DENVER VOICE (LESS!)

by Jacob Richards

I feel low;

low down.

The little street paper 

that i wrote for is shutting down

Woe is me.

It wasn’t much

A story a month.

It didn’t pay enough, 

to even justify the rewrites

but stubbornly, 

and at a loss to me and my family,

I carved out time and brainpower;

I called and emailed;

developed sources

attended meetings!

The gig; the last link

to a dream

of being a paid writer.

No matter how little it paid.

It was never about the $$$

but telling a story.

I think I will miss calling city hall

with questions

and having them fear me,

most of all.

Without a paper,

Who am I even writing for?

Why did I go to college?

Then I saw on 9 News...

The unhouse vendors of The Voice.

A man with a beard:

“When they told me 

they were shutting down,

I stayed in bed for three days”

An older woman, with red hair

And thick glasses:

“This is the longest job I’ve ever held in my life--

to be honest.”

A black man in front of a mural:

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep this paper going.”

Perspective is everything.

Author’s Note: Please consider joining the growing effort to save The Denver Voice! Colorado's only street paper.  Donate — The Denver VOICE 

Jacob Richards is a writer, editor, activist, and wilderness guide in Western Colorado.

NEVER ENOUGH

by Judy Kronenfeld

The people embracing each other, wiping

tears from their eyes, kneeling

to place roses and carnations, 

the banner headlines, the when

is enough enough? Then the families

home alone after our national rituals,

the presidential visit. Now the children’s

bereft bedrooms, the stories slipping

down front pages and inside the newspaper,

then gone, now Absence just beginning

to take up residence, burrowing

in and in and in. 

Judy Kronenfeld’s fifth full-length collection of poetry Groaning and Singing was published by FutureCycle Press in February, 2022. Previous books include Shimmer (WordTech, 2012) and Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017). Her poems have appeared widely in journals including Cider Press Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Ohio Review, Offcourse,  Slant, and Verdad.

THE LAYOUT OF TWO STORIES

by Barbara Simmons

San Jose Mercury News, March 18, 2022

It strikes me first because I want

to replicate the cover story, its

filling up the top-half of page one with

students costumed for their roles in Beauty and

the Beast, and fill the bottom of this page, the

story line the same, but now removing it from San Leandro,

taking it to Mariupol, setting up production there for

the same play, with young Ukrainians in the roles of Belle,

The Beast, the talking Armoire and the flickering Lumiere, 

all taking turns rehearsing for the opening night. The local

story tells of students whose dramatic arc

had lost two years, pandemic’s having moved them away

from stages and onto screens. The story from another world

shows readers columns, perhaps Corinthian, now holding air,

the theater they adorned now roofless, the drama playing out

a theme of death and rubble, shrapnel-scarred skeletons, smoke

the scrim. Who may have played these roles we do not know, those

killed as they sought refuge in a theater basement. 

The layout

is the story: partitioned narratives reveal two worlds, one

where drama’s curtain rises to roles donned, 

the other where the drama is demise, 

where nothing’s left for anyone, for any of us, 

to understand.

Barbara Simmons, a native Bostonian residing in California, a graduate of Wellesley College and The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins, is a retired teacher and counselor.  She explores the communion of words as ways to remember and envision.  Publications include Boston Accent, The NewVerse News, Soul-Lit, and Capsule Stories. Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums is her first book of poetry due in Spring 2022.

DARK DAYS

by Brian Beatty

A barking stray

trying to bite the whirling wind

 

gusts that blow loose 

front pages 

 

out of those locked

newspaper machines they rattle open 

across the street  

 

then paste up

against the locked windows and doors

of our locked house

 

like so many rain-soaked shutters

made from the world’s

cruel jokes

 

the latest black-and-white bad news

we would rather ignore

right there

 

in our faces 

demanding we must pay  

for what we’ve seen 

 

— that dog 

with its hot breath

likewise tells us 

more about ourselves 

than any of us knew before.

Brian Beatty's jokes, poems and stories have appeared in numerous print and digital publications.