Abstractions
Rage is a jammed
front door and order
is children slaughtered
in Gaza. Justice is a
feeling that a judge has
after lunch and common is
talking about the weather,
hoping to talk about something
that matters. Solitude is sitting
at the Walmart bus stop, looking
at a girl in a car asking who are
those people sitting there.
Ecstasy is buying a pizza
for a party of friends and family,
walking it in the front door.
Evil is the story in the paper
that I can’t read, I see the headline
and flip as fast as possible.
Gratitude is fresh air. Bobby Bare
is on the radio at 2:22 am.
My mind is a number. My children
at the zoo. Mercy is knowing me.
Faith is believing in me. Hunger
is the way I feel I am doing
something better than me. Peace
is swimming with my kids in a pond,
the snapping turtles never appear.
War is a dream. History is a dream.
An angel who helps my little crises.
��”George Payne
Grief
She walks home slowly
Thinking about what the doctor said
Going over every word
Again and again
Closing the door to her apartment
She sits at the table
Buries her head in her arms and cries,
Mourning the moments in the last six weeks
Squandered on worry
—Jim Savio
Come Sit on the Porch
Come sit on the porch with me, my love,
while the world falls apart.
A tumorous cloud at the river rises rapid,
like milk boiling over a too-small pan.
It emerges enorming, forming a storm
as unique steam startles and enrages it.
And now look: The whole sky is a color I’ve never seen.
It begins to go a blackish green.
While the wind whips the brackish waves, sailors scatter
and fishers flee for the nearest dock.
Why feign shock? This is what we have made for ourselves.
The world has turned on us, as we have turned on the world.
Rain is pelting the melting streets (not cooling—just angry).
Outside, the sun fried us all morning; now a torrent keens
and screams. There seems no air.
We are poaching; we are boiling.
Shall we suffocate, or drown?
Come sit down
and drink, my love, a toast
to the end of the world.
—Genie Abrams
Jimerick #3
When I’m in a tower
I’ll give you an hour;
I may hold a pair,
Or be lifted to swear;
I can measure a mare,
Show a singer I care,
Be loaned out as aid,
Waved, shaken, or laid.
What am I?
—Jim Raskoski
I hope you find your dreams like the corner of a kite.
It takes you up, up, up, way above your reality.
You will expand, see new perspectives,
laugh and feel light as a feather.
No need to hold on too tight, just a pinch.
At the bottom corner,
You will soar high,
Swirl in circles.
The sky will be more blue than ever before.
Clouds float by, many shapes and sizes.
Oh look, there is another kite,
Let go as that dream comes true and
grab hold of the new one beside you
Your vision is real, you feel yourself grow,
change shape and drift with the wind.
Just like your dreams, taking you higher,
your energy becomes electric, your dreams are realized…
Let go of the kite,
Your dreams have come true.
You soar on your wings, the kite is adrift…
A new soul it waits for.
—Missy Wallace
Last Words of a House on Fire
Please remember my fever—
The sidewalk chill—
How at the last, I tried to warm you—
An effigy – grief and firewood—
And I prayed for you, if you can call it prayer—
You – light of me cupped in the eye
As a valley-bed cradles the dying sun—
You – the air we might break and share as bread—
The men in helmets, the clouded moon,
The wailing o’er the town, all my ghosts set free—
But you – rain on your cheeks, barefoot and bedless—
Newly haunted and orphaned to the morrow—
Would that I could hold you as before—
Would that I could shelter you from this.
—Emily Murnane
Dating
I’m rusty
I write my new lover a poem
On the back of old wedding stationary
Handmade paper
Brittle from thirty years in the drawer
The violets disintegrate as did our union.
I’m stale
My wardrobe offers nothing original
I look nightly for a new accessory
I thrift for passion
I bargain hunt for intimacy
BOGO for positive regard and trust.
I’m impatient
I hunt through the recycle bin
Used torn repurposed
I’ll eat with a spork from long ago take out
I know how to make do
I’m aged
My address book a cemetery
Or more like a map
Pushpins on my timeline
Markers of memories
Updating their status
I’m parched
Hiking out of the Grand Canyon
My boyfriend leaves me water by a rock
His pace impatient with mine
The jar smells from peanut butter
And when I arrive
Ants have swarmed its crevices
Contaminate my ration
Of water.
I’m eager
To be fed from a stainless spoon
Drink quenchingly from the fountain
Be large
I want to cause pause.
—Ilyse Simon
Embracing Gone
I was embracing gone
After they went
And that’s one stiff hug.
I bet gone felt like Lake Erie
Stuck between parentheses (dam it!).
Now tributes are tributaries
That gift rivers to cemeteries
But the fluent words
Merely float memories downstream
While the sky heavy atop my canoe
Still won’t let me paddle up it-
Won’t even drop me a tow rope
And pull
To where mom and dad
Talk the woof woof woo
Of the speechless shamans
Of Hound Heaven
Frolicking all ahowl in om
As oarless in love
As the salmon that get all the way up
To their dearest
Who gesture “sit” and “stay”
“You’ve come all this way”.
—David L. Levitt
Incident
Furnace goes out no oil
no heat so you build a fire
center of living room floor
smoke sets off alarms
as the floor burns and
fire falls through to basement
just like everyone you love
has fallen away just like hopes & dreams
are consumed by the blaze
of your ambition to make a life
so perfect that no detail
is overlooked just like your smoldering
smile greets the rushing
sirens.
—C. P. Masciola
first love
dry leaves carried
by the summer wind
—Pulkita Anand
I Made a Poem
An inveterate scribbler
Not chosen, not rhymed.
Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you,
Lives untroubled among simple and quiet words.
He escapes a smeared fate
Knowing he does so nobly,
then he dies.
—Sean J McDermott
Firepit
Our firepit is full
of flowers
she’s asked me not
to burn.
So I gather up more
stone
and set it down in a new circle.
Love is like that—
flowers growing
where a flame
was;
beginning
over
once
again.
—Ryan Brennan
This article appears in December 2024.
