LOVE AND TIME INTERTWINED The past never thought the present could be such a gift, nor did the future predict I would forfeit to this pretty woman’s kiss, never did the future guess that this woman would happily live in my skin, settle in my mind, be the first in the heart hotel to check […]
Read more "Damian Mercer ~ LOVE AND TIME INTERTWINED"Rooting for Someone Else’s Roots White plastic bags from Salvation Army drift down El Paso’s Durango Street. What’s inside? A water bottle in a barbed collar? A bar of granola no control over the gambol of its boundaries? A package of dried fruitage no say in its reconstitution? Does refugee come from refuse or refuge? What […]
Read more "2 BORDER POEMS BY TIM STALEY"The Irish Way She didn’t own the bar, but she owned the bar, if you know what I mean, the Irish red-haired beauty with light freckled skin and a laugh like windchimes. She could handle a cloth, a mug, a till full of money, a compliment, a come-on, bleary eyes, and brawling fists as if she were […]
Read more "3 POEMS BY Arvilla Fee"L’appel Du Vide ~ Call of the Void What’s a boy to a star who gazes from afar?But a boy lost in reverie, knowing he was bound to be from the start?L’appel du vide.I can be condescending just to feel like I’m ascendingbut still feel like a decline, is the message sending?L’appel du vide.If my […]
Read more "SIJRA ~ L’APPEL DU VIDE"Transition Dreams Cab to train to plane to bus—– Where am I? Where? Here is a house but the rooms keep changing. Here all is familiar—– the school, the mall, the ceremonies, the stadium. What have I missed or is it all the session of mid & I just need rewinding? Traveling, strangers traveling, & all that […]
Read more "Stephen Mead ~ Transition Dreams"Self-Portrait With Writing a Poem I used to know what a poem is. And the scream of peacocks used to know me. And what does that mean? Here’s another bird: the snowy egret stands one-legged and silent in flowing creek water, and neither water nor egret knows the difference. My own sharp beak spears old […]
Read more "R.C. Hoerter ~ Self-Portrait With Writing a Poem"Arrogate There aretwo waysto makeit work swimin goldfrom LAto Dubai swimin bloodin Seattlein New Yorkagain, in LA either waythe end resultis the sameand whetheryou geta headstoneain’t upto you * * * The Emperor The chair is not anythingthe chair has never been—a bitsprung, threadbare, thinnerthan it was. Yet still it is wherehe sits, against the […]
Read more "5 POEMS BY ROBERT BEVERIDGE"Landscape with Tree To be the worst makes someone very special. Imagine the worst crook, the worst drunk and the worst enemy. They’re all special in their own right. And the worst art history student? I looked at every painting like it was a Rorschach test for hysteria or depression. Logic kills imagination. I studied […]
Read more "SARAH HENRY ~ Landscape with Tree"Unfinished Exit I keep thinking about the time in high school when you drew me a map of the city, I still have it somewhere. It was so easy to get lost in a place where all the trees look the same. And now every time I see a missing person’s poster stapled to a […]
Read more "Claudia Wysocky ~ Unfinished Exit"COYOTE TRUTHS Beauty What is it like, I ask Coyote, to wander in fields of lupine and poppies that dot the dry fields, to never walk a straight line and yet brush against glory? All day I starve and all night I roam, Coyote says. Beauty is to wander through an unwoven fence. Fear What […]
Read more "JEFF BURT ~ COYOTE TRUTHS"
Cacti Fur 