EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES – John Tustin

EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES It seems I am waking up every fifteen minutes. All night like this – I wake up thinking about the job. I look to the window to gauge the time And it always seems to be about 6 A.M. My alarm is set for 6:30. I need to be at work at […]

SHE HID IN THE TREES FROM THE NURSES – JAMES WRIGHT

SHE HID IN THE TREES FROM THE NURSES She stands between the trees and holdsOne hand in the other, still.Now far away the evening foldsAround the siloes and the hill. She sees, slowly, the gardenerReturn to check the gate beforeThe smoke begins to soften the airAnd June bugs try the open door. And through the […]

MEN’S WORK – Marc Janssen

MEN’S WORK Somebody has to kill the cow, Somebody has to go down the stairs when there is a noise Somebody has to carry the baby out of the burning building Somebody has to stoke the fire Somebody has to find the Golden Fleece Somebody, when the food runs low, has to go Somebody has […]

FROGS – Michael Lee Johnson

Frogs “Grow grass, stone frogs,” written on bathroom walls. Hippie beads, oodles colorful acid pills in dresser draws, no clothes, kaleidoscope condoms, ostentatious sex. No Bibles or Sundays that anyone remembers. Rochdale College, Toronto, Ontario 1972, freedom school, free education. Makes no sense, when you’re high on a song “American Women” blasting eardrums and police […]

4 POEMS – Roxanne Cardona

TRANSFER OF POWER I press my nameplate, flushed and new, hammered onto the door. I sit in his chair, His denim jacket slumped over Sink into his seat. It’s warm like he just got into the desktop drawer as if a naughty student paper-clips, a plastic sleeve, mouth half-open, An antacid tablet releases white dust […]

2 POEMS – Joe Benevento

I Want Out of the Cracker Box Too I saw a student presentation about Rumi as a BIPOC poet, and all this time I had thought Persians were white. A few months later I’m reading about Robert Saleh, a Lebanese-American, presented as one of only a few BIPOC NFL head coaches, and wondering whether anyone […]

SOUND CHECK – RAMZI ALBERT RIHANI

Sound Check A sound check ignites a flame In a distance of incendiary nights Back and forth the ringing breaks As the dawn announces a new appetite Hendrix and Joplin overdose and die Others overdose and fly Pour it slowly little one As the thirst for more brings a new might Like a shooting star, […]

DARING DUO – Fred Gerhard

Daring Duo Coyotes and bobcats have been spotted in my rural New England town. Not actually spotted, but there have been sightings. And not together, never together, having the same approximate jobs. Like competing dentists, we are obliged to see one or the other as they extract what they must. It was a very good […]

3 POEMS – DANIEL SCHULZ

Blackboard Your opinion on the chalkboard, the one your teacher wipes away. You are just another student, after all. Who gives a damn about opinions, when you as a person do not matter? Stand up, get up, scream! Refuse to stand down, insistently! Go to the principal’s office. Go to the dean. Go to your […]

2 POEMS – Caroline Reddy

Pods I sit on a black cushion and wonder if the electric pulses I feel are lightbody healers transmuting energy through the crevices we have created with our breaths to make us whole again. I rest my head on a pillow and imagine if the infinite impulses I feel are silver starseed-pods traveling through the […]

Cacti Fur

a poetry high ground