Why not a kiss? Will you kiss me once then half again, if I after stay my distance? You wear a mask as you always have, in the space between our parted lips, which should be immaterial, and watch with languid eyes over hospital grade cloth. Will you make up for the time we miss? … Continue reading Why not a kiss? by Roger Patulny

Pilgrim19 With flood and fire barely past, and hot smoke lingering by the sea and bats swarming from their autumn holes, flapping like shopping bags, entrapped in market stalls, with but a bite releasing beasts that lay siege to every box that bursts, and rumors seethe within a fright of sprawling suburbs, where sirens chase … Continue reading Pilgrim19 by Roger Patulny

Aerosol I imagine them immune from long exposure. Cat-faced publishers, sit po-faced, unaffected as I cannonade my poems at their ether, scatter-gunning outlets with the droplets of my words. My poems are too heavy. No aerosol or measle spray, the atmosphere cannot hold, but lets them sink to ground, or settle sideways on a surface, … Continue reading Aerosol by Roger Patulny

Mass and Sand The giant arc of Bondi is absent of a crowd, fractured and denuded of the blue shells of polyester beach tents waving in the coastal winds like clams. No hot granules crunch underfoot to track the trench lines of seaweed; no toddlers race first into the foamy waves, and then back into … Continue reading Mass and Sand by Roger Patulny