AN OLD GRAVEYARD IN THE WOODS

   by John Grey

 

Many stones, most fallen, buried in weeds,

so worn by time and weather,

there’s barely a trace of who is buried beneath,

when they lived, when they died,

 

their husbands, wives, children.

The carvings are in many shapes.

Some are broken. Most remain intact.

No mourners come here.

 

It’s as peaceful as a meadow.

Such blissful anonymity.

Such a gentle crumbling below.

Such an earth making room for all of us.

 

Bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Sheepshead Review. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and California Quarterly..

 

 

 

 

It all comes down to this in the end, baby—

  by Robert Beveridge

Down a shot in a dingy
bar in Aspinwall, write
poems on paper napkins
that tear and smear when wet
Christ, Chaucer couldn't've
even finished the Wife
of Bath's Tale on a blackglass
scarred bar like this one

 

Bio: Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry on unceded Mingo land (Akron, OH). Recent/upcoming appearances in Breathe, Playlist of the Damned, and Linked Verse, among others.

 

 

 

NIGHTMARE STRUGGLE 

      by Diane Webster

Lying on my back in bed 

struggling 

to move my hand 

to turn my head 

to mutter a sound; 

my ears would alert 

my brain to open my eyes 

to stop this dream of hands 

scrabbling over my body 

like a boy poking a stick 

against a cat’s carcass 

to make sure it was dead 

when all it wanted was to move enough 

to be taken home to a soft bed 

and warm milk and a soothing hand 

to pet its matted fur 

like finally I jerk awake 

in a midnight-telephone-ring way 

and curl into a fetal ball 

wanting sleep but my ears alert 

to every settling creak and pop 

or imagined step on the carpet. 

 

Bio: Diane Webster's work has appeared in Verdad, North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review and other literary magazines. She had a micro-chap published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022 and 2023 and was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022.