Bad Metaphor of Dying

I am that bare, crumbling
building that hasn’t been
inhabited in years.

Seeing those who
pass by my isolation.

Hearing their
inane conversations

that contribute nothing
but disdain for those residing
on this bitch called earth.

Falling memories crack
off my foundation, while

ten stories up—I teeter towards
the darkness of empty.
Plummeting, dropping
Off bit by bit.

Until the frame—barren.

Becomes the final segue from
gold
To
dust.

A former collegiate offensive lineman and football coach for 26 years, Dan Provost’s poetry has
been published both online and in print since 1993. He is the author of 15 books/chapbooks. His
latest, Wolf Whistles Behind the Dumpster was released by Roadside Press in November 2022.
He has been twice nominated for The Best of the Net and has read his poetry throughout the
United States. He lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife Laura, and dog Bella.

The coming of snow

Comes the brown snowfall
The low, heavy green clouds redden
then darken to brown
Then let drop their leavings
one by one
or with a chill gust,
a blizzard of whirling, hand-sized flakes.
They cover the ground.
They pile up in drifts.
Dry, crisp, curled, veined and stemmed.
When they have relieved themselves of all that weight,
the trees reveal their skeletons
reach up with thin, bony, crooked fingers
toward those clouds that bring another kind of snow.

Lou Conover has never participated in a writing workshop and has no training as a writer besides failing a creative writing course in high school. With degrees in music, mathematics, cognitive science, and teaching, Lou is a practicing musician, an engineer, a mathematics teacher, and, by accident, for the last eighteen years, an artist. Lou lives in Western Massachusetts, has a blessedly gender neutral name, no pronouns, no active social media accounts, and two children.

The Impresarios of Light

arrive in darkness. Those who
are surprised by this bat it away
by saying it’s a way to heighten
the contrast. Others, with more
extreme views, ascribe it to the
influence of those game-playing
wikis which elevate the eldritch
to a necessary component of any
form of fine art. The impresarios
emerge smiling at all the misinter-
pretations, do not seek to remind
the mind-blind crowd that darkness
always travels at the speed of light.

Mark Young’s latest collection of poetry, with the slow-paced turtle replaced by a fast fish,
will be published later this year by sandy press.