by Carol Casey The path is trodden, dusty, level.You know it will take youwhere many have gone. Step off—tangles of brambles,sometimes with blackberries,more often with little clawsthat catch on clothes and skin;and tortuous tree roots—inconvenient, sacred data unearthed—subterranean snakelets somehowsifted into snarls for feet to catch.There are stems that twine…
By Jimmy Pappas We are bats at the mercy of young boysthrowing baseballs high into the nightsky under a streetlight causing us to chaseafter the movement only to swerve awayat the last second still searching for moths. & We are magicians’ helpersprivy to the secretsbut never findingthe adulation we crave….
By Jimmy Pappas (This poem contains suicide.) Everyone owed me a call.That’s what she wrote,her suicide note of sortsposted on a sticky padattached to a boxof Christmas presentsshe never mailed out. That’s how it all works,isn’t it? We owe each otherthings: the book we borrowedlong ago that we kept holding…