Annmarie Lockhart, editor of vox poetica, has been reading and writing poetry since she could read and write. A lifelong Bergen County resident, she lives two miles from the hospital
where she was born.
Emily Ramser is a high school author living part time in North Carolina and California. She has had work published in a small school anthology and in online literary magazines such as The Crocodile Journal and Spinozablue. Emily works with Stage of Life as a featured blogger and on the team of a local magazine based at Living Word Church. She wishes to be published so that she might touch the world with her words. Visit her blog.
anger By Emily Ramser anger bolting rushing slamming against the door, rattling, rattling, doorknob broken dangling dangling // one wire // hand // left holding on circle in the wood // passage to the stars
the anger steals thieving hands, thriving in a world of deceit our hands reaching down save us from anger they beg
Greg Wood is a retired English teacher and coach who has lived for 66 years in Delmar DE/MD on the Delmarva Peninsula. He has also worked in the construction industry in steel fabrication and home building. He earned a BA and an MEd from Salisbury University, Salisbury MD. Greg has 3 sons, 7 grandchildren, and one newly minted great grandchild. Visit his blog.
Bored Hearts By Greg Wood Shuffle and flip and shuffle again I press my card at your side of The table and look for a response In diamonds so that I can dump On you A queen You are most slick and grin And shove a spade my way Digging that having a long Run I Cannot escape I wish I could club you
John Swain lives in Louisville KY. His work has appeared recently at BluePrint Review, Red Fez, and Up the Staircase Quarterly.
A Chance Will Tell By John Swain Lace of white sycamores stripped in passage as rain took rust off nails that boarded the old house from staying as the river rose to the hill in a bliss of turbulence. The stacks and tower held blue fire like an acrid sky of vertical water as I then twisted my limbs to let down from the wooden fencing where a chance will tell. I looked to the abandoned for the secret of escape.
William Ryan Hilary has had poems published in Junk, 40oz Bachelors, The Wilderness Review, and Aquirelle's print anthology, Poets Amongst Us III. His prose has been published in The Midway Review. Bless them all for having him. Ryan studied English at Vassar, where he was accepted into the competitive Senior Composition program. In other words, he was allowed to submit creative writing instead of a real thesis. Somehow this Ryan chap also earned an MA from Union Theological Seminary in philosophy and theology. Ryan will always feel uncomfortable writing about himself in the third person ... Mr. Torrance. He will use humor to distract from his madness.
Invocation By William Ryan Hilary
Amuse me!
Nothing is as nothing was Now emptiness is and blindness And all the spaces And all those "things" forgotten Or unheard are Suddenly important.
This will be the hour of something. The clamorous grief of a dead slave's voice Rising to an orchestral, bitter peak.
I was their familiar stranger Sailing the poet's night tyreme Drifting the surface of the salty universe While waiting for the Son to come up.
As the ancients invoked their gods I invoked the abandoned dead Indians, slaves, martyred women.
In the distant clamor I sang Through an unanticipated storm.
Nicole Yurcaba's most recent poem to appear here was Midnight Thoughts (April 2012).
Parallax By Nicole Yurcaba ... and I had imagined that, hand in hand we would walk the gravel hill's incline, cowering from peering passers-by gazes. threatening to assume more than half of what they saw.
John De Herrera is a writer/artist/activist who lives and works in Santa Barbara SC. Visit his website.
Go Through This By John De Herrera It's all about moving mountains; crisp jabs when your arms are tired; budging a boulder when it seems so set.
And then, you have a dream with a cat— A Siamese, as a matter of fact. You look up from this and see twins, with fins, skating across ice chips of a galaxy and think how much happier you'd be if you didn't have to go through this, fighting your way to a kiss.
Amy Huffman's most recent poem to appear here was Diversity Rules (February 2011).
[E]Motional Vacancies By Amy Huffman
I watch you in the mirror. Hoping our eyes will meet. In reflection, we appear nearer than we actually are. Objects and objections distorting. Until we are scaled to fit neatly inside each other['s lives]. A perception of connection hovers at the edge of distance. Is that really so far to fall? I remember you in a different frame: closer but still closed. But which is rationality? Conception is the final goal of futility. Bursting [with] dreams, I blink and the instant is gone. You are intervisioned with another scape[goat]. I shepherd myself back to sanity. Tomorrow will beget another chance at granting intimacy. Though by image or imagery still waits to be answered.
William C Ross' most recent poem to appear here was Another View (April 2012).
Impractical Beauty By William C Ross On rare days in spring and fall, when he was working in the fields, she stole an hour away from the washboard and churn, and planted bulbs and seeds in the unpromising ground.
Nothing would come of the effort that could be eaten or sold, nothing that the children could wear. They were merely rows of impractical beauty.
Daffodils and daisies, snowdrops and snowflowers. Neighbors envied the colors, and soon planted flowers of their own.
Seed after seed, season after season, bulbs surviving against all reason. Withering heat and winter's snow could not force death on the life below.
All the houses are gone now. And the families that lived there. Only a rough stone chimney stands, a silent sentinel in the empty miles where a strip mall lurks on the horizon, and morning glory vines climb the sunflower stalks along the old rows of impractical beauty.