John Attah - Two Poems

June 23, 2015, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Timothy Pilgrim - One Poem

≪ Previous: Craig Shay - One Poem

$

0

0

Heal These Bones

Heal these bones that lie on this valley
Where the cloud gathers
Where the rains fall
And thunder barks the testimony back to heaven
Lift them up like the bronze serpent
And let there be flesh in this valley of bones
For bones are not for eating
The flesh is the beauty hiding the bones
Free and heal these bones.



Whisper Slowly Into Those Ears

Whisper slowly into those ears
The ears that listen less
And listen as the mouth proclaims
All it has heard, true and untrue
For out of proportion, the words will flow
And the tap of oratory unfixed
While the lips churn out words
Words that bear no meanings
Words that ears prefer to take
To listen to and be merry
Let this whisper still be slow
The ears still listen less.



Ojonugwa John Attah is a Nigerian poet and short story writer. He also loves taking photos of nature and writing songs as well as messages. His poems have been published online and in print.

---

Timothy Pilgrim - One Poem

June 30, 2015, 9:21 am

≫ Next: Richard Schnap - Two Poems

≪ Previous: John Attah - Two Poems

$

0

0

Traitor Joe

 

Be assured, not an easy task, even aided

by fine wine, a Cote de Rhone --

 

in fact, I did not actually plant the wheat, 

grind flour, sift it, grow greens,

 

force-feed geese,  take their livers, 

make Foie gras from scratch,

 

hor d'oeuvre served with Cornichons

prior to our main course, Coq au vin, 

 

for which I had hunted  mushrooms, 

slaughtered hogs, killed my cock.

 

I did, however, drive the Porsche

to a trendy market, spend much time,

 

find these delicacies, endure checkout,

pass it all off to you as mine.

 

 

 

Timothy Pilgrim,  a Pacific Northwest poet  in journals such as Windfall, Cirque and Carcinogenic Poetry, is co-author of Bellingham poems (2014) and included in Idaho's Poets: A Centennial Anthology (University of Idaho Press), and Tribute to Orpheus II (Kearney Street Books).

Richard Schnap - Two Poems

July 10, 2015, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Emily Ramser - One Poem

≪ Previous: Timothy Pilgrim - One Poem

$

0

0

Wardrobe

In the morning she woke
With hope for the new day
A white dress embroidered
With flowers and stars

Then in the mail
Arrived three overdue bills
A grey smock frayed
At its collar and sleeves

Next came a call
From her depressed ex-husband
A blue robe stained
With tiny dark drops

And finally a text
From a man cancelling a date
A black gown riddled
With cigarette burns



Profile In Black

He was raised
By a lost father
And a gullible mother

Attended a school
With identical students
In both dress and cruelty

Worked at jobs
Soliciting strangers
In cage-like cubicles

Married a woman
That changed from a dove
To a ravenous vulture

Wrote many poems
That piled up like leaves
From a burnt forest

Watched the stars
And saw constellations
That no one else could


Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of orint and online publications.

Emily Ramser - One Poem

July 13, 2015, 8:33 am

≫ Next: Jocelyn Mosman - One Poem

≪ Previous: Richard Schnap - Two Poems

$

0

0

I Am In Lesbian Space

 

Your nipple is my spaceship,

as I am an astronaut

exploring the space of the body

my mother told me I shouldn’t touch.

 

I have landed on a comet

bearing your name

and I must radio home

to tell them I have found God

 

and She

is beautiful



Emily Ramser just published her first full poetry collection, I Forgot How to Write When They Diagnosed Me, this past January. Her next chapbook, Conjuring Her, is set to be released later this summer through Weasel Press. You can find more of her work at her blog, www.chickadeesweetie.wordpress.com.

Jocelyn Mosman - One Poem

July 14, 2015, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Gary Beck - One Poem

≪ Previous: Emily Ramser - One Poem

$

0

0

Neurosis

 

I am dark matter, white noise.

I can’t fall asleep

in midnight’s unrelenting

stillness.

 

The quiet makes

everyone and everything outside

disappear and

I feel alone.

 

I don’t know how to be alone

without losing my self.

Anxiety sets in

like mist.

 

I evade shadows,

lose focus as the sun

rises and

sets.

 

Some days,

I can’t keep up.

I need to breathe

but I can’t.

 

I am trapped

on this blue planet,

silently spinning

through space.

 

The world I was born into was

a muted scream made audible

in the emergency exit

of my mother’s belly.

 

I have made 20 revolutions

around a sun

I cannot control,

            a cycling of

 

waves, planets, bicycles, periods,

This noisy rhythm is dull

against my

heartbeat. 

 

The compression of blood

in and out of ventricles

in and out of veins,

            out of me:

 

like the ocean

washing the beach

after footprints litter

its pristine shoreline;

 

like the final squeeze

of catsup before it reaches

its sputtering and anticlimactic

finish;

 

like you

sighing, begging me

to stop being

so neurotic.

 

Each year, a twister

that sweeps me off my feet

day after day,  but I always find

my way home.

 

I don’t know where home is,

not anymore,

but being here with you

seems right.

 

The snow is silent as dots

falling from the darkness

of the heavens

onto spindly trees

 

The world is quiet here,

except the wind

on the window pane,

            and you beside me.

 

You hold my hand,

our body heat colliding

in the darkness and

            I can’t let go.

 

 

 

Jocelyn Mosman is a junior at Mount Holyoke College, but will be studying at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK this fall. She is a member of the Northampton Poetry Slam Team to compete at the National Poetry Slam in Oakland this August. She has previously published two volumes of poetry and is currently working on her third. 

Gary Beck - One Poem

July 15, 2015, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Taylor Bond - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Jocelyn Mosman - One Poem

$

0

0

Curtain Call

Broadway show
open and close
rarely making an impact
on the general public,
more and more immersed
in social media,
computer effects movies
diluting the impact
of live theater,
foolishly competing
with hi-tech cinema,
stage emotions mistrusted
by commercial producers
nurtured on twitter.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.

 

Taylor Bond - Two Poems

July 16, 2015, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Raymond Keen - One Poem

≪ Previous: Gary Beck - One Poem

$

0

0

The Last Three People on Earth

 

The lovers made their bed of flowers

and I watched from the baseball fields

cheeks hot against the chain-link fence

 

the echoes of metal bats cracked in the distance

perhaps far enough as the memory, life existing

even when it does not.

 

I was intruding but it was too late, 

I had left this world and entered alone

into the world that was shared between hands

 

and sticky August sweat, the type to swallow

skin as its own, hungrily, greedily

the rinds of watermelon embraced as its frames

 

letting everything spill over. Here, loneliness

was a comfort. Here loneliness meant the dissolving

of two into alone,  a sacred emptiness

 

everything a -ness that I watched

so sweet it coiled in my stomach and I groped

for the walls, a blindness an escape

 

I could not find

and next to the door was only

an empty vase where the flowers should be.

 

 

From Dawn To Dusk

 

One daylight is different from another

there are kinds that steal and others

that give the night a peace against

it’s own borders, weary darkness fades

at last, and in the flakes of gold and pink

 

that remind of the tucked inside of a shell

a remnant of a beach only the wind remembers

flowers relax then tighten tender spines

unfurling against the day, a former invisibility

discarded in pursuit of chasing the sun



Taylor Bond is a 2014-2015 Lannan Fellow, a writer, and a freelance photographer. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in various publications including Underwater New York and the Belle Reve Literary Journal. Her personal website can be found at www.warrior-princess.wix.com.

Raymond Keen - One Poem

July 23, 2015, 9:09 am

≫ Next: Eric McClure - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Taylor Bond - Two Poems

$

0

0

In The Caked Meat Of Our Circumstance

 

On graduation day

We vomit in our plates.

For years we had eaten our skin

So we could obtain membership

On the Skin-Eating Committee.

We had completed our studies

To determine if gravity is weakening.

A cannibal God,

Our studies had shown,

Is in a coma until December.

Using giant mirrors,

Gay theater critics

With poison egos

Had reviewed the War.

Standing on Frankenstein’s shoulders,

We developed a good vocabulary.

Hence, bald American women

Skinning the monkeys alive

In the hospital,

Or Dr. Teller

Playing the piano

Over the H-Bomb site,

Is the new paradigm.

If we’re right,

Then all of this means nothing.

 

 

 

Raymond Keen was educated at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Oklahoma.  He spent three years as a Navy clinical psychologist with a year in Vietnam.  Since that time he has worked as a school psychologist.  Love Poems for Cannibals was published in 2013.  His play, The Private and Public Life of King Able, will be published in 2015. 

---

Eric McClure - Two Poems

July 24, 2015, 10:03 am

≫ Next: Kelven Ka-shing LIT - One Poem

≪ Previous: Raymond Keen - One Poem

$

0

0

Genetically Mutated Dwarf Mouse

I was born on an operating table; under the topaz
twilight of amethyst surgical-lights – all Frankenstein-like.
My first breath was spent mistaking a knife
for my mother; I recall the way I extended my ghoulish
paw out towards the starved steel of the scalpel.

The tree outside the laboratory’s window was split asunder
            by the thunder of my first heartbeat.

I spent my childhood scrambling awkwardly in my wheel,
trying to learn the unkind mechanics of my design –
my legs were not created equal – and learning to operate
my asymmetrical spine without fumbling across
the imaginary tripwires required half of a lifetime.

I cannot dance, but now I know – my body isn’t a song,
            but a metronome. I keep time.

I am a pendulum in an enormous Victorian-era
antique clock, my whiskers mimic a split pediment,
my tail is a sundial’s gnomon – none of this was an accident.
Now I know why one leg is longer than the other:
because it catalogues the minutes, not the hours.

I can only assume that I was created to be the King
           of the Dwarf Mice. I have seen my reflection.

My albino pelt glistens against the midnight’s pallid
shades of pyrite. And in the night, my eyes, my snout,
my tail, glow fluorescent green – the way a construction
worker’s neon vest reflects against the testing tone
of passing headlights – my jacket shines. And at night,

amidst the laboratory’s unsettling absence of light,
            my eyes look like fireflies – two dancing shards of jadeite.



Psalm for a Coastal Diner

The restaurant’s patrons quietly stared
as Death Moth entered. The sackcloth outlaw
came to rest upon the pardoning paw
of the Japanese ceramic cat on the counter –

the slipshod-mask a Rorschach-forecast
for the brackish ocean’s perpetual
foreverness – a strange attraction to static.

All murmuring collapsed into quiet
as his legs lifted off of the Bobtail,
turbine-body in trail towards the center
of a ceiling-light, and as Death Moth’s

oscillating wingtips twitched below
the orange strobe, all knew that all that was
was the crepuscular messenger’s

sobering imprint,  forewings’ stigmata
glissando – a nocturnal arrangement
where for so long, there hadn’t been any music,
just noise – white unquiet, an empty of all.



Eric McClure has his BA in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he
was the winner of the Paul Carrol award for outstanding achievement in creative writing. His
work has appeared in The Red Shoes Review, the Shot Glass Journal, Prairie Margins, and The
Rusty Nail. He lives in Chicago where he is currently a graduate student at DePaul University.

Kelven Ka-shing LIT - One Poem

July 28, 2015, 10:03 am

≫ Next: Stephen Mead - One Poem

≪ Previous: Eric McClure - Two Poems

$

0

0

I Miss The Old Old Lantern

I miss the old old lantern.
When I was young and innocent,
It was you who brought me downstairs;
Carrying this little old old lantern,
On the day when the moon was full.

I was afraid,
Afraid that the lantern would be burnt,
Afraid that the candle would be hot,
Afraid that you would leave.

Your caring hands,
However just comforted me,
In that frightening moment,
You just held me,
Across the festive path downstairs,
Carrying the old old lantern.

It was my happiest time,
When warmness is no longer in scarcity
When family is no longer in dream.

Today,
I am still afraid,
The lantern would be burnt,
The candle would be hot,
And you would have left.

You really left.

The day when the moon was full could no longer be the same,
I cried,
But please don't worry,
One day,
Under the full moon;
I will hold your hands again,
To show you what I have done,
To honor what you have dedicated to me.

We will play the lantern together again, one day.

I miss the old old lantern.
I miss you.



As a Director of an app development company in Science Park Hong Kong, Kelven Ka-shing LIT believed Science is Magic but as time goes by, Science is just too weak to be with our Life. He fills this gap with Literature, and finally a way out comes by.

Stephen Mead - One Poem

August 7, 2015, 9:43 am

≫ Next: Matt Babcock - One Poem

≪ Previous: Kelven Ka-shing LIT - One Poem

$

0

0

Bathing Amid Danger

Garments shed, five layers, a bullet
Proof vest…
Now he is thin:
Ribs jutting, the hips, a canoe’s middle,
The legs, something to be swum, the wrists
Too fluid for shackles…

In the tub he’s almost invisible.
Smell warmth, languorous.
Smell lanky skin,
Mild, pliant on arms…
Fingers dip under.
Steam slips from waves, skims air…

Here, he’s as much without gravity,
The bathroom a moon element…
Lids close, dreams press out
The ceiling:  geese & clouds reflected
About bony shins, elbow crooks…
Canals & dark gondoliers…

Straw hats shield their eyes.
Long staffs work the current,
Frozen now, an Edward Hopper scene,
Lush but remote…

Hear pan pipes beginning?
It’s a solitary fanfare, some song nearly
Broken but sustained by notes…
Level after level, this is his voice rising…

Trickles bead from limbs, the neck’s hollow,
The swirling hair presently lifted, wrung out,
Damp black from a back
Unaware of its nakedness or what armor

This water music needs.



A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, maker of short collage-films and sound-collage downloads.  If you have the time feel free to Google the words "Stephen Mead Art" for various links to his multi-media work.  Oh yes, and he works a day job.

Matt Babcock - One Poem

August 24, 2015, 9:34 am

≫ Next: Martin H. Levinson - One Poem

≪ Previous: Stephen Mead - One Poem

$

0

0

Qaddafi’s Granddaughter

Not long after bombs stop plunging
from the skies over Tripoli, I invade
the “Mommy and Me Class” at the local pool. 
A storm broods.  Lightning slithers
through murky clouds. The chance that steered
the wayward bird of artillery that killed
the general’s four-month old granddaughter
threatens to march us to the break room
for a politically correct safety video
in which Longfellow, a cartoon whale
in Florence Nightingale bonnet, tells the tale
of the only black kid in a gang of four white kids
to get sunburned.  For now, our sleek
teenage teacher floats in a cheerless hub
of eight tubby moms and eight girlies
in pig and peppermint suits.  My son and I,
the only males, keep the far-off dreams
of deposed kings behind the forged passports
of our smiles.  Chilly hypocrites, the adults sing,
“If You’re Happy and You Know It,”
paddling the hands and feet of rebel kids. 
Each turn of the matriarchal wheel sends
an overcast look of ethnic cleansing
in my direction.  Who can splash off the stain
of not belonging?  What dark weather
decreed us too heavy for this year’s styles? 
What tyranny snared me in the whirlpool
of fatherhood?  My son, pure Viking, hair as white
as Arctic light, eyes of fierce democratic blue,
senses the shift in regimes as we slip
single-file into The Lazy River.  Under guard
of a goofy fiberglass moose, I learn I must
dunk him three times, which I do, loving him more
each time he comes up screaming curses
at this world in which every small life matters
as long as we, the newest circle of leaders,
obey the command to drown our hearts
and immerse our young in the lessons of death.
 
 
 
Teach writing at BYU-Idaho.  Poetic stuff in Alehouse; Bateau; The Cape Rock; PANK; Poecology; Quiddity; Rattle; Slant; The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review; Spoon River Poetry Review; Terrain; and Wild Violet. Earned the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Award and a PhD in Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. 

Martin H. Levinson - One Poem

October 15, 2015, 9:46 am

≫ Next: Richard Schnap - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Matt Babcock - One Poem

$

0

0

Civilization and its Discontents

I bite my lips, pinch my thighs,
pray I don’t pound you into the
ground or chuck myself off
the twenty-second floor terrace

we are standing on as your sip
your Singapore Sling, munch on a
pretzel, pontificate over climate change,
feminism, the lack of civility in American

society and your aching feet that I’d like to
stomp on each time you say “what is this
world coming to,” “politicians are liars and
crooks,” “bring back the good old days” as if

I don’t know I want to disappear and become
a Trappist monk obeying a vow of silence
with my fellow monks who also don’t talk
but love each other because how can you

not revere someone who doesn’t bore you
to death or make you want to kill them
with their washed-out platitudes and
monochromatic conversation that

dyes Technicolor discussions drab
and weary gray.



Martin H. Levinson is a member of the Authors Guild, National Book Critics Circle, and the book review editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He has published 8 books and numerous articles. His poems have appeared in The Potomac Review, Rattle, BRICKRhetoric, Occupoetry, Specter Magazine, First Literary Review East, Penumbra,  Literary Mama, Third Wednesday, Freshet, Musings, Message in a Bottle, Mindset Poetry, and other publications. He holds a PhD from NYU and lives in Forest Hills, New York.

Richard Schnap - Two Poems

October 16, 2015, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Tom Montag - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Martin H. Levinson - One Poem

$

0

0

And The Winner Is

He sometimes felt
He was just a character
In someone else’s film

Acting a role
Set down in a script
By an unseen hand

For the story of his life
Seemed to mimic those
He’d see on TV

Especially the ones
Said to be based
On real events

But maybe he was wrong
And the movies he watched
Were modeled after him

Making him believe
That in some strange way
He could never die



Landscape in Grey

I have walked
Down one way streets
That led me to
Sudden dead ends

Where ashen houses
With broken windows
Stood like skulls
In a deserted morgue

And in each one
I found orphans in rags
That could barely
Remember their names

As they filled their veins
With doses of poison
Hoping to forget
Them for good



Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Tom Montag - Two Poems

October 17, 2015, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Colin Dodds - One Poem

≪ Previous: Richard Schnap - Two Poems

$

0

0

Tear and Take Us

vulture, bird of

darkness, across

the chasm to

the light. Across

the emptiness

to the holy

silence. Take us

to and through and

past the face of

God, lord of death, 

until we find

our rest. Amen.



Only Dust

 

Only dust down main

street, paint faded, peeled.

All this emptiness,

people gone from here.

Heart full of ashes.

Only ghosts remain

Tom Montag is the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013, and a contributing writer at Verse-Virtual. In 2015 was the featured poet at Atticus Review(April) and Contemporary American Voices(August). He has poems at Hamilton Stone Review, Little Patuxent Review, Poetry Quarterly, Provo Canyon Review, Third Wednesday,and elsewhere.

---

Colin Dodds - One Poem

October 26, 2015, 10:31 am

≫ Next: Alan Steele - One Poem

≪ Previous: Tom Montag - Two Poems

$

0

0

Bluff, Utah

Waiting by the tumbleweeds
for my laundry to tumble dry
in a jerry-rigged moment of solitude.

In the Valley of the Gods,
the stone towers and shattered canyons
defy symmetry and elude explanation.

With its billion years, the canyon wall confronts.
Its striations continue for miles along, miles in,
broken only by paint, ravines and drill bores

like the irregular face of God,
marked and interrupted by our prayers,
distorted and illuminated by our investigations.

A silence greets me, nourishment enough
that I may turn from my heart of crumpled paper,
toward an unforeseen transformation.



Colin Dodds is the author of Another Broken Wizard, WINDFALL and The Last Bad Job. His writing has appeared in more than two hundred publications, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.Colin’s book-length poem That Happy Captive was a finalist in the 2015 Trio House Press Louise Bogan Award as well as the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award. Colin lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha. See more of his work at thecolindodds.com.

Alan Steele - One Poem

October 27, 2015, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Anna Sykora - One Poem

≪ Previous: Colin Dodds - One Poem

$

0

0

Bottomland

Our Trinity reached its banks today. Pooled,
First time in recent member, begging
My spirit away from my menial tasks,
A haze instilled to the afternoon, thus
Making three o’clock more like seven; touched
The depth where whiskey turns green umber then back.
Ripples stir perch to life, dancing beneath
A pair of mallards intent on their sprint,
Wings a whisper from twigs and Johnson grass
Afloat.  White discard lies as if anchored,
Tiny pillars of pulp brace water high,
Ever as preventing structural fail
From weight of the flock’s straggler members, each
Individual v in the flying
Zigzag across smooth amber glass surface, face
Buried deep in the ripples.  There, again,
Goes the two-some, post reincarnation
Of some girl’s childhood you, searching for
A home to call own in  river stand in
Ocean foam, artificial along the
Bank—homage, final Mexican Gulf home—
Nature stops well short with a mini train
Above the steep fall from grass to murk, a
Separation of two legs from none, and
To look through myself floating atop
Fluid depths, lying on those pillars, this
Other me among white caps wanting flight.
Desire to float, in continue my dry
Path to home, to my own blue, Gulf Delta.



Alan Steele holds degree in English and Law.  He lives in Burleson, Texas, just outside of Fort
Worth with his and kids.  Alan has been previously published in Aries, Apropos, Poetic License,
BL Poet, Verse Unto Us, New Mirage Quarterly, and Thumbprint.

Anna Sykora - One Poem

October 28, 2015, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Desi St. Amant - One Poem

≪ Previous: Alan Steele - One Poem

$

0

0

The-rapist 

 

what was in your mind Dr. A
did you believe you were helping me

 

that’s what you told me in our sessions
that’s what I tried to understand

 

I was eleven maybe younger
I had no breasts yet didn’t matter

 

when you embraced me and defaced me
when you defiled me and destroyed me

when you enjoyed me in your manner
when you repeated I'd get better

 

better and better oh
how did I gain the guts to go

 

crazed and fierce and out and alone
after you turned me to a stone

 

 

 

Anna Sykora has been an attorney in NYC and teacher of English in Germany.  To date she's placed 367 poems, genre and literary, in the small press,  and 139 stories. 

 

Desi St. Amant - One Poem

October 29, 2015, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Susan Beall Summers - One Poem

≪ Previous: Anna Sykora - One Poem

$

0

0

The Words She Wore

When she first spoke,
words were leaden with bookish facts
sandwiched with rehearsed one-liners
like a stiff, over-sized suit: It was pressed,
it was clean
but could not conceal her slouch
and anxious smile,
with pointy shoulders
and boxed silhouette 
heaping years onto her youthful façade.
with practice and wheeling seasons
she continued her quest for knowledge
exploring the narratives of sages
uncovering truths from storytellers,
playing match-maker for her
ambitious neurons, phrases, and clauses.
soon, her words became a
faded, well-worn band t-shirt
fitting her like a glove
mapping the unchartered curves, twists and turns
                                              she always knew her mind held.



Desi is a new writer, and her work is inspired by the countless people who have touched her life somehow: loved ones, complete strangers, and estranged acquaintances. Currently, Desi teaches 9^th grade English and 12^th grade AP Literature in Southern California, where she lives with her artist husband and two adventurous little boys.

Susan Beall Summers - One Poem

October 30, 2015, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Heather McCroskey - One Poem

≪ Previous: Desi St. Amant - One Poem

$

0

0

Seeing Infinity

 

Focus not on the forest

or the trees,

look for the small animals 

beneath the leaf litter:

snakes, toads, turtles.

Look closer, 

find snails, beetles,

fungus, worms,

and microscopic 

amoeba, paramecium, bacteria -

transforming rot into resources,

creating vital nutrients.

The lowliest comprise the base 

of all life where they digest and recycle.

 

Process everything at this lowly level;

find the atoms and split them,

transform matter into energy-

 

mushrooming above the canopy, 

through clouds, beyond our atmosphere.

to planets with their rings, moons, storms

to stars: giants, dwarfs, dying, birthing, 

headlines from hundreds of years past-

to the edge of our Milky Way, 

to Andromeda and

billions of other galaxies 

created by our searching,

beyond imagination.

 

See infinity in the smallest and the largest. 

Recognize the parts in the whole 

and the magnificence of universal light, 

feel insignificant 

except for the wonder of having a place

and a purpose to love all of it.

 

 

 

Susan Beall Summers is a positive and lively Austin poet. She has been published in Ilya’s Honey, Texas Poetry Calendar, Harbinger Asylum, Small Canyons & Anthology, Di-Verse-City, Yellow Chair Review, Cattails, Nothing. No One. Nowhere., and others. Mor info at www.tidalpoolpoet.com