Diane Webster - 2 Poems

SHADOWS STALK

As shadows stalk the evening sun
in longer and longer sneaks
until each rises in powerful pounce
and submerges earth into snatches of startled sight,
cars race home and park
like kittens suckling momma cat
as she purrs them to sleep
in a bundle of warm fur
protected until morning sun
stretches into the brood, and everyone scatters
to discover what changed overnight.

SHADES OF SUNLIGHT

As I stroll down the sidewalk tunnel,
sunshine turns up the volume.
From rainstorm dark
against my upturned collar
to virgin’s veil where
almost certainly a smile quivers
to cat basking bright
as I shed my coat
like a tulip awakening
to gulp in sunlight nectar.

Biography: Diane Webster's challenge as a poet is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday opportunities as well as those moments of epiphany. Then to allow her imagination to evolve that idea into a poem. Diane's work has appeared in “Philadelphia Poets”, “The Hurricane Review”, “Illya's Honey” and other literary magazines.

Donal Mahoney - 1 poem

Deity

The thing of it is,
says Johnny O,
none of us knows

whether he is
while others announce
after looking around

they beg to differ.
The thing of it is,
says Johnny O,

some would say
he’s here, he’s there,
he’s everywhere

while others would say
after looking around
no one can see him

anywhere--so how
can he be everywhere?
The thing of it is,

says Johnny O, 
he’s right over where?
Let’s look around.

Biography: Donal Mahoney has had work published in The Rainbow Rose and other publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Joan McNerney - 1 Poem

Virtual Love

A
long
slim
poem
full of hyperbole
& alliteration drifted
into the wrong e-mail box.

There she met an erudite
rich text format file.
They became attached.

Her fleeting metaphors
lifted his technical jargon.
They were a word couple
spinning through cyber space
giddy with inappropriate syllables.

Biography: Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Blueline, Spectrum, and three Bright Spring Press Anthologies. She has been nominated three times for Best of the Net. Four of her books have been published by fine small literary presses.

Diane Webster - 1 Poem

SCOWL POWER

My neighbor scowls
when she mows her lawn.
With each laborious swatch
eaten across her grass
she sweats, grunts, jerks
the mower into right angle turns
as if her white knuckles
could reach through the handle
into the motor, into the blades
and guillotine each green shaft
by sheer willpower
leaving severed clippings in her wake,
and gleefully giggling
as she returns inside her house.

BIOGRAPHY: Diane Webster's challenge as a poet is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday opportunities as well as those moments of epiphany. Then to allow her imagination to evolve that idea into a poem. Diane's work has appeared in “Philadelphia Poets,” “The Hurricane Review,” “Illya's Honey” and other literary magazines.

Bryan Murphy - 1 Poem

Elixir

All paths lead to death,
premature sacrifice for future spawn;
but on the way, pure joy.

Ravenous hair, falling
over a tactile wonderland
where deeper means finer.
From a mission to make her happy,
pure pleasure pours.

Three fine brats,
wavelengths aligned across the Atlantic,
together for the first time,
the little grey one’s me.

I ghost across boards,
flash onto a silver screen
find my niche in a voice studio.
Retirement will not be dull.

Stepfather beams with health;
words I cast out find homes;
my teams experiment
with life near the top;
friendships endure.

They come for me.
It is a cold spring morning.
I see the ax is blunt,
smell rust on its blade,
sleep through the screaming alarm.

BIOGRAPHY: Bryan Murphy recently retired from a job as a translator and now concentrates on his own words. He divides his time among England, Italy, the wider world and cyberspace. You can find him at http://www.bryanmurphy.eu/

Douglas Polk - 3 Poems

The Foreigner

Her features fine,
delicate like china,
new to this land of dust and sky,
never hugged or touched,
for fear of breaking her,
She did not belong in the roughness of the prairie,
She belonged to a place,
where men could stop and marvel at her beauty,
instead of staring at her with  sun baked eyes,
or touch her with callous hands.

A Drive-In Movie

A movie date,
at the drive in,
free to explore,
no nosy neighbors,
getting secret kicks,
bras unhooked,
without embarrassment,
tears shed,
during the death scene,
if it helps get one to third base,
intimacy shared,
the only worries,
dropping popcorn,
or spilling soda,
in the family car,
a station wagon.

A Fantasy

A fantasy this day shall never end,
or I never die,
or age,
and ache with old age,
the magic not fantasy,
but reality,
exists in the mind’s eye,
the soul,
seeing and keeping the dream alive,
life a precious gift,
magical and fleeting,
love the maker of magic,
to be shared and spread down through the ages.

Biography: Douglas Polk is a poet living in the wilds of central Nebraska with his wife and two boys. He has had numerous poems, three books of poems, and two children's books published. Poetry books are: In My Defense, The Defense Rests and On Appeal. The children's books are: The Legend of Garle Pond and Marie's Home.

Jeffrey Park - 1 Poem

THE RUNNER

He runs, he leaps, he misses
his footing
and slides down the steep ragged bank
and into the ravine
to the bottom
where he lies for many a long
lonely week
and then month
and then
year
and the grass grows up and through
his slow-bleaching bones
as if to prove incontrovertibly
that if man
had been meant to run like that
God
would have put wings
on his ankles.

Biography: Baltimore native Jeffrey Park currently lives in Munich, Germany, where he works at a private secondary school and teaches business English to adults. His latest poems have appeared in Requiem, Deep Tissue, Danse Macabre, Crack the Spine, Right Hand Pointing and elsewhere, and his digital chapbook, Inorganic, has just been published online by White Knuckle Press. Links to all of his published work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com.

Felino A. Soriano - 3 Poems

in the examination of rhythm

analysis this sound this
segregated meaning

dependent

crisscrossing versions
interpret the listener’s prelude

onto tongue of the hearsay ing
modules of time


in the dusk of rhythm

moment turn as splay reinvents focal knowledge:
: eye then above the eye a language opens

we’ve abbreviated meaning, my friend
or
            the abbreviation is unintentional then the furthermore elongated sadness



                        within these hours of day’s spacious irony (if unknown, yes, closeness)
                        closed-in(ward)
                        clusters of frames locate an otherness of say
pertaining to partial inclination to existential coastal affiliation—                 a
5:00 p.m. average
alluding
allowing

repetitious symphonies of rotating grays to
engage with the habit of this time’s
rectangular physiology


in the orange of rhythm

annual autumnal interpretation
fling from the finger weakened method (fall, stereotyped)
leaf                  in the plural of manifestation
                                                                                                foray
                                                                        swing
                                                band of clarinet (covering of opal angles of uninterrupted
yarning
                                    lights)
solos
crunch
created death              seers                enable vocalizing image amid

gregarious hope of season’s
sedentary (thus revisit(ing)ed) sentimental aggregates

BIOGRAPHY: Felino A. Soriano has authored 55 collections of poetry, including In the parallel of pursued occurrences (Fowlpox Press, 2012), Quartet Dialogues(white sky ebooks, 2012), and Of language|s| the rain speaks (quarter after press, 2012).  He publishes the online endeavors Counterexample Poetics and Differentia Press. His work finds foundation in philosophical studies and connection to various idioms of jazz music. He lives in California with his wife and family and is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. For further information, please visitwww.felinoasoriano.info.

Wanda Morrow Clevenger - 1 poem

90 degree ransack

a man with a black folio full
of circumstantiality and more
handwritten lines than time allots
has become a regular
at the Saturday meetings

he says they are mostly spiritual
- his brother says enough spiritual already -
so he laughs and reads a funny poem
about cats eating fat rats and fat bats

and I can hear he ransacked A to Z
so nothing went missed
before disclosing this trick of trade

his head hangs a heavy 90 degree
off plaid shoulders, fingers run
pencil cursive in braille transfer;
the room goes quiet so to amplify
gears making slow revolutions

BIOGRAPHY: Wanda Morrow Clevenger lives in Hettick, IL. She appears in numerous online and electronic publications. She writes of life and other peculiarities in the morning aided by many cups of hot tea gone cold.