Grandpa’s hands
were kind, old, tan from the hot sun
They told more than his face did about life
and where he had traveled in his eighty years.
His hands were masterful in finding lost gems,
making fishing lures and carving something
out of wood to last forever.
His hands always open, never closed.
I grew up wanting to have those hands
Touching earth, arranging space
I found it natural when his hand held mine.

Tim Tipton was first seduced by the craft of poetry when he read “The Panther” by Rainer Marie Rilke.  Today marks 20  years since he joined the Ventura County poetry circuit. Tim has written poetry that has been featured in ART/LIFE, Askew, The San Gabriel Quarterly, Poetic Diversity, LUMMOX, as well as other journals too many too mention. Tim is a graduate of California State University of Northridge where he received a Bachelor of Science in Sociology. He also received a degree in Substance Abuse counseling.

Newly together, coasting open road,
they parked the van, looked down from the hill
upon a village harbour, spruce with its boats
being taken out, repainted for the season.

They watched the boatmen, perceiving them
as bearded men in navy blue, returning now
to the open seas of quest and exhilaration.
They loved those men and their salty journeys.

(Griffiths, who’d originally grown that beard
because of shaving rash, had a headache that day,
but still, it was going into April now
and he was back in his Amethyst, a happy man).

Later, the van’s prow nosed back to the camp site,
passing the hedges’ promise and primroses.

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who lives about 30 miles down the coast from Dylan Thomas’s Boathouse. His poems have been published widely and in roughly equal measures in Britain and the USA, where he is a regular in SanPedro River Review, Jerry Jazz Musician and Panoply.

Isn’t it time
someone drew the curtains
on this farce
we’ll call government?
There are too many clowns
on the stage, their jokes
long since over
and never that funny
to begin with;
surely there are other acts
to follow, better-skilled professionals
and eager-to-learn amateurs,
ready to repair the damage
our collective I.Q.
has relentlessly taken?
And if this is all
we can expect
for the next thousand years,
please then, someone trip
the fire alarm
and let us out of here,
before someone really does
burn this place
to the ground, and we,
lassitude-d by despair,
allow ourselves to burn
into perfect peaks of ashes
too heavy for the even strongest winds.

Edward Lee’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England, and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, and Smiths Knoll.  His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Lewis Milne, Orson Carroll, Blinded Architect, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com.

My poems are mincing, prissy things
With hands enclosed in cotton gloves,
No shrieks of pain, no turgid loins,
No trembling roses, or old loves.

My poems are too polite to speak
Of romance or of raging wrath
And, Quakerish, they walk upon
The plain and simple Friendly path.

The Russians write of storms of feeling,
Longing, lovers lost and stuff.
They rend their clothes and tear their hair out,
Bared souls standing in the buff.

I am too WASP to wash my undies
In the public square with verse
That cuts and bleeds blood puddles,
That a doctor or a nurse

Would have to suture up with string
Or medicate some other way,
So I’ll just have to write these silly
Rambles till I see my way

Around these problems, loosen up,
And let my hair down. You can drink
From Passion’s cup and tell me all
About it. I won’t waste the ink.

Mrs. Hidley has been writing prose and poetry for her own amusement and that of her family and friends and others for most of her 73 years. And one of her ten grandchildren is named Kalliope. She has lived in Walla Walla, Washington; Frankfurt and Bremerhaven, Germany; Upper New York State; Enid, Oklahoma; Montgomery and Prattville, Alabama; Lubbock, Texas; Dover, Delaware; West Palm Beach, Florida; Goose Bay, Labrador; Washington, D.C.; Fairfield, California; Omaha, Nebraska; and now resides in Ojai (Nest-of-the-Moon), California, where she continues to write.