Finely mincing oaths–
recipes for disaster
on the chopping block

Charles Brand is a teacher and counselor in the Florida Department of Corrections who enjoys using any spare time and inspiration in the service of writing. Holding a master’s degree in western history, Charles is motivated to blend formal and informal skills in creative writing and persuasion to attract readers who want more out of the printed word, regardless of circumstance.

Your ache splits the rays of sunshine
Scatters the light through the clouds
Drenching the days with dreams raining down
Just to rise again with the heat of your heart

In songs of birds, in the flapping of their wings
Your love story carries on—
The beating wind, leaves lush and eager
Spinning through the air to the ground

Softening your path as you search
Thrusting your hands upwards to the hushed sky
You feel him now, a timeless canopy —
In fields you dance with the fireflies

Shelley Smithson is an emerging poet, writing for the love of expressing emotions in the form of images and phrases. She is a psychotherapist in her professional life and loves being in nature with family and friends. She relishes beating her husband at cribbage and likes dark cloudy days as much as the sunshine days of her home town of Elk Rapids, MI.

Granny can’t shell
boiled peanuts no more
but when I strip away the hard shells,
give her my little prizes,
she sure can smack her lips and cry
“Some good!”

I wrote that last week
as she sat at the kitchen table,
toothless and cackling and crazy alive.
Now I crack and peel
my little pile of prizes
for an empty table.

I can’t eat them today without her.
But I still lick my fingers
for that salty tear taste
of some good memories.

Michael Guillebeau has published seven novels and 41 stories, and a few poems.

Sometimes on nice days.
I clear my mind…and use my innermost lens.
Taking mental snapshots of where we landed.
I do this because.
I want you to see with your own eyes.
That you were so very wrong.
I was able to make you proud.
Us proud.

Angela Moore currently works at Yale University in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. She enjoys writing poetry and relaxing with coloring books.

I used to fall
Face first

Now
I don’t even move

There are enough miles
In those dead end towns
And neon streets
To close down
Any parlour

Not of the flesh
But of the mind

This quiet space
This country village

It calms the need for more

No motorbikes
No mopeds

No waking up
On the side of some road

The morning here
Brings fresh air

I steep
I don’t stir

These passing leaves

J H Martin is from London, England but has no fixed abode. For more information, please visit: https://acoatforamonkey.wordpress.com/

Even when the night air’s still
the sky and all that fills it will
not merely be, but twinkle, writhe, and wink.

One such night without a breeze
I camped by a lake enclosed by trees
and, staring at it, knew not what to think:

In the lake, the low and innocent
had seemed to swallow the firmament—
the moon herself and every constellation—

as if each being in the sky
with all its aches, as well as I,
had accepted a humble invitation

by cloning itself, then sent the clone
so the lake would not be so alone.
Alone, unseen, I suddenly stripped and dove

and, holding my breath, diving deeper yet,
I felt, with the darkness and the wet,
a tingle. Call it “universal love.”

When later I was drying in
the moonlight, I observed how my skin
wore a thousand starlit sequins—from the dive—

and, panting, came to realize
a secret of the still night skies:
That stars don’t only twinkle, writhe
and wink, but, with our mindless, blithe
emergences, will breathe, as if alive.

James B. Nicola, a returning contributor, is the author of six collections of poetry, the latest being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense. His decades of working in the theater culminated in the nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Guide to Live Performance, which won a Choice award.

No snow all season,
just relentless
rain and longing for
something bracing to hold
us up in the face of
everything. Every day
rain paints sidewalks dark gray,
circles drains, deadens
the gaze. This is the lost
winter of a disappeared
year, but how to even dare say
lost when so many
are gone and we remain?

Elizabeth L. Merrick lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. She and poetry have stayed together through thick and thin. She loves poetry that sees deeply into everyday moments, and that is her fondest aspiration for her own writing. Elizabeth is also a clinical social worker and health researcher.