Make Believe

Jennifer Luckenbill

She stands alone in a field,
tan prairie grass tinged with
red stretching to the rolling hills.
In one hand, a seed.
In the other, an ocean.
Her feet, bare, baked into
the soil, loaves of bread
rising from the earth,
cresting in yeasty domes. 

If the wind is a lullaby,
she is its melody,
quiet and haunting,
unsung notes echoing
up and down the spine,
humming to the tune of
no-one’s-listening. 

She’s the silence […]

John Grey

It’s all make-believe, I assure you.
From the gut? No, that’s not poetry,
that’s bile.
From the heart?
My heart’s a two-lane highway for blood,
nothing more.

I invent people
and I throw them into
made-up situations.
It’s my head that’s doing it.
It gets no kudos
but it doesn’t complain.

I hear […]

Valerie Sopher

I am not putting lemons in this poem.
They’ve been taking up too much
screen time lately and people
are starting to talk.

Hundreds of illuminating mini suns
a tree of extras always on time
scene-stealing stars in a garden
of muted peaches and pinks.

I could give them someone to dance with,
a salvia in flaming fuchsia or purple
perhaps, or maybe not.
Meyers crave attention, love seeing
people salivate at the thought of their

Maureen Cosgrove

A woman in a poppy-print tent dress and a man sporting
a mud puddle-color mock turtleneck sweater take turns 

spinning yarns that tumble to the formica in interlocked
mid-century designs. Alone at the next booth, you pick up

random sequences of words. The woman says, “I want
a different backstory.” You see a silver train arriving 

at a ghost town station. The man replies, “I was driving
in the rain, when a car in front of me suddenly swerved.” 

You watch […]

Mary Ellen Talley

The grandfather clock knows all about dissection. Frogs stop ticking quicker than chickens. A tight man inside keeps dropping parts as he stretches the well-oiled wood. Pulsing metal grates his ears, so he paints aging gears with soothing lavender, which does help as the tight man resides at the bottom of the tall wood enclosure. His suspenders are rusted from chicken drippings. The tight man clasps a slender paintbrush to dab upon the metal’s grinding edges. His hair is thinning. He intuits each conceit of the […]

Merna Dyer Skinner

Like a lover’s touch
we’ve yet to imagine—
the pool’s warm water glides
beneath our necks,
slides along our arms, brushes
our downy-haired thighs,
our feet flutter kicking
just enough to keep us afloat. 

You and I,
best friends,
partners in a summer swim class,
unafraid
to submerge ourselves,
to innocently spread our legs
into a V shape above the waterline,
slip into our favorite move—
the rotating sea-plank. 

Floating, face-up,