Category Archives: Poetry 2022

ADR poetry published in 2022

Masters of the Wheel by Ron Sanders

Masters of the Wheel

We were victors, we were gods, we were keepers of the crown: we had plucked the fire’s eye, we had worn the monster down. We had pierced creation’s heart, we had brought its pulse to heel; we had cracked the atom’s code, we were masters of the Wheel.

Yet we withered at inflections, we wallowed in our psalms; we watched our brute reflections as we wiped our sweaty palms. So stranger prayed for stranger, and father wept for son. Then came that awful moment when the sirens wailed as one

And the world went mad

Continue reading Masters of the Wheel by Ron Sanders

Glitz by Mariel Herbert

Glitz

All of us are stardust
beneath two courts
held in high regard

We clamor
as these gilded asters
open to pyrotechnics
to flares of flashbulbs

And firelight reveals
those weighty scales
the odd constellation
named for an object

A few chosen stars
draft our destruction
across the night sky
while we judge
base metals
masquerading
as bullion

At the end we hold
our earthly bodies
in the expanding dark

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Image Credit: Libra constellation [wallpaperaccess.com]

Medusa Buys A Car by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Medusa Buys A Car

Medusa’s weave is bulky of necessity, her glasses dark,
she’s buying a car, but the salesman’s calling her
little lady, and darling
darling, my thousand-year-old ass, she thinks.
Then he offers her an insurance rate she knows
is much too high, her hand is inching up
to her glasses, the snakes are stirring,
and she feels a bit like Dr. Strangelove;
it would be so satisfying, but this jerk’s not worth it.
She stands up to leave, and he’s all I can get
you a lower rate
 and if I said anything,
but she’s gone, googling
woman-owned car dealerships and
what was she thinking, walking into that place, anyway?

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Image Credit: Combine an attractive Medusa [cleanpng.com] with her viper car [topspeed.com]

Collards and Kale by David Arroyo

Collards and Kale

Lex, the lich, lurks in the low country, leaning long, hard
on the history of bar-b-que in the deep south.
Careful, his cafeteria, collards and kale, keeps
a vegan menu but that faux banana pudding
made with coconut milk, sows a slow, slouching desire
for ribs rubbed ruby. His secret? He lies. Condensed milk,
a teaspoon of coconut sugar, and magic scraped off
the backside of General Lee’s casket and baked
into the vanilla wafers, round out his sordid
list of ingredients designed to make a soy boy
a savage soul-sucker in one serving and forty-
eight hours of suffering. It’s ministry, renewing
primal drives in the civilized, spreads the good news
with burnt ends.

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Image Credit: Pork belly burnt ends and collards [orwhateveryoudo.com] for the sonnet-like poem

Soul for Sale by Anahita Ayasoufi

Soul for Sale

In a losing war
One warrior’s fighting, his skin riddled by
A thousand scars

When he no longer can
He finds his way to no man’s land
and knocks on the Devil’s door

Soul for sale, he shouts, for my people’s peace
Rip my heart out, but
Make battles cease

It’s impossible, the Devil says, awed
You have brought to me
What stumped your god?

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Image Credit: Fire Angel [wallpaperaccess.com]