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Issue 9

POETS

ANTEBI, DEBBI
BAVA, ALESSANDRA
BLAKER, ELI
BOGAR, ADAM
BOONE, RANDY
BOYLE, JONATHAN
BRAGER, HEATHER
BROWN, REBECCA
CHAN, JON
CLARKE, LAUREN
DRURY, IVO
DUNLAP, JAMES
EDWARDS, DAVID
FIX, ELVIS
GUSTAFSON, JIM
HARTWELL, RICHARD
HAYES, JOHN
IUPPA, M.J.
JACKSON, JENNIFER RUTH
JOO, JUNGMIN
JOY, BERNARD
LAGUZZA, ROBYN
LESLIE, STEPHEN
MINARD, JAMES
MURPHY, MICKEY
ORRIS, SCOTT
RATCLIFFE, MICHAEL
ROBBINS, CLAY
ROBBINS, DOUG
S., PREETI
SCHEER, WAYNE
SEYMOUR, JIM
SHIERS, RICHARD
WANKOWSKI, LYNN
WHITMAN, NEAL
WILSON, CONNOR
WISELY, DALE

Jim Seymour



after the argument
trembling lips
glassy eyes




Jim Seymour



funeral parlor reception line
muted conversations
gentle embraces




Richard Shiers



Authors are published
Writers are not
I will always be a writer




Lauren Clarke



Lost glove on park railings
Sticks its finger up
at the world.




Richard Shiers



A dance through the heart
A frolic through the mind
A tumble through the joints




Alessandra Bava



Any of your pictures in
black and white is more
subversive than you, Tina.




Alessandra Bava



Nothing sings better
than a starved tummy
on a sidewalk.




Connor Wilson



Sometimes I like your singing
Sometimes I like your screaming
Sometimes sad and nothing said




Eli Blaker



The walls are high
There is no escape
Where is my God




Preeti S.



With laboring strokes
The elastic hand of time
Cancels a known past.




Jungmin Joo



reloaded
ready to shoot
death in the face




Jungmin Joo



candlelight
flickering in the air
it will suffice




John Hayes



Mockingbirds sing
daffodils flower
its spring




James Dunlap



Nights she would dream of kudzu
creeping through the open window
and down her throat until it was part of her.




James Dunlap



All the bones laying under blood, skin and dust
have felt the flap of night wings
through the air-filled woods of the south.




David Edwards



eons are lengths of
time that can be measured in
similes alone




Randy Boone



weeds consume
the garden,
beautifying death




Ivo Drury



in the quarrel’s aftermath
recalling placid Niagara waters
mere meters past tumult




Ivo Drury



why fuss the precision of words
when we can find meaning
in drumbeat and birdsong




Doug Robbins



Feline friend why are you so mean?
Clean the blood from your whikers.
The bird is dead.




Scott Orris



I framed the condom,
to remember—
a dream.




M.J. Iuppa



Gazing up, our eyes steadied
the quicksilver sky– fizz of stars
left us with one reconciled wish.




Clay Robbins



Your blood on my hands,
Years of oppression avenged,
But who really wins?




Robyn Laguzza



I now know why they make gravestones so immutable
it takes a thousand days of rain to dull their sharp edges
and ten thousand lifetimes to return them to sand




Lynn Wankowski



Through dark wells in the ice ocean
spring escapes, rising gold infused,
vowing renewal.




Debbi Antebi



at his wife’s funeral
loud memories
silent tears




Wayne Scheer



False gods
Heal believers
Just fine




Bernard Joy



the clear white moon, and the warmth inside,
after sleet storms that seemed to start and stop
just long enough, among dark willows




Adam Bogar



in fly’s eye
light of stars
no more there




Lauren Clarke



I breathe you in
rain on the window
darkness like a womb




Jennifer Ruth Jackson



Inviting brass bed
Billowy sheets to lie on
Someone else’s bed




Debbi Antebi



under the blanket of makeup
worries swim
in deep wrinkles




Michael Ratcliffe



Winter walk in woods--
cold wind rattling through beech leaves
brings warmth to my mind.




Debbi Antebi



first day of school
sharpened pencils
droopy eyes




Jim Gustafson



It is no secret
We do not see the wind work
’till it rests in trees




James Minard



Nonjudgmental eyes
gaze down on my every movement-
the clear nighttime sky.




Rebecca Brown



Don’t trample the roses;
It took so long to grow them
In this bed of pretty lies.




Jonathan Boyle



All was known then
Knowing nothing now
Living without my friend




Dale Wisely



At 2 a.m. sitting on the side of the bed,
she hears the sound of a flute through the wall:
one, long, low note, falling in pitch.




Mickey Murphy



Distant obscure bard
Singing to my loneliness
Lift me on your strings.




Richard Hartwell



gray days and gray thoughts
recall earlier colors
blanketed by white




Richard Hartwell



listen to the wind
summoning my memories
forcing tears to fall




Elvis Fix



Days are the ways and means
of coffee cups and coffee beans
Days are your enemy.




Heather Brager



I turn over in the sheets, and
listen to arguments on the wind, while
endings writhe against the windows




Heather Brager



it craves oxygen
we fan our flames with fervor
words may burn it down




Heather Brager



in the early part of dawn, she watches patterns
sneak across a ceiling while they try to elude her
and she can almost recall being someone else




Neal Whitman



nothing eye-catching
sad to say
only an object of curiosity




Jon Chan



I wanted to tell them that you were in a better place
But I knew it in my heart that it was a lie
So I stood there and thanked them for coming




Jon Chan



They say a man must believe in his star and follow it
It is sadly true: by the time the star’s light reaches
Here, the star is long dead




Stephen Leslie



Dropped off by his dad
At the homeless shelter
The day he turned 18







© Copyright 2020; Glenn Lyvers; Prolific Press Inc. All Rights Reserved.