The Last Suitcase by Holly Day

I watched him float away like a single tuft of dandelion fluff
out of my arms and out of the house and into his own life
and then the door closed and I was alone. There was not one moment
in the past twenty years that I thought about this day
without thinking I’d be filled with relief, and joy, and the feeling
of a job well-done, or at least adequately done—

I was not prepared for the grief, the oppressive constant knot in my heart
the nagging feeling that there was so much I should have done
so many things I should have said
so many missed opportunities to let my son know
how wonderful he made everything for me
how I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now that he’s gone.

*****

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Plainsongs, The Long Islander, and The Nashwaak Review. Her newest poetry collections are A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press),  In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), I'm in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), The Yellow Dot of a Daisy (Alien Buddha Press), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), and  Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing).

Riding My Emu by John Kaniecki

Allen Ginsburg
Moloch was the matriarch of madness
A male giving birth?
Are we not the byproduct of the Earth?
Cancer says the doctor with hands trembling
A scary diagnosis resembling
The final, Final Solution
Take the butcher’s knife and cut a slice
Shall I spew forth a mouth of sperm?
If you want to get the big fish
To eat on your fine china dish
You need to use the correct worm
And for the final time
I am not Jesus Christ
Though I shall be crucified with my only crime
Telling the truth
And warning the youth
Not to enlist
RESIST!
I’ll be riding my emu
Cause I’m one cool cat
I’ll be riding my emu
Provided I don’t get too fat
But the blubber blues
Will be diffracted with strict refinement
When I go into solitary confinement
There with my Bible
And my sweet imagination
Contemplating salvation
And every vixen lustfully laden with sin
Spirit wrestles with carnality
Double duality
It’s true! It’s true?
Black can be white if you just look at it right

Crepuscular by John Grey

Brocken Inaglory
[CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Such an odd name
for the owls that hunt
the twilight rodents.

Or the woodcock
digging for earthworms.
Or the nighthawk
snaffling insects
on the wing.

Crepe is crisp and thin,
almost invisible,
And muscular
providing the strength, the tenacity,
to kill.

And all in the time
that is not quite anything.

Not bright.
Not dark.

Just a strange word
hungry for meaning.

*****

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and Roanoke Review.