Realms

On the trek to a budding friendship,
we speak of falsity
and its stench on talkfests.
We chat about this or that
when a person
I have blackballed crops up.
 
It’s the quality of the query
that begets the reply. Another on
the issue evokes another answer.
There is no flawless question
or comeback.
There is no last word.

Sanjeev Sethi has authored eight books of poetry, his latest being Legato without a Lisp (CLASSIX, an imprint
of Hawakal, New Delhi, September 2024). His poems have been published in over thirty-five countries and
have appeared in more than 500 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He lives in Mumbai, India.

 X/ Twitter @sanjeevpoems3 || Instagram sanjeevsethipoems

 

Light Show

The six wheel
Pickup is black
Its high beams
Freeze crossing
Wildlife and
Turn off 
Light sensed
Streetlamps
Pre-dawn
Walkers and 
Runners know
Its heavy 
Duty tires
Embarrass
Nails tacks
Screws
Even nuts
And bolts
Spark 
Like hooves
On getaway
Asphalt

Thomas M. McDade resides in Fredericksburg, VA. He is a graduate of Fairfield University. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran serving ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Dam Neck Virginia Beach, VA and aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and USS Miller (DE / FF-1091). 

Gabapentin

Let me tell you something of what happens when the medication, an anticonvulsive also
prescribed for persistent pain, breaches the blood-brain barrier. My head fills with gray
mist. Suddenly face-chomping zombies aren’t the only ones in need of behavioral
therapy. Rain hisses like an acetylene torch. I have unwelcome encounters in
basements and back streets with women who torture their own bodies. One or another
of them saws off my head under the cover of helping. Just prior, the future passed in an
instant. Now flowers keep throwing themselves into the sea to get there.

Howie Good is a writer and artist living on Cape Cod. His new poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

 

The Rapture

Staying young,
pulsing in the vibe.

Color lights of heaven…
Orchestra above.

Flash
and shake,

filling of the moon into our hearts.
We soon fly on our own

remembering the first tickle of youth.
Death was a game we’d never lose.

Lifting our palms upward tilt,
faces beaming,

laughing at the speed of it all,
daring us to stand and dance in the dome!

Stephen Jarrell Williams can be found on (X) Twitter @papapoet…  Write what you have to write, while we still have the right.

It’s About Time

Time will never come full circle
like a broken wall clock

Time will never catch me
like the bad guys in Road Warrior

Time is hardly the past and the present
like your great-aunt’s fruitcake

Time is too handsy — just try
turning back its hands

Time was precious like a string of pearls
fenced on the black market

Time was like a dish served cold
in Revenge of the Alarm Clock

Time can have a stitch that saves 9
like 9 can’t save its confabulous self

Time will tell, or maybe tattletale,
on space as their relationship continuums

Time to quit while I’m behind
like the poetry police with handcuffs

Steven Croft lives on an island off the coast of Georgia.  His latest chapbook is At Home with the Dreamlike Earth (The Poetry Box, 2023).  His work has appeared in places like The Basilisk Tree, Misfit Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

 

Cold Outside

Feathers ruffle 
again these
days. Feathers
torn. I sleep
in. It is
cold outside.

Words fall like
cactus spines.
Light fades to 
nothing. My
hand dissolves.
I vanish.
Thorns in the
stove sizzle.

Luis was born in Mexico. He lives in California and works in Los Angeles. His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Escape Into Life, Fixator Press, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories. He is the author of Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press).

snide

Isn’t that
what you really
came to see? The
penetration of
the unwilling
instrument of your
derision by any
sharp instrument
of choice. Or do I
need to phrase it
for you in a
different way?

Mark Young’s c. 650 paged, 20 years in the making, new book, The Magritte Poems, is due out
from Sandy Press later this year.

Fourth Time of Asking

skidding sluicing sometimes
flat-out tumbling
touching the sides for comfort
guide or guile
not to arrest the fall
but give it shape and sense,
even if its pattern
is a kaleidoscope of stained glass,
constantly reinventing its credo

until flush with success
our boy leaves the short slide
and dives not swims
into deeper brighter waters
where eels smile upon
each other to see a brother
so finned and flushed

haul himself from the brine
surmounting the steps
to try the open air,
with no guarantee that this time
the pool will be filled

– that the eels will enjoy
what he deep dives to tell them
and not only move in
for the kill

Ian Mullins ships out from Liverpool England. His movie-themed poetry collection NightWatchman (Alien Buddha Press) is now available, as is Fear Of Falling Backwards (Cajun Mutt Press), released in 2023.