What a sight
it would be,
me, with my heart
plucked out
of my body,
still managing
somehow to say,
“It’s just 11 ounces,
you morons,”
before feral youth
coldly scratch
their names
and affiliations
all over it.
Howie Good is the author of most recently of Stick Figure Opera from Cajun Mutt Press.
I didn’t know
that was
even possible –
to lie down
with you
and be fair
to all the parts,
and not have
a hierarchy.
Howie Good is the author of most recently of Stick Figure Opera from Cajun Mutt Press.
When they razed the field to make space
for the last of the houses the killdeer no longer
had any place to make their nests so they left,
all but one, who somehow got into the blood
of the woman living alone at the top of the hill,
which is why you can see her from time to time
dragging one wing on the lawn and screeching
“I’m here, I’m here” as the cars come home
early in the evening.
Ian Willey has a degree in Communications with a minor in Silence.
A man fishes
on a quiet lake
in early
morning mist
casting out
into the dark
reflection
of trees
where dream
fish rise,
glistening
in the silver sun.
Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, which feels like a refuge in these dark times.
We are lashed to the mast,
listening to the sirens sing
of oil and coal and creatures
dying in the shrinking woods.
Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, which feels like a refuge in these dark times.
Having received an offering
of a blood-red Ferrari
with black leather seats
and sterling silver hubcaps,
the goddess traveled at light speed
to the wild bees,
came back with five gallons of raw honey,
and poured it into the gas tank.
H. Edgar Hix is already tired of 2020.
I recall a blackbird
perched on our chimney,
and the melting snow,
and the ice gone overnight,
and the homecoming
of mallards, mergansers,
goldeneyes, and geese
to the open river,
and the end of the slowed
season with neighbors
now out of their houses,
this blackbird
warming herself and singing
to a mate in the treetops
and down the chimney to me,
not exactly the bird
but the cleansing
rains and green maple
days that followed her.
Fredric Hildebrand is a retired physician who lives and writes in Neenah, WI.
“Don’t you miss out on bein’ alive,”
my southern grandmother said,
her gnarled fingers holding old moments:
the lost family farm, early widowhood,
dead children, and her one-room life
at a hundred years in her eyes like
the light of an uncertain candle.
Fredric Hildebrand is a retired physician who lives and writes in Neenah, WI.