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”
Category: Poetry
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”
James G. Piatt: A Sonnet to Dawn
The dawn seen through old memories and mist
Seeps down the mountain at the hint of the sun
And the day is brightened with light’s first kiss:
All while the land is painted with colors spun,
Don Raymond: What Even Are?
The cat is a continuous function: smooth trace of a hand
along the length of her body, though only periodically
differentiable from the matrix of her surroundings:
discrete irregular patches of color and shadowed shapes
integrating into the background, absolute stillness
in the closed curve of perfect sleep; a twitch, oscillation
about the axis of her boneless, unparalleled comfort –
a viper’s downward pointing diamond of a head;
Continue reading “Don Raymond: What Even Are?”
Ken Hada: Coyotes
They welcome me home.
I drive through the open gate
in moonlit darkness.
A storm has passed.
In the northwest
I hear them howling.
Another pack answers
from the southeast.
All is calm, still.
Everything else is quiet, until
a neighbor’s dog barks
as if trying to remember something. Continue reading “Ken Hada: Coyotes”
Loretta Diane Walker: Interpretations
“The ultimate goal… is not to understand the dream,however, but to understand the dreamer.” —Calvin S. Hall
I am a sycamore tree
levitating over a deep hole
where I was once planted.
With roots intact, fanned like wild hair,
I stare down
at the gaping wound.
No thing or thought can fill its yawning.
No longing is large enough
to fit inside or cork it.
The bark on my aged wide trunk
is smooth and slippery.
Light slides up and down my chest
with its quick fingers grasping
for purchase around my neck.
My fleshy branches are hundreds of arms
reaching in all directions, searching
for something to hold
or give my life to. Continue reading “Loretta Diane Walker: Interpretations”
Loretta Diane Walker: Before My Birth
“Think long and hard about it. You won’t get a second chance with this one.” —Mother
I want to return to a sticky September afternoon,
back before my umbilical cord was snipped
and tied. Even further still, back before I was a seed
in the garden of my mother’s life.
There are a few things I want to negotiate
with the Creator, “do overs” for squandered opportunities. Continue reading “Loretta Diane Walker: Before My Birth”
Ken Wheatcroft Pardue: This Morning
eating my 4-minute eggs, my 2 veggie sausages, my whole-wheat toast,
out my front window, a passing school bus’ rumblings
launch a jumble of wings.
Our annual spring rite in full swing.
When cedar waxwings swarm on my holly bush
to gorge on its red berries.
Like Hitchcock’s The Birds,
an ear-full of them, their beaks
spotted with scarlet drops, swoop down.
My eggs cold, my plate abandoned.
I stand at the window, eyes flitting from branch to branch,
at this orgy, this blood-red frenzy. Continue reading “Ken Wheatcroft Pardue: This Morning”
