Evening of September 21, 2023

along the border weeding out the vulnerable

~John Hawkhead

preaching hellfire and damnation nation

~John Hawkhead

storm coming wind sweeping everything awry

~Jennifer Gurney

god’s good earth in the killing fields

~John Hawkhead

deepening love in mathematical improbabilities

~John Hawkhead

I Can't Take This Anymore

That's what I tell myself

every morning.

But I still get up

and do it all over again.

Because sometimes

a man has no other choice.

~Gabriel Bates

thanks for talking me off the 'buffeted by wind and wave' ledge

~Amy Sweeney

he jumped off his great-grandfather’s famous bridge

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

 

I’m not great at being anybody.

~Noah Berlatsky

ebb tide reaching a new low

~Patricia Hawkhead

Morning of September 17, 2023

all five faculties

what happens when you

don’t write things down

~Mark Gilbert

finding a soft spot in the icehouse of protracted pain

~Patrick Sweeney

tone in which the merchant said: we're not open

~Patrick Sweeney

the inner voyages of the bedridden sailor

~Patrick Sweeney

walking

between raindrops

white space

~Mark Gilbert

fire does not give rise to perspective

the birds don’t sing

autumn does not come

autumn from now on without legs without god without man

~Mykyta Ryzhykh

(Originally published in BarBar)

I would know Tom Wait’s

voice anywhere ...

all gravel and grit

~Jennifer Gurney

the universe is snow-winter

one day we will fall into the grave

slowly like snowflakes

~Mykyta Ryzhykh

clutter of neurons

thoughts

cling to the branches

~Mark Gilbert

after a trip to

the joke shop near Grandma’s house –

itching powder strikes

~Jennifer Gurney

a million fragments

each one labelled

with a memory

~Mark Gilbert

evidence of rickets deep in the bone texts of the Shang

~Patrick Sweeney

Metzenbaum scissors for the cut of his jib

~Patrick Sweeney

sandy beach scattered clouds a fake puppy runs toward the camera in slow motion

~Mark Gilbert

Afternoon of September 14, 2023

strange dream:

I spill a glass of wine

on Jack Kerouac

~Sharon Ferrante

Pyrites Pirate


I drink from the vessel,

casks of wine;

why leave it to the rats on board?

Pyrites Pirate, iron awe

to steal from sinking sailors,

wine-press gang.

~Stephen Kingsnorth

 

 

human extinction

and then life renews itself

no bones about it

~Robert Witmer

a young girl digs

discovers a fossil

marries him

~Sharon Ferrante

setting the bar

fairly low

a pagan funeral

in limbo

~Robert Witmer

paradice

the fruit of life’s gamble

snake eyes

~Robert Witmer

lace ships

harbor in a summer sky

mojitos by the sea

~Robert Witmer

in the sky something absurd

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

penthouse windows the rich know way of opening

~Robert Witmer

Space


⸮ With fewer words, more space for thought,

but space between the terms creates

prompts required for eroteme ?

~Stephen Kingsnorth

Colonial Power

rickety split

the banana tree

in the garden

uprooted

a ramshackle hurricane

snake eyes

in a pair

of loaded dice

~Robert Witmer