Afternoon of September 29, 2022

double espresso

we trade our faith

for turtlenecks

~Kelly Moyer

My muse

is gone, she left a note

that she went shopping

with the girls.

I hope I didn’t send her

on another bender.

My writing might be much worse

than I think.

~Nolcha Fox

Fourth of July

On this, most patriotic night,

my head is clear,

my vision full

of Roman candles

and crackling rain.

I play Hendrix.

I breathe smoke and gunpowder.

We turn the moon the color of flames.

~Lauren Scharhag

not the clouds

time passing -

the moon

~Chittaluri Satyanarayana

       don’t talk about

until starts to show

       colonists

~Jerome Berglund

Arsenic

For a price,

chef’s secret ingredient

will do away

with anybody.

So scrub the kitchen floor

all you want,

a murder scene

never dies.

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

I found a spaceship

in the toilet,

floating with a deck

of cards.

I laid them all out

on the couch

then dried them with

this poem.

~Nolcha Fox

kismet a galaxy of fruit flies

~Kelly Moyer

trying not to

step on toes

clown shoes

~Thomas Tilton

we're all waiting

wondering when Mother Earth

spanks us

~Stephen Jarrell Williams

Afternoon of September 27, 2022

semaphore signs of little progress

~John Hawkhead

trade winds of small change


~John Hawkhead

can't settle ...

restless leg syndrome

the ants nest in my bed

~Karen Harvey

they are special guests

succulent

right to the bone

~Richard Magahiz

wall poster

a big face

with no manifesto


~Daipayan Nair

carrying signs

we oppose whatever

we oppose

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

dream state of the nation

~John Hawkhead

annual

May Day parade

calicos in tanks

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

erratic path a satellite state

~John Hawkhead

Evening of September 26, 2022

once in a blue mo(o)nster

~Lorelyn De la Cruz Arevalo

walk at dusk

the same stranger

at every turn

~Arvinder Kaur

30 years dead

Still haunting the same places

~Steve Van Allen

frosted pumpkins

an abandoned home groans

with trespassers

~Anna Cates

Edwina
  
Applies

Deathly  

Gaze  

Before  

Eating 

~Richard Magahiz

reaching out

to window ledge

gargoyles

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

poems about war

bleed from my pen

I thought

Vietnam was the only one

to break my heart - silly me

~Pris Campbell

Hallway

I am haunted by hallways. If you were to pop open

my skull, you’d find an endless maze of gray nowhere

corridors. I am inhabited by lobbies and tunnels,

airport terminals and empty shopping malls. It’s a

common fear. We are unsettled by these perpetual threshold

places, where we stand hesitating, never becoming, never arriving,

because there is no thread, no way out of this labyrinth, and at

the center of ourselves is the beast we have to face, or not.

~Lauren Scharhag

       the circles

of condensation

       on underside of glass table

harder to wipe away —

wherefore art thou royal

~Jerome Berglund

The Moon Doesn’t Ask

why I’m here in the halls of midnight.

It recognizes kinfolk, someone who knows

what it’s like to always be on the downward slope

of the teeter-totter. We are both made of other people’s secrets. To soothe others

we had to be this collection of debris,

not born, but bezoars excreted from

unimaginable creatures.

~Lauren Scharhag

A Few Martinis

over drinks

she spills

her drink

over drinks

he spills

state secrets

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

no-tell motel

keeping their secrets

… fleas

~Thomas Tilton