Public Republic

Peter Kraevski

Photo: yogendra174
Oh, fruit of light!
Swell with love!
Ripen with sadness!
Sweeten juices – dreams!
And let your fragrant thoughts
be honeyed dew
upon your tender skin!

Donal Mahoney

Photo: bsabarnowl
Rogers Park, Chicago
This brilliant winter morning finds
waves of snow on every lawn
and red graffiti dripping
from the walls
of Temple Mizpah
once again
as down the street
stroll ancient men
who every morning
shuffle here for prayer.

Michael Lee Johnson

Photo: Robert Marin
Rebecca fantasized that life was a lottery ticket or a pull of a lever,
that one of the bunch in her pocket was a winner or the slots were a redeemer;
but life itself was not real that was strictly for the mentally insane at the Elgin
Mental Institution.
She gambled her savings away on [...]

Colleen Harris

Photo: the bbp
He wrote about dull mountainside detail,
said they wanted books on anything but war.
Ecstatic the way only a librarian can be,
she mailed ten boxes and promised more.

Mariana Velichkova

Photo: Niffty..
We are honest and decent
reasonable, chaste again
frigidly faithful
almost sterile
burdened by rules and pain

Martha Gehringer

Photo: flikr
On the subject of bad weather
the red rough Burren cows are sage:
if only to say that
in wind like this
     that drives the rain     like a whipping
you must pull together,
               haunch to haunch,
                    and bow your heads
                         and be.
               That simple.
Bow your tufted heads
                       and
                    be.

Julie Barbour
Photo: aturkus
Each morning I woke to an ocean of snow
and its gray sunless sky.
I walked down the black staircase
and fed myself in the kitchen,
handed the dogs my scraps, cleaned my own plate, then walked up the dark stairs
to the room where the winter wind snarled.

Dimana Ivanova
Translated from Bulgarian to English by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer

Photo: wili
I want to weave you in my hair,
pack you in my skin,
slip you on my finger,
like a wound from a wedding ring.

Michael Lee Johnson

Photo: weglet
Gingerbread lady,
no sugar or cinnamon spice;
years ago arthritis and senility took their toll.
Crippled mind moves in then out, like an old sexual adventure
blurred in an imagination of fingertip thoughts.
Who remembers the characters?
There was George, her lover, near the bridge at the Chicago River:
she missed his funeral; her friends were there.

Kristin Dimitrova
Photo: mikebaird
No, he wasn’t
fat or skinny,
tall or short,
he wasn’t good or evil, but
only neutral, like a geometric point –
no mass, but how it pierces the sheet.

Simon Perchik

Photo: claire1066
No one gets hurt, you pump
into a parachute, cup one hand
to float down, the other
as if water could rub off
the way the sky still gushes
from the once blue Earth
and your sleeve tearing apart

Martha Gehringer

Photo: Tony the Misfit
(Isaiah 58:5)
The trees
              scrub
the winter sky—
              scour away
the grey—
                            and I,
I bow
my head
                       like
              a reed.

Julie Barbour
Photo: ciadefoto
I long for you, the sad heat of your skin,
the flakes of skin in your hair,
your shallow breath when you sleep,
your sour breath haunting the room.
I long for your voice, grouchy, uncertain,

David Chorlton

Photo: Matt From London
Before we know it, the subject changes. Nobody
intended to bring this up, but suicide slips
into the room as an uninvited visitor
so we let it happen, make a place, and sit back
as it dominates the conversation. We all
have a story. There was the performance artist
who was always so funny until

Charlotte Pence

Photo: Clearly Ambiguous
Nothing lasts, we know, so why do I lift
The box turtle from the middle of the road
To the side where crab grass pocks asphalt crumbs?
Picking it up, I feel the tight-fisted weight
Of some creature shrunken inside, desperate
To be set down. I hold it away from my chest
As if I don’t want to [...]

Donal Mahoney

Photo: Lady-bug
My wife has a problem
with any poem
I give her to read
for a second opinion
especially when the poem
has no message
and my goal is
simply to hear
what I’m saying
and not care if
I understand it.

Simon Perchik

Photo: JennyHuang
And you, licking this reef
the way herds are nourished
with salt –even your tongue
has a trace, bitter, brackish
stings though salt
is what keeps stone stone

Michael Lee Johnson

Photo: pareeerica
Edith, in this nursing home
blinded with macular degeneration,
I come to you with your blurry
eyes, crystal sharp mind,
your countenance of grace-
as yesterday’s winds
I have chosen to consume you
and take you away.

Aksinia Mihailova

Photo: bslmmrs
When you leave
pieces of yourself
in the bodies of other women
and try desperately
to find yourself
complete
in the words,
I see our home
like a ghost boat
floating against the current
of the river;
but the boatman is [...]

David Chorlton

Photo: alancleaver_2000
A scene plays out between
an apartment house balcony
and the sidewalk where a young man
walks first away, then turns back
weeping toward the woman
three screaming storeys high
on a spring day with the oleander
making nectar of the air.