On:

Remember that words have power when spunThe way they turn spider silk into tapestriesRemember your enemies laugh themselvesOnto the floor for the same reasons as youRemember the sound of my voice as I rockedEach of you to sleep during the rainstormsIf I cannot see you off to be married doContinue Reading

On:

How to get familiar with infinity . . .A camel ride into the Saharato stargaze a wide open desert sky? The astronomer Carl Sagan once saidstars outnumbered grains of sand on beaches—so I rode a camel from Merzouga out into oceanic dunes of sandand sat there after sunset for theContinue Reading

On:

a masculine marmaladeour feline bathesbetween his toesmore assiduouslythan anyone we knowclaws flexingto and frolike translucent crescent moonscored by conquered bloodthe rasping strokeof his scouring tonguea ferocity pristineas raindrops or water hoseamong the wieldedyielding thornsof this bucephalus-headed rose. My name is Aletha Irby and I have been writing poetry for overContinue Reading

On:

I got wine drunk in the Holiday Inn Notre Damewith a view of the Eiffel Towerput on Brahms Symphony #1 in C Minor and was back in my British History classroomon an August night in 1982on the second floor of Alumni Recitation Hall working out ways to includeEnglish Beat andContinue Reading

On:

Stay close to any sounds thatmake you glad to be alive. Hafiz through the morningstill silenced by darknessyour sudden eruptionallegroarpeggioappoggiaturajoyful enoughto resurrect icarusto enjoin him nidicolousto soar forth once againairborne on wingéd rhapsodyoh songbirdyou remind usthat we can never flytoo close to the sunand i too risefledged by your warblingwhichContinue Reading

On:

It is an old story of disfunction.While I see the beauty of a crowthat has an ugly voicebut a wonderful wing spreadundulating shadows in the sky,controlling the sun’s lightfalling to earth,its feathers holding the air,you see only a bird. Lynette G. Esposito, MA Rutgers, has been published in Poetry Quarterly,Continue Reading

On:

Hello, Helen.Helen Harlot, Helen Home-Wrecker, Helen Whore. Most beautiful woman in the world, hatched from a swan’s egg, product of yet another rape perpetrated by your divine slut of a father, the “omnipotent” thunderer. His many bedfellows tell a different story.In all the myths, you are glittering, resplendent. And always,Continue Reading

On:

He was a son gone somewhat wrongin his talking to ghosts and speakingof dreams.Since he is alone in his monologue,we should join him on stage–wrap our spindly arms around his Princely shouldersand whisper it will be all right.Even if we see death coming,we can teach him to dodge. Lynette G.Continue Reading

On:

I.On a hill in the northwest corner of the ancient Athenian Agora, the Temple of Hephaestus is pocked with bullet holes. The little craters of exact proportion stand in stark contrast to the more natural degradations of time on the Dorian columns, those marks of erosion on marble like theContinue Reading

On:

Before he loved the starsHe loved the paint, the brush, the canvasHe loved the ear he sacrificedHe probably loved a womanWe cannot go back in timeand see what drove himBut if love is a key to everything,Why did he love the night? Lynette G. Esposito, MA Rutgers, has been publishedContinue Reading