A Poem by Michael Rush

Marked as Fragile

You said you were just a paperweight
resting upon scrawled letters.
You were more than that to me;
you were a snow-globe.
I remember you shaking, shaken
into a blizzard,
                       gloss white
beneath a glass veneer so thin
it might crumble in calloused hands.

My words felt cumbersome
(like they could start an avalanche)
so we spoke in whispers;
mimicking goldfish,
mouthing circles
like a secret code,
                             deciphering
definitions of you, of me, of us.

When you shattered, squeezed-to-burst,
every page that cushioned you
was saturated.  I was left
with lips pressed to shards
and the word 'fragile'
                                 hanging
from my tongue.

Michael Rush considers himself to be a hidden poet.  Nobody except a very select minority in his life knows that he writes poetry.  Living and working in a small, self-contained town makes it hard to stay invisible.  He fights for his anonymity because he is most comfortable in the margins.  So few get to truly know him in person that only those who read his poetry will discover each aspect of his personality.  A socially conscious, sensitive and even opinionated writer, waiting to share that with those willing to read.

A Poem by Cassandra Dallett

Without Grace

I sit
in the redwoods
on the deck
wondering why would I . . .
feel bad for leaving you
Why does it matter so much to me
that you still need me?
Every other moment
I think I'll stay
Love you when your massive muscles sag
when your head shines bald
I will cradle you when you fail
be the back bone a motherless man is missing
and every third moment--
I think I'll flee
do all the things
you would not want me to
be stingy
and private
an old lady
alone
an apartment
full of books
collecting dust

Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA.  Cassandra writes of a counter culture childhood in Vermont and her ongoing adolescence in the San Francisco Bay Are.  A reluctant poet she believed poetry better left to the hippies and beats of her parent's generation.  While taking classes at Berkeley Community College she stumbled, or rather dragged her feet, into poetry.  When her father died in late 2006, wanting to keep his stories alive she wrote her first poem, Talk Story, a poem about a father who never shut up it won Poem of the Month at the Beat Museum of San Francisco.  Cassandra reads out often and in addition to several chapbooks.  She has been published online and in print magazines such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, The Bicycle Review, Chiron Review, River Babble and Up the River.  A full-length book of poetry, Wet Recklessness, was released from Manic D Press in May of 2014.

Three Poems by Dah

Detachment

A thread of light:  the fog
opens, like a sinkhole, lifts
and heaves itself onto a shelf
of clear sky.  Dissolves.

What are left are memories
seared by the sun:  golden skin,
milk-blood, soft tendrils,
a thousand heavens.

I saw your radiant face
bloom and grow into a lover's
indulgence.  Your eyes:  a vine
of blue grapes.

I may be avoiding, or hiding
from, how memories cut
into the heart:  a mane
of blonde, river-musk,

silvery moonlight
rubbed with fertile kisses.
Our mouths were wolves
intoxicated with prey.

Have I mentioned that over time
I've looked for you?  My desire,
as lonesome as old steel.
Do you remember

that you covered your mouth
when I first tried to kiss you?
A perfect blush of star-fruit
trembled between us

and gathered momentum,
like prisms gather light,
nerves overheated
by a mass of pulsations.

So, why does love thin and blur
till nothing is left?--the inlet
of the heart, like a sponge,
soaking up the emptiness.



One Word

I keep writing
as if everything around me
is gone.
Deep into June, the cherries
are planets in a green universe.

I have dreamed for too long,
as if the nights are poems
lost in morning's fields:
I reach for you, in craving,
in skin.  Obsession.

A chilled stillness after a rain,
the ground is heavy, blind, useless.
The runoff enters earth,
a simple river for the faceless,
the lifeless.  Never-ending.

If I call out just one word to you,
will you know it?



A Blue Tear, Frozen

A white cloud knows its own demise,
slowly, in the sky's mouth, its body vaporized.

now the clear sky reflects a blue that affects me
deeply.

Even that woman across the street, her long,
dark coat, somehow,

shows your absence, or the state of our love's demise, and
I cannot punish anybody for the distance confusion burrows

yet the dull cold of sadness always brings me to my knees
and, still, every morning I light a wick and melt candle wax

on the grass, and dawn bursts into angels, their wings
untouched by another's hands, and I confess to them

while cupping images of you in my mind only to search
through them for something alive.

That day I watched you keeping yourself graceful,
a blue tear frozen, and your delicate wings folded,

tucked in, and pulled back from me.  I watched you,
your lips trembling and mine pale,

then I watched you form
into the past.

Dah's poetry has appeared in Sandy River Review, Stone Voices Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Orion headless, River & South Review, Perfume River Review, Miracle Magazine, Eunoia Review, Digital Papercut and The Muse, and is forthcoming in The Cape Rock, Lost Coast Review, Literature Today, Poetry Pacific, Zygote in my Coffee, Red Wolf Journal, Deep Tissue Magazine, Jellyfish Whispers, Dead Snakes Journal, Rose Red Review, and, Empty Sink Publishing.  The author of three collections of poetry from Stillpoint Books, Dah lives in Berkeley, California, where he is working on the manuscript for his fourth book.

Four Poems by Alexis Child

Die for Me

Death comes to a man like a dream
But there are no real goodbyes
Only a hint of something mysterious inside
Dying a little death each and every time
Whisper my name and I will
know I am still alive
Exhale, inhale me in beyond just a memory
Promise me no more futures
No farewells, no painful goodbyes
Now die for me, my darling
The veil is worn thin
The night calls to us
under this anguished moon
Embrace heaven and hell
Where we both belong
Remember us as we were
Let us begin again
Toll the bell


Stay

The candle is my moonlight
Where hope has a key
The light shines in your smile
But fear is far-reaching
Drawing blank looks
vague as fog
Without love we are lost
Were you drawn across
the sky to save me
When loneliness is my lot?
I crawl to the past
that has battered me
Shadow enemies have
stolen the years
I do not have time
for the 12th of never
as you speak in many tongues
worshipping my silence


Symphony of Shadows

You are in every song
Long after the music is over
You've vanished like a melody
Now just a memory
Feels like years since
you've been here
and I can't move on
You've gone like the trailing
garments of a ghost
There are echoes and
whispers of you
The walls are closing in
here in the darkness:
The dying flame of existence
You'll be the only light I see
There is a symphony of
destruction
Are there no shadows
where you are?


The Blood Inside Me

The universe was in your eyes
where there was a world unborn
Your face was in every flower
You were an angel here on earth
where the sky opened up
whispering love's goodbye
I worship you with your ashes
There are man ways to heaven
I long to see my Father's face
again in your gaze
You are crowned as the sun
And the full moon will light my way
as you kiss the earth
and I am found





Alexis Child hails from Toronto, Canada; horror in its purest form:  a calculated crime both against the aspirations of the soul and affections of the heart.  She worked at a Call Crisis Center befriending demons of the mind that roam freely amongst her writings.  She lived with a Calico-cat child sleuthing all that went bump in the night & is haunted by the memory of her cat.  She is currently signed to Nostilevo Records.  Her fiction has been featured in The House of Pain, Lost Souls, Screams of Terror, SpecFicWorld.com, The Official Nephilim Site, and U.K.'s Dark of Night Magazine.  Her poetry has been featured in numerous online and print publications, including Black Petals, Blood Moon Rising, Estronomicon eZine, Death Head Grin, Midnight Lullabies Anthology, Sein und Werden, The Horror Zine, and elsewhere.  Her first collection of poetry, "Devil in the Clock" will be released in print in the future by Witchfinder Press.  Visit her website:  http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/alexischild/

A Poem by Stacy Lynn Mar

Hitchhiking to Maine

Sometimes the words
"goodbye"
Can drop, semi-syllables
Like small explosions
In an empty room.
A relationship can become
Mere arithmetic,
Subtracted then divided
Into a series of vocabulary,
Whispery-lyric in a dim-lit room,
Sunday crossword puzzle
Left undone,
Each empty square a sad eye,
Abandoned as the old backpack
He used to stuff
For three-day holidays
Meant only for me,
Then abandon in my laundry room
Like an unused dresser drawer.
I imagine him with it now,
Hitchhiker on a back country road
Throwing the withered army tote
Onto the back of classic Harley's
And vintage muscle cars,
Into the beds of hay-littered
Country pick-up trucks,
It's pull-strings clutched
Like a lifeline between
His nicotine-stained fingers,
Yellow as the palest stars,
Pale the way his eye-whites
Have darkened, his liver sick.
Sometimes lost love just leaves,
Walks into the cemetery fog of night,
Sad and poetic, smelling of
Cheap alcohol and bar grease,
A stranger in old sneakers
And bell-bottom blue jeans.

Stacy Lynn Mar is a 30-something American poet.  Inspired by the works of Sharon Olds and Anne Sexton, her work is primarily confessional.  She holds three graduate degrees in psychology and attended Lindsey Wilson College of Human Sciences as well as Ellis College of NYIT for a BA in English.  Shacy divides her time between her young daughter, her forays into writing, a genuine love of books, film, coffee, vintage things, and her life partner.  She is founder and masthead of a new literary ezine for women, Pink. Girl. Ink, and also has a book review blog.  She invites you to visit her personal blog  www.warningthestars.blogspot.com  

A Poem by Karen Berry

Disassembly Required

It was an unbuilding,
more deliberate than a demolition
a deconstruction accomplished over time
a plank-by-plank denuding
of our most basic structure
as patient, planned, and organized
as the original architecture.

Remember, this was a decision,
this prizing-out of driven nails,
this breaking away of all supports,
these careful taps to dislodge mortar
from every dusted brick.  Lifting the planks,
pulling down the ceiling, unhangin the doors,
the windows not shattered, but closed, latched,
then unshimmed, unsashed, uninstalled.
You did it all on purpose.

The house is down.  I hardly remember
what it looked like, standing.
It's been counted, divided, shared-out.
But now you stand between the stacks
with a list, gesturing here and there,
along among the beams and braces,
the shingles, fittings, screws and steps,
smiling your encouragement,
speaking words of salvage.

Karen Berry lives and works in Portland, Oregon.  Her poetry has been published in Goblin Fruit, Fireweed, Seek It, Prairie Poetry, and many more journals and anthologies.  Her poem "Ceres" was nominated for the Dwarf Star Poetry Prize, and her piece "Caught" was a runner-up in The Binnacle's ultra-short fiction competition.  Her first novel, Love and Mahem at Francie June Memorial Trailer Park, was published in June of 2014.

Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

Hollows That Bleed

I draw a heart

across the page.

But it stays empty.

Nameless.

My love, it seems, is hollow.

Unfulfilled.

I try to force in letters

to make sense.

But they always come up:

DAMNED.

That’s me.

Past.

Present.

And future?

Probably.

Wipe the stage.

Try again.

This time I will go deeper.

Set this latest stain.

In blood.

Kamikaze

Shots fired over lines I never knew you set,

and me on a stool in their center.

I know this war.

I have lost it again and again.

If I breathe, if I move,

it is over.

I would prefer to just swallow

the shells.

Daily Mail

I am an addict, lying

naked in the gravel.  I am dying

for your words, for a word,

for a sign that I am

still in your thoughts

as I watch you lick

the stamp that will level me

faster than four tires.  I wait,

in a bag of unnecessity,

for the final page

to turn my breath

cold.

A.J. Huffman has published nine solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  She also has two new full-length poetry collections forthcoming: Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press) and A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing).  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, haiku and photography have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com 

Two Poems by Margery Hauser

Silence

We lay together
I twined around you like ivy on oak.
Warm and dark
a soft blanket of silence
comforted and carried us
together into a single dream.

          Morning came
          dreams dissolved.
          Light shone in the space
          between you and my idea of you.

We faced each other
you a wall against which
I flung myself.
Silence cold and gray
froze and shattered
strewing the ground with
fractured passion.

          no I wish no I can't
          no I meant no I should
          no but you no you wouldn't
          no you didn't no you never

          Shards of us pierced my soul
          desire catalyzed memory
          memory blurred and grew
          soft at the edges.

I sit alone in silence.
Our last words hang
in the empty air.
I breathe them in
like toxic fog
and my heart
implodes.



You said you were an open book

but you were written in a language
I could not decipher.

I did not know the grammar to translate your soul
parse the syntax of your heart.

Lost in a maze of modifiers
and descriptives,
confused by indecipherable
diacritical marks,
cryptic conjugations and declensions,

we spoke at
not with each other
ashamed to admit
we'd failed to understand --
each believing the failure
was ours alone.



Margery Hauser is a New York City poet whose work has appeared in Point Mass, Poetica Magazine, Umbrella, The Jewish Women's Literary Annual, Mobius, and other journals, both print and online.  She is the author of Fairyland Mail (NoNet Press, 2013) and a member of the Parkside Poets Collective.

Three Poems by Cristine A. Gruber

Within an Empty Email

Reading the ill-timed
message yet again,
I brush my thumb
across the screen,
feeling
the derision
in your words
through the pores
of my skin.
My written
response
is logical
and sound,
meticulously
worded
to further
bury the pain.
In the final
moments
before sleep claims
the remains of the day,
I swear
I can hear God laughing
at the futility of the human spirit.



Omission

This moment as I think of the declaration
from that safe place we both harbor,
I know where the importance lies.

From the scaffolding of a bridge
built over a constantly changing landscape,
I weigh the consequences of such a pronouncement,
such an all-encompassing oversight of being.

I'm caught in the wake of the changing tide,
the weight of the decision pressing down on my chest,
with mere moments to respire before surfacing
to a made-to-scale model of life.

Re-attaching as with pre-cut puzzle pieces,
essentials are fitted back together,
precisely, and yet so precariously.



Split

The headboard
has a crack in it, five inches
from the top, nine inches across.

I've no idea
how it happened, nor
any clue how long it's been there.

When the movers
arrive to pack up the house,
one of them notices the fissure

in the marital bed,
asking how long it's
been damaged in that way.

Presumptuous,
I'd say, though I'm
sure he means no harm.

I shrug
and say I've no idea
when the split first occurred,

but it's
clearly grown
to unbearable dimensions.

I pack the rest
of my things, then call
the Salvation Army to pick up the bed.



Cristine A. Gruber has had worked featured in numerous magazines, including:  North American Review, Writer's Digest, Writers' Journal, Ascent Aspirations, California Quarterly, Dead Snakes Online Journal, The Endicott Review, Garbanzo Literary Journal, The Homestead Review, Iodine Poetry Journal, Kind of a Hurricane Press:  Something's Brewing Anthology, Miller's Pond Poetry Magazine, The Penwood Review, Poem, Thema, The Tule Review, and Westward Quarterly.  Her first full-length collection of poetry, Lifeline, was released by Infinity Publishing and is available from Amazon.com

Three Poems by J.J. Campbell

dripping from your lips

whispering sweet
nothings to sleeping
angels on a lonely
saturday night

it must be years now
that i have chased
after this ghost
called love

a myth

a story told by
the elders

yet i can close my
eyes and see it
dripping from
your lips

and how i long for
those to be placed
right in the middle
of my soul

longing isn't the
right word anymore

this kind of desperation
usually ends up with
terms used by the police



the same lucky stars

wish upon the
same lucky stars
you saw the first
time you looked
in her eyes

somewhere
a wise man is
laughing about
the most beautiful
dream and the
nightmares that
followed

i haven't been
in love in so
long that i truly
don't know
what to do

in a sense, i
am freed from
those restrictions

although, it's
rather hard to
convince a cynic
that his next step
won't be into a
fresh pile of shit



dance in the glory

press your voodoo
lips upon my bloody
tears underneath the
last full moon either
one of us will ever
get to see

may we close our
eyes and dance in
the glory of the
drugs that brought
us here

acid rain dripping
off of the leaves
that refuse to change colors

my nightmares
are the only things
that ever have a
chance of coming
true

i catch the sparkle
of fading stars in
the corner of your
eye

this must be the
hell my mother
warned me about

J.J. Campbell (1976-?) lives and writes on a farm in Ohio.  He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Dead Snakes, The Camel Saloon, Pink Litter, Jellyfish Whispers, and Fuck Art, Let's Dance. His most recent book, Sofisticated White Trash (Interior Noise Press) is available wherever you happen to buy books these days.  You can find him most days on his highly entertaining blog, evil delights (evildelights.blogspot.com)

A Poem by Mikel K

Because of Her

Because of her,
he bit his nail so hard
that his finger started bleeding.

The pain surprised him.
He wanted to cry.
Not because of his fingernail,
but because of her.

Poetry by Mikel K has appeared in:  Subtle Tea, drown in my own fears, poetic diversity, Zygote in My Coffee, The Blue Lake Review, Swimming with Elephants, The Georgia Review, The Reeve Report, Lowlife Magazine, The Political Dogma, World Wide Hippies.com, Open Salon, and Beagle Bugle.  He was a music columnist for a Constitution.  He has been voted best poet in Atlanta for the last two years by readers of Creative Loafing, Atlanta's weekly newspaper.  You can buy a book by K at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/mikelkpoet

Two Poems by Miki Byrne

I Could if I Wanted to

On the day my final decree flopped on the doormat,
dead, flat as the marriage it ended, I went to Plymouth.
Spent four hours chicketty-chacking on a rocking train.
Heard mumble-voiced announcement of Cheltenham Spa,
Bristol Temple Meads.  Exeter St. David's.
Gathered old friends on arrival.  Roared in glorious freedom
round The Hoe, Barbican, dockside pubs.
Collected stray Marines on drink-soaked skirmishing leave,
delighted to join forces.  We dangled our feet over a stone jetty.
Spaced man, woman, man, woman like starlings on a ridge tile.
Watched waves wash in.  Saw one of the lads puke,
wipe his mouth with a hand's back.  Yell for more beer.
I eyed the talent.  Allowed wine soaked lust to bubble, ferment
in reckless bonhomie.  Felt the weight of years lift.
Fixed my eye on the handsome quiet one.
Enjoyed the knowledge that I could, if I wanted.



Untangling

After he left, followed his own dreams,
the narrow-boat changed.  Became hers alone.
It's comfort doubled.  Wrapped around her.
Became a haven of solitude set in miles of green.
A moat on one side, on the other,
a drawbridge raised at will.
Lap of water against hull soothed.
Fires roar comforted.
The cabins steel-sided strength bled into her.
No-one could intrude.  Peace was a strong arm
about her shoulders.  Healing, holding her upright.
Thoughts loosened from the screaming knots
they had twisted into.  Spread out in ripples
like the shining green water.
Untangled, floated ahead--in a new path.
Enticing to follow.




Miki Byrne has written three poetry collections, had work included in over 120 poetry magazines and anthologies and won prizes for her poetry.  She has read on both Radio and TV, judged poetry competitions and was a finalist for Poet Laureate of Gloucestershire.  Her latest collection, Flying Through Houses, is available now from Indigo Dreams Publishing.  Miki is disabled and lives near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, UK.

Three Poems by Ralph Monday

Love the Fiber Optics

God may be dead but love is not.  The internet has revived
romance.
                    Strange thing the way that time is not linear or cyclical,

but rather a weird juxtaposition of images, memories, experiences
all jumping about like pieces in a puzzle.
The way surfing works, the dead made living, all fitting into the
living room picture frame, Scotch and sofa, roses and violins,
                a few tapping keys like Poe's raven at the window.

                     Here, controlling the screen, and forgotten goddesses of the 40s, 50s

live again, images placed in the mind and they know time and kudos,
but more importantly Kairos, a moment of indeterminate time where
everything happens.

                      Like now and Gigi Montaigne, Mollie O'Day sit in this room

drinking Turkish coffee, giggling, alive in death, digital tropes that bring
with them the lost values of another time, stirring romance of creatures
who know that this instant matters.
They love me as I them, the more so for bringing conversation, drink, flowers,
to black and white images snapped decades ago that is the present moment.

                      Alas that the relationship ended before it began.



Papyrus Lips on Stone

I like to think of your rebuttals as portraits you will someday
allow me to paint, as ancient inventions newly rediscovered,
where you will translate for me Egyptian hieroglyphs and write
a new text with papyrus lips that color mine berry red.
Take me by the hand to see the pharaoh enclosed in his
granite tomb, whisper that we will ride his sunboat with him
to a new afterlife, and if we are not gods in this mortal coil,
we will become titans in the next.  There you will wear my
odors and perfume me with the desert's sullen sands, lead
my hand to the mystery of your thigh so that I feel your substance
peeled back, like the layers of rock piled high upon on another:
this deposit white sandstone, that one jagged slate, further down,
a seam of black coal streaked with feathered sulfur; down and down
to the core of beginnings where I will know your morning hallelujahs,
evening prayers, drink you like communion wine and the swallows
etch out your name on a sky singing a psalm to your thanksgiving.



Requiem for a Love Affair

They are not soft angels, heralds who come flying
on granite wings stiff as stone.  They hold in their
unhuman hands tablets and write upon them
commandments of the genital gods.
Seraphim of the love affair the first rule is to know
the dark one, the other walking wet streets after
theater of the sheets.  These angels bring grinning
satisfaction to requited love, mind specters, disembodied,
they seek out houses where women have eaten the moss
turned gray from a dry garden, men have emerged from
caves to hunt.
They know the power of secret sighs, lust redezvous,
Lady Gaga's dance, entrancement of cinema and CD,
umbra forces resurrected in different guises like
moon phases settled over a woman's moods.
Their's is the genie's bottle, uncorked, where Freud's
perfumes drift out and tattoo animal hieroglyphics
on long black skirts and men drink from gothic
goblets turned by Augustine before the conversion
beneath the tree.
The second commandment is that of the streets,
smoke filled bars for camouflage, Dionysus in every
glass, twisting through the speakers and women's
long legs trace out a modern Delphic oracle--
wine and dance, video voodoo the new testament
driving the earnest ecclesiastical reform.
In his embrace she would know the other's dark
hair, tempers and mysteries, her eyes stared deep
into love's abyss, the nucleus, the core as modern
now as his fingertips talking to her skin.
The dark angels know this and rejoice, choirs of
them gathered together like flocks of crows
singing phantom aria after phantom aria.  They
know that this is not a funeral mass, contained as
they are in world thought--this a litany, a petition,
a supplication for the cyclical invocation, turning
like a hawk in flight, endless shadow dance, a ballet
of relationships forged in flesh, in bone, in blood.

Ralph Monday is an Associate Professor of English at Roane State Community College in Harriman, TN, where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing courses.  In fall 2013 he had poems published in The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Fiction Week Literary Review, and was represented as the featured poet with 12 poems in the December issue of Poetry Repairs.  In winter 2014 he had poems published in Dead Snakes.  Summer 2014 had a poem in Contemporary Poetry:  An Anthology of Best Present Day Poems.  His work has appeared in publications such as The Phoenix, Bitter Creek Review, Full of Crow, Impressions, Kookamonga Square, Deep Waters, Jacket Magazine, The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, cc&d, Crack the Spine, The Camel Saloon, Dead Snakes, Jellyfish Whispers, Pyrokinection, Red River Review, Burningword and Poetry Repairs.  Featured Poet of the Week May, 2014 on Poetry Super Highway.  Forthcoming:  poems in Blood Moon Rising, Crack the Spine best of anthology and Down in the Dirt Magazine.  His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Houghton Mifflin's "Best of" Anthologies, as well as other awards.  A chapbook, All American Girl and Other Poems, was published in July 2014.  A book, Empty Houses and American Renditions, will be published by Hen House Press in Fall 2014.

A Poem by Iain Macdonald

Already Broken

As soon as my elbow grazed
the wineglass left carelessly close
to the counter's edge, I was
already reaching for the broom,
knowing that was all she wrote.

Somewhere in the final years,
long after we'd given up
on trying to find the perfect gift,
you came home from a yard sale
with four glass goblets, each one
large enough to hold a good
half-bottle of Sonoma red.

I loved them on sight, while you
grew to loathe that love.
Now, only two remain, and
as I sweep up sharp-edged
shards from the linoleum floor
of my single-room apartment,
I imagine that I hear you laugh.
Sympathetically, I hope.
Enough's been spilled already;
no need for malice now.
Whatever we think we have,
we come to learn, will not endure.

Born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, Iain Macdonald currently lives in Arcata, California.  He has earned his bread and beer in various ways, from flower picker to factory hand, merchant marine officer to high school teacher.  His chapbooks, Plotting the Course and Transit Report are published by March Street Press.  A third chapbook, The Wrecker's Yard, has been accepted for publication by Kattywompus Press.

A Poem by Deborah Cole

Shopping for One

Went to the store
like I always do,
walked right by those pies.
No, stopped, considered--
lemon meringue, cherry, apple,
all stacked neatly there.
Then walked on.
You won't be there to
eat them.
Went home with a
lighter bag, heavy heart.
Hope someone will
buy those pies
so they won't be left alone.

Deborah Cole is a psychologist and does counseling and coaching with adults and adolescents.  She resides in Massachusetts, where she has had a private practice of psychology for over 30 years.  Writing is her avocation and she has a special interest in poetry that expresses aspects of everyday human emotions.

A Poem by Rick Hartwell

She's Gone Again

Just visiting this time
Maybe
So I expect her back
Maybe
But lonely for all that

House echoes are different
With too few bodies in bed



Night Reversal

Used to being counted among
prowling people of the night,
somehow my circadian rhythm
reversed polarity over years.

Now I break day differently,
greeting each dawn graciously,
rather than defiantly cursing
threads of light and noise.

Bubbling gurgles of runoff,
well-kept sprinklered lawns,
more soothing now than
soft swirls of soiled toilets,
dispelling smell and stain,
vomit and alcohol diarrhea.

In past serving as beds and comfort,
depending on one's point of view,
gutters now are salutary, rather than
discriminatory, liquid sounds melodic
counterpoint to early morning traffic.

Other dawn breakers now curse the sun,
longing for dark, hiding desires of the night;
secretly I know best who's better off,
being no longer hunter or prey, but
just another member of the dawn patrol.

Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school English teacher living in Southern California.  He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity.  Given his druthers, if he's not writing, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon. 

A Poem by Liz Egan

When He Leaves You

I.

When he leaves you, he will say, "It's not you, it's me."  He will say it is all his fault.  He will say
he has changed, there's nothing you can do, things are not the same anymore.  He will say he
knows it hurts you now but this will make you happy later.

                                                    (You will say, out loud, "Can we please just talk about this?")

                                                                      He will say his mind is made up.  He will say he still
                                                                      loves you.  He will say I hope we can still be friends.

II.

When he leaves you, he will say, "Of course it's you, you crazy bitch!"  He will say it is all your
fault.  He will say you changed.  He will say you are not the girl he married.

                                (You will say, to yourself, "Well, no.  Mostly because I am no longer a girl.")

                                            He will say none of his friends ever liked you.  He will say you were
                                                            a mistake.  He will say he doesn't love you, not anymore.

                                                                  He will say he is keeping the television, by the way.
                                            He will say don't call me.  He will say I don't want to see you again.

                                                                                                                                         Ever.

III.

When he leaves you, he will say nothing.  No explanation, no reason why.  When you scream
and cry and thrash on the ground shouting, "Just talk to me!" he will only blink and say, "I
don't know what you want me to say."  He will be gone by the time you come home from the
grocery store, arms loaded with the apple juice and Little Debbie snacks and rack of lamb you
know he loves.  He will leave you in the bed that smells like him, alone in a hurricane with the
wind rattling the windows and a leak sprung overhead.



Liz Egan holds an MFA in fiction writing from George Mason University.  Her writing has been published in ink & coda and Sliced Bread.  She teaches writing and directs the writing center at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.