. Cicada Serenade Boys hang their beat on the heat of the summer. Sticky days twang with their thick, tinny ring. Banshee crescendos and thrums from...

. Where Virtue Dies In the city of Washington, where virtue dies in the immoral sewage as it putrefies, those who tell the most brazen, despicable...

. Recipe for a Poem Scraped clean of glib and warty observation, On pristine paper place one piercing thought. Add in the fragrant oil of...

. The High Priest's Homily Once Man, in thrall to ignorance, believed the world was round, But now we know that everything is one vast sea of...

. Circling In It’s time (I tell myself) we circled in;Gave up at last the overwrought concernThat pulls us this-way-that till we begin To lose the...

. Garden Party The sparrows near the feeder flit and preen While predators politely quit the scene. A mockingbird is chirping up a storm, And soft...

. Wisdom of Reagan: Government Waste “Government is like a baby: with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.” ...

. “Thou, in our wonder and astonishment, Hast built thyself a livelong monument.” —John Milton, “On Shakespeare” First Prize: $200....

. Ode to the Zeer Across the Sahel states, the humble zeer, A pear-shaped or full-bellied earthen pot Strains muddy water, turns it cool and...

. Oversimplification What so many people tend to say or write, Reduces complex issues of today, To merely simple packages of black or...

. Hard To Tell With attributes that only those who know him understand, A countenance deceptive, and a being hard to gauge, Within what seems...

. Leave Above the land, suspended, green and grand and splendid, we furnish food for trees, whisper with the breeze till cold winds bluster in and...

. August Foraging “It’s hot, it’s dry. No fun outdoors; No fungi, flowers, foliage, fruit For us to eat where Nature stores Wild food. The...

. New Directions, or Deviations? by Joseph S. Salemi Many years ago I read an account of a discussion between Ezra Pound and an interviewer...

. DoorWay Canto 7: Flight to The Eyrie In Canto 7, the narrating Pilgrim Poet deviates from the Zodiac, leaving Sagittarius, to visit the...

. The Worst of Our Convictions When, finally, the last church shuts its doors; when we run out of new identities to choose from; when the politicians...

. Phoebus I saw the sun catch in your hair, Your silhouette against the glare. I heard your laughter rise and fall And shatter in the frozen...

. An Invitation While treading my locality's __New-slathered pavement grass, There came a flying, loud "hello" __From sprightly Mr. Das. "Black...

. The Mannequins Are Melting The mannequins are melting as we speak Now that the summer heat wave's at its peak. __While passing by the clothing...

. Hope Hope feels so strange these days, at times a bit Like something old that now no longer fits; It’s stretched beyond repair and somewhat...