green sea foam jello is a delicacy enjoyed
by the Curtain Snappers who also enjoy
an occasional game of carpet rugby
organized by the Ministry of Picture Wizards
who partake in an ever increasing number
of typewriter joyrides while
rounding up all of the Candle Tappers
until the unbearable burden
of the enjoyment itself
comes down to
the sickening reality
of a leather lampshade.
But the fruit was so sweet . . .
silence the fig tree missing leaves
Susan Beth Furst
What’s left of the Lucky Charms I mix in with a little bit of Life creating a tincture a serum a salve what-have-you that just might cure okay staunch I mean plug this feeling of being lost at sea this soupy blue milk is all I’ve got to slurp down dribble out so derelict have I become at prayers.
whiteout conditions signing my will
Peter Newton
After my sex tape failed to go viral, I kind of gave up on the internet.
little black book
the women who blew me
off
Dave Read
On this sunny spring day the panorama is dreamy as we approach the settlement, but the soviet gloominess of Volodarka brings me back to reality very soon…
ukrainian prairies —
our eyes
seeking eyes
Andrea Cecon
Dave Read
The house is empty. It looks plagiarised. Can you mail it some poems, words, with the right stake of grammar? Maybe some love poems because it has suffered enough of oppressed poetry on politics, wars, homelessness, economy, all that bloodlessness captured in words.
rhapsody
she hums his favourite
duet
Poornima Laxmeshwar
In September of 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland. One week later they captured the city of Lodz. Twenty year old Irena fled her hometown for Warsaw. She had intended to cross the border to Russia, but was too late; the border had been closed. She stayed with friends in Warsaw but food was scarce and she missed her family. Irena decided to go back home.
Because she was Jewish she was forbidden to ride the train. But Irena didn’t look Jewish and she could speak German. So she removed the yellow star from her sleeve and climbed aboard the train departing for Lodz.
The train pulled into the station after the eleven o’clock curfew. As she hurried home, Irena could see a German Officer a few blocks away. So she crossed the street and spoke to him – in perfect German. She told him that she was returning from Warsaw and the train was late; that she was tired and couldn’t wait to get home. She pointed to her apartment building. There was a Nazi flag hanging from the window.
The officer looked at her and said, “Poor girl, run fast, run fast.”
Never one to push her luck, Irena ran, thankful that her landlord was German.
dark night shooting stars one by one
Susan Beth Furst
The world is an act of monomania. We are drawn towards definitions, standard synonyms like without them the whole entirety of a thing will be plainly lost and never found. In this act we forget that we discover the best when we don’t bind, don’t compel, when we just refuse to label.
theoretical
the strung words that never
made sense
Poornima Laxmeshwar
we all have been so busy on the committee doing all the the the things that they talked to us about and I think it will help the teachers with things like this because they’re all about town and not really paying attention to the oh what’s the word you know to to all of those things that everyone says should happen because it’s not that that that we don’t want them to come with us but they need to be able to get offices like the ones on campus which were really just perfect and they had huge feasts with all us kids there on the farm and it was great great fun to go through the the coat closet and put on their big oversized coats and see the hairdryer there and so was the typewriter
winter sky
a crow
without a murder
Jennifer Hambrick
