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Stephanie Smith - Two Poems

December 27, 2014, 5:24 am
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A Lament

your skin
smells of sandalwood
and sleep
the reek
of winter’s corpse
your lips of mint
and silk kisses
like slippery rooftops
skeletons dance upon
like my morning coffee
the dolor
of life without you
the cold embrace
of this poem


Breath and Shadow

you are
still life

the breath of feathers
in an empty galaxy

the shadow
in a child’s nightmare

you are oxygen—
artificial and alone

the cry
in claustrophobia’s
dark closet



Stephanie Smith is a poet and writer from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in such publications as Strong Verse, Pif Magazine, The Literary Hatchet, Bete Noire and The Horror Zine. Her first poetry chapbook, DREAMS OF DALI, is available from Flutter Press.
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Nathan Blan - One Poem

December 28, 2014, 5:31 am
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The Italienne

What were those sentences
I wrote for her and polished


again and again
what did those letters say exactly
the epistles that I never sent
but kept hidden
beneath my mattress until
I would take one out
to rewrite once more
while thinking of her
that girl with eyes like black olives
 
the exact sentences so much forgotten
I do not believe
even a hypnotist could help me
no matter how shiny his watch
and monotone his command to remember
those sentences cannot be recovered
so I might think on them
when I remember her
that girl with eyes like black olives
who I have not seen
in more than thirty years
and once heard died
in childbirth
long ago


Nathan Blan is 39 years old and lives in Kentucky. He shares a house with his sister, two nieces, four cats, and a dog. His hobbies include horology and reading Thomas Bernhard.
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Donal Mahoney - One Poem

December 30, 2014, 12:18 am
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The Parish Carnival
 
That's Bernie's wife on the carousel
laughing and waving her arms.
Once again she won't get off 
even though Bernie is yelling
next to the concession stand
jumping around in his wheel chair.
He's finished his cotton candy
and wants to go home. 
He probably has to pee.
He never goes anywhere 
except to the parish carnival. 
He loves the cotton candy.
He says it's the same as when 
he was a kid years ago 
before he fell out of the tree. 
He needs Stella more than ever now
to push his wheel chair and she does
except when she comes to the carnival 
and gives old Bernie a big plume 
of cotton candy and hops on the carousel
laughing and waving her arms 
once a summer every year.
 
 
 
Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had work published in various publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com
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Richard D. Houff - One Poem

December 30, 2014, 2:30 pm
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Miniatures)  Uncle Jean

Jean had a 3rd grade education, and never really
said a whole lot.  He was my mother’s uncle, so that’s
how we’d address him.

When he did speak, it was always in the past tense;
his stories were generally plain and very simple—
almost nonchalant, and yet, some of them were damn
serious in content.

All of his tales were centered on railroad lines
like the Arkansas Western, Kansas City Southern, L&N,
Southern Pacific and even the most obscure of them
being the Maine Central.

For those of us who listened, they seemed
so surreal and unapproachable.

And then he interweaved that one particular and unforgettable 
story, about how he went on the bum with his father;
sometime after the 1929 stock market crash.

He talked about riding the Illinois Central,
and how his father took sick.

He then proceeded to tell us about how he died
in his arms coughing up blood, and two days later,
how he buried him under a pile of rocks near a trestle.

Jean said, it was real peaceful, a place the dead could call
their own, and then he stopped talking.



Richard D. Houff was the editor of Heeltap Magazine and Pariah Press, from 1986 to
2010.  He has had over twenty books published in both poetry and prose.  His work has
appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals, both nationally, and throughout
Europe.
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Thomas Zimmerman - Three Poems

December 31, 2014, 4:00 am
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Random Notes
 
It’s Dylan on the stereo again:
“A Simple Twist of Fate” with lukewarm sun,
obligatory coffee, and my man-
ufactured thoughts. The dogs asleep, and Ann's
downstairs, I dive inside the music. . . . When
will hidden stars align their fires,  or one
of Hades’ weird sisters lift her skirt
to tease me with the answer that I know
conceals an undertow of human woe?
My learning’s only half-digested. Hurt
and anger, existential dread entwine
with motorcycles, basement tapes, and love
affairs. An idiot knows more. Above
the trees, a crow tries random notes. They’re mine.
 
 
 
An Exhumation
 
Along the cemetery’s edge, I wedge
my bones and hedge my bets on getting home
before I’m dead again. Dawn-pink ledge
with cat above my head, that balding dome
an egg fresh-laid and warm to break and eat
with fur and Momma’s old Tabasco, brown
as bedsheet blood. And now the rain falls sweet,
like chili heat, Louise’s hymen down
her leg. That morning’s lives ago, the house
across the way on wheels down Some-such Ave
or Street. I’m home to try the knob, but dowse
the door with vodka, strike a match. Where have
the good old visions crept, the ones that made
the portals creak, the hemlock bloom, not fade?
 
 
 
At Starved Rock State Park
The milkweed floats like jellyfish in air,
but there’s no sting: it’s only ghosts that make
us wheeze. I squeeze your shoulder, but your stare
says, “No, not yet.” I walk behind, mistake
the rhythmic cling-release of cotton on
your hips for bedroom curtains once in Nice,
Laguna Beach, or Bath. I want to catch
you like a fish, but when will you release
me? Meadow grass was ocean once, and dawn
revealed, beneath the sway of dinosaur,
beneath some trembling leaf, a rodent: this
was über-papa, our progenitor.
Your mouse-brown hair is clinging—let me snatch
it—there—from just behind your ear, and kiss.



Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His chapbook In Stereo: Thirteen Sonnets and Some Fire Musicappeared from The Camel Saloon Books on Blog in 2012. Tom's website: http://thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/
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Jonathan Simkins - One Poem

December 31, 2014, 4:30 pm
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Determinations of June

I

Somewhere it’s winter, somewhere the flesh closes,
Too, in another womb; inside that womb
The luminous seed wakes; and we assume
It barren, drum the season, thumb our noses
At the bald lack that finds the lack of roses
Announcing nothing- where nothing can bloom
Until the deed is writ, and then it closes.
It’s June now. Far off from this place it’s winter:
You tell me that it stays, you never grieve
It, and what you can’t outrun, you enter.
In entering the barren what I leave
Is this womb, heart entrenched, a bloody splinter.

II

You told me that in Germany a child
Torn limb from limb awoke: before the sweat
Soaked the sheets he turned and looked at you-
Him dreaming of his death, dreaming of you,
A beautiful woman and your warm, wet
Places. But was your dreaming it that wild?
Another child in India had eight limbs.
But that one was the dream! You couldn’t shake it.
Mutant or human, it will never wake,
You told yourself; it’s not a her or him,
It’s not a demon given legs by dream,
And should it turn to me and scream, I’ll wake,
Turn towards the one I love, and only him.

III

What shall I do about this spinning top
But spin it? Lesser lovesick phantoms set
My feet on this path; but these are my feet,
The hair I’ve lost my hair that cannot crop
The younger’s head or warm it with the heat
This spinning may endow. Or will it? Drop
Anchor on the bonfire, let the blood I let.
The plug, like a light stick, becomes a flaming
Brand: in the You and Not You unliving fires
Devour the top, that Out of what it came
The labyrinth gives back the living fire
To us- of a ghost- a ghost’s right, still flaming.

IV

The five and seven fix the weight to me
At fifty seven; the bell tolls in the bleachers
And I stand afraid, the ground beyond my reach;
And shuffling beneath me I cannot see
The thing laments its origins or touch
The superhuman- me, it says. Agree
The empty frame is empty- and part of me.
I found it in the jagged diction of
Your teeth. I knew the years of grinding softened
It back to form. I knew the body, yours, left
The blueprint: blood encrusted keys above
The island towers, where we saw the wave
Breaking the body . . . O phantom of the soft
Corpse, all renewing, teeth bared as if for love . . .

V

Winter Island, it’s always, never not, June.
The thing existing and the thing denied
Have commerce. Sealed, absolutely denied,
The third that lives through two speaks through the rain.
We crane the ears: nothing. The winter rain
And nether heat, unrelenting, defied
What it demanded: this unliving June.
Sometimes a rainbow greets us on the shore.
Cloth hung on the rainbow, cloth of birth or death,
Stands us up naked, interrogator:
Had we not wanted something more from earth,
Had nothing that we done demanded more?



Jonathan Simkins lives in Ybor City, Florida. He works as a psychiatric registered nurse. His first published poem appeared recently in Stepping Stones Magazine.
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R.J. Stanford - One Poem

January 2, 2015, 3:24 pm
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Fall and Rise

            The tides will fall and rise eternally
            As crisp winds cut across my face.
            Alone, internally—
            My quiet place.
            Journey
            To trace
            A vernally
            Tender soul to embrace.
            Once again, I, externally,
            Neglect to substitute that empty space.
 
 
R.J. Stanford, 25, is a currently a student at Southwest Texas Junior College with his sights set on both writing professionally and becoming a postsecondary education administrator. He resides in Hondo, Texas.
 
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Paul R. Davis - Three Poems

January 3, 2015, 9:30 am
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The Milky Way Poem
(After viewing a nine gigapixel image)
 
You can’t hold it in just one hand,
it is ordinary in the universe,
 
It is everything we know,
it is everything we do not know,
 
special to its inhabitants.
What makes it so?
 
It is all things to all people,
it is nothing in the awesomeness of time.
 
Some call its nine gigapixel image
a muddy creek, some will call it false god.
 
A single flower is more worthy of devotion,
and God must surely know.
 
A cup, a bow, tree of forever growing branches,
sanctuary and nursery:
 
how must we think, worship,
contemplate?  Let us eat from the same plate.
 
In its bulge, in its spiral arms,
in its dust is our history and future,
 
but we fight and consume,
love and die,
 
and try to hold in futility,
crave and grasp
 
while this vast companion of our sleeping
is too real, too sentient
 
and again, it is we,
it is us.
 
The secret of this galaxy is its art.
Let no one know.


 
Oceanic
 
Giant squid in the depths
Of the calm Pacific,
How does your last breath
In the sunlit darkness feel?
I can only imagine how jealous
You might be of my successes,
Of my historical youth,
Of my bicycling on a summer evening.
But I return to you, slowly sinking
To the ocean floor
To be divine in the stomach
Of another living creature.
I, too, consider myself divine,
But I eat mindlessly
And sleep some nights without
That wandering thought
That is a soundtrack to days
Where space between the trees
Holds my mind like an empty
Hand.  


 
 
Tu Vates Eris
 
(With the poem, “Ver erat”, Rimbaud
took the first prize for Latin composition
in verse. The story said he finished in
an hour and he did not consult his
Gradus ad parnassium.)
 
You are born naked
beneath the cordial blessings of lifting hands.
Unseen, silent, white in blueness,
the shabby ground swells its pregnant belly,
shakes the thundering word -
learn!
You must grip the scattered sounds
and give them - no - build them
a house to inhabit,
with the milk of your eyes and hands of thought.
When the seasons have brought you
to equilibrium, to a graciousness of contentment,
then you will know they will not be lost,
and you will be clothed.
 
 
 
Paul R. Davis does not hold an MFA, and believes in a simple poetic philosophy:  the joy of expression, the necessity of communication.  His poems are imagistic, philosophical, lyrical, and take you somewhere you may have never been. 
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Marianne Szlyk - One Poem

January 6, 2015, 11:26 am
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Cabin Fever
 
The green leaves outside glitter as if welded to the tree.
Birds perched there sing harshly, if at all.
 
Clouds are piling up like traffic.
The air tastes like car exhaust.
 
You are hoping for a storm this afternoon,
something, any thing to break this spell.
 
Outside young men in tank tops and baggy shorts
march up and down the street with their children.

Couples bike.  The neighbors drag in their trashcans.
The roofers walk back to work.  You stay in.

You stop the dryer, fearing its heat’s
popping the pocket of cool around you.
 
The wash piles up.  Fearing the air outside,
you hang your clothes over tables and chairs to dry.
 
Now the rooms grow damp with Apple Mango Tango.
You choke. You curse the sheets.  You restart the dryer.
 
A CD of saxophones and shadows plays in your head;
the long, slow notes and rolling drum remind you of thunder,
 
of when the weather seemed more manageable,
when you lived up north and only ice storms kept you in.
 
 
 
Marianne Szlyk recently published her first chapbook, Listening to Electric Cambodia, Looking Up at Trees of Heaven, at Kind of a Hurricane Press. Her poem "Walking Past Mt. Calvary Cemetery in Winter" has been nominated for the 2014 Best of the Net. Her work has appeared in print and online, most recently in Carcinogenic Poetry, bird's thumb, Of/with, and Walking is Still Honest as well as Kind of a Hurricane's anthologies, most recently Switch (the Difference).  She edits a poetry blog-zine at http://thesongis.blogspot.com/.
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Herb Kauderer & Alan Katerinsky - One Poem

January 11, 2015, 7:21 am
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Verbal Masturbation

in the age of talk media
exercising freedom of speech
no matter how stupid
is considered a moral imperative

hate and ignorance
are deemed justified
by the need of the individual
to express what they feel

with no responsibility
for new feelings created
in the next caller

and no awareness
that their own buttons
have been pushed
 
 
 

Herb Kauderer is an associate professor of English at Hilbert College in Hamburg, NY. He holds an M.F.A. from Goddard College in Vermont.
 
Alan Katerinsky is an assistant professor of computer security and information assurance at Hilbert College, and repeatedly a graduate of the University at Buffalo.

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Trish Saunders - One Poem

January 12, 2015, 3:54 pm
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Life After Layoffs
 
There was no need to duck your head
when we saw you waitressing
in Waimanalo,
 
middle-aged and varicose-veined
working under the table for
tips so small they might be crumbs,
 
Just tell the driver,
I’ll pay next time,
take your seat on the bus.     
 
We, too, remember
glossy brown hair.
The beauty school will dye it for free on Tuesday.
 
 
 
Trish Saunders has published poems in Carcinogenic Poetry, Off the Coast Poetry Journal, Blast Furnace Press, and Vox Poetica; she has poems forthcoming in Seattle Poetry Bus. She lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.
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Michael H. Brownstein - Two Poems

January 19, 2015, 9:32 am
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Night, South Dakota, No Fresh Water for Forty Miles
 
There is an ease in the way meteors breeze into flame
like the sudden change in leaf one night, late autumn
when their lives bleed into yellows, bright reds,
sometimes the frail lint of nightfall,
stars tickling the sky, sunlight
hiding everything alive in the dark.
 
 
 
Jack Frost Sleeps with Goldilocks
 
Cold sleeps in the room with Beauty
rearranging itself into frost giants and lumberjacks.
Snow White is still in development,
and Loki—well, he’s already a myth.
This I know: Beauty sleeps under twenty blankets
and always feels the pinch of the pea—grows her hair
long enough to cut, and cuts it—carries fresh meat pies
through the forest to lure wolves to their death,
to skin them—and when she falls asleep in her brass bed,
the cold remains, unremitting, a poisoned apple,
a hundred year sleep, a broken glass slipper 
Humpty Dumptied into so many pieces
no prince in love wants to glue it back together again.
 
 
 
Michael H. Brownstein wrote Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (http://booksonblog35.blogspot.com/) and one night while camping in Kentucky, had a rattlesnake snuggle up to him inside his sleeping bag. Apparently he survived that mishap as well as the one with the sniper who could not hit him as he crossed a field along 44th Street in Chicago.
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M.R. Briceño - Two Poems

January 22, 2015, 8:30 am
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Jim Beam

Let my love die.
Sink it in all of the
dead dreams
and full ashtrays
of the world.
Let it sink,
and then let it die.
Let my ambition die.
Let me out of every
ivy-league college
and every law degree
and every law book
and every law man
that promises
everything for
nothing.
Let me sink further
into perdition
and let me rot
without sunlight
for years, decades.
Let me look at the sky
alone smoking a cheap,
whore cigarette
while I think of
all of the things
that I didn’t do,
or I’m not doing,
because
if I look at the sky
long enough,
some day I will see
a supernova,
and it will be fire,
and it will light everything
for a second
brighter than it ever
was.



The Tigress

My dearest woman,
I know now
the wild cries
of the animals
late at night,
the wolf,
the cow, the chicken,
the crow,
but I always
feel my fingers burn
and my spine twitch
when I hear
your roar,
the roar of a
tigress
leaping forward,
her claws
and teeth
locked on a piece
of red,
dead
meat.



M. R. Briceño is a young writer from León, México. A slacker and a procrastinator, he wastes his time writing instead of studying.
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Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois - Two Poems

January 23, 2015, 7:00 am
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Guillotine
 
Underneath Kayla’s shirt you’ll find two quarters
There’s a guillotine where her heart should be
Fooled again--
the cantaloupe was unripe when she sliced it open
 
In no moment is she winning
The grass on her mother’s grave is withering in the drought
 
 
 
Broken Rabbits
 
The rabbits in
Broken Toyland
have heads
whose stitching is unraveling

Mother Rabbit holds
a jug of poison moonshine
She wears a necklace of skull-and-crossbones
and a perpetual sneer
because she remembers the days
when rabbits were symbols of innocence

Now all the innocence is gone
It might have been a myth
but it was a good myth
She enjoyed it
Now there is nothing left

Her husband
smokes a joint
and talks about moving to Colorado
where they can smoke dope legally
day and night
and forget
all the things that have gone wrong in their lives

He remembers when his wife could
reliably pop out a litter of twelve
and coat their nest box with
fine warm fur

But that was a long time ago
and she has used up all her eggs

The pitchfork he holds is rusted
and the idea of American Gothic
no longer thrills him

The sun in the sky is prickly
like a porcupine
and gives little light
and no heat

It is lucky they are furred
but their fur is
mangy now
bare in places
and smells of barns
and feral cats

Broken Toyland
once held allure
the mystique of the outlaw
but it’s no longer where they want to be
However they have no choice

Broken Toyland is all they know
They have no transportation
and public busses
have stopped running
out here
so far in the country 



Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over seven hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for work published in 2012, 2013, and 2014. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. He lives in Denver. 
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Hannah Newcomer - One Poem

January 24, 2015, 8:00 am
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A Slowly Dying Star

i.
as i lay here and listen
to the soft jazz playing
over the simple quiet
of my house,
i know.

ii.
what i know is that
i must write,
that if i didn't write
the tumbling words,
the words that come
pouring out of me like
water from the tap,
i would quietly combust and
explode, much like a
dying star.

iii.
i feel my words are
merely water from the tap.
transparent, a little dirty, sometimes
gritty, sometimes makes you
wonder if the government is really
slipping fluoride into it.
it always leaves a
metallic taste in your mouth.

iv.
i wonder at those
dying stars, the way
their light can shine
for light years.
i can only hope
mine does.



Hannah Newcomer was born in Texas and raised in Austin. She eats, sleeps, and breathes poetry. It is her life. She has been published twice. Once in Eber & Wein's "Passport"anthology, and again in the America Library of Poetry's "Accolades"anthology. She hopes to one day touch the hearts and souls of the world with her words. 
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Scott Vanya - One Poem

January 27, 2015, 10:42 am
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Right

When you stop
       being a poet
and start
       being a poem

The World
        hugs you
as if to say

        "Welcome home"

Speed limits look like
       a good idea:
All saying

          "Enjoy this moment
           as well as
           the next"

Daylight dapples
        across your hands
and face
       and dogs barking
are
       "yourself".

Just drifting off
        as if
someone else
         wore your
flesh.

And "to write"
         means
 
        "to be"

and

        "to be"

means

       "to love".

And all around
          are nothing
but sweet
        sounds
as words
        and
they all
        are true.

And it no longer
        matters if
you seek nor understand.

Just existing is enough.

And it no longer matters

whose hands write
        them, it,
        or
        us.

Just children's
       voices
filling up
       the emptiness
where joy
       will soon reside.

"forlorn""abstract"
"real""imaginary"
it is all
          chaff
          swept away
by the words
         of what you
once thought you were.

To sit to be
and smile with Grace
       and awe
       and wonder.

That is what it is
        once the poet goes
and all that is left
        is poem.

a poem.

All that is left
          is a poem.



Scott Vanya is an Austin, TX area poet. He has been writing for a long time and favors sharing his work at open mics where he performs extemporaneously and plays guitar. His work has appeared in Walt’s Corner, Manna, Perigee, Chicago Literary Review, Mobius, Cosmic Trend, Pitchfork, Romantics Quarterly, Artisan, Pegasus, The Neovictorian, and The Blind Man's Rainbow. He is author of poetry collections, Free for an Unlimited Time, Conduit's of the Sublime, and CarryAway Seeds. He operates Open Mics Austin, a blogsite that archives various Austin area open mics and performances. 
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Linda M. Crate - One Poem

January 28, 2015, 7:00 am
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New Beginning
 
the winter has come
blessed us with ice and snow,
and the grumbling
is enormous;
but the cold never bothered me,
and perhaps winter
isn't the curse we want to believe it
to be—
perhaps it's a new beginning
killing everything in our lives that could
destroy us if given the opportunity
to breath past it's expiry,
and the snow can be beautiful
glittering like diamonds
or sapphires when the blue of the sky is
lost in its velvet skin;
perhaps winter has not come to undo us,
but make us stronger
than we ever knew we could be—
sometimes the cold is a refreshing snap
reminding us that we're alive,
but like all remembrances sometimes she
can be cruel;
but i don't think old man winter is as
evil as everyone would suggest.
 
 
 
Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. She currently resides in Meadville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. Recently her two chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014) were published. Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic is forthcoming from Ravenswood Publishing.
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Stephen Jarrell Williams - Two Poems

January 30, 2015, 8:00 am
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Doubtful
 
Doubtful
Peal of clothes upon the back porch will
Help her
Feel the old exhilaration
Back when
No pangs of guilt
Anonymous males
Raked her leaves
In moonlight shows of secrecy
Their great dark eyes over the bare earth
Scandalous moves repeated
Never foreseeing
This night
Low rain clouds coming
Self pity
 
She shakes her head fighting it
Stepping down the stairs
Timid dance
Naked titillation
The years disappearing as the rain falls
Washing her
Down into the mud
She smears herself with chocolate soil
 
Something missing
So unconnected
She slumps in the shifting colors
Pink skin gleaming
Untouched
By those youth-drugged hands
Faceless smiles filling her
 
She pushes them away
On their backsides spread-eagled
She clutches a brick from the flower bed
Hurls it down
Breaking their teeth
Smashing their lolling tongues
Yard crawling with snakes
Escaping her
 
Doubtful
They’ll ever come back.
 
 
 
The Pits
 
You’ve always been what you are
No matter how hard trying to change
 
The days slip into familiar ruts
Safety in the mundane and occasional venture
 
Lift of an eye into the underworld glints
Crawling home at dawn without your pants
 
8 to 5 working and tolerating the gossip
Always hoping someone will charge your battery
 
Weekends too quick with too much of nothing
Forcing yourself to watch church on T.V.
 
Wanting to soak in the bathtub and fall asleep
Never waking except in the blurry waters of dreams
 
Coughing up your entire life over a plate of beans
Picking through the ruins for a Cracker-Jack prize.
 
 
 
Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write in the middle of the night with a grin and a grimace and flame in his heart.He is the editor of Dead Snakes at deadsnakes.blogspot.com
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Jacqueline Jules - Two Poems

January 31, 2015, 8:00 am
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The Art of the Stoic Face

Wearing a hat to match her dress,
Queen Elizabeth waved a gloved hand
from balcony, carriage, and cathedral
for four long Jubilee days.
Her smile,
like dentures hiding
the absence of teeth,
masked distress
over pouring rain
and the health of her husband,
hospitalized before the celebration.

At 86,
and a lifetime in front of cameras,
she is the stooped master of the stoic face.

I wonder if she uses needles, injecting
something akin to Novocain or Botox,
to paralyze thoughts that wrinkle. 
And if, when the cameras quit clicking,
she is left, like I am,
with phantom swelling in her cheeks
and two dry sockets,
no longer capable of tears.



The White Flags of Spring

They have sprouted
on bare branches
like fluffy white popcorn
weeks before
scarves and hats
have been tossed in the closet
to hibernate for the summer.

And now, clutching each other
in a brisk wind,
frail petals cling courageously,
stems joined in solidarity

after yet another season
of plunging Dow, pink slips,
and Congressional gridlock.

My steps quicken
running towards them
as if they were white flags
on Red Cross trucks
bringing bandages and bottled water
and I was an embattled child
with a dirt-streaked face.



Author of the poetry chapbooks, Field Trip to the Museum, published by Finishing Line Press and Stronger Than Cleopatra, published by ELJ Publications. Online at www.jacquelinejules.com.
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Sudha Srivatsan - One Poem

February 1, 2015, 7:00 am
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Unforgiving

A feeling so numb
Like lost my little finger,
Befriending the tail
Gone missing for long
A fragment of soul neatly exsected
Long warped my mind with denial
Content traded smartly
For the organic melancholy
Seeded in the soil of willing fault
Like meaningful the whole life
A residue so charming
A sensation so blissful
In the fullness of unwillingness
To let go and forgive.




Work due to appear in the Commonline Journal January 2015, Indiana Voice Journal April 2015 issue, winner of poetry contests and shortlisted for the Mary Charman Smith November 2014 Poetry Competition.
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