Poetry By Drew Martin

Shadows of a Winter’s Dawn

The broken light of fractured dawn
Sifting through the trees
Free from all their trappings
As naked as they please
For they don’t mind a certain kind
Of skeletal imagery
Although October’s passed on by
Shadows dance with glee
Over hill and valley
Caked with frost and freeze
They spend a frigid sunrise
Doing as they please
And who would dare disturb them?
To interrupt their fun
Shadows stretch, dance, and play
The same as anyone
Be it dawn or be it dusk
Those are their favorite times
Making all their mischief
Committing all their crimes.

Poetry By Nicholas De Marino

cemetery cry

One time when we were
in a cemetery, you started crying
and I held you. An elderly couple

orbited us, closer and closer
because we were in the historical section.
And we looked foreign because we were

foreign, and maybe we had a story.
We did, but not related to anyone
here they knew. I did stop

and imagine being a corpse
in one of those ornate family crypts,
suddenly so glad to be so far

away from everyone but you.

Poetry By Bronwyn C

Requiem 3

All things go, and it is right that they should do so, for if you see
Something whole, it doesn’t look
Nearly as nice as it seemed.

As you cling to the departing soul by the throat, see it strangle—
The pulse give, the shine decay
And all you’ve got left is the rest.

It stays in memory, but so too that corrupts in time, and now
You wish you’d made more precise
An anatomical reference.

All that’s left to do in the end times (such as they are) is: return
And walk into this regret
Eyes damned and fearless because you forgot.

Poetry By Olga Pyshnyak-Lawrence

Little Calligraphy Desk

Sandy colored, wooden waves
Aspirations and hopes
Ingrained,
Inspired by dreams chasing beauty.

Thoughts of Paris and Le Provence
Victorian ladies and thank-you cards.

I want to nurture moments of stillness
As my pen hovers like a shy hummingbird,
Almost tasting the sweetness of Prose,
A nectar for the soul, for the one
Who receives slivers of my heart,
Upon the romance platter.

And so, I write, leaving traces
Of myself
Inside the lace of time.

I soak myself in this moment
Gazing upon the little calligraphy desk,
Nursing the possibility,
At the breast of opportunity,
Filled with love and wonder.

It is no longer a little calligraphy desk,
But a humble tool of transformation.
Lovingly, with every ounce of longing,
My sweet friend of self-reflection,
A destination, where time stands still,
And I’m no longer just me,
But a vessel of history.
One who shapes the future through the lenses of the past.
I’m no longer splintered by the world
As I gaze upon this wooden wonder…

Poetry By Jennifer Weigel

The Evolution of Marriage

I memorize every coil of your hair.
The soft locks twist and spiral
in the lamplight by our bed,
like seashells newly emerged from the mire
yet to be found along the shore.

People change over time.
I am not the same as when we met.
You too have become someone new.
I am reminded time and again
of how little we really know one another.

Our lives are evolving together,
intertwined in their own blessed movement.
Caught in constant motion,
we adapt to the new rules
while we get to know who we have been.

Poetry By John Holding

Laughter, Slaughter under a Ghost Gum

I looked at the tree and asked

Have you seen too much pain—

Bark weeping around your feet

Trunk ghostly—ashen white

Leaves drifting to ground

There to turn to dust

Are you,

Three hundred years old?

There before the slaughter

When all you heard was laughter.

Silence.

Then I knew—

S is all that stands between

Mirth and death.

Ship.

Settlers, Steel, Syphilis.

Spears… Dust

I am full of words—

But dust is mute.

Poetry By Carl “Papa” Palmer

Celebrity Celibacy

Her laptop sits upon my pillow,
poems covering my side of our bed.

Jazz escapes her earphones as I lean
in for a quick peck on my cheek.

Her eyes return to her writings
as I exit unmissed to the den.

This same scene, nine months of
nights, sleeping on the couch.

I hold myself to blame, begged
her to come, read for open mike

and she loved it. Her first reading
wowed the audience, read again,

became a regular, joined poetry
groups, found her voice,

was asked to be the featured reader,
wrote more, read more, published,

working on her second collection,
poems covering my side of our bed.

Poetry By Timothy Horne

It Starts With a Bang

Fickle masses lined the way

Their song “Hosanna” filled the sky

Palm fronds hailed the coming Christ

But such acclaim obscured a lie

The one they praised and lionized

In five short days would be held high

Not as the Sovereign Lord of all

But on a cross, condemned to die

Their shouts of joy would turn to scorn

And hope be dashed in “My God, why?”

Jerusalem, the Throne of Kings

Witness of that woeful cry

Poetry By J.B. Hogan

Thankful for the Poetry

It took some doing, some time –
she had moved on long before,
but he didn’t move so fast,
knew only to move slow;
it had taken some work,
it had taken some mistakes
but it finally played out
or maybe frayed from the distance.
After, he was still free,
still intact, still on the same path.
It would have been a good thing,
but it didn’t happen, and
at the end he was still who he was,
not done yet, still in the game, and
thankful for the learning,
thankful for every moment,
thankful for the poetry.