Afternoon of November 29, 2025

 

Migrant2

~Michael Lee Johnson

what we talk about

when we talk about

what we talk about

~Nicholas De Marino

junk mail

let's play

postman

~Yasir Farooq

house sparrow

through the one-way window

unreturned love

~Yasir Farooq

        baking bread

        yesterday’s news

        lights the fire

        ~Belinda Behne

first

Thanksgiving without you

empty chair

~Jennifer Gurney

without you

all the Vermillion Queens

will go astray

~Tejendra Sherchan

                                p

                                o

                                 r

             p     o     r     t     a     l

             o                  a

p     o     r     t     a     l

              t

              a

              l

~Nicholas De Marino

they should give us

a mute button for all the hurtful things

people say

~Jennifer Gurney

script kiddies pad thai


~Jerome Berglund

source music

cutting a switch

~Jerome Berglund

we call

them myths

plausible deniability

~Jerome Berglund

Whitepilled

Male

lone gunman

epidemic.

~Chad Parenteau

I have lost myself in Paris

Shed my English skin

Like a chameleon

Trying to fit in

Of course it is a waste of time

Parisians are fierce and not blind

Every little thing she does

Spells foreign... and yet

Paris has been kind to me

As kind as it gets

~Olinda Ninolakis

Don't say

Don't say 'nothing is impossible'.

I have done nothing in my whole life.

~Partha Sarkar

no after-dinner cleanup

our first Thanksgiving at

a soup kitchen

~John J. Dunphy

no joke

like the

present

~Helen Buckingham

Intervention


~Nicholas De Marino

 

 

Morning of November 27, 2025

 

Red vs Green

~dan smith

starless night—

inflation becomes

sky-high

~Martina Matijević

my state importing

all the worldly goods

except jobs

~Tejendra Sherchan

an urge to win

over my dark side

waxing moon

~Tejendra Sherchan

a thin slice

of pumpkin pie

crescent moon

~Elliot Diamond

winter night shivering crescent moon

~Tejendra Sherchan

guidance counselor either Simon or Garfunkel

~petro c. k.

masked symptoms hardening mass

deportation

~petro c. k.

now it's personal leopards at the door

~petro c. k.

meditation

listening to music

far and near

~Bipasha Majumder (De)

off to sleep

valerian tea

to the twilight zone

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

they waited while he made goofy faces...

the concave and convex sides

of the spoon

~Patrick Sweeney

one-man steps barefoot on a Lego

another joins the First Crusade

~Patrick Sweeney

three camels

in elevator

hump to hump

~Elliot Diamond

Insomnia

I don’t think that sheep

counts.

~Noah Berlatsky

fallen branches scars of a previous lifetime

~Patricia Hawkhead

sunset sketching in my shadows

~Patricia Hawkhead

seagulls

an invasive species

in my poems

~Oliver Kleyer

 

 

 

Afternoon of November 26, 2025

 

not so foggy

since Jack the Ripper died

on London cobbles

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

matted leaves

i slip under

the radar

~Barrie Levine

nothing more to add to my bucket list fall dusk

~Mona Bedi

N                R
   E           E
      V    V
         E
            R
               E
                  A
                      C
                          T

~Allen David Simon

Circuit Fever


I plugged you in;

your ghost flickers

in the half-lit corners of my mind


~David Anson Lee

Cosmic Flea


something bites:

a star collapses

into my rib cage

~David Anson Lee

After the Quiet


the post-apocalypse

tastes like lukewarm coffee

and yesterday’s regret

~David Anson Lee

losing the battle

as life dissolves

line in the sky

~Jennifer Gurney

miles of mansplaining

by all means

don’t apologize

~Laurinda Lind

3 A.M. dog howls

beneath the comet

country music

~Morgan Ellington

The bloody knife in the sink.

Your finger,

shorter than before.

~Shawn Scott Smith

A Protest

I boycotted all of capitalism

and then starved and became homeless—

having greatly underestimated it.

~Shreya Datta

NO FUTURE

I get it.

Tomorrow

never comes.

So that means

the day after tomorrow

is also shot.

~John Grey

GOOD NEWS

Because of

a technical glitch,

the bad news

has been delayed.

 

In the interim,

there is no news.

~John Grey

night sky

the pattern of birds

long gone

~Nisha Raviprasad

 

 

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

 

 

Afternoon of November 23, 2025

 

Messages

~dan smith

gliding through skyscrapers

I too fall in love

with my AI avatar

~Jackie Chou

escaping

into the breaths

of shakuhachi

our lives before

the immigrant blues

~Jackie Chou

pageant breakfast

stalks of green grapes

on our tiny plates

~Jackie Chou

\\\u8bewn0

01..{{gg”ds1`q

cat walk haiku

~Sherri J Moye-Dombrosky

Windy day

Leaves on the oak

Try to hang on

So do I

    So do I

~Tom Blessing

wrapped in a flag

old white man believing

he is america

~Tom Blessing

she had her way with my words

~dan smith

zen garden letting weeds be weeds

~Bryan Rickert

my usual walk but backwards the earth’s spin

~Bryan Rickert

I look at my screen

and remember

yesterday's screen

~Noah Berlatsky

fire drums

across the plains

tent cities

~Sherry Reniker

wisecracks–

a blind masseuse

walks my buttocks

~Sherry Reniker

sidewalk

near the feet

of the body's chalk outline

passerby places

a banana peel

~John J. Dunphy

racing against

the clock

still trying

to figure out life

before hitting 72

~John J. Dunphy

dioxide skies

the relentless rage

of refineries

~Stephanie Zepherelli

self-help book not feeling the hieroglyphics

~Stephanie Zepherelli

the soup

needing more water

homeless camp

~Stephanie Zepherelli

bleached bones

the only remains

of shipwrecked dreams

~Stephanie Zepherelli