The Burning of the Bread - David Joseph Ostrowski - day 18

older than day and collapsing in the mouth teeth to the wall but nearly half as straight welling up with moonface and chattering away wine and lipstick glass on white paper placemat

child fingered gelatin a rotten ruby red sound of metal tongs some silver on the stem little apple rind and little crystal man the power of the range is smoking through the room

wellfire flume to richer poorer make chewing shelled meat mountain in microphone again shower in the cast iron liquored up with marks to telephones with friends and ivory tinkling

the horns are going smaller than pirouetting gem the right words to describe the nose of what it is the naked slobbering sulk of keeping the peace hour in the fountain containing tongue and cheek

You Can’t Make an Omelet without Breaking Some Eggs - Uncle Scooter - Day 18

I heard through the grapevine it’s always darkest before the dawn, but every dog has its day throwing caution to the wind, going on a wild goose chase, pulling someone’s leg, biting off more than you can chew by the skin of your teeth straight from the horse’s mouth. Getting a taste of your own medicine, tit for tat (turnabout is fair play), a snowball effect letting the cat out of the bag and killing two birds with one stone (don’t count your chickens before they hatch), adding insult to injury by beating a dead horse (you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink the last straw). Speak of the devil! The elephant in the room,
 playing devil’s advocate, going down in flames, burning bridges,
 like two peas in a pod getting a second wind to run like the wind. Head in the clouds, 
clouds on the horizon, weather the storm but feeling under the weather, caught between a rock and a hard place through thick and thin (no pain, no gain), but don’t judge a book by its cover, it’s a blessing in disguise! Letting someone off the hook is the icing on the cake,                a peice of cake,                giving the befenit of the dubot                at the dorp of a hat                is the bset of btoh woldrs,                for as you sow so slahl you raep


                         na papel a ydapseektehcotdoryawa…

Cicada Symphony #1 - Joe Gallenstein - day 18

Cicadas emerge slowly in late Spring, Singing at first slowly, Almost sweetly and sporadically

And then the cicada’s voices crescendo, As their chirps grow as big and diverse as a symphony, They create a new and deafening cacophony

Though slowly as summer’s temperatures rise, The sounds of cicada’s voices dies, Fading by July into their soft Summer slumber

Seventeen more years until these cicada’s children, Will emerge to sing their early Summer songs, Again celebrating with a new chirping melody

palomino - elsa kennedy - day 17

truth be told it hurts more than my other duties to steady my hand

around her shaking. she roots around amongst the dreams we’ve discarded,

this circadian wasteland, our kingdom of glass and mismatched nightmares

a palomino tosses her head against our shared air that’s shrinking

against the contours of everything that lives here between our bodies

where is the eye, she screams with her galloping hands, of this hurricane

The Charming Young Dictator - David Joseph Ostrowski - day 17

had a lovely day in the mind cellar and saw sleeping there the big old unsatisfied vertex of an unfinished shape.  meanwhile, the paper was boring and going to bed wasn’t as i remembered it.  the perfect sight would be relinquishing everything. in so many words, that is precisely what i decided was required of me.

Healthy At Home - Joe Gallenstein - day 17

Healthy at home is Not possible when your home Is someone’s income

It is not your home When your income won’t stop the Eviction notice

Healthy at home is Not possible when police Do not protect you

Is it still your home When officers can enter Without knocking first?

Healthy at home is Not possible when your street Now tastes like plastic

Is it still a home When you can’t repeatedly Stop breathing poison?

Healthy at home is Only possible when dreams And promises meet

What do you do when - Lauren Wachenfeld - day 17

When the passion lays dormant and bold red turns to pallid blue, how do you occupy the space and where do you run to?

When your hands become idle and your feet stay in place and your breathing turns slow, do you try to hide your face?

When the words stick like glue caught right behind your tongue do they scrape against your throat, echoes of songs never sung?

neuroplasticity - Uncle Scooter - day 17

so one time maybe two years ago i was in chicago, and i was downtown on my way somewhere very important - no doubt - and some tricked out, four-door sedan with out-sized off-road tires fastened to its stripped and too-small frame came barreling down the street, music blaring so loud the bass beat seemed to rattle the windows of the skyscrapers above. as the first flickers of friction within me threatened to become a five-alarm blaze throughout my being, i noticed from across the street a young girl, maybe 5 or 6 years old, and she was

D                  A                    N         N           I             G                C

which when i came to think about it, (because retraining can take a lifetime), was really the best response.

Man Who Writes Songs Good at Job - David Joseph Ostrowski - day 16

likely it’s the dashboard where you forgot your shirt intimation of a theme that no one understands now it’s just the novelization of every street light turn it down backwards just to turn it up in the deserted quiet night night kitchen deserves a pilot light i can still picture the verse until it goes away every day needs a replacement and sometimes side by side perhaps as a reminder if that’s what it deserves the moon is loaded light and did we see it naked the pine covered that moon we did not see it naked as if the pining was a restoration of the silver water’s edge but if it is i cannot judge i thought i knew what happened but it was years ago reveals in street light all these people watching windshield shows unafraid of getting caught in recklessness and bother september catches up with them in orbit madness bright the tightness of a stretching tom photograph is slated to appear in this the filming of sightseeing taking all these years to go all these people love to stand we do not see them naked the picture reflects them naked

the picture reflects them naked we do not see them naked all these people love to stand the filming of sightseeing taking all these years to go photograph is slated to appear in this madness bright the tightness of a stretching tom september catches up with them in orbit unafraid of getting caught in recklessness and bother reveals in street light all these people watching windshield shows i thought i knew what happened but it was years ago but if it is i cannot judge as if the pining was a restoration of the silver water’s edge the pine covered that moon we did not see it naked the moon is loaded light and did we see it naked perhaps as a reminder if that’s what it deserves every day needs a replacement and sometimes side by side i can still picture the verse until it goes away night kitchen deserves a pilot light turn it down backwards just to turn it up in the deserted quiet night now it’s just the novelization of every street light intimation of a theme that no one understands likely it’s the dashboard where you forgot your shirt

Cancel Culture - Uncle Scooter - day 16

How should we then, oh children of the earth, best re-make our world? What sacrifice is in order to appease the dragons and/or appeal to the angels, to make veridical our moonbeam, cloud nine visions? Apocalyptic electric fire reflected in our fluids, itches scratched in rubbled marble alabaster dopamine. Wild cabals of bloodthirsty men, hands chalked and calloused, grasping flintily to self-contempt, again and again throw the adulteress at the feet of him they hope to bait. But preacher said we’re never nearer God than when we play the advocate, and never nearer Satan than when we are the accuser.

Simpler Times - Joe Gallenstein - day 16

Don’t we all miss simpler times? Riding on your Papaw’s wagon With an RC™ and a Moon Pie®

Going out to eat with your parents Visiting Skyline® and getting a Pepsi™ To bring in the weekend

Sneaking into the snack drawer at Mamaw’s With all of your favorite Hostess® treats… Zebra Cakes™, Ho Ho’s®, and Oatmeal Crème Pies™ … or did those come from Little Debbie®?

The American Dream™ is bought and sold With nostalgia alongside a Coca-Cola®

Restless - Lauren Wachenfeld - day 15

Restless to sleep yet restless to dream want to go so far away I don’t recognize me.

bosticated - Knusprig - day 15

She would have preferred that he'd slowly eroded her spirit over the four years But he waited until they were ending to clutch it in his clawed gamer hands and mindlessly destroyed it like someone snapping styrofoam in half to fit into the trash can, all the pieces clinging to anything that might keep them safe, though never whole again.

I Thought That I Heard You Laughing - David Joseph Ostrowski - day 15

winking at me lonely longing cincinnati tireless spinning it is winging in the punch and all the pins get set up like clockwork a burden to behold and so weighty it’s got me laughing i’m too slender for this burgeoning dream

waved away like a siberian plague with a flesh too cold for any dead things to crawl on so that all the dead things are dead past their dying too dead they are laughing beyond crying i’m too inoculated for this powerful lie

wide open and shrieking cincinnati a movement distorted and wicked and ready for their punch and poison frozen hell or something better than laughing i’m too necessary for this towering sky

whyever should i care when you scream where would i even run to hear it if we lie here we can hear the trains of cincinnati from a place above it higher than the feeling of laughing i’m too novice for this somber news

well i thought i heard cincinnati singing because i thought i saw the world fall apart all the seas and their stars receding it is a place beyond the sound of laughing i’m too childish for this animal odyssey

we won’t be making it in this televised town it’s like the hollywood that opposes hollywood and i get shaken from my punch-addled dream with a screaming that only comes after laughing i’m too joyful for this happy good-bye

growing pains - max - day 15

all the cardboard cutouts of my youth have abandoned me and I keep looking for a jukebox to play my sad songs and the trauma doesn’t go away it’s on repeat in the back of a movie you know every line to

Ode to Appalachian Women - Joe Gallenstein - day 15

Media is filled with Appalachian women But they hardly look like the ones I know Women who only know to submit themselves to men And not to fight for what they believe in

Rarely do we see anymore the stories Of the woman known as the Widow Combs Who stopped the company men from strippling her land And doing all she could to protect her home

We never hear about the petticoat mafia A group of women in a former mining town Who did all they could To turn their communities fortunes around

My Mamaw nor my Nanny resembled anything you’d see In pieces that fawn over JD’s ‘memoir’ Titled Hillbilly Elegy

Our experiences aren’t that different Summers spent in the foothills of Kentucky Where we’d go back home to subdivisions In the suburbs that surround Cincinnati

A future of possibility exists Because of the love that binds Because of the leadership that persists Of the women who live to fight

Fight for their dreams No matter how impossible it seems Fight for their family Even when it meant moving away

This is my ode to Appalachian women Whose strength we’ve too often diminished The Mamaws and Mamas Sisters and friends Who know how to dream And know to dream big

traveling the jim crow south - uncle scooter - day 15

in some untaught place within, the child would dread the sight of long shadows on the road, the way late daylight flickered through his father’s visor, quick bursts of waning glow timed with the racing sound of wheels against the pavement. perhaps it was the taut unease now pooling in the marionette lines of his mother’s mouth (after a day’s relaxed diversions), as if the puppeteer, with thick night blurring at the windows’ edges, abruptly let go the strings.

Overcast - R. Trenaman - day 15

Cloud hanging over the sun like a damp towel on a hook why don’t you rain?

for show - max - day 14

wrote a poem just for show a poem I wouldn’t show you not sure how that works not sure if this works slow down put your hands behind your back close your eyes breathe in my scent give me something else to write about

Unfinished - Uncle Scooter - day 14

the quarry rocks black water midnight prickling skin anticipation a dirt path headlights catching misty veils a body that will never be this young again