Poetry

Silver Begets Bronze

Poetry

By Cody Claassen 

Silver begets Bronze

just as mother births child;

a cycle continues,

staying the same and yet changing everything.

Whimsical fantasy shifts into gritty noir

that taint everything with a realism

not yet experienced in this day and age.

A legacy is dirtied, a hero dissloved,

and respect for the future

becomes preposterous.

A beacon emerges

flooding existence with its emerald, ethereal glow

and thunderous lightening applauds its coming

Icons from the past usurp the darkness

that simplicity and innocence still have a place.

Heroes made, Heroes, died, and Heroes reborn

Forever a cycle of continuity.

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Nestled in the Crook

Poetry

By Marike Stucky

She listens for his motions, attentively,

but does not hear for the blare of the television.

It’s switched on

the couch

she’s nestled in the crook.

As a little girl

I listened closely as well,

but now I have seen

the things that men can do.

I feel the fear

that salted her trembling lips.

I only wanted someone to love, she tells me.

Can I climb my way out?

The voice-over keeping on

from the television

blares.

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Backfired

Poetry

By Jocelyn Wilkinson

Backfired
We have some problems
Real life, fucked up, serious ones.

Actually, fucking tons.

Is it our culture?
Is it our government?
Is it our military?
Seriously, what is it?
Because I don’t understand.
My mind is incapable of comprehension
I can find no sense.

The killing, the innocent,
Death doesn’t ruin only the defiled.
Hitting that point,
it ruins society.

Perhaps we encourage it.
Or maybe we just don’t challenge it.
We live, expecting shit to fix itself.

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Sugar Ants

Poetry

 By Kaitlin Schmidt

It occurred to me today, (so long ago)
that you are a bit like the sugar ants that
crawl across my grandmother’s kitchen counter.
Let me tell you about them.

She never could keep them out.

During the dry months
when the heat breeds heavy hopelessness in the air,
the ants scuttle in to escape it.
In, in, in from the house’s every seam
from between the blonde trim and the wall
from behind a loose outlet cover
easiest of all, from a windowsill.
They have no mass no limits nothing slows them.
They are minute dots, black wisps in my vision as they explore
the cool white porcelain sink. They like it there, I think.

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Psychic Respiration

Poetry

By Andrew Unruh

A burned out light in the sky,
its life-spark lost to the aether,
throws shade across its hollow-eyed
desolation tenement lodgers…

Telephone wires above are sizzling like a snare
smoking in the supernatural darkness,
floating across the tops of cities
reproducing flowers of green-gold, red-gold and fire…

The cinders of psychic respiration flow on
within you and without you, as we lay
by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.

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Leaving Home

Poetry

By Miranda Weaver

I am standing, trembling

at the edge of all my dreams

the dawn of new and promising things

glaring and shimmering across the abyss

I am not afraid of falling- no!

I am afraid of what I’m leaving behind

of breaking with this familiar, beloved ground

So many memories born in this warm earth

But the enchanting, beckoning blue above

calls to me with its freedom

its freshness, its mystery

And my heart is answering

urging me on to this last step in my safe, known place

I will leap! I will spread wings I knew not of, burn with fire I knew not I had

soar in joyful wheels at heights I thought unattainable

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Chain Reaction

Poetry

By Jocelyn Wilkinson

A brush, a swipe, a breath

I feel you against my neck

I can’t find you though.

Where did you go?

Hand flings through the air—I’m growing up to you.

You were just there

But now you’re gone.

Where did you go?

There

    There

        There

I see you but can’t get you

Try catching up, you’re gone.

Where are you going?

Stop

Stop

STOP

Please I said stop

Just slow down so I can catch you

I can feel you—I’m almost big enough for you—just slow down.

Where are you going?

My body is

    B     U     R     S     T     I     N    G

trying to find, meet, understand you

Can’t you see I’m trying?

Why are you going?

Oh there you are…

                             Almost…

I missed you again—bigger, bigger—slipped from my hands.

Why are you going?

You stopped…but…you were going somewhere…

You couldn’t have stopped for me—I shrink, I’m normal.

Why did you stop?

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Slumbering Giant

Poetry

By Jordan Esely-Kohlman

A granite-tinged
violet fog enshrouds
my brainstem. I become
a tepid traveler, shuffling
and sore. Lantern’s light,
snagging on a million little dew impedances,
unspools into thick threads
of every single color.
Streamers barely billowing, celebrating
existence and the gaps
that permeate it (the exact
coordinates where red becomes
orange becomes yellow…)
Brushing angel hair from my
face, every movement
a bruising moment; I begin
to become color. My blood
brings all my auras to the surface,
making it easier for them to diffuse
through thick skin and
evaporate. So yes,
it is deflation–—a harmless
loss of self–—But more so it is
integration,
time stitched seamless into passages through spectrums.

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Centrifuge in Motion

Poetry

 By Anthony Gonzalez

In the weeds I
Felt the grasses I
Felt the rushes under my
Earthen toes
Sooty feet

I felt the lashes
Of concrete patches
Upon crusted fingertips
Plastered
In the midday dewy lens
Of christened sapphiric
Blooms

If forgotten I
Grow molden and I
Shift to dust and suffer
The rust of hinges
In the seasalt air
Molasses thick tears
Of mineral remains
Sticks of carbon
Fretting in
The dirt

Ill begotten I
Give passage to
The sun above though
Powerless to say
Otherwise

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Haiku Quartet

Poetry

By Andrew Unruh

I.
A southern Kansas wind…
My favorite friend,
I wonder where she lives now?

II.
Bare sycamore branch—
Laughter pervades the air,
Leaves fly

III.
Deep spring’s blue hour
Movement through an alleyway
One dog’s lone bark

IV.
Early morning’s lavender mist
The ever-recoiling shore
A baying hound