Mike Maggio

Arrangement in Reds and Grays

Nothing about my therapist says he’s trying to kill me, 
except slowly by incompetence, but here he is, 
softly cutting a diagonal through Hoppertown 
in a brick-noir haze,

and here I am, in his gray bright office huddling damp
behind a file cabinet I know he doesn’t have.
No Steelers flag, no dog art; this must be a dream.
Fortunately, there are women:

assistants, midwives of billing, the “gals” he says 
will schedule my next visit or fill my scripts. 
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of gals. 
As he enters, they pop into view 

in magic bubbles, one after another. They lie for me.
“She didn’t come in.” “Across the street, maybe.”
Watches tight, their sensible arms ever conducting.

He freezes with his knife.
This world is suddenly cardboard.
I might yet get out alive.

He moves again, but it’s a broken TV or stop-motion,
and the gals are faster in their bewildering deflection,
and me I’ve disappeared altogether.



Copyright 2024 by Pamela Murray Winters

Pamela Murray Winters lives and writes in Bowie, Maryland. She’s working on a second full-length poetry collection and several chapbooks, so she will soon embark on the sometimes daunting process of submission (to publishers and the cosmos). When she’s not writing, she’s watching TV with her husband, playing with her cats, and/or competing in several quiz leagues. (Please let her know if your team needs a pop culture aficionado.)

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

BLACK FRIDAY

They say it’s darkest before dawn
but it don’t seem that way
Mama sits at table but this time
without coffee and cigarette
I don’t hear her
coughing or wheezing
It’s clear she’s gettin’ better
I call the undertaker
and cancel her funeral
It’s lighter now but still dark
Saturday after Black Friday--
the one following Thanksgiving
not the good one before Easter
I got some letters to mail
but before I do, I hug her
for the longest time
Death has given me back
my mama and I can’t
let go

Copyright 2024 Carl Stilwell

Carl Stilwell (aka CaLoki) was born during the depression in Oklahoma and came to California in 1959 and has lived here ever since. He is a retired teacher who taught for over 30 years in the
Los Angeles Unified school District and has published poems in Altadena Poetry
Review, Blue Collar Review, Four Feather’s Press, Lummox, Pearl, Prism, Revolutionary
Poets Brigade–Los Angeles, Rise Up, Sequoyah Cherokee River Jornal, The Sparring
Artists.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

The Armchairs I Liked to Wear in My Sleep


The armchairs I liked to wear in my sleep
to pretend I was a grownup
must have seemed childish, at that time.
I dreamed they were
no different than a folding chair of my father's, 
and also mom says
she likes to work on the chair under the biceps.

A bundle of dreams is a gift
but mine just took up space
that could have been used to write instead,
at the entrance to the hair of the vertebrae.
There are four open walls that don't like me
because my head is a ram's rope.
The sleepers could look inside
and see ready-made sheets on the old side of the poet,
as beds say.

I bow to the sidewalk between the folds of vocal chords.
I'm a monster: my hands are drawn like flowers
and my heart has bad breath so easily.
Today I'm holding a bench
on which a newspaper seller
protrudes from a centavo's mane.
He's carved in white, 
but on Sunday he'll disappear 
like writers do.

Poets are saints
and, since ceilings are a thing of the past, 
they think that the stars singing next to them
are feathers they can pet: 
poets could really do so, even if the stars are not outside of them.

Copyright 2024 by Angelo Colella

Angelo ‘NGE’ Colella was born in Italy where he still lives. He writes prose and poetry in Italian and English and also makes collages, asemic writing and DADA objects. Some of his works have appeared on Uut Poetry, Utsanga, The Ekphrastic Review, Il Cucchiaio nell’Orecchio, Il Mirino, Multiperso, Blogorilla, Word For/Word, Otoliths, La Morte per Acqua, and 22 Pensieri.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Pontus

He invited me to sit with him in the small wheelhouse 
which was faintly lit by the computer screens of a few 
navigational devices. 

But, before the sun broke the horizon,
The silent calmness 
was rudely interrupted 
by everything that seemed to be alive.

The storm clouds,
the waves,
the shouts,
the accusations,
last rites and prayers,
waking God from a sound sleep.

I have always dreamed in years,
never hours or minutes,
never colors, always hues of purple.

Coming back to the emotion of my mind,
It seems incredible to live life twice.
In movies they do, screenplays and lyrics.

Although the assembly of the cast 
grows with each peak and cry of my life,
it wanes when truth warms the spice of the cast.

the plot stormed off stage,
dissolving in shifting motion, 
leaving the script and the words to fight it out.

waves of emotions strike us
as we sink into complete darkness.

Copyright 2024 by Dolores Hoffman

Dolores Hoffman has been a writer for South Jersey Mom Magazine and Northeast Metro Woman Magazine.  Her poems have been published in Poet’s Choice publication and Pen in Hand magazine.  She was a 2019 Selected Poet for Eastern Shore Voices during Salisbury Week.  Dolores started writing poetry at the age of 15 and her passion has led her to create a quarterly booklet called “Pick-Me-Up”.  These booklets have been delivered to local hospitals and cancer centers with the expressed purpose of exposing patients to poetry in a subtle way.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review