Writing, Poetry, Short Stories, Reviews, Art Contests
holiday mass
the accordeon is sweating
tango pearls on the skin
of spanish dancers
lord and lady lizardhead
lipless vile and lidless
under lampoons of lore
raising their hands
in nuremburg fashion
they hail the high priest
his orchards his nails
that pin the star to the jacket
that pin the cross to the word
of course the cross is crimson
in the light of colored bulbs
Follow on Twitter: @jatzek_gerald
webpage: GeraldJatzek.com
Fine
I cringe with my
entire nervous
system at the spider’s
web then long
to place it
in my photograph.
There is almost
muscle where
the silks bind
together; opulent
curve and square.
I always step
into the prickly
glue of it, jump
back, attached, I
wield temporary
spinnerets; shudder
to shutter, I snap
back, snapshot mode,
as light hits
and the leftover
net turns tinsel. My
thigh as steady
as a dampened
noodle, I become
the spider’s toady,
cheering its best
angle. A battered
wing sighs, a fly;
tied to the web
as a damsel
on the railroad
track. Another picture
opportunity finds
me finding the right
cold-blood moment
before these
insects return
to respective exile.
AUTHOR BIO: K Weber lives and writes in southwestern Ohio. THIS ASSEMBLY is her 5th self-published online chapbook and audiobook project. Her writing has been included in issues of Memoir Mixtapes, Detritus Online, Black Bough Poetry, Writer’s Digest, Moonchild Magazine, Theta Wave and more! Her photography has appeared in such literary magazines as Barren Magazine and Nightingale & Sparrow. K earned her BA in Creative Writing from Miami University in 1999. More publishing credits and access to all of her online book projects at: http://kweberandherwords.wordpress.com Twitter: @KWandherwords
Photography by K Weber
some days my sadness is so magnificent
that an acrid taste lingers in the mouth of the night
and i think about the thousand ways
that i might die and i think about the birds
Stuart Buck is a Best of the Net/PushCart Prize/BIFFY50 nominated poet and artist living in North Wales.
His second book ‘Become Something Frail’ was released to critical acclaim on Selcouth Station Press in 2019. When he is not writing or reading poetry, he likes to cook, juggle and listen to music. He suffers terribly from tsundoku – the art of buying copious amounts of books that he will never read.
Seems like you touched someone,
right near the heart of the Hun.
Those guesses of yours,
as you entertained crowds;
in vogue, lucky, to entertain half price.
You tame them all to start, downtown;
hypnotized crowds, they all wonder
if they’re flesheaters, just like you .
They kept a record: an electric image,
of your smiling shattered teeth
the death’ head tattoo you got
one day before you shipped out.
You never look at it closely,
instead you collect tin foil wrappers
from under chrome bumpers
to stage your lavish midway spectacle.
Next time I saw you, same as before,
You had long since confessed to eating flesh
it was the color of the rouge on faces
of women who claimed to love you.
Your eyes, also red, both of us knowing,
the hand really is quicker than the eye.
We’re so wary of the moves it takes
to heal scar tissue from wounds in the corridor.
And I rifle through the boxes you left
to slip further along the empty aisles.
Michael Igoe is a great poet from Boston.
His website is https://poetryinmotion416254859.wordpress.com/
You can find him on twitter: @MichaelIgoe5
Too frail, too timeworn, so
on my wedding day I came to her
overdressed in the day room, I looked
in aged faces to no avail
then, a chuckle, and there
under a clock, she sat
I kneeled before her
letting soundless seconds fall between us
the change in her jarring
impossible to reconcile to
my bedside locker photograph
a stranger before her
I took her hand and
she let me
her skin, gossamer over tiny bird bones
I looked into her eyes, once fire
now ash
“I’m getting married today”
“That’s nice”
lifetimes before, she took the world by the tail
and squeezed
and shook
to our family of land dwellers
she blazed across the heavens
she was the child of Icarus and Earhart
she was mountainside heather
she was paddle boats and big band jazz
she was a wave on Mirror Lake
before
in the now we hold hands
and do not speak
I gaze into her eyes
eyes that saw it all and
I find her, I find her
“I know you”
“I’m getting married today”
“You are?”
“I am”
“Do I know her?”
“Not yet”
“I was married once”
“I know”
“Let yourself be happy”
“I will try”
“I know you”
I feel her squeeze my hand
I look down and see a map
liver spot countries once explored
I look back up to find her
leaning in conspiratorially
whispering, just in case
“sometimes men come to my room during the night”
“do they?”
“they do, they come to my window”
“is that right?”
“it is, I tell the staff but…
…they do not believe me”
“will I tell them?”
“oh no, sometimes I leave the window open”
she winks and cackles
and the day room silence is gone
a startled flock of birds
“Shut up Thrush!”, says another elderly lady
“I will not shut up!”
she smiles at me and I watch
as the stardust falls from her eyes
and her hand grows limp in mine
and she is gone
Previously published in, ‘Of Thunder, Pearls and Birdsong’, by Fowlpox Press, available here
–
https://www.peecho.com/checkout/14586524308808136/417032/ofthunderpearlsandbirdsong
His website can be found at: https://stevedenehan.wixsite.com/website
check out Steve’s book available on Cajun Mutt Press (available on Amazon)
An amazing writer, Poet, and seems like a nice guy!
*stardust photo by David Babayan on Unsplash.com*
