Perfect Circle

By Marc Janssen

Posted on

After “What Goes Around” by G. E. Stinson

Drop a pebble into the water
Snap your finger, cry your name
And the circle
The perfect circle slowly leaves
The perfect circle raggedly finds.

One day waves click drums and hammers
One day waves will reach the shore
And the circle
Goes around
It comes around
It goes around once more.

Light a candle in the darkness
Somewhere someone finds a door.
You can will the rain into a stream,
Cry your words into the sky and floor.
You are the only one who hears
You are the only one who reads.

I can feel the water on my feet
The same as yesterday and last year,
Water of this river, of this sea
I can tell you I’ve have been here before
And have never been here before

You speak
The world turns around
I speak
The world turns around
Words turn into water
Streams run across the sky
And return to the sea
You speak and the words return to me.… ...continue reading

Tanner

By Mitchell Warnken

Posted on

He offered me a free bottle
Cheap red.
Left on his porch
Late in the evening.

No strings attached.
He worked for the wine company,
Or maybe a bar.

We wouldn’t have to meet
Face to face.
He would never know my
Name.
And I,
His.… ...continue reading

The Stone

By Kjetil Jansen

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Pacing my living room at 0617 while my phone was charging, I told my left knee to not act up. This was and had long been the day, a mental red circle around the last Sunday of April. My first real walk without crutches, a taste of what had been and will be again.

I decided to be bold and head for the base of Ulriken Mountain. Forty minutes at the most. Almost no nature involved, only streets and a four-hundred-yard stretch of rough and stony path turning steep at the end. Four years ago, I did another street walk on an early Sunday morning. The city of Bergen, Norway sleeps in on weekends and I was walking through deserted streets thinking about this desertion: even the dog-owners are getting lazy, when I felt something was wrong in a deep way I seldom feel.… ...continue reading

Silence

By Brenden Layte

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They told her she couldn’t enter a conversation or a relationship or a room without stepping slowly, without nervously reaching into the darkness and feeling around for something to anchor her. They told her that it wasn’t that she was careful. Being careful made sense. They told her it was because she was afraid. And maybe they were right. Maybe it was fear. Maybe she’d just been telling herself it was smart—logical even—that just about everything made her feel terrified: an eager smile from someone she only kind of knew, a call she wasn’t expecting, an awkward moment or mistake or regret from the past that she was reliving again. Everything made her head feel so loud, so full of voices that she only faintly recognized, all arguing and shaming her until they were all she could hear.… ...continue reading

Once

By Lynn D. Gilbert

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walking down a new street
at night, I lost a poem.
Drizzle beaded on lampposts;
mist circled the bare bulbs
suspended like electric moons.
Silent houses crouched together,
warmed by glowing porch lights.
An airplane disappeared
behind cloud smudges;
dripping elms flanked
the yellow “No Outlet” sign.
In the sodden dark,
the vast alone had shrunk
to one block, one house
on a leaf-wet street
where someone once lived.

– Lynn D. Gilbert

Author’s Note: This poem started out with losing a poem I was writing and ended up by losing myself.


...continue reading

I wish I could live in a soap sud

By Sandy Yang

Posted on

I wish I could live in a soap sud
And swirl in the off-white basin
Lit above by three bulbs:
Two warm and one broken
I would rise and fall and ride the thin film of water
Buoyed in a kaleidoscope of colors
But there’s a tremor in the delicate walls
Because a voice booms behind me
化学的东西不是好的
My own, much quieter
You’re wasting time
So I turn on the faucet
And let the stream of water drown them out
Once again I reach for the iridescent pink liquid soap
1-2-3-4-5
Once again I reach for the iridescent pink liquid soap
1-2-3-4-5
Once again I reach for the iridescent pink liquid soap
1-2-3-4-5
Then I dry my hands on my pink washcloth
Before retreating to my room with its pink curtains
Where I sit criss cross applesauce to confront
The piles of paper on the unforgiving porcelain floor
Is this how Psyche felt while sorting seeds?… ...continue reading