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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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2 POEMS ~ Bradford Middleton

OH PHALLUS OF RIDICULOUSNESS Oh phallus of ridiculousness you tower over our town like a monolith fucking the sky as the denizens fuck with themselves anyway we can. Some chose to shop whilst I try to forget as life moves on in a drunken wasted state towards my ultimate escape and a place where life […]

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The 10 Commandments of the 2022 Teen Creative Writing Club of South Central New Mexico

The 10 Commandmentsof the 2022 Teen Creative Writing Clubof South Central New Mexico 1 anything can be poetry2 encourage others and be yourself3 things aren’t all black and white4 bad writing is better than no writing5 it’s not all about white men6 love your writing because it’s yours7 don’t forget this is a way out8 […]

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INAUGURAL KAREN TRUJILLO POETRY CONTEST – CLASS OF 2022 – THE WINNERS!

THE LIES ARE BEFORE THE FOOTHILLBy Melaina L. Mittel3rd place I want to tell you all a thing hereA tragic thing that defines my characterSomething that awakens even in dusk’s dawnSomething that can make an ego out of itselfSomething that can bring you and the others downAt the crack of daybreakSomething that defines my unfortunate […]

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Continental Breakfast La Quinta Jackson Mississippi – Tim Staley

Continental Breakfast La Quinta Jackson, Mississippi There’s a sadness in heart-shaped waffles, in the cool flickering logs, in the tower  of Styrofoam tended to by a brown person. There’s petroleum in the apparel, haircuts and politics of the others. There’s blunt force trauma in the space-age gravy,  in the Fruit Loops from a wheel, in […]

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