Poetry Contributor
Jenny lives in Liverpool UK and has been writing poetry since her teens but only seriously since retiring. She is an ex social worker/manager and NHS Director. She has poems in The Morning Star, Writing at the Beach Hut, and in a forthcoming anthology of poetry celebrating the bicentennial anniversary of George Eliot, (Yaffle Press).
Lauren Boisvert
I told you I was writing love poems
and you said oh no
like you knew they’d be about you;
I could’ve been writing
about the impeccable love
between cat and person
but instead, yes, I wrote about you
am currently writing about talking about writing
about you.
There’s some psychology about that somewhere
I’m sure:
Freud or Rilke or the great philosopher Siken.
Writing about writing
about someone you love
is a shallow act
like an old prospector panning for gold
praying for that little nugget of pure inspiration
an angel’s tear
unearthed from water
this poem is neither tear nor nugget
but something unpolished and raw
an unrefined wisdom on a shelf at the Goodwill
dusted off and taken home
with someone who collects neither nuggets nor tears
but cyclical renderings
of words and fat
a richness like a snake eating its own tail
and enjoying it.
I hold your cheek to mine
and I feel like I’m looking at the base of a globe
the light-up one I had as a child
suffused blue light and multicolored countries
I traced them all in marker
like I trace my fingernails along your back now
staring into that light
white Antarctica blazing in it’s frigid shell.
Marcelle Newbold
your shining light that cannot be hidden,
your curves and dimples that are just for me,
your perfect fit.
I love the way you melt, to my pleasure,
that delicious craving,
the promise careful undressing brings.
Ode to Ferrero Rocher
Kim Malinowski
Lying on our stomachs we suck strawberries,
dabbing them in sugar, grasping them,
as plump lips bite.
Each granule of sweet,
a promise.
Forever lazy sunshine, park picknicks,
fresh mown grass.
Sticky fingers caress cheeks,
slide along collar bones.
Strawberries promise love
even with age,
with fever.
We vow forever,
both tart and sweet.
Anna Teresa Slater
Everyone always told me what love would look like.
How love would sashay in through a hollow in the trees.
Everyone made fairy sighs, declaiming how candy-yellow butterflies
would swarm or hover above my chair before swooping in.
How it might bid me hello like a warm pixie’s shudder.
How I’d be under a spell, floating in sparkly air, how I’ll just know
when love is there and they were right but why is it that no one
ever told me how to make love stay when it pointed the other way?
How not to stumble on the steps after the midnight hour.
No one told me that love could bite. Love needs to bare it all, ogre and claw.
I don’t mean to go on like this but love needs to uncover its flaws.
Let me have tea with the brewing witches beneath the flowers,
so that when love arrives again, whether love slays a giant or reverts to frog,
I will be queen of my tower, a master of hearts, vulnerable but armed.
Whitney Hansen
You were my husband for an evening,
when you pretended not to graze my arm at the dinner table.
Our first kiss did not happen when your friend left the room.
We whispered “I love you”s in the grocery store,
but they all came out as cost calculations per ounce.
We stood side by side at the kitchen’s altar,
but never clasped hands.
There were no “I do”s,
only “Should I put this in the freezer?”
Our first kiss did not happen
when I did not offer you a ride home.
Our first kiss did not happen.
Jasmine Arch
i wonder
what the gods
were thinking
when they matched
my love and me
he watches sports
on tv
while I cradle
a book
in my lap
he spends hours
punching buttons
on a game controller
and i don’t hear
a single
of his virtual gunshots
bombs could go off
on the screen
or in the room
i would be
none the wiser
as i get lost
in rabbit holes
of my own devising
words tumbling
from my brain
rolling
over my fingers
onto a blank page
sometimes
he shakes his head
and i can almost
hear his thoughts
how
did i end up
marrying such a geek
don’t get me wrong
i love
every inch of ink
on his skin
the body
that wears khaki
so well
the mind i can make
neither head nor tail of
my mouth will run dry
and my legs turn to jelly
at the merest
of his kisses
polar opposites
that’s what we are
they probably thought
it would be funny
but when we stare
at each other’s jokes
like a mime
at a stand-up comedian
the question
is no longer
what they were thinking
but rather what they were drinking
and why
on earth
they didn’t share it with me
Poetry Contributor
Brian Yule is a writer & musician who hails originally from County Durham in the northeast of England, but has drifted considerably since.
Michael Estabrook
Love of Romance
First Date
Asking her
to go steady with me
on our very first date 50 years ago
is the greatest thing
I’ve ever done in my life
Pure Beauty
Looking up at me holding my hand tightly
telling me “Yes I’ll go steady with you
be your girl if you still want me.”
Time Travel
To go back in time fall in love all over again:
her hair, her walk, her kiss, her scent, her smile –
what could be better than that?
Stunning
Barely able to speak
in her presence: “Can’t believe
I’m standing here talking to you.”
Exactly how I’ve felt
every day of my life.
Silence
When she would fall asleep
her pretty head light upon my shoulder
I’d stay still as a stuffed otter
listening to the silence
all around me
Tori Eberle
I.
I try to notice things,
big things and small things.
The fading murals on industrial buildings
and the tone of your voice every time
you say my name.
II.
But I’m still scared and worried
about missing anything,
everything.
So, I cling to the muscles of your back
with my eyes searching for meaning
in the movements of
your breath
when you sigh because
I asked you something—
the same thing I always ask
because I want to remember
the shapes your mouth
makes around certain phrases
Forever.