After If I Loved You

by Don Schaeffer

If I could betray you
life would make sense.

I could spend my days
empty in all the places

where things can fill them
with frightened titters

and come home
scared and fresh to a cold bed.

I would be off to the far vacuums
if I could betray you.

for the drunken failure he was

by Justin Hyde


Justin Hyde lives in Iowa, where he attempts to rehabilitate criminals. He can be contacted at jjjjhyde@yahoo.com.





my dad never once
missed a day
of work.

that is more
than i can claim
on another fake sick-day
sitting on a beanbag chair
in the downtown library
with carver
and two
flasks.

if we had
anything to do with each other
old man
i'd drink you
under a bar-stool

i'd tell you
i remember
how sometimes on the way out the door
to the bar
you'd grab my wrist
just so
making my hand
slam shut

the ten bucks
i stole
from mom's purse
to buy that spring-loaded
forearm-strengthener
from dan kamn

thinking maybe
if i ever could
open my hand up
you'd want to
stick around.

On Golden Pond

by Don Schaeffer


She clings to
the wool of his sweater,
grasping to prevent him from

falling away. She hangs on to
the familiarity of his breast
rising in breath,

the beat of his heart.
It isn't time
for you to leave.

Why do I cry only in movies
when there is so little kindness
and such a need for tears?

Football

Rainy Day

A Career of Burglarproof Doors

by Don Schaeffer


It's been over a year
since I closed the grey steel
burglarproof doors,
felt the magnetic eraser

zap away memories of what I did
that every day
drove me further from
kind voices and good deeds.

And, I left the building
without grace. Now, the judges
are all on the other side of the wall,
among the forgotten.

Lost Somewhere in Her Tan

by Dan Flore

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

I am lost somewhere in her tan
she spins and the earth turns in her direction
but she doesn't know it
God drips down
but only in things like manholes and mascara
she swears He's there
while part of her wishes He wasn't
she talks and everyone listens but her
she is in some sphere beyond sweat and sea
I move far when she stands
afraid my awkward walk will drift into her grace

"The Grocer" on You Tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8tVyNC-nKM

The World Opening Ritual

by Don Schaeffer


We attend
the reverse funeral on Wednesday.
It's all so clean
in the reverence of white.
The tiny secret gates to the world
are opened once again

and the confusion
of the earth bumps up by one.
We suck up our mourning
as new-eyes-and-new-mouth,
so common yet so grand, enters.

The event lasts
longer than a kiss,
immediately catching
the attention of God.

Act Five

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).

always they said "act your age"

I tried
until I became too old
to act any other way

now
as some faces harden into a pinched sneer
and others into a pouty drop of bittersweet
the tail high but drooped over itself
a parody of a Hershey's kiss
or a Daumier head with elfin hat

i
lost all my egotistic capitalization
burn like a candle at church
gloom surounding
the little self-illuminating nimbus

i
am now a reminiscer
the wake at the tail end of the boat
a water-skier holding to life
bouncing on the plough through the lake
which was once so liquid
and shined with spoonfuls of sun
with sprinkles of moon
but now it is almost solid
not with ice
that seasonal
but with the hard tile of age
dark
ungiving
unforgiving
paved congealed age

and the potty face looking on
sneers
"act your age"

i
act
because it is an act
in a drama
a comedy
ha-ha
the fool
i hang myself upside down
monkey of dreams
view the world
as if young

how cracked the face in the mirror
the road to hell

and this was before drugs

by Gary Horvitz (aka Nikko47)

Gary Horvitz is a health professional, truth-seeker, activist, dreamer and sometime poet living in the San Francisco Bay area who is perfecting the art of accepting things just as they are.


Fourteen I was,
back when time slowed down and I
began to clock the distance between
father and tomorrow
took my time to cover my tracks
measured out the difference between
school and the roadless anarchy
fractured under cover of darkness
a walking cadaver
toe tied to family meals
and algebra into moonrise
but in the mornings
sliding out from my slab of sleep
the symbols melted all over again

Week at a Hotel in a Foreign Country: Inspired by a Movie

by Don Schaeffer

An encounter
he thinks as he stands
shaking her hand
with all his attendants milling around
saying goodbye.

He wants to give her a kiss
instead of becoming
a stranger again.

He massaged her feet.
She trusted him.
They talked the deepest
and quietest speech.

And just as the sun
begins to set
and the door of the taxi
opens, he gives her a kiss
and creates big
purple and red
memories.

The Female and Myths

by Charlotte Thompson (aka Golden Illusions)

Charlotte Thompson is a very distinctive poet with a sense of the mystic and an enormous passion. She is always turning ideas of the feminine over in her mind. She raises prize Arabian horses.

Minus one.

Just a while ago I planted flowers and brought seeds to the trash. It doesn't matter the need of grow now. Just something on my mind like washing clothes or going to Nik's or beginning a tea shoppe and trying to believe in Santa Claus. This isn’t going to be social I think. This is going to be way recluse like the piano at night. Just something soft-please not loud or garish or split the divide of my clothes that hang on me-restless carried away by the birds even. Threads can’t be that bare. Until the cows come home and moo around me I will be unable to have peace.

One day you died.

Damn that death boy charging around you like that-fuck.I always thought of always. You know like Cinderella. I did. Be a total truth-I did. Well now it’s the other way around. Bring me no prince or cathedral in candles or until forever -silly princed out vows.I want no mass said in my name or priests telling me I will inherit the kingdom of God.That is a ridiculous thought and I will have no part of fairy tales again.

Regina O Regina.

Hail Mary mother of all women or so that’s what was said.
How much of this out of whack bull shit must females endure. We are the make of wind and trees of birds and oceans.
The divine music of art. That part that sustains a birth
brings home those fantasy rules and then slits their wrists
bleeding to death the old story of caballeros blanco. Bleed them.

Watch a storm grow.

All smooth of skin and hair-finely precious. Female.

Perversity

by Don Schaeffer


Not the feel of flesh,
nor the fragrance or
anything that touches the skin,
it's far away,
light entering my eyes,
a flutter brush with the outer filaments of nature,
the biology of far away,
hidden way back
in the angel breath of memory.

View From the Tobaggan Slide

I Do Remember

by Tom Prime

I do remember when She whispered, Her hair Red smokewind. We are One.


When Tom stayed at my home over night a couple of years ago, he was in the midst of his wandering across Canada. He told me so much about homelessness and travel. Tom is a magic, mystical free spirit. His poems reflect that.

Wife's Cousin

by Justin Hyde

she's on her side
on my living room floor,
legs slightly scissored.

also the wife is there,
sister in law
and her giant dullard
of a boyfriend.

they are playing
a board game
as i sit in corner,
nurse the forty,

try to act normal
to keep unstable peace
with wife.

cousin repositions
here and there
and her box
sings to me
from underneath
that denim.

nose
then my tongue
then my machinery
in there.

it wriggles,
taunting me
like sparrow
to cat
behind
screen-window.

i crouch
glaze-eyed
behind forty,

sweat drips
down my
machinery.

i think how screens
sometimes
pop out

and front doors
are accidentally
left open.


Justin Hyde is an internet poet who burst on the scene not too long ago with a freshness and frankness respected by an increasing army of fans. He has been published in a number of more liberal e-zine and print publications including "Zygote in My Coffee," "St.Vitus Press," "Literary Chaos."

My Son, Me and the Old Poets

by Anna Yin

We painted my son's room.
He chose the color blue,
it's supposed to be cool.

We end the day there.
He reads his book,
I read mine, we dream.

Nearby, a new library will be
an ocean of books. I will throw
him in so he can learn to swim.

I joined a new poetry group.
I am the youngest, surrounded
by deep lakes and old trees.

Thirty years from now
I will be like them, settled
in my meditation.

By then, my son
will be sailing on his ambition,
exploring beyond my ocean.


Anna Yin is a Canadian poet and literary translator whose native language and culture is Chinese. She has the courage to write poetry in English and the courage to try poetry in a variety of forms.

Welcome