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

 


Afternoon of September 24, 2024

The Fate of a Tender Heart

~Kelly Moyer

photos available here




hard lux the search for the god particle

~John Pappas




later life tango at dawn in red heels

~Katherine E Winnick




butterfly effect a sonata of ghosted notes

~John Pappas




a sunbeam slowly hardens into thought

~Vijay Prasad




door slam the slippery lizard loses his tail

~Katherine E Winnick




secrets swept under the carpet bombing

~John Pappas




sandpipers cast toothpicks to olive moons

~Elliot Diamond




ink bleeding the light from a dying star

~John Pappas




rumors of war

a moon too full

to carry

~John Pappas




people who

double click their car fob

just to hear their horn beep

~Jennifer Gurney




dogs in purses

dogs in restaurants

dog days of summer

~Jennifer Gurney




The size of the sky

 

Measuring the size of the sky

on the scale of cloud speed

~Marie Derley




condemned convict's last meal

he asks to write

a yelp review

~John J. Dunphy




drought

shrinking river reveals

more guns

~John J. Dunphy




as we had been told

our guns were useless,

useless

~Richard Magahiz




no claws no teeth

no eyes not even

a proper mouth

~Richard Magahiz




asleep

at wheel


in worst things


how directly

culpable

am I

~Jerome Berglund

 


Morning of September 22, 2024

 

 

golf course sniper

aiming to make

a hole in one candidate

~John J. Dunphy




monsoon night

a cockroach has eaten

my m & m

~Tejendra Sherchan




moon in virgo

looking up

vaginoplasty

~Adele Evershed




what we believed to be our fairytale eggplant

~Kelly Moyer




misogyny

a twist of salt

on the lyme

~Kelly Moyer




cost of living

a crisp

two-dollar apple

~Kelly Moyer




midlife romance

the ripeness

of discount nectarines

~Kelly Moyer




beyond the veil

all the reasons

to become a nun

~Kelly Moyer




the world

waits

in the inbox

~Noah Berlatsky




yarrow leaves

I almost went

to law school

~Joshua St. Claire

 

Evening of September 18, 2024

 

And So the Ego

~Kelly Moyer 

Photos available here




Jazz Trio

glorm-glorm-glouourm-gle-

gl-glee-gl-glee-gl-glorm           gling

glee-gl-gl-gl-glorm 



boum ba-ba-boum boum

ts-tss boum ba-boum boum tss

ta-ts-tsss-ta-ts


glorm glorm glorm ba-boom

glorm glee ba-boom ta-ts-tsss

ta-ts-tsss ba-boom

~Morley Carothers




before and after his white lies heat mirage

~Hifsa Ashraf




dried lilacs her illness in a nutshell

~Hifsa Ashraf




soccer kick the parabola of adrenaline rush

~Hifsa Ashraf




political rhetoric winding up the wireless fidelity

~Hifsa Ashraf




full house

too many hearts

I fold

~Olinda Ninolakis




Statistically speaking frequentists seem a little too flippant

~dan smith




the collapse of to-do lists survival instinct

~Arvinder Kaur




after the tunnel the mountains’ open arms

~Arvinder Kaur




vast blue

the loneliness of a cirrus

just like mine

~Arvinder Kaur




The aberrations of too much tripe

and not enough treacle

~Kathryn Lasseter

 

 

 

sweat from my brow

adds salt to bubble tea

August heatwave

~Patricia Carragon




Far and Bare

night squalls.

snakes bite.

~Kathryn Lasseter




Vertigo

Mound of art.

Ants in the belfry

~Kathryn Lasseter




Maleficent


make eyes at varmints

transact tempo

~Kathryn Lasseter




a crapulous man with a crapulous Poe on his tee-shirt

~Patrick Sweeney




a C-note says he talks to the hovering dragonfly

~Patrick Sweeney




queasy with complex prognostications, we let the thriller come to a confusing end

~Patrick Sweeney




fire in the top of the silver maple, I've come to my algebraic limit

~Patrick Sweeney




dirt between her toes

she walks in the way

of sun-faced buddhas

~Patrick Sweeney

 


 


 

 

See Our Five Fleas Merch


Morning of September 13, 2024

 

Please, Take a Seat

~Kelly Moyer

Photos available here




sleepless night

a tiny version of me

in the freezer

~Emil Karla



the owl

on the lookout

for dragons

~Emil Karla




generation gap

missing cow's milk

with my coffee

~Melissa Dennison




first bite

a baby leech

on my ankle

~Tejendra Sherchan




lightning can strike twice —

the second wife

also a psychopath

~Stacy Taylor




total eclipse —

people don’t see

what they don’t want to see

~Stacy Taylor




a spiritualist

in dark shades

smiles at the eclipse

~Robert Witmer




certitude

to be lost and to find

your own footprints

~Robert Witmer




psychedelic moon landing

I fantasize...

all of those small steps

we never took

~Joana Figueiredo




lost deeper

in the static blackness

we stare

at the turned off TV; we are

nothing more than

shadow silhouettes; trapped

on bare screens

~Joana Figueiredo




in need of a hug runaway train

~Roberta Beach Jacobson




in the city of self-pity knowing the residents by name

~Joana Figueiredo




these pebbles in my hand

far older than I will ever be

                          yet

~Tom Blessing




who i was

i am not

who i am

i will not be

impermanent

like the wave

~Tom Blessing




waiting for the garbage truck

ravens, seagulls, and me

~Tom Blessing




dying from drought

the weeds around

the fire hydrant

~John J. Dunphy




aurora borealis

setting the focus

to infinity

~Rupa Anand




the innocence of

believing David Cassidy

could be mine

~Jennifer Gurney




seashells —

nothingness

of the serial hoarder

~Maurizio Brancaleoni




A stillborn citizen


A festoon stands

By a galloping train

In rain.

Sees the clock time-

A poem without rhyme.

And taunts the citizen.

Does the festoon know why?

~Partha Sakar




blue dream

everything that helps close

the ozone hole

~Fatma Zohra Habis





Afternoon of September 10, 2024

those bitter comments

beyond her comfort zone

~words and image Wanda Amos




evolving circles

never ending

the infinity

of my mind

day dreaming

~Wanda Amos




waves are incessant / they come in just to go out / and I still wonder

~Charles A. Perrone




the shattered syntax of a neither

~Vijay Prasad




if AI has an epiphany is it human

~dan smith




driver’s ed

car in P

for panic

~Roberta Beach Jacobson




he never knew who was singing along

~Patrick Sweeney




the ghostliness of setting the table early

~Patrick Sweeney




his satori ended up being the onset of a head cold

~Patrick Sweeney




he crossed three rows and two aisles to quote the 'refrigerator' haiku to me

~Patrick Sweeney




Hykoo


Refrigeration

not needed, poems will keep;

spoil, decay, rot? NOT!

~Suzanne S. Austin-Hill




tiny arms

Tyrannosaurus Rex can’t punt

the football

~Randy Brooks




Piper

I am the mourner with the bagpipes and tartan,

blowing nine notes as I approach the Gate. I can’t

guarantee the frisson that raises goosebumps

though the search for it has filled every syringe

in the alley; names proclaiming they were here,

wearing away a wall.

~Cheryl Snell




For Fifty Years I Run Naked through the Halls to Take a Test I’m Unprepared for



The test- dream wakes me

or is it the alarm’s buzz?

Either way: it's Monday

~Cheryl Snell




strawberry

slopes of Red Fuji—

a shaved ice

~Stephen J. DeGuire




potato rot

deepening with each peel

a rapist's interview

~Daipayan Nair




All the trains are dead

After I reach the station,

I find the train has passed away.

Now it is 11.59 p.m.

Now I have nowhere to go

but before me there is a lot of darkness-

The vast open space for introspection.


I sit under the stars and meditate to be enlightened.

~Partha Sarkar




The offal is sacred

The hapless food delivery boy did not know

What tragedy was waiting for him. He knocked on the door and

No sooner had the owner of the flat opened the door

Than a dog from the room pounced on the delivery boy

And scared, he fell from the stairs and died.


But after that, did it (The owner of the house) chew the bones?

~Partha Sarkar




the sea drowns in the silence of the waves

and takes the seagulls with it

I'm not a bird

~Mykyta Ryzhykh




a house is growing on the slope of my eyes

the pupils give artificial dilapidation

~Mykyta Ryzhykh




he wants to be a samurai

the boy who never looked up

from his phone

~Patrick Sweeney




snakes...

the colors and patterns

not so lovable

~Tejendra Sherchan




sometimes the clock

I watch barely moves—

neither do I

~words and image James Penha