QUESTIONABLE CHOICE Gathered at the water hole Primates lacking hair. Cover selves from neck to toe Lest reveal what’s there. Feeding till they’re satisfied, Drinking till they’re full. Elders showing sagging hides From the planet’s pull. Try imagining these apes “Masters of the Earth,” Guzzling down fermented grapes, Adding to their girth. Evolution must have […]
Read more
OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS Although there was no Noah Or Gilgamesh around, No blast like Krakatoa To deafen with its sound, The Ocean of the Indies Awakened from its sleep When scarp off Indonesia Collapsed in Sunda Deep. The nine-o quake by Richter With cataclysmic force Unleashed a silent killer Unnoticed at its source. A bump upon the […]
Read more
MISS JULIE-ANNE – By John Grey She pours drops of whiskey on the withered rose petals. Then wields the hose with a cigarette flopping from her lower lip. What doesn’t intoxicate her flowers, she drinks. Ashes fall onto the buds. The bees will have to suffer for their pollination. She passes the graves of all her cats, apologizes […]
Read more
VICE (By Joseph Cavera) Perhaps I stare too long into the dark Stretching my ligaments to their last inch Could not be lifted to life by a winch Her naps with me do not permit me to hark Beauty distracts me like the soaring lark and piercing songs like a black-breasted finch mine eyes adjust to the light, then […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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. […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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, […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more