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