braving the elements
he tests the river
lead and mercury
~Robert Witmer
The
Wrong Library
A wooden room. A guitar with nine strings.
The books show no titles, just naked spines.
A poet walks in still stiff from driving
his nine-foot bus. The wooden guitar’s strings
are rusty and the neck’s short. All those things
wrong with it draw you like a shot that strikes
a wooden room’s wall. The guitar’s nine strings
form
a blank book. The title is your spine.
~Mark
J. Mitchell
growing in the dark
rootless
food for thought
or a madman's cloud
mushroom
~Robert Witmer
chipped porcelain —
the antique dealer
cracks a smile
~Rhoda Tripp
Wink
sometimes
a star winks at us
and
we are so small
that it is insignificant
if
we wink back.
~John Tustin
Mask Workshop
With
all these still faces, what masks
get shaped? Common gray clay can blind
unclosed eyes. Small mouths don’t close fast.
Some faces won’t hold still while masks
harden. Much stays hidden. You ask
your loose questions and wait for time
to still faces into stiff masks.
They’re shapeless, uncommon and blind.
~Mark J. Mitchell
Watering dead plants
We all do it, hoping to
Revive the lost cause
~Jennifer Gurney
a string of caesuras white-knuckled the broad Himalayan mountains
~Julie Allyn Johnson
silence
seeking,
hungering,
digging
for more
then
bumping
into shadows
~Julie Allyn Johnson
A
Plucked Flower
I refuse to be a plucked flower
That is pulled from the ground,
Clipped, sprayed to look shiny
And put in a bouquet or garland
With the others.
~John Tustin
old donkeys
the sadness of days without rain
in their eyes
~Françoise Maurice
confusion over cocoa, coca, and cacao
is a distraction
~Harrison Fisher
Rosy
So we come again
to the ancient pretzel.
The moon breaks
a city window.
Your glass is half-full,
my bottle, half-empty.
The pretzel twists but
who
cares?
~Mark J. Mitchell
The moon doesn’t pay taxes.
It floats free
beyond the safety net.
~Noah
Berlatsky
