Prophecy

I predict
November will
be full of promises
I couldn’t keep
bills
I didn’t pay
and lovers
who wouldn’t lay.

Some modern day Methuselah,
I am a prophet
who can assure you
that each of her prophecies
will come true.

Sue Zalokar

The Secret War

A leak somewhere
Along the wall

And the rushing catastrophe
The freezing water freed

It bites through the skin
To the intestines

And suddenly
It’s waist deep

The water is thick
With dirt and everywhere

Waist deep
The color of flood

Noah West

A College Infatuation

I knew you were a weakness
a puzzle
I should better let alone

Photo: Sue Zalokar

But then, there was the factor of light
orange, striped
curving over you collar bone

with such delicacy I couldn’t
turn away, forgot
to moan while you moved

in and out of me, hands
clinging
my back, sweaty

 

Cassandra Kolsen

One of Life’s Ugly Little Mysteries

how is it

that a woman’s

surrender

has more value

when

bartered for with

negotiations?

is the pretense

of possible affection and plattitude

truly

more important

than honest attraction?

is

the celebration a woman’s

tongue makes

as it glides

against the

sandpaper, raw-silk

of your skin

less erotic or surreal

because of the

absense of

it’s cost?

 

Julie McCurdy

The Edge

The mercy of the Muse
is a perfectly intimate
and timely mercilessness.

No one and nothing
has met me like she has.

No one and nothing else
has wanted me so unfurled,
so staunch, so finished,
so honestly endangered
and dangerous,
so lived.

She has worked to halt me
only when I was petty.

I have shown up for
the writing by my hand
of thousands and thousands
of poems.

None done casually.

And they in turn
have written me.

I am their artwork,
as they are mine.

They are the ear I listen with
to find the way I am to go now.

As you too may have noticed,
this world is made of solid music.

As you too may have noticed,
each dancer moves the music
even as music moves the dancer.

Here in this pattern’s fact
the act of art and
the art of action
know the same kiss of the world,
the same cut,
the same mercy that is
the most intimate and timely
mercilessness.

Welcome, then, to this edge,
where we have always been,
where we will always be,
there being nowhere else
nor nothing else to be,
to do,
to love,
to flee.

megwhitescultures.com

Poem by Lance M. Loder