Free Verse
Wet Pennies
wet pennies is what I really want to say, wet on a tongue maybe, or blood, the scent of wet pennies, a sensation of sharp metallics— short lived on a tongue like the live end of a battery—it wouldn’t be mine, its all been said before. These days many people will never know that scent of wet pennies. The courage it takes to leave one tails up on the ground, then wonder for days if good luck had been picked up. The hundreds of millions of hands they’ll never know. The hands that have freely touched a single penny or kissed the mouths of those who have once tried. Once, I stopped following, it didn’t matter I was locked in—the algorithm had me regularly sending your bullshit whether I liked it or not cursory scrolling time, there’s always trees I thought, there’s always the sky I thought too, a sky with an almost white moist lime ceiling trying to decide between dew or rain before dawn. Lime, the ceiling I used to lay beneath. Who for a minute would have ever thought a penny could become so cliché? A metaphor for value in 1989. On the ground you’d pick one up — Copper Lore mixed with dimes, nickels, and quarters for a cup of coffee. In line behind aged beauty with shaking hands counting out all the pennies to pay, sent from an angel, a god, to Love. 1989 a humble farmer from the Soviet Union refuses to send tanks to Bornholmer Straße a handful of peace held high—and hope. He then allowed the wall to come down.
By Gerry Thibeault2 months ago in Poets
The Shape That Stayed. Top Story - September 2026.
On a walk in the wilderness a long, translucent and scaly encasement is found in the thick brush. As you happen upon its dazzling design you falter and step back, carefully observing for movement that never comes. Eye caps that remain intact but purposeless. The diamond shape that extends into a cylindrical tube that stretches then tapers at the end. Open and detached it is cavernous but sits flat and holds no weight. Fear turns to fascination as you pick up a twig, snapped from some storm-battered branch, and gently lift the skin. Crouching for a closer look, flipping what remains to reveal the glistening jeweled exterior. Perfect in its imitation of what was and what was left behind. With the sleeve of your hoodie or sweater you lift the empty skin jacket and note the lifeless eye caps, gently holding them to the sunlight as it reaches down between the trees to reveal The window to nothing. And the mouth you imagined fierce moments before is now a gap of no consequence. The long hollow tube that once held prey is now a footprint of appetite and survival. Yes—muscle, hunger now struggles to hold itself as you let it lie on the dirt and the grass. You trace gently the opening, carefully, with a measure of respect, as your finger caresses the dry paper-like surface, following its winding length till you come to the tail. As you gaze and ponder, your hands straighten the casing into an imitation of life. But it falls flat. So you ease just a finger, one solitary digit into the opening, filling and giving weight to what remains. It is fuller now. No more alive. You gently retract your finger from the shed skin and it collapses just as easily as it had done before. In that moment you also notice the absence. No hiss. No slither. Do you make the sound just to give the silence something to hold or accept the absence? Imitation is not resurrection.
By Paul Stewart2 months ago in Poets
The version that fits.
I tell him I'm going to write. That’s what I fed my second husband. Sun, distance, blue water, and space to clear my head. He ate it up. That’s the version that fits inside a marriage without splitting it open. But I came here to remember. To finish something that never had an ending. Twenty-five years is a long time to live inside a story that stops mid-sentence. There's a villa on the hill that's mine for exactly as long as October lasts, and I do write there, some. It's the rest of it I don't explain.
By tatiana vitas2 months ago in Poets
