poems
Spiritual What you want to tell is your story, though you can’t hear it here where four wildroses have popped out despite the wind gusts that threaten to disperse their petals. They think it’s just fine to come to life again and feel wind and sun touch them in their particular corner behind cinderblocks, […]
Read more "POETRY: JOSEPH SOMOZA – SPIRITUAL"Wedding Cake
We eat the top of your wedding cake,
Stale sugar pieces cracking our teeth,
Promising each mouthful
To be the last,
Buttercream drooling from
Sticky fingers,
Pregnant with cream,
Pink pearls to be kissed.
Plump lips wait,
Shivering from loneliness.
We listen to the screaming downstairs
The plastic bride and groom
Sucked clean of sweetness.
Read more "POETRY: NATALIE CRICK – WEDDING CAKE"Guests
A lost dog and at his side
a lost friend are running day
and night across blue rivers’
bridges, down red roads not
clay but pavement, from state
to state each a map’s different
color. No time for rest or sleep,
to eat, only random wild root
or berry, quick short drink from
a cold spring. Each hour I hear
them growing closer, closer,
expect at any second one kind
paw scratch at my screen door,
the whisper of patient knocking,
muted, shy, polite but unafraid
no one will answer after their
long journey as I rise to greet
my two guests, the strangers
I’ve waited all my life to meet.
Read more "POETRY: NELS HANSON – GUESTS"Not Enough
not enough
now
or ever
after the rain wrought
wrinkled
wet
and worlded
the way out
it’s not enough
the way you held the standard poem
and read it out
the way the world loved it
and gave me the towel
to wipe you down
give the world all its bliss
and give me everything after
in the ruins
where I can make my home
Read more "POETRY: ROBYN WYATT DUNN – NOT ENOUGH"Dodgy Edge
You’re out shopping
right now
for the room
we’re going to share
tonight.
It will be cheap,
somewhere
on the dodgy edge of town
but you’re looking
at the color
and pattern of the curtains
the quality of the artwork
on the walls.
I’m disappearing
in faint gusts of wind
lost in anticipation
wondering why
you expect to take away
anything more
than what
I put inside you.
Dear Kelly
Some things exist only to be seen by
those that need them most. As a
child, I watched a young theologian
reduce the divine to a chalkboard
sketch. Time is a circle that we live
inside, he explained, and that the Almighty
exists outside of. How simple
the universe is, sometimes. I’ve driven
down enough country roads to know
what loneliness is, walked down enough
city streets to know the isolation of
crowds. Wherever you are, you are
small amidst the vastness of the unknown.
I am standing atop a bridge, surrounded
by strangers, watching an eclipse
overhead. One whispers to another,
“We are witnessing history.” It’s true.
In eighteen years there will be
another, and by then none of us will
remember each other’s names.
Read more "Poetry: Matthew Heston – Dear Kelly"To the couple from the orange tent
whose amorous shushes
crept around the campground
long into the night like a bear
looking for leftovers,
I’m sorry if my kids
happened to slam the car doors
a few too many times
on our way out to an early morning
Ranger-led flora and fauna walk.
Staring at a lineup of RVs
crammed with wildlife-gawking
selfie-stick swinging day-trippers,
he said: the valley
had become a petting zoo.
Better head for the high country
if you’re looking for something wild.
So we did, and found more people and cars
but also endless pine, something blue
called sky, and mountains rising up
with a shrug that said: if not wild
then closer. Maybe it was the thin air,
or not showering for five days,
but I’d recommend the ice-clear lake
I dove into, for once not wondering
how much time was left on the clock.
Read more "POETRY: Yoni Hammer-Kossoy – Scrawled on a Yosemite Park Map"