Snoring – a Prose Poem / Luisa Berne
The sound of my father’s snoring fills the room in the nursing home. Rhythmic and slow, thunder rolling across a bay. Or tucks downshifting on a highway. I used to hate the sound of his snoring when he napped. As a child I would pinch his nose to make him stop. But now, now, I sit with my eyes closed in the hard plastic chair, my eight-week-old son at my breast and pretend just for an instant that my father is not dying, that he is just napping on a hot afternoon like he used to. That he will wake up and remember me. Wake up and hold his grandson, his grandson who has his hair color and his eye color. His breath falters, stops, slows, I open my eyes, I think this is it, this is his last breath, then he snores again, and never have I been so thankful to hear a snore.
The Old Orange Tyran / Scott Burnam
the old orange tyrant
slams his oligarch’s fist
“You will be compliant!
How dare you resist?”
his grease painted yap
spewing hatred and woe
his nostrils aflap
as he puts on his show
for brainwashed minions
and mislabeled christians
who have no opinions
due to broken cognition
with all of his bluster
he’ll likely not hear
that we started to muster
and we shed off our fear
we are now defiant
we are all proudly woke
we won’t be compliant
we won’t bear the yoke
of history repeated
or of freedom bum-rushed
of people deleted
or true Patriots crushed
so we show up in hoards
with the courage to march
bearing Justice’s sword
burning Liberty’s torch
til the old orange tyrant
can do nothing but kneel
and we serve him the warrants
til there is no appeal
as he’s sentenced for treason
his name in disgrace
he’ll finally reason
these were never his States
but even after he’s cold
we still won’t be content
we won’t be consoled
til there’s no more “1%”
Shadowman / David Estringel
–after Richard Hambleton
anti-matter
inkblot splatter
ever silent screaming
eyeless dagger-stare
shake the pauses
from glass hothouses
throwing tantrums
throwing shade
bust your nut ‘cross the skin of a dark violet sky
frozen motion
black void thought explosion
saying much
saying little
sing
your hypodermic song
letting eyes feast
feeding the beast
you quench the thirst of blood flowers growing wild in our veins
Raptor / Catherine Forest
A redtail surveys
Habitat encroachment, its
Cry pierces my heart
I’ll Be the Goddess. Hear Me Out. / Erika Seshadri
6_ILL_BE_THE_GODDESS_HEAR_ME_OUT.docx
The Kilns / Arthur Turfa
Solitude searching from the suburban sprawl
and adolescent angst about grades, girls,
the loud house and acclimating to my
new home (although I sound like the old one),
I walked down into the quarry, then went
up the other side to several kilns
left over from colonial times, when
limestone formed the foundation of the land.
There I sat, listening to birds, watching
the sky, and thinking about the future.
Aspirations developed differently,
but I have no regrets. The kiln served as
my kiva, where slowly, unknowingly,
this boy child became father to the man.
