IN KEEPING Your stuff. Some call it junk. The bric-a-brac of ten decades, one hundred years of bobs and bits. On the windowsills—the rooster, whose changing colours foretold the weather, long since at a standstill; the clutch of porcelain roses in crystal vases that never require watering. In the glass cabinet, the prized bone-china teacups, […]
K. V. Skene | IMPERFECT VISION
IMPERFECT VISION A secret at home is like rocks under tide ………..-Dinah Craik i. so you said everything that shouldn’t be said shouldn’t be    and the house exhales the children stare eyes the stained-blue glass of heaven of    angels ricocheting ceilings and corners and baseboards and doors even the foundations […]
Laurie D. Graham | DRIVING HOME
DRIVING HOME The extractive machinery scrapes away a wide, wide swath, an industrial-yard welcome. Buildings poke out of curved horizon, appearing as one in the distance, a tasteful sci-fi of dread. After a feeling of bush and home, recalling the warmth as a child of lights in the dark in the distance, of the city […]
Hugh Anderson | ÉMIGRÉ
ÉMIGRÉ The language is still English; that much is familiar. Shifted in a moment from moss-bearded firs to birch and red pine, to sky threatened with thunder, I return like a lone horse to a fence I cannot cross. Once I walked the cracked pavements of this place, turned soil, planted, grew like aspen, […]
Aidan Chafe | MEDITATION ON ENCLOSED SPACE
MEDITATION ON ENCLOSED SPACE A room is a refuge …………a reformatory ……………………a universe of thoughts a landfill of dreams A room …………keeps weather outside & others away A secret gives birth …………in a room, ……………………rearing its little rumours A border is a line …………on the floorboards ……………………in a room with two towns Two rooms […]
William Grant | DIGITAL BATH
DIGITAL BATH* The city is a mechanical ocean. Its endless murmuring hum of electricity, its circuitry of flood and tide, is a digital bath disconnecting us from life’s more visceral storms. Lost at sea in boats of stone, assailed by wind and waves of hostile matrices lulling us to sleep with waves of black and […]
Jade Wallace | ANEMONE
ANEMONE I devoted my life to her after I saw her sleep. When she sleeps, she still hears everything— the planes of her face shift as I speak to her, but her replies seem all rote or nonsense. When she sleeps she is like God and I am too simple for illumination. My words […]
Frances Boyle | WE KNEW
WE KNEW We knew it already knew without being told felt the weight of the knowing as we ate our cereal in front of the television which wasn’t usually allowed. We knew that the world would never be the same again even while we argued over Razzle Dazzle and the Mickey Mouse Club (I […]
Robbie Chesick | STILL HOME
STILL HOME The rains will come …………………..(they were never here) The Himachali sun is covered by desert dust …………………..(the desert was never here) The dust is gone, the rains have come …………………..(the dust was never here) The rain is here …the first clear drop fell and now (it was never …here) here is another and […]