BECAUSE WE DON’T WALK ON RED ANYMORE A small skunk is dead in the intersection of the busy road, intestines swirled in a tiny pile, a slash of vermilion stabbing through its stripes fluttering in the spring breeze cars from one direction zooming over and past. I couldn’t begin our walk, watching car after car […]
Read more "5 POEMS By Carol Coven Grannick"Soldiering through an internal war Helpless in a hospital, While laid out like a cadaver, My thoughts are mercurial. Petitioning for health is my endeavor. Although zeroed on my pain, I look at the TV news, Feeling levels of disdain And guilt for writing the blues. Some people in war-torn lands remain strong. Undaunted, they’re […]
Read more "Soldiering through an internal war ~ Bob McNeil"Wherever You Are, Look Wherever you are, look out the window (please let there be a window)— at the sky, at something green if you can find it; This world can’t exist just to grind us down, I refuse to believe it. And if I’m wrong, at least let me be ground down not by […]
Read more "Anneliese Finke ~ Wherever You Are, Look"Sisyphus, Further Upstate Nothing new, nothing you haven’t discovered yet, only America, only I will make you sing it louder, will make you scream it, scream AMERICA!! like it’s the answer to a question you can’t imagine, like you’re hanging from a rope of used needles, hanging from a rope of spent time, and it’s […]
Read more "JOHN SWEET ~ Sisyphus, Further Upstate"4th Annual Karen Trujillo Poetry Contest, the winning poems, 2025 Best 9th Grade Poem “Empty Threads” by Arturo Luna EMPTY THREADS But even peace feels so distantWhen I replay the words that tore us apart.The house is quiet, but I feel it,Like the walls are pressing in, but it echoesHeavy with the weight in my […]
Read more "WINNING POEMS FROM 4th ANNUAL KAREN TRUJILLO POETRY CONTEST for high school poets in Las Cruces, NM 2025"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"
Cacti Fur 