Bruce Niedt
Bruce W. Niedt is a retired civil servant whose poetry has appeared in many print and online journals, including Rattle, Writer’s Digest, Tiferet, Spitball, Mason Street Review, US 1 Worksheets, and Your Daily Poem. His poetry is also included in the anthologies Best of the Barefoot Muse, Write Your Heart Out, and Poetry for Ukraine. He has won awards from Writer’s Digest, ByLine Magazine, and The Philadelphia Writers Conference. His first full-length poetry collection, The Bungalow of Colorful Aging, and his eighth chapbook, Knit Our Broken Bones, were published in 2022. He lives with his incredibly patient wife in Cherry Hill, NJ. Visit him on the web here.
The following work is Copyright © 2023, and owned by Bruce Niedt and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Owls and Thunder
What is an owl?
A creature who speaks for the ghosts.
What is a ghost?
That which is left of longing and regret.
What is longing?
A river trying to reach the sea.
What is a river?
A song in the water.
What is a song?
A miracle from a throat or an instrument.
What is a miracle?
That which happens when lightning follows thunder.
What is thunder?
The only thing that quiets the owls at night.
Tanka Review of Your Body
You are the landscape
I always want to visit,
your curves and your hills,
your lush accommodations
and world’s softest skin: five stars.
Alex Stolis
Alex Stolis is a Minneapolis-based poet and photographer. Visit him on the web here.
The following work is Copyright © 2023, and owned by Alex Stolis and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
RIP Winston Smith
She wants to fall in love
just a little, enough to feel
the charcoal and smoke
of melancholy;
enough to hear the music
of wind swaying
through trees
of clouds shifting
in the most vivid
Easter blue;
she was never
an ordinary girl,
remembers when
the world was reduced
to curves, angles,
longitude and latitudes
of grief and trauma
that guillotined
through her;
now, the terrain
is clear, she maps it,
in thin black lines;
borders, rivers,
paved roads;
she is transparent
and indestructible,
renames the birds
in heaven,
the animals on earth;
renames him, marks
him; and they travel,
past what is mappable,
irretrievable, true;
unsparing yet found.
RIP Winston Smith
He doesn’t believe in love
or god, or happily
-ever-after-endings
riding into sunsets,
exploding with yellow
reds and orange
and the soft music
of spheres;
he prefers solid
ground, the earth
rust brown
and damp;
the gun metal
grey of sadness
found in solitude;
love is like war,
with guns, knives,
land mines,
and casualties,
collateral damage;
winners, losers,
reparations;
it should scar you,
leave you for dead;
it’s nothing
more than exhaled
breath under a roiling
sea, a whisper
inside a wave;
unspoken
and unheard.
