Summer '08

Autumn '08

Yule '08

Lisa J. Cihlar

Falling Pearls

Head and Shoulders

The Naked Line

Putting the Real in the Virtual

The Daunt Diana

Memories of a Winter's Day

Aubade to Marit Haahr

Jim Boring

Marie Fitzpatrick

Maureen Wilkenson

Alexander Lang

Peter Vilbig

Weaving Dreams

Persephone

Blue Walls

Marty-s Career

Daffodils in a Blue Vase

Trio

Wabi Songs

The Pugilist

Stewart

Hearing Dogs by Liz Haig

Fear and Loathing in Southwark by Bill West

Gingerbread, An Everyday Poem

Beatrices Behemoth is Bothersome and Backbreaking

Falling Man

Filburt Gets his Formula Half Right

In Conversation: Ramon Collins and Randall Brown

In Break Formations by Donal Mahoney

So We Decided to Keep by Lisa Cihlar

Wendell Tomlin, Jr

Ann Walters

Nancy Norton

Head and Shoulders

The Naked Line

Putting the Real in the Virtual

Treasures at my Feet

The door bell chimed. I opened the door. Flat-iron air swirled in. A boy with blond hair, his chin flecked with stubble. He held out a green coconut pierced with a plastic straw. I took the straw in my mouth and sucked up sweet coconut water. It felt good

Faith by Bonnie ZoBell

Spanish Gold and Pearls by Elizabeth Creith

Between Breaths by Donia Carey

The New Man by Digby Beaumont

I Am Being Everybody They Cries: Peter Barnes by Martin Heavisides

A Los Angeles Friend by Pierrino Mascarino

There Used To Be A River Here

The Station

Waters Rising

Barbary Dove by Sergio Ortiz

The Music Box by Stan Long

Wild Strawberries by Lisa Cihlar

Stewart by Kristi Stokes

Millefiori
by S.P. Flannery

Ticks
by S.P Flannery

Editing My Ex Lover's Digital Face in Photoshop
by Richard Fein

Another Taste
by George Bishop

Berenika

Yang Chu's Poem 86

The Boy

Champ

Dog Days of Christmas by Marie Shields

Click through for our Yule Photography and Art 2008

Plucked and Scrambled

The morning after, he’s knocking my bird-nest head against the headboard before I can scrape the egg-whites from my eyelids.

Bill on the Hill

Wrapped in winter wool, the neighborhood kids seemed strangers. They hauled sleds up the sparkling hill and glided down.

Bed-Making

I had a twin once, a firehaired sister who knew my thoughts before they formed on my lips as crude expressions of desire.

The Abyss of Human Illusion

Sometimes

The Goatherd’s Fingers

Ocean’s Alive

Summer '09

Fall '09

Winter '09/'10

Bedoya

Sexton

Sheehan

The Game

an armed man lurks in ambush

The Man in the Wet, Gray Fedora by Jim Parks

Gil by Pepe Nero

The Boy by Yvette Managan (Flys)

Blessings X1 V by Anne Whitehouse

Under a Dirty Moon by Avital Gad-Cykman

Spa Tour by Stefanie Freele

Korean Echo

Fresh Start

Haunting

The Rain that Wears no Raincoat

What Warmth Is There in One Old Tree?

Unexpected Bats by Ann Walters

To Pierce the Sky by Ann Walters

The Dancer by Ann Walters

Desert Roses, 1994 by Ann Walters

Buenos Aires: A Literary City

personal history

James Claffey

John S Fields

Joseph Cordaro

Bill West

William Blake

evie robillard

"Write this down -- you are a bitch. One might say a Constance bitch."

Olivia

Promise

Songs of Innocence

Moon Catalog

Lonely as a Clown by Mike Lewis

Time to shine by Lesley Timms

The Day is Done by H W Longfellow

Reading in Bed by Digby Beaumont

Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures by Vanessa Gebbie

Narrative of New Netherland 1570-1970
by Sean Farragher

"I am the viridian swell and the vermilitm tempest. I am surly beast and have will to rectify murder: my death and other happenstance makes for ironu with miniatures painted without sight in a golden locket never opened and not lost memories of those centuries before whatever instant diseased and bent with pock marked face to how anger stalls without any pleasure or even the protest of strangled fowl You can watch my stance without eyes and make me move without legs as I am only flood and tempest unboundedmy schemes ser down as blasphemed physic and truth."
John Colman (1580-1664)

The King of Ireland's Son by Padraic Colum

SHORT BIO:
Born Patrick Collumb, in Longford, in Co. Longford, in Ireland, poet, editor, children’s writer, folklorist and playwright Padraic Colum was the oldest of eight siblings. At 17, he took a job as a clerk for the Irish Railway Clearing House and began to write seriouslyÍ he had joined the Irish Republican Army and the Gaelic League and taken the name Padraic Colum by the time he was 20. Living in Dublin during the Celtic Revival and a member of both the National Theatre Society and the Abbey Theatre, he met and became close friends with writers James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and George Russell. With James Stephens and Thomas MacDonagh, Colum founded the Irish Review.

Neal Celebrates Christmas by Cheryl Chambers

Neal discovered a spectacular postcard last yearÍ on it the baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary huddled in a manger, candlelight behind each head providing the halos. Normally Neal noticed only regular Christmas postcards with a jolly Saint Nick or a cozy, well-lit home surrounded by fresh snow and a friendly neighbor sleigh riding by, a hand of greeting held high in the air. But this card depicted the real deal. This card was Ukrainian. He bought it./His mother had him over two days before Christmas, which had become their tradition. They sat on opposite sides of the table, feasting on ham, potatoes, a few carrots, and cookies for dessert. Afierwards, they took the bus to the theater and watched a Christmas comedy.

Ancestor by Jim Boring

The Witches Grace by Nonnie Augustine

Dance of the Dead by Maureen Wilkenson

Issue Art Wall

Christmas Present by Marie Shields

Dog Days of Christmas by Marie Shields

Christmas Morning by Martin Heavisides

Sleeping with the Monkfish: The Execution by John C. Mannone

Dreaming of Elsbeth, Alexander Lang

Ashwini Alli, Peter Vilbig

Simple Tillie by Nonnie Augustine

Learning to Fly by Anne Collins

Blizzard by Nonnie Augustine

Cold, Cold Heart by Jim Haughey

Memory of a Winter's Day by Anne Walters

Out of Rock NOW by Russell Bittner

Taking the road from Crownpoint to Chaco by Anne Walters

FLIGHT 103 TO LOCKERBIE: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY by Russell Bittner

*#4* by Neil Dyer

An Old Friend by Mike Blake

Taken by Hand, Heart and Storm by Ernest Williamson III

The Pugilist by Carla Martin-Wood

Art Galley Summer 2008

Classic: The Swan Song by Anton Chekov

Gallery Archive
Images: Russell Bittner
Carol Mannheim
Mari Fitzpatrick

Dreaming of Elsbeth

Ashwini Alli

Morphane Tree

Flashlight’s Jewels

Weaving Dreams

Persephone

Blue Walls

Marty-s Career

Daffodils in a Blue Vase

Trio

Book Two: Indigo

The Crafts

Patrick

Augustine

Murray

Vanishing point

Cold Fish

In Time

Wabi Songs

The Pugilist

Stewart

Spring 2023 Magazine ...

COMING SOON .........

TLW's "Timelines"

Commemorating the life of the German painter Johannes Matthaeus Koelz, who after winning a medal of gallantry in the Great War went on to defy Hitler and to become an anti-war campaigner... Lyrics and Melody by Dave Taylor

Citrine

The Music Box

1970

Hearing Dogs by Liz Haig

Fear and Loathing in Southwark by Bill West

Gingerbread, An Everyday Poem

Gifts For The Residents by Paul Murray

Human Noise by Bruce Harris

Best Brewed Plans by Lydia Fazio Theys

Fable of the Fortieth Sheep by Rumjhum Biswas

The River Thief
"'The two of us,' she'd say, "partners to the end," the crochet needle at a small and quick twist in her hand, or a sewing needle making code against her finger"

Photophobia
"His voice seeped up brittle from under the rubble of covers; maybe she should have waited longer. Damn earring wouldn’t go in the hole. She sat down and squinted into the dresser mirror, not wanting to risk opening the curtains yet."

Mr. Wyandotte
"One Friday morning as I sat at my office computer trying to enter progress notes and demographic data (but really mostly just listening to Franz Liszt on YouTube) I got a call from a policeman in Upper Bucks County."

Camlin

Paradise

learning to fly

Her

The River Thief
"'The two of us,' she'd say, "partners to the end," the crochet needle at a small and quick twist in her hand, or a sewing needle making code against her finger"

Photophobia
"His voice seeped up brittle from under the rubble of covers; maybe she should have waited longer. Damn earring wouldn’t go in the hole. She sat down and squinted into the dresser mirror, not wanting to risk opening the curtains yet."

Mr. Wyandotte
"One Friday morning as I sat at my office computer trying to enter progress notes and demographic data (but really mostly just listening to Franz Liszt on YouTube) I got a call from a policeman in Upper Bucks County."

Crow

Precious

Art Gallery

Our Grandson Seeks the Snow and His Mother in Milwaukee

Equus & Anima

Lough Reflections

Rare Glimpse by James Claffey

Magic Mirror by Nathan E.Tavaras

Rosie and Max by William Ogden Haynes

Executive sweet by Mathew Paust

Summer '08

Autumn '08

Yule '08

Commemorating the life of the German painter Johannes Matthaeus Koelz, who after winning a medal of gallantry in the Great War went on to defy Hitler and to become an anti-war campaigner... Lyrics and Melody by Dave Taylor

From our
'Everyday Poems Page'

Gingerbread
The Day is Done
Who Goes with Fergus?
Strange Meeting
The Darkling Thrush
A Pint of Plain is your only Man
Go and Catch a Falling Star

The Man in the Wet, Gray Fedora by Jim Parks

Gil by Pepe Nero

The Boy by Yvette Managan (Flys)

Lisa J. Cihlar

Falling Pearls

The Red Couch

Sweet Cotton

Branded

The River Thief
"'The two of us,' she'd say, "partners to the end," the crochet needle at a small and quick twist in her hand, or a sewing needle making code against her finger"

Photophobia
"His voice seeped up brittle from under the rubble of covers; maybe she should have waited longer. Damn earring wouldn’t go in the hole. She sat down and squinted into the dresser mirror, not wanting to risk opening the curtains yet."

Mr. Wyandotte
"One Friday morning as I sat at my office computer trying to enter progress notes and demographic data (but really mostly just listening to Franz Liszt on YouTube) I got a call from a policeman in Upper Bucks County."

Gifts For The Residents by Paul Murray

Human Noise by Bruce Harris

Best Brewed Plans by Lydia Fazio Theys

Fable of the Fortieth Sheep by Rumjhum Biswas

The Horseman by Gary Cadwallader

Deities at an Exhibition by Martin Heavisides

Pillow by Teri Davis Rouvelas

Our Grandson Seeks the Snow and His Mother in Milwaukee

Equus & Anima

Lough Reflections

Korean Echo

Fresh Start

Haunting

Rare Glimpse by James Claffey

Magic Mirror by Nathan E.Tavaras

Hiding

Nesting Dolls

Amy in the Dark

The Daunt Diana

Memories of a Winter's Day

Aubade to Marit Haahr

Keep

Manifesto

Memory of a Winter-s Day

Batshit Crazy

Trio

Daffodils in a Blue Vase

Collision

Buenos Aires: A Literary City

Ed's Wife and Other Stories

Inniscrone

Eden

The Old Field House

Things from Life in the Death of a Man

illustrations: Federico Garcia Lorca, 5 June 1898 - 19 August 1936

Promise

Songs of Innocence

Moon Catalog

Patrick

Augustine

Murray

Beatrices Behemoth is Bothersome and Backbreaking

Falling Man

Filburt Gets his Formula Half Right

James Claffey

John S Fields

Joseph Cordaro

Jim Boring

Marie Fitzpatrick

Maureen Wilkenson

Bill West

William Blake

evie robillard

Alexander Lang

Peter Vilbig

John S Fields

Sundance Review, The Dead Returns

Moon Library Broom Lending/Indigo

Popeye at 80

Dawgs will be Dawgs, Deputy dawgs and....

Ego, Egat, Egod.... eeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh

"Write this down -- you are a bitch. One might say a Constance bitch."

Olivia

Crow

Precious

Art Gallery

British Guy

The Dice are Not to Blame

Jamie's Song

Blessings X1 V by Anne Whitehouse

Under a Dirty Moon by Avital Gad-Cykman

Spa Tour by Stefanie Freele

Repossession

1970

The First Time the Son was Ever on TV

You Have Grown In Stature by Noeleen Kavanagh

SunnyFs First Fellini by MD Kempis

Houndstooth and Lucky by Digby Beaumont

In Conversation: Ramon Collins and Randall Brown

In Break Formations by Donal Mahoney

So We Decided to Keep by Lisa Cihlar

The Sunday Special

Summer storms . . .

The Cellist’s First Date

Lonely as a Clown by Mike Lewis

Time to shine by Lesley Timms

The Day is Done by H W Longfellow

Marty-s Career

Daffodils in a Blue Vase

Trio

"I am the viridian swell and the vermilitm tempest. I am surly beast and have will to rectify murder: my death and other happenstance makes for ironu with miniatures painted without sight in a golden locket never opened and not lost memories of those centuries before whatever instant diseased and bent with pock marked face to how anger stalls without any pleasure or even the protest of strangled fowl. You can watch my stance without eyes and make me move without legs as I am only flood and tempest unbounded my schemes ser down as blasphemed physic and truth."
John Colman (1580-1664)

Summer '09

Fall '09

Winter '09/'10

They

White Satin

Border Rats

Early Thoughts On The Oedipus Complex by Rebecca Coffey

Dancing All The Steps I Know by Pepe Nero

No Such Thing as a Free Tea by Jennifer Stakes

Hearing Dogs by Liz Haig

Fear and Loathing in Southwark by Bill West

Gingerbread, An Everyday Poem

Wendell Tomlin, Jr

Ann Walters

Nancy Norton

Weaving Dreams

Persephone

Blue Walls

The Language of Frost

Sweet Talk

Be Sure Your Sins

Vampires, Ghosts, the Dead returned by Yvette Managan

Carnal Knowledge by Stan Long

I was nine and my sister seven, and we were walking home from the dam that was a favourite haunt of mine, where moorhens nested and herons fished and where will-o-the-wisps coiled over the marshy ground on damp evenings. Visiting with her grandma with whom I lived, she had asked to go with me to see the dam during that late afternoon in the summer of the war when all the young men had been conscripted and both town and countryside were empty of them.

Necromancy by Karen Jones

Four(teen)-letter Words

Nolens Volens

What Warmth Is There in One Old Tree?

This Rain That Wears No Raincoat

Simple Tillie by Nonnie Augustine

Learning to Fly by Anne Collins

Vow by Carla Martin=Wood

Ta gra agam duit, mo run

When I die/it shall be with/your name on my lips/the last word/I speak into/earth's air and that name/I shall bear upon/my tongue/and it shall go/with me into/what comes after

And when I board/that dark barge/and my soul speaks/its first word to/the grim boatman/that name shall fall/from my lips/and it shall be/ the coin that pays/my passage

The Smell of Salt by Loretta Sylvestre

Ginny escaped north over a four-lane stretch of U.S. Highway 99. The sun hung low in the west and the roadbed shone, stretching across the flats like a river of red. She drove a nineteen fifty-six cream lacquered Chevy Belair. Only five years old and still perfect, the car flew through the miles and kicked up a wind that lifted Ginnys brown curls and cooled her neck. That rushing air brought welcome relief from the heat that, despite autumn and oncoming night, flooded the desert.

The Cellist’s First Date by Marja Hagborg

Nesting Dolls by Carly Berg

Major Works of fiction

Beauty and the Beast

Buenos Aires: A Literary City

personal history

Art Gallery

Romantic

My Crow

Sunflower

Short Shrift

The Goatherd’s Fingers

Ocean’s Alive

A Gentle Heart (Obit)

Forecast For Interstate 81
by P. W. Murray

South, U.S. Highway 11, 1960.
Duff’s Rebel Restaurant,
breakfast in Winchester and supper -
if all goes on schedule - near Pulaski.
Hills to our right -
“… jingle bell, jingle bell,
jingle bell rock,"

wipers click and wipers clock.
Ears to the radio, eyes to the
billboards, a signs calls out
for a diner - “Listen there - if we were
still up in Carlisle, Hagerstown or
Martinsburg we’d be butt-deep in
snow." Pop knows. Here it’s just
cold slop, a little sleet but cold
assaulting rain, mostly. A diner
with dingy motel's light glows ahead.
"Rockin' around the Christmas tree
at the Christmas party hop… ."

Childhood Portrait
by Howie Good

When the old mare collapsed
between the shafts of the milk wagon

and the wagon driver leaped
to the ground cursing

the tallest trees leaned forward
as if to better see

my teachers call the house
your son they said

too young to wonder
what’s worse as I was punched

in the head and slapped
the anger of the man slashing at it

with a whip or its wish
to get up again and go on

i picked at a scab today
by Casey Quinn

an old wound
long forgotten

it was just there,
healing

nature,
taking its course

but i
didn't let it.


i picked at the scab
and it bled

and the process was forced
to start over again.

Water Cycle
by Oonah V. Joslin

Wood
waterlogged,
slippy with ice and moss
the fence
frozen this morning,
stream of steam swirls
clawing upwards
vaporous cloud
cools, cascades
flows back to
ground, soggy
beneath berried yew
to be sucked up
brackish again by
wood.

my niece by Casey Quinn

"i had not

seen her in years i told her ..."

Feeding Ducks by Jim Hatfield

As I tore and cast upon the water half a
loaf of Mothers Pride, he advised that feed-
ing ducks was now a crime, punishable by a
statutory fine.

Armstrong by Martin Heavisides

"I was tellin’ about the time when I was a little bitty boy in my mother’s hometown of Boutte, Louisiana. I was about five years old, cute little ol’ thing, too. Mayann, my mother you know, she said to me one morning, “Son, run down to the pond and get a bucket of water for your mama." And I cut out for that water, and Mayann dug me when I come back without the water and poooh, boy! She said, “Boy, where is that water?" I said, “Well, mama, there’s a big old rusty alligator in that pond and I didn’t get that water." She said, “Oh, boy, go get that water. Don’t you know that alligator is scared of you as you are of him?" I told her, “Mama, if he’s scared of me as I am of him, that water ain’t fit to drink."
As quoted in Gary Giddins, Satchmo

“Roses are red
Violets are blue
Lucille’s are pink
I saw them on the clothesline"

The Ethos of Capital-isthmus By Russell Bittner

What pay is this? Some chit now
long past due to get us roundly up
and out the door,
to squeeze a measly buck, redound a score,
then shuck, to gutted towns, our shell-
shocked crew? Like hell you'll clear us
out and push us through, demanding,
time-cards swiped, we quit the floor
and not-like peevish children-
scream for more, but take our bul-
lied selves elsewhere for brew! I
tell you, China's coast is far from
clear;
and China's sum of us is no less dim.
So go now-take your cash where
it may still win hearts and minds
not scarified by beer and will, no
doubt, find skillful hands to trim
the scrim of your next threadbare, off-shore thrill.

The Irritating Stiffie by Dennis Leppanen

I wouldn't have considered Harley Burgess as a matrimonial conquest. Not even a slightly remote possibility. You see, Pa hung himself the morning before Harley came around. My brother, Russell, two years my junior, built the casket while I dug the hole. Wished he would a found him, though. Pa’s face was purple hanging there, almost black. The move to the west had been especially cruel on Pa. A gentleman he was, a western farmer, he wasn’t.

I had turned nineteen, in the middle of the prairie, a randy woman in the middle of nowhere. Harley Burgess was pushing thirty, if not over the brink. Russell and I were busy packing up our meager belongings. Meager? After years living out east in near royalty. What we had become. The old farm in the middle of nowhere killed Pa. We decided to get, while the getting was good.

Sanctuary by Julie Innis

In Conversation: Russell Bittner and Marie Fitzpatrick

Jenny's Secret by Mimi Rosen

Rummaging by Roland Goity

Frontierland by Norah Piehl

Pa did not like a country so old and worn out that the hunting was poor. He wanted to go west. For two years he had wanted to go west and take a homestead, but Ma did not want to leave the settled country.
--Laura Ingalls Wilder, By The Shores of Silver Lake



Carl found a condo with a view of the Empire State Building, but imagined bunking down under the stars. He fell asleep each night to a recording of wind rustling prairie grasses, crickets marking time, coyotes ominously keeping watch, their distant howls drowning out the cab horns and the guy who stood outside the Herald Square Hotel screamingly exhorting tourists to turn back, repent before it was too late. Sometimes Carl fancied the buses cruising down Lexington were prairie schooners under sail, on their way to boroughs yet unknown.

He discovered Charlotte at Whole Foods. Her basket held New Jersey tomatoes and organic onions, whole-wheat flour, brown rice, a basil plant to place on a sunny windowsill. She studied a shrink-wrapped package of mushrooms, turned to him as casually as if they had been shopping together for years. “These come from Pennsylvania," she said. “Do you think that’s okay?" He knew exactly what she meant, even before she spoke again. “I want to make my own spaghetti sauce," she said, “but there’s no such thing as a locally-grown mushroom, not here, anyway." Her freckled face shone pale under her broad sun hat.

The replica cabin was a rest area by the side of the Wisconsin highway, an afterthought for most, a convenient place for passersby to empty the McDonald’s wrappers from their car, to buy a pop, take a crap, and--oh yeah--to snap a picture in front of that first Little House.

Art Gallery 2010

Theresa Defused by Frank Dineen

Failure by Susan Teppen

Snails on the Road by Rebecca Burns

THERE WERE SNAILS ON THE ROAD to the tapas bar. They had oozed over from a scrub of undeveloped land beside the main street into town. Grandma shouted a warning from up ahead, shading her eyes as she turned back to face us, squinting into the sun. But Mum didn’t swerve to avoid the little creatures littering the road. Instead they were crushed under the wheels of Toby’s buggy as Mum pushed him straight on; their shells disintegrated with tiny pops that reminded me of the gravel on our drive at home, churned up into a sharp spray by spinning wheels.

Mum’s jaw was set, and I couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark glasses she’ d worn all week. I tried not to think of the snails’ soft bodies being pulped into the concrete.


It was early evening but the heat was still stifling. We’ d sat around the pool for most of the morning with Grandma whilst Mum slept in the villa. Grandma was strong and had easily held Toby in the shallow end, letting his twisted legs float to the surface in a way that delighted him. He squealed and drooled, thrashing his head from side to side, soaking us both. But we didn’t mind. It felt good to see him so happy.

Barataria Bay
by Nonnie Augustine

Camlin
by M.V.Horan

learning to fly
by Wilmonte Johnson

Her
by Mike Berger

Shapeshifting
by Gemma Meek

Butterfly Service

There were butterflies
dancing against the light,
the stained glass of Jesus
changing them into shadows.

Commas

A grandmother now, she lives a life rife with careful pauses. A long-tailed calligraphy of fits and starts.

The Abyss of Human Illusion

Sometimes

Six Micros by Sheldon Compton

RESIDUE
The shell casing slow motions-skyward, drop-floats back to rye grass, brass in a tight coat of gunpowder. Many others, random as dandelions, are found by the sunlight, gathered, handed out to wilt between our fingers, in pockets. A cousin reminds us to wash with lots of soap after touching them. Lead residue. Still warm in our hands, the poison slow motions, too.

The Sick House by Michael C. Keith

The story about that creepy old house goes something like this. Almost two years ago all the kids that lived there got polio and one, a little girl named Sara, died. This drove her parents crazy and they disappeared with their two other kids, who were crippled by the disease. No one has heard from them since, and some say they went out into the Narragansett Bay on their dad’s small fishing boat and drowned during a storm, but no bodies have ever been found.

The Thief and the Baby by Townsend Walker

People sometimes talk about the peacefulness of fog. A morning wrap that calms. Obliterates time. Forgives.

Gino woke up late that morning. He'd had trouble sleeping. The robbery hadn't gone smoothly. There'd been someone in the apartment and he’ d been forced to deal with her. He shook off the memory, jumped into his blue coveralls and went into the kitchen.

A Painful Truth by Ethan Swage

No school today for Kyle Jagot, although he's not happy about it. He's scared to leave the bathroom, scared that if he ventures too far away from the toilet he may let go again-the sit-down kind.

Despite Kyle's objections, his mother barges in. He's wedged between tub and toilet, doubled over, rocking, crossed forearms pressed tightly beneath his belly. She dabs a moist washcloth to his forehead, asks him what other symptoms he has had.

Unexpected Bats by Ann Walters

To Pierce the Sky by Ann Walters

The Dancer by Ann Walters

Desert Roses, 1994 by Ann Walters

January by Marie Fitzpatrick

White Out by Nancy Norton

In the Depths of Winter by Nancy Norton

THE MUDMEN by Mikal Hubber

Won't You Please Stand Up

Won't you please look up
to where that young girl
looks down hoping you'll
overlook weathered shoes?
You'll cross through the crowd,
through the breakers of dancers
to say she's the one that
you choose.

Won't you please stand up
and shake the shivered nerve
endings, into magnetic sounds
that young love understands?
She will know each new step.
She will sense your arrival.
She will reach out and lend you
her hand.

Won't you please step out,
through your young fellow dancers?
Lay her head to your shoulder,
hands gently in line.
You don't touch the floor
by means that escape you
as you'11 move in three
quarter time.


Won't you please stand up
and grant me my pardon,
as I leave you young men
so awkward you see?
My best hope's to hope
on your east-rising of manhood
that you'll be better dancers
than me.

-- 2008 Murray

All our Years

She leaves softly
the bed she makes for me,
sets the house in order before I wake.

On the table
places my meal without fuss,
tendering to me
as a good wife will.

Our needs met in order
as they rise,
she to mine and I to hers.
Those kindnesses

and all our years crush
to one moment
when her life goes out,
stops on the page.

In memoriam, sheets lie
crumpled
the table is not set
and flowers go dry
in the vase.

Island by Mark Dallingan


No breaking news
sky, sea and rock,
my islands meteorology.

No highway noise
but tidal ebb and flow,
for soft white sound.

No crowded streets
but rock pools brimming
with mussel, crab and shrimp.

-2008-Dalligan

Reading in Bed by Digby Beaumont

Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures by Vanessa Gebbie

real Hollywood outcalls

Kelly's Orchard

Hardball

I Am Being Everybody They Cried: Peter Barnes (1931-2004) by Martin Heavisides

Prologue


DIOGENES: I thought those who came after would be better. Wrong! What can the comforting deceptions of philosophy signify in the face of truth, which is always the same --nothing ends well. I should have studied emptiness, nothing, instead of virtue. The gods tried to tell me. One night I was huddled in my barrel, trying to sleep. The snow was falling outside and I heard the gods praising me for my discussion on emptiness, nothing. 'But I haven't said anything,' I told them. 'You haven't said anything as we haven't heard anything: that's true emptiness,' they replied. I should've studied emptiness and midwives should give up their calling; it's a crime against mankind to inflict life on another human being.

THE REAL LONG JOHN SILVER, pp. 50-51

"The Moon and The Stars"

Credo

As a psychologist, I have seen 1000/attempts to avoid responsibility for/a troubled child./"It's a chemical imbalance; it's the schools;/it's the medication; it's uncle Harry."

The Dragon

When you first told me about/the dragon tattoo, I didn't/believe you were preppy 101,/clean cut in your wool sweater/and dockers. I wasnFt sure/I wanted to see your legs,/lean and pale;

Musings chanced upon in the quiet of Inniscrone

High Water

Willy was born delighted in the middle of a rainstorm that threatened to flood the root cellar where they were hiding from the lightning. She had wide-open blue eyes. Her tiny expressive face soundlessly oohed and aahed and grimaced and startled with each feeling from the very beginning and, soon, she had a coo of contentment that nurtured her mother and then a three-tone song of a laugh that always made her siblings smile. Thunderstorms and floods threatened them so often but Willy's birth let Mama engage with them easier from then on.

The River Thief

English Wells fought the Pumquich River for forty years, moving his will ever by degrees at it. "By God, Miriam," he often said to his wife, "I'll go at it until I drop, most likely. What you work for, you get. You get what you work for." English, lacking funds or worldly promise, wanted to steal more land from this side of the river, to push his small estate out over the river#s run, to claim energy's due.

The New Man by Digby Beaumont

Harry's Bar by Nonnie Augustine

Mr. Wyandotte by Phoebe Wilcox

Photophobia by Niall Joseph

The River Thief by Tom Sheehan

Berenika

Yang Chu's Poem 86

The Game

an armed man lurks in ambush

Buenos Aires: A Literary City

personal history

A Gentle Heart (Obit)

Under Christian Crosses by Mari Fitzpatrick

The Night of the Fox by Rebecca Burns

Some of this is True by Len Joy

Ribs of sunken galleons

Sam and Frank--Old Friends

Russian roulette

Cold, Cold Heart by Jim Haughey

No estaba seguro de cuanto tiempo habia estado el cuerpo all. Una, tal vez dos semanas. El olor se habia asentado tan intensamente en el dormitorio que, aunque se quedó alli solo unos minutos cada vez, estaba asombrado de lo profundamente que el olor invadia la tela de su ropa. El olor de los organos atrofiandose. Los globos oculares se convirtieron en pequeños orbes de gelatina gris mate.

The sun was just rising in West Central Minnesota, brazing the horizon a magenta color as upkicked dust lilted behind a Chevrolet truck that rumbled down the long gravel driveway. The truck pulled onto a paved county road that reached out for miles on an even plain. The only signs of civilization outside of Jay’s passenger side window were the railroad tracks running parallel to the road and the high-voltage power lines off in the distance--giants standing above the wheat and corn and beets. Tyler, Jay’s cousin and a year his junior, flipped on the radio.