Water
Each lake is a pinhole
poked from a larger map of land.
Each nameless roadside creek
is born of curious scissors.
I am sorry,
cartographer of my life.
I love the water too much
to stop drilling here.
by John Sibley Williams
John Sibley Williams is the author of six chapbooks, finalist for the Pushcart and Rumi Prizes in Poetry, and winner of the 2011 HEART Poetry Award. His website is www.TheArtOfRaining.com.
On the Way Out
Written based on prompts by Penelope Scambly Schott at her workshop
I close the door behind you, but I’m the one outside. I change my mind: there is more to say, but the brass door handle breaks off in my hand.
Childhood cat at my feet, no longer blind; smooth shiny fur, as if time fixed what it breaks. My body, neatly refurbished, cured of wrinkles and small pains.
The cat walks away next to my younger figure. I watch them disappear.
I don't notice my absence.
by A. Molotkov
Visit A. Molotkov at www.AMolotkov.com
Brown Sugar – Life Before Waking
Strange to find you again
after so long an absence
standing in the living room
of my old house, down
the street from your own,
talking in that easy way
that we always used to.
I don’t remember the move
to the couch, or any
of the ways you looked
subtly different from my memory
in the gray December light
through wobbly old window glass.
Your brown eyes were animated
with engagement, and I realized
that everything had shifted again –
we were laying in bed,
wearing only the speech between
us in the weak light,
bare leg tangled to leg,
one hand cradling a breast
while you explained to me
about the most recent guy
and I let you in
on the vacant sky blue
I just turned away from,
but these were clinical dialogues
underwritten without envy or fear
on the steps we’d taken
to find this inevitable shore.
by Chris Ridenour
appeared in Adagio Verse Quarterly
Chris Ridenour is a print artist and writer. He founded Night Bomb Press in 2008 with his wife, Amber. Together they have produced six books and one infant daughter. He lives in St. Johns, Oregon.