The struggle for equality is—
Having a place to just sleep safely
Or a square meal to eat each day
To walk in the moonlight unafraid
With the innocence of a child
To look upon the new neighbors
And be glad they are there
The train’s whistle echoes down the valley green.
A bell sounds clear in a scene of icicles.
Freight cars slamming, bang as they shift.
Clickety-clack wheels screech on the curve
Quaking the earth as it passes me by.
Lights go on, motors are started, clock alarms slammed.
A garage door squeaks protest to moving.
An angry driver squeals the tires
As he rushes out, angry at whom or what?
Eighteen-wheelers elbow pick-up trucks
To rush deliver today’s city needs.
A rattling sound at a nearby mine:
Coal chuting down to load the hauling cars.
China breaking on the ice:
Discards dumped at chinaware mill.
A grindstone whines as it burnishes the steel.
Bright orange-red flares light up the sky
As the Bessemer furnace clears its throat.
Cans rattle and jam on the assembly lines
Punctuated by staccato cannon fire
From the seamless tubing mill as rolling mills groan.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Readers who write in response to one of the prompts listed each month in Splintered Glass, may see their work presented here on the last week of that month. Though poems are preferred, short prose work will also be considered for publication.
Guidelines for submission:
SPLINTERS FOR JUNE 2025
THE WALL
Quiet sounds of reverence
Speak of deeds and suffering
Souls intertwined in war
Royally incised on this wall
The living tearfully hail
Names enshrined in loving care
Here in this grass-line vale.
A peace, not theirs in life,
In death, is eternally theirs.
May those left behind find
Peace, safety, contentment here.
GRIEF
I wandered
In that time of sorrow
Through strange and haunted lands.
I pondered
Ways that I might borrow
Peace the heart demands.
I squandered
On a false tomorrow
Tears on foreign strands.
YELLOW IS A STATE OF MIND
Music from an unseen source
Catches you
By the hand
Twirls you into a spin
Whisks you
Across pavement and grass–
Yellow
The gray fog divides
Before you
Revealing an unfamiliar
World which beckons
Irresistibly…
You fall
Into the welcome of home–
Yellow
AUTHOR NOTES
GLASS RAIN—the poetry by Margaret Roxby
“GRIEF” may or may not be written about the days following the loss of her first child, a son who never breathed after birth. The author told of how her eventual recovery resulted after a nurse, against orders, brought to her room a live prematurley born Black child which barely fit in the nurse’s palm. The sight of this little miracle is what Margaret felt broke through her depression.
REFRACTIONS— the poetry of Robert Roxby
“THE WALL” is likely written about the wall of names commemorating the ship Arizona sunk duing the Pearl Harbor attack. The author and his wife visited Honolulu where they were strongly moved by the memorial.
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS—the poetry of Kathleen Roxby
“YELLOW IS A STATE OF MIND” is one of several poems exploring color in the author’s chapbook, “Singular Prism,” soon to be published.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Readers who write in response to one of the prompts listed each month in Splintered Glass, may see their work presented here on the last week of that month. Though poems are preferred, short prose work will also be considered for publication.
Guidelines for submission:
SPLINTERS FOR JUNE 2025
INDUSTRIAL TOWN
The struggle for equality is—
Having a place to just sleep safely
Or a square meal to eat each day
To walk in the moonlight unafraid
With the innocence of a child
To look upon the new neighbors
And be glad they are there
The train’s whistle echoes down the valley green.
A bell sounds clear in a scene of icicles.
Freight cars slamming, bang as they shift.
Clickety-clack wheels screech on the curve
Quaking the earth as it passes me by.
Lights go on, motors are started, clock alarms slammed.
A garage door squeaks protest to moving.
An angry driver squeals the tires
As he rushes out, angry at whom or what?
Eighteen-wheelers elbow pick-up trucks
To rush deliver today’s city needs.
A rattling sound at a nearby mine:
Coal chuting down to load the hauling cars.
China breaking on the ice:
Discards dumped at chinaware mill.
A grindstone whines as it burnishes the steel.
Bright orange-red flares light up the sky
As the Bessemer furnace clears its throat.
Cans rattle and jam on the assembly lines
Punctuated by staccato cannon fire
From the seamless tubing mill as rolling mills groan.
SUMMER COMES TO BREWSTER PLACE
(after reading The Women of Brewster Place)
The dark-skinned black-eyed women
Live and love
In the walled street of Brewster Place
Abandoned, often bereft,
their mother-natures nurture
both good and bad
Tears are seldom seen
or even shed
but anger slowly rising
spills over like water
when the tap is turned
and left
In the relentless heated hours
along Brewster Place
hope slowly rots
like the discarded apple cores
at the open doorways
Or, conversely, swells
in pregnant ballooning ways
Life in ebb and flow,
washes through the bricks
of Brewster Place
its blood pulse:
Day night night day
When the sun, heat-heavy
hovering, finally sets
and darkness descends
on Brewster Place