I bring a milkshake every other week to an old man in a nursing home, a refugee from Germany who paid me 50 cents to cut his grass when I was a kid in Chicago after WWII. I couldn’t understand him then and I can’t understand him now but 50 cents was big money in 1950, 10 candy bars, 10 […]
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Bucket List before I expire, i’d defy the laws of gravity, by breastroking through the atmosphere, upwards. i’ll then settle on the fluffiest of the floating beds in the sky; sipping copiously from my bottle of malta in high spirit. then borrow from mr. eagle, his sharp lenses to visualize the world from above in a new dimension. […]
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SMALL BEFORE THE SEA We have only pictures, A journal and rubble From what was a fixture To keep ships from trouble. A lighthouse, built sturdy, On Unimak island Around 1940, With Coast Guard as client. Five Guardsmen were manning The station that morning, Both horn and beam spanning The sea with their warning. At […]
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THE SAVIOR You ask me, “If the house were burning, what would you save?” Would it be my photo albums? Odd how printing pictures has all but stopped. I don’t own jewelry, though I imagine gold melting to nuggets in someone else’s fire. The cat can save itself with a leap when the door is opened. I’d […]
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LEONID (By Joseph Cavera) the soul lays here in this grim place demons rear I can’t stand the pace this Mad mien dampens the soul perhaps the cause of this pandemic hole and although juts through the tailpipe of every last jenny and john uncertainty of right- and wrong they cannot feel anything like this not now, […]
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A Puzzling Marriage Married 60 years Fred and Daisy still are very different people. All day long they hide their differences to make their marriage last but every night after supper they let them out silently. Fred in his recliner works a crossword puzzle while Daisy in the dining room works a jigsaw puzzle but neither Fred nor Daisy speaks a word until one has finished and howls […]
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Heartless at the Checkout Line “I’d never take my anger out on you,” she said, when I remarked she looked so piqued I had the inclination to skidoo. As someone who desired her, I freaked out at the dewdrops missing from her ears, the stern configuration of her lips, her strident voice and mortifying leers. Since these impediments did not […]
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PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFERENCES The backseat driver sits by my side applying the brakes, cautioning, “There’s a car!” which, by the way, is ten car lengths ahead at a corner and I am already fully aware. “Here are the keys,” I offer, stopped at the roadside, “Would you prefer to drive?” But now, she is offended, says she just […]
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I’m Not Coming Home For Christmas by, Melissa R. Mendelson Desert sands are the stars shining tonight. Warm kisses of wind are the wings touching my back, but I still can’t take flight. So, here I am on Christmas with my heart begging to be held, but I know. I know my love will be found. This war […]
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To The One Who Desires To Be Me what life is left in me to be desired? me, the wayward wing of a brawny bluebird that lost its grip on the tiptop of a fruit tree fell flat on the heart of a wretched rock where rains washed all traces of its milky memories far far away i live on […]
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