The Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library
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”
Perfection
Ken Haas
In junior high Spanish class
Mr. Koochman gave each kid a nickname
that followed us into the streets.
The pouty ingénue was Labios Levine,
the over-developed blonde Melones Morgan,
the kid from the projects, Kong Coleman.
The hairy one became Oso,
the sweaty one Puerco,
and the frail, nervous one
who rode the D train early
with the night nurses and winos,
was dubbed Hércules.
This was the Bronx in 1965.
Koochman, a cadaver in tweed, Continue reading “Ken Haas, Two Poems”
The Year We All Got Cancer
Steve Deutsch
Winter stayed.
The April rain so cold
it left blisters of ice
on an earth
as scarred and pockmarked
as a landscape mired in war.
We waited through the freeze and thaw Continue reading “Steve Deutsch, Three Poems”
Love in the Desert
Lynn Hoggard
In forty-five minutes, he said, go outside
with a camera and take my picture. If no shots
go astray at the nearby shooting range,
I’ll be on top of that mountain,
and I’ll be waving my arms.
Then my crazy, jogging husband
was on his way as I sat, camera in hand,
in the Chihuahuan Desert, thinking about
roads high and low that we had traveled
and those who venture or who stay behind. Continue reading “Lynn Hoggard, Two Poems”
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