I am looking at pain,
my world turning brittle-edged and bright,
my body becoming a meditation on shards—
thoughts, incandescent and ecstatic.
Mark Neely | ANOTHER IDIOT
My email bleeps. The sky goes grey. Cars ease by the mute bell
tower. Time’s cosmic joke—it speeds up when
you need it most. I thought I had wrapped my mind
around it like a bow
Peter Grandbois | CROW FINDS A GRAIN OF SAND LODGED IN THE BACK OF HIS EYE
And has a vision of a mountain lake,
feather oil mixing with rain
The water at the shoreline a quivering mother
berating the rock
Zak Jones | NO PHOTOS OF RALPH
Before me mounds of food on Formica,
crooked mouths of porcelain at parties.
Before me staged smiles in tempered tonalities:
and we’re going back in time.
The cheap bleed of a red-tinged photograph—
and another, and another.
Constance Hansen | OR THE ORB
Charred cinnamon
scent of warmth, that lick
of gold, as much or more
than what it touched—
George Looney | REMEMBERING THE SCENT OF FRESH-MOWN HAY
Not even the body of a lover—remembered,
of course, as all there is, in the end, is
memory—can ease you back to any place
you’d ever want to say you know
like the back of that lover’s neck after love.
Leanne Charette | VEHOPHOBIA
Snarling, snapping, eyes wide
As he lunges at my wheelchair.
Each frostbite bark rises,
defensiveness a frozen mist.
Jan Jorgensen | DESDEMONA REBUKES OTHELLO
after “The Ballad of Othello Clemence” by George Elliott Clarke A ghost, I no longer know how to weep yet grieve the madness of false words believed. I recollect how I adored recitations of your exploits, how I traced the outline of your calloused hands, …your biceps, your lips; marking them ……with my scent, curling […]
Caitlyn Alario | STRAY
we had to draw the old temples on a map from memory. they were destroyed centuries ago, rebuilt to different gods & destroyed again. now they’re grassy platforms, marked & open, as if the air stays holy when not even rubble remains.