Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Lying in bed
on a Monday morning
I watch my wife towel off

after showering and think
why can’t I be that towel
rolling over her knolls

basking in her garden
rather than rising
and going to work.


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

Contributor: Sally Dunn

- -
I live, but I don’t know why.
I look for reasons and
find ashes and chores.
I once thought life itself was
reason enough,
but always that life contained
him.

He took my reasons
with his life.

I eat, though all
food tastes of chalk.
I sleep so time will pass.
I sort his things.
Throw out some.
Save some.
Plan to sell some.

Life reduced to
piles and boxes.

Why live at all?

Still, my breath comes in and out.
The days dawn and set.
Tears come in
silent burning streams
or in choking sobs,
or they come
not at all.


- - -
Sally Dunn’s poetry has appeared in 2River View, Rio Grande Review, The Perch and Straylight Literary Magazine. Her poetry won honorable mention in the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest. She lives on Cape Cod.

Contributor: Gary Thomas Hubbard

- -
Spaces left upon my calloused soul
Unfinished dreams leaving a gaping hole
Spaces left between love and hate
Feelings I must control before it is too late
Spaces unfilled from memories lost
Fearing the loneliness and what of the cost
Spaces like wishes that remain unfulfilled
Will be wasted like a farmer's untilled field
Spaces need to be filled with memories of hope
This is how the human spirit will learn to cope


- - -
He was born and raised in Ohio, and now lives in Florida. He is married and has two children. Most important he is a Papa. He has over 20 poems on this site and one printed in "Stormcloud Poets second anthology".

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Many churches today
have a food pantry that never
had a pantry before.

I attend a church like that.
Some folks are well-fixed,
others poor, most betwixt.

Some had money before
but not enough now to pay
the mortgage and then buy food

so the pantry helps them
the same way it helps clients
it has helped for years.

Some folks in the pews quietly
support the pantry with
checks and canned goods

enabling the nouveau poor
to stand in line with the
forever poor on Mondays.

A neighborhood baker slips
into the church Sunday mornings
just prior to the end of service

and quietly stacks his trays
of unsold bread in the dark foyer.
He says nothing and disappears.

No one seems to know
who he is but the hungry
love his bread and word

of its excellence has reached
the woman who leaves church early
and always grabs two loaves

of French baguettes and is
out in the parking lot long
before anyone else and

drives off in a red Mercedes.
Perhaps she’s on unemployment,
low on food stamps or is still

making payments on the car.
It’s not for the usher to ask.
I simply hold the door.


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

Contributor: Kenny Foquitz

- -
A beetle a day
keeps little sister away
one in her shoe
one in her bed
one in her cereal
one on her head
and worms in her lunchbox
and snails in her desk
even at school
she gets no rest.


- - -
Kenny Foquitz was a bit of a bugger in school. His siblings turned out alright despite his best efforts.

Contributor: J.R. Mookins

- -
Vodka gatorade
takes away the punch
the sweet
the dull
the hanging hell
of too many days
of too many screaming faces
soccer moms
boomer moms
angry moms
wanting everything
wanting it all for free
wanting it all now
yesterday
last week
entitled
entitled

Millenial tears
the struggle is real
ear-raped daily
for pocketbook pleasures.


- - -
Think before you speak. Those who live in glass castles throw too many rocks.

Contributor: Tim Carlo Majeia

- -
silent judgments
silent eyes
shift left
shift right
shifty questions
shifty thoughts
trickling
trundling along
like traffic
in tiny minds

oh,
what wonders you'd see
looking at people
like me
if you could just be
as open and free
as we
as we try to be.


- - -
Father of three. AFAB. Church is life.

Contributor: Sarah Henry

- -
St. Helena’s Island
is a good place for him.
The oldest turtle
in the world lives
well in captivity.

Jonathan jerks along
the ground, heavily
approaching lunch.
He’s big as a garbage
can and fun to watch.

He lumbers mightily
to a pile of fruit
and bites a slice.
The turtle made it
this far from 1835.

Tourists get a wide
view of him on film
and grin. The oldest
turtle in the world
has celebrity.

The island is a zoo
for one. The turtle
lives long in captivity.
He’s older than
some countries
and making history.


- - -
Sarah Henry is a vegetarian. She has written work about animal rights.

Contributor: Lyla Sommersby

- -
echoes of echoes
we see, we be
tall and reaching trees
with roots deep
in the peat
in the earth
drawing up the dead
devouring the ghosts
dispersed through the land
and turning it into light
turning it into life
and breathing life
in echoes and echoes
and echoes
on and on
into the night.


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

Contributor: John R. Parmensonne

- -
cut to it
cut right down to it
slice away the sick
the slick-tongued
silver saccharine
safewords
and silence
the self-sacrificing
rhetoric
of failure
of giving in
and being
all they want you to be
here and now
and always
for their needs
for their greedy needs
their slick mouths
ever hungry
ever gnawing
even after death.


- - -
I live in a basement of my own regrets.