Poetry - Year V - Number 28 - September 2019

  IF ONLYby Brian C. Felder     Call Us A Work In ProgressLife, with all its moving parts,is a profoundly complicated business ~a ‘process’, as people are fond of saying ~most often experienced in a linear fashion,replete...

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...

WITHOUT YOUby Ann Christine Tabaka Without You A thousand years agoit came to be, or so itseems. It spit my heartin two, or so it felt. Emotions drift upona waft of smoke, burningmy eyes once more.Past’s subtle...

COULD A LOVER LOVE MY MUSEby Jan Little Could a Lover Love My Muse? My muse mocks my left-brained worldWith its trudging logical  meetingDaily objectives on chalkboards.At moments between classes, she sneaks out,Makes humorous analogies I...

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...

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,...

DOOR AJARby Fabrice Poussin    Door AjarLosing direction I sighed againmade of what he imagined in a late nightlittle me at dawn in the river of torrentialpassions cooled to the icy granite rock.I plunged again Olympian...

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...

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,...

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,...