Friday, March 29, 2024

November 2018

True Self Nameless stands with his back to the wall. Desperate grappling of an unsettled mind. Piercing screams emitting from some lost place. Unsure of any fate, real or imagined. Looking past a vague blackness, slowly filling an empty jar on the shelf. Cardboard dreams crumbling, while paint peels off in layers of obscurity. A disease of doubt...

Poems by Jack Donahue

The Removal of Sin in a World Without Sin Turning once again toward the sea, strong arms move my head to look at the land instead, a desert landscape beige, bland sand the monotonous menu for my eyes that have seen it all before. Defiant, I turn to feast on the wild water, currents pushing the shore...

Poems by Claudine Nash

I PASS YOU AN EMPTY SKY I just love when I pass you an empty sky and you spin it then hand me back a fistful of stars. ENTANGLEMENT 1 You reach through this spiral of settling light and touch a drifting, mislaid piece of dust. You lift it and somewhere else in time and space, something in me rises. ENTANGLEMENT 2 On this ground I plant a seed. I lay by this mound of peat moss and...

Poems by Ricky Garni

TRIATHLON Jane was in Vancouver one day and she stood at the window and saw a woman crawling out of the sea. The woman started running really fast on the beach until she reached a bicycle and then she hopped on it and kept going. “Wow!” Jane said, “I just saw the evolution of mankind in...
suicide paula’s weak moment leaving me early sad lonely feeling nightly she returns softly whispering her lost love still in my heart bliss alone in library empty used bookstore roaming shelves sacred experience like attending church feeling hopeful promise quietly turning pages becoming dreamer again freedom waking to birdsong before first light building small fire boiling water from stream instant coffee oats in tin cup ready for journey picking way over deadfall brushing aside cobwebs escaping...

Poems by Lucy Wilson

Distant Thunder I. Monster Mash My sister noticed first: “You walk like an old lady.” I was forty-six, but she was right. I could not, would not, see. One day on the beach in Hermosa, walking along the shore, I stopped and looked back. The sea tried to hide the evidence but I was too quick: step slide, step slide,...
THE MAGIC OF STILLNESS AND THE CHAOTIC Some people, lost souls, caught in the absurdity of noise, create magical stillness out of the chaotic outwitting comprehension. Other lost souls, caught in the absurdity of silence, create the chaotic out of magical stillness sidestepping incomprehension. I, confused by both noise and silence, adoring absurdity yet not knowing which is more magical or comprehensible, stillness or...
THE TRANSLATOR You once contributed to a study. You said what you took seemed superior to what you left behind. You got the letter but never joined the team. You put on a different costume, but you’re always a shaman. You said you would storm the studio and seize the local reality from the projectors. You...
On The Vasettha Sutta Two Brahmins brought the Blessed One a dispute. One argued, We were born pure into this caste. The second claimed, Class is by virtue of actions. Buddha, who often stayed silent, untouchable, above such fray, discoursed in no uncertain terms: Grasses or trees are distinct from birth, not man. Still twenty-five hundred...
Old Men Walk Funny Old men walk funny with shadows and time eating at their heels. Pediatric walkers, prostate exams, bend over, then most die. They grow poor, leave their grocery list at home, and forget their social security checks bank account numbers, dwell on whether they wear dentures, uppers or lowers; did they...
Love-Child Hugging his belly against my womb He chimes exuberance galore Through the placenta of my soul And chase my hum in a strum Like a frisking fawn With melodies stacked Under a banished bay Drenched in kaleidoscopic notes We gather them with bare hands To compose the sky mottled gray Like a charismatic vowel Dilating a barren consonant He conducts In return,...