Evening of October 9, 2024

 


Skin off—hundreds of bones.

Skin on—millions of faces.

~Carol-Versannie




Teach a kangaroo rat to swim

As asking you to love me

Oh darling, a moth would rather die in fire

~Carol-Versannie




red hood down

she is running

with the pack

~Melissa Dennison




liberated

he lets his inner werewolf

run free

~Melissa Dennison




frozen in terror

eight legs dangling

just above her bed

~Melissa Dennison




soothed by Renoir and a mango slushy

~Patrick Sweeney




the very corner where Kafka bowed to the blind man

~Patrick Sweeney




messing with her ETA, the distances to the outer planets

~Patrick Sweeney




hornet washing her skinny feet in the dew

~Patrick Sweeney




waiting for a candidate to hold up a lotus flower

~Patrick Sweeney




on the path, it's a leaf not a visitor

~Patrick Sweeney




Singularity Delayed


confidence builder

a robot with training wheels

not our equal yet

~John H. Dromey




A STILL IS  STILL

A STILL       IF IT

REMAINS STILL

IN   THE   STILL

OF  THE NIGHT

~Charles A. Perrone




mother tongue interference

how i fit

nowhere

~Jahnavi Gogoi




moving on

her initials on

his arm

~Jahnavi Gogoi




midnight cravings

i unblock a forbidden

number

~Jahnavi Gogoi




motion and direction imposed upon a wanderer

~Vijay Prasad

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Fleas Merch

Afternoon of October 5, 2024

 

plague doctor on call

                              of

                                  the

                                   void

~John Hawkhead



lone headlight

my shadow walks

the woods

~Mariel Herbert



 

death becoming a mere shadow of myself

~John Hawkhead




You know the meaning


Voter.

Dyslexia.


Democracy.

Sunset.


Leftism.

Hmm…


Justice.

Rotten procrastination.


Fascism.

Fetid gob.


Revolution.

Cul-de-sac.

~Partha Sarkar



 

swept away

by witch’s broom

my fairy tale

~Roberta Beach Jacobson




autumn equinox

my neighbor's earth flag

at half staff

~John J. Dunphy



darkened city street

the glow of a porch light

in an oil slick

~Joseph P. Wechselberger



 

meeting

at the moon

skinny-dippers

~Joseph P. Wechselberger



small town

a biker guns his engine

at the lone stop sign

~Joseph P. Wechselberger



 

the costume

that makes her scream

work uniform

~Roberta Beach Jacobson




full clouds

forgetting expired milk

in the fridge

~Mariel Herbert

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Darkly Beautiful is a dark, gothly, witchy print publication celebrating witches, nature, the

magical and ethereal (a special edition by Magique Publishing, so it will happen only

once)! Send in your submissions by October 10.


Link for guidelines (Note: primarily mentioning sister magazine)

 

Afternoon of October 3, 2024


 

Snake catchers are proud of their work

The jungle is the birthplace of dangers


This is what snake phantom pain looks like

Fingers trying to feel the wind


Rusty leaves tickle the belly

Laughter turns into intimidation of the enemy


Deceitful fangs threaten with poison that actually does not exist

The gaze searches for a house that no longer exists

~Mykyta Ryzhykh

(Originally published in The Creativity Webzine)




Midnight refrain

Thoughts get thinner

At the crossroads

~Sarah Mahina Calvello




outside a colors shop

grounded on its half wing

a dead butterfly

~Tejendra Sherchan




a reluctant smile towed away by a flea

~Vijay Prasad




buzzed or was bee

~Roberta Beach Jacobson




night waves

hitting the pier

songs from the other side

~Anthony Lusardi




Past, Present and Our Future


 

Through the collective known as Women! – ever ready, willing, and able

 

to withstand persistent pressures and towering temperatures 

needed to become glittering, priceless diamonds 

 

      lighting the way

out of madness to sanity; out of chaos to order; out of conflict to peace;

      world no longer on fire

~Suzanne S. Austin-Hill




volcanic pizza burning the crust

~Roberta Beach Jacobson




powerline

a crow maneuvers her tail

to balance on

~Tejendra Sherchan




Dusty mirror

Time has not been kind

Vanishing moon

~Sarah Mahina Calvello




carefully :

there won't be any more time

~Mykyta Ryzhykh




repent, tick tock fan

time wastes the fritter

even a space ex

~dan smith

 

 

Morning of September 29, 2024

 

 

wings of geese moving on with my life

~Maya Daneva




one minute from yesterday  a lonely pronoun

~Vijay Prasad




writing down another inch of grief

~Maya Daneva




wounded by her high heel echo

~Maya Daneva




the rising sparks

from a blacksmith’s furnace

shooting stars

~Tejendra Sherchan




mid-air flight

strapped in the aisle seat

a plush hamburger

~Tuyet Van Do




breath in-out

in the pauses

the green graph

~Kavita Ratna




riding out the storm

FL coast dweller puts on

his old army dog tag

~John J. Dunphy




garden threshold

planting peace lilies

a martyr's wife

~Debarati Sen




a simple guacamole

oh, the ripeness

of her karma

~Kelly Moyer




death cleaning

i keep my dirty laundry

for the obit

~Kelly Moyer




my upbringing

a highchair stowed

beneath the cuckoo clock

~Kelly Moyer




imagined futures

a cat

at the screen door

~Kelly Moyer




preemptive


i leave my hand

open flat

on the mattress

so i don’t

wake up swinging


from the moon

~Kelly Moyer




Nothing.

And then

nothing,

but

in verse.

~Noah Berlatsky




Thank you, State


You are without heart

on World Heart Day.


Thank you, State.

~Partha Sarkar




beached whale —

        in her last breath

        she just wants a selfie

~Nicoletta Ignatti




        dry leaf in the wind —

        the silent protest

        of a single woman

~Nicoletta Ignatti

 

Afternoon of September 25, 2024

the name of silence

on the tip of the tongue


we never knew how to say

goodbye properly

~Mykyta Ryzhykh




upside-down birds fall up

~Mykyta Ryzhykh




snowflakes you also sailed here

in silence and melted under my feet

~Mykyta Ryzhykh




egg-balancing

her uterine tilt debunked

at 23.5 degrees

~Kelly Moyer




shadow work

sorting the seeds

of her 8-ball zucchini

~Kelly Moyer




raindrops on glass

alien planets

and moons

~Melissa Dennison




the look of love

a spider sneaks

into the house

~Melissa Dennison




two steps

a cockroach escapes

my wrath

~Tejendra Sherchan




Kolkata before and after 2024


jading

jades

jade

jade.

~Partha Sarkar




Fuel dies- goes back again dead to pyre.

~Partha Sarkar




On Display


Barbs on the barbed wire fence

pretend they’re blackbirds

clinging to telephone lines

paralleling the road except

nothing startles barbs into flight;

they remain attached

frozen like dead blackbirds

on museum display.

~Diane Webster




Driftwood


Beached sun-bleached tree

abandoned atop the sand dune

squiggled with sand waves.

 

A millennial shore

of memory postcards

mailed along the way.

~Diane Webster




Disappearance


Car tracks in snow

drive off

into the sky’s horizon;

snowflakes lay a mantle

across the road;

trees witness nothing.

~Diane Webster




Return Answer


A road curves through

a canyon of buildings.

 

Does it go the distance?

Does it fall off the flat world?

Does it flow into the gutter

and disappear down the drain?

 

Will someone return

with an answer?

~Diane Webster




one catastrophe,

another this haunted place—

but how vivid now

~Aaron Anstett




rocks trapped in a stream

singing a song home

one grain at a time

~Sam Calhoun




morning comes cloudy

waiting for the pistol snap

the sun never rises

~Sam Calhoun




chronic illness

i don

my invisibility cloak

~Kelly Moyer




existential dread

a slug

in the ant trap

~Kelly Moyer




eyes wide

as the saucer she flew in on

the poet’s kitten

~Kelly Moyer

 


Morning of September 25, 2024

 

city bus

every tragedy

taken

~Patrick Sweeney




listen man, no one here cares where the electrons are

~Patrick Sweeney




looking for a place to put yesterday's pink crayon moon

~Patrick Sweeney




China white stars

the mysterious conferences

of crickets

~Patrick Sweeney




jelly shoes, and after all, we're in space

~Patrick Sweeney




his advice was to hang onto whatever nothingness you've got

~Patrick Sweeney




horror

at the manor

only the butler survived

~David C. Kopaska-Merkel




plague of hippos

thank God most of them

only have one head

~David C. Kopaska-Merkel




Seems to be a curse

The call of distant strangers

Never will be meet

~Sarah Mahina Calvello




Sunbloked face

Getting packages

At the door

~Sarah Mahina Calvello




The backbone of the poet has vanished


'Only backbone makes differences..'

Once wrote the poet.


Wheels on the Time

With the injustice committed by the ruthless state

And protests against it most of the fire in rain.


Only the backbone of that poet has vanished.

~Partha Sarkar




missing moon

the parts of me

I fail to resurrect

~Mona Bedi




mid-summer

we add a dash of lemon

to our conversation

~Mona Bedi




 

dirt road

a honey crisp apple

falls off the cart

~Mona Bedi




meditation

a housefly wiggles

through my hair

~Mona Bedi




Below the Empty House


Assembled from the trash

that face

In the cellar's darkest corner

tumbled bones

The narrow cobwebbed stair

steeply descending toward

a congeries of murmurs

The flashlight dies

warm sibilant breaths

~David C. Kopaska-Merkel




Thunderstorms and fireflies

Childhood summer spreadsheet-stolen-

Too hard to monetize

the uncaged green

~Ennis Rook Bashe




acidrainwashedjeans

~Debbie Strange




magicisafootlonghotdog

~Debbie Strange




how astronomical the dawn

~Debbie Strange




lobbing the ancient cannonballs of rhetoric

~Debbie Strange



mosquito thunder bouncing off mountains of tents

~Debbie Strange