The task at hand,
the questioner mumbled,
is to ascertain the moment par
of when untruth becomes
truth
of when truth becomes
subservient.
Jami Macarty | LATE AFTERNOON AUTUMN, A TREMBLED ALTERNATIVE
coming up over the hill
then down a chill
into slivered light, a shiver
walking across green, grassy wholeness—
Willow Loveday Little | GALATEA FEELS FEAR FIRST
A pull so she pivots on her heel. There’s a little girl clutching a book.
Galatea smiles consciously, imagines the process of petrification.
The girl’s eyes are a dark name scratched in an oak tree.
I read about you in art class. You’re my favourite. Medusa is too.
Madelaine Caritas Longman | BREATHING, NOT COUNTING
after the deluge, there’s the quiet. one colour
blue, an eyeless blank sky where i once felt your mind
close over my own like water in water.
death was a circle i broke when i surfaced,
emptiness splintering down on my shoulders — light
falls all over me, not passing though.
Rachael Cain | ERASURE
I’ve started carefully extracting you from family photos. Slice/slash. Thankfully scissors. Thankfully fire for a last labour of lost love, I blacken your aching silhouette ‘til that one shot becomes a queen sized bed, my small frame curled against a shapeless ghost. Do you know the one? Call it foreshadowing: I’m asleep, feeling safe. Your […]
Ken Victor | INVITATION
Everything starts today. If renewal were easy,
we’d all begin again. We’d drop our endless searching
for four-leaf clovers that declare us topped up
with good luck. Our efforts at self-improvement
Kayla Czaga | SMALL POEM
The closest thing I have to a heritage
is a photograph of my grandmother
being fake-arrested in a fake saloon
in Arizona. Two cowboy actors aim
Conyer Clayton | BEFORE AND AFTER
in the first photo
the apple is whole
Yuan Changming | THE TUNER: A 50-WORD TRILOGY
In the mid-teens
You gave me a tuner
In Mayuhe, which I’ve