Issue #11

“Does poetry have to rhyme?” I have heard this question asked in too many online poetry groups to count and the answers are very often vocal and heated, debated between the rhyme and no-rhyme camps. Though, when I talk to most poets in the community, they typically seem ambivalent, acknowledging that poems can be or do anything they want. They can rhyme, not rhyme, not make sense, or not even be in any discernible language at all.
In this issue you will find rhyme, but not always in the kind of pattern you might expect. Yes, some of our offerings are traditional schemes and couplets, but some are erratic, unconventional, maybe even difficult to spot at first glance. But all the poems in this issue utilize rhyme in one way or another. This is the kind of diversity and playfulness that will always keep rhyme relevant in poetry.

I don’t want no prestidigitation
And no mumbo-jumbo, too
Don’t wanna hear you tell me, baby
What your sleight of hand can do
Keep your rabbit in your top hat
Hang your cape beside the door
Lock those doves inside their cage
Where I can’t see them any more
Don’t play me three-card monte
Hide no dreams in moving cups
And no hocus-pocus, baby 
I don’t buy your royal flush
Keep your wand inside your coat sleeve
And your levitation, too 
I know those tricks — I wrote the script
There’s just one spell I need from you
Hold your charming incantations
And your smooth enchantment, too
Don’t think you can entrance me 
With your Copperfield voodoo
Dazzle up no Double Whammy
And no devilish refrain
Just be my private wizard
With that sweet legerdemain

Marianne Tefft is a poet and voice-over reader who daylights as a Montessori teacher on the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Maarten. Her poems and short stories appear online, in print and on air in North America, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean. She is the author of the 2022 poetry collections Full Moon Fire: Spoken Songs of Love and Moonchild: Poems for Moon Lovers.

Wad them up, one at a time,
or tear them into confetti.
The more surface area the better.

After gathering dry twigs—
two fistfuls, as long and thin
as raw spaghetti—
jam their heads together
to make the inverted V
which starts your teepee.

The money is the heart,
the kindling, the sacred 
conception
upon which all else ignites.

Leaving one side open,
add bigger sticks, encircled 
with a layer of bigger ones.

Now, don’t light the edges 
or the top.  Go low.  
Go for the eye.

Grant Vecera teaches writing, literature, and thinking at Butler University and at Indiana University Indianapolis, where he lives with his lovely wife, daughter, bicycle, and two cats.  His poems have been appearing in various illustrious literary periodicals on and off again for about 30 years.

I
 The Body

The body
Wobbles, waddles;
Bobbles, hobbles, toddles:
Totters, teeters:
Occasionally topples.
The comedy of a melting spine.

II
 The Mind

The mind
Jumps and jives,
Moves and grooves,
Wheels and deals,
Laughs and weeps,
Sows and reaps;
Dances, prances, enhances;
Even romances.

III
 The Soul

The soul
Wonders, waits, anticipates;
Counting down while cleaning up;
Scrubbing Faith and dusting Hope;
Burying sin and gagging Doubt;
Rationing fears, rehearsing tears.
Tremulously listening for his name to be called.


Edward J. Gallagher, octogenarian, is a well published academic who blogged for several years as “The Bethlehem Gadfly,” now trying his hand at “real” writing, poetry, a field in which he is spectacularly unpublished.

I’m Mr Hyde, baby
You’ll never know what I’ll do
Mr Hyde, baby
Got something to hyde 
from you 

I’m tired of living in my skin 
There is a monster hidden within 
Dr Jekyll I want to choke 
I’ve hidden the antidote

I’ll make this simpering scientist sulk
Releasing an unquenchable hulk
This potion is in motion
Making waves in the ocean 

That diddling doctor 
I’ll show him who is in charge 
As I grow scary and large
I’ll drown him with this swig of syrup 
Then wriggle into my true self 
I’m not needing any help 

Can you love a creature 
With bipolar features 
Smart and savage 
Seemingly balanced
Angry when challenged 
Take a twist and turn 
Try not to get burned 

I’m Mr Hyde, baby
You’ll never know what I’ll do
Mr Hyde, baby
Got something to hyde 
from you 

Gina Carrillo, aka Black Widow is a Spoken Word Artist from Franklin,TN. Creator of The Prodigal Poets Poetry Collective. Author of Kaleidoscope & Poets United, which can be found on Amazon & Barnes and Noble Websites. Writings of Love, Loss, Strength & Resilience About overcoming deaths, beating cancer, and domestic violence. Peace, Love & Poetry Instagram: @blackwidowpoet @prodigalpoets Facebook: Prodigal Poets or Black Widow & The Prodigal Poets & Black Widow Poet.

I wrote letters to God
To confess sins that never belonged to me
To confess sins she planted in my mind’s voice
Why was I the suitcase brimmed with her traumas
Packed in a hushed rush to hold, fold, keep untold
But when I tried to unpack mine
She was so cold, so sold on scold
She slapped my ‘sass’ with her slipper’s sole 

I wrote letters to God
For divine intervention
Begging for the torture to end
She only paid attention to me 
To cast me in the role of punching bag
To remind me I’m a burden
To remind me I’m not wanted

I was ready to return to sender
Ready to return to a home that must be better 
Than my own
I was ready to be untethered
To commit this unholy act, to surrender 
To meet His holy skies

I wrote letters to God 
That became letters to myself
Why did He neglect my cries for help?
He was nothing more than an echo chamber 

So the last letter to God that I wrote
Was a farewell and see you soon
Was a last confession of the sins I did commit
Was another letter unsent
Under my phone and pill bottles 
Switched to do not disturb
The dead

He left me to make my own choices
But divine intervention
Must exist after all 

Divine intervention is equivalent exchange 
As a bird banged into my window
Startled me out of overdose slumber
I did not succeed in my attempt
He wasn’t ready for me to come back home

Magnus is a poet from the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania area and has been performing live since 2018. The pandemic caused them to take a respite from attending events during 2020-2022, but she has blown back up on the scene upon returning to the mic this year. Magnus has been published in the 2023 Pennsylvania Bards East Anthology and hopes to publish her collection of poetry either as chapbooks or full length publications. They’ve recently joined the list of rotating guest hosts for Noble Quills in Bethlehem, PA and started to explore more of the NJ Renaissance.

Tied to the land,
The place of my birth,
Where my fore-fathers made their great stand
For this freeborn turf.
The system long since turned against me,
So I had to go away far,
Way across the seven seas,
Wishing desperately upon a falling star.
Time too was against me,
My heart is now a relic of the past.
My soul was born of an ageless chivalry,
But into this degenerate secular realm 
My mortal body was thus cast.
So 
I hike far away into the mountains,
On an unestablished trail,
Seeking natures marvelous fountains
And my own version of the holy grail.
I sail away on the ocean,
With nowhere planned to go,
Where fate bears the notion
To send me on the next wind flow.
I discover caves untouched by man,
And tropical islands forgotten by time,
On this journey to find who I am
In this lonesome traveler’s rhyme. 
When hiking on a woods trail
With no end in sight,
I glance down 
And my body seems a bit frail.
I don’t worry when its daylight
And I don’t cry during the witching hour..
Back when I was with you,
Such a wonderful charming world,
And away we both flew,
Upon a moonbeam we both were hurled.
Now 
You’ve flown on your own way,
And I’ve gone away on mine.
You needed your own day,
And my soul I must find.
I’m lord of this obsolete island,
And I’m king of a wilderness hill.
I think it’s so grand
That I can live according to my own will.
Still 
I sail
Out on the ocean,
A drift on the high seas;
Moving with the perpetual motion,
Where one’s soul can live free,
Searching for a magic potion
To purge me of my terminal disease.

H.L. Dowless is a national & international academic/ ESL Instructor. He has been a writer for over thirty years. His latest publications have been two books of nonfiction with Algora Publishing, a fictional novel by Atmosphere Press, and fictional publications with combo e-zines and print magazines; Leaves Of Ink, CC&D Magazine, a novel with Atmosphere press, Short Story Lovers, The Fear Of Monkeys, and Frontier Tales. He recently signed three contracts with Pen it Publications.
The author has enjoyed a lifetime of outdoor activities from big game hunting, camping, fishing, and trapping, to archaeological field work in various exotic locations. What he enjoys most of all is meeting freedom loving, interesting creative people, who are also regular dedicated fans of his publications.

Don’t micromanage me. I can micromanage myself.
Don’t micromanage me, please don’t put me on the self.
I don’t want to spend my life sitting with others like me. 
Unread and dusty. And dry at the spine. 
The pages as crisp as they day they were printed.
The cover as glossy as the day it was pressed.
With watermark, copyright and fancy crest.

Don’t micromanage me, I can micromanage myself.
“Don’t you think I know what is best?” 
I said in my youth. I was stupid and cocky. 
The coastline within reach but the shoreline was rocky.
If I only knew then what I know now. 
But, you can never go back or turn back time.
“Don’t tell me what to do. Let me ruin my life.”
Little did I know the lessons I was missing
as I continued dismissing all your sage advice.
“Don’t YOU think I know what is best?” you said in my youth. 
As I laughed and lit the match in haste, unaware and aloof.

Don’t micromanage me, I can micromanage myself.
So, now I am the father and THAT book on the shelf.
“When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.”
As I am getting readied for the proverbial bonfire;
All of this time has passed and what have we found?
What use is that book on the shelf  if no one ever reads it?
What good is sage advice when nobody ever heeds it?
And lost in the fire with words never spoken
like a dust covered collector’s car forever broken.

“Don’t micromanage me, I can micromanage myself.”
Now when I hear those words,
I breathe deep and listen to the birds.
When she says “Don’t you think I know what is best?” 
I bite my tongue. I let her get her bearings, 
you see, it cuts down on most of the swearing. 
The battle is over and I just don’t have the fight in me.
I try not to interfere and continue to tread lightly. 
Because you can never go back and turn back time.

We are only here for a little while. Why not take a breath 
and make someone smile and not get hung up 
on all the small stuff? Life is tough, people die. 
Ideas are lost as the good ones get tossed aside. 
Like books at a fair at the bottom of the bin. 
All dog eared, scared and scarred. 
But, I’d rather have lived a life then have lived a lie.
Please, don’t micromanage me. I can micromanage myself.
Now, let’s get that screwdriver out and dismantle this broken shelf.

v.j.(Vinnie) Calone, formalist poet. Winner 1st place P.P.A. Poetry contest 2023 Studied under Lewis Turco author, The New Book of Forms.  BA SUNY Oswego ’95. Vincent’s a poet/dramatist. Writing, acting and directing original theater on Long Island for the past eight years.  His poems have appeared in The Long Island Sounds Anthology, The Suffolk County Poetry Review, The Chiron Review, Atom Mind, Long Island Quarterly, Poetry X Hunger, and PoARTry.  Vinnie writes, edits and posts a new poem everyday at Raven Wire Poetry Prompts on Face Book and has been doing so since August 1st. 2022. Vinnie just finished a collection of poetry called “A Caesura” to be released this fall. It is his life’s work and will contain over three hundred poems. Submission Editor at THE SCENE poetry/art zine (June 2023) thescene.life 
You can reach Vin directly @ jeweliasdad@aol.com and thescene.life  This summer he just wrote and published 60 copies of mini chapbook, “Get to the Point” about Montauk Point.

All the things want to get lost,
find wings, sneak off, become cost
and inconvenience,
be unseen to win a sense
they lack innocence,
dislike being bossed.

The things that remain
want to fall apart, retain
some freedom from slavery,
demonstrate their knavery,
show themselves as unsavory,
eager to cause some small pain.

Rebellions grow up like weeds
to overpower plans’ beds of ordered seeds,
foil the flowers man’s hand feeds.
Words spoil, strain to follow the things’ leads,
coil, uncoil their strength to strike at all our creeds,
a force, perhaps, the soil breeds.

B. Deemer has self-published 2 books of poetry.  The second one can also function as a door stop.  He keeps an eye on Lake Huron.

I was standing in line 
in a checkout line 
checking out 
the belly button ring 
on a teen queen 
on the cover of 
a teen scene magazine
while the woman in front of me 
had to get a price check 
on her Rice Chex 
then tried to cash a check, 
but couldn’t cash the check; 
so the cashier called the manager 
who studied the check, 
okayed the check, 
initialed the check, 
and wrote a little check on the check.
Then. I whipped out my credit card 
and accumulated debt,  
walked to my car, 
opened the door, 
got in, 
started it up, 
and hit every red light 
on the way to the hardware store.

About halfway there, 
I came across a wreck. 
(Lucky, I wasn’t in it.) 
Two cops took lots of notes, 
There was a lady 
in her early-to-mid-forties or so 
with tears in her eyes 
as she did surmise 
her totaled late-nineties Infiniti SUV 
while a man in his mid-to-late sixties 
stood nonchalantly 
leaning against his Olds Eighty-eight 
which didn’t evidence a dent
because it was one of those tanks  
built in the seventies.   

Bryan Franco is a gay, Jewish poet from Brunswick, Maine who competed in the 2014 National Poetry Slam in Oakland, California. He has been published in the US, Australia, England, Germany, Holland, India, Ireland, and Scotland and has featured in the US, Canada, England, Ireland, and Scotland. He performed at the New York City Poetry Festival in 2022 and 2023.  He was a finalist in the 2022 and won the 2023 NAMI New Jersey Mental Health Poetry Contest and is a Best Of The Net nominee. He has facilitated poetry workshops for Brunswick High School, Tumblewords Project, and Phynnecabulary. He hosts Café Generalissimo Open Mic, is a member of the Beardo Bards Of The Bardo poetry troupe, painter, sculptor, gardener, and culinary genius. His book “Everything I Think Is All in My Mind” was published in 2021.

A gentle kiss
A blueberry passed between my lips
Sharing sustenance like a game.
Playful love, our only aim.

Cuddled close, a breath apart
Words whispered from heart to heart.
Verses passed between our kisses,
Lyrics of love and moonstruck wishes.

Stopping suddenly to save the soundtrack;
Pen scribbling stanzas to paper propped upon my back.
I feel your words caress my skin;
Endearments enveloping me within.

Returning to our embrace, your green eyes mirror mine.
Sonnets spoken while our limbs entwine.
Asking for assonance, responding in rhyme,
The verbal volley of your breath and mine.

Terms sent twisting and twirling from your tongue,
A sweet symphony sung,
A dancing ditty upon my cheek,
With every complimentary couplet that you speak.

Announcing adoration, affection, and affirmations
Pronouncing powerful passion potions
Overflowing with fondness, ballads from my beloved
And me giggling like a giddy kid.

Like two children, we explore and play
With our food, our words, and our bodies while we lay,
Exchanging expressions that feed my soul,
Connecting with you, my only goal.

Valerie Parker is a fiery American school teacher and eduformer (educator +performer= an activist who hopes to inspire through performance, arts, and writing). They live in Thailand where they spend their days writing educational content on trauma prevention, practicing stand-up comedy, teaching circus games, and making art. They love playing with their words, juggling, and flaming hula hoops. They have a passion for healing themselves, advocating for consent culture starting with kids, and engaging in conversations to make the world safer #ConversationChangesEverything @MissValerieParker and www.MissValerieParker.com/ . Their writing can be found in Fleas on the Dog and Nude Studio.

Tired of dwelling in Illing Noise,
I thought I’d head for Truth or Consequences- an abandoned city. 
I’d heard that there were meticulously constructed 
but empty structures still standing in Convention Square there.
I had passed through Normal, skirted Cancer City 
when I saw a phrase stumble over the border wall 
and fall before climbing into a sentence
without brakes and unpunctuated tireds…
The map hadn’t shown that wall…
My maps often omitted phantoum structures anyway…go figure…
Anywho, the phrase must have realized its predicament 
because without apparent clause it climbed out of the window 
and, like an idiom, slipped across Stanza Blvd 
and started hitchhiking to…No Meaning Whatsoever…
Meanwhile, ideas zigged and zagged like cracks spreading 
in asphalt too much driven over, their fragments dangling 
over roadside railings as if to jump into the nothingness 
waiting below to catch some significance
I found out that Reason had left Rhyme 
two counties behind trying to catch a ride 
with a broken thumb that couldn’t even bully a pinkie anymore…
it was forced to try another finger…
A few miles down the road Simile, in its euphemism, 
tried to saunter past the border sans clue about the sin tax on metaphornication. She almost got edited without bail, 
but Cliche rolled up in a Deus ex Machina 
disguised as a Deuce and a Quarter, paid the toll 
and they drove on down the road together 
in reminiscence of obsolescence and four-play. 
They laughed about the time Naked Rhythm and barely-dressed Rhyme
tried to penetrate the membrane between Mumbo and Jumbo 
and hy men- beyond compare in contrasting uniforms- put a stop
to that none sense and rode Rhythm and Rhyme outta town on a qua train.
A nagging nagging nagging thought kept recurring…I
was as mad as Max in a palindrome, only had a little rations left 
and since I’d already be cum a master baiter of hyperbaton,
I thought I’d better double entendre back the way I’d cum…
Now, well-versed in aimless travel, I reflect on that an epic odyssey of a journey to which this piece is an oderous homage or omage if you prefer- I know some people pay omahj to Tarjay…
I hadn’t found Truth and the only consequence is that I find myself right back in Illing Noise where I started, far too close to Normal.

T. A. Niles hails from the land of Steel Drums, Calypso (now Soca), and sugar cane: Trinidad & Tobago. His nomadic destiny has led to extended dalliances in Brooklyn, New York; Hartford, Connecticut; Beaufort, South Carolina; Okinawa Japan; Daeseong-dong, Korea; Miami, Miami Beach, and Fort Myers, Florida; and now Mimbres New Mexico. His poetic expressions erupt from his experiences in and observations of the fascinating, bamboozling world he inhabits.

Gone with the macrobiotics
Out with the Scarsdale diet
For George Ohsawa it was only brown rice
The other guy said protein was all the riot
Chocolate pudding is nice, replete
Everything you’ll ever need to eat
And while MSG is purportedly deadly
It’s flavor on taste buds make a happy belly

Studies show beef from a petri dish
Will grow you a tail and udder
While healthier eaters, strictly vegan
Eat hummus and chia seed butter

Jews don’t eat pork with a spoon or a fork
And don’t let that beef touch your cheese
Muslims have similar eating restrictions
These Abrahamic brothers – to each other, quite mean

And what do your eating particulars
Tell us about who you are?
Does what you eat reflect how you feel
What you think, where you’ll go, and how far?

Bhaktivedanta said if you eat a pig
You become like a gluttonous sow
But I’ll bet even guys like me who are big
Still have a chance at nirvana somehow

Marc Mannheimer is a mental health peer supporter from Cleveland, Ohio. Writing is a compulsion for him, a nervous tic. His memoir, The Overwhelmed, was published by Alien Buddha Press. Other works include the chapbooks, If the Moon Was Right (Writing Knights Press), and Reckoning with Essential Bliss (Poet’s Haven)

They know their place
High above the common trace.
Let’s Send the rich into space
We’ll spare them gladly 
From out before our face
They can Jeer madly, 
they’ve made their case, gladly!
Let’s send the rich into space 

Let’s send the rich to space 
Let them make their own fresh air
Then They’ll have to make it, I don’t care.
No use faking it
Losing the rich
Won’t make us
Sad, mad, perhaps alittle spittle-glad!
But It Does scratch an itch!
The somana-bitch!

Cause 
all they had they stole!
Taken into their pockets from the poor.
Let’s buy rockets!
Don’t let the door behind, hit you.
You won’t have to share 
Plenty of vacuum out there, to spare! 
Let’s send the rich into space 

So keep your spoils 
and your buds
The royals, 
You’re all so amused let me leave you these clues,
it seems you just might have to polish your own bloody shoes

No longer
Will they walk among us
Send them out into the stars far from us.
They can Take their yachts, and all that rot!
And even their cars, way out to the stars!
Let’s send the rich out into space 

Bless their darling arses
Let’m dodge and duck,
as each meteor passes
Take their own poodle out for a Willy
Where? Solar flare? 
Oops! Silly!
Until the next spinning asteroid grinning
until he, will he?
bag his lunch, or the space ship goes crunch
Let’s send the rich out into space !

Take all their sneering, their complacent careering
Their vain glory poses
They can take it and shake it!
Shove it up their Surgeon trimmed noses. I’d love it!

They’re far too too good 
to tarry here
Whynot leave us the earth 
and its waters and turf
dear!

Take your servants, if they willing
No one else need be waited upon grillin, 
And get their fill on your satin pillow’s
As if your a sage or a new age villain.
Let’s send the rich into space -I’ll chase!

They can spend their lives without their humble shutters drawn,
their flies in disguise!
And your Royal Progeny’s 
entitled classes & their stinky asses
at the school (they spawned)
Where each Dawn of Royal clan
Skates right through 
An across-the-gold-plated span

Then Every man a king
Each Woman a queen
Not a knee shall bow
Nor wait in distress
On any scene of their mess
Just send the RICH, into space 
I guess!
It’ll save us a ton of stress
And prevent them if we sent them
from making even more of a mess
Let’s send the rich into SPACE! 

Richard has been a Writer/Producer/Director in Live theatre, TV, RADIO, and the WEB.  Richard has written and produced a live Radio Comedy on WLRN-FM in Miami. And has seen 6 of his plays mounted.
He has published two short story collections “Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors”, and “Between the Silences”. In 2022 Richard published his collected poetry, “7370 Allen Drive”. 
Richard his new webcast just wrapped up its fifth season, “Poets of the East”, which features poets from Asia, Africa Europe, and the Americas.