The Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library
The Cough
Robert Fillman
I am sleeping in the bedroom
down the hall for another night—
having spent the last two away
from my wife, in a narrow bed,
feet dangling over the edge,
unsure how to fold my long arms
as I bump against the rear wall
of the coldest room in the house.
All night, I hear my son coughing Continue reading “Robert Fillman, Three Poems”
Delta
Dawn Leas
I am a mosaic of Emerald Isle,
Italian leather and gypsy song.
I am swirls of magic,
Stories my grandmother told in Slovak,
a foreign language she lived in,
but never taught us.
I am salt. I am water.
Flowing blue to green,
dancing calm to chaos in a white foam dress.
I did not root in mountain mud
like an evergreen, but in sand,
like a pitch pine or orchid
moving with fire and breeze
in the barrens of New Jersey.
I am the woman
stepping off the known trail Continue reading “Dawn Leas, Three Poems”
The Gingerbread Boy Turns 40
Jim Zola
Last night’s love carries me
back across the river.
I hurry the kids for school,
replace missing gumdrops,
straighten crooked faces.
Fox grumbles that our life
has grown stale.
Sometimes I hear Continue reading “Jim Zola, The Gingerbread Boy Turns 40”
You . . . Again
Dean Robbins
“I know. It’s just habit,”
he says standing too close
to an old memory;
trying to warm himself
against a coal burner
some weeks ago removed
from ever offering
to stay the cold again.
I smile, thinking of you,
and wish I did not know
exactly what he means.
Family Reunion
Dean Robbins
The snakeskin, most complete and long enough Continue reading “Dean Robbins, Two Poems”
Corroboration
Patricia Farnelli
My great-grandmother Augusta
saw leprechauns daily.
She shared her high four-poster bed with me,
age three.
I slept on the side against the wall.
When wee green men
danced on her chest of drawers
she would yell for my mother
to bring a broom
and sweep them away.
My great-grandmother was thin
and wore cat-eye glasses
and she’d say, “Let’s go for a walk
around the block”
and take me by the hand
and we’d walk a few laps
around the dining room table. Continue reading “Patricia Farnelli, Two Poems”
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