Oh, the big voice is gone forever.
All we have left is the so long line
that he filled up with himself, always
telling us more than we wanted to know.
Every polity wraps itself in lies, exaggerations
stitching the social fabric,
and Walt
was one of our biggest liars, always
puffing us up.
You see now though how thin
it was—democracy.
There’s so little of it left.

Charles Tarlton has a Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles and lives now in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. His work has been seen in Rattle, Blackbox Manifold (UK), London Grip (UK), Illanot Review (Israel), and 2River.

The perplexity of joy and
jolting why of beauty: consider
the spiral, the raindrop, the branch;
poppies, pinecones,
the ocean.

That drift state before sleep,
the general ache of
wistful longing.
The exquisite pleasures
of love.

The treasure of attention,
unnamed gifts of unbearable gravity,
the numberless ways
suffering
inadvertently reveals.

Then, a tickle
on my arm, a
ladybug climbing my shoulder,
this tiny weight of
uncountable wishes.

Tanya Fenkell is a Canadian artist and writer. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three sons. As an artist, she explores solitude and solitary spaces. She exhibits her paintings regularly and her artwork is held in private collections in Canada and the US.

After Death:

“From dust we came and dust we’ll be”
The atheists’ mantra—
As worms sing chords
Of jubilee.

The rest: wish immortality
With some jolly Santa,
And hell is for
The devil’s devotees—
But never for good folks
Like you or me.

Family Circus

Savoring
cabernet
by the glass—

Italian
cuisine by
sunset beach—

Emma grabs
and sucks on
her big toe.

Long we bore your downcast eyes
raining tears across the earth.
Your cold sun bleeding out our roots.

Once we believed you would learn
something, something
about beginnings and ends
fallings and risings
loving and returning love.

But no more.

Now we are inversed,
alone in the desert.
And when the sky opens
you retreat to pixelated lights
while we bloom and sing
to moonlight.

John F. Benevelli is a poet who grew up in Bethel, Connecticut, a small town near the Connecticut-New York border. He graduated from Boston College, where he studied philosophy, and The George Washington University Law School. John now works as a civil rights attorney at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. John also is a photographer. His photographs have appeared in several exhibitions in the Washington, D.C. area. John lives with his wife and son in their Washington, D.C. home, which they share with their lovely black lab, Shenandoah.

Deep underground, where sun doesn’t go,
and people haven’t been, and nothing will grow,
is the root of a money tree.
Even deeper still, the root grows thicker and darker and strong.
The tree grows past all the people who it did wrong.

Past the hare and the turf and the gravel,
the root of the money tree begins to unravel.
It gives off shoots and blossoms despite no light,
and grows all the time, every day and every night.

The people above don’t hear or see
the roots of the money tree that won’t set them free.
They paw at the branches and pull at the leaves
hitting and kicking and acting like thieves.

Above where the sun shines and people go about their day
the tall, thick money tree continues to sway.
Back and forth and up and down, the money tree gives its shade to the ground.
That is, after all, where the first leaf was found.

The people don’t see what danger they’re in.
The money tree stays quiet and lets their heads spin.
“How did this tree get here?” the people cry
Pg. 2
while the rest of the world goes awry.

The money tree goes very far down.
It reaches and moves and doesn’t make a sound.
No one would know the danger they face
unless they saw the origin of the money tree and that awful, terrible place.

See the money tree is old, it goes very far back.
It saw before the moon walk and Columbus and fire, it remembers when it was all black.
Then along came Good and made people, the perfect subjects for the tree’s ferocious plan:
Take their good nature and watch the fall of man.

“In the beginning”, a good place to start.
Adam and Eve, perfect for the part.
The money tree had no time to waste
It only took one prompting and their spotlessness was erased.

The money tree works much the same way today as it did back then.
It can play its dirty game again and again.
Grab your attention and never let it go.
Give it some time, the feeling will grow.

The more you love yourself the more you’ll forget
what others have done for you, how much you’re in debt.
The money tree is insidious and only needs fertile ground to grow.
If you aren’t careful, you’ll start a garden and not even know.

Say your prayers and don’t let your soul out of sight
because the money tree grows without any light.

Maggie Harbrecht is, among many things, a student and a novice writer. She lives on a hill in Pittsburgh (as most Pittsburghers do) and finds inspiration in religion, medicine, and the kingdom Animalia.

If one line of a sonnet was a password
It might require Shakespearean skill to crack
And your security could rest assured,
Safe even from a brute force app attack,

So if my hackers chose to wax poetic
By trolling around in my predilection,
They now know that I also am strategic
In my use of 14 line misdirection.

It’s true that lines from sonnets do have uses
For purposes outside of electronics,
(i.e.) words quoted from the lofty muses
Might cool hurt lovers abject histrionics,

But whether parsed for digits or for passions,
Iambs have applications for what happens.

David L Williams is recently retired from 34 years teaching high school English in Lincoln, Nebraska, his primary residence since going to college there in the 80s. For inspiration, he enjoys sitting on the two steps leading down to their patio and looking out back. He shares the home with his 30 year living partner, Mary, who unknowingly models for some of his poems.

In different dimensions we exist
Side by side
Threads of fate tangling and interweaving
We walk,
Side by side
Our footsteps follow each other
But we could not be farther apart

I am you, if only you
Slept in five minutes
Listened to a different song on the subway
Missed that left turn

The rules are different for each of us
But each small difference gives us a chance
To make things right
In our own way

Butterfly wingbeats become typhoons

Nik Rajagopalan is a biochemistry student who enjoys writing poetry, motorcycling, candy making, and playing with his dog Tashi. He hopes to one day explore scientific ideas through poetry.

The many little corners of a day
Are stuck in places that you’ll never find
Until you’re ready to come out and say
Exactly what was furthest from your mind.

When nighttime comes you shouldn’t shake your head
At spaces you refused to enter in,
But know your willful choice to climb in bed
Will slickly end what you never began.

Smack in between these times of indecision
Just stop and take a moment to suppose
What might be lost without your lone revision,
The little whiffs only under your knows.

The empty spaces on a calendar
Are not just there so you’ll know where you are.

David L Williams is recently retired from 34 years teaching high school English in Lincoln, Nebraska, his primary residence since going to college there in the 80s. For inspiration, he enjoys sitting on the two steps leading down to their patio and looking out back. He shares the home with his 30 year living partner, Mary, who unknowingly models for some of his poems.

It’s quiet as Hell
The telephone rings
Ignore it or not
Either way your life changes
You pick it up
A deal is made
You’re unaware
but your path is now clear
Later your need will be great
And will be met

Howard Zugman an 82 year old man who has never written poetry before. He has recently written about 40 or so short poems to his girlfriend who thinks he should share them. So he’s sharing. This is his first move in that direction. What do you think?