I’m strolling about the city deeper now at a calm… inside the handsome sunglass setting swung roses like a blind planetarium kindness now you will obtain numb syntax expressive to wit perhaps a breath pencil it in death was thrown last evenin' frosted by a smile with burden creating the end/ putrid breath from across... Continue Reading →
Insomnia by Scott Thomas Outlar
I stared at red digits on the alarm clock for months, slowly going crazy as I tried to fall asleep. I turned around in the bed, trying to find respite down at the foot board. I read books trying to become drowsy, but wound up ripping them apart and smashing them into walls when the... Continue Reading →
Lux Aeterna by Donald Sellitti
A death knell rung in light, not sound; pealing from the surface of a rust-stained concrete smokestack in a sky that seemed had never been without them. Flashing red on foggy nights and moonlit ones; on days that always felt like Sunday. But for the most interior of rooms there was no refuge from their... Continue Reading →
Slowing Down
Dear Readers, I just wanted to send a quick note to let everyone know that Ephemeral Elegies will be slowing down and going back to one poem a week for the foreseeable future. It's been great to be able to produce more content over the last few months, and I'm so grateful for all the... Continue Reading →
Submersion by Sam Barbee
My eyes close, surrounded by bluest sea. I bob virgin tides, never backstroked before. Body prone, angled headfirst into swells. Parabolic currents baptize, salt water’s gender nurturing each raw scar to a wrinkle. No corner to bend in underwater dark, light assembles the surface to snatch starlight. My confession gasps, sealed in single syllables. I... Continue Reading →
Legacy by Lynn White
Vera Lynn was a famous singer, the Forces Sweetheart, no less. My mother was Vera, so I should be Lynn. My mother liked things to be right. But even more than the correctness of Vera and Lynn, she abhorred diminutives. They were definitely not right. So I must have a name which could not be... Continue Reading →
Flesh and Bone by Kathi Crawford
Part One— Birth upon birth upon birth made us; a miracle of inherited flesh and bone. Our tethered hearts severed the day you left me at the door; my forehead pressed against the glass as rivulets of tears drained from my eyes. Part Two— It is said mothers raise daughters and love their sons. You... Continue Reading →
Configurations by R. Gerry Fabian
If you are a lost myth why do you haunt me? Nowhere has simple limits. Yet I explore each slight hope as it presents itself and retain just the glimpse of some expectations. We are imitations of collected sources with such potential only as a single response to correct a failure or establish success. So... Continue Reading →
Trifecta by Wayne F. Burke
I had a triple bypass surgery and died on the table and was revived: did not know of my demise until I read the doctor's report on his desk while his back was turned to me. One out of every thousand they said, before wheeling me to the operating room door where the doc stood... Continue Reading →
Terminal by Simon MacCulloch
Somewhere in the city far from home A railway station where the trains don’t stop A place where echoing footsteps coldly drop Into emptiness, partnered only By a humming, blank and lonely A power station where the dull ghosts roam. I walked its platform as the evening fell A long still dusk as summer softly... Continue Reading →