All is quiet; the winds have subsided; The storm’s dissonance is behind us. Sideways rain and sleet that tore through the night Have jeweled branches with icy shards Of pearls that refract the pale sunlight Demurely peeking through lightening clouds. Nuthatches dance up and down trunks of trees; A lone blue jay streaks down lighting on a bush. A thin white icy wafer-like crust coats The grass, the steps, and roadway, too, All unbroken by footprint or tire tracks. On this joyful morning as we celebrate This elusive moment of momentary peace, We pause, knowing … Continue reading Respite by Joseph Kleponis→
I stretched out my legs before me, ready to bury my dead bodies, when my boss invited me to his office and made me an immoral offer. He pleaded with me with a blackface and with eyes tinier than the mustard seed, that he would appreciate my help were I prepared to offer it to him. He would be grateful if I killed myself; so calm and gentle like lilac was he when he laid down a body-worn camera on the table and asked me to drive it wherever I went. I carried it with … Continue reading Self Driving to Eternity by Chibuike Ukah→
Poem, come in, sit down. How are you getting along? Are people reading your ordinary troubles? Let’s talk about that. (I hear my fatherly voice: pledged to do no harm.) Let’s first talk about your literal surface. The reader can’t know a poem at first glance, by appearances, I assure you. Don’t worry about snap judgements. You look comfortable on the page today. Is that safe to say? You might be a narrative, let’s say, or a description, a reminiscence, an emotional plea, a philosophical dialectic perhaps, or a political screed. Want to talk about … Continue reading Questions to Ask a Poem by Fred Wilbur→
In the ER, we try to save them all, yet, each death of a stranger is a small death inside me, an accumulation of failed effort that cripples imagination, cripples empathy, presses the dream closed. Still, each departure can be a small reprieve from holding back the flood of sick and injured souls, a momentary opportunity to draw breath deeply. Running along beside a stretcher down a corridor trying to pump a man’s chest. His eyes already glazing over, he won’t revive. I feel nothing. Evolved into a numb creature, I see only shadows, … Continue reading A Plum on a Tree by Roselyn Elliott→
In the empty lot across the street they graze on ground scrape and grind — diesel sculptors of land and sound that rumble words shatter lines I try to write take up residence between my shoulder blades and teeth. Then it’s quitting time and quiet unfurls through air. Into this gap this negativity of sound — an echo, insistent: how the backhoe’s motor idled, revved, and whined how metal screamed when it hit rock how workers’ voices floated like dandelion seeds windblown this stillness opens silence then words asking to be heard. Cindy Buchanan … Continue reading Still Life with Bulldozer and Backhoe by Cindy Buchanan→
The worms are writing a song in my garden, rustling their slick bodies through the leaves in a rising crescendo, inspired by the rain. If one were musically inclined, they could accompany these worms but only softly, because if you’re too loud, you’ll scare them and they’ll stop. They like flutes. They don’t like cellos. The worms hear my footsteps across the yard and grow silent just as I approach pick up their song again with verve and zest in the wake of my passing. If I were musically inclined, I’m sure I could pace … Continue reading The Audience Beneath by Holly Day→
If you want a free lunch, All you have to do is smash, bleed, and work for it. Would you like some peanuts for lunch? Free sample, the sign on the wooden box says. Take one. Inside the box with the sign, behind the broken glass holding them in place, the peanuts lie stacked, delicately pressed and balanced against the edge ready to tumble on the first move. To eat them, you must first smash the glass, and hope your hands don’t bleed. Disturb the system, and hope none cascade onto the floor, so that … Continue reading Trick of the Eye: Fresh Roasted by Richard Elliott Martin→
Teaching, too, is labor. Everyday to be up to the task, everyday the master of a hundred worlds, of casual words, and of causal words, to confront the faces added to or taken from. Do you know when you add a thought there, it shows in the eyes, it shows in the mouth’s subtle creases? Do you know, when you stop a thought, when you turn it aside with a straight line, with the shortest distance from there to here, it shows in the brow’s labor? Exhaustion. Do you know that teaching is exhaustion, everyday … Continue reading Teaching by J.R. Solonche→
“It is true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality.” —George Orwell “Why I Write” (1947) Several months ago (23 September 2024) Miles Fowler wrote a Street Talk blog titled “The Thinly Disguised Autobiography” which provoked me to reflect on this “courageous or foolhardy” activity. Naturally, many writers entertain the notion of writing about themselves; personal experience being a writer’s primary resource. Autobiography differs from biography in that the author is still alive! I say this flippantly as biography can be of a person alive … Continue reading A Bragging Humility by Fred Wilbur→
Tucked in her shell of gutsy metal, an errant art teacher spun my car into a snow bank. We shook after the collision, the grab handle, Jesus, pried loose, sun visor dangling like a hangnail from the inside roof. The glovebox archives our road lives, talismen from preschool classes, cassette tapes and their magnetic cellophanes spooling loose, expired disability placards lodged behind the tissue packets. The passenger side door was crinkled, discarded- candy-wrapper-style, and the back of my head felt like mayhem and grind. She didn’t see me turning right, despite my right of way, … Continue reading First Car Accident by Alisha Goldblatt→
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