Amelek, Feared No God

by Sy Roth

The tired ones hung back
walk-weary lines of them
snaking the rear
shuffling gait
young ones their crutches.

Youthful steps moved the others forward
heads mounted to their goal
inattentive to the rear.

Amalek swore to his soldiers
he would preserve them,
desiccate the healthy,
consume the old and bent.

Godless ones licked their lips,
for the laggards were a tempting lot
easily consumed
swept away before so
the others could mourn.

They ate the rear with
cannibalistic gusto.
Youth buried beneath their weak,
laved in their blood.

A storm of tears unglued the skies.
Men razed their dreams,
the meek,
the weak,
the infirm,
the young
lost in a morass of ego.

Amalek feared no god,
only himself.

Downsizing

by Robert Demaree

Favorite authors dropped off
For the church book sale,
The passing of a friend.
Easier to part with:
Those memos to the file,
Notes on events
Of interest to lawyers.
We did not succeed:
A storage shed, tight
With boxes, whose labels
Have lost meaning;
Somewhere in there
Green Depression Glass
That did not sell on eBay,
The Chelsea we bought for Caroline.

Letter to My Sister

by Warda Al Barbar

I sailed the sea of mourn
forlorn but canopied
with your virtuous soul
upon a crying wave.
I dropped my remembrance
as an anchor to abstain
between the eastern sun
of forgets
and the western moon
of ignorance;
a compass I lost
when I heard your mellow voice
murmuring in a melodious dream.
The waves swallowed me
when I saw your coy smile
painting an archaic picture
of a crowned epoch;
I found myself safe but taken
by memories that grieve me
not alone. Your mother
drunk the sea to beget you again;
your father is a shore of sadness,
standing to erase death.

Marking Time

by Susan McDonough-Hintz

11:01 a.m.
Goodbye filled our mouths and lingered,
diffuse on the tongues, swirling.

6:32 a.m.
This morning I reached for a
tube of toothpaste and my
neck hairs lifted like eyelids,
my nipples stiff as peaks, nostrils
flared by the sudden smell of you,
but you weren’t there.

6:41 a.m.
I was alarmed.
The light was changing.

8:26 p.m.
Halfway up the mountain
night falls. I dig my bed
in dirt, cover myself with leaves,
and sleep, awake unearthed and
well bruised. Jagged rocks,
out of my way.

4:44 a.m.
I am alive and all of you is surge. 
And the flash.

Needles of Freezing Air

by John McKernan

Slither
Right in

Covering the floor
With its metaphor of broken glass
Over oak across a black rug

Imitating the sounds
Of certain months and years
Of German and Russian history
Adding a strange new conclusion

To the Cinderella epic
I've just read to my daughter
Who asks    What did that?   
And I answer honestly   I don't know
Just a fierce wind   Probably nothing   Nothing at all

The Dilemma of Atoms

by Bobbie Troy

these unseen microbodies
positive, negative, and neutral
attract and repel each other
connect and disconnect
from themselves
but never know
that they have created
matter out of randomness
because they are on the inside
looking out