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Showing posts from November, 2022

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