Keeping Time The mayfly lives two days, a swallowtail butterfly two weeks. The last generation of monarchs born each year endure for months flying the hundred mile a day migration, ribbons, orange and black, unfurl high across the sky. Dragonfly nymphs thrive five years in streams hiding under roots and rocks. Arctic woolly bear caterpillars chew willow leaves for seven. Spiders spin their silk orb webs for twenty years, liquid in their abdomens pulled out as threads by gravity, like water stiffening to icicles. A human life is to the lives of stars as the … Continue reading Keeping Time and Awake in the Night, 2 poems by Patricia Hemminger→
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→
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→
When I encounter a word I don’t know I check the books and screens. Even after that, there remain words I cannot find the meaning of. Some are multisyllabic thefts from languages not mine. Some might be mis-spellings or typos that look correct until not. Some congregate in sentences but so many just sit there refusing to surrender meaning. And then there are the words I always thought I knew: tree, rain, stone, island, myself. Michael Penny was born in Australia and now lives on an island near Vancouver, BC. He pursues his interest in … Continue reading Ignorance by Michael Penny→
…………………………for John Kander Music plays in my head, and I listen. Sounds and rhythms, echoes and vibrations. This is how I move through space, how I comprehend my world. Long, long ago, when I was a baby in Kansas City, I caught tuberculosis. In those days, there was no cure. Isolated on a sleeping porch, I learned to match the sounds of approaching footsteps with the ones who made them. But footsteps go both ways. A residue of loneliness lingers after all these years. Music is the antidote. Anne Whitehouse’s poem, “Outside from the Inside,” … Continue reading The Composer by Anne Whitehouse→
I just bought an eight-pack of bony Jesuses, an Amazon special, to be sure Jesus remembers this little lamb if I run a red light or ease through a stop sign as an 18-wheeler rolls through I also bought eight fuzzy rabbits’ feet on fake gold chains in case I need good luck when stopped by a crotchety cop who had a serious spat with her husband this morning when she discovered condoms in his back pocket I will hang a dangling Jesus on my rearview mirror on even numbered days and the rabbit’s foot … Continue reading Equal Opportunity by Claire Scott→
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→
Not thinking about it doesn’t make it go away. Recollection makes sense of it, invents details from the misremembered: as with open carry and its fine print—no one flinches when the guy walks into McDonalds, a large pistol strapped to his waist and orders a Big Mac, hold the pickles, and the young man at the register says it always has pickles. When you’ve got a pistol strapped to your waist you can’t help resting your hand on its polished blue-black handle with faux pearl inlay on the grip, and the young man at the … Continue reading How Pain Matters by Mark Simpson→
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