These are asphalt pools with placid surface
Bubbles emerge in a slow graceful dance
Traps for large creatures in bygone ages
Who weren’t careful enough at pool edges

Just a few steps in and the seeds were sown
For the creature’s fate to be set in stone
To slowly sink into a toxic glue
Finally pass completely out of view

Though La Brea pools are a hazard no longer
There is a pool posing immediate danger

An expanding pool with seething surface
Bubbles emerge in an explosive dance
A trap for all things in our current age
Which do not evade its dynamic edge

Just a few yards in and the seeds are sown
For the victim’s fate to be set in stone
To slowly sink into a toxic glue
Finally pass completely out of view

David Radford is a retired college professor who loves gardening and the great outdoors. Creative writing has been a welcome change from the technical writing his career demanded.

I handed you a map of the world.
“Been there. Done that,” you said.
But what do you remember of those
Jewel dark caves, the green drip of moss
Across trees?
“No one ever asks me that,” you said.
“Not once in all this time.”
Maybe you should tell them,
Let them see where the waves touched
You.
“Here’s a map to the heart,” I said,
“Start with this.”

Kate Bowers is a writer based out of Pittsburgh, PA. She has been published previously in “The Ekphrastic Review,” “Rue Scribe,” “Sheila-Na-Gig,” and in the anthology “Pandemic Evolution: Poets Respond to the Art of Matthew Wolfe,” edited by Hayley Haugen.

The mother like no other
stood
whisking eggs
with a disappointed gaze.
Sighing.
“This child I raised!
Never in my days!
Such peculiar ways.
Extraordinarily
ornery.
Scant ability
to do anything with facility.
At least a pleasing face would’ve saved grace.
Such a bright sister and
exemplary brothers!
If I had my druthers…
she’d be, at least a bit, like the others,
so I could kvell. I do it so well.”

Lisa Finder is a librarian at Hunter college/CUNY. She is a longtime resident of Inwood in New York City and is originally from Albany, New York. She started writing rhyming poetry in 2020.

The steel bones of a city
bury me. I fasten
my seat belt while seated.
Skyscraper icicles collapse

into black filigree river
roads. More snow.
This is when I begin to be glad.
This is when I begin to be sad.

I will not lie. I love the time
between takeoff and landing.
Walls fall, rooms open,
doorways and windows flash,

crystal clarity bends
to a blue horizon and every-
where is snow, and birds,
looking for a place to land.

Evalyn Lee is a former CBS News producer currently living in London with her husband and two children. Over the years, she has produced television segments for 60 Minutes in New York and the BBC in London.

Brevity

When someone first says they’ll be brief,
Don’t be too quick to feel relief.

Path Taken

Those with honest introspection
Tend to take the right direction.

Faultless

Relationships may not last long
If neither side is ever wrong.

Mr. Winick began writing poetry about two years ago, after concluding a long legal career. Most of his work tends to be short and formal.

The day they knew
Was in the 50’s I think, when
On the Sunday drive to
Nowhere families took back then

While gazing out a window
At a Maxfield Parrish sky
I yelled to my father to
Stop the car and he did
Asking ‘What?’
Or maybe ‘Why?’

And at the sight of such obvious beauty
In silhouette against the fading light
I replied: “Look at that tree!”

It was then that they knew
The kind of son their
Second son would be.

Don Sellitti is retired after a thirty-eight year career in research and teaching at a university. His publications number in the fifties, but all are in scientific journals and the closest thing to poetry in them is a well-turned phrase in the Discussion section.

Nonetheless, he admires the way poets can tackle the same unknowns of life that he as, but in a way that’s more fun to read, and that sometimes rhymes.

Beyond
this grief’s torrent,
beyond this pall of clouds
that conceals everlasting light,
soar gull.

Carry
my loving touch
upon your tattered wings
through this deluge, this steely sky
to him.

Through hail,
through wind-swept sleet,
over these clashing waves
flecked by a sun far past this sun,
fly on.

Defy
holey borders
barring living from dead.
Soften your wails for the bereft.
Rejoice.

Ashes
spread in the sea,
while in eternal gleams
once more a husband and a wife
embrace.

Gregory E. Lucas lives on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. He swims in the ocean every day about seven months out of the year. He is 63 years old and he has been playing classical guitar for decades. He worked as a tutor in Delaware for 32 years and he is currently a caregiver to his old-aged mother.

For you alone I will dumb myself down
Unlearn all the things that are true
About the universe
(So therefore, me and you)

Like how the self is not a
Single thing but scattered
Through the brain in pieces
that come together for a time
Then fall apart when that time ceases.

And how love is not a force of nature
Akin to energy or gravity
But something almost weightless
A neural signal writ in dopamine
That moved a lonely God to create us

For you I will forget it all
To mirror what you feel for me,
tit for tat.
I can promise you this.
But what I cannot promise you is that:

I will not one day mistake you
for a hat.

Don Sellitti is retired after a thirty-eight year career in research and teaching at a university. His publications number in the fifties, but all are in scientific journals and the closest thing to poetry in them is a well-turned phrase in the Discussion section.

Nonetheless, he admires the way poets can tackle the same unknowns of life that he as, but in a way that’s more fun to read, and that sometimes rhymes.

To gooeysweet neighbors who can’t decide
whether to keep the damn fence or not
to coworkers stale as this parking lot
of a town, with threadbare dreams baked & dried

to Richie Rich compadres who’ll glide
through life on Mommy-Daddy’s nectar pot
to a daddy drunk on gall who only taught
me to be my own father on the side

to the gym-goons who spit right on the floor
to the chuffs who called me fat in study hall
to the baying yelping cur that lives next door
to a world that makes me want to end it all—

God bless! for showing me a better way
My revenge? not to be like you today

Kevin Blankinship is a professor of Arabic at Brigham Young University. His essays and poetry have appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Gingerbread House, Blue Unicorn, Wine Cellar Press, and more. Follow him on Twitter @AmericanMaghreb.

I drifted
Along the riverbank,
Taking pause
To eye each swirling pool
And eddy,
Stepping lightly
Over smoothed stones
And knotted nests of branches,
Scanning the soft
Silted earth
For footprints,
And listening –
To the whisper
Of the water.

A doe met
The river’s edge
She paused to drink –
And contemplate
Her reflection,
Then crossed
With care,
Paying no attention
To my quiet casts
And wandering
Mind.

I heard the
Hushed waving
Of the
Great Blue Heron’s
Wings.
He peered down
At me with pity,
Or –
It may have been
Disdain,
My pastime
After all,
Is his
Necessity.

It matters not
Whether the
Trout,
With her smooth
And shining body
Is fooled
By my dancing.
Her speckled scales
Undulate
As she glides
Against the
Slow moving current.

She is at peace
Below the
Mirrored surface –
Held in stillness,
Beneath the rushing
Of the
Day.

“Dan is a teacher from Colorado. He holds an undergraduate degree in Biology and is working on a master’s in Waldorf Education. He likes to ride his bike in the foothills and fly fish on the local river. He writes in the mornings with his coffee, and oats with frozen blueberries.”