I would like to give you a brief description about the poems here and the project from which they emerged. They are from a one-year-long project called POND — The poems are acrostics.  Here is my process.  Everyday, at different times during the day, I would visit our pond with notebook and camera in hand.  I’d jot down some notes, and take a picture or two, if a good photo op. presented itself.  Then I’d head home and write a four line acrostic using the letters P, O, N, and D.  To elevate the challenge, I added the caveat that I could use … Continue reading Stanizzi J L – John L. Stanizzi

Medusa of the Pillow   I skirt our ruin of crumpled clothes, run the maze of underwear liberated in candid haste.             Carpet vibrations arouse interest, blonde hair wriggles from sleep’s tangle – coils writhe, spar and strike.   … Continue reading McGivern R – Ross McGivern

Cemetery Man had an eye disease from staring at the cross.   Man had a heart disease from making other men stare at the cross.   Man had a voice like bells that flew to rome,   called the troops to wash his gouty hands in duty. Risk It’s cheetahs runnig on a razor’s edge.   It’s ocean trees on barbed wire island.   It’s fragrant clouds behind a poison tank.   Let’s say at seven at the coffee shop.   Let’s hope the cheetahs will be there.   Surrender to be a concrete man to be a hero   … Continue reading Jatzek G – Gerald Jatzek

3 excellent poems from the forthcoming collection Fever Few, which will be reviewed here in impspired when it is published Is this the ebb, or flow?   We are manacled in green the grass like an anchor, holding us to the earth   new buds on the magnolias break through as the blossom sheds itself like skin cells.   The moment is born, the moment dies, simultaneously.   How is it that late in life, even after losses,  the moment sings, symphonic.   Like the time we watched the song thrush every speckle on its tiny chest as vivid and … Continue reading Saunders A – Anna Saunders

    obituary for a house it was oldeven when builtleaking at the panes but the children weregrateful for those draftson humid nights when it could not cool itselffrom the coals of dayand though it became brittle in serest winter it neverbroke or chaffed awayand all its boxiness had a soul of a fatherfor the mother in itwho had no husband this house held herin its cubicle lovewhen no man would stay more than a nightand it saw her childrento school with its browed eaves and windowagape with each departurebut all the children are now gone the mothertoo and a … Continue reading Darnell M – Marc Darnell

Ode To The Captain Be gone, J. Evans Pritchard, proclaims the Captain,   an actor in a movie, confronting another tyrant dad, but too real     with his sad smile, who made us laugh   even as I dealt with … Continue reading Seyedbagheri M Y – Mir Yashar Seyedbagheri