Contributor: Richard Schnap

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An unshaven man
In a worn army coat
Passes on the sidewalk
With a liquor store bag

While across the street
A girl without makeup
Also walks by
Carrying one herself

And each one sees
The other and for
A moment their eyes
Lock in an embrace

As if both of them feel
The same lonely burden
They try to forget
The same lonely way


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Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Contributor: Richard J. Lamoureux

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Once upon a time
I gazed on the face of a beautiful sadness
She invited me into her temple
Transported me there
By crystal blue tears
Poured from her goblet
Stinging
Ripping me from the fabric of my time
I walked down her hallways
Stumbled through her darkness
Searched for hidden passages
Grasped at invisible doorknobs
"Please, please,
let me see,
a glimpse of eternity!"

Her clear voice flowed down the hall
Color from shadows transformed the walls
I followed unable to speak
Within her sanctuary
Answers
I chose to seek

There in the temple
Of her mind
Upon a broken Altar I dined
Unsure what mystery I would find
I felt my preconceptions
Slowly unwind

The sadness I felt
Had been my own
I had traveled many paths alone
The broken Altar was my heart of stone
Which had led me away from another's throne

I looked out the windows of her soul
Seen my own face drenched in blue tears
It seems her eyes were actually mirrors
In that moment the evaporation of my fears
As I gazed upon the face
Of a beautiful sadness.


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Author and poet, living in Kelowna British Columbia. My book is titled DUMMY, Hurting and Healing words.

Contributor: Susan Sweetland Garay

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Though I have heard it
a thousand times
I am still surprised
by the miraculous sound
of her voice.

She babbles before
she falls asleep,
telling me stories
from her day and
kicking her legs joyfully
as though running some
terrific race.

She falls asleep
suddenly and with
a fist full of my hair.


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Born and raised in Portland Oregon, Susan Sweetland Garay currently lives in the Willamette Valley with her husband and daughter where she works in the vineyard industry. She has had poetry and photography published in a variety of journals, on line and in print, and her first full length poetry collection was published in 2013.

Contributor: Brian Baumgarn

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Night cries for having lost the moon.
Twilight sobs at the failing of the sky.
Dusk moans at having misplaced the stars.
Heavy tears.
Water tears,
from spawning, pewter gray clouds.
Night lost the moon, sky, and stars.
Abundant tears.
Fertile tears.
The soils swim with her grief.
Plush tears.
Falling tears.
Entreaties to the endless abyss.
Prayers to a God unseen.
Wind driven tears.
Supplication tears.
Bring back the moon, the sky, and stars
that we may cease this crying.
Healing tears.
Absolution tears.
Night sighs. Weighted clouds dissipate.
Wistful prayers are answered.
The night sees her nest in the heavens
unfolding and shining once again.
Her last tears have found
the moon, the stars, and the sky.


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65 year old working with developmentally challenged men. Living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Writing again for nearly two years.

Contributor: Lyla Sommersby

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Take a chance
Try to fly
Stretch those wings, Icarus
Try to fly

The sky is not so very big
The fall is not so very far
Come back again in another life
Try to make the same flight
With new wings
With new sight
Full of the same fight
That put you in the cold sea
That threw you against colder stones
Though you had hoped and hoped,
Flailed and flapped
So keen
To finally be
Free

How glorious the scene
When you finally fly
On wings strong enough to sail a circle
Around the blazing sun


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

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
with apologies to Hemingway

Beyond the frippery and folderol
of bishops and the like,
Father Murphy’s on vacation
with just a week to cast
for bigger fish than pike.

And so he sails the peaceful bay
casting every kind of bait,
praying that a tarpon
suddenly will strike.
Hook the big one, Father claims,

and it will thrash around
as if Satan were a submarine
cruising in its wake.
A fish that big, claims Father,
is always worth the wait

for it guarantees an aging priest,
with just a week’s vacation,
action and distraction from
the frippery and folderol
of bishops and the like.


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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Contributor: Jared Ninfa Kelly

- -
Give me a reason
Give me a word
Give me a sign
A snatch of lyrics
So precise
Exactly what you feel
Exactly what you want
Rendered in words
Sung by other lips
Set in music and motion
So precise
So precise
But something,
Something still.


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Hi, I'm Jared. I live in New York and beatbox on the street corner for fun and profit.

Contributor: Reed Venrick

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Go to nature's place
go where nothing's been invented
by the hand or mind of human
no power lines, no paved roads
no soda cans or plastic bags
no cars or tractors or planes or trains

go where earth was and will be
after humans have passed
and flown on to another planet
or another dimension space

go where your shadow stands
lean as the bamboo, swim naked
in the sea, or ride a horse bareback
while wearing, if you must, a pig's skin
put aside the the clothes squeezed
from sweaty shops

or just lean against a sturdy oak
and watch the show of passing clouds
the first meditation of evolving minds
before the full moon was created

feel the knotty log that Cicero sat
tasting an apricot and red wine
feel the same fire that Di Vinci
warmed his fingers before he picked
up the brush and began

hear the breeze whine in the pines
and the flutter of maple leaves
as Kant did on his daily walk

swim in the water as easily
as Jesus floated in the Dead Sea
and catch a fish as tasty as sushi is

and remember what we always knew
we are they, they are we
when the senses are perceiving
we'll find again time and space
the greatest illusions

after all, we don't have to die
to find eternity in a universal space--
there it is a natural place.


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R Venrick lives in Florida,
writes and photographs
abstracted nature.

Contributor: Nikhil Nath

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Can you catch
a rainbow
in the incubator
and silence
that voice screaming
on the mobile
without burning calories
biting Saturday
inside the cockpit
of a Boeing full of jealousy.


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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: D. Webb

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I'm free
And so is she
I've sewn my first seed
And she has another he
How can we be
Anything but happy?
How can we be
Anything but a joyous
(and separate)
We?


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Two kids. Loves camping, vaping and chicken-fried steak.