Live Nude Poems

Italian sonnet for my ginger lover

Consider this Italian sonnet a creative expression of my love for a lady with hair so thick it shoves and stomps its way past Texas bluebonnets till it sees its lush strands with red on it and my heart enwrapped, laid bare like a rug caked with dust, dirt, bug guts and smears of blood shed from years with wrong women, doggonit. Our lunch-hour chat of self-immolation cracked a hole in our leaking souls unknown. You asked if I wanted to come over. I brought Macbeth, feature presentation. We spilled onto your floor naked and prone where we laid spent, sore, content, drunk, sober.

Alex Z. Salinas lives in San Antonio, Texas. His short fiction, poetry and op-eds have appeared in various print and electronic publications. He is the author of a full-length collection of poetry, WARBLES. He serves as poetry editor of the San Antonio Review, and holds an M.A. in English Literature and Language from St. Mary's University.  

Lightning Within

inside vast towering clouds lightning erupts sharp, arcing, illuminating massive ethereal bulk as though concealing tesla coils deep within their wet recesses the nervous electric flashes of a mad scientist’s laboratory in a black and white horror film flickering out of the 1930s – we fly west, level with heaven, as though we were equals -
behind me and far below my mother is finally in the ground next to my father after waiting over 40 years to have a date carved in stone she joins him in death at last having been the devoted, loyal widow the whole time mourning him longer than she ever had him -
outside the airliner window the lightning doesn’t stop it keeps cracking the sky we simply fly past it racing the sunset west set from the start to lose
M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania, grew up there & in Cleveland, Ohio.  He’s resided in northern California since 1979. He began writing poetry at age 11. His work has been published in little magazines, onl…

Night Time Viewing

The small room Accessible for Night time viewing Equipped with All the necessaries Needed to induce Not sleep but Intense insomnia So great The person Who occupies The small room Will reach for Their phone Tingling And will drive The lover back.
Susan Tepper is the author of eight published books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent book just out in June is a road novel titled “What Drives Men.” It was shortlisted at American Book Fest Best Book Awards. Other honors and awards include eighteen Pushcart Nominations, a Pulitzer Prize Nomination for the novel “What May Have Been” (Cervena Barva Press, and currently being adapted for the stage), NPR’s Selected Shorts Series, Second Place Winner in Story/South Million Writers Award, Best Story of 17 Years of Vestal Review, Shortlisted 7th in the Zoetrope Novel Contest (2003), Best of the Net and more. Tepper is a native New Yorker.

Flashback at the Atlantic Ocean

In the cool of the evening, the Atlantic framed by my window.
Over a glass of cold vodka, I try to forget the wasted years in a foreign land.
That's how it works: one hand on the pulse of time, the other on the ass of the world.

Eduard Schmidt-Zorner is a translator and writer of poetry, haibun, haiku and short stories. He writes in four languages: English, French, Spanish and German and holds workshops on Japanese and Chinese style poetry and prose. Member of four writer groups in Ireland and lives in County Kerry, Ireland, for more than 25 years and is a proud Irish citizen, born in Germany. Published in 75 anthologies, literary journals and broadsheets in USA, UK, Ireland, India and Canada. Writes also under his pen name: Eadbhard McGowan

Plans to Stay

My husband remembers to buy milk before the container at home expires and he makes sure that my computer doesn’t catch whatever electronic flu
is going around.I’m not an easy guy. Sometimes I’m a pencil, the lead breaking just when you want to write a note to stick on the door for the propane dude.This could be
an anniversary poem.27 years, a couple of bluebirds, beautiful, but ready to fly away.
We promised forever.That’s not possible, so we took till death do us part.Death always finds our living room. We watch TV and eat popcorn, hold hands.Even then,
it doesn’t take a hint. It plans to stay.


Confederate Judy
On Halloween I learned I’d better not dress as Judy Garland.That would get me beat up.Why can’t a boy sing “Over the Rainbow” on a suburban street?
Instead I wore a gray jacket and told candy-givers I was a Confederate soldier. We lived in Illinois— no one blinked. A boy can be military even if he looks like a schnook kid in baggy pants—
I wore Judy in my head, belted out “The Man Who Go…

A12 After a Concert 

Full after a meal we recline, this night different from a normal night in the way the cool hits our overwarm bodies.
Sated, ears popping, hardly hearing Bjork on the tapedeck singing All is Full of Love on the A12
& the radio leaves a wake of sound waves skipping over the pond.
Streetlights morph & distort Nicky’s half-sleep half-smile, Karen’s knuckles curl & cuddle the steering wheel. We listen listlessly every hard breath of soft night air we sigh.
My forehead touches the glass and melts into condensation, I am parched, but drink 2 am like I’ve been desert-crawling between panes of chilled glass.
In the dark, eighth notes scatter behind us.

Joey Gould, a non-binary writing tutor, wrote The Acute Avian Heart (2019, Lily Poetry Review).  Twice nominated for Bettering American Poetry and once for a Pushcart Prize, Joey's work has appeared in Paper Nautilus, The Compassion Anthology, Memoir Mixtapes, & District Lit. Joey's character Izzie Hexxam features in The Poetr…