The Laughing Man’s Eyes
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
Response piece

       The laughing man’s eyes,                                             like so many high

     Falutin drum rolls, brightened                                  before constricting to wee,

   Loveless cups, ne’er brimming light                       or elsewise dripping affection.

  Such orbs as fill school book warnings,                  nonetheless, blink. They tunnel

Vision toward unhappy motes’ partnering             reminisce us over unmet possibilities.

After the murder, his mistress’ osteomanty           brought no comfort to wife or coryphee

  In his corps de ballet, where the guy’s                  shameless contact hurt more than feet,

   Like a declawed, defanged lions’ air,                    resentment, ‘longside the dead man’s

     Resolute infidelity, accessed                                  payroll, select assailant’s motives

         Almost scrutable plots,                                           also crime scene listicles.

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Linda Sorrells-Smith
“Enviromantle”
Response
Ebony pencil on paper

Nonetheless, Encouraged State
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
Inspiration piece

In rippled lands, brutality’s strictures no longer reign.

There, pyres swell sky over ocean, smoke away candor.

Communities, in which old pain controls date palms, present

Stories split from looms of banal, hackneyed, otherwise trite,

Speaking. No gnosis churned from pharmaceutical companies

Reflect those unsung enchantments. Instead, quiet benevolences

Of old words, free kestrels, also eye candy scattered oddly, create

Crowns from servile physiognomy stippled among growth

Found in women’s song, rosebuds, places only accessible via

Sadistic fellowships. Excuses, anyway, encourage change.

Such grandfathers mostly provided sperm, also learned weird plants’

Inception, penalized expired gratitudes, soothed quick references,

Fasted or not in privately organized affairs. And then, what of it?

Monkeys present as unlikely to face washing errors created by strapping,

Less than sagacious, sorts, versus groundskeepers preoccupied with bees.

The world’s laboratories invent, two at a time, palpably comfortable

Luminosity, only decades after informed belief yield edentulous solutions.

Taiga full of mustelid setts generate more amazement, via socks, raw beef, tea,

Then diaper bag bottoms, bitumen, gout, humped off questions, costume

Jewelry. In the end, babies, nurslings, other wee folk, wade through fingers.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Leaving
By Linda Sorrells-Smith
Response

The leaving is easy, she said.
No hickory am I,
no roots to stretch,
no roots to reach.
As my shadow moves over,
a whisper.
Her balloon sails out of view.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Linda Sorrells-Smith
Response

Kathleen Finn Jordan
Inspiration

Water
Kathleen Finn Jordan

Clear pools of sparkling drink or swim wonder
Loving the refreshing, the cool, the mirror of sun
In its lively gentle mood giving life
Or hunkered in a tropical storm
Windblown and angry
Whipping land and lake and power overwhelming all
Frightening
Water
Planetary gift or planetary weapon
Drowning or floating
Swimming or thrashing though the silt
running from home
Water commanding respect
Leaving us wondering and
Praying for the rain to stop as hurricanes destroy
And leave the people thirsty.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.