Afternoon of March 6, 2023

wear and tear

the guarantee has expired

on this life

~Wanda Amos

harvest moon

a muskrat busts out

the ouija board

~Kelly Moyer

family photos

everyone dead

even the living

~Ellen Kom

past the brightest star

a left turn takes you

beyond footprints

~Linda L Ludwig

petrichor all the rage with the worms

~Kelly Moyer

the steam of hot exchange tea stall

~Bidyut Prabha Gantayat

jotting notes

on the old book

I buy a new diary

as if I'll be inspired

to write again

~Christina Chin / M. R. Defibaugh

Six-Word Life Memoir

 

Signals worn due to self-hatred.

~Dan Provost

To Ti Esti

 

If words were sheep,

I’d shear them,

then writhe

to the music

of their naked bleating.

~Kelly Moyer

When water-birds walk

their feet fold

so that the two outer toes

touch.

~Noah Berlatsky

So disappointing

To get an invitation

After the event

~Jennifer Gurney

Evening of March 2, 2023

 sea anemones

the girl in the aquarium

fingers her hair

~Keith Evetts

      a tisket a tasket

  we’re off to buy a casket

 my mother died my father cried

      a tisket a tasket

  we need another casket

~Ellen Kom

remember why they're called forget-me-nots?

~Keith Evetts

Items on the Menu

I keep poems in a box so they will not get away.

I write them and throw them in there, let them pile up.

When they are ripe or rotten I take them out,

type them up, or throw them away.

Its the same with what I send to publishers:

trash in the mail or trash at the curb.

Sometimes only rats and raccoons can appreciate

what is on my mind, and find the treasures

hidden in the muck, ready for digestion.

~Joseph Farley

for ukraine


inside a doll

another doll

another doll

inside a doll

Babushka

~Rupa Anand

evening shadows if I'm not mistaken

~Keith Evetts

Those tiny little

Hairs on the back of your neck

After each haircut

~Jennifer Gurney

No Prophet in It

I never meant

to save the world.

I never meant

to destroy it.

I only wanted

to be here a while

and watch the mountains

move towards the sea.

~Joseph Farley

back room

of the library

haiku

~Keith Evetts

Anti-Haiku

Nature does not

bend to pen,

instead smashes

against home,

ten-year-old windows

buckle under gusts.

Forced endings

are for the weak.

~Chad Parenteau

The Internet’s Forever Until It Isn’t 

 

Someday this will be what’s left of me.

Bytes on servers flickering;

dreary blogs that burp and settle like bogs

drawn on a whiteboard, 

devolving PowerPoint.

 

The internet is forever until it isn’t.

Skin-colored, ten-limbed creatures flop and breed

clacking nowhere chattering.

A friable ghost is lost

when you turn it off, or off.

~Noah Berlatsky

Poem

In the future,

everyone realizes

how badly

they screwed up

twenty years prior.

~Chad Parenteau

 

~Keith Evetts

Morning of March 2, 2023

 shock value

her life

as a live wire

~Kelly Moyer

Matt or Gloss?

 

Can fleas jump through the icepack melt,

deep buried matt in polar fur,

or hide, wide in the penguin stir,

caught bubble, air, as water thump?

Working though clumps to find the derm,

then holding on for all their worth,

despite the preening beaks as comb;

not gloss as seals escape the whales,

thick skinned, unsuitable to fleas.

~Stephen Kingsnorth

Thought is a caterpillar

wiggling down the spine,

making a left into the mouth,

and fluttering out as a word butterfly.

Sometimes, it turns too soon

and slides down the nose.

Then, it’s just snot.

~Nolcha Fox

Highway trucks like thunder invade dreams like a storm

~Julie A. Dickson

clarified butter the owl's antecedent

~Kelly Moyer

spare parts the sum of his life

~Kelly Moyer

Tattered Threads

The holes 

in his jeans

are portals

through 

which 

I embrace

my true nature

and 

the shelf-life

of Easy Cheese.

~Kelly Moyer

dust-covered a poem filled with ribbon candy

~Kelly Moyer

mud flower bloom

~Rob McKinnon

spring rain 

trimming rust 

from the berries

~Kelly Moyer

Afternoon of March 1, 2023

 

braving the elements

he tests the river

lead and mercury

~Robert Witmer

The Wrong Library

A wooden room. A guitar with nine strings.

The books show no titles, just naked spines.

A poet walks in still stiff from driving

his nine-foot bus. The wooden guitar’s strings

are rusty and the neck’s short. All those things

wrong with it draw you like a shot that strikes

a wooden room’s wall. The guitar’s nine strings

form a blank book. The title is your spine.

~Mark J. Mitchell

growing in the dark

rootless

food for thought

or a madman's cloud

mushroom

~Robert Witmer

chipped porcelain —

the antique dealer

cracks a smile

~Rhoda Tripp

Wink

sometimes

a star winks at us

and

we are so small

that it is insignificant

if

we wink back.

~John Tustin

Mask Workshop

With all these still faces, what masks

get shaped? Common gray clay can blind

unclosed eyes. Small mouths don’t close fast.

Some faces won’t hold still while masks

harden. Much stays hidden. You ask

your loose questions and wait for time

to still faces into stiff masks.

They’re shapeless, uncommon and blind.

~Mark J. Mitchell

Watering dead plants

We all do it, hoping to

Revive the lost cause

~Jennifer Gurney

a string of caesuras white-knuckled the broad Himalayan mountains

~Julie Allyn Johnson

silence 

seeking, 

hungering,

digging 

for more

              then

bumping 

into shadows

~Julie Allyn Johnson

A Plucked Flower

I refuse to be a plucked flower

That is pulled from the ground,

Clipped, sprayed to look shiny

And put in a bouquet or garland

With the others.

~John Tustin

old donkeys

the sadness of days without rain

in their eyes

~Françoise Maurice

confusion over cocoa, coca, and cacao

is a distraction

~Harrison Fisher

Rosy

So we come again

to the ancient pretzel.

The moon breaks

a city window.

Your glass is half-full,

my bottle, half-empty.

The pretzel twists but

who cares?

~Mark J. Mitchell

The moon doesn’t pay taxes.

It floats free

beyond the safety net.

~Noah Berlatsky