Writer’s Block
By Mandi
I sit down
To write a poem
Anticipation
Ideas frenetically bound across my mind
I adjust my chair
My light
Stretch my back
This isn’t good
The lighting is all wrong
How many syllables in a haiku?
What rhymes with orange?
Do I need to buy milk?
I grab paper and a pen
A lifeboat
I flounder
I focus on the shapes of the letters
My handwriting is terrible
Computer [...]

Between Closed Eyes
By Mandi
Disjointed images
flitter across my mind
Dancers with no faces
Yet I know who they are
Sound tracked by forgotten
snipits of songs
Confusion and fears
that leave me trembling
Amusement parks whose rides
are made of recliners
Colors more vivid
than anything Hollywood could create
Plots so fantastic
Yet with so many holes
It only make sense
While my eyes are closed
Fanciful creatures who have no [...]

The Promise
By Mandi
CALLING THE CHILDREN IN FROM PLAYING SETTING THEM DOWN TO DINNER AND THEN PUTTING THEM INTO A WARM BATH BEFORE TUCKING THEM INTO BED AND SLIPPING DOWNSTAIRS WHISPERING AND GIGGLING THEN VOICES GROWING LOUDER IN ANGER AS THE PROMISES OF YESTERDAY ARE FORGOTTEN AND THE TROUBLES OF TODAY TAKE OVER AND RISE TO [...]

You said “I guess…
I’ll marry you….
if it’s mine”
When I was born
She had to walk to the pay phone
Because you had to drink at the bar.
You called me “he”
for the first three months
Even when they dressed me in pink
She left you, wisely,
when you made the home unsafe for me
Sand burrs were the last straw
She brought me [...]

Drought
By Mandi
A drought comes to the land
Once fertile valleys wither
Dust blows in billowing clouds
Emerald fades into burnt sienna
Life slows to a creeping crawl
Hope fades like a forgotten flower
As Technicolor turns to sepia
A pale horse’s cadence can be heard
Forlorn and adrift
And then a single drop
A tear from Aoide
And life springs forth
The cycle renews
Atropos holds off [...]