Afternoon of December 5, 2022

 

a sudden itch

to go shopping

flea market

~Andrew Markowski

poison ivy

a boy in summer camp

is itching to leave

~Andrew Markowski

with time the faithless will itch with fleas

~Elancharan Gunasekaran

   prey pray predators play war and peace wargames

~Mark Gilbert

leap and pray and follow the serpent’s sway

~Elancharan Gunasekaran

devil's daughter

they say the devil is in the details,

and i've always noticed everything;

does that mean i'm his daughter?

~linda m. crate

 

he was a When Kingdom Comes type of guy

~Patrick Sweeney

Morning of December 5, 2022

 

death a breeding ground for life

~Sreenath

revise the syntax to approximate the destruction

~Elancharan Gunasekaran

it's hard to throw away pictures of the dead

~Patrick Sweeney

Death serves me

coffee and sits

at the table.

He points outside.

Those trees will

remain without you.

Want more cream?

~Nolcha Fox

effigy’s final act of resistance: a smile

~Elancharan Gunasekaran

where the bleeding was internal rhyme

~Kelly Moyer

grey upon grey and into the afterthought

~Elancharan Gunasekaran

slipped away

you slipped away

into some foreign sea,

a message in a bottle

i wasn't meant to read.

~linda m. crate

Evening of November 30, 2022

 

Walmartians

~Susan Burch

wilted flowers by the roadside vigil


~John Hawkhead

no.chance.of.saving-my-soul-in.this.life


~John Hawkhead

A Darkening Year

A bird fleeing

mottled wings

from a songless cage

~Steve Gerson

railroad track

fragments and phrases

clackety-clack


~Keith Evetts

The Burning

And if I were Queen of the world,

I would burn all of the cages

where feathers have fallen to rust

and every sweet song

is just a melancholy whistling of dust.

~Connie Carmichael

Host Family
 

 My dog is host to

a family of five fleas

moved here recently

from abroad you see

that is to say, hopped

over from Bud the beagle

across the street when

their noses touched on

our walk yesterday

~Julie A. Dickson

traffic symphony:

the shrill pitch of an ambulance

colliding with 

a bawling police horn

and

a naked fire siren

                           . . .

who on God’s earth can survive 

this orchestra?

~Rupa Anand

so smooth

the grab bars on

the inside of the oven

~Richard Magahiz

ouch


~Susan Burch