Category: Poetry

The ocean dries up when I touch it. Fish and algae disintegrate; every drop of salt water seeps into sand. Emoto says it’s my negative energy, that the waves would rather go bare than be exposed to me. I don’t know the ocean’s feelings. And it doesn’t care to know mine: I’ve given up looking for my notice of its departure. All I know is the little girl inside me, and the apologies I keep giving her. I write sorries in handwriting she doesn’t know as her own. I’m a stranger to her now. Her tiered dresses hang dusty in my closet, gray around the seams. The mole on my forehead mirrors hers, and, to her disappointment, the scar on her fingertip still hasn’t faded. I try to tell her about the science of nostalgia, about sensory stimuli and chronological remoteness.… ...continue reading

Look, her almost bare stems bows away from glass,
casting charms and spells so you’ll face the glass.

Leaning towards light, this one expects you to play
like some little girl who’s not encased in glass.

Green, sharp and strict, still hoping. A soft sway
lights the words she needs to explain the glass.

Crossed as a sword, daring, calling today
shyly—come closer to her. She’ll tame the glass.

Commanding light to kiss her, calling May
out of April, she flies to perfectly shade the glass.

Almost straight as a delicate mast, gay
as a face card, reflecting the spray of glass.

Gather them all and mark their place—
Softly, gentle, careful not to break the glass.

– Mark J. Mitchell… ...continue reading

The act:
disappearing
the past, not dramatic
as it once was, reduce coated
paper

to black
white ash. Now a
click: gone forever, code
overwritten, the result is
the same:

you are
gone, I am here,
without. Over length, crimp,
curl of synapses, you appear,
or not,

your face
as true as I
remember, or not, &
your melodious voice is heard,
or not.

– Eugene Stevenson

Author’s Note: One of the reasons why I write is to make photographs from the daily rushes our lives produce. I cannot discard photos, no matter how painful. Some people do so easily, out of hurt, anger, resentment, or envy. Images that remain after the photos have been destroyed are those we carry in our heads & hearts.… ...continue reading

Endless autumn train tracks – all these great abandoned houses and their fallow fields.

You get used to it. The endless hours. The blur of yellowing

Trees, and time, and bridges. Every two-exit town looks the same,

Toothpick diorama of a farm. What am I supposed to learn about life

Here, amid all the loneliness? Perhaps the elegance of a withering

Willow by the bridge. To be alone but not hollow, solitary but not lost.

You’re a hard friend to make and harder to keep, and I’m starting to think

That maybe you’re not worth keeping. In the grass, the implication

Of a body. In the car, the ghost of a great-

Aunt’s mediocre love. I’m not sorry for wanting

You to kiss me in the bathroom hallway but I’m sorry

That it didn’t happen before our friends came through the door.… ...continue reading

to get to the waterfall
you must go straight up

to go beyond you must
take the trail beside it

there is canopy everywhere
and a rush of noise
to guide you

south are trails
to the interstate
and to the abandoned
bridges that cross them

beyond that the trail
flattens out i hear. i do not know.
i’ve never been
and no one who goes that way returns

the things we miss
we will miss forever

– J.E. O’Leary… ...continue reading

pollen drifts from the oaks, floats down
to the lawn, travels on the breeze

across the grass, turns from yellow-
green to brown, collects in clumps, balls

at the foot of retaining walls
loses stickiness, turns crunchy

blocks gutters & drains, fills cracks
between concrete sidewalk slabs, coats

parked white cars & black trucks, drapes
itself over bushes, hedges

& fences, sticks to black letter-
boxes, clings to the fur of cats

attaches to running shoe soles
& laces, stealthily enters

homes through back doors, insinuates
itself into living rooms, kitchens

bedrooms & bathrooms, irritates
eyes, attacks nostrils, triggers

histamines, sneezing, headaches
brain fog, dripping noses, transports

male oak DNA into gaps
& fissures, fails to fertilize

– Nathanael O’Reilly… ...continue reading

I started like a seed, sprouting
in a wild world of June’s bloom.

Growing tall in the sun’s land
I asked why the night comes.

My mother knelt at old oak trees
in empty fields holding hope

in her hands. I spent
summers throwing rocks at stars,

waiting for them to fall
while looking for forever

in their unending light.
I left our ghosts in the garden

and aged among the hungry bees
searching for bright flowers

despite the darkness,
for even the night is as thin as paper.

– Natalie Marino

Note: A different version of this poem was published online by UCity Review in December 2021.… ...continue reading