The oblong mirror mocks my reddish cape,
the gray hair lying neatly butchered on it.
The tidy barber, a pudgy guy, now shapes
each inch, or so it seems from where I sit.
Category: Poetry
Ulf Kirchdorfer: In Silence
Some people want to make something creepy
out of ventriloquists, as if their occupation
could legitimately be accosted, whereas funeral
directors get a pass, perhaps because the very
same people who speak ill of the honest thrower
Phoebe Marrall: The Gray Spider
Without announcement
or effort at display
or notice of me except
as I make shadow and motion,
a spider hangs below the soap bar.
Holly Day: Trip to the Farm
The butterfly lands on my hand in an attempt
of curious deconstruction. I stand perfectly still as it explores
my wrist, climbs up my arm curiously, seeking
the source of attraction, some hormonal secretion
or new deodorant that smells like butterfly love.
Donald Raymond: Carter in the Valley of the Kings
“wonderful things…”
alone among these houses
empty as summer schoolrooms;
as any fast-abandoned place,
this one by chance or luck
left overlooked for us, cramped
dark, and narrow, filled to overflow
with alabaster oil jars, centuries
dry, tipped sideways and discarded
among overturned furniture;
chisel-marks on unfinished stone:
as if they had forgotten something
small, and easily misplaced
as if they were called, suddenly, away –
Continue reading “Donald Raymond: Carter in the Valley of the Kings”
John Grey: The Felling of an Old Tree
Ladders, a small crane,
a wealth of power tools,
on one side
and a tree on the other.
The winner is clear
from the first buzz of a chainsaw.
Kim Malinowski: Reflection
We stare out at each other through the mirror,
He stands in his bathroom,
towel wrapped around his hips,
foam covers his face as he glides
the razor beneath his chin.
Continue reading “Kim Malinowski: Reflection”
Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue: July 4, 2017
On TV, Bogie in a trenchcoat is paused
exactly between knowing and not knowing.
While outside fireworks pop
in the daylight’s last gleaming.
10 years ago, on the Redneck Riviera,
my wife and I watched
Glen Sorestad: Bulldozers
The bulldozers have come and gone.
Over days and weeks, they have
razed much of my childhood,
erased every trace — house, barn,
garage, every outbuilding.
Gone.
Glen Sorestad: Pacheco’s Murals
The executioner in the painting by Castro Pacheco
in the Governor’s Palace in Merida appears poised
to initiate the torture entrusted to him.
The spearhead has been heated to a fiery glow,
the sword honed to suit the grisly work he is
about to undertake, to punish the refusal Continue reading “Glen Sorestad: Pacheco’s Murals”
