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A love suicide
by Kan Hashimoto
Say
Where is my shame,
When I call your name?
So, please don’t set me free
I’m as heavy as can be
I will do you harm
I will break my arm
I am a victim of your charms
I want to be dead
When I’m in bed
I can be so mean
You can beat me
I would like to shame you
I would like to blame you
Just because of my love to you
And
Love itself is just as innocent as roses in May
I know nothing can drive it away
Though
Love itself is just as brief as a candle in the wind
But it’s greedy just like sin
Alone but sane
I am a love suicide
‘Cause
Love itself is just as brief as a candle in the wind
It is pure white just like sin
Alone but sane
I am a love suicide
‘Cause
Love itself is just as innocent as roses in May
It is pure white just like sin
Expiration
by MaryEllen Letarte
My Uncle Joe's smoke rings mesmerized me
His circular soot, those ghostly Os,
Were playthings of my past
I remember them with fondness
Until I see Aunt Bea, her body bent and tired,
Chained to her oxygen tank.
The tank on a skeletal pole with bloated wheels,
More substantial than its owner
My uncle never needed a tank,
The wheels of a swerving motorcycle
Crushed him and his fresh lit cigarette
Night Duel
by Robert Beck
In days of youth and honor
fueled by many libations
and a now forgotten slight,
my brother and I adjourned
to a late night Brooklyn street.
We chose to settle our differences
as gentlemen rightly should
donned fencing jackets
set masks upon our heads
then took foils firmly in hand.
Our crossed blades rang loudly,
the night echoed with the strains
of lunge, parry and riposte,
while watching cousins cheered,
until the gendarmerie arrived
summoned by anxious neighbors
seeking rest and repose before dawn.
Only tongues faster and more agile
than flashing swords,
prevented incarceration.
Tenement Trap
by Gary Beck
Generation after generation
have smoldered relentlessly
within your bile-green walls.
Italian, Jewish, Black, Hispanic,
all indiscriminately
filled the air shaft with refuse,
protesting their coffin confines.
The dirt encrusted windows blend
changing seasons into one entombment
of thwarted hopes or expectations,
crushed by the scurry of rat and roach feet.
No wonder so many of your children,
arbitrarily consigned to squalor,
rejected the feeble offerings
of a disdainful society
and encouraged by embittered parents,
turned their abilities to crime.
A stray
by Quinn Kukor
when out upon a walk to test the street
a mangy dog may follow down the road
no animal did you go out to meet
politely there behind still he strode
you wonder at his odd canine intent
is he outdoors perchance to find a bone
could he be planning something more violent
or does he think that you might take him home
if you speed up in hope that he'll turn back
he follows you as to a boat an oar
to scratch his ear and he might soon retract
or he might hope that you will give him more
his mind dares not aspire towards a meal
he could be simply happy by your heel
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Untitled
by Thalia Edwards-Cabrera
Romance expressed through a simple glance
Our eyes dance with each other passionately
Soft, plump and pinkish -red
May sound feminine
But
Deep structures on your lips
Provide a masculine effect
My breast pressed against your
Warm and safe chest
A sense of serenity flows throughout my body
Your flawed but unique hands
Grab the small of my back
Now, a sexual response
Child-woman Julie
by Lora Bloom
Child-woman Julie
sits quiet tonight
we are the three witches
on the couch in the back of the party
men visit us from time to time,
sit and talk with us then float away
our eyes are wide and we cannot move
and Julie’s eyes scare me sometimes,
like they’ve been searching through the dark
for so many lives
looking for the light
at the end of the tunnel
and it’s become hell
and I want to tell her
she’ll be okay cause I am ok
this moment
but it isn’t true
the party is all fluorescent demons
monsters so bright
in one room a man in a mask
whips people.
It frightens us, so we smoke
the light in my head just keeps expanding
and Julie: truth in her falls
crawls over the waves of herself, is lost.
I want to tell her
there are sparks in her eyes
but she won’t believe
So I keep my arm around Julie
it feels warm, along the heat
of her soft scratched skin
it doesn’t feel
unnatural
or forced
or strange
Someone Else’s
by David LaBounty
I took someone else’s kids
to the beach and to the park.
I taught someone else’s kids
how to wipe their asses and
tie their shoes.
I taught someone else’s kids
how to throw and catch the ball
and how to ride a bike and
how to get a kite
up into the air.
I helped someone else’s kids
with their homework and
with broken toys and
broken dreams that I
I couldn’t always fix.
And it was someone else’s kids
that I had to leave early one
morning because their
mother needed,
needed to belong,
to someone else.
hope springs never
by Daniel Weiner
Life is not fleeting
it has fled.
We exist in the breeze that quickly follows.
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