 Winning Down the Road As Ususal At the End by Julie Carpenter Winning
To win the game You must work with him Become hollow before it starts Scrape out your own insides It will be less painful to do it now Now he can wear your skin Like a suit Stretched and reshaped The very little that is left of you Is pushed to the edges The boundary, your own skin And yet… Your existence still stains the exterior, a thin coat of paint His lips must stop at yours His sense of touch Must end inside your fingertips The victory of inhabitation is finite The triumph smaller than you would have thought The trivial price of playing the game
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 Poems by Jeff Weddle Without further introduction, enjoy some poems by one of our favorite poets, Jeff Weddle! Links to books appear below the poetry.  Painting by Essie Lee photo by Julie Poetry for Quarantine by John Patrick Robbins Nothing Changes But The Weather Most the world was in a self imposed quarantine, and here I was hooking up with a semi stranger in the backseat of a car. A life lived dangerously had been my mantra so just because the apocalypse was near why stop the party now? She was a second date and beat nothing at all. I was a drunk and not in the least bit picky. She took the ride and I watched the traffic from the view of the parking lot and thought up this little ditty I'm sharing now. You know it's memorable, when you're penning poems in your head with your pen in someone else's ink. She was a second date and I just another empty soul to share space and grind against for the lack of anything better to do. Never polish off the edges, leave them hidden in poorly penned poems for everyone to read. I never high five myself for it's far from an achievement. We all need something and I wasn't under the delusion they ever needed me. We had our moment and went our separate ways. I ended up with a poem and she simply got a goodbye. Nothing changes but the weather.  Four Poems by Brian Rihlmann BATTLE OF THE BULGE
because of vestigial tooth and claw the raised hackles and the roar the avarice, the acquisitiveness that served us well through thousands of forgotten years millions of atrocities swept under the proverbial rug this world will not conform to our foolish images of paradise there’s a mountain of dirt under there bulging the stitches of our carefully woven mandala-- how the roots of trees shatter concrete beautifully as drunken spiderwebs and we, scampering with darning needles trowels in hand  5 Poems by Ryan Quinn Flanagan Half in the Bag
A single brass antique candle holder, the top protruding out of a passing floral patterned purse that rushes by in a hurry, she must be late the same way pregnancy scares are late, rushing around in flushed chubby panic like that; with the bottom part of her new brass candleholder half in the bag slung over boney shoulder… I can only see the top, the various arms in need of dusting; not quite Menorah or octopus, but enough arms to do the job which is all any of us can really ask for on this living breathing Earth.  If you go to Lane’s Author page, the review of this book is deceptively simple. It begins with a few lines of poetry from this sharp, sweet, and far too short book.
In the Cemetery
In the cemetery, I was standing on my knees, reading verses of the holy book to the tombs I was praying with tears on my cheeks until the graveyard stopped me and asked me if I was reading verses or reading sorrows with an emotionless face, he asked to repeat I started reading again and, his face was getting red as his eyes were dropping my unrhymed tears he stopped me with anger and screamed out why more grieves, why more death, and less peace I responded to him, why did hope sold us to traitors why life is struggling with us, why did the wars rape us shamelessly we cried together as he was saying that he’s listening to spirits weeping with us, as the clouds will rain again he asked me again, why our world is no longer bright instead, it’s full of darkness and lots of bloody cuts our grandparents were the farmers, who lift the sunshine and brunt themselves to death, just to protect the seeds our mothers stole the moon from the wall of the night they hid in their coffins and the stars after our fathers turned the rainbow into a solider in the zone of death and made the snow into a drinkable water to survive Pristimantis jamescameroni
I dreamt that James Cameron made a movie about me that had nothing to do with my life and that I was only referenced through metaphor the special effects making me hungry and orange-brown and it was a box office failure even with 26 explosions in the first three minutes and a woman who jumps off a building that used to be her birdfeeder in an alternate universe. Phoenix Rises Again
There’s no logic in the land of emotions where tears drop without explanation. I am attached to my past, keep pushing my present into it; sucking my future into my present time. When I saw him trying to severe himself from his past, I felt the pain of his effort in his words and at his face. A sure connect, I lived that pain and then it happened. Emotions swept my feet clean from under me as I observed them flow silently, fiercely. They came and I embarrassed myself in public, after a long time. But men don’t cry! I knew they’d come, those tears, just a second before they came There was a chain of reactions that drew drops out and logged them on the lenses. They’d leave their outline on drying, so I wiped the lenses clean while the liquid and the emotions that sent it there were fresh and alive. From premonition to the actual wiping live emotions. What stays behind is the guilt of letting the secret out; the fear that someone would ask about it. For men don’t cry. It’s only thrice, or four times in his adult life that a man cries. How many times can a phoenix die, and rise from the ashes? by Lane Mochow
Hospital Jesus June, 2018 When I met the Jesus He took my hand, kissed it. He told me He was Jesus Born with black skin. He didn't tell me to follow Him, To fall before his feet, to kneel low. He told me my name Meant "Heaven on Earth". He didn't tell me I was hell bound, Destined for smokey flames and torment. He told me my nose hairs Helped me smell the supernatural. He told me I would be His Sixteenth consort and bear His first child. He told me He never truly died, Just fell into an unconscious dreamscape. |
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