We felt your angry hand that day in the hurricane
as we prayed to the finger of rain
you swirled across the sky,
as we begged for rescue and cowered,
awaiting the god-ness of your superpowers.
Two lifetimes ago, Catherine performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. You can find her in the Bluesky. Watch and read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com
A clarity of reversed cluttering,
those damaged ornaments,
layers of dust nestled into cracks,
each speck a decade older
than the last; a lesson ingrained into each
one, the shelves dip like sedentary
snakes, drunk under the weight
of this relentless hoarding.
Certain ones remain more polished
and hold value over sheer nostalgia.
The room now empties, the walls
like torn canvasses useless
in the task of imprinting ideas,
those objects of clutter, thrown
from each window, their influence
and drama, no longer an ash
like smudge.
Too tired to sleep.
Finally home from
my tedious blue-
collar job, following
another exhausting
twelve-hour shift,
with almost four-
hours travel time
on an overcrowded
train deodorized by
vomit and failure.
Drinking whiskey
and cola, attempting
to write poetry.
Henry Miller coming
through with sparkling
clarity on my old
wireless headphones,
saying, all the Gods
and leaders are gone
for modern man. It
is up to each of
us to save ourselves.
I quickly swallow
the last of the whiskey.
Spontaneously filling
several pages with
a fresh, unexpected
grin. Picturing Henry
Miller authoritatively
peering from the
opposite corner of
the bright, suddenly
impelled room. Thick
New York accent.
Joyfully declaring:
"Someone is finally
fucking listening!"
Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia. Poetry of his has appeared in Gargoyle, New York Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, Heavy Feather Review, and Nerve Cowboy. He has two full length collections available from Epic Rites Press.
We are all sausages
In our skin linked together.
Blood, bone, meat put
Through the daily grind.
Some red, some brown,
Some white, each flavored
To local spice and taste.
Yes, we are all sausages
Ready for the plate, a meal
Off the grill or cold, sliced
Or whole in a bun, smeared
With colorful condiments.
We are a feast, consumed,
Both the best and worst.
Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. He is the author of two poetry collections: Planet Mort (2024) and Simple Arithmetic & Other Artifices (2014). His poems have appeared in numerous online and print venues. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.
vomiting chunks into the
river, while
hanging over the bridge
railing as
my drinking buddy, an
ex ski bum pot-smoking
hippy, waits
patiently, through the
up rush and
gush, as
all my sickness
and self-disgust over
what I had become--
what I was--
came to the surface.
“In 762, Li Po’s wandering ends south of the Yangtze River, at someone else’s house, when he falls into a river and drowns trying to embrace the moon.”
—David Hinton, The Selected Poems of Li Po
The moon is that which does not come and go.
The moon always agrees with water.
She hides, she is my eye moving as the earth turns.
She stands as light, my true mother to my father.
Moon holds, reflects him, where he shines—
in the clouded eyes of crones,
and boys and young girls,
moon changes with the time. Many moons
mirage in puddles during rainstorms.
Moons feed artists and madmen at night.
And my lover wonders why I write
about a Chinese poet with the sight who’s drowned
himself, her hunger a yawn for lunatic stories
lapping on Li Po’s dock.
So, such ripples of night’s white apple convict.
This moment of peace. The green shallows
fill lungs with water and with smiles—
I sleep soundlessly. I am a mere piece of fruit-fall
for beautiful mirrors and rivers of charity,
these—inviting bone-whites, fingers speak
sweetly, every syllable a clarity
to strum a song that I would die for,
to flock with fish
beneath the stream.
Manny Grimaldi is a Kentucky writer and editor at Yearling Poetry Journal with two
books Riding Shotgun with the Mothman and Ex Libris Ioannes Cerva. His third book,
slated for the near future is with Whiskey City Press on the subject of how to royally
fuck up every single relationship you’ve ever had. Without exception. He lives
with two stupid feathery bipeds and the dishes are never done.
Sunken through its face
this concrete skeleton's teeth makes light
pick out exaggerated cars on its skinny highway,
swallowing souls whose birthdays pack today like a sardine tin
controlled by so many wheels I wonder where they could possibly go
to escape the judgements of the bone-tinted light,
appearing from the mouths of buildings,
and the skull-shaped concrete
perched behind broccoli trees
wobbling a worried wind that tries to wobble broccoli trees back
and everyone assumes
it's a language of vision and silence that poems magically fall from
Driving through New England,
I notice small towns
all have a cemetery
crowded with tombstones,
weathered and leaning
into each other
like old friends.
How many dead people
are buried there?
I hear my father’s voice
ask years ago—
All of them, he’d say,
then laugh at his own joke.
The dead don’t mind,
having sailed away
like widows and warriors
taken by surprise
when the night sky
sinks into a fishbowl,
and the stars blink
out one by one.
Mind is the satellite hailing with silent frequencies This corrosion of values This plague bitch flayed but still Drop dead alive A viral i...
