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 […]
Read more "2 POEMS – Joe Benevento"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, […]
Read more "SOUND CHECK – RAMZI ALBERT RIHANI"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 […]
Read more "DARING DUO – Fred Gerhard"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 […]
Read more "3 POEMS – DANIEL SCHULZ "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 […]
Read more "2 POEMS – Caroline Reddy"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 […]
Read more "2 POEMS ~ Bradford Middleton"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 […]
Read more "Continental Breakfast La Quinta Jackson Mississippi – Tim Staley"The swarm of buzzing continues down the road. The way it hums startles the silence, stirring around the surrounding eco system. The way the cottontail’s ears twitch every second of every beat the gray fox’s paw fall onto the red sand. The lack of silence disturbs the yucca as it raises its stem high in […]
Read more "NATURE POEM – MADISON STONE"DEATH IS RATTLING Death is rattling me From my throat to my balls To my bones When I wake up in the morning, As I contemplate this space I occupy, Drive to work Or pick up some groceries. It lurks whenever it is not staring into my eyes And daring me to stare back. The […]
Read more "DEATH IS RATTLING – JOHN TUSTIN"Symphony The ambient noise of cars, the atonal honk of impatient drivers, rushing to work, until March 2020. When the Skies became clearer, the Roads, quieter, the deadlines, the timetables, simply Memories The Birdsong, the rhythmic tarmac strike of pedestrians, a Symphony. The Quiet third movement of a Concerto, and at the end, only one […]
Read more "A PANDEMIC POEM – SYMPHONY – Ben Macnair"
Cacti Fur 