Live Nude Poems

She is Forgetting Him Steve says his wife often comes into their bedroom and says "Where's Steve?" And he says to her. "I'm here love. We've been married forty years." And she says, "Of course you are. We have." And she laughs. "How did we first get together?" At the end of the next day, when they've been out to the shops and visiting old friends she'll say, "What have we done today, Steve?" And she remembers none of it. At mealtimes she picks up her knife and fork and holds them very close to her glazed eyes. Holds them like javelins to eat her meal. (II) You've stolen them. Haven't you?" "Stolen what, love?" "You know what. Look?" She shows him her fingers, and he sees they are no longer fat but thin to the bone. "Come on,love. They must have dropped off. I'll help you look for them...

Sulfur Water The sulfur water stains the children’s clothes when their parents try to wash them. The water man said it’s actually iron -- elemental problem -- but people think sulfur because that is what they have been told for ages. That doesn’t cause the smell. He says the filter will fix the problem and make the water softer too. It will be better for cooking and cleaning soon and that smell will work its way out of the homestead. The well will need venting The hydrogen sulfide Is the cause of the smell But does not cause the stains. This will fix the problems. It sounds like a great plan for now, or at least till they run city water. Then water man’s widow can soon be forgotten. Ernest Gordon Taulbee grew up in Salyersville, KY – a rural town in Eastern Kentucky. He holds a BA and an MA in English from Eastern Kentucky University. He lives in Louisville, KY with his wife and daughters. His novel A Sibling in Always ...

No Mote black swans i almost didnt see but for their glowy beaks red as sumac- they didnt match the dark tones of lake, stuck out like your lust for me while i read to the children all cloistered- who could hear me even from the colonnade, all hickory and hops-vine, where i saw you watch me from inside a white willow tree. mergansers with their heads trailing swam among dead stakes of lotus. that belted kingfisher bode us a good day, and returned the children to their cages below bald cypress knees so naked i had to look away. you willowed no longer, i took leaf to mean wing, and feather to mean ivy. i took a shaded path back to the armory. it got hot and thick and i could breathe more heavily, rapt on high, no mote of hope. Bree is a poet and visual artist living in Pleasureville, KY. Her Green Panda Press has put out hand-made chapbooks, anthologies and sundry of the very small art and poetry press since 2001. In 2015 she began Least Bittern Books out of Henry County, K...

Ghost Says It's Loud At The Border all manner of caterwauling and hollering and carrying on, eyes rollercoaster closed and lips drawn back in fear, in ecstasy. The rare ones smile, smile like they're saying See?, the ones who knew it was coming all along and that it didn't mean an end, just a layover, a connection, a staying a bit, then a going. They smile out the windows of the gravity bus, equally at peace on this side or the other, ready to begin again. Maybe if y'all could think about it as an exodus, Ghost says, like coming out of Egypt, or starting an extended vacation, or really winning what's behind door number four, or being filled rather than emptied, being opened and filled and filled and filled to the point that you simply cannot, will not, do not want to, stay there anymore.  Mary Carroll-Hackett is the author of six collections of poetry, The Real Politics of Lipstick , Animal Soul, If We Could Know Our Bones, The Night I Heard Ever...

Unsleeping A cloud passes overhead bringing 30 seconds of exceptional rain. Not enough to raise the failing reservoirs more than an eighth of an inch. The cat prowls the hallway's outer borders looking for some kind of prey. The floorboards are creaking. The room shrinks. Sconce light begins to show its bias, its unnatural nature and inability to do more than make less dim its tiny corner of the globe. A river could not meander less directly. Enter spirit of the night. At last the world turns imperative.  Now a dog howls the way a dog has howled for these many million years. Lights come up. Words are shouted, but the tone is very French. Another cloud burst explodes with the beat of at least twenty drummers on the roof. I'm awake anyway watching the dark. I have no exceptional worries unless the dark begins watching me. Ian Randall Wilson has published two chapbooks, Theme of the Parabola ...

In Afghanistan when the fighting got really heavy I would be pulled out of the ward and put right up front to receive the wounded from the helicopter there was little I could do there except clear away blood hold severed limbs hand equipment to nurses and try not to get rattled as soldiers screamed on those days even the sky had teeth. 5 am I am heading for the gym I have weights to lift a day to start words to write when our youngest daughter who still sleeps with us wraps her arms around me in bed and I realize this morning now belongs to her. Matt Borczon is a writer and nurse from Erie, Pa. He publishes widely in the small press. His book A Clock of Human Bones won the Yellow Chair Review chap book contest in 2015. His second book Battle Lines is available through Epic Rites Press and his third book Ghost Train will come out in 2017 from Weasel Press....