Poetry - Year V - Number 28 - September 2019

  THE BRIDEby Wally Swist    Salutations: after Antonio Porchia            for Richard Shaw 1.The fields are buttercuppedand edged with ragged robin. We've entered the realmof the subtle variegations of the colors of summer. 2.Wishing you well on a mid-June evening,one on...

SURVIVAL BALLADby Michael Atkinson  Investigations “All detectives are in love, and all detectivestories have beds.”– Guillermo Calderon,screenplay for Neruda All detective stories are clocks, swallowingsecrets and measuring the worries of sunrisedown the alleys streaming east.All detective stories lie,...

DETACHEDby Laura Dunn I.Phase, just a phase. Not to worry,You’re only insane.Dirty hippy, smoking herb,We don’t want to share your word.Just too liberal, just too free,Don’t you wish you were like ---Me me or me?You...

WORDby Patrick T. Reardon Make In summer, the father grilled hot dogswith his white t-shirt off, skin burning. In fall, he tolled novenas. After snow melt,the whitened bones of a gnawed bird,chaos of feathers. Can you taste the beckoning? In...

LIFE, INTERRUPTEDby Roseanne Morales Life, Interrupted A growing sensation never there,a dream you woke up from, wonderingdid it even happen, in another life,perhaps another death never recorded?This be is not to be, no questionasked or answered,...

LAUDA XVBy Jacapone da TodiTranslated from the Umbrian by Ted Witham Pursue poverty, and peace will reign over all:with poverty life is secure, No fear from thieves or thunder squall.Poverty dies in peace, makes no will,leaves...

FRANCIS SEAL OF LOVEBy Vittoria ColonnaTranslated by Ted Witham    Jesus presses wax to the living flesh  Blazes wounds, seals in love, Lover's heat. Marks on Francis a true image, so fresh   with love, Francis celebrates: replete.   When he gripped you and gave to you his fire,  and virtue itself, all of you was made whole.  Now among us as his bride inspire Time and place to prepare the soul.  Poverty,...

RAPID MOVEMENTby Patrick Hurley Selections from “Variation” (Part Two of Quartet) sequential fantasy bendssheets of lightinto cylinders­­––veinsarteriescapillaries the waxing and waningof pressure feltlike forces imposed mercury risesin a chamber––in the backgroundthe hum of equanimity questions about the numberof the world’s...

PROFITby Nathanael O’Reilly The Third of July On the corner of Prairie Dunesand Spyglass sixteen miniatureAmerican flags line the path to the police officer’s door.Two neighbors mow lawnsbut most have left town or gone to church to hearthe...

LAMP LIGHTby Craig Kennedy Neighbors I Have Known Robbiewho never held a job but didn’t discuss it with meTommywho wanted to write a bookAdrianwho chased birds from her backyard every morning by banging the tree with...