tequila sunset
asleep in the rocker
before nine
—
Christina Sng is a poet, writer, and artist. She lives in Singapore with her family and their cat Kit. Visit her online at christinasng.com.
Archives
old footbridge–
old footbridge–
the school kids busy counting
cherry blossoms
—
Pravat Kumar Padhy, a poet-scientist, did his Masters and Ph.D from IIT-Dhanbad, India. Work referred in Spectrum History of Indian Literature in English, Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Poetry etc. His Japanese short form poetry has appeared in many international journals. His poetry has won the Editors’ Choice Award at Asia-American Poetry, Poetbay, USA; Writers’ Guild of India; the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, Canada; UNESCO International Year of Water Co-operation; and the Kloštar Ivanić International Haiku Commendation award. Songs of Love: A Celebration, published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta is his latest collection of poetry.
ECT
After their treatments
I woke empty and blind
as an egg, so fragile
I had to be careful
not to break anything
that didn’t belong to me.
I forgot my own name
but no one else’s.
Nothing would stay with me.
All my old associations
were bled out
reduced to strangers
I’d swear I never met.
What good was this cruel robbery
supposed to do?
Make me more careful
to stay inside the lines
and stop complaining
before you can come up
with another cure
worse than this.
—
Mary C McCarthy has always been a writer, but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. She has had work included in many online and print journals, including Expound, Third Wednesday, Earth’s Daughters, The Evening Street Review, and Caketrain.
Skins
You wore me down
like sandpaper
reducing all my knots
and splintered edges
to a surface so bland
and smooth
no one would suspect
it had ever been anything
but innocuous.
Still I remember
that old skin
rough and graceless
marked by scars
and strange tattoos
like the autographs
of inquisitors
eager for confession.
Now I am domesticated
beyond suspicion
and I get no second glances
moving easily
among the wolves
perfect in this harmless
disguise.
—
Mary C McCarthy has always been a writer, but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. She has had work included in many online and print journals, including Expound, Third Wednesday, Earth’s Daughters, The Evening Street Review, and Caketrain.
In a Dark Room
It’s so simple, this waiting
in a dark room, its air
perfumed with lilac and mold.
Every breath springs to your
chest like a white moth
flitting in a garden of ash.
Once there were sounds
of many voices, and silver
pictures flickering on the walls.
That was long ago in the days
of heat. We were carried off
by strong hands into rough cliffs,
where we learned a new set
of prayers. But now the walls
are painted over with signs.
One points to the road that runs
past this house, winding its way
to the city of our birth
with its traffic and children
and dogs skirting rubble and glass.
Another points inward to the ocean
of our blood. As our lungs fill
with the water of dreams, we touch
each other lightly, just before dawn.
—
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems, both from Flutter Press, and Family Reunion, forthcoming from Big Table Publishing.
Super Moon
June 22, 2013
Because I don’t want my neighbors to think
that I am doing nothing except watch the moon
rise between the maple and the evergreens,
I place a book in my lap, put on headphones,
inch my chair a few degrees north just
to keep the moon positioned cleanly over
our little slice of suburbia. Soon a neighbor
will join me, place his lawn chair next to mine.
He sits down and begins to whittle, slicing pale
curls from a hickory branch which pool
around his feet. After the man in the moon
clears the telephone lines, misses the maples,
my neighbor asks, What are you listening to?
Nothing, I reply. Hmmmm…he says,
Maybe you should learn to whittle?
Are you going to teach me? I ask.
Sure, he says, you begin by looking
at the moon…
—
Cathryn Essinger is the author of three prize winning books of poetry: A Desk in the Elephant House, My Dog Does Not Read Plato, and What I Know About Innocence. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of journals, from Midwest Gothic to The Southern Review, The Antioch Review and Poetry. She is a retired Professor of English and a member of The Greenville Poets, from Greenville, Ohio.
Moon Kisses
I love the moon’s craters,
how they appear like bubbles in pancakes
or gaps in an alligator’s smile. The moon
does not know how to love,
but I’m content to blow kisses at its
slowly revolving merry-go-round face.
Moons don’t pulse for love,
but they do tuck snugly into orbit,
sighing pleasantries into our ears,
nuzzling against our bare skin
as we lay in bed awake, hoping
to learn how to spin.
—
Kelsey May’s poetry has recently appeared in The Maine Review and damselfly press and is forthcoming in Barking Sycamores, and Pine Hills Review. She has also received numerous grants and awards, including a nomination for a 2016 Pushcart Prize. She loves grilled cheese sandwiches and reading novels about Central America.
Sea Song
When my lover went blind,
He touched my stains, my teacup skin,
He took my thirst and drank it in.
When my lover went blind,
He followed the waves, nose to the wind,
We salted our toes by dipping them in.
When my lover went blind,
We cracked oysters, thick with sin
And fed on their liquor, dripping it in.
When my lover went blind,
His ears could see and his hands were finned
I climbed on his back, we dove in.
—
PJ Wren writes poems and very short fiction and has had work published in The Lake and After the Pause. More of PJ Wren’s writing, including non-fiction, poems, and stories, can be found at (or through) Inside the Glass Tunnel and PJWrenWriting.
Talking You to Sleep
We are all midnight swimmers in a cosmic sea.
– Robert Van der Cleave
I lie down on your bed and talk you to sleep.
It’s easy now. Already your arm under your pillow
is pulling through brine shrimp by the billion.
Around you the jellies gently pout and pulse,
their umbrellas hauling along ghostly ribbons,
breathing and eating being the same ballet.
Soon I will slide down this continental shelf too,
past twilight blue mussels swaying with the waves
and oysters licking their pearly wounds.
I’ll meet you among the ships flying their kelp flags
through submarine canyons. Down, down I go,
my nightgown a see-through swim-bladder,
the Pleiades twinkling in my wild hair.
I might be almost beautiful again, as I soar
among undersea peaks, my face free of its mask
of worry, my arms open wide as if to pour
the entire shimmering Andromeda galaxy
at your feet. Who taught us to love like this?
To slip out of ourselves into this long current
breathing us so easily in and in and in,
then out again, imperceptibly new.
—
Margaret Holley’s fifth collection of poems is Walking Through the Horizon (University of Arkansas Press). Her work has appeared in Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and many other journals. Former director of Bryn Mawr College’s Creative Writing Program, she currently serves as a docent at Winterthur Museum.
Geography of the Dream
We seek our houses, we swim, we fly, we lose
Our keys, misplace the car, find our beloved dead
Wearing fedoras and hats with veils.
We ride horses, we arrive in class
Unprepared, our notes missing,
We appear on the avenue of the naked.
We make excuses, solve mysteries we are pursued
By spies, we climb scaffolds, panic in elevators.
We are not ourselves
Or we are young again and passionate.
The images dissolve in feelings so intense
We wake shuddering. We write down
What we can remember. The lover faceless and nameless
The university of discovery.
The boiler room where bad things happen.
—
Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, etc. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She has published 16 books including Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press which received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize and Ribcage from Glass Lyre Press which has been awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. She has two books forthcoming in 2016 and 2017. One of her poems is among the winners of the 2016 Atlantic Review International Poetry Contest. Colby is also a senior editor of FutureCycle Press and an associate editor of Kentucky Review.