Anna Gaccione - One Poem

Upon a Neglected Wall

The sun’s gaze lands
Upon a neglected wall
Usually hidden by darkness.
Light wakes the colors.
Rosewood and russet greet each other.
They begin to dance
Back and forth across the bricks.
Dust stretches towards the light
Having been confined too long
On sills and awnings.
People rush back and forth
Like mindless worker ants, blind

The sun slowly turns its gaze.
Darkness gradually gains power,
Once again suffocating the wall.
The secret is lost in the dark
Until the sun grants it life again.

Maybe then someone will stop
And find the joy in stopping.



Anna Gaccione was born in Virginia in 1992. She has a black belt in Taekwondoe and attends Shorter University. 

Carol Oberg - Three Poems

Entertainment...

Did you see me fall against the house
When I put my cigarette butt in the pop can
And after popping back up from my knees
Fall, back, again, on my butt;
I wasn’t drunk at 9 a.m.
Nor still tipsy from the night before
But it hasn’t happened again
So it’s hardly even a thought now-
Unless someone, like you,
Saw me fall, pop back up
Only to do it again that
Plop plop
On the dry deck
In my winter jacket
Scarf, hat, the gloveless hands
Of a serious outdoor smoker
And called all the neighbors
Your entire widespread family
Then posted the video of it
On your facebook page
Then it would be a thought
Worth my sweaty alarm
Because you could be anywhere
Everywhere I am falling next
One time after another
Picking myself up all alone
Unless I am broke can
And can not pop up.




Sunshine Makes Rain Impossible

The first green grass
Is that linguini piece
Growing behind the wood stove
That exhales wide tubes of smoke
Without inhaling ever and
The thermostat’s set at 67
But its 75 inside again with
Most of the windows open.
It’s time we let the
Fire burn out and in bed
Before dawn decide
To make that long trip
To town because
There are not enough
Blankets in this house.




Wisdom Runs

On the opposite wall the cheap print looks
Remarkably like you hanging for real
But lifeless, the fake eyes bulging wet-like
Above the proud manipulations of your generous
Head and long neck sawed off, glued tight to
An oak board nailed sturdy onto knotty pines
Someone ages ago went searching the virgin woods
To cut down, hand saw and plane, varnish yellow
The walls and ceilings with deep grooves for winter flies
And spiders to nestle their own in safe hiding
As the years turn the cabin planks shiny orange
Waiting for others to go back out
Search deep in the quiet November forest
For your kind my dear. You poor deer
God made smart enough to grow, to even crown
Your head with a mighty rack for all to wildly pursue
The glorious boast-- Got One
to take and eat then show the rest of you off
No knife no fork scrapes anywhere, you’re magnificent
Alive in multiple memories, some of you buried in white
Forever hiding, collecting inches of freezer burn
but with us. Still.



 Carol Oberg has published widely with Blue Mountain Arts, Inc.; was one of three featured poets( ten poems published) in Ancient Paths Literary Magazine, issue 16, in 2010; in the fall will have a poem published in The Fourth River (Chatham University).  She and her husband are retired on a small inland lake in Michigan's Upper Penninsula.

James Shrader - One Poem

When She Comes

First one I remember
it is Christmas Eve. Outside
my bedroom window colored lights are strung
along a bending length of fence in the cool Florida night.
In the morning there will be fog.

Her knees are saddled
against the plates of my pelvis,
anchoring her. Each time her back wall—
where it tents—clamps down on me painfully
her eyelids flutter and her lips part vacantly. Beautiful, she falls
backward a bit, arching as if against a headwind. Impaled
on my modest length of mast, her arms lift outward
as if to catch the wind. Lifting outward
as if crucified. Each time
I have to shake
her awake.

In old Dallas,
in a converted Victorian,
pink curtains filter streetlight
like a scarf draped over a tiffany lamp,
like an ancient house of burlesque.
Atop me she swells.

As an athlete she
excelled, all points of her body
graded on the curve. She leans forward, clasping
her hands behind the base of my skull, elbows finding purchase
in my collarbones. A Muay-Thai fighting clinch. Her wails resonate
through the groaning, antebellum building, and when she spasms, the hiss
and spit of a lawn sprinkler spigot, a warm spray in choppy bursts.
When we rise to survey the damage the pink sheets are stained
wet with the negative impression of my form. The lighter,
dry trunk of my torso forking into two legs.
A crime scene outline,
a massacre.

Central New York
in winter. The frozen mouth
of the Mohawk Valley. The most beautiful, married
mother of two, a born-again Baptist in a town full of Catholics.
If her balding husband were a better Christian
she wouldn’t be doing this,
she says.

Her icy blue
bedroom eyes and swollen,
clichéd lips say otherwise. With me
above her hoisting her hips, the sweetest nectar
branches along the peach fuzz of her lightly scarred navel
then converges in a narrow torrent between her breasts. With her
above me we ruin my roommate’s air mattress, the stuff pooling in the seams,
to my wrist where I support my weight to sit up. We flip over couch
cushions once, then again. Eventually we burn wounds
into our knees and along our spines from the old,
rough carpet. The floor there is wet for days
and cold as outside the snow
piles man-high.



James Shrader's nonfiction has appeared in the Florida Review and Awosting Alchemy.

Maurice Devitt - One Poem

Dreamless

Is this what
you were born to:
the sound of thunder
in an upstairs room,
the apology
of mirrors,
family tree
smudged
on the palm
of your hand -
sweat of blue ink
running
to reveal
a childless life -
hopes
set to zero
and in this fixed fragment
to hear
only the silent song
of a passing bell?



Maurice Devitt has just been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and in 2012 was runner-up in the Cork Literary Review Manuscript Competition, short-listed for the Listowel Writers’ Week Poetry Collection Competition and had poems accepted by Orbis, Abridged, Skylight 47, Southword, Moloch, Revival, Boyneberries, Paraxis, Weary Blues, thefirstcut, Red Fez, Spinoza Blue, The Galway Review, Other Words: Merida, Stony Thursday, Ofi Press, Bluepepper, The Weekenders and Smiths Knoll.