Words says the janitor I just keep getting swept away till the floor is clean— that educated shine polished with spit from the tongue. Danny P. Barbare has recently appeared in Hollow, Sojourn, The Tau, and Willard & Maple. He attended Greenville Technical College where he studied creative writing. He has been writing poetry off […]
Got so high I finally felt like myself.
Brags about the solid granite. How his sweat and stretch polish the stone. That endless is his torment. As if forever means more to him than to us. As if he’d trade his burden for mornings writing checks our mothers can no longer sign, or his ever upward effort for their long downhill slides. Truth: […]
Grandma dropped the lizard down the garbage disposal. “I don’t like animals.” Her excuse muffles the Crunch crunch rattle crunch Of the lizard Pulled apart With the orange peel and the meatloaf and the broccoli and the half-eaten weight watchers Jello Leftovers. The lizard was a left-over. Over from the swamp. Pre-condo Pre-golf course Pre-garbage […]
Awake to heavily pounding trains. Pass my window, shake my spine. Split with fluttering light of day my head and take me down the stairs to where my daughter taps and talks. So little, spritely, light and flighty. Lost and half asleep I wander through the morning and the morning and the morning waiting for […]
Missed Connections by Christina Kallery “I look on here daily hoping someone noticed me enough to post an ad about it.” –Anonymous in Trenton, Michigan To the garbage man in the orange truck, who chatted up a lady by the Hollywood Tan, would you guess she’d love another chance to watch you hoist those overflowing cans? […]
In memory of Ivan P. In the stillness of the cemetery, I wonder how it is a man will live for only books, but rarely read them, books to pile in towers on counter tops, tables, floor, towers that could be seen as art, if we focused on texture, color, could be taken as virtuous, […]
after F. Isabel Campoy I come from a fledgling suburb in a state that lost its mind with beauty but coped by building tract homes and strip malls. Where I come from, everyone calls out to friends from patios studded with braziers across yards littered with bicycles sandboxes and panting mutts. Cookouts are a seasonal […]
Insomnia Yellow jackets burrow for winter in the exterior brick that edges the second story window. Inside that bedroom with its indistinct hum, sleep eludes me. Who can say whether bees, the noise of cars on a distant highway, or some machinery of my brain that refuses to power down at night? In bed, I […]
Even with a receipt I can’t return The day bought on a whim— Careless of time being spent. Buyer’s remorse wakes The following day, a hangover Rising from relentless binge-buying. “I couldn’t help myself.” So says contrition laid on When the mistake’s made Visible. The size and color, All wrong. Why take it from the […]
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