The Squabbling Neighbors, by John Grey

The Squabbling Neighbors
by John Grey

They’ve been married ten years,
she once told me.
Must have been quite a wedding day,
I’m thinking.
I can just see and hear the preacher –
“Do you, lazy motherfucker
take stupid bitch
to be your lawfully wedded wife.
And do you fat trollop
take drunken bum to be your
lawfully wedded husband.”
And then a couple of
snarled “I do’s”,
a funeral march
down the aisle
and out the door of the church
where interfering old cow,
freeloading halfwit
and catty witch,
throw confetti.
What a honeymoon that must have been
bouts on the beach,
scraps in the bar,
sixteen rounders in the bedroom.
And here they are still together.
You have to wonder what
brainless idiot and useless lump of lard
still see in one another.
But who can explain true love?
Of course, they do as good a job as any.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Blueline, Chronogram and Clade Song.

One Kiss, One Train, by John Grey

One Kiss, One Train
by John Grey

Without first love, there’d be no love.
The rest of the loves
are just sorrowful old men and women
with battered suitcases
standing on drab platforms
for trains that never come.
Still, we convince ourselves
that the standing and the waiting
is the true love,
with its baggage at both our sides,
with that shared stare down the barren track
for sign of something.
I can’t kiss the woman
from twenty years ago
so I lean over and kiss the one next to me.
It’s the nearest I get to that other kiss.
It’s like her cheek is a scrap-book
and I’m pasting
a twenty year old clipping into its pages.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Blueline, Chronogram and Clade Song.

Trace by Compression, by Jeff Burt

Trace by Compression
by Jeff Burt

I am removing nails to let the rain through the roof
so the drops slip through shingles and slats
and I can make a pond where drought-winnowed migrating herds gather
to show how arresting one note is like water on your lips.

I am looking for ways to keep the propagation of sound continuing,
an eternal sine wave that captures all your words
into an echoing tone that continually wakens my anvil and stirrup,
like the ring a sculptor makes pounding with her hammer to shape
one metal against another, or the frequency of a bell rung to welcome
prodigals home, to show how one vowel from your lips
perpetually resounds off the folds and creases of my brain.

I am looking for ways to capture the atmospheric storm
of horses on your tongue that gather and stampede with satchels full of letters,
ponies I want to corral with thunderous hoofs sending
wild and captivating Morse code I would read the rest of my life
to show how exhilarating phrases charge forth from your mouth.

I am telling you why when you recite the atlas and cache of your heart
I must close my eyes and place my lips against your lips
to trace by compression what I cannot understand by sound.

Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife and works in mental health. He has poems in Rabid Oak, Eclectica, Williwaw Journal, and Cold Mountain Review.

Timeless Licks, by Karla Linn Merrifield

Timeless Licks
by Karla Linn Merrifield

Whether the Flying Vee or Parker Fly or—
you name it—the electric guitar
is a sex machine,
all spooge and squish:

it swoons into the innocent ear
of a teeny-bopper the late night
she kisses her guy on their first date;

it blasts the macho ears
of BMOC frat bro at the kegger
where he’ll bang his
tripped-out coed
on the game room floor;

it cranks the jaded ear
of the hot-shot ad exec
during the launch party
when he nail a coked-up
copywriter to the boardroom table;

and it weeps into the nostalgic ear
of the silver-haired widow
in the wee hour before dawn
when she opens her body
to take one last lover into her life.

Karla Linn Merrifield has 14 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the newly released full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. She is currently at work on a poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars; the book is slated to be published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY). Her Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills Publishing) received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. She is a frequent contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, and assistant editor and poetry book reviewer emerita for The Centrifugal Eye.

Iseult of the White Hands, by Marie C Lecrivain

Iseult of the White Hands
by Marie C Lecrivain

“out damned spot.” – william shakespeare/macbeth

I.
you’ve placed the Moon between us,
an electrum dagger buried in your side –
and you grin victorious like st. sebastian
as i sit by the window,
growing heavy with bile and virginity.

II.
in desperation, i offer my troth
to a passing water elemental
who politely refused me –
he cannot wash away the poison
in my heart left by the wedding toast
to the Moon that you imbibed
at the height of your blinding arrogance.
woe to you, my fast-fading love;
for your lies and your flawed reasoning
that a life lived simply implies a simple intellect.

III.

it’s not a lie when i say
your love has singed holes in my eyes,
and all i can see is black … even now,
as the Moon’s full white sails
glide across the bay,
all you hear is the word black –
and within a four-fold instant,
you disappear. here, now,
the Moon holds you in her arms,
weeping, while i rub my hands together
to rid myself of the stains
left by your blood and memory.

Marie C Lecrivain is a poet, publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, and ordained priestess in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the ecclesiastical arm of Ordo Templi Orientis. Her work has been published in Nonbinary Review, Orbis, Pirene’s Fountain, and many other journals. She’s the author of several books of poetry and fiction, and recent editor of Gondal Heights: A Bronte Tribute Anthology (copyright 2019 Sybaritic Press, http://www.sybpress.com).

Golden Anniversary, by Joe Cottonwood

Golden Anniversary
by Joe Cottonwood

Drinking coffee in that dumpy kitchen
fifty years ago in Missouri
if you asked where we imagined
our lives would take us
redwood trees would not figure into the answer
but here we stand.

If you’d asked how an English major
and a History major could support themselves
we’d have shrugged and smiled.

A good marriage is half love
and half luck.

We had a plan: go to Canada
and figure something out
which in the Sixties
made as much sense as anything.

Instead, this forest our home.
Fun is transient.
Strength, uplift, roots,
that’s joy.

Half a century
weathering changes
passes in a blink.
Ask any sequoia.

Joe Cottonwood is a semi-retired contractor with a lifetime of repairing homes by day, writing by night. He lives under (and at the mercy of) redwood trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His most recent book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific Coast. joecottonwood.com

The Road Not Taken, by Joe Cottonwood

The Road Not Taken
by Joe Cottonwood

The job, illegal.
No records; no taxes.
The client paid cash.
Now I stop for gas.
In my wallet, a nest of one-hundred-dollar bills.
Thirty of them.
Across the street, a sign:
          FREEWAY ENTRANCE
          US 101
          NORTH
I hold the gas nozzle thinking: North.
At least once in your married, child-raising life,
comes the thought.
The old truck has new brakes. Good tires.
In three days, maybe four, I can be in Alaska
—alone—
with a truck full of tools.
Pipeline work. No questions asked.
Cool mountains, clean rivers.
To be free, strong, and . . . thirty-four.
Or is it -five?
Inside the mini-mart, I pay for the fill-up
by the wide glass doors of the cooler.
Rose asked me to pick up some strawberry
yogurt on the way home from work.
And—what was it?
Oh yeah. Laundry soap.

Joe Cottonwood is a semi-retired contractor with a lifetime of repairing homes by day, writing by night. He lives under (and at the mercy of) redwood trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His most recent book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific Coast. joecottonwood.com

Autobiography of Kisses, by Joe Cottonwood

Autobiography of Kisses
by Joe Cottonwood

High school kids in the Chevy wagon
(lips of warm bread)
how innocent we were (tongue of butter)
just kissing.

You unmasked the secret poet,
the scientific fuck-up. I discovered
in your eyes deep libraries,
your flesh oiled calfskin, your furrowed brow
the ink of knowledge when I had no idea
who I was or what I wanted
except kissing
(pure as rainfall).

With dark wisdom you whispered
You are a writer, nothing else.
You should do what you love—besides kissing
(taste of pollen, of nectar).

From your eyes, your voice
rock solid belief
and a nibble of teeth
(scent of moss)
(touch of soft mushroom).

So much, just that. Belief.
And kissing (fresh, a touch, sprouts
in fertile earth).

Joe Cottonwood is a semi-retired contractor with a lifetime of repairing homes by day, writing by night. He lives under (and at the mercy of) redwood trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His most recent book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific Coast. joecottonwood.com

An Invitation With Conditions, by Judy DeCroce & Antoni Oot

An Invitation With Conditions
by Judy DeCroce & Antoni Oot

I still love you—
even those unshared parts;

invite you into my life
but there are some secrets to keep.

Nothing says you don’t belong.
But please, keep something back.

True, you are here, and
I’m glad.

I love you,
but…

I don’t really want to know…
            Everything.

Writers, storyteller and educator Judy DeCroce, and poet/artist Antoni Ooto are based in Upstate New York.

Married and sharing a love of poetry, these two creative souls gather inspiration during their morning poetry sessions over a pot of coffee where they listen to, critique, and revise their work.

Judy DeCroce, has been published in PilCrow & Dagger, Red Eft Review, Front Porch Review, Amethyst Review, An Upstate of Mind, as well as Palettes & Quills, and Writers & Books.

Antoni Ooto has been published in The Red Eft Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Young Ravens Literary Review, Front Porch Review, Amethyst Review, Upstate of Mind and Palettes and Quills, and both have been published in many other journals.

They are collaborating on an upcoming book.

Blindsided, by Judy DeCroce & Antoni Ooto

Blindsided
by Judy DeCroce & Antoni Ooto

I find pain
like a tongue to a loose tooth.

Is life all luck or fate…
love or unexpected emptiness?

There is a week,
then a season,

distractions, commitments,
an errand, and some time filled.

Then—
with a sound, a sight, an email,

I catch my breath…
and once again
                            am blindsided.

Writers, storyteller and educator Judy DeCroce, and poet/artist Antoni Ooto are based in Upstate New York.

Married and sharing a love of poetry, these two creative souls gather inspiration during their morning poetry sessions over a pot of coffee where they listen to, critique, and revise their work.

Judy DeCroce, has been published in PilCrow & Dagger, Red Eft Review, Front Porch Review, Amethyst Review, An Upstate of Mind, as well as Palettes & Quills, and Writers & Books.

Antoni Ooto has been published in The Red Eft Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Young Ravens Literary Review, Front Porch Review, Amethyst Review, Upstate of Mind and Palettes and Quills, and both have been published in many other journals.

They are collaborating on an upcoming book.