Jon Huer writes

David Norris shoots

Alicja Kuberska writes

A stranger

It seems to me, 

I know her from somewhere.
The familiar eyes look at me.
A smile lights up her face.

She holds a diploma in hand
And believes that she can easily
Change a man and the world.
Naive girl.

Young mother
Matured with love.
Secrets of the night were to be

The happiness of days.

Power suited business woman
Sells her soul for pennies

And is screwed by corporations.
One day she will wake up.

Time is merciful

It steals moments from memory

Leaving only small fragments
And whispers of her, behind

Young Woman With Diploma -- Neysa McMein

Michael Drummond writes

Metamorphosis on a Lost Rainy Day

The wipers wipe the rain 

Off the bus-wide windshield

Their movements are symmetrical 

Perfectly timed as they pivot

So precisely and simultaneously. 

These two wipers have erotic movements

As would an Indian woman carrying a jug of

water 

On her head, her hips swiveling to absorb 

The instability of her shifting feet 

Walking down the path 

Wherein not a ripple 

Is formed on the surface of her vessel 

These windshield wipers are alive 

Showing but their profiles 

Each with a swiveling head 

Teeth clamped on to the wiper's mid-riff.

Each head has a well placed 

Cobra eye: simple rivets perpetually staring 

At each others' movements and fastened onto

their necks are two steel chop sticks 

Which are perfectly parallel 

Pivoting as they do 

An inch and a half apart 

The animal's ’esophagus’ 

Climbs up the outside chopstick 

A narrow, black rubber hose 

That spits out a chemical mix 

Onto the windshield 

Only to have it wiped away by the blade 

That the cobra fangs fasten themselves onto 

These wipers constantly pivot in and out 

In towards the middle 

Out towards the periphery 

Until the rain passes 

Wherein they come to stand still 

Staring down at each other down 

At the middle of the windshield 

Asleep with their one eye each observing us 

Like a silent, still guard 

Waiting only for the next rainfall

Proposed Colossal Monument for Grant Park, Chicago: Windshield Wiper -- Claes Oldenburg

 

Arlene Corwin writes

*Impetus For An Arlene Poem*

Impetus for an Arlene poem

Can come

From

Anywhere:

A phrase, a word, a letter

From a friend or alphabet-ter,

Bettering the source.

Any boost

Can force this chicken off her roost,

Any force create a course,

Any impulse impetus.

Wondrous is the geist creative,

Case that’s dative.

Speech from everyday,

Voiced and unvoiced vocabulary.

An Arlene poem

Reaches its home in a conclusion -

Something summing up the theme.

Simple words leading to rhyme,

Un-meteoric meter.

(She, confessed and plodding thinker)

An Arlene mind needs to combine  

Instruction, art and entertainment,

Synapse sparks from cups of coffee

Speeding up the poky brain incentive.

Sassy, saucy, brazen, shameless,

Truths so deep they must stay nameless.

All this to become a stanza capturing

The nature of death, age, romance,

The everything

Implicit in the impetus. 

*a quote from a Duane Vorhees letter.

 

 Continuum – Robert Hardgrave