Poetry from Rick Hartwell

 

Foggy Dawn

 

I love these foggy dawns of

spring and early summer:

mornings of limited visibility,

muffled sounds, water

coating every surface.

 

These are quiet mornings,

made for contemplation,

self-reflection.

 

I do not need to deeply analyze

to know these are mornings of:

certain limited sadness,

unfulfilled expectations,

intentions set-aside,

uncompleted lives,

lost causes

 

However, they are mornings of

promise still, if not for me,

then perhaps for you.

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Short essay from Austin Harrington

 

Blood Money

At nine in the morning on any Saturday, my neighborhood is quiet. I can hear the traffic from the major intersections, but no cars come down my street. All the hookers left the streets at dawn. The cops made their rounds long ago, to quiet down the late-night partyers. The pit-bull puppy from down the street that’s already mean because his owner thinks it’s tough to have a growling dog at his side, even he, is still sleeping. I am left alone to walk the few blocks to the plasma center. The sound of each step echoes in the silence and makes me think about the current state of my life. I’m thirty years old but most people place me around forty-five. It’s the prematurely grey hair – or maybe it’s the drug abuse and alcoholism, from my younger years, starting to show on my face. I still indulge, but not at the reckless level of days gone by; now I smoke and drink with all the respectability of a married father of two. Each wrinkle or bag under my eyes tells a story like a line on the inside of a tree tells its age. I live with my wife’s family and have two kids but no job. I start to think that leaving my temp job wasn’t the best plan.

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Poetry from Leticia Garcia Bradford

The Undoing of a Nemesis
by Leticia Garcia Bradford
You made my life unhappy to the extent that my happiness relied on another. I’ve spent more time and energy on your existence than was healthy. I went round and round in circles with the pain. You took from me what was mine. Or was it really? And, yet, you took away even more. My dignity. I felt violated in the way no person should suffer. My pain was unyielding, fatiguing, wearing my spirit down. Wearisome, I tried to forgive. The heart couldn’t forget the pain. My coping skills to manage you weren’t up to par. I tried. I ignored you. I didn’t acknowledge you.
But, there you were with a false happy smile and I felt betrayed.

Artwork from Walter Savage

 

W. Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and artist. He is the author of six books (wjacksavage.com) To date, thirty-two of Jack’s stories have been published by various online and print magazines, and eighteen of his pictures have been published as well. Jack and his wife Kathy live in Monrovia, California.

From top left: Love’s Yearning, Watching the Watchers, Mother and Son, At The Ready and The Ruins Seemed Familiar.