November

         by  John Muro

 

Mud-puddle month, sister to March,

Birthing bogs and fields of frost-salted

Grass, enabling ice to creep into narrow

Streams thin enough to peer through

And reveal a month in want of purpose

And rounding towards decay. Longer

Days of darkness linger, and light

Wraps around itself, as groves of

Birches stand like frail straps of lath

Holding back the thin plaster of new-

Fallen snow and faint wisps of wood-

Smoke are tucked into the folds of low-

Lying clouds. Even the cold harvest

Of constellations is born from a place

Of heart-ache and the astral sign is a

Thing of subterranean shadow, balancing

An abscess of tail like a wood-curl,

Gracelessly bearing this den-littered

Season’s deadly maul of blossom.   

 

Bio:   A life-long resident of Connecticut, John is a graduate of Trinity College, Wesleyan University and the University of Connecticut. His first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published last fall, and it is available on Amazon. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous literary journals, including River Heron, Sheepshead, Moria, Writer Shed, Euonia and the French Literary Review.

 

 

Sunrise admits

         by  Richard Weaver

 

what once was not is becoming less and less. Done shivering it collapses on a convenient tree’s northernmost side, to rest a moment, just a moment’s moment of resting while the stars, free from constellational duties modestly fluff their pillows, and the many and various known planets and astral bodies apply unguents in great thunderstorms of glittering promiscuity. It’s August, and gods wearing speedos are vacationing in alter-native universes. For a moment light is blinded with sight, the fleeting bulge. The overhanging shelfdrop of belly. It blinks and welcomes cool, endless, fashionable darkness, a half-nano second of bliss with a twist of blood orange. Not a shadow notices; they are always the last to wake. Clockwork universal gears grind, double-clutch, as another day lurches forward.

 

Bio:The author volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, CityLit, the Baltimore Book Festival, and was the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Recent pubs: FRIGG, Mad Swirl, Spank the carp, Adelaide, Dead Mule, and Magnolia Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and provided the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005), performed 4 times to date. Recently his 130th {Ir}Rational Narrative, aka prose poem, was published.

 

 

Waking up, reclusively

 

      by Haley Johannesen

 

I can see the problem, but he just keeps pulling it.

Why spend the money on a hutch if, if you are just going to break it

Inside your 2008 Altima. That’s what I always say. God, my throat

 

Is so closed I can’t even eat cheese. Or drink water. Or smoke cigarettes. 

The funny thing was, I felt it before I’d even seen it. It hit me upside the head. 

I felt & felt but all I felt was hair. I looked up, heard it. That’s when I saw my fans

 

Had veins around the base. The bitch bat was in the corner. She’d followed me 

Here from years ago. We met in Iowa, she took my foot. Now she wanted more. 

I let her go. These are fever dreams anyway. 

 

Bio: Haley Johannesen is a high school English teacher living in Iowa City, Iowa. She lives with her husband and two cats. She enjoys reading, writing, and baking. Her favorite book of 2021 is Agatha of Little Neon by Claire Luchette.