After Brunch Journal

The arch never sleeps. I had not hiked the path for weeks when I came upon a secret portal so low and so discreet it must have been built for sprites or ferrets. A drystack arch with pink voussoirs no doubt by elfin craftsmen carved in ages past, but this I know: such fine art…

History is a relentless master.It has no present, only the pastrushing into the future heat moved across the courtyard crowds waiting drinking bottled water and fanning themselves until the museum opened where we narrowed down to a blast furnace of humanity pushing inside and the dome over the inner chamber was glass-paned in diamonds that…

The angels puff out chest feathers and turn up noses at the bread crumb legacies that pigeons poke and peck at while circling park benches. Cocked halo gestures would pluck from hearts harp images in Hansel and Gretel heads. Good faith spirits in guys and gals for whole lifetimes and artists, gambling that a canvas…

A summer night in 1984 or maybe it was 83 Backyard looked like the Milky Way as lightning bugs called to us – me and two step-sisters – to run barefoot carefree with hands open trying to catch yellow stars that shifted into new constellations It was a rare night for you to be home…

Morning comes soon as you dangle at the end of a thread hung from the tip of a blue crescent moon. Head buried in sand the mystic declares “I’ve struck gold, will never grow old.” Send in the clowns, invite Robespierre, Napoleon as well, just to be fair. Euphoric the ride along a brain wave,…

How can you feel relief about something you still don’t understand? John Gacy When speech serves the uncivilized mind notice how the tongue’s pink shovel conducts the choir in a midnight dirge as violent verbs leave trenches in the crawlspace of a sad suburban brain. For many, his picture was the last thing they saw…

Cooking as a conclusion. Another means of mixing, of limitations, all for the sake ofeffects. Layers of the thinnest, layers of the heavy. Imprecisions. “Hey. I dreamt I spent my days freeing flies, those trapped in the windows. Blue Bottles. Big. Slow. Desperate. Yearning for the light on Lucknow Street. Wait…” Some moments of intricate…

I used to have scary nightmares but now, my daymares are worse. I’m too old to dream green fields and flowers and cute animals. I daydream explosions, nuclear fallout, scant food supplies, and orphaned children. I wonder if I could buy back the pretty things I used to think of Maybe a dusty old shop…

Finally, the gods were reduced to the odd bit of glare, to silhouettes and shadows, to a few fading and distant jeers. And so light, a single pharaoh ant could lift them. They’ve lain down with the straw, becoming golden stalks. They reside in funnel webs. In a convergence of ditches. They are self-detained, a…

Every time I look up and see the moon, even when I don’t, girdled gold, orange, white sheen glow gifted us all, vigilant in extremis, when caught between crossfires of Chance and Necessity, chips not just down, brokered, bankrupt, bereft, love gone haywire, dark nights of teen spirit, grief’s gravity pulled down beneath our feet,…

If the light is a fork, (and it is) and you are the wooden handle, and the wood still dreams of root and rain, Then The shadow is a spoon. Don’t ask me why. It just is. Else, If the light is a lie told by a switch— a small god of true, false— and…

Slowly coming out of the valley of broken dolls after my soul took a Niagara fall into the abyss of an after- a-first-date cheek kiss which was a blatant dodge from one that was meant for the lips a phenomenon that has sunk a thousand potential relationships and now I am second-guessing all my early…

Even now, just before the cockerel’s crow tears the ambience, before the millet slouches to dawns eloquent hush, fear lays siege at our door posts, standing like a silent masquerade at the mouth of our fields – our farms, its raffia breath soaring where dusk’s blood river pooled; A waiting augury; a whisper of hoofbeats…

The silk-spring moments, webs of garden gossamer spun out even over desert unveiling its mean-street-selves not just in meme and metaphor, bully pulpit social rant and rave, but in upload blooms that bloom and shine outrageously, sometimes, in wind and sand, monsoon and drought, in more than upshot, horny green, endless ecru, without knowing how…

I sing the praises of all things dead this is the shrouded world thus is the coloured world green of moulding flame interspersed with minorities in purple deserted curtains rotted, draped in half light of hypocrisy these are the dreams this is our scripture psalms unheard amidst the beloved dead amidst the rubble, the rabble…

There. Resting in the shade afforded by the overgrown shrubbery, tumbledown house, watching with the carefulness such patience rewards, caring nothing for the history that has led to such ruin, our passing, waiting out the noon- tide of our days. The one observes the other, knowing names, labels, and if the searing heat of day…

Something must be brought him. A sealed box holds it, careful hands take it out, gloved, careful, devoted hands turn the pages. He is imagined bending towards it, disastrously drooling, mumbling. Actually he isn’t that bad, or old, but such is the image of someone who retains his expertise. He knows it’s what they see.…

“I guess we’ll reach some understandingWhen we see what the future will bring.”–Jackson Browne 70 years into the tunnel of eternity and I understand nothing. Who promised me future peace, of country or mind? No Man. And if I wander a little too far from home who will take care of the dog and the…

once a yearmy fathertangled tree lights About the Author Stacy R. Nigliazzo is a nurse and the award-winning author of three poetry books. She is a founding member of the Humanities Expression & Arts Lab (HEAL) at Baylor College of Medicine, where she teaches poetry and art to physicians and students.

It’s been said for years, before this was a park, that red orbs would dance tree to tree where the magnolias now grow. These orbs left the deep woods and shadowed parked cars, lights off—a known lover’s lane. There were no other lights— the orbs floated directly windshields and peered in. It’s been accepted that…

Make it slow and soothing something sensationally quiet like saffron or soft like footfalls in snow. Make it rise in afternoon sunlight. Make it click in rhythm to the stream or the heavy bass bump of car stereos in the parking lot. When it happens, it happens but make it slide at delicate angles a…

He brought her fresh Flowers every week, And on Valentine’s Day A special bunch. Afterwards, he sat down Beside the grave, wept for her, then ate his lunch. About the Author Bernard Pearson’s work appears in over one hundred and fifty publications, including; Aesthetica Magazine , The Edinburgh Review, Crossways, The Gentian, Nymphs The Poetry…

In the dream, on the last day of class, I told them I’d only been hired because everyone at all qualified had been laid off or quit. I was initially very reluctant. So the night before the semester I made a list of my fears, and (unfolding it) would read it to them now. I…

Maybe the gray mimics the colors of heaven and the gummed-up tulips trying to bloom are the flowers that line the walkways of Eden after a sleet rain squall. The crocuses that don’t open are too stoic for spring and the rubble of branches that thrashed in the wind. Maybe we keep hanging on to…

There is rain under my umbrella for me and me alone tears of cut glass and shame (why does everything hurt?) it is dark under my umbrella… I don’t think I could see myself even if I wanted to (I don’t want to) does my voice work under my umbrella? I scream and scream as…

The distance reflected in eyes that look out across hills ravaged by the sun and drizzle that are the sum of our days, the backpack still stuffed with an umbrella more suited to months harsher in different ways, but the coat worn anyway in defiance of the warmth that seeps through the pores of morning…

If there is a bridge or a tunnel – especially if decisions are made on the other side – everything in the last few blocks before it, imperceptibly but unresistingly, flows. The bar. The charmless motel. The stern but flaking bank, long unremodeled. The vacant (these are now, significantly, called “empty”) lots. Traffic compressed like…

There once was a boy who saw a fearsome wolf he told everyone he saw a fearsome wolf everyone told the boy he was confused by the rhythm of the red fox a second wolf joined the first the boy told everyone wolves stalk him from the first sliver of light to the dimming of…

I’ve heard that the great funnel cloud of memory begins at the tip of a phonograph needle and ends at the tip of a ball point pen, that a poem fades faster than a rub-on rose tattoo, that your hand never forgets the feel of a coffin handle, that tornadoes are often brewed inside teapots…

He brought a few angels to his desk a few angels with confidence over the horizon. He welcomed bandits from the mountains, liars from lying contests, echoes of owls, clods of dirt he threw in dirt wars. He never smoothed them but traced the stains on his jeans and face. Shadows became lives. They leaned…

The walls in the asylum talk and talk from their crayon-colored pictures. “The best is yet to come.” “Every day is a new start.” “I am worthy of being heard.” “I am worthy of being seen.” “I’m deserving of happiness.” “I am capable of achieving my goals.” Where I am is a countrified wing of…

because their mother’s told them: always use two hands—or was it always wash both hands? Fireflies are always trying to get away with something, just because they are beautiful, just because they beat Edison by a million years. But my mother pulls off their bulbs to make them into rings. She won’t stop making rings…

The glass tips. Red across the cotton. It doesn’t stop at the surface. It runs for the seam, sinks into the weave. You grab a towel. Press. Lift. Press again. The colour spreads wider than your hand. At the edges it dulls, thickens. By morning it marks the cloth no longer surface. You flip the…

The guitar player seemed moody that night and so did his playing (the room humming with a pensive nostalgia (the moon having put one of her many hexes on this sweaty Missouri ev’ning, no doubt)) and the fishing trawler of my mind had drifted off- course into strangely calm waters where more questions than answers…

Rubber ball bouncing against wooden desk in the trench of a schoolday– waiting for the spelling bee. I was good, and at Ss. Philip and James this was something, this was a whole thing, the rolling ball through the desk through the day to the microphone, sixth grade, me vs. Liana, the red auditorium packed…

The curb remembers. Smoke curls upward like sound spilling from the mouth of someone who once resembled a boy sharpened by rage. He offers a cigarette, his fingers burned black, his teeth clenched as they are turned to ash. There is no holding what burns itself to be held. Fire eats through fingers, burns slow,…

The perverse pleasure the dead bodies give me stuck here like trophies displayed for months on end is perhaps not unlike certain other civilizations exhibiting the bodies or heads of enemies on crosses or pikes or spikes or pallisades preventing proper burial deterring rebellion celebrating victory as I take them down and throw them out…

Ghost scenes projected on a screen of low-hanging      clouds, while the candle-      flicker shadows of all our      former selves do serpentine           shimmies against the cave walls. About the Author: Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-five books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper…

In your rich indigo gown you dance along Boylston Street and astound lawyers and accountants whose briefcases anchor them to a sedate, Darwinian world. You flaunt your color with gestures so acrobatic they disprove everything we learned in high school when our bodies often betrayed us. Your gown is not an act of clothing but…

What I never mentioned is that my father had two faces— one that would smile just a little and the other that never  smiled at all. It’s obvious that I inherited these faces but now the one face  doesn’t smile at all, mainly because it’s devastated by the way  things worked out— not to forget…

It had come again, rising from within, a murmur—the awful scrabbling, the horrid scritch, scritch, scritch—a rat between the walls, desperate for a way out.  No exit.   No respite.   Only louder. And, as night descended, more relentless.   He had crouched for long minutes, gathering himself within the lingering, oppressive heat. The world was still. Silent. Expectant.…

Flexing our tails in the museum we stroll around the galleries with our surreal humor brimming. Few notice that we’re lizards with the smack of insects on our lips. A woman trips over my tail and apologizes straight-faced as if lizard people are common in her mown suburban world. We willed ourselves into lizards by…

Don’t miss this once in a lifetime offer!– Remember this kind of headline? And if so, here’s your chance to relivethe days of great discounts The altered states of deals and pricesthat made the market feel new When the savings were groundbreakingon values no one saw before Yes, it can be yours again, click hereto…

Morning breaks. It’s raining. No, it’s pouring. Wait a minute…this is a deluge. And one so heavy the world seems drowned. Trees bow in supplication. And the lake’s surface is a single dark lid Closing over everything. Thin rivulets crawl down the windows. They remind me of desperate fingers. The weather has turned Piscean. This…

In the zoetrope of everyone else’s rising, Trapped and still falling behind, Why can’t I cover myself with these pictures Of weddings, dining parties, And vacations to get a little bit of elevation? You’d think it would rub off, all their smiles, Instead, warnings are pinned to me, Until access is denied, taking away any…

The ship drifts across the skyline, Beyond the pull of tides, A vessel set free from its destruction To be chained to endless repetition. Those on the deck, at the wheel, Have all the time in the world But nothing of expression, No inkling of what they’re doing there. They’ve become their own memories But…

She looked exhausted. She was still in her blue cleaning uniform, likely comingstraight from work. A sour trace of sweat clung to her. “When we got married, he promised we’d settle in the city,” she said. “I’ll burnhim the grandest paper villa.” I handed her the price list. Housing in Guangzhou was impossibly expensive. A…

I have not eaten any of your poems, trueMy teeth went through and parted themBefore I realized that they were only clear, wet, And bittersweet, nothing to digestExcept a tide of highlights, verbal kicksNot worth absorbing or breaking down. I am not saying your words did not glow,For I held your lines up at nightTo…

If reincarnation was a possibility I know what I would dream of most fondly. To rise after my fall as an Iris The flower of faith, hope, courage and wisdom All of which are qualities to maintain and desire. A flower surrounded by greenery With beauty so captivating that passersby can only stop to admire…