CRAP WEATHER, CRAP COUNTRY, NO EGGS By Susan Isla Tepper

Frilly apron, pastel oven mitts

life a stinking pile of onions

set on the counter to rot—

Such is my incentive to cook:

boil a bag of noodles

sprinkle on the grated cheese.

Voila.

If the plates are pretty in design

will you notice I’ve scaled back?

Kitchen windows north facing

have frost-bite—

Using my fingernail

I scrape a heart anyway.

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty year writer and the author of 12 published books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent novel “Hair of a Fallen Angel” was released by Spuyten Duyil, NYC in early October. Check out the Official Video for this book on YouTube 

link: https://youtu.be/W2HVIc4NrqYriter 

Tepper has also written 5 Stage Plays. www.susantepper.com

Sunday Morning By Jake St. John

The sun 

spills sideways 

through living room blinds 

falls between dust 

and morning air 

across the carpet.

My coffee 

has gone cold 

again 

and I can't recall 

the last time 

I cared.

Waiting 

for a phone 

that never rings 

in the hum of silence

the world 

runs its course.

A broken radio 

plays our song 

in the echo 

of an empty room.

Jake St. John lives in the woods on the edge of the Salmon River. He is the author of several collections of poetry including Lips Leave Scars (with Jenn Knickerbocker, Whiskey City Press, 2023) Ring of Fog (Holy and Intoxicated Publications, 2022), Night Full of Diamonds (Whiskey City Press, 2021), and Lost City Highway (A Jabber Publication, 2019). He is the editor of Elephant and is considered an original member of the New London School of poetry. His poems have appeared in print and online journals around the world."

In Silence By Manny Grimaldi

I feel you closer than ever / and I don’t want to talk.

 —Marin Bodakov

With you, my self’s self

on sleepy terraces built 

in elm’s moss spying the spheres

all, enough to adore, enough 

to weep, newborn insects gasping at the fog.

Welcome to my city, her ways and alleys

twist constant surprise—long bar room hours,

the persistence of sewer winds,

and free books in wood-glass huts on church corners.

Instead of making love the first time in the truck,

we banter when I say perhaps we should wait,

and in your vanity you become indignant

and nearly write me off.

We’ve something unsaid.

We have different ideas.

We don’t speak. 

We think of each other until Wednesday.

Manny Grimaldi is a Kentucky writer, author of Riding Shotgun with the Shotgun, and Ex Libris Ioannes Cerva. His website is mannygrimaldi.mypixieset.com .  

We Find Ourselves in Dreamtown By Trish Saunders

The rules are clear: You have 20 minutes. Use them. 

Forget the talking man behind you on television

hawking sleep aids. Much better to remember

 past afternoons walking under tall pines 

and the crunch of dead bees under your feet. 

If a hawk’s shadow flies across the wall,

that doesn’t mean the raptor is actually in here. 

The dream, which you won’t remember, features

a long-dead appaloosa mare calling to you 

across the pasture. Think how you will respond. 

Have your answer ready, just in case. 

 

Trish Saunders's poems have been featured or are forthcoming in The Rye Whiskey Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Right Hand Pointing, Eunoia Review, Chiron Review, among others. She lives in Seattle, formerly in Honolulu. 

TRAPPED IN MANUFACTURED TIME By Strider Marcus Jones

so lost schooled-

but not a fool,

stands in cold sunshine

on golden heath

where no kings’ rule

and ancestors of cottons thief,

make poor ends meet for dirty dime-

trapped in manufactured time.

he sits

and fits

in the shadows of its shades

and lines

on Cribden hill- 

where clouds spill

like wire brillowed blinds,

imagining a wintered witch

composing pagan spells and rhymes

with bones like martyred blades,

whose burned marrow curses

industrialists and tokened slaves-

to believe a full purse is

how life measures made.

the trees are gone,

and wandering tribes,

who worked and gathered everything as one-

now live down in gas warmed hives,

in settled serfdom's

truths and lies.

Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.  

His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine;The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.

Holes By Susan Isla Tepper

There are men can make you sweat

bullets but can’t make you cry

can’t tamp out the soft side

lying in your chest this pillow

it wants to be rocked

between your knees

wants to be stroked from

the inside out—

Those men who pile drive you

after will forget, like holes

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty year writer and the author of 12 published books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent novel “Hair of a Fallen Angel” was released by Spuyten Duyil, NYC in early October. Check out the Official Video for this book on YouTube link: https://youtu.be/W2HVIc4NrqYriter 

Tepper has also written 5 Stage Plays. www.susantepper.com

Twelve Windows By Susan Isla Tepper

You skip out for years—

What is the price for mercy

I ask myself, repeatedly

 

I bought a large billowing

fern for the sun porch where

we spent our days discussing 

the family—

its whys and wherefores.

 

The plant keeps me company now.

I thought we’d made our peace

there— sun slanting in through

twelve windows.

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty year writer and the author of 12 published books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent novel “Hair of a Fallen Angel” was released by Spuyten Duyil, NYC in early October. Check out the Official Video for this book on YouTube link: https://youtu.be/W2HVIc4NrqYriter 

Tepper has also written 5 Stage Plays. www.susantepper.com