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Smiling Beneath The Mask~ By Tom Squitieri

6/17/2020

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The mask
Over my mouth
Hiding my best way
To tell you how I feel

Disguised affection
Still burns true
Full of tease, sauce
And flip

The music stops
until we pick up
Other instruments
and scores,
as we must
As we do

You know that
I am
Smiling beneath the mask
For you

Now you have to
make eye contact
And read there my
Smile
As it bounces
Through muffled words

My fingers wave
in my own sign
Language
Forming a smile
That is not hidden

It is
A bond
You and I share
A new article of
Clothing
That when removed
Coveys trust
And desire

My fingertips await
to brush your face,
feel your smile and
await your fingers entwine

I am smiling now
As I think
About what it means
when we move the mask
together
 

Author Bio:
Tom Squitieri is a three-time winner each of the Overseas Press Club and White House Correspondents’ Association awards for his work as a war correspondent, with reporting from all seven continents. His poetry has appeared in Ariel Chart, The Raven's Perch, Scarlet Leaf Review, Twisted Vine, The Literary Yard, Eskimo Pie, The Stardust Review, Wanderlust Journal, Shanghai Writer’s Workshop, No Strings Attached, Style Sonata and The Griffin’s Inkpot, in the book "Put Into Words My Love,” and was selected for Color: Story 2020. He writes most of his poetry while parallel parking or walking his dogs, Topsie and Batman.
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Virtual Family Meeting~ By Mary K O'Melveny

6/16/2020

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The kids are as charming as always.
It is an adventure, all this time at home.
Hannah shows everyone her swan drawing.
We clap as a pale pink letter S swims past.
Mirabelle has painted a thank you card
for those who drop mail, packages on her
porch –  a girl, garbed in rainbows amidst
a shower of hearts. We clap once again.
 
Cameron plays Fleur de Lis but only
once we promise he will not appear on
camera. Their parents have been directing
each day like Hollywood auteurs waving
megaphones, even as they manage work-
from-home demands.  We older adults are
still screen-shy. This viral world of zoom, skype
blackboard still too new to feel familiar.
 
We are used to raw energy’s comfort,
to depth of field beyond tiny images
perched like bird’s nests on our computer
screen’s upper corners. We want to go bigger,
hear background noises, hold hands, kiss cheeks.
Everyone gives an update: an early visit
to a local food market during senior only
shopping hours; a trip around the driveway
 
with hiking sticks meant for Glacier or Zion;
a poem in progress; a self-portrait glazed
in blue and black.  Even the old dog is
hoisted into the conversation, though she 
clearly prefers to dream of chasing squirrels.
We are torn about the virtues of virtual dialogue
but, lacking choice, plan for an on-line Seder.
We will all have more than four questions.
 

Author Bio:
Mary K O'Melveny recently retired from a long career as a labor rights lawyer. She lives in Washington, DC and Woodstock, NY. Mary wrote poetry as a young woman but then set aside that part of her brain to work on legal issues affecting workers and enforcement of their rights. She has now returned to poetry, seeking its comforts and challenges as a way of making sense of our increasingly crazy world. Since "emerging" as a poet, Mary has been published in various journals, including FLARE: The Flagler Review, GFT Press, Allegro Poetry Magazine and Into the Void.
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Carrier Pigeon~ By Jordan Reed

6/15/2020

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My heart is a carrier pigeon
Each morning as the sun rises
I open her little golden cage
And give her a pet on the head
Gingerly placing a note upon her back
Giddiness bubbling in my stomach
She coos eagerly
Holding her firmly to my chest
I open my window in the kitchen
Sunlight beaming in with crisp air
I let her go
She flutters into the sky
Poking through cirrus clouds
Soaring over a sea of cement & rooftops
Stained in hues of pink
She follows the Connecticut river heading north
a change in tide to waves of rolling green valleys
The sight of your face is a beacon
she finds you with a warm smile waiting on your doorstep and landing in your soft hands
A familiar friend, you have an afternoon smoke and sit outside with her perched in your lap
Each exhale is carried in the breeze
Golden hour falls upon the oak trees across the street until
A silver moon appears sleeping in dusky indigo haze
sky scraping windows gleaming like stars in the distance from my kitchen window still open
I hear fluttering and stir to find her perched on the sill in anticipation
sighing relief I cup my hands in front of her
She hops into them joyfully
I close my eyes
Holding her firmly to my chest
and suddenly the air is perfumed with tobacco


Author Bio:
Jordan Reed is an emerging theater maker and performance artist in Bushwick NYC. Originally from MA, she is a 2017 BA graduate from the UMass Amherst Theater Department. Reed is engaged by work using movement, ensemble, comedy, horror, gender-bending, glamor, sensuality, and ritual to serve, heal, and uplift underserved communities through a lens of intersectionality and multiculturalism. Her most recent work, performed in collaboration with the Northampton MA Arts Council, is a performance art piece FLAMBOYAN, exploring intersectional feminine Puerto Rican experience through the lens of a bruja. Raízes, a poem from this piece, was selected as part of the 2019 Western MA Visual Arts & Poetry Biennial.
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Scraps of Chalk~ By Elli Sanchez

6/11/2020

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The eraser sits in my hand.
I look at the words and contemplate their fate
I feel like a god watching its creations.
Made of dust
Like they’re made of chalk
I exalted thee out of the dust
Risen from the particles is something breathing,
Something alive
The chalk on the board has meaning now,
But will it always?
I can swipe my hand and kill the bloodless words
Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return
Forgotten.
Dust in the Wind.
Just like I too may be
When the Writer and Eraser of my life
Decides it’s time to start again
All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust.
And all I will be is chalk on a board
Turned to dust in the air



Author Bio:
Elli Sanchez started writing poetry and stories when she learned how to pick up a pen. She has always had a passion for storytelling, especially through poetry. She grew up in a house full of sisters, so she often went outside to write where it was quiet. Her writing is influenced by her Spanish culture, her spirituality, and nature. Even though she has taken up writing fiction, she finds herself reaching back to poetry because it allows her to reflect on life and herself. Elli is currently enrolled to receive her Bachelor’s degree in English.
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Mute~ By Andy Oram

6/10/2020

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The slumped city a dome of silence--
            souls remanded to limbo, quartered in nuclear barracks

The only rustle--
       a hubbub of switches, shepherding photons along twisted paths
                       where multitudes emulate realities
              their domiciles ripped open to others

A place for all,
               where all have a voice--
               where even a thousand chips lack the filters
    to discriminate our declarations, so--

                                       Mute that cat!

Author Bio:
Andy Oram is a writer and editor in the computer field. His editorial projects have ranged from a legal guide covering intellectual property to a graphic novel about teenage hackers. Print publications where his writings have appeared include The Economist, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, and Vanguardia Dossier. He has lived in the Boston, Massachusetts area for more than 30 years. His poems have been published in Ají, Arlington Literary Journal, DASH, Genre: Urban Arts, Offcourse, Panoply, Soul-Lit, and Speckled Trout Review.
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At Risk~ By Buff Whitman-Bradley

6/9/2020

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i.
 
Older now
We surprise ourselves
In small ways
Every day.  
Some mornings
The first glimpse
Of our faces
In the bathroom mirror
Is a shock
That knocks us back
For a moment.
Sometimes there is an instant
Of instability
New to us
When we stand up
From a chair
And we teeter a little
Before forging ahead,
And then we remember 
When our old, old grandmothers
Required our help
To pull them up
Out of their deeply cushioned rockers
Where they’d sat crocheting for hours.
We notice that we have a tenuous relationship
With many consonants
And that when someone says
The word meet, for example,
We may guess
Feet or bean or heap
But really only hear ee,
In addition to which
We are increasingly aware
Of uttering the question What?
With great regularity
When our partners 
Attempt to convey
Essential information
From across the room.
 
ii.
 
But startlingly new to many of us our age
These days
Is the realization that we are counted
Among the group of global citizens
Deemed most at risk
From the pandemic
That is rampaging
Around the planet
Sickening and killing
Thousands upon thousands.
And while we may understand
The reasons why we are more at risk,
Coming face to face
With that existential/medical fact
For many of us who pride ourselves
On staying fit
Exercising regularly
Eating the healthiest foods,
Is profoundly sobering.
We read the death notices
Every day
Noting the ages of those
Who have succumbed
And which were within our range,
While we can’t help thinking, 
Better us than the little ones.
 
iii.
 
Older now
And at risk in a time of plague
Long lives thoroughly lived
Battle-scared immune systems
Bracing for another deadly onslaught
Feeling immense gratitude 
For all the courageous helpers
Bottomless love 
For family and friends
Perhaps growing somewhat philosophical
About the unpredictable arrival
Of mortality’s midnight train
But ready to climb aboard?
Not yet.
 

Author Bio:
Buff Whitman-Bradley and his wife Cynthia are relying on digital technology to keep in touch with their young granddaughters, but ache to be able to romp in the woods with them again. Buff's poems have appeared and many print and online journals. His latest book is "Crows with Bad Writing." He podcasts poems reflecting on aging, memory and mortality at thirdactpoems.podbean.com This poem expresses the uncertainty many feel about the ultimate outcome of the current crisis -- and future ones.
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Poem For The Plague Year~ By Michael S. Walker

6/8/2020

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I reach out
To some girl in Riyadh
While the TV in my
Sister's room
Keeps warning "Isolate"
I try reading Defoe
Imaging there might be
Comfort and insights
And he reads like
A Census of the Dead
And I give him up quickly
Strange noises in the night now
Stray dogs as prophets
The girl in Riyadh has gone silent
Under the TVs loop
Isolate Isolate Isolate
She is somewhere in tomorrow afternoon
Somewhere closer
Defoe is as dead as his book
Defoe is as dead as Marilyn Monroe
Or some anonymous Dough Boy
Or...
The furnace kicks on as usual
And the prophets darken
Bark it will not always be so
My sister sleeping in the next room coughs
And I wonder
And cannot sleep at all...


Author Bio:
Michael Walker is a writer living in Newark, Ohio. He is the author of two novels: 7-22, a YA fantasy novel and The Vampire Henry, a "literary" horror novel. He has also seen his stories and poems published in Adelaide Literary Magazine and Fiction Southeast, among others.
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Black and White Corners~ By Tom Squitieri

6/4/2020

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We fade to others,
in the shade find
Liberation
Square to them
Diamonds to us
 
Stark black and white
Produces the internal
Rainbow shadow
Where sharp lines on
Outsides
Be the ruse for
The melding that
Beckons
 
One day the lines
​join in the corner

To dazzle others to
Say wow
The spectrum
Has stark shades
For the angles that
Make our kaleidoscope


Author Bio:
Tom Squitieri is a three-time winner each of the Overseas Press Club and White House Correspondents’ Association awards for his work as a war correspondent, with reporting from all seven continents. His poetry has appeared in Ariel Chart, The Raven's Perch, Scarlet Leaf Review, Twisted Vine, The Literary Yard, Eskimo Pie, The Stardust Review, Wanderlust Journal, Shanghai Writer’s Workshop, No Strings Attached, Style Sonata and The Griffin’s Inkpot, in the book "Put Into Words My Love,” and was selected for Color: Story 2020. He writes most of his poetry while parallel parking or walking his dogs, Topsie and Batman.
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Entombed by love in the depths of the sea~ By Nardine Sanderson

6/3/2020

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Entombed by love in the depths of the sea, was his love for she, in the wreckage of his drowning heart
Beneath the wildest waves
Her spirit dancing lone in shadows, for his kiss she craves
World's apart in sheltering skies
Eclipsed by moons, and closing eyes
The carnage of an age-old love
In parting beds of sorrow lay
Silently amongst the shadows and the calling home of day.

Nardine Sanderson 22/03/2020
(C) copyright all rights reserved.



Author Bio:
Nardine Sanderson is Geelong born writer poetess who's love of words stretches across the sea to immortalize the loves in her life.
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Pause~ By Kathryn Sadakierski

6/2/2020

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In the harried whirlwind of life,
The ceaseless carousel
Lights blurred in the frenzy,
So much has been taken for granted:
Food, health, safety, freedom;
But when we simplify,
We can see
What, before, was forgotten.

Our digital world is viral,
Always connected, never paused,
And yet
Coronavirus slows the routines we know,
So now
We can only reflect,
Be in the moment,
And next, remember
Not to forget
What is most important,
Being with family,
Knowing we’re not alone,
That with solidarity and hope
We will overcome,
Refinding home.


Author Bio:
Kathryn Sadakierski is a creative writer who draws much of her inspiration from nature and art. In particular, Kathryn enjoys writing ekphrastic poetry in response to works of art. She has had a lifelong love of literature, but it wasn’t until fifth grade when she discovered the incredible depth and beauty of poetry upon reading a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Thereafter, Kathryn gravitated towards reading and writing poetry, and now considers it to be her primary mode of creative expression, though she also enjoys writing short stories that are can be quite verbose, in all actuality. Kathryn’s writing has appeared in The Bangor Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Nine Muses Poetry, Teachers of Vision, Dime Show Review, The Decadent Review, Visual Verse, iō Literary Journal, as well as in various anthologies. Kathryn’s poem “Fall in New England” is forthcoming in Northern New England Review. She graduated summa cum laude from Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts with her B.A., and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree.
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