May & June 2019
Vol IV No III
Not your ordinary poetry magazine!
If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!
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Published bi-monthly
Sentimental Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch
A Mouthful of Tacks
He was a man with a mouth full of tacks,
blue-black germs of his journeyman’s trade:
Dad daily dipped magnetic hammers into urns
teeming with those sharp dark seeds,
popped bristled blossoms into his mouth,
hammers’ stems springing back to tight lips,
deftly drawing tongue-aligned tacks
as his scratched right hand beat time
on satins or leathers stretched taut
by free forefinger and thumb,
and plied soft sculptures on furniture frames—
creating from cold bones his fleshed italic art.
But I, his first-born, proud and defiant,
could only see the defiled hands,
black tack-stained teeth, nicked lips,
blue-black tongue—could only feel
spiked angers spit out at me
when I failed to see the art in his craft —
seeing only the immigrant’s indignity,
not knowing this humble art shaped me,
who now daily labor, trying to articulate
with tired hands, type, and blue-bleeding tongue
just one work as finely finished as
my father made from a mouthful of tacks.
Originally appeared in Italian Americana.
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Retired from professing English and American literature, Ralph La Rosa has published work on American writers, written for film, and now devotes himself to poetry, having published on the Internet, in print journals, one chapbook, Sonnet Stanzas, and a full-length collection, Ghost Trees.
Just be Yourself
Too many people are like you.
They smile like they care.
They hold you like they’re there.
Their lips caress the word “Love”
like they mean it.
Stop.
Relax.
Exhale.
Let go.
I came to you
Because I saw you were hurting
from that mask you wear.
It’s barbed.
But the wires
face both ways.
So stop.
Put the mask down.
Be who you are.
Be apathetic.
Be mean.
For those around you,
Just be yourself.
Alex S. Jones is a sophomore at Henry Ford College in Michigan. She takes her classes online. When it comes to her writing, she is as optimistic as she is amateur.
Fireflies
We drive at night and blur the lines
and follow cryptic highway signs
to gravel lanes and sylvan air
until our gate reflectors flare.
I click the headlights off and let
the house recede to silhouette
and sitting still we soon surmise
gold fusillades are fireflies.
My lowered window is a chance
an errant firefly takes to dance
and raise his wings along the dash
for eminence in fervent flash.
We wait and watch the fragile guy
succumb forlorn and fail to fly
and so we coax and carry light
outside one safe and lucky night.
Thomas Jardine now lives in France and renovates an 1889 manor house between writing lyrical poetry in form that makes sense, and gently expounding on life. His poems appear in Huffington Post, Passager, Loch Raven Review, and others.
A Snoratorium
Could we have a moratorium
On nature poetry please
A resounding snoratorium
On meadows, lakes, and trees
A halt to poems about sunsets,
Full moons, snowfalls and such
These tickle the fancy of nature buffs
But for others — not so much
A cutback on odes to roses,
Summer’s glory or butterflies
Fewer tributes to all things blooming
And birds that fill the skies
Let’s take a break from winter scenes
And the beauty of an ancient sea
Try one about the human race
Think of the novelty
First published on the Hello Poetry website.
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Vernon Waring’s poetry — both light verse and serious — has appeared in The Great American Poetry Show, The Saturday Evening Post, LIGHT Quarterly, ICONOCLAST, and on The Prairie Home Companion website.
Pound
Borders close. A tree near a puckered well
Straddles the heat. A few men look for shade.
The women hide their hands; it’s the rings;
You can tell the bandits by their poached smiles.
A boy on his mother’s hip with dirt in his eyes
Reaches for his father on the other side.
“Remember,” Lazarus smiles,
“Remember the fence we made
To climb to heaven; and the sun grew sweet
Mornings we could taste, when we held each other
In the arms of the orange tree.”
Hugh Amberly is a retired common laborer who lives in Upstate New York.
12 April 1965
Sembach, Germany
Like children
(young and touchingly earnest)
we hold hands under tables
and steal kisses with a
searching, rapid glance.
I did not know love could be so silent,
so alive—
with a hidden intensity
that speaks a language
no ear has ever heard.
And I am a man—young,
and you a woman—full . . .
both realizing that we have needs
that must be fulfilled . . .
in ways untouched before
by anyone.
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Richard Atwood currently lives in Wichita, Kansas. He has been published in several literary journals and has three books of poetry on Amazon. This selection is from You, My Love... a diary in verse (detailing a European love affair.)
