Evening of October 21, 2022

alone at Dad’s grave

by the cemetery wall

six or seven cows

   they watch me write little poems

   but will they keep it secret?

~Sean O’Connor

a ninja

wearing a cowbell

climate change

~Robert Witmer

midmorning

the good wife’s

muffin cups 

~Kelly Moyer

thin men

with frightened hair

cloves

~Robert Witmer

oh God –

do you –

what the –

I don’t –

are we –

would we –

it’s so –

going now –

and he was –

(found poem sourced from Kim Wozencraft, Wanted)

~Caroline Reid

The most beautiful thing about a blistering summer day is a swimming pool.

The most beautiful thing about a swimming pool is goosebumps.

The most beautiful thing about goosebumps is a blistering summer day.

~Nolcha Fox

cockroaches my crush on them

 ~Keith Evetts

self-preservation muting the barrel-aged bluebird

~Kelly Moyer

feet smaller than Buddha’s Grauman prints
 

~Stephen J. DeGuire

just as the sun explodes haiku

~Keith Evetts

moth-eaten poems the missing words

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

sigh a while after the expiration date

~Keith Evetts

Will she

go to church

in that red satin dress,

like her daddy wants?

Or smoke on the corner,

wait for the boys,

like her mommy does?

~Nolcha Fox

Evening of October 19, 2022

 

Not Made in Heaven

Every single town in the world

has at least one woman

I would have married.

But we lived in our town

and I married you.

My Love.

~Vern Fein

                this morning

           walking in the park

                     through

                 a spiderweb

                     my face

          entangled in threads 

~Rupa Anand

skipping school

for lack of sanitary napkin

an african girl-child

left in the dark

period of taboo

~Christina Chin / Uchechukwu Onyedikam

The Better Part

Lazy when cooking, housekeeping,

I’m diligent about writing poems.

Ignoring everything but old age,

I people watch patrons in local restaurants,

eavesdrop hushed conversations,

write poem fragments on scraps of paper.

On a walk from the library I look

for my name on discarded envelopes,

postcards, spray painted graffiti, unpaid bills.

~Frank C. Modica

moønsoon rains

weather i like it

or nut

~Lorelyn De la Cruz Arevalo

signing his death warrant

the clown uses

invisible ink

~Thomas Tilton

cemetery

lying under the wall

the magpie's shadow

~Françoise Maurice

My Wife an Owl

Once a sprite blue bird,

always flying through my thoughts

and desires, in and out,

flapping her wings, singing.

 

But now feathers graying

at our dinner table,

when my lowering voice speaks,

she is an owl, tilting her head

and cupping her ear in my direction.


Not whooo, but why?

~Vern Fein

mathematical perfection

a universe

spun from chewing gum

~Kelly Moyer

at night

they emerge

moonlit clowns

~Thomas Tilton

October moon —

my broomstick comes

out of the closet

~Bonnie J Scherer

Bull in a China Shop

and I am the china.

I know you ground-pawing beef,

always thinking you can win

by throwing your weight around,

snuffling your ugly head back and forth

drooling until you charge,

break innocence into a zillion pieces.

can’t save the precious,

too much ever to sweep up.


I better never let you in.

~Vern Fein

Branded

Lift your legs

the Hoover’s buzzing, carpet drone -

recall the ease, Linoleum -

brushing cushions, clouding dust,

like the Kleenezy man’s about.

Because bare ankles bear the marks,

those jumping critters, flailing bout;

why do they choose her blood, not mine?

Branded now, generic fleas.

~Stephen Kingsnorth

(b)each

(b)itch

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

autumn evening

cat on my lap

fleas in fur

and we all

under quilt

~Mirela Brăilean

moth

emperor

ate his clothes

~petro c.k.

Evening of October 17, 2022

reclaiming control-alt-delete

~Kelly Moyer

the caterpillar i follow down leaf holes

~Anette Chaney

brontosauruses resurrect at night but humans can’t see them

~Robert Fleming

shark pie in the bayou

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

You scrape

your shadow off the wall

with a spatula,

toss it in the frying pan

with butter and bacon

to fatten it up.

You eat it.

You cast a bigger shadow now.

~Nolcha Fox

a deeper shade of pale moonlight postmortem


~Rich Schilling

creeping up the wall slime molds of my thoughts

~Mona Bedi

second mortgage on your home page

~petro c.k.

a dark and stormy web

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

Evening of October 14, 2022

       family 

no matter how itchy

     still family

~Rupa Anand

The Milky Way

fell into an artisan fountain

under a bridge

homeless people

playing dice

with a strange patrol

dressed in green

a milkmaid brought

a few porcelain lambs

to send to Mars

~Mircea Moldovan

 

poet’s

secret life

(redacted)

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

Shivering bracken skeletons

 march in grey discord

~Rebecca Dempsey

 

 

sex                                                               pot

      ladling soup from the bottom of the

~Kelly Moyer

puppet theatre

the snip

of her strings

~Kelly Moyer

whisper from stage left your fly trap is open
 

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

Leafing the ground

trees sate their own hunger

~Rebecca Dempsey

a sudden swing

of the weathercock 

abandoned manor 

~Arvinder Kaur

as I rearrange the river’s stones by hand...

you say

you want me to change

~Lee Hudspeth

vampire mosquitos

escape from a vampire's

niche and attack a group of night bathers and pierce their harvest of human blood 

into the vein of their vamp. Ouch!

~Madeleine Vinluan

minstrel cycle

I feel like

singing

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

morning dew

no asterisk at the edge

of eden

~Kelly Moyer

Afternoon of October 9, 2022

wagamama nottingham

chopsticks clacking

slurpers slurping

sauce-stained noodles

from wooden bowls

rows of peasants

packed onto benches

behind glass

umami
 

~Mark Gilbert

A domino falls over,

and over another

its neighbor falls.

~Catherine Zickgraf

morning mist

every word colored

mondegreen

~John Pappas

in today's horoscope

the colour I dislike

is lucky for the day


~Muskaan Ahuja

night market

the flowerseller’s

can of paint
 

~Kelly Moyer

sure thing

Sweating

and screaming

as Espresso Speedway

powered past Masterclass

in the final straight.

I was hooked,

addicted.


~Mark Gilbert

Denali bus ride …

tourists watching the moose

watching the tourists
 

~Bonnie J Scherer

gravity waves

past catastrophes

causing ripples

today and next week

~Mark Gilbert

empty theatre

we meet

in ghost light 

~John Pappas

Half moon floats

above orange and red trees

darkening sky

shivers, not from the cold

~Steve Van Allen

a corpse

 rising from pond scum—

 year of the rat 

~Anna Cates

glowing moon

casts a shadow—

flying witch
 

~Sharon H. Frost

lucky to have wrinkles to worry about

~Patrick Sweeney

a looking glass half-fully conscious

~Kelly Moyer

building muscle…

the repetitions in

sleepless nights

 

~Bonnie J Scherer

tonight

the unicorn

that was feeding

with my dreams

didn't come

I stayed up all night

waiting

and counting

sheep

on and on

~Mirela Brăilean

I must be crazy

to write all these

but here I am

~Mirela Brăilean