at the mouth of the tomb

fatigue is
my raincoat   it’s been
a wet spring
   sending a
flood of synthetic dancers
   politicians and

heretics
raining down   shoddy
counterfeit
coins pour from
hell’s own slot machine into
the lap of the world

this is a
near miss comedy
   a picnic
of nothing
but yesterday’s cold coffee
and raw injustice

all bridges
burnt   windows nailed shut
   strings pulled tight
our one brief
opportunity squandered
in petty squabbles

   when hunters
     the dark efficient
shepherds of
the order
   emerge from the wood armed with
the cross and the sword

   i flirt with
the thought of being
a hero
   but there will
be no medals awarded
for speaking truth now

RC deWinter’s poetry is anthologized, notably in Uno: A Poetry Anthology (Verian Thomas, 2002), New York City Haiku (NY Times, 2017), Cowboys & Cocktails (Brick Street Poetry, April 2019), Nature In The Now (Tiny Seed Press, August 2019), in print in 2River, Adelaide Magazine, borrowed solace, Genre Urban Arts, Gravitas, In Parentheses, Night Picnic Journal, Prairie Schooner, Reality Break Press, Southword, Variant Literature, among many others and appears in numerous online literary journals.

Gianna Sannipoli’s poetry has been published in London Grip, Red Coyote, Mason Street, The Wild Word, Panoply, Gold Dust Magazine, One Sentence Poems, Dodging the Rain, CARE and is forthcoming in Edify Fiction, and Gnashing Teeth Publishing's anthology: Love Notes You'll Never Read. She is San Antonio Review’s poetry editor and lives in Brno, Czechia.