3 POEMS BY GLEN CALLEJA

(all 3 poems translated from Maltese by Albert Gatt) Someone’s wife refuses to follow. Someone’s wife refuses to follow her therapist’s advice. She finally changes out of her work uniform. She nibbles at a chunk of dark chocolate. Insists that she’s on first name terms with Buddha. That he’s like an old faux pas, addled […]

N.T. Chambers ~ A Walk Along Forever

A Walk Along Forever

3 poems by Arvilla Fee

Under the Deck I hear the coo of the mourning dove echoing down the chimney flue, all the more melancholy fluted by walls of tin. I wonder what she thinks up there, her tiny talons dug into sticky, black shingles. I wonder if, like me, she needs these moments of peace as the sun slits […]

Alex Scarborough ~ ghost ride the whip

ghost ride the whip another house party hosted by whatsherface another lacklustre Saturday chauffeuring you around rooms of architecturally handsome faces but tonight I’m cloaked each word I utter is a haunting met with a second-sucking startle before being relegated to the conversation’s footnotes so I saunter between gossiping huddles like a watermark on the […]

Dance of the Butterflies ~ Jeff Lewis

Christmas in July

PENNY NOLTE ~ REFLECTION

Reflection When I was in the hospital I was five years old and With another little girl Next door We talked And laughed Just knowing She was there I felt better My mother says I had a private room But there may have been a mirror

FEELZ TRIP ~ Tim Staley

Feelz Trip I got tired of pushing sublime at my students. William Cowper, Lord Byron, James Thomson, Samuel Rogers?! Let’s just say those old boys weren’t hitting under the busted-up ceiling panels and flickering fluorescent lights of my classroom. My students were squirming in the hard plastic cells of their desks, so I decided to […]

Michael Ashley ~ Holed up in a filthy duvet

Holed up in a filthy duvet tightly bundled upwith the TV mutedscrolling YouTube shortstrying to escape the shameof not being able to remember getting homehow do you purge itis it enough to sweat it outmaybe I should go sit in a boxand tell the Fatherfingers grasping at the rosariesdirty words reverberating fromthe walnut panelling or perhaps […]

Jeffrey Zable ~ THE LESSON

When Denis pulled the lever on the firebox in front of the school on a Saturday afternoon, and we hid in the bushes up the street watching the firemen get out of the truck, look around the front of the school, and then get back into the truck and drive away, I didn’t know that […]

POETRY: LET THE GROUND BREATHE WITH YOU – Jennifer Lothrigel

Let The Ground Breathe With You

Let the ground breathe with you,
not in opposition.

On my morning run
I pass by two elderly women
walking with their canes.
Scent of timeless roses.

Let the ground breathe with you,
not in opposition.

Dew drops line the center of aloe leaves,
the sweat on my unwashed morning skin,
has collected in the center of my chest−
still heavy with last night’s dreams;
I searched all night through alternative realities
for my drunk husband.Let the ground breathe with you.
not in opposition.

A man walks by with his dog,
pants under his breath
“It’s harder uphill, isn’t it.”

–

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