Play Pen: Poetry, Prose & Music Open Mic

The first Tuesday of every month The Write Room literary magazine hosts an open mic evening of poetry, prose and music from 7:30-10pm located in Johnnie MacCracken’s Celtic Pub 15 Atlanta Street Marietta, Ga. This month’s date is September 7th. All poets, writers and musicians are welcome to perform. Great food, drinks, and fun. Network [...]

Time Out

by Levi Wagenmaker   the Humpty Dumpty Clock hung on a wall and when the wall crumbled it did not fall but just kept hanging on to nothing at all just passing the time the time of day swapped against the time of night darkens not Dark Times have different origins origins are early forms [...]

IKWERRE ROAD (Oyinbo Love Songs, #3)

by Mark Cassidy  Josephine lives on Ikwerre Road, in a single room squeezed into the corner of a crooked little yard in a narrow compound beside a cement factory.  Through the mornings fine white dust drifts down into the yard and is spun into looping whorls and eddies by breezes and draughts which weave and [...]

A Summer’s Distance

by Anne Bromley   I. Your brown shoulders cradle two-by-fours, and you sleep in the skeleton of a house, not for shelter, but to be alone. The midnight air hangs warm and weightless. Beneath the half-built roof the moon slides along the bones of the walls. You dream of yellow beams and gray nails softening [...]

Mini-Mal

by Levi Wagenmaker   in the 1960s mini-theatres were big in Amsterdam and everyone who was no-one performed there at night   that afternoon in one mini-theatre on the steps of a narrow flight of stairs she sat forehead on knees hair shrouding shins hands on top of her skull pale fungus on dark soil [...]

Blood-borne

by Anne Bromley   Parked in the pharmacy lot, waiting, I read the beer truck’s bumper: Responsibility matters, and hear the rumbling engine of an R.V. devoted to blood donors. The vehicle’s sides implore passers-by, Somebody’s life depends on you,   but I am here to pick up drugs — one to kill the tick’s [...]

Big Bang/Big Crunch?

by Joseph Ferguson Late at night, When the house creaks And mice make tiny music   To the opening And closing Of car doors   In the street, I think of you Waving in winter From a bridge of snow, Coat a green puff On white canvass,   Hair, Black brush strokes On the bluster. [...]

For the Sake of Mr. Finch

by Christopher Gallegos  When the shakes come, don’t be surprised.  Toiling around hapless patrons of midnight, wander listless never faltering to gain selfish recognition.  Imitating lurid idols behind closed sheets.  Reciting obscure passages, deeming them meaningful for time and place.  Wavering to speak a mind for time consuming quotation.  Blisters on hand reminds a sobering [...]

Hunger Bite

by Timothy L. Marsh     Here I stand upon the scales a plump and rounded figure. And if the boys don’t like me now they sure won’t like me bigger.   —Newfoundland Nursery Rhyme     The husky young girl traveling with her grandmother has never been kissed by a boy, held by a [...]

Mary Blue

by Barry Spacks   Our every grudging blurt of “no” grinds gravel to dust, untunes the music.   Our best sounds are color’d the Mary-blue of kindness.