what is love? A poem by Mari Angelica Galangco

what is love?

I asked my mother once, on a cloudy
afternoon. She was scrubbing a plain,
white shirt with her thin, cold hands–
rough like the powdered detergent she
bought from the dollar store with a
toonie she found in between the seats
of the late-night bus, she would take
to go home after a day of scrubbing
toilets and mopping floors with other
gray-haired, single mothers who spoke
less English than the 3-year-old toddlers
with fat fingers living in the houses
they called their workplace. She sighed,
plunged the shirt under the basin full
of bubbly water before wringing it
out and checking for the black stain
she’s been scrubbing off for the past
hour. She tsked, reprimanded me for
asking about nonsense things,
		and kept on scrubbing.

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Mari Angelica Galangco is currently taking an Advanced Creative Writing Seminar course at Trent University Durham GTA. She enjoys going on strolls, watching cozy movies and drinking matcha lattes during her spare time. She is working towards being a primary teacher in the near future.

2 poems by Rhonda Melanson

After The Egg Comes Sunshine And More

i)

I flip the memory, over and over. The easy lesson of eggs.

Poached, Grandma used to make. A white blob, struggling
to stay afloat. Squiggly tentacles paddling anxiously in simmering
ocean. Pathetic, to some people. How its tiny trauma bubbles, 
splashing onto the fire.

My own hot mess crying. I'm so hungry! Eat! Before they get cold!
I gobble too fast, those pierced yolks, ignore all that sunshine spilling 
over my toast. I forget all about the kindness.

There were many more breakfasts. 
Time and over again.

ii)

Rinse, wring, repeat. Automatic cycle, this worrying.
A clothesline, strung out, taut as a dirge. Moaning 
under the weight of nothing. I'm the Empress
only with the rags I've imagined.

In moments of clarity, I leave them to dry, letting
gentleness blow its magic. Feel the calm. Perhaps 
taste more of that sunshine, a thick yellow tsunami.
Hope that it will coat me for days.

iii)

Someday, free of light. Yoke-less. I learn to play
in the dark. Turn monsters into mythical creatures.
Become myself a phantom of worries I used to know.






Like The Song Says, Darkness An Old Friend

1.

Dogs at Humane Society. Lost ones answering
to Ginger. Death row ones named Midnight
or Coal. Don't remind me of the one who
died waiting for his owner to return. Devotion
of the purest color.

2.

Mom is lucid today. Wants me to buy more
of the black pants she likes. Two more pairs 
should do her till she dies! She's been up all
night thinking about it. How comfortable
they will be, familiar against her forgetful skin.

3.

Does it matter the name of this quiet river,
its ripples flowing on repeat? When you listen 
with an ear pressed to risky faith, silence 
can be certainty. Not a phobia telling you
all water is darkness and slaughter.

4.

Waiting on subway. Tunnel the color of gasoline.
Can you also taste it? These fossil fuels will kill
us all. Look at the walls- the graffiti of prophets.
The neon suspends us even while train in flight.
Then, a hard miss. Until the next time.

5.

Like the song says, darkness an old friend.
For years, my cocoon; now, a revolution
from within. I will take soft steps, fumble
through a moonless night. A trail without
a blaze. The dust will cover me.

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A graduate of Queen’s University Artist In The Community Education Program, Rhonda Melanson has been published in several print and online magazines. She is the author of two chapbooks: Gracenotes (Beret Days Press) and My Name is Mary (Alien Buddha Press). She also co-edits a literary blog Uproar.

Writer’s Block. A poem by Marthese Fenech

Writer’s Block

Tea leaves scattered,
jasmine across the table
The scent of plumeria
swirling
An open notebook
Empty
A glint of sunlight
A blank page
Old scars
Bleeding

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Marthese Fenech is the number one bestselling author of epic historical novels set in sixteenth-century Malta and Turkey. She has also written the pilot episode of a television series based on her books.

Research has taken her to the ancient streets her characters roamed, the fortresses they defended, the seas they sailed, and the dungeons they escaped.

Obstinate curiosity has led her to sixty-five countries across six continents. She does her best plot-weaving while hiking mountain trails, wandering local markets, paddle boarding cliff-sheltered bays, and sitting at home with her Siberian husky curled at her feet.

The youngest of five, Marthese was born in Toronto to Maltese parents. At twelve, she moved to Malta for six months and was enrolled in an all-girls private school run by nuns; she lasted three days before getting kicked out for talking too much. Back in Toronto, she started a business editing and selling bootleg heavy metal concerts. She later worked with special needs children and adults, witnessing small miracles daily.

Mar has a Master’s degree in Education and teaches high school English. She speaks fluent Maltese and French and knows how to ask where the bathroom is in Spanish and Italian. She took up archery and wound up accidentally becoming a licensed coach. A former kickboxing instructor, she snowboards, surfs, scuba-dives, climbs, skydives, throws axes, and practices yoga—which may sometimes include goats or puppies. She lives north of Toronto with her brilliant, mathematically-inclined husband and brilliant, musically-inclined dog, known to lead family howl sessions on occasion.

3 poems by Mykyta Ryzhykh

Mykyta Ryzhykh(1)

***
You can hope you never get cancer
You may not understand how you can lose your left leg
You can trust that your daughter won't strangle you in the middle of the night
One may consider the Holocaust unthinkable, but thoughts are only an imprint of matter
Everything will happen one day
Everything will happen again one day
And everything will be the same
But it doesn't matter anymore
After all, we know that there is never anything new
Every time Jesus dies anew in every tree and Nazi ghetto
And in each new round of history his body becomes more and more dilapidated
But why? Why can't he die completely?
Death? Immortality? Because it's not death?
Death exists only in our consciousness (why does Jesus die so often?)
Death is just a stop of time in an immobilized mirror.
The Holocaust may be considered unthinkable, but thoughts are only an imprint of action.
One may consider the Holocaust unthinkable, but thoughts are only an imprint of inaction
And a red-light flashes in the eyes of someone walking along the road




***
аnd when the soldier fell 
there was no one 
who could help him up





***
axiom 
of emptiness 
in the cemetery

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Mykyta Ryzhykh is the winner of the international competition Art Against Drugs and Ukrainian contests Vytoky, Shoduarivska Altanka, Khortytsky dzvony. A laureate of the literary competition named after Tyutyunnik, Lyceum, Twelve, named after Dragomoshchenko and a nominated for Pushcart Prize, he was published in Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Rechport, Topos, Articulation, Formaslov, Literature Factory, Literary Chernihiv, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, and elsewhere.

A Single Leaf. A poem by Josephine LoRe

A Single Leaf

this poem is a leaf 
falling from a tree

this poem is the stillness 
after the last echo sounds

the pause between an exhalation 
and the next inhale

this poem is gravel 
embedded into knee

an offering of thanks 
for a crust of week-old bread 

this poem is the rumble 
of armoured trucks
a deluge of debris

this poem is every story
every footfall walking 
further from belongings
step by step toward the safety 
beyond borders

this poem is a pacifier
in the dead grasses 
by the roadside

family photos
curling in the flame

this poem is fingers 
playing a white piano 
for the very last time

a baker in a land of foreign tongue
braiding dough

this poem is centuries of steady leaving 

flaxen-haired children 
playing in the grasses 
of the Canadian West
hearing tales of their babusya

this poem is the pattern 
finely painted on a paschal egg

a ribbon woven 
a dance steeped in folklore

this poem is empty words and hollow lies

this poem is arrogance
the hubris of ambition
a heart of anthracite 

this poem is despotic
the colour of blue sky
golden sun
a tattered flag at dusk

this poem is the world watching
too afraid to condemn

the pause between an inhalation 
and the last exhale

this poem is the silence that thunders 
after the last echo

this poem, a single leaf 
falling from a tree

this poem is a doll, trampled
a fountain, withered
markings for growth pencilled on a door jam
of a house in which the roof 
has fallen in

this poem is a whimper in the night

this poem is Syria, 
Passchendaele, Dakar
this poem is Dresden, Tripoli
Ukraine


this poem is polished leather 
marching in the mud
to the counterpoint of hatred

this poem is a drone
the barrel of a gun

this poem is a daffodil 
sprung from ground 
no-one there to marvel

this poem is a prayer 
unanswered in the dark

a graveyard
headstones tumbled in the tumult

this poem is hope 
navigating in a blind sky

this poem is fear
the stench of death

a seed swallowed 
in the belly of the plenty

this poem is numb

this poem is sirens, air raids, blackouts
a mother shushing a wailing child
eyes dimmed 
by the hunger and the horror

this poem is robin muted
barn owl stunned into silence

this poem is humanitarian 
drop by single drop
the cold press of metal

this poem is making its way over rubble
the body yearning for comfort
for respite, for home

this poem is the blue glow 
of late-night news
the drone, the drone

this poem is Gallipoli
the battle of Batoche, Beirut
Leningrad, Michilimackinac, Kyiv

this poem is a weightless child
borne on weary shoulders

the elderly, infirm left behind

this poem is the same mistake 
repeated

power, greed, and lust 
all the venial sins
and all the mortal sins combined
and circles
circles upon circles of inner hell

this poem is the atrocities of man
barriers, fences, roadblocks
undiluted hate

this poem is a cry tearing the veil of night

this poem is a leaf
a single leaf falling from a single tree

this poem is a stream running red
bodies rotting into ground

this poem is letters undelivered
lovers lost to each other in forever
babies not conceived and never born

this poem is fields untilled, unsown
song unsung
country churches
windows smashed and broken

this poem is chickens left to rummage
cows unmilked, sheep unshorn
a horse dying of starvation 
on cold ground

this poem is the moon 
hung low in desperation
the deportation of Acadians 
at the point of bayonet
Tibet

Jerusalem, Berlin:  walls of wailing 
walls of brick

the floating exodus of Viet Nam
this poem is Mogadishu, Rwanda
the Lost Boys of Sudan

this poem is drownings in the harbour
the Noche Triste, the Fourth Reich

this poem is the West Bank and the Nile
the War of 1812, the war of secession
the war against repression
the war against concession

this poem is a reed basket
Daniel and the lion
Samson shorn
this poem is David 
without a slingshot or a stone

this poem is a leaf, a single leaf 

falling from a tree
a single tree
floating on a river

a river turning red

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Josephine LoRe’s poetry has been read on stage and in global zoom-rooms, put to music, danced, integrated into visual art, and published in anthologies and collections in 11 countries and 4 languages.   Publications include FreeFall and Vallum in Canada, Fixed & Free and Tiny Seed Journal in the US, Constellate in England, Ireland’s Same Page Anthology, and the Wild Word in Germany. Josephine has two collections, Unity and the Calgary Herald Bestseller The Cowichan Series. https://www.josephinelorepoet.com/   

3 poems by CS Venable

Charles Venable(1)

First They Came, An Elegy for Hind Rajab

"Six-year-old Hind Rajab spent three hours on the phone with Palestinian emergency services, crying for help, stranded in a car under Israeli fire in Gaza. Her relatives were killed while trying to escape. Twelve days later, she was found dead. What happened after Hind’s phone line went dark?" - Al Jazeerah, February 19th, 2024

Come take me. You will come and take me.

They came in a cloud of dust.
They took her sister. They took her parents.
But the soldiers, they did not take her.

Come take me. You will come and take me.

They came resplendent in red and white.
Wedding dresses stained with blood.
In the silence that followed the dust, 

They came as constellations.
They took the casings and the shells,
But the medics, they could not take her. 

Come take me. You will come and take me.

They came in black veils of mourning,
At that time of the night when the moon
And the stars yield to the darkness;

They came with a length of bent rebar
Resting on their shoulder. Their scythe
Confiscated at the last armed checkpoint. 

They came to what remained of the car, 
And They said to the little girl, 
"Come, Hind, I have come to take you."

Then they came, and there was no one left.




 
The Fig Tree

"‘The war will end’: Remembering Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s poetic voice
Mahmoud Darwish’s poems are ever relevant to the conditions of Palestinians, particularly now in Gaza." - Al Jazeerah, March 13th, 2024, by Indlieb Farazi Saber

When the fig tree wilted
At Christ's cursed hunger,
Still, the land felt its roots. 
It would leave a scar 
Upon the soil until worms
Made a meal of it,
But the land, the land 
Would forever remember 
Something taken from it 
That it would never get back.

This was not the first of many
Scars left by the God of Israel,
But it was the first He dared
To wring out upon us in person.

Do you think, Jesus, the Christ,
Looked upon that wilted tree
And realized what he had done?

How a single word from his lips
Could spell the end of a life.

His father, how many lives 
Had he ended, with neither
Fire nor flood nor famine,
But with His words to his people? 
His voice, like flames, a burning bush.

Even His messages of freedom
Came to them like this—
A blackened scar on our land.




 
The Impossibility of Life

"Does Israel twist humanitarian law to justify Gaza carnage? Israel aims for the “impossibility to continue civil life in Gaza,” as UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese tells host Steve Clemons." - Al Jazeera, April 11th, 2024

How does it feel to be a dandelion? 

The children and the poets, they love you,
But they do nothing to protect you 

As the men in boots crush you under foot,
As the men in uniform dig up your roots.
Your body, like so many others, 
Will be piled atop your kin and burned. 

All the while, there will be songs 
Sung in your name and flowers
Painted in your likeness, but not you,

You will not be there to see it, 
You will not be there to see your smile
Blossom into a thousand wishes.

That will not stop them from imagining it,
And when they imagine it, 
They will curl their lips like a kiss, 
And they will blow:
Imaginary seeds; imaginary wishes. 
When all these settle to the ground,

The poets will have moved on to the next genocide,
And the men in boots will still stand on your soil, 
To ensure that no weeds ever grow here again.

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2 poems by Poet in Residence Mansour Noorbakhsh

And into your ears only 
 		
I need to lurk rather than walk. 
I’m forced to lurk if I am still thinking of you. 
We were content to read a poem aloud. 
And to an inhalation of a loud laugh. 

We have been forced to remain silent, 
in honor of the generic products’ anthem. 

Wine doesn’t aspire to livelihood these days. 
Although we’ve lived within our whispers of wisdom. 
And in the smell of old books of love stories. 
The eternal inhaling of poisonous wine and honey. 
Drunkenness and freedom. 

I’ll whisper into your ears and into your ears only, 
if I could calm my dizziness on your shoulders. 
And on your shoulders only. 

A deliberate poem and a deliberate poem only 
helps me to breathe.  
Even without inhalation of a loud laugh. 

While we’re lurking to escape predators.  
Share your whispers with me. 







Wavy In All Its Curves 

                 January

I was wandering around.
like someone who is wasting time.
Waiting restlessly to see
the most beautiful moment of the world.
I was waiting for a sudden rain to fill my silence with songs.
Although it was me who told you that nothing will come to you by itself.
Except death

                 February

You poked me to search for somewhere around the love.
You moved me to get closer to see the flickering lights from afar.
As evidence for believing in there are possible places for
living happily.
You returned then,
and I stayed there, paralyzed, 
to watch the flickering lights. And only the flickering lights.

                 March

I wrote for you and I knew
that you will never read it.
Those who read me are others 
like me.
Lonely ones trapped in rituality and wishing for happiness.

                 April

You and I walked on the same soil
to grow on it and grow again.
We were promised that we’d flourish. 
An ultimate and sublime goal.
And we fell in love with the rain
to wash our eyes. What happened though,
yet we haven’t shared our visions together?

                 May

Maybe, siting afar from each other
And being in love is painful.
But isn't that all what love is?
Isn’t that love in its entirety?  
Hasn’t been so always?

                 June

You will hear me.
I have no doubt.
But you never came closer, 
lest lips tempt kissing.
You like words rather than lips.

                 July

I wanted to cry hard.
And I couldn't
Something called “living like others”
confines me.
And commands me how to cry.
And how to smile.
So, I walked in the rain.
In the rain, and I wished to cry hard.

                 August

From the middle of May
until the middle of July
the earth becomes warmer and warmer.
So that plants tempt noisy sparrows
to become their partners.
And it rains too.
Some days relentless. Uninterrupted.
Later until the end of August
The heat is still there, but
only to dry and scorch what May had heralded.

                 September

Green, purple and black.
Golden, orange.
With all its curves, waving.
I have never seen such a blushing, 
and rosy sunrise, or sunset.
Six is not in the middle of twelve, I believe it’s all of it.

                 October

For me, September is kind fingers of a delicate hand
pointing to December, softly.
Tender and lively, unhesitant.

                 November

Your look was the strangest acquaintance.
The loudest silence.
The latest iteration.
The best sign ever for Spring to return.
New every time, and every time new.

                 December

You should write the ending.
As you marked the beginning too.
When you turned to look behind
it made the ending meaningless.
The ending is not what you might endure.
If there is an end, it is me. It’s embodied with me.
To me, the beginning was an imaginary vague, 
raw, and formless thing, before you.

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Mansour Noorbakhsh writes and translates poems in both English and Farsi, his first language. He tries to be a voice for freedom, human rights and environment in his writings. He believes a dialog between people around the world is an essential need for developing a peaceful world, and poetry helps this dialog echoes the human rights. Currently he is featuring The Contemporary Canadian Poets in a weekly Persian radio program https://persianradio.net/. The poet’s bio and poems are translated into Farsi and read to the Persian-Canadian audiences. Both English (by the poets) and Farsi (by him) readings are on air. This is a project of his to build bridges between the Persian-Canadian communities by way of introducing them to contemporary Canadian poets. His book about the life and work of Sohrab Sepehri entitled, “Be Soragh e Man Agar Miaeed” (trans. “If you come to visit me”) is published in 1997 in Iran. And his English book length poem; “In Search of Shared Wishes” is published in 2017 in Canada. His English poems are published in “WordCity monthly” and “Infinite Passages” (anthology 2020 by The Ontario Poetry Society). He is a member of The Ontario Poetry Society and he is an Electrical Engineer, P.Eng. He lives with his wife, his daughter and his son in Toronto, Canada.

3 poems by D. R. James

If god were gentle

Let us believe in a strong god,
who makes the oceans
roar and the wind crack about our ears…
For we are envious of this, and to
believe in a gentle god,
therefore, does not become us.
—John Haines, “Pictures and Parables, IV”

                 But if god were gentle,
           here’s what would become us:
           bluest sky, the sun-warmed porch, both
                 beholding a glorious afternoon;
           a couple of hummers buzzing
           one another and synthetic flowers strung
           from the eaves of drowsy cottages
                 in their staggered, settled rows;
           patches of heat, patches of swifter cool,
           gulls and butterflies riding
           the easy overlap; the oblivious bees
                 busiest among the wine-red geraniums;
           the breeze-borne pine;
           the near swish along a length of shore.
                 This perfect day—
           and then a doze, a little more
           of sailing the muddling resubmergence
           into all of a life that’s come before—
                 a convergence too complex
           to register, though no less corporeal
           for its mysteries, for its streams,
           for its coursing through the
                 unwished, the essential, sorrows.
 




           When the Water and Sand Dance

           When the water and sand dance, whence (whence?)
           their music? What is that music? What sense, what
           composition surfs itself in? Yes, the water—its
           bazillion droplets, the mini-jetsam line it etches.
           Yes, the sand—its gazillion granules, the sponging
           gauze-and-muslin of them. But what but mind
           imagines there’s music? Perhaps the end of your
           century also hauled along its ton of sadness
           as did mine. And perhaps the years have
           finally worn it down to barely nothing of your
           day-to-day. The sun and shadows play
           again their fetching fine effects. The moon
           and birds and even dying leaves relieve
           your smallest residue of gloom. But
           mind—must it remember anyway? And
           is it therefore grateful, more than
           happy in that moment, to cue its
           private music, then tune your needy
           ear to every measure when
           the water and the sand dance?





 
           True North

           The lone crow on the lone pole
           where the weathervane used to whirl
           insinuates my need for misdirection.

           He is an arrow of skittish attention,
           of scant intention: the cock and hop,
           the flick and caw toward anything

           on the wind. Now angling east, now
           south by southwest, he designates
           with beak then disagreeing tail feathers,

           with a lean-to and a shoulder scrunch,
           with an attitude from his beady black eye—
           as if he were ever the one to judge.

           And once he’s spun like a pin on a binnacle
           past all points of some madcap inner compass—
           once the summer clouds have bowed to push on

           and the grasses have waved their gratefulness—
           he unfurls the shifty sails of his wings,
           and the breeze relieves him of his post.


	           —first published in Town Creek Poetry (Fall 2014)

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D.R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections are MobiusTrip and Flip Requiem(Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his work has appeared internationally in a wide variety of anthologies and journals.

  1. https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage

2 poems by Peter Mladinic

A Green Leaf

A green leaf of a Dutch elm
looks nothing like a safety pin.
A branch of the blue spruce 
out my window, a bristled branch 
looks like a cylinder brush.

The closed pin holds up a diaper. 
The leaf sways in the wind, 
on a branch above a river 
moving on, like hands of a clock.




 
Squeak

They all get together and howl 
over something out the window. 
He squeaks. It drives me nuts!
That little terrier. Even if one
isn’t by the window, but somewhere 
else, he or she hears the howling 
and joins in, in this poem about 
inside dogs. Is your dog an inside 
dog or an outside dog?  Oh,
you don’t have a dog, or a cat.
Only love, all that love inside 
for one someone or something.

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Peter Mladinic‘s most recent book of poems, The Homesick Mortician, is available from BlazeVOX books. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.

3 poems by Tom Pennacchini

A good clean break

realities routine's are a stone crusher
all of it
the jobs
the relationships
the striving
the failing
the achievements (I'm guessing)
and more begets more
all the do's of you hafeta do
you can get tired beyond exhaustion
tired of your self
your thoughts (if you are inclined to that sort of thing)
and relief is much needed
some quiet 
a long walk 
to 
the middle of
nowhere
some surcease
the compassion of a dog's eyes




 
it can sometimes does
I am looking out the window with my classical on as I ponder the rigmaroles of existence discussing such with the most fascinating person I know.  
Every time I feel I've made a valid point or observation during my ongoing convo I like to whip off my glasses to add further emphasis 
while highlighting a point that's been made salient and to add further punctuating resonance landing on a note redolent of conversational flair.  For example as I gaze out 
I reflect to myself on the virtues of eschewing the virtual for the sake and embracement of tactility and doing the sharp clean whip on eschew.  
When I revelate that the only thing remaining is to become a saint there is a slow whipping on become. Like that.

Happenstance can work well and good sometimes.

Oh sweet exquisiteness, as I lovingly prepare an afternoon aperitif and just now at the ready of the first gentle sip (lord how I love my ceremonies!) the radio crows out "heroes" - Ah yes, aglow and 
a flow, I duly proceed to an illuminated bask.

The heart of the matter resides in the entire lonesomeness of the venture, and so dream, a much needed break from the prosaic, makes fantasy a much vaunted ally.
So it goes, the garden of eden and myself with menagerie of profound friendships and equipped with a fleet of canines are baying in unison at the rising moon each eve over the waters. 

I think of a bovine at dusk by the side of a country road,  looming and ruminating.  Life can be so wonderful!  And indeed the cat never ceases to contribute the phenomenal 
and to provide blessed insight into all things seriously absurd, a well rounded tutorial in surrealist burlesque,
It welcomes and relieves one from the strangulating  confinements of love and isolation, providing a delightfully futile longing 
for unencumbered innocence and a bit of air.

So it goes, the gallivanting ambition is to string two good days in a row together.

But for now, synchronicity dovetails to a tee and a thickening
of well and good in the here/now of slow nothing.





 
its the best
he was pouring at the happening and usually there is a fair amount of disdain for the enthusiasts 
who like to sidle up to sample the snacks, libations and what have you goodies.

he was a wisp of fair blond - a hippy kid.

he asked me if I would like him to crack my can of brew
I told him that this was not necessary

I looked at some stuff and listened to some other stuff
trying to maintain a bit of elbow room 
while the crowds swirled and yammered
 biding some time before refill and then I went back for another and he 
cracked this one for me and said "cheers"

I drank it down and went for a walk down the street
I did not want to appear to be too gluttonous so I gave it some minutes

when I resurfaced in the crowded room and foraged thru the groups back to my man
he smiled and said "I grabbed this one at the bottom so that its chilled and now it needs to be shotgunned".

I laughed and retorted with double thumbs up
Impressed that this cat accurately assessed my quench and provided a 
responsive and congenial atmosphere in one that can be rather unpleasant and clannish

my man had it
and I salute him for it
the damn hippy dippy 
had it

kindness

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Tom Pennacchini is a flaneur living in NYC and has been published in numerous journals and magazines.