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Ode to a Writing Prompt

by on May 12, 2015

it was red week
at nursery school
and my daughter
brought home
a red folder full
of red lions
painted in that
irony-free red
on flip chart paper
I asked her what
about apples
and fire trucks
or shirts or maybe
a crimson sunset
over a ruby island
in a coral sea
and she said no
just lions because
they are the best
and red is
her best color
she was beamingly
proud of her lion
family even the baby
and mommy lions
are red she said
showing their
long red hair
and fancy bows
and when I asked her
if there are any
blue lions she said
yes but actually
they also turn red
from the blood
they eat for dinner
and even the blue
vegetarian lions
could play
in the forest
and didn’t need
to be afraid
of the red lions

 

—
Originally born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Yoni Hammer-Kossoy has been living in Israel for the last 16 years with his wife and three kids. Poems by Yoni have recently appeared in The Harpoon Review, The Jewish Literary Journal, Stoneboat Journal and Bones Haiku. Yoni also writes on Twitter as @whichofawind where he experiments recreationally (but responsibly) with various short poetic forms.

microwords

by on May 11, 2015

I long to write little poems
for the interstitial spaces
of atomic structure

small & unfamiliar places
where I can sculpt words unrecognized
and free from censorship

I’m ready to create a new vocabulary

a language written in orbits
& charms & charges

but the censors are one step
ahead of me again
and the guards

outside the particle accelerator
know my face
& they have orders
to shoot to kill

 

—
Herb Kauderer is a retired Teamster who grew up to be an associate professor of English at Hilbert College. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and has published a lot.

Omen

by on May 5, 2015

What does it mean
that I saw a white fox
lit up against the dim
highway, bounding
back to my north, as
we drove south ?

What does it mean
that you were sitting
in the seat beside me
and said nothing?

 

—
Sonja Johanson attended College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, ME, and currently serves as the Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator for the Massachusetts Master Gardener Association.  She has recent work appearing in The Albatross, Off the Coast, and Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed, and was a participating writer in FPR’s 2014 Oulipost Project.  Sonja divides her time between work in Massachusetts and her home in the mountains of western Maine.

waxing moon

by on May 4, 2015

 

waxing moon —
in my cousin’s cigar box
a flash drive

 

—
Eric Burke lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he works as a computer programmer. More of his poems can be found in Pine Hills Review, PANK, Thrush Poetry Journal, PoetsArtists, bluestem, Escape Into Life, decomP, A cappella Zoo, and Weave Magazine. Poetry videos made from several of his poems can be viewed at The Poetry Storehouse. You can keep up with him at his blog Anomalocrinus Incurvus.

Poem Without Words

by on Apr 30, 2015

Sometimes a poem just happens in plain air.
Mute, like mimes, the actors shimmer briefly
and are gone, leaving their outlines etched
in light, wordless but entire. Consider this:

the cemetery fence, the graves beyond;
the balding man, late middle-aged, who walks
towards the fence; fresh blooms against
a tombstone and dead flowers lobbed towards

the dump; the arc they make; the boy with Downs
who stumbles, weeping, close behind. The man,
the flowers and the boy. The air that framed them
and the light that picked them out.

 

—
Dick Jones has had work published in many magazines, paper and online. In 2010 Dick received a Pushcart nomination for his poem “Sea Of Stars” and his first collection, Ancient Lights, was published by Phoenicia Publishing in 2012. A translation of Blaise Cendrars’ iconoclastic epic poem “La Prose du Transsibérien…”, illustrated by Natalie D’Arbeloff, has just been published by The Old Stile Press.

Wastage

by on Apr 29, 2015

. . . the British High Command called it: non-combat deaths from disease, mishaps of trench life, and sporadic enemy shells that seemed anonymous, somehow, like accidents or heavy weather.

buried
in The Times:
casualty list

 

—
Bill Waters lives in Pennington, New Jersey, U.S.A., with his wonderful wife and their three amazing cats. You can find more of his writing on Twitter @bill312 and Bill Waters ~~ Haiku.

Buddha & Co.

by on Apr 28, 2015

Exposure to long winters has erased the face
of the garden Buddha. I shouldn’t compare,
but Van Gogh also had most of his teeth pulled.
In the dark subzero hours of early morning,
I have been woken up by yips & squeaks,
coyote pups trying to keep warm. I lie there
and listen, & then I am no longer the color of tears.

 

—
Howie Good is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Beautiful Decay from Another New Calligraphy and Fugitive Pieces from Right Hand Pointing Press.

These Hands

by on Apr 27, 2015

These hands cradled the window-stunned sparrow, and caressed the stiff hairs on the hide of the elephant.

These hands tended the garden, strummed the strings, and focused the lens on all things abandoned and broken.

These hands held the walking stick up the mountain, over the frozen river, and down the path of enlightenment.

These hands kneaded the dough, carried water from the well, and kindled the fire of longing . . .

bone-white
gnarled driftwood
these hands
no longer able to play
the soft notes of your skin

 

—
Debbie Strange is a published tanka and haiku poet and an avid photographer. She enjoys creating haiga and tanshi (small poem) art. You are invited to see more of her work on Twitter @Debbie_Strange.

Sisters

by on Apr 23, 2015

She was visiting for the first time. Over the next few days, our only not-so-hidden-agenda was to forget ourselves. The weather was brewed and just right for poetry. A haiku here, a tanka there, and a little free verse to drown in. Our faces beamed with happiness, and were also tinged with the temporality of it all. She would go back. I would be left all by myself again. I received a book of Gulzar’s poems as a gift from her. And a box of chocolates.

A month later, all that remains are a few wrappers in the drawer.

winter rain…
eavesdropping I listen
to nothing
but the sound of my breath
bounce off the walls

 

—
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India. Her work appears in over two dozen international anthologies including publications by Paragram, Silver Birch Press, Minor Arcana Press, Harbinger Asylum, Kind of a Hurricane Press and Writing Knights Press among others. Her poems, erasures, haiku & tanka have appeared in numerous print and online journals. She is also the editor of the literary and arts journal, Sonic Boom.

Mary at 60 Remembers 30

by on Apr 22, 2015

When I turned 30
my friends dumped me at a table
in a dark bar, ordered me a daiquiri.
I sat silently as they remembered
the old days—less than fifteen years ago.

When I got home, I broke
the bathroom mirror,
gathered the shards,
and watched a Dick Van Dyke Show rerun.
Laura Petrie would be cute
forever.  Joseph already preferred
PBS science specials to kissing.
Or did he?  I thought he did,
accused him of infidelity
which wasn’t true—

then.  Today I think about 30
and wonder why I got the glooms.
Life was good.  Or was it?
Memory has old scores to settle,
selects flavors that it craves,

leaves the rest.  I may make it to 90.
What will 60 feel like then?
The years speed up.  I’m walking
against traffic, no one slowing down.

 

—
Kenneth Pobo has a book forthcoming from Blue Light Press called Bend Of Quiet. His recent work has been in: Weber: The Contemporary West, Floating Bridge, The Queer South (anthology), and elsewhere.