Wandering Joe by Robert Halleck

 

Wandering Joe is at it again.
Up and down the corridors
hitting the crash bar on the doors,
setting off alarms, scaring the residents.
Joe is going to walk until he drops.
Until then the years will become
months, then days, then hours,
then nothing.

Joe didn’t always wander. He
worked hard at raising kids now
scattered to wherever. Wherever
they are they don’t come to visit,
send cards, or call. His love was
blond, pretty, funny, and smart.
Cancer cured that and left him
Alone, broke and old to
wander the corridors of
life’s last stop.

Dying like Dogs by John Dorsey

 

even as a kid
i can remember
that my mother’s sister
could never let go of anything
spending thousands to
to keep a dying german shepherd alive
for a few more months

a beagle for a few more fleeting weeks

& now sitting outside
drinking iced tea
on a warm spring day
my mother says that she
is thinking about making me
the family executor

it’s not because of the cold killer instinct
that i jokingly claim to have
that thing that pennsylvania winters
just seem to instill in you at birth
like having to let your favorite sports teams hopes
go out with the frost

it’s only that my father
is not a labrador

& she is not a teacup poodle
no matter what her latest haircut
might lead you to believe

it’s just that they
don’t want to die
like dogs.

HEARD IT ON THE SCHOOLYARD by Marc Olmsted

 

 

 

you said it really fast so the other guy said “What?’

“Did you know that queers can’t hear?”

I tried this on my dad – I was 9 or 10, heard on the schoolyard.

“Marc,” he said solemnly, “do you know what a queer IS?”

A spaz or retard I assumed.

“It’s a man who acts like a woman.”

“You mean like Elvis Presley?”

“Yes.”

____________

 

Marc Olmsted has appeared in City Lights Journal, New Directions in Prose & Poetry,  The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and a variety of small presses.  He is the author of five collections of poetry, including What Use Am I a Hungry Ghost?, which has an introduction by Allen Ginsberg.  For more of his work, http://www.marcolmsted.com

 

 

If God Were To Say By Grant Guy

if god were say
kill Isaac for me
i’d say
screw you
do it yourself
better yet I’ll tell Isaac
& we’ll meet you in the schoolyard
after school

& if god thinks i’m insolent
look into the cosmic mirror daddio

____________

 

Grant Guy is a Canadian poet, writer and playwright. He has over one hundred poems and short stories published in internationally. He has five books published: Open Fragments, On the Bright Side of Down, Blues for a Mustang, The Life and Lies of Calamity Jane and Bus Stop Bus Stop. He was the 2004 recipient of the MAC’s 2004 Award of Distinction and the 2017 recipient of the WAC Making A Difference Award.

Bipolar by Ben Rasnic

 

Never knowing
if the day will drape
its black curtain
tight as a drum
over my mind’s eye
or if the light
from cerulean skies
will somehow seep
thru the crevices
& brighten my day.
It could go either way.

old pottery by Carl Miller Daniels

 

the slimy muck and mess of everything —
the absolute sliminess of reality — it’s all
just, well, it’s all
just so slimy. gooey. slippery.
yep, the utter sliminess
of everything sometimes overwhelms.
saddens. envelopes us.
you. me. everything.
just a big gooey mess.
sometimes,
i envision
myself a pile of bleached white
bones on a secluded hillside.
dry. dry, everything
is so clean and slick
and dry. bones, wind-blown,
dry, not a droplet of anything
moist or gooey left.
yet the wind
hangs around,
ever vigilant, just
in case.