Poetry

We Are All Complicit In Mariupol, a man searchesall night in the rubble of his house.“Four children, four adults,” he says,as day breaks. He starts to dig their graves. On a New York street a man...

Four Haikus Music Music feeds the soulTouches our deepest recessesLove and cherish it. Rippling Lake Gently rippling lakeBathed in soft autumn sunlight.Leaves in myriad shapes. The Starling As I sip coffeeA starling settles nearbyPlumage speckled white. Lilac Leaves Green leaves turn yellowPerfectly...

A MALLARD AND THE RED SHOES I glide through a velvet watermirage of swirling autumnalcolor. In the water, trees bleedand shimmer. I glide throughtrees, and trees are water and wateris sky. I am mallard. I...

TO PAINT A CLOUD To paint a cloud,apply colors, etherealand pure. Translucentlike white powdermisted onto silk. Wield your brushinto the heavensso your cloudsheave, like an ocean’sgreat waves or stampeding horsessoaring into the sky,a gambol of dragons,swirling bearers...

The Yelling Man The man screeches at the bird watcher he nearlyruns over, screams at his ice cream meltingin the heat, shouts at his noisy twins just being kids.He once had a wife. But he...

In the bewitched aviary. The sonnet according to Mr. Shakespeare Helots muse about moony Golden Fleece of the condor. Drudges think of the dreamy eternal dew of the hen. Philosophers ponder on winged fantasy of the crow. Kings ruminate...

Forever August We hate to see August drain awayLike the grains of goldFleeing from a dying miner’s handFrom an old movie.We want to remember theLush, emerald-green of the vegetationWhich surrounds us.Like a sweet-smelling cocoon.My nose...

kaleidoscoping a sun-dressed mare Lest my heart becomes a seagull, soars away—the world is a cold country—lest my heart effervesces in pyrogenic fever, leaving my body unlike a lamb, but a naïve bull running from...

KILNS FANTASTIQUE for J. G. Verne Neath the kilnsof Coplay,one mile deep, adrift through cavernsof twinkling aquamarine. Rooms untouched,musty cold, gurgling streams teemedwith finned marmalade, shrooms golden brownlike altar bread, opening worldswithin worlds. T. J. Masluk, poet and writer, has work appearing in...

There’s a fly in my champagne coupethe door is locked from the wrong side Freshly squeezed stars and glitter all over the floorfreshly squeezed heart vessels and vermillion all over the groundI once read that...