all poems

Rich Murphy 

Open Heart Emergency 

Great wealth uses a crowbar 

in surgery to rock the child 

at chamber doors until  

the heart welcomes the world. 

Richard J. Fleming 

Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers 

Someday, I'll open a drawer, 

and it will be full of lost socks. 

But, I won't remember where 

I've put that loving feeling. 

Jean McLeod 

Diogenes  

Truth wanders the world 

looking for a home. 

Down the street 

the final shutter closes 

and the last door snaps shut. 

Corey Mesler 

Pen and Paper 

The pen is phallic.  

The paper is willing 

but pure.  

The lesson today is 

about stillness.  

The pencil is not 

moving. The 

poem is born deaf. The 

pencil begins its song. 

Kip Knott 

Encoded 

Every day my life embraces  

its own death. Inside my chest,  

the man I will become when I die 

taps out an encoded message  

I choose not to decipher. 

Post-It to a Young Poet 

If you lose the will to write, 

burn all the paper you own 

and harvest the ashes. 

H. Edgar Nix 

Basal Ganglia 

Blind lizard who  

only wants to hide, 

feed on the smaller things,  

find shade  

and enjoy the warm rocks,  

I embrace you. 

Mark Danowsky 

Bonsai 

A part of me wonders 

could it be shallow 

breath that is the root 

of my penchant for compressed 

cadences in literature? 

The City Is a River  

8 cops showed up on a work night  

shined spotlights on the dumpster  

& fire escapes out back  

then departed within minutes  

leaving behind the last  

moments before bedtime  

Michele Karas 

The Unreliability of Memory 

The children 

have already seen it. 

This 

makes it all 

the more mysterious. 

Howie Good 

Winter's End 

The gravedigger  

dozes  

off again, 

leaning  

uncertainly  

on his  

shovel 

for balance, 

as spring  

walks,  

hatless, 

across  

the rooftops. 

Sylvia Ashby 

Notice 

Today 

I closed the door 

drew my house around me 

and will not hear your words     

Tomorrow 

if the door opens 

with the wind: 

come in 

Do not ask me. 

Larry D. Thomas 

Art Museum 

The slightest 

sound 

is anathema: 

this mausoleum: 

hard wrought 

residue 

of whole lives, 

hanging,  

permanent: 

crunched  

to color,  

line, shape, 

texture: 

executed 

to perfection. 

Katie Manning 

This Is Not a Metaphor 

       after Sylvia Plath 

I am the red balloon  

          a cushioned 

room the ripe  

pumpkin       mid-air 

          heaving  

toward pavement 

the overblown 

tire        the riddle 

already solved. 

Christina Murphy 

In Wittgenstein’s garden 

In Wittgenstein’s garden, 

the limits of a flower’s world 

are the language its petals speak; 

roots are episteme, stems elan vitale 

and pollen parole as flowers dance 

in Neo-Platonic joy. 

Marilyn Westfall 

The Welder’s Angioplasty 

Come winter, when  

they chilled him—six 

metal stents—he went 

woozy, feeling phantom 

needles & his groin 

gone numb, heard 

whispers—relax—as 

surgeons fused steel 

  with his heart. 

Devotional  

Whenever Monsignor  

phoned, she volunteered,  

mopped sanctuary  

marble, babied walnut  

pews with lemon oil. No  

saint—not like her mom  

had been, genuflecting  

just to dust the feet  

of Jesus. 

Eric Burke 

Hermitage 

After the trauma 

of the house painting, 

he exiled himself 

from birds and trees. 

Robert Scotellaro 

triple digit heat— 

the scratching sound 

of 

her  

bra 

clasp 

circling in the dryer 

roadside stand; 

she fans herself with the cardboard 

2 for $1.00 sign 

talking on a cell phone 

she tilts her umbrella 

over her pooping Chihuahua 

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