Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

I Dreamed I Was a Seal

and you were a shark,
predatory and prepared
to attack.  I knowingly dove
into your ocean, baiting your teeth.
Neither of us was surprised
when our subsequent contact
turned both our worlds red.



Because There Were Things Missing

Seven sleeping capsules.

His keys.

My heart.  Failure

is what happens outside

the dark.

Pieces of Heat

In this growing, moving softness,

you are a valium.  I swallow

without thought.  You handle like liquid,

coating my mouth in repressed desire.

Like a prism of memory, you tickle,

and I choke on my own

desperation.  Together we have become

a prison of blindness.  No bed remains

unstained by our regret.

A.J. Huffman has published twelve solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her new poetry collections, Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press), A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing), Butchery of the Innocent (Scars Publications), Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink) and A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press) are now available from their respective publishers and amazon.com.  She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2400 poems in various 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.

Three Poems by Joanna M. Weston

Expectant

chained to my chair
I wait for words
to rise from the table
adjectives I can eat
to digest separation

I fly action outward
pile nouns before me
while verbs circle
pulling the ache
of your absence
into my mouth



That Dancing Time

you and I shared
so many silences

those of dawn before
birds broke darkness

mid-morning as we
headed into work

hours dreaming
of where we'd been

where we might be going
before love spoke again

we lulled the evening
into long farewells

and forgot the months
of dancing hearts



Heard by Night

    1st line from Thomas James' Going Back

yes, I have known something of the dark you speak of
sentences vibrating through a distant night

an impenetrable conversation of verbs
the last cocktail party before we left

spectral discussions even as midnight chimes
opening the door to a blank looking-glass

or a confusion of absolutes on the phone
texting foreign languages by candlelight

moments of romance at the winter solstice
words tossed like stars to cover embarrassment

hold darkness as the perfection of love
nothing can be said when all is done

Joanna M. Weston is married, has two cats, multiple spiders, a herd of deer, and two derelict hen houses.  Her middle reader, Frame and The McGuire, was published by Tradewind Books, and her poetry book, A Summer Father, was published by Frontenac House of Calgary.  Her eBooks can be found at her blog:  http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com/

A Poem by Margaret Holbrook

We Had Nothing

We had nothing, so much
of it that we could
hold it in our hands,
let it slip through our fingers
fine as gold,
weightless, abundant.
We had so much
saving everything we had
for a rainy day, hoping
it wouldn't come,
it didn't.

We got through,
found ourselves in a
better situation, less
nothing, more of something
tangible.
We saved and saved and saved.
Anything we wanted
was ours, yours and mine.
We set some aside for a rainy day,
hoping it wouldn't come,
it didn't.

We got through, we were
on our feet,
everything we wanted
more than we needed.
Too much to hold in our
hands, too heavy to slip
through our fingers.
We knew the rainy day
must come,
it did.

A deluge swept all of it
from under our feet, took
the whole lot from us,
left us with nothing, except
each other, shop-soiled
goods left on the shelf
after all else has
been taken.

Do you remember when
we had nothing?

Margaret Holbrook is a writer of plays, poetry and fiction.  She lives in Cheshire, UK and has had her work published in several anthologies, most recently Schooldays published by Paper Swan Press, and in the following magazines, Orbis, SLO, The Dawntreader, The Journal, The SHOp, Reflections, Areopagus, the caterpillar, and online in, The Poetry Shed, Jellyfish Whispers and Napalm and Novocain.  Her first poetry collection, Hobby Horses Will Dance, was published in 2014.  Margaret leads the Creative Writing Workshop for Chapel Arts in Chapel en le Frith, Derbyshire.

A Poem by Joseph K. Wells

My Time With You

Your presence
is like a gentle perfume

nestled in the grooves
of the crooked fate lines
on my palms

that evaporates
into thin air
as I struggle to stop it
in my clamped fists

and am left with
two tired, sweaty
hands.

Empty . . .

Joseph K. Wells earns his livelihood as a businessman, occupational therapist and adjunct professor.  He was also paid for being a special police officer for a week.  He has been published but has not been paid for his poetry yet.

A Poem by Wayne Russell

The Loss

As beauty lies weeping, somewhere
out there, up in the frozen tundra of
northern snowy winters dream.

Sins of my heart, beating longing for
you and this infused raven abyss, bring
thee back to my longing arms.

Forest of clay melt beneath ashen Gothic
feet, your absence an eternal torment,
kiss me quick; bury my memory with the
ages gone before.

Intrusive the silent frost of your black eyes
lye, lament thrust and gathered upon lonely
window pane, strewn empty inner child,
lost; forlorn.

The ensuing years pass and reap regrets.

Here I am with you, concussed in a strange
dream, out in the bitter chill of formlessness,
vagrancy of night, running rampant with the
golden wolfs of Dionysus, a bastard child;
reaping what he has sewn.

Wayne Russell is a creative writer that hails from Tampa, Florida.  He has been published in Nomadic Voices Magazine, Zaira Journal, Danse Macabre, The Bitchin' Kitschs', and Rolling Thunder Press.