Trash Bags Beside the Highway

Only Seen in Peripheral Vision

by Dan Flore

Dan is 29 years old. He does poetry workshops for people with serious mental illness, lives In Pennsylvania. He has another poem in Enthalpy.






the fields are black
they carry me through her skin
clouds strangle me
I am only seen in peripheral vision now

a child laughed
and I prayed without knowing it
only the flesh of shadows touches me

I am the lost harmonicas'
final resurrecting hum
I am a mans last look
at a photo of himself as a child

my life belongs to the infants now
it flickers in their eyes
I sing songs that have no notes
songs that cling to church ceilings

Mozart

by Don Schaeffer

It has no location
since it moves
along the buzzing and hissing
lifeline of now,
made of a clot of time.

It invades from outside,
gets past cracks in your castle walls
and moves with you as you pass
along the strips of the present.
But it talks to you and dances,
moving up and down in a space
stretched like a web of time.

Oh the dances can be sweeter than sighs,
can quake your human sinew,
webbed over the bones of time,
can gesture gently as if you had eyes
that could envision the thin wires of time.

The Manitoba Story

I Don't Know How It Happened

by Ray Sweatman

Ray grew up in Jonesboro, GA. Wandered around. Came back. Tried to settle down a few times, but the ground kept moving. Got an MFA in playwriting from Columbia. Was too young to know playwriting was dead. But the real education was New York City and a woman named Jackie. Didn’t write anything for about 15 years. One of his exes called him the Smoker who talks about writing.


but the chickens have decided
they’d like to have lips
and the plastic chicken surgeon
was happy to oblige
he’d already made their breasts so big
it was a natural step
and now the butterflies have declared
they’d like to hold nets
and how we laughed
when they started chasing
the men in their silly shorts
and funny white hats
and almost cracked a rib
watching them pump
frantic legs
into the sunset
and here we are
the butterfly and me
sitting in the front row
watching brand new chickens
strut down the runway
as she says Oh Sweet Man
isn’t the world a lovely place?
and I reply Oh yes Miss Butterfly
and growing more so
by the minute.

Missouri Poem

by Dan Cuddy
Dan has been involved with the writing community in Baltimore,MD. His book of poems, "Handprint On The Window" was published by Three Conditions Press in 2003 (available on Amazon.com).



the river sludges by

I sit
how my parents hated that
get a job
do something with your life
I sit

pull blades of grass
wonder how Whitman
made an epic of them

me?
just a kid with a hand me down language
I can tell when poems are sophisticated
me?
too blunt too uneducated to advance anything
much less art

the water isn't pretty
and drinking?
beer is healthier

Virginia Woolf weighted herself down
with stones
with stones
I skip over the river's ripples
defy gravity
like words defy death
for a bit

I sit
watch
mumble to myself
no minuet of form
just mumbling
grumbling
people pass by
there is a road up there
they are busy
getting from here to there
but they don't stop
just water
effluent
carrying so much
to nowhere

I sit
mumble
repeating the same things over and over

the river is rising
I'm not moving
let it tear me away
I'm not moving
just sitting and mumbling
who cares?
the people who don't have time?