One Piece by Emilie Dec

Megan

She danced as if she was the only one in the room.
Nothing could stop her.
With her short blonde hair and soft yellow dress.
All eyes were on her.
Look at her.
It's her time to shine.
Not yours,
Not mine.
Let her be.
Step back, take a look
At her beauty,
And what she has made you be.
She is gone now,
But we will see her again.
Now that she is free,
She can go in peace.

{Poem by Emilie Dec}

One Poem by Amanda Bernard

Longer

The cool breeze blowing through the trees
The smell of lilacs brush my nose
The only sound coming from the far off crickets
As we swing in the violet glow of the moon
The stars dancing overhead
As the clouds roll by
This is a perfect night with you by my side
Lightning bugs dance over the horizon
I don't want this night to end
I don't want to lose my best friend
You'll be leaving tomorrow
As the sky turns pink
And the sun begins to rise
I lay my head on your shoulder
Holding on for a little longer.

{Poem by Amanda Bernard}

One Poem by Matthew Allen

A Sunny Transition

In a circle that continues,
another cycle comes.
From white-brick walls
To open air and fields.
Water splashed from house to house,
People reveling in the freedom,
Exulting in everything.
With a boundless energy never abating
And nothing on our minds;
We shout
We sing
We dance
We play,
For summer's here
And there's only air;
Only air between us and an adventure.

{Poem by Matthew Allen}

One Piece by Heather Luthy

The Wait

Walkin up
First in line
Glove in hand
Cap on
And the jersey
Your childhood favorite
You get there
The cold iron gate
Between you
And the field
The line
Starts to grow
You hear a
Dull roar
The music starts
Glad you're in front
You will beat them
You will be first
To the field
The autograph
Is as good as yours

{Poem by Heather Luthy}

One Piece by Robert Urich

My Blood Runs Black

Written beliefs, they manifest
They appear through me,

oozing from my palms,
like stigmata

I rip off my skin to find the
blood has been replaced
by ink

From my pocket I take a tool to write,
and I dip it in, on the inside

"This pen is where
these words
live"

I said.

I will dip the pen.
I will dip it again.

And again.
And again.

Until my ink
runs
out

{Poem by Robert Urich}

One Poem by Alexandria King

Wind Knocks My Window

Wind knocks at my window
With its cold and shallow blows
Against the wet, frosty glass
And it sends its wails, shrills and silhouettes
Across my bedroom wall
As I find it hard to slumber
With the bizarre sounds
The wind composes at night
The shadows move stealthily closer
To my puny blue bed
Ready to devour me whole
And spit me out in another dimension
A world more diverse than mine
So I turn on the light to frighten
The fiends away as I yell
For mother who says its all right
It was just a nightmare and tucks
Me back into bed
Sending the demons away
And telling me to go to sleep
And I close my eyes once more
To the wind that knocks on my window

{Poem by Alexandria King}

One Piece by Daniel Colgin

Embrace This

Freedom of mind is something you'll find that
helps you with time in a dark place like this.
The dark is so dark that the beginning will mark
the way you should come back to the original start.
All of us closets stacked full of boxes
filled with happy and hurtful felings all in a row.
Don't you remember all the things you have lived?
For a single drop of happiness how much did you give?
Do you have anything to show besides your unopened box,
the closets, the closed doors with tamper proof locks?
At some point you will open all the things you once knew,
and until that day comes there are things you must do.
You must free your mind of all locks and doors,
you must burn all your boxes all stacked on the floors.
It may seem impossible and unimportant right now,
still you must do it to be free of all space,
then your mind is your own and that you'll embrace.

{Poem by Daniel Colgin}

One Piece by Dennis Herrell

Dust Child

The wind settles.
Small man-child sits
calm as the dust under his body,
cups soft warmness in his hand.
Broken earth sifts between fingers,
falling in plumed dribbles
over legs crossed in repose.

He watches the ways of dust
as each handful caresses
his legs like shattered feathers,
then wisping on dead smoothness
the face fallen by his knee,
still face, whose eyes like the dust
rest upon the child.

{Poem by Dennis Herrell}

One Poem by Noelle Dunn

Costume of Concern

You can not see that which you are
as you exist in a petri dish
a mere specimen for those self proclaimed scientists
who claim to know, as they diagnose and examine you
through a microscope of culturally rigid eyes,
under this so called costume of concern,
and the guise of God (good),
the need to know and the obsession to
de-compartmentalize your frame
to make sense of the senseless
resisting the truth by calling names
and placing undue labels by and out of the refusal
to accept that which you are

{Poem by Noelle Dunn}

One Poem by Joshua Kreis McTiernan

The Class

for those herein described: "many thanks"

You can’t expect me to teach when
I’ve been reading Thanatopsis in the bath tub.

My mind flows to class where there’s
Cameron, with the afghan straight hair,
bones brittle, discarded twigs;
Maisaa, smile hung dutifully from the ears;
Angel, his roman-romantic curls,
drowsy with fourth period.

I finger Thanatopsis

and Bryant quietly approaches the lectern,
his chin wrapped in fingers, one straying
to the mouth to remind me that
the chemicals will unbalance,
ventricles will buckle, and
cells clump and clog, collapsing
exhausted,
one holding another. This is the best we can hope for.
And every parent, he says, still sees their men and women
through cradle-vision: doughy, squashed down to
tiny fingers and toes untried, untested,
unready.

The twigs we’ll bundle and bury
with few words. The smile will dangle, choke.
The curls will fall and energy
disappear. Not destroyed, merely
transferred.

Do they see in me
the look I bring to class, clutched close
like an ill-tempered child?
The cold bath water soaks
through my skin. I drip Thanatopsis.
I drain it.

No lecture. No assignment. I cannot teach
the dead to stay that way, nor the living
[and so bright: twigs and smile and curls]
to accept indescribable non-existence. In time
we get to that uneasy understanding
alone. We read it in shivers,
in blue lips after bath time,
in hair clumped heavy in defeat
and the little pulls from that perpetual gray Sunday
in Lincoln Park. I think,

‘What will I say to them then?
What will I say when they slouch through
the trail I expect to blaze,
their hair cropped closer perhaps,
wrinkles like fingers
cupping the sockets, age weary child born fat
or femur thin from some new-shaken-off disease?’
And will they be surprised to see that
once again we’ve been tossed together
with no lesson plan?

{Poem by Joshua Kreis McTiernan}

One Piece by Natalie Williams

Cream Tears

She pastes on her finery
Plastic hose and diamond white
She is the night

Her pearls are cream tears
Sugared by her losses
She glosses over

She's trapped in the mirror
Can you hear her?
She’s breaking a liquid turn

{Poem by Natalie Williams}

Two Poems by Ron Koppelberger

Nightfall Bloom

Surely the dear design of echoing excitement
And the means to rush a sinew and bone
Alliance with the consummation of ash and tender
Sparks of need,
Define a possible parable in
Pews of well washed nightfall bloom told by the
Wonder of conceived blood.


Sunshine at Night

Remembered by the courtesy of twilight
Assurance in owl cooing echos of dusky
Advance and cool airs in firefly dance, a
Charge in wisdom of wrangled wishes
For the dreamy phantasms of sleeping darkness
And wan sunshine at night.

{Poetry by Ron Koppelberger}

One Poem by Kent Miller

The Legend of Her Soul

She stands out like a raven
on dark love on twilight's beach
her imagination is her wing
her heart a moonesque guide
luminating her hunt
a tender, passionate light
her lips breath a scented truth
her breasts sweet pillows of desire
she's a huntress in search of meaning
in beauty she's already attired
she stands at the edge of the water
feels the waves lap her toes
she disrobes her black blouse and pants
she swims naked embraced by the ocean
baptized by nature in her quest for harmony
kissed by the dream of a lover
in eros' rapturous rythmn she'll move towards gentle maddness
where her perception will blossoom and grow
in poetry she becomes a movement
a union between mind and earth
she surrenders to the sun and moon mantra
the vibrates through the legend of her soul.

{Poem by Kent Miller}

One Poem by Robert Watson

A Picture of a Man

It’s a cold night
I’m walking along
All is dark and quiet
In the distance I see some light

It’s a small dinner on the corner
I draw nearer to it
I witness a bar keep attending to a couple
And a man in the corner keeping to his own

Where I stand I hear nothing
Nothing at all
But I can almost hear the banter
The banter within

I just stand there cold
With the wind touching
The back of my neck
And I stand there numbed

I think back to the events of today
Today was one of my days off
From the dead end career I posses
The day was brief and empty

And my nights off are just the same
Tonight I walk the town looking for a moment

And this moment I love

It captures a piece of me
It shows a man in love
Enjoying the moments he shares
A picture that was once my past
Then I see the man
At the edge of the bar
Alone and to him self
Lost in his mind

Now I am afraid.
Who will walk into the dinner next?

Who am I going to be?
Where am I going?

{Poem by Robert Watson}

One Piece by Nancy Keating

Annuals

I don’t plant annuals.
Evanescent as my sexiest ex-lovers,
gone like daydreams,
total waste of calories.
Nana put in pansies every year
(see the happy little faces)
Petunias too
(they’re just so sweet)
In her 15-foot yard in Queens.
Annuals don’t last
but I see no harm in sweet
happy faces. And Nana had
some way with annuals;
how many years is it now?

{Poem by Nancy Keating}

Two Poems by Annika Hodges

I’m Gonna Shoot High

I'm Gonna Shoot High
I know I’ll fall down
And I might just die
But I’m going to try

Follow your dream
As impossible as it might seem
Do not fear
You know you’ll Get there

When you fall down
Get back up
Because the sky is the limit
And your dreams will come true


The Ingredients of Friendship

Always knowing how your friend feels
Is part of the friendship wheel.

Loving her through all her faults
Helps your friendship to never halt

Being there for her
Is just what she needs

This is more than
Just a good deed.

{Poetry by Annika Hodges}

One Piece by TWIXT

Crossing The Moot

In daily living in minor matters
with specific individuals from
time to time I have felt disgruntled and
worked it over and left no ill feeling
that mattered a grumble that I could tell.

Then will you please tell the court why you left.
I could, but I don’t, plead the fifth. I hope
by being open to what was, to be
open to what is. I have no further
questions.

{Poem by TWIXT}

One Poem by Noam Kaufman

The Art of Truth in Perfect Villanelle

1. Sitting in a corner
with a trusted friend,
like Brutus and Julius Caesar.

2. Something to say
a stare that screams serious,
eyes hard and clear as crystal balls.

3. A solemn mist settles
a storm is coming,
I feel, for mine eyes
dare not deceive

4. Dressed in the mask of truth
and with the tone of a man on trial for treason,
I am told what is and what is not.

(Disclaimer)
Trust these words, for they do not lie,
Spread them far and wide,
for all should learn the art of truth.
Friends, Romans, countrymen
like Brutus and Julius Caesar.

{Poem by Noam Kaufman}

One Piece by Brenda Kay Ledford

Garden of Life
A Sestina

Wearing her straw hat, Blanche gathered
Silver Queen corn from her garden.
The sun scooped across the sky
held promise of a future, sunflowers.
Rondie loved fresh vegetables,
his laughter filled the red-plank house.

Children played at Blanche’s house,
wondered what she would gather
from her cornucopia of vegetables,
pretended they could garden
like her, grow rows of sunflowers,
life pulsing beneath the sun.

Night bent its elbow across the sky.
Rondie told Irish stories in their house,
wind whistled through the sunflowers
rain tapped the tin roof, Blanche gathered
the kids, sliced squash from the garden
washed jars to can vegetables.

Drought snagged the vegetables.
Rondie looked for clouds in the sky,
leaves wilted across the garden.
Sweat drenched sheets in their house,
the children fussed, gathered
stalks of dried sunflowers.

Blanche roasted the sunflowers
served them with vegetables,
found herself with thoughts, gathering
roses beneath a bleeding sky.
She remembered Rondie leaving the house,
her tears fell in the garden.

She lost herself in the garden,
drew strength from the sunflowers,
recalled Rondie laughing in their house,
wondered if he had vegetables
as she gazed into the sky,
blight specked the beans she gathered.

He gathered, labored in the garden
of life. The sky caressed sunflowers,
vegetables abound in his heavenly home.

{Poem by Brenda Kay Ledford}

One Poem by Anne Rucchetto

Fail

Can you hear it?
It’s the rushing of your
dreams crushing exactly
where they were first conceived.
In the swarming torrent of ambition
came nagging pessimistic ammunition.
You evened out the score so much more than it was
ever meant to be.
Don’t blame me, love.
It was never my idea.
You mistook what hooked you
from the start and were sucked into
a storm of shallow sequences.
Now your heart is lying on the dining room table,
overcooked. Now no one wants it.
It smells like defeat and is rotting
into meaningless discourse.
Remove it, waiter!
Is that a frown I see? Trust me,
You’ll get nowhere with a scowl.
That’s how all this trouble first started,
Isn’t it?

{Poem by Anne Rucchetto}

Two Poems by Bob Baker

Water Cannot Be Compressed

Water cannot be compressed.
Wine, in freezers of forgetfulness,
Will crack as plans go on more blessed;
But Water, cannot be compressed.

Transcendent in its weariness,
Pacific yawns, one more sunset.
Smog, swallows down the pallid ball.
No pose of love, and peace for all.

Sucked down and, come full circle, spit,
Back east, as if they wanted it.
Rolling on in throaty waves,
Drawn lunar, in the purple haze.

Rising, falling, I'm caressed,
Upon the older woman's breast.
Drowning, I thank graciously,
Her envelopment of me.

Water cannot be compressed.
Move slowly, languid in the net.
You may push against the river; yet;
Water cannot be compressed.


Haiku #1

Play me cries the harp
The lyre begs for truths to speak
Fall air rusts the wire

{Poems by Bob Baker}