Scott Thomas Outlar- A Poem

To and Fro

  

One step outside

where the wind whistles and howls,

blistering my naked ears –

I’ve not worn headphones today;

I want to hear the agony

along with the ecstasy

of every sound the dying earth makes

as Winter scrapes away the leaves

and creates skeletons all around.

One step onto the street,

paved in dark asphalt murder

with white lines of ghost blood

running straight as an arrow down the middle –

that’s where I stay, in balance,

in rhythm, with harmonic gestures

guiding each footfall as I dance

through the days of desolation and destruction.

One step onto the main road,

machines of raging thunder

roaring by at a steady clip

upon black rubber bullets to nowhere –

a smog in the air, a gasoline gulp,

a hazy fog of collective consciousness

hanging palpably above the scene

carrying all the lost dreams and remorse

of a million daily commuters

dragging their half-dead carcasses back home

where maybe there’s a lukewarm plate of dinner

waiting on the table for them to scarf down

before hitting the hay and sleeping away the pain.

One step into the park

where the air is fresh and vital,

oxygenating my blood, clearing my mind

and detoxifying my polluted lungs.

Walk by the lake where turtles

bath in the sun upon rocks

and ducks leisurely paddle along

with orange webbed feet beneath the water.

Birds chirp in the trees

but get drowned out by a plane above

as it pours out trails of toxic whatever –

so much for the fresh oxygen,

soon enough it’ll be laced with heavy metals

for a neuron path lobotomy.

One step into the woods,

escaping under the cover of a tall rise forest.

Shade from the sun

and a brief respite

from the workaday madness and the incessant drumbeat

toward a job, toward a war, toward a drug,

toward a gadget, toward a television screen,

toward an election, toward a sales-pitch savior,

toward whatever new, trendy, topnotch,

fashionable fad has stolen the hearts and minds

of a zombie population this particular week.

One step at a time,

retracing my path

back to where I began –

nothing seems to matter anymore.

I’ve simply seen too much of it all,

time and time again, ad infinitum

through the eternal recurrence

as the cycles of history replay on repeat.

Not ennui or apathy.

Not enlightenment or nirvana.

Just detached observation

of a terrible and awesome existence

moving one step at a time

and going somewhere.

Bio:

Scott Thomas Outlar dances beneath the stars to the sweet sound of nature's celestial song, laughing all the while at life's existential problems, and waiting for the next round of chaos to commence.  He recently took the plunge into the world of social media by creating 17numa.wordpress.com where more of his writing can be found.

Arif Ahmad- A Poem

This I believe

Such is the nature of this beast that I believe not one conflict of any nature or scale is an unequivocal complete fault of only one side

Not one

And if this premise can be agreed upon

Then therein lies the solution

Jennifer Lagier- Three Poems & Photos

King Tides

January, 84 degrees--winter missing in action.
Persistent drought, freakish heat, substantiate global warming.
King tides, cruel reminder of far-away rain storms
soaking geography, not California.

Swollen surf sweeps fishermen off coastal boulders,
mesmerizes beachcombers, driftwood collectors.
Engorged ocean glows, pushes itself ashore.
Burnished lagoon floods low-lying wetlands.

Gold sunrise brings no epiphany or resolution,
just higher surge, dryer hilltops and meadows.
It’s another big buildup, symptoms of tempest
without drenching drama.

Pierced

Malevolent willow punctures white cowl of calla.
Skinny twig protrudes, mirrors erect yellow stamen.

Morning chill pierces, penetrates layers of clothes,
hip joints, stiff knees, arthritic fingers.

Pine needles, cones mingle with rotting wreckage
of intrusive toadstools, rubbery mushrooms.

I wander granite trail past faux Tudor cottages.
Gold sun pokes through blue above restless ocean.

Blackbirds chatter, disrupt contemplation.
Passing jet streams lacerate clear horizon.

Perspective

Icy breeze off morning surf validates winter.
Fuzzy sunrise blares above misted hills,
dark collage of pine and palm,
incongruous Lover’s Point grove,
slanting, ramshackle cypress.

Along the affluent side of Monterey Bay,
granite shore instead of soft dune,
seaside village with bright Victorians
unlike my flimsy townhouse
tucked between ocean and wetland.

Harsh Marina habitat, less protected,
roughly shaped by wind and salty drizzle,
toughens what it doesn’t annihilate,
shelters hawks, muse and poet.



Jennifer Lagier is in training to raise dead snakes from the grave, sea serpents from winter torpor.

B.Z. Niditch- Three Poems

JANUARY BLUES

Today's sky

will not be missed

in a sorry shade 

of black and blue

when Arctic air

quietly smuggled in

from Canada freezes

the lifeless bodies

of snow into ice

bright figurines

and my sax

is exposed 

as an orange

eaten on my motorcycle

on the jazzy corner

for my timely gig,

yet a poet is still

a Beat for life

in his runaway suit

when the same shade

shines in darkness

from a cool club

on the blind window

stares back at him

with a sponged fog

on a wasted visage

and an angel stranger

helps the poet

with the gas

both knowing the blahs

will not outlast

the skittering waters

on our faces

and that spring 

may be early

when words

will go down

and the sax

will again beat out

its underground notes

to play the Blues. 

AT AN L.A. BUS STOP

Would you mind leaving

me off at a bus stop

in Los Angeles,

a runaway 

who's run out of bread

and grief

needs to make a call

back east

in a cavernous dawn

bone tired

troubled by despairing 

shadows

in silences of direction

a winter's pawned jacket

covered with dried blood

drunk with echoes

and thoughts of ecstasy.

HEARING COLTRANE

Hearing Coltrane

in the late A.M.

in my sound proof room

releasing my own riffs

and still believing in art

as a mistaken phone call

leads to a museum date,

finding a neighbors

break up note

in a diary

lying under the floorboard

by the fish tank's

own blue dimentia

and playing solo

of daring mortality

resting on a high note

of early optimism

until the daily news broadcast

spreads its headlines

where a few good stories

make my day.

B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. 

His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including:Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; LeGuepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others. His latest poetry collections are “Lorca at Sevilla”,”Captive Cities.” 

He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

 

Gene McCormick- Paris Art

Gene McCormick is a writer who paints without preference for either discipline.  His art is in private and commercial collections and he has illustrated a number of books.  He is the illustrator for Misfitmagazine.net.

Painting #1     Metra Serenade, Gare St.-Lazare, Paris
Painting #2     Hydrant I
Painting #3     Main Street 

Stefanie Bennett- Two Poems

LEAVING HAVASU, ARIZONA   

If the sky had a voice

I envisage

We’d buckle under

The bent over

Exit wounds

Just as

The willow

Does

In bright water.


Published in Boston Poetry Magazine 2/12/14

RITES, THE Mojave: (In Memory of Flight MH17)

When all else failed

The great heart

Of the Joshua Tree

Became

A Tipi ‘fire-build’

In the desert’s

Empty

Arena –.

It was a signal.

It is the signal.

Published in Boston Poetry Magazine 2/12/14

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry, a novel and a libretto. Her poetry

has been published by The Camel Saloon, The Mindless Muse, Aleola Journal, The Provo

Canyon Review, Communion, IS&T, Record-Magazine and others. Of mixed ancestry

[Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Queensland, Australia, in 1945.

Deirdre Hines- A Poem

The Wind Tree

headlights replace red votive flames

around the wind tree's branches

startling awake a sleeper below-

a bone white wind whittles away

billboard papers proclaiming lies

masquerading as the only answer-

scatters the smog in all directions

then catches in a stinking pool

a star cluster and one half moon-

a runaway off his ritalin

tugs on his only wheels

two teases stole to throw away

the branch that knocks them down

is pyrographed with the tree of life

drop falls into his shaking hands-

lightning spells zeds in pylons

until the hush of no electric

throws all five into relief-

two wasters running for their life

from a stick dancing boy

in step

with an awakened sleeper

in harmony with

the Tao of  psithurism.

Deirdre Hines is an award winning poet. Her first collection of poems, "The Language of

Coats" was published by New Island Press in 2012. She has won the Listowel Poetry

Collection Prize (2011) and been shortlisted for The Patrick Kavanagh Award and the

Gregory O'Donohue International Poetry Prize. You can hear her read some of these poems

by visitng her website www.deirdrehines.com

 

 

Adreyo Sen- A Poem

Late to Chocolate

 

His first taste of chocolate at 31 -

an event to him not vivant.

It did not convey, in over-sweet bliss

the joys of a childhood missed.

Growing up had been hard, but happy,

or something very much like it.

 

 

Rose Mary Boehm- Three Poems

After the Floods

Relentless programming of blood sacrifices consumes

the halcyon days of summer. Autumn gold hides

behind blind transom windows and hoary doors.

Transient bitterness settles in the dark, squishy roots

of inducement. Turning lazily in the river waters,

swollen wooden shapes hint at their former integrity.

Colliding fronts squash floating stars, giving

no inducement to those who would stay.

Early Dawn

At this hour the world is dark and empty.

Her toes don’t have to touch the cold stone floor

to understand the value of a warm bed.

She doesn’t have to lift the curtain to confirm

the green mix of pale-yellow street lamps

and the first blue morning glow. She turns

over, reaches across for his body and her

hand finds no purchase. She buries her face

in his pillow, takes a deep breath and remembers

his bent back, coat collar up against the wind.

Red

once seen can never be forgotten,

nor the deaf percussionist.

Zbigniew’s reincarnation in the

e-minor concierto by van den Budenmayer.

Ghost stored in tin cans and

spilled all over the old tapes.

Les Marionettes transformed

into music between gardens.

​A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection published in 2011 in the UK, ‘TANGENTS’, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies, and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet. She won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), was semi-finalist in the Naugatuck poetry contest 2012/13 and has been a finalist in several GR contests, winning it in October 2014.

 

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal- 3 Poems

THE TORTOISE

 

I can’t stand for losing.

I can’t let the tortoise beat me.

The sun shines expertly.

The fly won’t leave me alone.

It comes at me like an arrow

It’s cruel just like the sun.

 

I have been shackled to a

tree.  My flesh is burning up.

I have had enough of the sun

and the fly.  I don’t feel well.

I can’t let the tortoise beat me.

I want to call the race off.

 

 

 

SONGS OF DESPAIR

 

Songs of despair

worm throughout my soft skull.

The dark songs hum

loud at night and whisper

 

in the morning.  Like full-

blown lullabies the songs

are calm and sweet,

then turn melancholy.

 

The songs go on

in perpetuity.

They will not end.

They follow me around.

They’re the shovel and the

dirt, preparing me for the grave.

 

 

  

COLD BEER

 

Drinking cold beer

with a tooth ache.

It does not feel

too good at all.

 

Drinking cold beer

with an old flame,

it does not feel

too good at all,

 

especially

when the past is

brought back and all

the reasons why

 

we are apart.

Drinking cold beer

does not help when

the tooth and heart

 

are hurting just

as much.  At least

I could have the

tooth extracted. 

 

The old flame burns,

but in time I

could douse that

flame with cold beer.

 

 

S. Black- Three Poems

both sides of the street

she phones

out of hours

from the new runaround

parked

on the other side of the street

a class act

she needs some release

from the twenty-four seven

and has no desire

for conservation

he knows his place

she presses the button

he leaves the door open

end of all worlds

a man hates the world

so he retreats to a corner

and creates another

but soon enough

he despises it just as much

so he perseveres

until he runs out of worlds

to conquer

runs out of corners

to back into

what you get used to

it comes and it comes

straight from hell

it hunts us down

teeth bared

snapping at our heels

and has done for as long

as we dare to remember

but it's amazing

what you get used to

we just don't look around

 

 

S. Black- Other work may be found at the likes of Ink, Sweat and Tears, Message in a Bottle, the Screech Owl, Snakeskin and Dog-Ear. Now residing in the Thames Valley (UK).

 

Robert Lavett Smith- Three Poems

HENRY, WALT, AND BRAM

Bram Stoker, whose suppressed homosexuality
is implicit in the horror with which women
are regarded in Dracula, wrote long, gushing
letters to Walt Whitman as a young man, praising
the poet’s understanding of “men like ourselves.”

The older writer responded with bewildered
kindness, flattered perhaps by the adulation,
but rightly suspicious of its callow sincerity.
The two never actually met; shortly thereafter,
Stoker fell under the spell of the flamboyant

Shakespearian actor Sir Henry Irving, who
sported a deep black velvet cape, and strode
through gaslight with preternatural assurance,
while the stage manager fluttered around him
like a moth drawn to an incinerating flame.

The rest is buried between the lines, interred
in the “decrepit earth” of the nineteenth century.
No consummation ever occurred that we know.
Twelve novels and three short story collections
were disregarded, unmentioned in any obituary.


 
THROUGH THE WINDOW

Raindrops on cold glass
trace the memory of light
momentarily.



THE CHORD IN HIS BRAIN

Dad’s condition grows steadily worse,
the situation somehow unforeseen despite
months of deathbed vigils followed by apparent
rallying—although these miraculous recoveries
are always temporary. Tonight, on the phone,
Mom says the hospice nurse anticipates
no further improvement, a steep decline
is not unusual when the end finally nears.

What’s different this time, she tells me,
is that his body, after long illness,
is at last fairly healthy, but his mind
emptying rapidly, all recognition gone:
the chord in his brain reduced to white noise,
wind whistling through a broken window,
or the radiant wail of solar flares
in the spaces between stars.



Raised in New Jersey, Robert Lavett Smith has lived since 1987 in San Francisco, where for the past sixteen years he has worked as a Special Education Paraprofessional. He has studied with Charles Simic and the late Galway Kinnell. He is the author of several chapbooks and three full-length poetry collections, the most recent of which is The Widower Considers Candles (Full Court Press, 2014).Two poems from this newest book have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Stefanie Bennett- Two Poems

FREEZE: The Coalition of the Un-willing, Mariupol   

 

Around the bend they came,

Past the broken ground.

The know-it-alls

Who cannot recognize

Goose-flesh from

(Pardon me)

A horse’s arse

Viewed

            From

One step “back

To the future’s”

Sure footed

Titanium heart.

 

 

TIPSTER      

 

On nights of the full moon

I batten

Down the hatch

For who knows what city-slickers,

Layabouts and deceivers

Will tally up to.

 

All and sundry’s fumigated,

Especially

The wicker chair

Belching

              Collywobbles

And covered

In hoar frost

 

- The lair where an

Enthused

Meteor squats and

Resumes

His Promethean shock-

Jock tale

 

... Of devil’s dust

Gone loco.

 

Beware the pith

And marrow,

- He intones.

                    It’s 

Sucking eggs

That makes

Men wise...

 

 

 

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry, a novel and a libretto. Her poetry

has been published by The Camel Saloon, The Mindless Muse, Aleola Journal, The Provo

Canyon Review, Communion, IS&T, Record-Magazine and others. Of mixed ancestry

[Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Queensland, Australia, in 1945.

 

Paul Tristram- Three Poems

…As She Lifted The Curtain Hem Of Her Circus Dress Of Promiscuity
And Relaxed…Unfaithfully…Once Again.
(God Upturned The Table With The Cards
Which He Had Just Been Playing Patience Upon And Lost!)

…and as she set off once again, smiling
down that familiar road
of learnt behaviour/destruction.
Carefree and stupidly
heading straight towards the wreckage
that we kept pulling her free from.
We shook our heads,
surrendering to the inevitable
and turned and walked away.
After eighteen months
of destitute complaining and self-pity
she hasn’t quite learnt her lesson
but I hear that she’s at least
on her way, hooray!

© Paul Tristram 2015 

 To Imprison The Moment

I have kept that special moment here
all of this time and no one suspected.
The little miracle sent to help me
wrapped and cloaked in ancient magic.
A wonderful secret, a knowledge
that no one else (Alive!) is privy too.
The thing that keeps me protected so.
Sometimes in the very beginning
I would fear that its whispering would
alert the wrong ears in our direction
but cleverness is part of the bundle.
It gleams like a knife but only for me
and it still smells exactly like it used to.
I would share it with the lost and lonely
but it really does not fraction or multiply.

© Paul Tristram 2014

A Scab Upon The Face Of Love

He swaggered into the ballroom
dressed as a swashbuckling pirate,
bowed thrice and smiled as nearly
everyone applauded or squirmed.
She burst out of the audience
screaming like a banshee,
in the clobber of Marie Antoinette.
“You are wearing the wrong costume,
my dear heartbreaker. Yours is still
hanging by the dressing room window
upon a bloody butchers hook.
I spent days sewing it together myself,
it’s made entirely of rotting raw meat
and stinking offal, mostly pigs hearts
mixed in with the occasional arsehole.
It has your filthy name branded
with vindictiveness into the right breast,
Mr. Scab Upon The Face Of Love!”
She snarled, gnashed, kicked and clawed
whilst being dragged away backwards
down the long entrance hall of shame,
to be cast out mercilessly into the cold
Winter of snow and approaching lunacy.
Far away from the warmth of the party,
future love, respect, her class, dignity
and every sane thing she’d ever known.

© Paul Tristram 2014


Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.
 
You can read his poems and stories here! http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/

Janne Karlsson- Cartoon

"Janne Karlsson will always write stupid bios where he´s basically just telling people to buy his books and shit and then go fuck themselves. His website is here, by the way: www.svenskapache.se"

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

World Cup

The ISIS Brit

tall in the desert

blade by his side

talks to the camera

severs the head 

of the orange infidel

kneeling beside him 

kicks the head

across the sand

while the world 

has a beer

in its coliseum

deaf to Satan

shouting “Goal!”

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

 

Scott Thomas Outlar- A Poem

A Return to Glory

The Winter chill is a velvet blanket

draped over my skin

to bring out the raw frigid emotions

that return my ancestral memories

to the days when my forefathers

survived in caves at night after slaughtering

large beasts in the field by day and then feasting

upon the roasted flesh from the fire

that was sparked with the flame of evolutionary ingenuity.

A part of me longs for a return

to those harrowing, threat-filled, simpler times

when adrenaline and testosterone

ruled the roost, and Man

clawed his way to the top of the food chain

one sacrificial ceremony at a time.

I long to gnaw on the fresh bones

of a woolly mammoth brought down

after days on end spent tracking its herd’s location.

I long to thrust the hand carved spear into its side.

I long to shred the fur from its skin.

I long to wear the wool

and dance to the wild rhythmic beats

that only the shamans and madmen 

who are connected to deceased spirits

can hear as the strange song pours forth

from a holy synchronized force

that flows with an energy beyond temporal understanding.

I long for the primal rage and bloodlust.

I long to let loose from these lungs

with a warning to all challengers

that the King Ape has ascended,

and that all who are not with me

have become potential enemies or prey.

The Winter chill through my open window

disturbs my furnace heated comfort,

arousing all types of preternatural instincts to surface

inside the safety of this suburban home. 

Bio:

Scott Thomas Outlar flows and fluxes with the Tao River, gazes at stars, laughs at life's existential problems, dances to the rhythms of the celestial song, and writes prose-fusion poetry dedicated to the Phoenix Generation.  His work appears weekly at Dissident Voice, and recently in venues such as Medusa's Kitchen, Section 8 Magazine, Corner Club Press, W.I.S.H, and The Kitchen Poet.  He can be reached at 17Numa@gmail.com.

Richard Schnap- A Poem

TRIBE

There are those in life
Who follow the rules
They are told to obey

To root for the home team
To read the best-sellers
To save for the future

And there are those in life
Who make up the rules
For millions to obey

To pay their taxes
To buy the right products
To learn to shoot

And there are those in life
Who do not follow rules
Who never obey

To be labeled mad
To have impossible dreams
To converse with God

Ayaz Daryl Nielsen- Three Poems

deeper than spring mud

my bull-shitter buddy

tells another one

empty homesteads              

dust

to dust

small-town politics                         

kicking court-house walls

not the mayor

ayaz daryl nielsen, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/125+ issues), homes for poems include Lilliput Review, SCIFAIKUEST, Shemom, Shamrock, Kind of a Hurricane, and!   online at  bear creek haiku  poetry, poems and info 

Nancy May- Three Poems

distant thunder

a bolt of lightning

drizzle of kisses

on a frozen pond

a shower of leaves

we part ways

feathers ruffle

snow fallen branches

silence between us

Nancy May has haiku published inThree Line Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Inclement Poetry, Twisted Dreams Magazine, Vox Poetica, Eskimo Pie, Icebox, Dark Pens, Daily Love, Leaves of Ink, The Blue Hour Magazine, Kernels, Mused – The BellaOnline Literary Review, Dead Snakes, Danse Macabre – An online literary Magazine, High Coupe, A Handful of Stones, Lyrical Passion Poetry E-Zine, UFO Gigolo, 50 Haikus, The Germ, Boston Literary Review, Be happy Zone, Every Day Poets, Cattails, Ppigpenn, Creatrix Journal and M58.

She is a monthly contributor at The Camel Saloon and Poems and Poetry. She has reached The Heron’s Nest consideration stage twice and the Chrysanthemum consideration stage once. She is working on her first haiku collection.

 

 

Denny E. Marshall- Art

                                                                   The Guitar

Ross Vassilev- A Poem

therefore ...

walking
down the street
with the sun
the wind
and the blue sky
God is waiting
for me to say
something
profound while
the white
butterflies dance
in my head
the cars speed by
and I remember
that day
in 2nd grade
when I got up
unzipped
and showed it
to the girl sitting
in front of me
I tell God
he doesn't exist
so I must be
talking to myself
therefore
I am God with
nothing but
these eyes in my
head staring at
my white hands—
I am alive.

Donal Mahoney- Three Poems

Charley on My Harley

The nightmare woke my father every night 

for years. He had no idea what it meant 

and so he wrote the story down and hoped 

some day he'd understand it.

He lost the note that night but 

found it decades later in a drawer 

next to the glass eye he popped out 

the stormy night that Mother left.

Mom came back to "make their marriage work"

after she'd been gone for 20 years

but Father told her they had been divorced 

for at least 10 years. Despite her tears,

Father told her, "Maude, after all this time,

let's agree that you were gone before you left 

so let me tell you all about the nightmare 

I've had every night since you rode off

with Charley on my Harley. I wrote the story down 

to tell the kids but they grew up and left 

before I had a chance to ask if they knew 

what the nightmare meant. 

Maybe you can help me understand it, Maude. 

The note says this: 'What purpose does a rabbit have 

other than as prey? What difference does 

a rainbow make in a rabbit’s day?'

Now you say you love me, Maude, 

but the kids are grown and gone 

so take my Harley and go find Charley.

It's time I put my eye back in."

A Walmart Way of Life

Opal the widow next door

shouts to Hilda over the fence

as they hang out their wash

on a sunny morning that

Walmart's having a big sale

on toilet paper and she's

stocked up now for the year

unless she gets diarrhea.

Then Hilda tells Opal she

would stock up on that too 

but her doctor has told her

she could live for many years

so she has to save in case 

she ever needs a cat scan. 

Opal says not to worry since

she will give Hilda the ad

the next time Walmart 

runs a sale on pet stuff.

A Matter of Business 

Every day at noon

when church bells peal

Rufus stops counting his money

gets up from his roll-top desk

lights a Cuban cigar

pours a glass of fine wine

and looks out his garret window

hoping to see Martha 

his neighbor dead in the snow

dropped by a heart attack 

or maybe black ice.

Either will do.

Too old to shovel the walk

she can’t afford to have it done.

Rufus never thought Martha

would live this long.

When she finally dies 

the property reverts to him

the result of a deal he cut

with her dead husband Mort

years ago when the couple 

needed his money and Rufus

figured they’d die in no time.

Mort was quick to cooperate

but Martha has been a turtle.

Twice now Rufus has lost

good buyers for the place 

rehabbers think is worth fixing.

Rufus doesn’t agree 

but he’ll sell the place in seconds

to anyone who offers the money.

For now, when church bells peal

Rufus lights a cigar, drinks wine,

looks out the window and thinks,

Hurry up Martha and die.

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.