Crème Brûlée Or (Rather, And/Or) Mud Pie?

Ocean dip, or kiddie pool?
Beach, or box of sand?
Lazyboy, or shaky stool?
Christmas gift so cool…
Or socks so bland?

Noonday sun, or candle flame?
Chess, or Tic-Tac-Toe?
Honey pure, or aspartame?
Roses fresh cut for the dame…
Or faux?

Forty winks, or feline nap?
Crème brûlée, or mud pie?
Disney World, or tourist trap?
With arms and robes enwrapped…
Or pigsty?*

Tie the knot, or dare not try?
Crown that lasts, or laurel-wrought?
Seek a friend, or dumb A.I.?
Trusting Him Who once did rise…
Or ego-caught…
A lot afraid…
Until the day the farm’s bought?

Poetry By Andi Brooks

Time’s Chalice

The children played as children do,
unfettered by earthbound time;
their voices rose in song and rhyme,
long lost to those like me and you.

When all their games had run their course,
they gathered up their scattered toys.
Then, upon their phantom steeds,
off rode those laughing girls and boys.

Yet there upon a grassy knoll,
stood a lone child left behind.
He raised his arm and waved;
I waved back in kind.

Snatching up a switch,
he dreamily came on;
dallying here, dallying there,
the lord of pirates and dragons.

At last he stood there at my feet,
and looked at me through squinting eyes.
Was he real or merely a dream
blown from the land of lullabies?

‘You look so very, very old,’
the child said with innocent charm.
Truthful youth—so pure of heart—
his presence filled my soul with calm.

O blessed child, I envied him
free from all sorrow and distress—
never to drink from time’s chalice
nor wither neath its chill caress.

Wearily, I sank to the ground,
my tired limbs so weak, so cold.
The weight of life oppressing me—
I was so very, very old.

Reaching down, he tugged my sleeve;
the time had come for us to go.
As if I were a child myself,
I sprang up, free of earthly woe.

We raced away in joyful voice
to where his steed pranced light of foot.
He climbed on first, then pulled me up,
and off we rode—fey laughing boys.

Poetry By Karrie Wortner

Long Road Out of Myself

I keep walking down this dirt road that runs between fields gone stiff with last year’s stubble, and the dust lifts around my ankles like it remembers every version of me I’ve tried to leave behind, so I let my steps fall slow and steady, breathing in that familiar mix of rain‑thick air that always seems to settle here before the truth does, the kind of truth that clings under your fingernails no matter how long you stand at the sink trying to scrub it away, as if the land itself is waiting for me to admit what I already know.

The Midwest has a way of holding your face in its hands, turning you toward the light even when you’d rather squint away. There’s no hiding from yourself when the sky is this wide and the silence this honest.

And as I move forward, the past keeps tugging at me with its small, insistent sounds—a voice shaped like memory calling from a porch I don’t belong to anymore, the low moan of wind slipping through bare branches like someone calling my name from the tree line, the loose siding on an old shed clapping in the breeze as if trying to catch my attention while I pass—but I keep my eyes on the road because I know how easy it is to mistake old shadows for shelter, how easy it is to pretend the devil lives far off in the distance when he’s really curled up in the tiny details I’ve stepped over for years, waiting for me to finally look down and see him for what he is.

So I walk, breath catching in the cool dusk to the sound of crickets and the soft, wandering glow of lightning bugs drifting through the weeds, telling myself not to fold into someone else’s story just to avoid my own, not to punish myself for the things I carried too long, not to flinch at the mirror the sky keeps holding up, and with every slow mile something loosens—not forgiveness exactly, but a thinning of the dust, a clearing in the air—until the road ahead opens wide and quiet and possible, and I realize that looking closely might hurt, but it’s the only way I’ll ever be able to keep going forward.

Poetry By Sherry Shahan

STATIC

The bedroom smells like furniture polish so

I must’ve tossed the rags in with the sheets again. Light

from the bedside table burns my fingertips. Memories bore into the flaws of my mattress.

Ink grieves across cocktail napkins, on a sales’ receipt, in the margin

of a city map. Air between scraps of paper wants to be truth. Words sound themselves

out as if they’re facts. Silly air words on scraps of paper aren’t

permanent. A hologram on my lampshade: a snake’s severed head can still bite/

the daddy longlegs in my shower doesn’t feel its missing leg. I’ll eat the

Thesaurus if it lies to me again. Insomniacs on my street pipe skunk

weed through my open window as if I don’t worry enough about

the kismet of my lungs. Streetlights squeeze out color in a bottomless annum, turning

walls into Pop Tart pastels like my hair, only painted with a toothbrush.

And under it all, daffodil bulbs hibernate in a brown paper bag on the floor

of the closet beneath N95 masks and a canister with my mother’s ashes

no, remains because how do we really know what’s inside? In the broken night my

neighbor shrieks under a honeycomb moon; she’s lost her house keys again.

Dogs barking at 3 a.m. make you feel like you’re going crazy. Cracking pistachios in bed

has permanently split my thumbnail. I so love the blue-striped Hanes left

behind by my last boyfriend how they bloom recklessly large on my hips, chew on

my thighs; still blood warm stretched-out in the crotch. All those empty

bottles of hotel shampoo float in the tub where an invisible crowd bathes to extinguish

germs we can’t see no one comes to apologize who can sleep?

Poetry By Michael Woodard

Looking Forward (in a Billy Collins multiverse)

Whenever I stare into the future,
the blinding light of progress
scares me more than the unknowable dark.

I no longer see a shining city on a hill,
instead the glinting heap of digital refuse
winking back at us, whispering I told you so.

Nor do I see the arc bending towards justice,
not for humans anyway, so my hope rests
with the Greenland sharks, the bristlecones, and the glass sponges.

All I see in the shadows
are my children longing for a time they knew
only as children

paddling through the reeds, pausing
to gaze at the pond turtle beneath the surface,
ignoring the rippling mirror.

This morning my daughter emerged from the blacked-out bedroom
and reminded me to look up from my book
at the hazy geraldine light on the Sierra,

she said she would have been sad all day
to have missed it, and I recall some past mornings
she wailed at having woken too late.

I hold on to this buoy all day
floating through the cycles of laundry,
the inevitable conversation about what to make for dinner,

and news from the astronauts
aboard Artemis, bound
for the dark side of the moon.

Poetry By Olga Pyshnyak-Lawrence

I want to make my Father Famous in Heaven

My father’s death
Is a deep wound inside of me.
When I am still I constantly think of him.
I keep busy, running ragged
Running away from my thoughts of him.
If I stand still, I unravel
And that scares me.
Facing his death, head on is so scary,
Because I want to pretend it’s not true.
Facing his death, head on is so scary
Because I know, I cannot pretend it’s not true.

I try hard not to define myself through my father’s death.
In vain I try so hard.
Because the truth is
I’m forever changed
And no longer who I used to be.
But I’m better,
Less afraid,
More determined
To live a life he’d be proud of.

In Heaven I want him to be famous for
“Being that father of that daughter”,
One who made a difference.
One who didn’t give up when things were hard.
But took the pain and mixed it with beauty
To paint this world
Into something more beautiful.

And so I continue,
I don’t give up.
I keep moving when the going gets tough,
Because I want to make my father famous in heaven
For “being that father of that daughter”
One who made a difference.

Poetry By Johanna Rodda

Kingfisher, Fisher King

One day I went walking, walking to the sea.

I was all unbound, all one, completely free.

A fisherman was grounded, his boat upon the sand.

“Can you help me?” He was stoic.

“Sure,” I said, “I’ll give you a hand.”

He did not say much, that fisher,

but we pushed that boat off the strand.

He was carried out to sea. Then he cried out with a plea.

“Oh, come with me, I pray you,” he turned his voice to me.

“You’ll be the king – I swear it – I swear it on the three.”

And I went about the task – out as far as eye could see.

I am no god of water. I was sinking, on the waves.

My journey, though not long, felt like many days.

But my body rose from there in most blessed fashion:

surely this rising up was of the Blood and of the Passion.

I reached the man’s boat. He helped me aboard.

I showed interest in his nets. He showed interest in the Lord.

“Will you stay?” so said he. “Do not answer now in haste.”

“Why not?” said I. Said he, “The land lies waste.

Le roi est mort, vive le roi,” he said, most cryptically.

I watched the birds that dipped and that dove upon the sea.

And captured one just then, flying there alee.

“It is a kingfisher,” said the man. “A master of the billow.

You’ll not age a day, the sea your pillow.

For when the king dies – don’t you know – ”

“Yes,” I said. “The plants won’t grow.”

And so the man, he set the sail,

while I hoped that life would fail.

But my life now is one true grail,

a cup, a chalice, the truth all pale:

life begets life, that the great mystery;

and that source of life – that now is me.

So, I drift on and onward one of three,

I a Fisher King on his sea.

Poetry By Paul Glover

Keeping on keeping on

My life is lived, or so it seems,
between the pushing and the shutting of the door.
Each day I try to give, for charity redeems,
but end up less ambitious than before.
My dearest dreams, though highly born,
are used to wipe daily stains
on life’s mosaic floor.
My hopes are lean as starving kine,
despairing expectations,
both worshipped and abhorred.
And so, when you ask me what lies behind my grin,
do not question deeply or I might invite you in.

Poetry By Cameron Kimber

El Gringo’s

When I was little
The three of us would pile into dad’s little sky blue pickup
He’d rewind whatever cassette was in the tape deck to his favorite song
And drive us to the Mexican restaurant just outside of town
I don’t remember much about the place
Certainly not the food
Or the color of the big sombrero
They made you wear when they sang happy birthday
All I remember is
One time on the way home
My forehead pressed against the cold backseat window
And the beads of rain streaking down the glass
If I looked close enough
I could see the whole world in every little drop