Pushcart Prize Nominations from Five Fleas

 

Enjoy these exceptional poems by John Grey, Olinda Ninolakis, Jason

Ryberg, dan smith, and Diane Webster. Congrats to the nominees.

THE APOLOGY

My apology

was insincere

but she

accepted it.

Then we kissed

and made up.

At least,

she made up.

I made do.

~John Grey

K i n t s u g i

Awake and aware

The scalpel is there

Cuts in my face

Will help me place

What's right or wrong

Life is where I belong

Stitched up and plastered

Kintsugi on my cheek

Fault lines of the past

Joined up at last

~Olinda Ninolakis

 

Blind Eye

There’s been a prison-

     break of poets, tonight, and

     the hound dogs and guards

     are all out in force, but the

     moon is casting a blind eye.

~Jason Ryberg

Knucklebone

Outside the moon is

a knucklebone and someone

     is staging a post-

post-modernist production

     of Our Town in the old black

     box theater of my dreams.

~Jason Ryberg

Piece In The Valley

here a gun

there a gun

everywhere

a gun gun

~dan smith

Shadows in Jail

Shadows from the snow fence

stretch in jail-cell menace

across the drift blowing higher

in an attempt to escape

and race across the flats

to riot between highway lines

in the do-not-pass zone.

~Diane Webster