The Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library
Forget the Snail
Mary Panke
Maybe depression is the color of biology,
painted on genes like green-brown eyes
or chalk-blue streaks, blurred by staying under
water too long. Or olive-grey lichens clinging
to oaks, their leaves mothers’ hands calling
you back to shore, while you drift and drift, numb
in the salty sling of the tide, Continue reading “Mary Panke, Two Poems”
There Aren’t Any Ducks in the Duck Pond,
Jonathan Greenhause
but that’s OK because there’s no God either,
so the lack of ducks
in a pond named after them
shouldn’t be cause for concern, this absent divinity
allowing us to believe in other things, like science
or perhaps ourselves;
& if we try hard enough,
we can put the ducks back into the duck pond,
put the water back into water, remove Continue reading “Jonathan Greenhause, Spring•Summer 2017”
To the Police Officer Who Let Me Off the Hook
Carolyn Martin
You were right: eleven miles over sixty-five.
Can’t argue with a radar gun. Fair and clean,
you net my Honda Fit out of all those speeders
slashing through the Sunset Highway’s curves.
I can tell you now I almost cited Kepler’s Law
of Equal Areas: planets move faster when
they’re nearer to the sun. I could have teased
I was mimicking this natural principle. Continue reading “Carolyn Martin, Spring•Summer 2017”
Coming Back to Bukowski
Erin L. Delaney
Dispirited, I flip through piles of books
looking for something new,
something to bring on some fire.
Instead I stare down Bukowski.
We’ve been introduced before.
I open Dog from Hell’s pages,
readjust the glue,
recover the nonstick binding.
He provokes me,
pours me a glass
of words,
and this drink ignites
my pen to paper—
a drunken admission
a bare-handed back alley boxing match Continue reading “Erin L. Delaney, Spring•Summer 2017”
Sunrise Psalm
Craig W. Steele
“Dawn was breaking over the horizon,
shell pink and faintly gold…”
—J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Dawn’s light chases Ephialtes’
shadows back into their secret
caves, dispersing them about my
yard, beyond the fence and down the
road in all directions. Glowing
pink in every puddle where the
gold-eyed Eos bathes her face, it
burnishes the dewy leaves and
grass until they’re glinting like fine
crystal, brightening my way today.
Word Fountain 