Moon Meets the Sun I remember when I first saw you, your shining face smiling at me from afar Said the moon. You are so bright, so golden and sweet I can almost taste your laughter how it fills the holes of my heart with joy Said the moon. I know I hide in the shadows I am shyer, only showing my face once in a while but when I look at you, I light up You make the darkness go away as you smile and fill the space around me with warmth Turning my world into the perfect place Said the moon.
Poetry from Mary Croy
Crab Nebula a tenuous spoon bent into black whirlpool joy at a trillion volts orange whispers out just touching the void thankful for unencumbered elements what's it like to spin thirty times a second? do you get dizzy? what would Lao Tzu have to say about you? rings form, concentric trying to hide the numbing density you've thought about slowing down taking a look around the neighborhood but that's best left to the wear and tear guys or the wishes of the slide rule you lost some of your shine over the last millennium but heat and beat they're all yours acorn sermon live with the acorn sermon that sits for a long time in the stubble fields that seems boring until it razors home greet the duck as a distinguished guest quacking tales from hither and yon he knows both North and South and his wife can tell East and West words dangle on cool air come fall they sprinkle the ground racing again in spring then everybody talks summer and sun waits for blossoms to sweeten the life history of my body Right index finger: Carbon created in a supernova in the Sculptor Supercluster 8 billion years ago, travelled to Earth via Sculptor Void Left knee: bone atoms from a Blue Giant in Leo Supercluster 6.8 billion years ago White blood cells: material from Fornax cluster, type 1a nova over 5.5 billion years previous Hair: spun from a molecular cloud in the Andromeda galaxy, carried to Earth via a comet 3.7 billion years ago Eye: a rain of organic material from the small Magellanic cloud, 4.5 billion years travel time All other parts from unidentified parts of the Universe. Estimated travel time: 5-10 billion years Aldo Leopold at a pure stone table I write in a way cognizant of bumps, ridges and purple flowers Coolness in the wind seeks out its own kind of day dream the peculiar symphony of trees holds a memory of seed, the last rainfall and buttercup sky curved pathways lead who knows where? Overhead a small plane plies cloud, but the labyrinth branches ground eyes and birds soar sound.
Mary E. Croy lives in Madison, Wisconsin where she works as an administrative assistant. She spent nine years teaching English Language Learners in Ha Noi, Viet Nam. During her free time, Mary likes reading poetry and hanging out with her cats, Buster and Gabby. Her work has appeared in Better than Starbucks, Woven Tale Press, and Valley Voices, among others.
Poetry from John Edward Culp
RUN-ON SENTENCE
And my Eternity
Allowed the Time
my Heart
Stands Fallen
to the next
moment
where I Am Now
And looking at what I thought
WAS Me felt GOOD
Knowing
WAS I BORN HUMAN
or the Path Beneath me
Grows these Legs to
Walk
Where I AM
turns to wind &
Dust to
Swirl in the shape
of a Heart
where flowers
CAN GROW
AS I AM Always
Kissed Knowing
Kissed As if again &
Again
where lips find
OUR Smell
And I am Reminded
I AM Human.
by John Edward Culp
Friday morning
December 9, 2022
Poetry from Marley Manalo-Landicho
La La Land Light or dark? There would be chaos constricted into a tiny bubble of all my thoughts, all my fears hopes, dreams, life, love, death; entrapped. Into one entity. Initially, I didn’t know what I would be without my body. My love, my light, myself. Am I my own self my own love, my own light? Do I face my subconscious self-sabotage for what appears to be my own form of “self-preservation?” Or am I just floating away from others so I don’t find myself in the dark. When I strip down my skin, manipulate my muscles, obliterate my organs, and break my bones into stardust; what is left? Light or dark?
Poetry from J.J. Campbell
two weeks before christmas endless haze a chance of a tornado two weeks before christmas tell me again how climate change is a hoax we all know why the rich are going to space they have just about run out of places to fuck up here ----------------------------------------------------- drift to the beyond i am pretty much a quiet and reserved kind of guy put a little alcohol in me and i loosen up a bit add some drugs and i have been known to entertain with a story from the void mix them all together and hopefully i will drift to the beyond what a beautiful thought that would be --------------------------------------------------------- thursday it's a tight skirt and a dirty imagination my afternoon just got interesting --------------------------------------------------------- the kiss of the most exotic woman the anticipation hits your tongue like the kiss of the most exotic woman walking the earth give in say yes let go walk on water rejoice that life is still an option let all the thoughts drain from whatever brain you are using pressure is whatever you allow to be placed on you enjoy the control embrace the darkness ------------------------------------------------------- a quiet christmas mom's out of the hospital covid nearly killed us both it is going to be a quiet christmas this year not sure which spirit is going to bother to show up
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know where the bodies are buried. He’s been widely published over the last quarter-century, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, Cajun Mutt Press, Terror House Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy and Jellyfish Whispers. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
Short story from Jim Meirose
—this is in response to your recent complaint about our librarian’s treatment of your son Mouse Mousie or whatever alias you currently got him using—he’s nothing but a stick-faced mole of a hellraiser; him and that pal of his—Rat, I think it was? Mouse, Rat, Rat, Mouse, no after a while they merged into one somehow. One great problem for me—one great problem for the patrons of the library—one great problem for the entire library system—legendary in their snot-caked red raw howling blathering yelling screaming superindifference to everyone else—like the whole planet revolved about them—the way the planet that spawned them is doomed to circle in chains forever about the big fat overheated and overestimated big fat squirt-ass of a Mothersun. I would probably have less disruption to my supposedly calm cool day to day life which is why I got into this field to begin with, if they stripped nude in my library but just sat quiet heads thrust deep in their respective computer screens their privates hidden in their fat tubular roundy-round fleshfolds and their hands buried in the dark somewhere thereabouts doing the unthinkable at least no one would have to hear that at least nobody would have their deep thought-trains burst and ripped and severed over and over by the bleating of your undisciplined thoughtless crushing bore of a Rat or a Mouse or a Mouse or a Rat or whatever they merge in my face anyway into one quick downzip of a couple of dozen fuck the rules ass pimping hoodlums! No rules in the animal kingdom, you know, Miss Mousemother. They can lick themselves in the animal kingdom you know Miss Mousemother and that’s exactly what your phony son and his helped do to each other all day every day. We had to dumpster the chairs they sat at because I did not doubt that some of the hours they did sit quietly, heaven forbid, they may have done this or that nasty and use your imagination Miss Mousemother. Negative Rat-lady queen of all bass lines including one of the most eloquent found in the variations, to which Bach added chromatic intervals which provided tonal shadings; and as you also are main patron-saint of each and every fecal impaction human dog hippo or otherwise, get this and see it is the most final—this plot to self-enrich your gang most masturbatorily, for the consummation of which you called me this day—you’re not their Mother you’re probably just some collegepal slut-bitch in on the plot— yeah I know I know, the plot; the final insult being that your rockyheaded supposed son got down and jackhammered his head repeatedly into my floor yes my floor not your floor or their floor but my floor—and then got himself swept to the hospital for phony treatment—I cannot imagine how much you are paying the doctors and nurses there to diagnose a nonexistent problem—my God what’s this world coming to—the word professional means nothing any more —I ought to quit my job unbank my cash-nest and lock into my one-roomer and hermit yes hermit my time away so I don’t have to deal with such as your so-called boy or you, you little slut of a bitchface if that’s what you call yourself—yah I bet you do because inside yourself you know what you are—and I could bonbon my way out to eternity; but tell me yonder slappy-slutgirl— I ask you and the RatMouse evil twinboys are you really going to sue me and the system? Are you really really going to eh? Are you are you because if you dare you will at first see from your illusion of a safe calm sandbeach just the line of horizon—then after some hours a trail of smoky brownwisps will start curling up; then after some more hours a forbidding grey foretop will appear coming—then a battleship will form, mount over the horizonhump, and you will just go all agape—you may even layback and feast down a big sleepypicnic of a lunch while observing this anomaly like it’s just the start of a big parade—every other time you have basked at this beach it’s just been swimmers in sweetwaves but this time why a warship—a terrible trojanesque warship stuffed half with lawyers and half with well-thought-out briefs no not that kind the legal kind —including that wondrous canonic variation in four-four time, which Kenneth Gilbert saw as an allemande despite its lack of anacrusis--and half with motions; rotary motions turning in a circle; linear motion moving in a straight line; reciprocating motion moving backwards and forwards in a straight line; and oscillating motion swinging from side to side back to front top to bottom east to west north to south and again over again yah and; when you are all hypnotized by this transformation of normal life to abnormally entranced, the battleship will ground, burst as a classically woven straw piñata, and you will be buried in paperwork that you cannot burn away because we will have your oxygen and you and that RatBoy cum Mouseman buried, so—the message is don’t fuck with the regional library system no not the regional library system we are Flush with money and not the doggy kind doggy kind doggy kind no. If you don’t get that then go look it up, stupid. Good day sir or whichever you crappy diss’ of a mothering p—<end voicemail>
Poetry from Ashley Mann
TAKING SIDES and why do you hate (democrats) (republicans) exactly- only hearing about them, not talking with them, hating them, for what they're only more people who don't know what they're talking about, flipping on a screen of one side to believe and the next day relishing that the same screen agrees. people dislike an other side because someone else judged it and they agreed, upset when their side is judged and are there really sides anymore when we all do the same things at the bottom of a hole, too dark to see POUNDING PAVEMENT driving in cars on highways is the norm, living in simulations is the norm, spots for cars in a city outnumbering slots for human beings, bands don't make bass but computers, machines pound their noise into heads eyes, ears, minds oversaturated, filling time, no time to see overviews, totality, what's happening, no time no time to be wise fentanyl lab made food cause disease more addictive than drugs- find em cheap on every corner, every store, wrapped in plastic- a by-product of oil- because it's cheap because it's cheap because it's cheap to die, they'll watch they'll watch they'll watch as you die TEXAS In Texas you'll see a field of grass out to the horizon flat and a couple donkeys while you hear a jet plane overhead. You'll see a plane low landing toward a military base as the old yellow school bus rolls by. Neighborhoods of identical houses in plywood uniquely priced. Neighbors will forget to say hi. Rolling out trash bins on wheels to the curb and pay strangers a dumping fee, they won't know your name, dogs snarling at you from behind their gate, in Texas, there'll be no sidewalks of people walking by, there'll be no choice, more headlights growling, roaring than real eyes passing by, in Texas. LIVE MINES you would get everyone sick, sick enough with disease that they'd die- as to (rid) (dispose) of the carnage that would have remained after a disaster- maybe you'd get the government to agree, to work with you, because millions dead through disease is easier on the mind than the thought of piles blown up, exploding to dust- gas pipelines- laid mines would be easy to do if no one saw you do it, if they saw you looking normal, under their own eyes, construction crews, foreign builders always building, laying foundations, construction sites, trenches and laid mines maybe you'd introduce into the environment the specimen- named-disease, toxins in foods, eaten willingly addicting, fentanyl pills made at the seat of the world, in the east, undetected- would this be ironic funny even they say comedy is tragedy plus (after) time- and live mines Mann is a young writer from Texas. She has worked as a writer and analyst at the state's house of representatives and committee on appropriations in Austin. She spent the pandemic living in San Francisco to release through contemporary writings and illustrations. She believes poems ought not always be fluffy, but real.