Below the Farmhouse

Below the Farmhouse by Monte Persinger

I can smell the coals spirit that lingers heavy in this chamber it hasn't worked in for decades. I can see its chalk stained remains on the fired brick walls.

Just enough light in summer time as to uncover hiding shadows. Too little light in the winter time with goose bump drafts blown from cracks in a concrete floor.

It is the resting place of kept items used never or at Christmas. They sit around on settling shelves and inside plastic bags making basement noises.

The spiders set up their nets while the roaches run their races and a trapped sparrow looks on and thinks he'd much rather be outside playing.

Finding You by Rachel Plotnick

I am writing this letter so it will find you striking up your last cigarette on a San Francisco morning when fog hangs, weary, in a restless sky, so it will find you peeling off clothes to hop into bed with a buttermilk-skinned virgin who poses as Venus for you in the dark. So it will find you humming a melancholy saxophone in the shower's steam, or idly reading the afternoon paper while flipping a lighter between two callused fingers. I am writing this letter so it will find you surveying the beginnings of a sagging belly and gray stubbled chin, or slumbering like a bruised peach on an easy chair during the evening news. So it will find you playing tattered records that moan out of pitch, and flipping through photos jaundiced with time. So it will make you turn in the darkness and reach out urgently for my face, so instead ypu will find herfull hips, full breasts, raven hair, so you will wilt when she groans in her sleep and pushes you away.

I Have Been by Thom Kudla

The first time was a shock, So close to suicide, within psychosis. The second time had me aware, I wasn't caught off guard, and That's what made it closer. The third And final Time I have No real clue about, but I can Speculate as to what it May be, and I can relate To you what I'm not going To do. What I'm going to Let happen. So many people Have yet to see the sun set Them upon an altered reality, One that may satisfy their Internal strife through Spiritual serenity. My father has yet to see That my Father wants him to be With sight, with vision, hidden In my silent composition, my (need to be) satisfied disposition. Now I know why my father is the person who I'm trying the hardest to get through To- his ignorance will hurt me more Than he knows, more than I may know, Only God knows when and how to take Me away, as a sign-- a final one-- to send Him the truth's message through a Son's dusk. I will Do what is necessary Since I'm "no longer Afraid, but I wish I Could help him now in my words and not Later in a symbolic tragedy. I've seen that The good die upon Acknowledging their goodness, Their worthiness, their Understanding of truth. You're only given so Many opportunities.

Why not feel This Instead of analyzing And speculating about Its dynamics?

If my eyes could be Wide open for eternity, I would leave them Like that but life Seems to prevent Such liberating vision. Perhaps I just need to Leave this reality. Maybe I just desire Love's understanding.

Untitled by Jamie Perry