i am

i will not be

impermanent

like the wave

~Tom Blessing

waiting for the garbage truck

ravens, seagulls, and me

~Tom Blessing

dying from drought

the weeds around

the fire hydrant

~John J. Dunphy

aurora borealis

setting the focus

to infinity

~Rupa Anand

the innocence of

believing David Cassidy

could be mine

~Jennifer Gurney

seashells —

nothingness

of the serial hoarder

~Maurizio Brancaleoni

A stillborn citizen

A festoon stands

By a galloping train

In rain.

Sees the clock time-

A poem without rhyme.

And taunts the citizen.

Does the festoon know why?

~Partha Sakar

blue dream

everything that helps close

the ozone hole

~Fatma Zohra Habis