Afternoon of December 9, 2022

I. Escape

planned by the small green turtle that lived in a glass bowl,

with only a plastic tree and fake rock for company,

clean dish of water and flakes of turtle food

his only diversion as he explored his environment

~Julie A. Dickson

II. Except

late at night, he climbed from the bowl, ambitious journey

from table down to the floor heat duct through narrow

metal slats, landing in a low pan of water

for humidity – a turtle’s heated swimming pool

~Julie A. Dickson

III. Search

in the morning for missing turtle, absent from his bowl,

found in the heat duct, pan of water happily swimming.

Retrieved, returned turtle back to the glass bowl prison

where he spent the day planning his next escape

~Julie A. Dickson

cataract fact sheet

can't

read it

~Ruth Holzer

fleabag motel a parrot screeches hello

~Adrian Bouter 

in a window of the old age home canaries


~Ruth Holzer

rickshaw pulling

the pause

between each song

~Daipayan Nair

retirement cake—

thirty years

of heartburn

~Ruth Holzer

My only proper clothes

Are the two hoodies

I have lucked into

Over the several

Last months

And it goes downhill

From there

For Gerry

Veryvery

Fast

~Gerard Sarnat

He swallows all the sleeping pills,

he bags his head in plastic.

He leaves no note, no text, no cry.

He only leaves us silence.

~Nolcha Fox

false sense of well-being better than no sense at all Xanax

~Ruth Holzer

every day a pilgrimage wheelie bins

~Ruth Holzer

i escape

with white horses

this disjunctive world
 

~Wanda Amos

five fleas...

a roo’s ear twitching

in the outback heat

~Wanda Amos

a fly

in my shiraz

dying with dignity

~Wanda Amos

Evening of December 5, 2022

 

spaceship window ……….

no more ups

no more downs

~Mark Gilbert

fingers touching keyboards we become A.I.

~Colette Kern

malaria sun the bite of betrayal

~Susan Burch

The stolen apple

oh so juicy.

One bite

he choked.

~Peter Blau

Faster, giant trash truck, faster

   squirrels are gaining on you! 

~Steve Van Allen

Endception

notes on the notes

on the notes

~Jerome Berglund

helpfully debunking

conspiracy theories

conspirators

~Jerome Berglund

I’m not a perfectionist

just because I use tweezers

to pick up confetti.

~Nolcha Fox

Ephemera

In quiet moments, he makes

tiny bubbles with his mouth.

It’s as though they might be

spirits yet to cross over

or innocents yet to be born.

I yearn to capture each one

within a dusty mason jar,

just as i might

a hastily-scribbled poem

or this post-apocalyptic firefly.

~Kelly Moyer

daddy long legs and I have nowhere to be


~Patrick Sweeney

avant garde

of entitled characters

finding the lost city

of creatures

half-human half-troll(ey)

buried

in the amazon jungle

of boxes and receipts

failing at

closing credits


~Lorelyn De la Cruz Arevalo

he fed the banister to the furnace for us

~Patrick Sweeey

Afternoon of December 5, 2022

 

a sudden itch

to go shopping

flea market

~Andrew Markowski

poison ivy

a boy in summer camp

is itching to leave

~Andrew Markowski

with time the faithless will itch with fleas

~Elancharan Gunasekaran

   prey pray predators play war and peace wargames

~Mark Gilbert

leap and pray and follow the serpent’s sway

~Elancharan Gunasekaran

devil's daughter

they say the devil is in the details,

and i've always noticed everything;

does that mean i'm his daughter?

~linda m. crate

 

he was a When Kingdom Comes type of guy

~Patrick Sweeney

Morning of December 5, 2022

 

death a breeding ground for life

~Sreenath

revise the syntax to approximate the destruction

~Elancharan Gunasekaran

it's hard to throw away pictures of the dead

~Patrick Sweeney

Death serves me

coffee and sits

at the table.

He points outside.

Those trees will

remain without you.

Want more cream?

~Nolcha Fox

effigy’s final act of resistance: a smile

~Elancharan Gunasekaran

where the bleeding was internal rhyme

~Kelly Moyer

grey upon grey and into the afterthought

~Elancharan Gunasekaran

slipped away

you slipped away

into some foreign sea,

a message in a bottle

i wasn't meant to read.

~linda m. crate

Evening of November 30, 2022

 

Walmartians

~Susan Burch

wilted flowers by the roadside vigil


~John Hawkhead

no.chance.of.saving-my-soul-in.this.life


~John Hawkhead

A Darkening Year

A bird fleeing

mottled wings

from a songless cage

~Steve Gerson

railroad track

fragments and phrases

clackety-clack


~Keith Evetts

The Burning

And if I were Queen of the world,

I would burn all of the cages

where feathers have fallen to rust

and every sweet song

is just a melancholy whistling of dust.

~Connie Carmichael

Host Family
 

 My dog is host to

a family of five fleas

moved here recently

from abroad you see

that is to say, hopped

over from Bud the beagle

across the street when

their noses touched on

our walk yesterday

~Julie A. Dickson

traffic symphony:

the shrill pitch of an ambulance

colliding with 

a bawling police horn

and

a naked fire siren

                           . . .

who on God’s earth can survive 

this orchestra?

~Rupa Anand

so smooth

the grab bars on

the inside of the oven

~Richard Magahiz

ouch


~Susan Burch

Afternoon of November 30, 2022

 

Dull Shine

sometimes love stalls

carburetor clogged with self-pity

or pettiness or thoughtlessness

like oil-stained rags left on

an oil-stained garage floor pitted

and windows half shut

so rain pours in

rusting

~Steve Gerson

all our unanswered prayers incense ash

~Mona Bedi

beyond the pull of earth whale song


~Keith Evetts

All Those Books


They’ve not been shelved, despite their space,

though most unleaved, a collage built

through time and place in unity,

each tome a tale from memory,

the books we’ll never read.

~Stephen Kingsnorth

Carefree                   

 

those

roadworks

looked ominous

 

the sign said

detour

 

we became lost

just going

around the block

~Geoffrey Aitken

heron’s syrinx tuning the prehistoric bugle

~Jim Krotzman