Mallards

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A Poem by Richard D. Hartwell

I saw three glinting
Emerald mallards
Dawning through the sky,
Meandering purposefully,
Above the ground fog,
Sadly searching for a
Lost pond in the mist.

I saw a dead mallard
On the way to work today.

Five Sides . . . To Understand[ing]

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A Poem by A.J. Huffman

Is sanity’s coin really the only option?
Flip me
off the edge;
over myself;
into another space . . .

Under construction
is the lie I sew
across my chest.
It fools no one.
They can see the shiny
neon on the collar that labels me: wrong.
And no amount of angel cloth or scrubbing
bubbled bleach can change their stare.
So I taught myself to scale anxiety
like a map. I duck and dive through cracks
in their perception. From behind I am building
a masque for their world. Contorting the eyes
to suit my vision. Still our looks don’t quite click.
(No surprise, I am my own/only locks key).
Which leaves me dangling on the periphery,
trying to decide which clause I should slip
into the stream to carve my version
of a smile into/over/through even the cloud-
iest of eyes.

paging the schneid

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A Poem by Dennis Mahagin

Admitting I know
next to nothing
about getting off
curse of the cosmos yet
your passport photo
does favor

Ezra, with a bit
of Chuck Connors
thrown in (The Rifleman?)
upper lip stiff with flaxen
mustache, arrowhead
soul patch for
the chin.

Thirty years
of position papers
putting down the hoot owl
and pecker wood, brown eyes
a glint hard as struck flint

make a crunching sound
of tough freaking
luck. I only ever
wanted

some feedback, soft
salty lamplight to nudge
me off

this bunker on a bright
sunny day, cinema

jump cut

like lightning in a bottle on a
wet bale of clay … yet here

we are again, frightening
away the Muse, you all
liquored, born

to lose, must be up
to me, make the last

move: gonna board

a Boeing jet, fly to the
Austin beyond all
knowing; get

thee in front

of me,
reflection above
the left tail

spin I’ll suck you
off like hard mint candy
as another cancelled
bell rings.

Snowflake #4

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A Poem by Richard D. Hartwell

My son’s in love with Snowflake #4,
A twister, a dancer, a skater on parade,
A mini-skirted package of pirouettes,
Whirling, twirling, gyrating to the tune,
Just to the left of the Snow Queen in back.
He is watching her, wide-eyed again,
A Disneyland Winter Spectacular.

She decorates his dreamy show,
While he is longing for much more,
Something he does not yet know,
My son’s in love with Snowflake #4.

While all of this was going on,
I just smiled most knowingly,
And open-mouthed I stare and dream,
Recalling early love: red-haired Fairy #3.

But much has changed since ‘fifty-five,
The Happiest Place has grown since then.
So have I, though aging not so nearly well.
My Fairy of reality has become my Queen.
Flirtations now are only memory as I’m
Surrounded by a brace of grands begging
To visit Disney’s Magic Winter Kingdom.

Scented Sonnet

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A Poem by Richard D. Hartwell

Again, encountered you in dream’s repast,
Your visit is for me a nightly balm,
Imbued medicaments for dreams to last,
Until dawn fogs your image with day’s song.

As stars of bethlehem then close at dusk,
I rush headlong t’wards my own audition,
And must again encore my love, and musk
Is scented, envelopes all of my perdition.

Each eve I’m wafted on rose bower’s breeze,
And you and I, with light touch intertwined,
Until you slumber, I caress, and seize
Memories of others audaciously reclined.

Thus unto you my love each night expressed,
Must rising thoughts of others be repressed.

Downstroked

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A Poem by A.J. Huffman

I want to give him this peace
of my mind.
I want to cover him with it.
So that his eyes
as well as his skin
may feel my indifference.
So solid.
He cannot break its reign.
And it’s raining.
Behind his eyes now.
Not mine
as he had planned.
Too bad.
Too late.
Tomorrow he will drown.
Under nothing more
than the weight
of my unforgotten name.