Epiphany

Scarce sweets and treats of penny pinching love,
hesitant rewards from bare wallets.
Small hands extended, always unaware,
worry hidden behind smiling facades.

Devistation smothered in manilla
lurked in unseen corners,
dreading the coming month of
choking tension and pasted happiness.

Tiny bodies grow up and soon realize
the fights of constant worry come from
the Lack-of and not the Abundance.

The way I was | Brad Barton

Across the hall they ran
Yelling and giggling
The school halls echoed their noise.
How could they be so immature?
How do they forget to care?

Before walking out of the building,
I saw a picture of me on the wall.
Long ago I ruled this school.
Oh how I was immature!
Oh how I didn’t care!

Epiphany | Amy Loveless

Rain falls and wooshes against my window.
I watch the tiny water snakes slither
Winding and curling where'er the wind hurls,
Bending and dodging, just fighting to go
Where no other rain-snake has gone before.
So what if they bump and join with their friends?
They couldn't care less, so long as they please.
Those others that go wherever they will,
Find sooner than most their journey's uphill.
Why do they journey where others may not?

On their untraveled path of lonesome tears
They seem (some) more jovial than their peers.
All join together at the window's edge,
Whirling and curling at their newfound sight

Songs | Chelsea Lane Campbell

A dimly lit auditorium-
manufactured moonlight.
A solo black piano, center stage,
my languid body draped over,
and your fingers striking cords-
the same cords strike me.
Every note, pulling together,
painting emotions, feeling colors.

The breaths I pull in to mumble
along with your lips' oo’s and ah’s
feel more like water than air-
thick, heavy, slowing everything
but I don't mind.
Somehow, adorning a piano
at three in the morning
begs for songs in slow motion.

Converstion | Nikaela Aitken

I want to be...
so be it.
I want to go...
so go.
I want to do...
so do it.

I will when I get there.
where's there?
I dunno, but i'll know when I get there.
when are you going to get there
I dunno.

but I want to be...

Wasted Away | Sara Staheli

His shrunken body
Found on the stoop
Of the neighbor's
House.
A nestling
Tripped
And fell.
And, without feathers,
Without mother's protection,
Wasted away.

His shrunken body
I cupped in my hands,
Convinced
I would save him.
Resurrection was a tall order
For a small child.
This long dead nestling
And my limitless faith
Together
Wasted away.

Garbanzos | Trent Gurney

Pork, garbanzo beans
Potatoes.
A delightful Dutch oven dinner
I crack a joke.
They laugh.
They laugh a lot.
"You're funny," a stranger tells me.
As she snorts, her beans
Fall from her mouth.
They hit her plate with a loud plop.

I'm funny?
I hear the plop of garbanzos.
In that splatter of beans, I see
I can be.
Funny funny me.

Photography | Stevie Smart

I hunt,
Camera in hand,
For my next subject.

There, on the counter!
How the glass reflects
in such beautiful designs
onto the smooth surface!
How the light from the kitchen window
creates shadows and highlights
in just the right places!

The salt and pepper shakers;
They are compositional perfection!

I focus the lense
and hesitate,
for fear that no one
will see the beauty I see
in these common objects,
but I must take the chance.
I take the picture.

Matt Clegg | Variety

I put in the bread and pushed it down,
Waiting for it to come out light brown.
After that would come the butter,
Mouth-watering gold butter.
Then peanut butter and honey,
Delicious, gooey and runny.

One day it came up, but didn’t taste good,
As my apprehensive mind thought it would.
The butter was more oil than gold,
In fact the whole taste was pretty old.

Then in my mind I could understand,
Why something once so good, now tasted bland.
So rather than toast every day, I fed
Off something different each day instead

Epiphany poem | J.D. Olenslager

The polite snorer

Sometimes, when I’m wrapped
up and waiting for the alarm,
a murmur, like an owl’s
white wing, escapes your lips
and sifts along the bedclothes.
The slightest of rumbles
like a tire moving
gravel along the blackened asphalt
outside the apartment window.

And even though you are still sleeping,
unaware of the of the tenor
cleft between your trembling lips,
I dream
about who might be in the drive
at this time of night, long after
the moon has spooned over the black
and starless sky, and wait.

Stranded | Josh Fowkes

stranded man
strength from forsaken
tomorrow's bid
light upon new
stranger's the night
it will be known

coming soon
new desire
past is no forever
tip of the hat
it is day
a stranded woman

Speed Limit | Katherine Goodell

On a long road, I drive from my home.
Driving past a sunset and the mountains
that are illuminated with pink snow,
that watch, unchanging, with indifference,
the time pass in dusks and dawns. But the
wind pounds and sweeps, never still, blowing fast
pushing water and dragging dirt, it moves
atoms of the mountains as they wait for
a day that dawn and dusk melt into such stillness
that they too will begin to move and be heard.

Backflash | Randon Dyreng

Looking at the white door
The pink carpet on the floor.
My body began to stir
my mind could not cease.
feelings like I was overcome
by some damn disease.
Infecting my heart and troubling
my brain.
with dark thoughts of life, grief,
and pain.

The carpet still the same
my soul still carries shame.
I wish I could forget
the way I acted that night.
I would give anything to cause
the wrong to be made right.
The carpet hadn't changed
"but why"
With my head in my hands I began
to cry.

Easy | Felicia Phillips

A time comes,
A time goes,
Learning, hurting
and failing.

Thrown into nothing,
Drowning in the emptyness.
Experiance grows,
as one swims through the deps.

It is a hard thing,
Graying hair, wrinkles.
Cracking, aching,
Bones ready to snap.

Simply fall asleep,
dream of nothing,
Finally, feel nothing,
it's easy.

Winter's Life | James Landon Buie

Powerful and dark is Winter time
Fearful summer ran from its sublime
Snowflakes froze its fairest grounds
Tearful children lost their Merry go Rounds

Dirty shoes pierced white paths of winter.
Destroying snow’s heavenly grandeur.
Warm hearted joy has lost its fun
For the deathful season has begun

Winter is deathly cold in eyes of men
Makes them think life has a chilling end
Their bodies feel truth’s artic killer wind
Fear of losing their warm hearted skin.

O Ignorant Man! See spring’s rain
Green colored trees shall live again
Birds shall sing their heartfelt song
In fields of green shall children run along

The Son will resurrect summer’s life
Husbands will see their radiant wives
Spirit and Bone shall be perfected
Righteous beauty will be respected

Immortality (man this sucks) | Brett "Hannibal" Oberhelman

To be immortal is to see changes
Not eternal life, but to observe
When one notices their world fading
One day the mountain looks smaller
Then a building has fallen
What was new yesterday is now dying
Your world has now become someone else’s
What a pain is this immortality
Eternal life is a sweet deception
Wisdom I impart unto you now

Coffee Pee

Rapidly walking over the hard paved
Ground
Each step vibrates through my body tickling
My bladder.
With each jolting step the yearning to
urinate is emphasized.
I drank so much coffee.
I need to pee instantaneously.

I stop abruptly crossing my legs.
Right slender leg tightly wrapped around
Long and slender left.
My bladder is tingling and burning.
The nearest toilet is only
Twenty yards away.
Or so it appears.
I can make it!


No I can't.
I have to pee right now.
What if I just dropped my pants right here
and peed a healthy yellow stream?
What would they think as they walk in
and out of these campus buildings?
Certainly they would understand.
Why does it matter what they think?


Are “they” even real or just subconscious
Idioms?
It’s all subliminal guilt.
That’s why I can’t pee here.
They wouldn’t just walk by while I peed
My healthy yellow stream.
It isn’t normal!

Shade | Tyler Montgomery

Shade

Silence
echoed outside of my head,
turmoil bounced within
my body lay sprawled
on the sun parched
grass, partially enveloped
by the shadow emitted
from the gargantuan statue
of Christ

Standing
I approached the glossy
marble of a newly etched
stone; my finger bled
as I traced my finger over the name
Dizzines mingled with the sweat
pouring from my body
I fully entered the shade
from the statue glad to escape
the heat.

Things of naught | Mary Cox

I sat there staring at the flower
a rose, a thing of beauty
it's meaning-- love.
Why had a thing of such beauty
become such a prized possesion
if handed to a girl
from a man she loved.
Originally it might have been just a flower
but now it's structure, it's color,
everything about it held so much more meaning.

A frog some believed that if you kissed the right one,
It would turn into a hansom prince
Stealing you away on his beautiful black stallion.
Some girls may have spent their lives kissing frogs,
hoping that one day they might find that special one.
It too was once just a green frog,
but now it seemed to hold the key to every girls dreams.

How many roses would they have to go through before
realizing that it was not the rose
which told the women the man actually loved her?
How many frogs would one girl kiss
before giving up and searching
amoung human race.
Finding that where in lied
her actual prince,
waiting to pull her aboard his black stallion.

Man|Stacie Morris

I looked up at the man
In amazement
He that had watched
And taught me all these years
Looking at me not knowing what to say
A new light was brought to my mind.
This man, my father
Had not all the answers
Was not the idol of younger years.
But instead a man and only that

Heaven | Jennifer Belliston

Dusk.
Soft lamplight on faces.
Music, wafting through speakers.
Dancing.
Small head nestled on his shoulder.
Love.
Grown man dancing with his sleeping baby.
Heaven.

Holes | Sara Denson

I popped out the pin.
It was still warm.
I got my chin pierced in a town
that hated the sight of metal.
I can’t remember what my point was.
Now, on my first day of college,
I want nothing from a needle
visible on my face.
Just a healing hole,
from something I've grown out of.

Angst | Gregory Burbank

I wander lonely by the pool
lap _lap_lap_Like the ticking of a clock.
I explore empty, half-lit rooms
Familiar objects strange in twilight
Isolation in the dark.
Is there nothing but the self?!
Or is there only nothing at all!?
The distant stars are indifferent.
A Birthday--I break down on the sofa.
I have never made a cup of coffee.