Sam Frome – Emerging from the edge.

Sam is a young Poetess who recently relocated to the wilds of Colorado. She describes her political affiliation as “silly hippie communism”.

“Waiting”

Waiting
for your company
is like
getting through
the last 45 minutes
of a shift
at McDonald’s…

Only,
when you get here,
I don’t smell
like french fry grease.

Sam Frome ©2013

“Suitcase”

Sometimes
while I sit on the porch
here
and smoke cigarettes,
I close my eyes
and pretend
I am home.
But this seat
is too comfortable
and when children laugh
and birds sing
the echoes
are not the same.
There is no piece
of what I know
here
that I did not unpack
from a suitcase.

Sam Frome ©2013

“One Hell”

On any day
she
is a stranger
to me
and to forget her
is impossible
only because I already have
until
on dark nights
and bright mornings
and cloudy afternoons she
drips
down my throat
tastes
like an angel
ethereal
and whatnot
grabs my brain
by the stem
picks it
like a lily
she rips
my roots
out
cuts me
at an angle because
clearly
I belong
in the vase on her
nightstand where
my withering can be appreciated.

Sam Frome ©2013

Kelli Allen – Otherwise, Soft White Ash Offical Book Trailor

“Kelli Allen’s debut book includes the short story “Orphaned Near the Cave” and the poem “The Twelfth Swan,” among other works that according to Glenn Irwin, Assistant Director,

University of Missouri in St. Louis MFA, “embody the kind of magic which good poetry has always striven towards and is full of the dark and wonderful complexities of life.” Gary Geddes, poet and editor of 20th-Century Poetry & Poetics said “Kelli Allen’s work…illustrates all three stages in the making of an artist.”

Equal Rights

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson

Chuck A Stetson – Connecticut Poet and Photographer

Chuck A Stetson is a published Connecticut poet and photographer. When he isn’tdaydreaming, you might find him on the backroads of New England with borrowed camera documenting what he thinks he sees.

In the December Grey by Chuck A Stetson

after Satan laughs
it begins
there will be no Vicodin today

In the parking lot a shadowy figure mumbled a kind of

hello. At first I thought him a hallucination, but with the

sun breaking through the bleakness and codeine deprivation

vice-gripping my brain, I recognized Gary’s black onyx ring

loosely fit on his crooked right ring finger. How I hated him, once

a friend, now a specter, a haunting reminder of when my boys

were young and I still called Fran my wife.
more ghosts jump from
a worn Altoid’s tin

Gary lit a hand rolled cigarette; desolation swirled around his acrid plume.

I breathed in the heaviness; I exhaled a tired breath.

knee-pained

buzz-deprived

sweat, chills… damned this crawling skin

Why a computer programmer chose to rob banks after his divorce, I’ve no

answer. Eight years in a Michigan prison, a lifetime… shit, prison life is an

oxymoron; his soul’s forever an inmate. His children, his friends, all moved on.

I knew this about Gary…

$40 for 20mg

Satan accepts credit

Gary doesn’t

And my lockup is measured in cravings, milligrams, broken promises and

disillusioned children — mine, Fran’s, ours. There will be no Vicodin today,

I am broke… broken in the December grey.

© chuck a stetson 2012

A stunning image by Chuck….