Contributor: Sarabela Deas

- -
The first,
A wave
A bit of sea foam
Scattering sand.

The second,
She wolf
Seeking puppies
Seeking a pack.

The third
Mountain lion mistress,
Rainbow parade
Glitter in the wind.

The fourth
A lotus amidst the muck
Soft-petalled,
Already rotting away.

The fifth
Fascinating flame
An efreet all black around the edges
Burning everything away.

The sixth
Sweetest snuggle tiger
Soft as cutting claws
Ferocious as a kitten's mew.


- - -
My words come from the heart. There's nothing of the rational mind here.

Contributor: Gary Thomas Hubbard

- -
Foolishly thinking we
have time to spare
Moving around slowly
as we lose our hair
saving plastic bottles,
someday to reuse
by not taking chances
we have nothing to lose
watching the timer like
we are baking bread
still angry years later
over what someone said
realizing as time passes,
we are born with all we need
everything else is acquired
through modesty and greed
rushing through breakfast
to get out ahead
no matter how fast you are
we all wind up dead
stop to smell the proverbial roses
as you walk along
living life to its fullest
how can that ever be wrong?


- - -
I was born and raised in Ohio and now I live in Florida. I'm married and we have two children. Most important, I'm a Papa. There are a dozen poems on this site and I have a poem printed in "Stormcloud Poets second anthology".

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
The indications used to come
like movie fighter planes in break
formation, one by one, the perfect
plummet, down and out. This time they’re
slower. But after supper, when I hear her
in the kitchen hum again, hum higher,
higher, till my ears are numb,
I remember how it was
the last time: how she hummed
to Aramaic peaks, flung
supper plates across the kitchen
till I brought her by the shoulders
humming to the chair.
I remember how the final days
her eyelids, operating on their own,
rose and fell, how she strolled
among the children, winding tractors,
hugging dolls, how finally
I phoned and had them come again,
how I walked behind them
as they took her by the shoulders,
house dress in the breeze, slowly
down the walk and to the curbing,
how I watched them bend her
in the back seat of the squad again,
how I watched them pull away
and heard again the parliament
of neighbors talking.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Contributor: Thomas White-Kears

- -
I'll stop drinking
When my heart stops hurting
When the wounds
Only the booze can soothe
Someday close
Someday stop their weeping
And the thought of you
Smiling with some other someone
Slices no deeper
Than the slash
Of a papercut.

I'll stop drinking
When the memory of you
Is just a moment,
Irritating,
A stubborn shit
Soon passed
Nothing more.


- - -

Contributor: J.K. Durick

- -
These are dark days
dark summer days
with their storms so strong

they tear families apart
knock trees down
blow holes in the afternoon.


- - -
J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Eskimo Pie, Pacific Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, and Muddy River Poetry Review.

Contributor: Ben Riddle

- -
Dark grey rain whips
my flooded reflection,
flaying my appearance
for my presumption.

How dare I stand
alone before the storm,
while the wind flays
and the river runs?

My smile braves
the monotonous shades;
the stream the colour
of uncried tears.

All it took for me to stand
was deciding to.


- - -
A fourth year student of Political Science and English at the University of Western Australia, Ben is a founding member of the Said Poets Society.

Contributor: Lyla Sommersby

- -
And then one day you were gone.
Your eyes gone glassy
Your touch distant, cold
Briefly, I thought I saw you smile
Thought your tears were more
Than just dust
Than just some spilled soul
Trickling through
Trickling from you
Like stars in flight
Forever blurring my eyes
Forever burning through
Forever just passing through
Just like you,
Just like you.


- - -
I am a student in Miami, Florida. Painting is my other love. My first book, Sketches of Someone, is available through Thunderune Publishing.

Contributor: Desley Obman

- -
Day by day
I watch you kill yourself.
I watch you drown yourself in drink
I watch you razor your lungs
With little doses of death
With smoke and self-loathing
Burning your way toward nothing
As if there were nothing
Worth saving
In this world
In this life
As if you were nothing
As if you meant nothing
To no one


- - -
A poem of love for one who doesn't love what I love.

Contributor: Nikhil Nath

- -
Sitting in a hemisphere
of abstraction

I cut a lemon
into two sentences

filled with the aroma
of humor

that will bring
an orange of refreshment

from the daily sameness
of marrying everything to simile


- - -
Nikhil has been writing poetry for eighteen years. He has been published in various magazines in India, the USA and the UK. Nikhil Nath is his pen name. He lives and works from Kolkata, India. "Write rubbish, but write", said Virginia Woolf. This is Nikhil's maxim for writing. His poems have been accepted in Allegro, Aji, Ink sweat and tears, Ithica lit., Germ, Leaves of Ink, Ehanom among others.

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
In two more hours I'll have to shower,
shave and coffee-prop my lids
and otherwise prepare for day. It's 4 a.m.
and now the barkeep, Griggs,

is rushing me, the first
to come, the last to leave,
the lad who just an hour before
was coaxed to quaff one more.

At work I'll cummerbund a smile,
hold my head and sit all day,
play another endless game
of solitaire or tic-tac-toe.

Griggs' apron's off. The neon's out
and now he'll set the locks in back.
The spittle, butts and half-slain beers
he'll leave for Willie who'll soon be here

to dance his broom between
the tables and the scattered chairs
as smoothly as Kelly or Astaire.
At 6 a.m., he'll climb the ladder

near the door and aim his broom
through the transom toward the sky.
Each morning Willie puts another
bullet through the eye of sunrise.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.