Poetry by HilLesha O’Nan : “Small Town Hearts” “Two Wolves” & “Living with the Mirrors”

Map, Postcard, Greeting, Birthday
Small Town Hearts

We have tonight and it is ours Savor it for it’s only one night i’m yours We laugh We reminisce As “Don’t Stop Believin” Plays on the radio this song is a joke and the rhythm is all wrong but our small town hearts collide in this lonely world But don’t worry We have each other for tonight I turn my head and a single tear drop rolls down I wish I could love you the way I love him I wish you could love me the way you love her that’s the funny thing why do we love those who don’t want us When we can have each other Tomorrow, we’ll adore those who ignore us What a joke! And like the song We’ve got the rhythm all wrong At least the melody is beautiful but complicated like us

Two Wolves 

Two wolves came to me            
in a dream One good One bad Who shall I feed today? 

Living with the Mirrors

She stares at her reflection in the mirror Barely recognizing the woman staring back at her. Thinning hair Time worn skin Her beauty has faded gradually over the years like a faded rose petal dried and pressed in the pages of a book long forgotten. Her memories are no different Shattered fragments Sharp and dull Scattered like broken glass. She then hears music playing in the distance “On a dark desert highway Cool wind in my hair Warm smell of colitas, Rising up through the air” A faint smile crosses her lips To a memory that croons inside her soul She sways to the music and drifts to a time lost, yet not completely forgotten Young, naive, and in love with love and a childish notion that time was limitless.

Bio:HilLesha O’Nan is a blogger, writer, photographer & marketer. She is co-editor/founder of Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art. She runs the blog tothemotherhood.com for over 15 years

Poem by David L O’Nan : “Valen, Mocky, Georgie, Johnny Happy”

Valen, Mocky, Georgie, Johnny Happy

We remember back to years we knew them all,
Valen, Mocky, Georgie, Johnny Happy and the paper dolls.
The misfits from the hills.
The hicks from the razor-sharp streets,
The change from Brown to Green,
once the storm bleached out the heat.
Taking in all the sensations of the awakening.

They were prisoners, weak to death
Strong in mind, 
yet always quaking in a shiver.
In the cold house of steel,
Those who danced, those who'd construct, Deconstruct,
shatter, and then wilt.

We knew all that was beginning to change.

They will be colored in fevers
They will have burning coals in their chests
They will battle their wars tight in a jar
They can die in silence,
or as the night becomes berserk.
They will continue to find the distance,
from their wives and children.

Oh, we are all getting older
White hairs crawling from each of us -
like wild mice to cheese
Those that'll chew holes through our shoes.

The boys and the mannequin stares,
the Danny O'Day doll's eyes, 
a novelty we all are.
Living in the nightmares of grapevines, barbwire
for the butchers.
Friends from childhood to distant shadows -
absorbed into delusions.

We used to be tender, family, unbound, and free. Asleep
allowed to leave the trenches.
Gifted, wrapped as a holiday present - Away
from all the borders.
They choked us from power.

One by one a new demise.
Thwarted in the dust.
Fighting the skeleton inside.
And the memory pops like bubble wrap.  Little
green wings of fire now tipsy and burst.
Drunk and tiresome.
Woozy, scared as they remove our food.
The heart lives on like a patch.
How long will you feel my love?

All of this bleeding becomes  breezy
Like an infinite painting of crimson wind,
still framed and lost is our revolution.
They will carry us out
like stuffed animals taking too much room. Evict
the mites, so what is left can breathe.
The riots yell sounds soft in a madman's dream.


Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog. 

Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today! 

Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren 

Bare Bones Writings Issue 1 is out on Paperback and Kindle







3 poems by Jennifer Patino : “Postcard” “the Thaw” & “Watching Rosemary’s baby at 6 AM”

Postcard, Letters, Antique, Old, Vintage

Postcard

There is no
resolution
or solution
when a ghost
hops time zones

You wrote, "I'm all alone,
but the beauty
of the afterlife
is that everything
is automatic,
and nothing
is problematic
anymore."

A glossy photo
of a golden shore
with angelic scrawl,
in my head,
your voice,
a heavenly southern drawl

Impossibilities
were always
your specialty,
and I'm sorry
I can't reply
                            
                    "You never said
goodbye,"

There is no
return address
for loneliness,
no messenger
to throw
a harpoon through,
only a wind chime,
maybe white noise,
a smoke signal,
to let me know it's from you

The Thaw

sadness serenades
from the rooftops,
slick, post-slush,
kiss goodbye
the winter sky

footsteps fill
with floods,
and I pray
you aren't
swept away

I smell daffodils
already, sweet
scented frills,
man-planted landscape

in this dry desert,
the sage, tough
with age, the rolling
tumbleweed;
I long for hills

but I'm in the valley,
in the weeping of
a decade not enough
to fill these
reservoirs

we've made this land
a piece of ours, at least
in where we've lived
and tread,
where we've rested
our jaded heads

sing softly for the thaw,
the melting, the new
moon season arriving,
for thirsty shrubs
that soon
will be thriving

Watching Rosemary's Baby at 6 AM

1.

Mia sits like a china cup
chipping away at French
manicured nails
Wild printed woman, 30
years her senior,
speaks with a table shaking
voice

2.

it's serene
here
underwater,
familiar scene

wait,
i'm the red clad lamb
being led to slaughter

time ticks,
i reminisce,
what did they give me?

3.

polished & forgiven,
too yellow morning
awakening

accusation lingers on the 
skin,
marked & bitten

tea bag evidence
an open window invitation


Bio: Jennifer Patino is an Ojibwe poet from Detroit, Michigan currently residing in Las Vegas, Nevada. She lives for books and film. She has had work featured in Door is A Jar, Punk Noir Magazine, The Chamber Magazine, Free Verse Revolution Lit, and elsewhere. She blogs at www.thistlethoughts.com. 

Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Jennifer Patino



4 poems by Kushal Poddar : “Kosher Meat” “Metallic Sea” “Full Moon, Springtime 2021″”Crimson Comes the Gloaming”

Kosher Meat

Today, Tim's birthday, and he slips
down slope of the slippery sanity.
Each word indicates,
he is yet to claw through his sleep

fearing he may see the father he despised
in the antique looking glass near his bed's feet.

An alarm set guts time.
All kosher, salt and pepper sun
burns his skin.

Tim's chickens hatch some one-winged birds.
Feathers choke the wind.
Happy Birthday, he croons while bleeding
one old cock. It quivers as if its body is
the old telegraph lines and death is tapping and SOS.

Metallic Sea
Because that first puff in the morning
still tastes like the Sea-and-metal/
- Rick C. Christensen

I stroll down beach, and my toes
poke through their sandal-shells,
and with their dull and broad nails
I dig up sand's settlement of memory;
It bores me after a jiffy, and I near
the brine light of the morning;
light never belongs to its origine.
Mist sheds the sun, and yet
luminosity sways, wades, stands still
when you close your eyes and imagine
it as a painting - proud and shy with its nakedness.
As if sea has released the light.
Sometimes I walk into the sea
to see if I do not belong to this earthliness,
as if by perishing my flesh I can prove
imperishability, and sometimes, like today,
I see the repetition unworthy. So I drink
the nearest kiosk and gossip
about the ocean level leveling down
the tiny town once made for the tourists.
No one can recall reason for its birth.
You too cannot remember yours, can you?

Full Moon, Springtime 2021
The reflection of the moon at its peak
looks like a before & after photography,
not a pair of fake shots used for selling something,
but one real you stumble upon in a Spring cleaning.

The water seems more smoke and less mirror
one moment, and more mirror and less smoke the next.
Anyways, you would have thought the scene fake,
and yet loved to show the same to your best friend.
You cannot do so in the virus outbreak,
but that doesn't explain why you do not call him,
why sometimes coming out and staring at the lake
is the only thing you do other than washing hands.

Crimson Comes the Gloaming
This means the nightmares
are 3D printed outside,
and my id

empty, the way, if you remember,
our local pub looks like
during the plague quarantine,

waits for angels to seek refuge in the serene hell.

Note to self, stuck on the door
of our whining and rasping refrigerator:

"Don't forget not to wake up!"


Bio: An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, edited a magazine - ‘Words Surfacing’, authored seven volumes including ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, 'A Place For Your Ghost Animals', 'Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems' and 'Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel'. His works have been translated in ten languages. Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
AuthorFacebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

Wolfpack Contributor: Kushal Poddar

Poetry Showcase from Kushal Poddar

A Poetry Series by Kushal Poddar “Hiraeth Series”

Poem “Swallow the Night” by Ryan Flett

Swallow the Night

Full moon tonight has
chased away
the clouds from the sky,
and the stars above
twinkle
in the water below.

I cup a handful of
stars and
bring it to my lips,
swallowing them whole
hoping
I'll shine just as brightly.


Bio: Ryan has been writing poetry since about 2019. Some of Ryan's favorite poets are Mary Oliver, Charles Wright, and Charles Bukowski. He currently work as a registered nurse and as a programmer at a small video game company a friend and his founded this year. Writing has always been a passion of his, and he has found poetry is the ideal way for me to express myself. Ryan has had some work published in Eve Poetry Magazine, but primarily post his work to Twitter (@ryanwritespoems). Ryan is currently working on my first chapbook. Ryan lives in Oregon and is a Pacific Northwest native.