Posts for June 16, 2025 (page 12)

Mike Wilson

Category

Poem

6/16/25

Watching the Parade

A shot of adrenalin, 3 a.m.
I stew for hours in the dark,
brain squeezing wrath into a rock.

Humanity’s feet swing helplessly
in the gallows of my chest.

I’m overcome by spectacle,
a unified world split in two
with a bloody axe of lies.

Goldie

Category

Poem

6/16/25

shrill farrows of Mary thrumming the frail Spanish moss

His nails were the sallowing thickness of furze, like

beaver teeth curled through the throat of the Gila, like

sagescrub lolled to obscure or assort all the

flyaway rays of the sun to a fishtail

braid—his hair, left the umber of bone spurs,

plumbing up mole-gnawed, cinnabar, sixty-grit

skin; all his thumbprints, scrofulous

tangrams, testing the restless

wit of a pitiless Percival, groping

a skull back together with

knock-kneed floss and wry-

necked safety-pins, hesitant

spittle and Gojo, going the way of the

blue-footed booby caught dusting the

bladder-fat stars from boat-choked Biscayne Bay, bent,

whispering, gruff as a besom beats back the untidied,

crepitant tides, shrill farrows of Mary debrided

from what was the firmament mostly, now, but

chilblained toast come penitent dinner time; yet,

my grandfather muttered like

Pooh Bear lost on the lam

in downtown Dothan, wore

all his shirts to unspeakable

softness, cradled two jawless

chihuahuas wherever he strode,

and sang little songs about toddling

song birds—spends his days now

testing the tensile limits of live oaks,

minding a pile of anvils swaddled in half-

sloughed Spanish moss and an unkinked

Kentucky rifle his

forebears swore

had belonged

to Daniel

Boone

once—Danny

still out there

somewhere,
somewhere, probing

the border, farther
than any man dares to see,
through trellising moss, all
the way to shrill farrows of
Mary stretched like dew along
toddling
river
rocks

J.E. Barr

Category

Poem

6/16/25

the unsent project

I checked out the site
I typed my name in the search
I hope one’s from you

Arwen

Category

Poem

6/16/25

see the little two flit
and splash, kicking
and flapping and looking
to me like they know
the best thing to do
on a morbid hot day
when everything
presses against you
and you feel time as an
illusion alluding to
your eventual end
and why does it matter
anyway because our hand
basket is gaining speed
is shake it off
in this place together
while I, inside these
pristine walls, wonder
from my window
do they know or
do they even care
(or do they possibly prefer)
it’s dirt?

—————————————————

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

– From To Be of Use by Marge Piercy

Coleman Davis

Category

Poem

6/16/25

Komorebi

The way light filters through trees

the way small yellow-star-flower

reaches out to say hello. Grabs you

by the corner of your eye –snaps–

your head around like it’s a wrestler

trying out a move from top rope. But

it’s just a flower.

The way a shadow slithers along

the exposed trunk of an uprooted

dead cedar like a copperhead

hunting a vole when it hasn’t eaten

since the dusted Virginia Pines gave

up their old man-walking-in-park

disguise and shook off snow

in wind to explode into spring. And

it’s only shifting shadow.

The way the sky spins a whistle

right above the canopy treetops

from between the feathers of a bird

the size of a small hog that has been

watching you from it’s nest of limbs,

and bleached rabbit bones halfway up

the lichen covered vertical rockface

when the sky is breathing.

H.A.

Category

Poem

6/16/25

June is a Shadow

this June

is unlike

any

June known before

it is a forgotten collection of snapshots

buried deep underground

in cold damp soil

dig carefully,

you could fall in yourself

and become the shadow of (this) June

lost

to all time

recorded history

and beloved memory

don’t strike a match

light a candle

everything we know

is sure to burn if you do

keep quiet & sit tight

become the silhouette we know:

soft

starry

night

this June is a shadow

gripping the edge of May

growing

and

before

July

and likely

eclipsing

August, too.

this June is a shadow

the cover of night

where assassins make haste

resistance takes root

and the darkness ignites

becoming the torch

connecting shadows in

blinding

burning

light.

Carrie Elam Spillman

Category

Poem

6/16/25

In bloom

Powdered with color
The meadow is in bloom
From the path we are happily engulfed
by red, blue, yellow flowers
swallowing us whole
smothered by fresh dirt, roots, the tiny ungrown bulbs of wild tulips
Next spring well be pushed back out
Growing from the mouth of the earth
strong and wild
beautiful and pure
Our lungs will scream life into the mountain air
our welcomed infancy

Bill Brymer

Category

Poem

6/16/25

Father’s Day

Flies land on raw hamburger meat,
my daughter sees before I can wave them away
says her appetite’s ruined, the heat
I explain will kill any germs, it’s too late,
her mind has hardened.

Grey tower of grill smoke
a message to the neighborhood
I’m lazy about the little things.
Garden hose left out in a looping line.
A pile of trimmed branches
from the hedge between houses
sits in the drive, a mound the dog walks up to,
pees on.

I’ve forgotten to start steaming
the asparagus and the burgers are done,
we’ll be eating in stages, one course
at a time. Daughter wants cereal,
will I go to the store and get some?

You’ve got to be kidding.

Oh, but, just look at that face,
how it mimics in certain light
the one that surprises me most,
and the one I love best.

The father-daughter dance begins:
how much damage by giving in?