Afternoon of October 8, 2026

  

that's not a fly in your soup sir its a shark fin sea of cortez

~Melissa Dennison

weaving in and out

car after car

a crow plays chicken

~Melissa Dennison

brave new world

unsettled

by how the fibre optic

winks

~Melissa Dennison

Every goodbye a small winter


~Manasa Reddy

checkered past continues to flap via midnight memes

~Marjorie Pezzoli

out of weapons carrying their hearts into war

~Stephanie Zepherelli

late arrival

tucking in the edges

of my opinions

~Stephanie Zepherelli

 

sharp glances

a ringlet escapes

from her hijab

~Stephanie Zepherelli

all doors

festooned with cobwebs

nowhere to escape

~Tejendra Sherchan

 

vocal chords

too small for us to hear

a lettuce snail

~Randy Brooks

 

tech bro that manufactured persona

 ~Ian Willey

 

 

 

 

panda diplomacy bamboozling the public

~Ian Willey

250 years of freedom fighting
 

~Ian Willey

soaring kite

why are there always

strings attached?


 ~Ian Willey

Doom of choice

The impending doom was in fact my own

as the scrolling between us was oh so sweet -

Ring, ring. Damn. Reality calling.

~Joanne Macias 

learning anything now is a plus cuneiform

~Ruth Holzer

 

liquidating

 

the trust

mother's spidery signature

~Ruth Holzer

 

 

 

 

mussels in wine sauce what were they thinking of

~Ruth Holzer

 

thinking hard

about thinking

about nothing

~Ruth Holzer

                                        

What the

most of my paintings

don't come right out

and say it and the others

suppress it pretty well 

only a couple poems 

come close to laying it

on the line with some

euphemisms but you 

 

get the idea

~dan smith

tundra....

not sure

what to make of it

~M. R. Pelletier

good omens

morning snow

and ravens

talking

~Tom Blessing

america today

             our dreams have

                        become a prison

~Tom Blessing

Afternoon of October 5, 2026

 

Hal’s still haunting voice misalignment

~Bruce H. Feingold

 

 

 

combing 

for clues…

head lice 

~Lisa C Reynolds

 

what's 

it going to take 

to get justice around here

~Jennifer Gurney

 

 

 

blind trust

the social truth

of fertilizer

~Robert Witmer 

 

 

back to the future

pickles

in a coal cellar

~Robert Witmer

 

 

'At the end of the day'

the mother 

of six

~Patrick Sweeney

Unless you know the number of chickens on the sovereign island of Malta; there's no winning this game

~Patrick Sweeney

Department of Education Address, 2026

 

They call our green city impoverished,

implying my area’s colleges have sunk

into a resource void, into that black hole

 

of education (now the shame of a whole

nation—which itself is an impoverished

red mark), and I wonder why our city’s sunk.

 

But even great Atlantis had never sunk

on its own. Climate wrath? A hidden loophole

in our tax codes? Or are we en-poverished?

 

His impoverished report: we sunk them shitholes.

 

~Colleen M. Farrelly 

alien(ated)

another planet

rejects me

 

        ~Colleen M. Farrelly

 

 

 

Turing test

the machine deems me

a cyborg

~Colleen M. Farrelly

 

 

toy soldiers

               the camouflage green            

of real war

~Gavin Austin

 

 

mining town

the things that don’t stay                                

buried

~Gavin Austin

 

tending the bonsai his smaller world

~Gavin Austin

 

 

 

regret the hug of quicksand

~Gavin Austin

 

Rejection does not end even after

~Jacob Gur

 

 

On a quest to seek Super Intelligence,

Failing to convince my browser 

- I am human.

~David Rudd-Mitchell

 

 

 

A defeat      

Before sending my own poem, I declare -'I am not a robot!'.  

~Partha Sarkar

winter window
an appleblossom amaryllis
pollinates my beard 

~Joshua St. Claire

 

 

 

Imagine Kerouac identifying with Montgomery Clift...
ignoring my illiteracy, I pretend to read books and watch parts of movies—I can't stop pretending now

~Patrick Sweeney 

 

 

Five Fleas Swag

https://www.zazzle.com/store/five_fleas

Afternoon of October 2, 2026

 

 

in this world of Darwin’s theory an ice flower 

~Arvinder Kaur

She didn't know she was writing a masterpiece—

only sharing something she couldn't keep to herself

~Patrick Sweeney

lazy river, the velvety touch of a name brand paper towel

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

 

 

This city runs on iced coffee and raw ambition 

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

His incessant note taking was making the guests nervous

~Patrick Sweeney

The windings to and fro I no longer touch the Earth with my feet 

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

Entering the forest of good listeners

~Patrick Sweeney

 

no pee section in a pool if politics cared about this

~Pegah Rahmati Nezhad

The town's under water

and the yellow-billed loon has zero followers

~Patrick Sweeney

 

 

new smells and colors coffee in a storm breaking through silence 

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

Occluded front—meeting the local meteorologist at the post office

~Patrick Sweeney

The silence in the house of no sugar bowl 

~Patrick Sweeney

 

status wars a relationship in remission 

~Arvinder Kaur

He's stuck on the third wish

~Patrick Sweeney

ataraxia

until a fly
finds my nose

~Arvinder Kaur

everyone says
I'll never forget

so & so or such & such

but they do

till the only thing

they can't forget

is how much 

they keep forgetting 

~dan smith

long-married couple

now separated at

the homeless shelter

~John J. Dunphy

cliff's edge
we cinch our hoods
against the yodel of rain

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

 

land snails
accelerating into the curve
of her long bones

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

 

mother tongue
the apple
of her oyster fork

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

 

 

bubbling up
from the tine marks
dissent

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

No!

Sitting in the studio,

I am a model

for a surrealist painter;

apple branches grow from my eyes,

a snake lies beneath my feet,

mushrooms sprout from the snow.

I am fleeing--

enough of war.

~Anica Marcelic

 

 

 

Where to Submit Your Creative Works This Month

 

Prune Juice Journal (theme of language)

Trash Panda (Anthropocene)

Only Human Senryu 

Pulse (medical)

Post-Ku

Best of the Net Nominations from Five Fleas Itchy Poetry

              

 

         What Lines?

         ~Kelly Sauvage Moyer 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                            

                                                                                     

                                                                                                                      And?

                                                                  ~dan smith

  

Congratulations to our talented itchy poets and artists: 

 

Biswajit Mishra (p)

Cynthia Anderson (p)

dan smith (a)

Jackie Chou (p) 

John J. Dunphy (p)

Kelly Sauvage Moyer (a)

Noah Berlatsky (p)

Patrick Sweeney (p)

 

Here are their poems: 

reading

the depth of insomnia

I lie

surrounded by rows

of unread books

~Biswajit Mishra

 

wind chill factor

the real feel

of ICE

~Cynthia Anderson

 

where the sky

meets the mountains

and the sea

the thin line between

friend and enemy

~Jackie Chou

 

Minneapolis street

its snow

bloodied

~John J. Dunphy

 

 

M.

 

You sleep around my sleep

because you dream of me

while I dream of you or

because the other way around or

because you went to sleep first

and woke up later.

~Noah Berlatsky

secretly, he believed that every dandelion wish would come true

~Patrick Sweeney

 

 

A Day in the Life

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer