Kristin Garth

Only Love

Traverse the woods, your hands clenched in fists
to rap upon air you are convinced harbors
the portal to an alternate state in which
he returns to the object of your ardor
instead of your hate. They say it exists,
some women in town, between two oak trees,
discernible by fingers and sound. It
empties the heart of its guile, all enmity.
When you walk through its invisible frame,
you are set free of the past, the weight of
wrath-riddled bones. You smile at a name
without any pain you’d once known. Only
love is admissible in this dimension.
You’ll knock forever to get there again.

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Rhysling nominated sonneteer and a Best of the Net 2020 finalist, the author of a short story collection You Don’t Want This ( Pink Plastic Press), The Stakes (Really Serious Literature) and many more books. 

Jeff Weddle

The Truth About Cats

It is just as you
have always
suspected:

Cats compose poems
in their heads
most all the time,
poems so beautiful
we could not
hear them
and survive.

But they are wise enough
in their indifferent love
never to share them
with those who
provide food

while dogs
poor things

think of nothing
but baseball
and magic
and don’t give a damn
who knows.

Jeff Weddle loves cats but is more or less happy they do not recite their poetry to him. He teaches at the University of Alabama. 

Steven Croft

War in Iraq in Seven Vignettes

Diesel exhaust from snow-topped Humvee,
revving in winter darkness to leave Al Asad Marine base,
ice crystals on the mouth of the turret gunner,
blowing water vapor through pulled up black neck gaiter.

We stop in traffic. I look left down a dusty street of houses.
On the curb, a man with a thick black mustache bends to kiss
a shamefaced girl-child on the mouth. She's held forward by
extended armsof a white-robed man in red-checkered headdress.

Cheerful medic cleaning the meat of a soldier's exposed bicep,
exploded out like an anatomy diagram. Soldier sits in sand in pain,
rolling the back of his head against the metal tread of an armored carrier.
"You'll be fine," says the smiling medic. We all truly believe him.

After the shock of IED blast, in an upturned vehicle four slack bodies
with unconscious faces are slowly consumed by licking fire.
We watch through the smoke-fogged, unbreakable bulletproof glass
of combat-locked doors. If only one was awake, could unlock a door.

Nothing visual says "this is war" like this bright blister of pointed tracers
splitting night's black curtain. Their battered Toyota truck racing from
the sound of Apache helos nearing, in night vision we see gowned
figures with AKs bail in backscatter of dust from glorious Gatling rain.

All the uniforms stink in this close press around the regulation boxing
ring outside the PX. Under the glow of generator lights, our potbellied cook
is in the Friday Night Fights, hit again and again by the taller, heavier Marine.
Until, Jones starts punching, punching. Jones wins, my battalion erupts.

With packs and weapons, we wait in twilight. C-130s always fly at night
from Baghdad International, to evade enemy fire. In my last night, I listen
to faraway gunfire. When the call comes, we gather packs, hustle in a loose
line. I plant my left boot on the tail ramp's metal, lift my right out of Iraq.

An Army veteran, Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020).  His poems have appeared inThe New Verse News,Misfit Magazine, Live Nude Poems, Quaci Press Magazine,So It Goes, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ariel Chart, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.