Four Poems by Doug Tanoury

A Walk on the Moon
I.
I told her many times over
How I watched the lunar landing
In 1969 with my grandfather
On a black and white portable TV
With aluminum foil wrapped
Around its rabbit ear antenna
To improve reception.
I adjusted knobs, re-positioned
Antenna, even reshaped [...]

Six Poems by Judith Skillman

The Skull
You walked up Tabletop Mountain
And found a skull. A coyote, dog,
Or wolf—you are not sure.
Perhaps a deer.  You run
You finger along the teeth:
Canines’ glowing yellowed ivories,
The molars’ compacted surfaces.
Not a single one [...]

Four Poems by Del Corey

Lifetime of Winters
Oh, there were winters when I tucked
my eternity under my mattress,
but I wore its secret powers like body armor,
when speeding and reeling and hurtling
my youth upon unforgiving ice,
or flinging my future down
mountains with [...]

The Hero That I Know

I believed in you today,
in what you battle.
With admiration I observed your appearance
after you returned from the long combat.
I believed in myself when I looked at you. 
Gazing into your privileged soul
made me forget the prolonged [...]

Through Molasses

Through sticky, thick molasses, he dragged his spirit
Up from the depths of desired death
To the surface strands by the watery shores
Where she hiccupped from too much crying
Over a man she once thought of as her lover.
Anger over the loss of what she did [...]

Medusa’s Mariachi Band – Live from Hazleton, Pennsylvania

A Poem of Immigration
by Maria Jacketti
Invocation
 
Come, Clio, history’s doyenne,
nun of Alexandria, tabloid-scroll of truth.
On this mountain of cracked coal,
far from golden ages,
we move closer to the end of the long count,
the new Earth, 
all of [...]

comedy incarnate — Part 5

Joan Forgiving
1.
 
I am agony.
I am fire.
The flames sear
my fleeing flesh.
I am incarnate.
I am pain.
The fires scorch
my thoughts,
then sever them
from my mind.
I am forever . . .
yet I must die;
I want to cease.
I must drive
myself away,
to rid [...]

Poetry’s Constant Mentor

AN INTERVIEW WITH DEL COREY
by Ward Kelley

Del writes:
Del Corey was born Adelbert M. Corey, in West Springfield, Massachusetts, near the banks of the Connecticut River, November 19, 1934. Although this was during the Depression and his family was poor, everyone appeared happy – Del, his one sister, and his four brothers. The [...]

Rod Stroked Survival with a Deadly Hammer

Rebecca fantasized that life was a lottery ticket or a pull of a lever,
that one of the bunch in her pocket was a winner or the slots were a redeemer;
but life itself was not real that was strictly for the mentally insane at the Elgin
Mental Institution.
She gambled her savings away on a riverboat
stuck in mud [...]

Mother, Edith, at 98

Edith, in this nursing home
blinded with macular degeneration,
I come to you with your blurry
eyes, crystal sharp mind,
your countenance of grace−
as yesterday’s winds
I have chosen to consume you
and take you away.
“Oh, where did Jesus disappear
to”, she murmured,
over and over again,
in a low voice
dripping words
like a leaking faucet:
“Oh, there He is my
Angel of the coming.”