Leave me the night | Bartholomew Barker

Let the heat of the sun be transmuted
to ivory by the fallow moon where polar
shade hides ice for eons

Grant me her gentle gaze under star-speckled
skies instead of the blinding stare of day
where color offends the eye I drink in shadows

Leave me the night


Bartholomew Barker works with Living Poetry. He has published a full-length collection, a chapbook and been nominated for a Pushcart and the Best of the Net. His work has recently appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Panoply, Tipton Poetry Journal, Gyroscope Review and the Naugatuck River Review among others. www.bartbarkerpoet.com

Hope is a Thing with Feathers | Sarah Dodd

She perches in my heart and flutters in my mind.

In the shadow of her wings, both faith and love abide.

She sings a song of serenity and lights the shadowed way.

Though her wings may battered be by winds of fear and shame,

Through the bitter winds of hate, she struggles to find a way.

She graces my soul with gratitude.

And strengthens the weary will

When all else seems to subside, hope will live here still.


Sarah Dodd a.k.a. Not All Who Wander Are Lost, can be found at musingsbydoddzilla.org

Perfect Peace | Frank Hubeny

We did not know this was an active war.

We ate and drank and then went out to play.

A flood of darkness terrorized that day.

We sank to depths, but couldn’t find a floor.

Death couldn’t get enough. It wanted more.

When waters drained then flames arose to prey.

We watched our gold like straw. It burnt away.

The white sands turned to glass on what was shore.

Then all was still and birds returned to sing.

Our prison doors were opened. (Weren’t we free?)

What dangers might await the ones who leave

and what, we wondered, would this new peace bring,

but one by one we left. We had to see.

And so we did rejoicing to receive.


Frank Hubeny has poetry published in Snakeskin and The Lyric. He regularly posts, poetry, prose and photography to https://frankhubeny.blog.

Blood on the thumb | Michael Martinez-Ziegler

A red Nile stretches across a beige pasture,

Building to a drip on a sheen nail,

The disgust of origin from chaffed cartilage.

The fear of a hole and a rub, my honor,

I am guilty of picking the green,

But why the penalty of maturity?

Like Moses parting the sea to engulf the Pharaoh,

So does my own enslaver drown in a gush of filth–

My hands washed for necessity and sanity!


Born in Toledo, Ohio; Michael spends his time analyzing poetry at his blog  www.theverseuniverse.com. He also works as an author for AllPoetry and is in the process of completing his first novella, titled Dance in the Dark.

Seeds | Lynn White

The bomb blew up the water melon.

It exploded shredding its pink flesh

and scattering its seeds.

The bombs blew up the water melons.

They exploded shredding their pink flesh

and scattering their seeds.

Bombs and more bombs

scattering seeds to make more water melons.


Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. 

https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com

 https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ 

The Boredom of Fitzgerald | Michael Martinez-Ziegler

A book on wood, a table carved in a rectangle;

A face with impression, mystery in content–

To pick up the paper so slender in volume;

I read with boredom, meaning, I don’t care…

Why the allure of repute and a biography?

How too do I long for the finance and import–

To sit in central air and with feet on the wood,

Relaxed, sunk in, my shadow stretched across.

In fake I am not famous, in wallet I am ruined;

My story is much thought about, but who I

am, seems to most just a mystique, allured-

This thought unfinished, why do I care so much…


Born in Toledo, Ohio; Michael spends his time analyzing poetry at his blog  www.theverseuniverse.com. He also works as an author for AllPoetry and is in the process of completing his first novella, titled Dance in the Dark.

Wild Water | Lynn White

Looking up from the crag

the sky is a smooth

unbroken blue,

smooth as clear water

the storm almost forgotten

hardly a memory trickling

over moist rocks.

But looking down it’s clear

that the river remembers it all.


Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. 

https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com

 https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/