Zimbabwe

You watch the N’anga
throw the bones to the ground
and hope the birds will return.

*

John Irvine

The Point Sur Lighthouse
illuminates the night
again and again.

*

Richard Cody
RCodywrites

On wind stripped branches, a single red-brown oak leaf, curled up like a robin's breast.

*

Kaspalita
another small stone

a falling leaf
        impaled
            by a dry vine...

*

Robert Quiggle III

with a black eye
        and "trust"
            tattooed on her wrist

*

Robert Quiggle III

vodka diet
he orders
a vodka Diet

*

Lucas Stensland

brief rain— the tender sound from leaves * P K Padhy

Rhythmic; crackling breaths move from chest to nose. Who knew that dreams could be so musical?

*

Elizabeth Maddox

An ordinary bus goes past;
I gasp -- its speed & size
suddenly quite terrifying.

*

Gareth Trew

this moustache
gives me someone else's face
i can feel his long thoughts
growing
in places you left fallow

*

James Newton

The Symbol

A crudely painted swastika
on a park wall. The lichen
around it furious, slowly
covering it from budding trees.

*

Christian Ward

Broad beans

I pop beans out
from cushioned pods.
A pleasure akin
to the bursting
of bubble-wrap bubbles.

*

Kylie Dinning
Pausing to pick up small stones

The south-facing window in our family room is long and thin, with eight square metal divisions; it shows little from this high up. But, if I happen to track it, the moon rises and sets across the top two squares each night the sky is clear.

*

S. E. Ingraham

westmount fountain
east end jukebox
same empty wind
a squirrel bows on a branch

*

Steve Myers
Broken Bats

A rare moment of stillness, you flop like a raggedy doll, moulding your clay body into the soft contours from which you came.

*

Shanee Barraclough
Throw me to the sky

The mildness of Spring; gentle rain, scents of crushed grass, slippery mud beneath my boots.

*

Freya Pickard
Dragonscale Clippings

One table companion
Fell-fed femina puts out
Her cigar in left over
Hot chocolate

*

Alex Damov

their laughter
a needle pricked
into a voodoo doll

*

Virginie Colline

Bird Collides with Window

becoming a dark
hieroglyph
on the dimpled
blank page
of the snow

*

Andrea Blythe

New Year sunshine
a wisp of cloud
a dragon?

*

Gillena Fox
Lunch Break

snow, layers of pale pastel, gossamer folds of fabric flutterig in the wind as the older faceless woman hunched over on this muted of color dawn, first icy snow that sticks to where her brown scuffed tarnished lived-in boots trod.

*

Emma's Orchard

A crescent of spilt dark coffee on a white saucer, the crumbled edge of a digestive biscuit, and the clink of a tea-spoon meeting the edge of the cup.

*

Kaspalita
another small stone

The soil is dry. I empty the dregs of tea into the bathroom sink and fill the mug with water. I carry it into the office. I pour water into the pot, where it sinks down towards the roots. The plant drinks. What ordinary miracles.

*

Fiona Robyn
a small stone

Funeral Wear (Neglected)

badly fitted suits and stale shirts
stained with nicotine smelling
faintly of moss

*

James Alden

panicked barks
inside a locked car
the tow truck operator
bites her lip

*

Lucas Stensland

Chive blades stretch upwards,
a golden-winged butterfly
smells their spicy scents

*

Claudia Messelodi