My fingertips thrummed with your heartbeat which lapped at me, a tongue in a bowl, a ticking turn signal. I watched your breath grow downy with fear and hoped you could walk out of the room on your own. Bio: Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or […]
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To The Last Detail AND THE YOUNG WHORE PLAYED OUT HER PART AS THE FORGOTTEN SAILORS PLAYED OUT THEIRS SHE LOOKED SO LOVELY SITTING THERE ALL NAKED AND BEAUTIFUL ENTICING THE PRISONER TO RUN AWAY. AND HE DID TRY TO RUN AWAY BUT HIS COMPADRES CAUGHT HIM REBUKING HIM FOR ESCAPING ABUSING HIM FOR RUNNING […]
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Remnants The once proud avenues of vaunted shops now are deserted. Only the ghosts of employees past haunt the cobwebbed stores, all that remains of the departed unable to get other jobs, abandoned by their masters, unable to adapt to changing circumstances, conditioned to servitude, unfit for opportunities limited to the few capable of functioning in the Information Age.
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AFTER PARTY (By John Biscello) She, Lazarus, back from the dead, with a musical vengeance— A beat, Christ, please, she asks of her martyred D.J., half-light, half-man, and out climbs her voice, grinding through rubble, a dark velvet toy wound up for centuries, released, on behalf of every last blue girl, unannounced, notes from underground unfurling a cortege of […]
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I Traded Ethel for Tiffany I know very little about computers but I use one for basic needs. Poems, stories, not much more. Like some nice women I’ve known, I’ve discovered computers have a mind of their own. They do what they want and expect me to understand. The problem is I never do. I babble in amazement. And like the […]
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Open Eyes Laid Back By Michael Lee Johnson Open eyes, black-eyed peas, laid back busy lives, consuming our hours, handheld devices grocery store “which can Jolly Green Giant peas, alternatives, darling, to bring home tonight- these aisles of decisions.” Mind gap: “Before long apps will be wiping our butts and we, others, our children will not notice.” No worries, […]
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EVE (By Joseph Cavera) it was christmas eve, and all through the streets, wind echoes without grace, telling me to leave ..for a better place. yet I arose to see a snowy sight, crystals rose up in the sky shining down refracted light such beauty, a frozen cry left behind by the Man up there and still is […]
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Homer’s never owned a gun, thinks they should be banned along with bombs and missiles. Doesn’t need them in the river that flows between his mind and his emotions where every now and then he pushes someone in for some untoward remark. He points to the sky first, says that’s where heaven is and gives a push […]
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VEXED OF KIN You pick your friends, but not your kin. Once stork descends with you, you’re in Whatever group that Fate selects, Who’ll mold you to what they expect. To some degree, your genes decide What you will be, who you’re inside. But those you’re with through early years Upon your pith their likeness sear. […]
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Insignificance Late in life I struggle against my insignificance When I should enjoy the freedom from performance before an audience. Applause is happiness but if they withhold applause, embarrassment. When Da Liu put me to work crunching hexagrams and spreadsheet numerology Instead of ghost writing his books about T’ai Chi for longevity I was humiliated but freed. No need to […]
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