Archive for Poems
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WINTER LOVE • by Waldy Ens
No Comments
white snow crunches under black boots hunched against
Literary
harsh face-biting wind in the late dawn of early winter
everything zips up into itself and closes shop pulls down
shutters dries like a raisined grape in the cruel air of
December and our breath escapes in bursts of white fog
rises and dissipates until it becomes [...]
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THE STILLED WHEEL • by Jeff Jeppesen
6 Comments
Other
In a park in a Russian town,
close to where an accident happened, stands
a Ferris wheel that has not turned in many years.
Candy colored paint is flaking but still bright.
Most of the wheel’s hundreds of bulbs are unbroken
though unlit.
A park like this should never be so quiet.
And despite what you may have heard, when the sun [...]
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WHEN FIRE TURNS TO ICE • by J. Clayton L. Jones
2 Comments
I remember the Frost poem, the anecdote about
Other
when the astronomy professor came up to him
at the faculty mixer, he in his awkwardness trying
desperately to make conversation: Al Gore on 30 Rock
smoking cigarettes without filters in the southland where it
never gets this cold or during the winter we’ve never sweat
frozen bullets before [...]
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NAKED MEMORY • by Jenny Schwartz
15 Comments
Time has worn naked the memory of him,
Literary
taken his lies into its keeping
and left exposed the insecurities
that I had not the life to see, not then.
He walked without belief in gravity,
upsidedown with his hands open, feet bare.
Don’t know when youth died, when I saw the man
I could have loved, had I the courage.
He crumbled into [...]
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LULLA-BA • by Josephine Orta
8 Comments
Rock a banana
On a green stalk
When the wind blows
They sway and they rock
When the bough breaks
Tarantulas fall
Let’s move baby’s cradle
Away from the wall
Josephine Orta lives in San Antonio, TX with her husband and medicine cat Peep. She does website technical support during the day and free-form research at all hours. Her internal artist is [...]
Horror, Humour/Satire
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GOD'S WORK • by Ben Langhinrichs
11 Comments
We wake before the break of dawn,
Inspirational
Just grab some coffee; head on out
And toil until the daylight’s gone.
Each day we face what is foregone,
Some days fight floods, and others drought
We wake before the break of dawn.
Though strong young men, we ache and yawn.
Rough fists must rub the tired out,
And toil until the daylight’s gone.
Come Sunday, [...]
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MARKET, CLOSING TIME • by Darcy McMurtery
11 Comments
Those Early Girls, piled upon tables,
Literary
pert pyramids of cheerleaders
vied for my attention, shining in
the too- bright glare of compact fluorescents.
My fingers trailed over their
ripe roundness and I squeezed a few
toward points of pain,
plucking the best for my basket
before last call, closing time,
and ambled up to the cashier,
who eyed the remaining customers
with practiced [...]
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TURN • by derenz
6 Comments
Other
in autumn,
where foot-fall
and hoof-fall
once dented the soil,
a verge is moulded
by the tread of tyres
destined
to be squeezed
between vessels
of steel and trestles
of wood.
A fortress of crates
attend at a gate,
as a mechanical
harvester -
with skirts and belts
that shoogle
and sort -
grubs spuds
from shawless
plants, where
tattie-howkers
once finger-picked
stents, joked
and sang, ran
from the man
from the buroo,
ignored sore
backs, and earth
caked skin,
to heave themselves
and their spoils,
up [...]
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AN ILL KEPT TENAMENT • by L R Humphries
21 Comments
Surreal
His moist lips purse to kiss the amber rain,
and catch the final seeping of its deluge,
as gilded fragments of a winter’s sun,
that glimmer through the darkness of the day.
And as he steals along the nectar tarn,
his eyes pause upon a square of shade;
where, through the haze of a pale blue smoke,
her outline taunts the concord [...]
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BED OF TEARS • by Amy Corbin
19 Comments
Other, Relationships
I had always been afraid of what giving me “something
to cry about” would feel like. Like soap wedged between
clenched teeth wasn’t a good enough reason. Reason could
have been his belt. Belt thrashing my scrawny legs.
It was true what he’d said about pain. Pain was seeing
that note on the door “evicted”. Evicted [...]

