I look at this imaginary painting on the wall –
A man is standing on an Irish cliff with the morning dew glistening
Upon the grass as green as green can be
And in his unruly beard that is sometimes more brown than red,
Other times more red than brown.
The sun is in his eyes and he’s squinting.
In the distance where he is looking
There is a roiling sea with a small ship rocking on it.
Two women are on that ship, on their way to stand also on the Irish cliff
Where the dew will cling to their bare feet and hang from the hems of their long flimsy skirts.
One woman is with the man of the unruly beard where the red and the brown do battle.…
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I escaped through the basement door
at midnight, while up on the third floor
they were playing death games
on the flatscreen. I walked the dark streets
barefoot in cargo shorts.
Above me half a moon and half a sun
were stalking each other.
A line of handsome homes posed
at the edge of the bluff
as if thinking about jumping.
I only wanted to hide for a while
in their electric landscapes
to become a stone statue of no one
so they would touch my face
with their trembling fingers.…
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I was seated
in the death black limousine
at the back.
Thirteen, sobbing.
Bagpipes played
the bagpipe songs.
Timely snow
covered our coats.
Our grandmother
mother
wife
stranger
lowered
into the ground.…
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After my checkup, hatchlings sitting on a broken
bough startle at the form I’ve taken.
Who’s to say what cures & what chafes?
So far, my generation has
discovered Higgs bosons, gravitons, quarks—
nuclear folly & deterrents.
The hatchings nibble at clippings of timothy
while I can still hear the nurse
tugging a ticker-tape of arrhythmias.
If wishing could reprieve
bones, I’d retrieve that echo through all those
lifetimes when I climbed a trellis
the full width of the patio
to replace a fallen fledgling.
If a hint might reawaken
the wilder beast with whom I’m unfinished
one or two lifetimes from now, I’m curious
how (or if) the bird will sing
the encore of my heartbeat.
– Bob Haynes
Author’s Note: This poem was written in 2022, which was not only a year of a continuing pandemic but also a year of personal loss.…
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“Barren,”
says the doctor and there it is
the monitored hope
of a caught firefly in the mason jar of my womb:
a crescendo to its emptiness
breathing and gasping in
only pockets of air
through a pin-pricked eggshell thin lid.
– Krysten Ross
Author’s Note: In early 2021, I was having a check-up with my doctor when I raised concerns about my health. After reviewing my symptoms, the doctor told me quite matter-of-factly that I may never have children. My heart sunk to the bottom of my stomach when I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. During one of the ultrasound tests, I looked at the monitor when the sonographer left the room. The cysts on my ovaries lit up the screen like a million fireflies in the night.…
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★★★☆☆
Wait time was too long. I stood around for hours, but never got what I wanted.
★★★★★
This is it. The real deal. She will peel apart her ribcage and let you see her naked heart. She hides nothing; exposes everything, even the ugliest parts, the intestines, blood, rotten. All of it is on the page. (All of it.)
★☆☆☆☆
has never been to the bottom of the ocean. does not know what it is to truly cry. can not comprehend loss. mourns but is never mourned.
★★☆☆☆
Doesn’t make sense. Why can’t life be understood? Some of us want to know why we are here. No answers, just questions!
★★★★☆
at dawn she walked the shore to greet me in a hug. she was smiling.…
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Children search clouds
for bunnies and puppy dogs
but find only
stampedes of thundering water
buffalo, spooked
and hale horned, tsunamis
of great whites foaming
at the mouth.
Air coils
around their ankles
like snakes poised
to swallow whole.
– Brian Wallace Baker…
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