The following is a collection of poems about Vietnam veterans and how their lives were forever changed by the horrific effects of the herbicidal warfare compound known as Agent Orange. A Life Without Guard Rails You think you got problems? You probably do but would you trade with Phillip, a Vietnam vet who still thinks Agent Orange lurks in every puddle […]
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Where the Grass Grows Sunlight narrows the shadow, spreading across the writer’s back to his face. He wakes, ready to feed his children, walks through the halls, and out to the patio with a leash around his neck, and a nurse by his side. Near the cracks in the concrete that shape the letter Z, he sees their hair. […]
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2.5.19 7.48 a.m. 33 degrees Picking the boardwalk instead of the pond this morning, onward through the woods, the ground a mosaic of leaves necessary for the crosshatch of broken branches to fall silently, dim in the overcast, the cedar is possessed by bittersweet. 2.6.19 11.33 a.m. 41 degrees Pretended yesterday that spring was […]
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WINTER, A LOVE STORY (By John Biscello) Winter’s brides, wearing long white scarves of sleet and song, touching pale sky to blue lips, breathing memory and frost; their sorrow and spectral want grows hands that enclose me, a robust crush, matrimonial in its grip, until I am no more than a whiff of air, and then, not even that, […]
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The Bald Eagle One must have a mind of America To regard the sharp beak and black Eye of the solitary bird of prey; And have listened a long time to Behold the silence of the Liberty Bell, The dusty flag rough in the distant Glitter of America’s spacious skies; And not to think of any misery In […]
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The Drifting-Bys I am the boy you almost lost to a stretch of long black distance found luckily, by love stronger, than time and space and procrastination & now in that love I drown I float, drift, swim and drown again for it is as a honey puddle deep, an ocean of pink passion please leave me here for […]
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The Complication Slide in Problem #1 since the story’s going too easily, way too well It’s a complication just created around the second act, since the author did not realize the story was so simple A bit of a bad baron dropped in from the sky, as in: Why should she be attracted to him? But it will propel us […]
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Crystal Blue The rain pounded the pavement as if it were furious over the lonely hearts that hid in their rooms with nobody to wipe away their tears or make them smile, but the rain did share their pain and splattered kisses upon windows of their homes to console them because the rain could see the love they hid […]
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With her name in your mouth more than a word, a morning and everywhere on Earth at the same time, in daylight though once every year you eat an apple in silence as if a whisper could pull the stars down closer and closer to one another and from your mouth a second sun that has […]
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Why Are the Dead So Still – By Fern G. Z. Carr Arms crossed, lying motionless in an open casket, he gazes upward through closed eyelids. Maybe if I look hard enough I’ll see him flinch or wriggle his nose at the acrid smell of incense rising from the censer; holy water is sprinkled on his body – it […]
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