Morning of June 14, 2024

 

TheCat Lady

~Kelly Moyer 

Photography available here

up close

to the crow's

knuckles

~Patrick Sweeney

turns out

you can take it with you

spoliation

~Jerome Berglund

the twisted stanines in my testing history

~Patrick Sweeney

election results macaques + sleight of hand

~Jerome Berglund

Every voter is nothing but a salained corpse

The consternation.

The helpless eyes or the greedy fleeing.

The same attire of the ages.

No new wings for, of, by people.

Only just a box to put something into. What?

None know.

Yet a queue...

A smoke billowing.

~Partha Sarkar

he was far too mathematical for reincarnation

~Patrick Sweeney

not always a bad thing crash test dummy

~Jerome Berglund

a rubber boat traveled on the waters

resistance fighters about to pull the trigger

shoot first, talk later

~Fhen M.

Zummer Evenèn

Zunlight whirlèn

Zummer Evenèn

Russlèn brook

Yollow flowerz

Storm clouds

Gather in orcha'd

Death no foe

Never can forget 'ee

Hearty vo'k zing

A zong ov rememberin'

~Olinda Ninolakis

in this part of the play, I'm the old man writing in the back room

~Patrick Sweeney

dead pixel cheese grater revisionism

~Jerome Berglund

so many triggers Shiva packing heat

~Jerome Berglund

Dog Float

I float therefore I am

My human is close at hand

She leaves me adrift on a float

All the swimmers know me

I am a canine boat

I do know how to swim

Swimmers look at me and grin 

But it's so nice to just

Observe the birds above

In humans I do trust

~Olinda Ninolakis

when we used to wonder who the pallbearers would be

~Patrick Sweeney

leaving Sheetz through the wrong door    the pretzels know the way

~Patrick Sweeney

the voice on the phone doesn't breathe

~Patrick Sweeney

a glance back and the mystic stumbles

  ~Patrick Sweeney

 

 

 

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Afternoon of June 12, 2024

 

The Insomniac

~Kelly Moyer 

Photography available here

sand grains –

all her bullying

word by word

~Nicoletta Ignatti

obsessive compulsive disorder –

lapping of waves

back and forth

~Nicoletta Ignatti

Renaissance Fair

costumed reenactors line up

at a porta-potty

~John J. Dunphy

marijuana dispensary

all its employees

highly trained

~John J. Dunphy

You have to love poetry

to be a poet.

But the only poems

I really love

are mine.

~Noah Berlatsky

flooded Golden Trumpets

all heaped on a drainage filter…

muddied and rotting

~Tejendra Sherchan

it was always fresh fish,

fresh meat, fresh fruits

served on an ancient table

~Fhen M.

then came a C Ration

imported, stateside

a fine range of canned foods

for not so sophisticated palates

~Fhen M.

a jungle of palm trees

turned to modern civilization

now an airport without airplanes.

~Fhen M.

I feel ashamed

The chirpings.

Birds come.

I spread crumbs.

They take them.

A mother-bird feeds a nestling.

A divine motherhood starts a day without war.

I feel ashamed of my human structure- The warmonger.

~Partha Sarkar

wordplaying with double entrées is appetizing

~Keith Snow

desert crackling orange peels tequila sunrise

~Elliot Diamond

haystack of a vacant moo

~Elliot Diamond

 

 

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Afternoon of June 8, 2024

 Recruiting

before

activity

ends in the cerebrum

a precisely located shock

it jumps!

pattern

realigned with our objective

it thinks our thoughts believes

our ends our means

are best

~David C. Kopaska-Merkel

old stump

my old butt

good company

~Tom Blessing

“Hey Joe, give me a chewing gum”

barefoot, soiled feet

this boy could have been my grandpa

~Fhen M.

just words

the jurors play

hangman

~Robert Witmer

the golden egg

each morning a different

goose

~David C. Kopaska-Merkel

summer sunset—

a bulbul flutters out of a bush

and flies in a curve

~Tejendra Sherchan

My journey

Without a caravan.

Feel the vacuum, beloved.

~Partha Sarkar

the dune moves on

polished metal emerges

from the sands of Mars

~David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Knowing and Not Knowing

 

There are books on my kindle

I probably won’t read before I die.

 

So much knowledge

not in my head when my head

is filled with earth.

Who knows which books?

 

I mean, Finnegan’s Wake, obviously.

But other than that.

~Noah Berlatsky

candlelight

the fortune teller smiles

through the nervous shadows

~Robert Witmer

a white pale man

wore a Donald Duck hat

hired to build roads & airstrips

~Fhen M

flea circus

a mangy cat

snarls at a tiny chair

~Robert Witmer

lying listless

in wet mud

street cats

~Rupa Anand

catastrophic heat

the tree sheds mangoes

just to keep cool

~Rupa Anand

opal sky

the morning slug’s

trail of slime

~B. L. Bruce

sun slow to set

two hoots

from the owl

~B. L. Bruce

You are a hazy

moon, hiding

your intentions

in murky

mumblings.

~Nolcha Fox

annihilation—

Mexican Devils ravage a Peepal

halfway up

~Tejendra Sherchan

Pookie—

dancing to a cover of Boom  Boom

a hearty bowl of Soupy

~dan smith

"here

take everything I have"

i hold out my

empty hands

~Tom Blessing

dining out now checking for symptoms

~Ruth Holzer

giving the bird medicine he screams and dies

~Ruth Holzer

syrtaki for once joining the circle

~Ruth Holzer

waking to the brittle voices of the morning ravens

~Tom Blessing

memory

a brief visitor to my life

the man on a raft of cans

paddling down the ganges

at hardwar

neither of us knowing

the end of the journey

~Tom Blessing

 

 

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Evening of June 4, 2024

Invented Tongue

Griblish glubmitsch

Glinglyglingly

Beritched

Griblish glubmitsch

Mumubliblik

Demingcik digribnik

Duffisuffidly

Vifucked

Demingcik digribnik

Susuçuник

~Olinda Ninolakis

the harder

I hold on

the harder letting go is

~Jennifer Gurney

barcoding

illogical fuzzy logic

tuxedo cats

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

Swiftly

swifts perform a passeggiata

at twilight in Chania harbour

tourists click pics on their mobile phone

parea gathers noone alone

poets recite verse in Terza rima now

the sun melts gently into the lighthouse - how

fast the transition from day to night

scent of jasmine our senses excited

~Olinda Ninolakis

minor misunderstanding

bring on the banjos

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

if I only knew

the path this journey

will lead to...

~Jennifer Gurney

in the corner of my eye

supernova remnant

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

write about

what you know

write about

nothing

~Noah Berlatsky

 

Evening of June 3, 2024

PRF (The Pluto Rehabilitation Front)

Let's campaign to rehabilitate Pluto!

Since I was a child

Pluto was the ninth planet

of our solar system.

I don't want to believe that our teachers

were wrong for so long

or that Pluto had a free ride.

Let's campaign to rehabilitate Pluto

FREE PLUTO - FREE PLUTO!

~Marie Derley

it's too easy now for loners to keep in touch

~Patrick Sweeney

always the first to spot Hitchcock

in the films

he never made

~Patrick Sweeney

leaving the bathroom

a female worker

washes her hands

at

the kitchen sink

~Tuyet Van Do

On the last day of May I lay down

And wept with joy for many things

For friends for foes for sunsets

Sunrise, birds' dawn chorus

Journeys in space time

Lines without rhyme

Love lasting

Soaring

Still

~Olinda Ninolakis

bracing my heart

for the letter in the mail

final papers

~Jennifer Gurney

late night fire pits

long, slow mornings...

the pace of summer

~Jennifer Gurney

droplets on glass

a race to the bottom

I always win

~John Hawkhead

he doesn't want to go to the search party

~Patrick Sweeney

strange quarks

I revise my story

one more time

~John Hawkhead

bulldozers cut coconut trees

to construct a Quonset hut community

~Fhen M.

coke is a symbol of friendship

one advertisement claimed

& we believe it.

~Fhen M.

when only time

stands between now and the end

the finality

~Jennifer Gurney

a fern fiddlehead--

why can't I bloom?

ever questioning

~Tejendra Sherchan

Afternoon of June 3, 2024

The Seductress

~Kelly Moyer

Photography available here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

separating the river's twin spiriting a boat to drown in

~petro c. k.

innocent antarctic parallel pines

~J. D. Nelson

no possums in the propeller

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

never nevering

~petro c. k.

there once was a twice

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

could be risky hundreds & thousands

~J. D. Nelson

looking to blame Prometheus done with us

~petro c. k.

checkered bovine weirdly impoverished

~J. D. Nelson

digging in the snow

on Burns Night

a handsome skunk

~Janet Ruth Heller

“…not this poem, not this space…”

sweet spot, sucker-punched

solar plexus, took a direct hit

domain of negativity, engaged

like a match to dry hay, papers scorched

recall a poetic colloquialism

writer’s glass chin

~Suzanne S. Austin-Hill

power company

razes lilacs, wild peas—

war zone

~Janet Ruth Heller

antique chamber pot

elevated on a shelf

after all the shit

~Kimberly Kuchar

left in the dust

3-D coral reefers

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

high school stadium

a track hurdle jumped

by a deer

~John J. Dunphy

London wall

two men peeing

across time

~Kimberly Kuchar

behind the singing boys

guitar cover’s dreamcatcher

sways in the wind

~Tejendra Sherchan

my "happy father's day, dad"

drowned out by

the cemetery's lawnmower

~John J. Dunphy

birds

without beaks

ask for a drink

~Mykyta Ryzhykh

(Originally published in Password)

neither here nor there

meet me in Rumi's field

Somewhere Else

~Olinda Ninolakis

bone grates on bone

pain…movement slows

mobility aid

~JL Huffman

I used to feed

a stray cat and her kittens—

now I feed her alone

~Tejendra Sherchan

used furniture store

test-sitting a sofa

I rise with fleas

~John J. Dunphy