married thirty years

god bless this television set--

the weight of expectation
around its
neck.

*

Ross Leese

extraordinary
sunrise
orange and pink
and blue
I didn’t get
on the train
to stare at it
longer

*

Laura Dennis

Toothbrush

Bent bristles whistle left right through teeth, digging for neglect.

*

Andrew J. Stone
Writing is Dead

charcoal-gray skies
vibrate with thunderheads –
wind chimes panic

*

Craig W. Steele

Spruce limbs lift and sway with grace
A line of hula dancers waving in the wind

*

Maureen Bailey

Rain

---in the dark living room,
the pillows in disarray, the TV on mute, the couch is not where it is supposed to be, the only thing you can hear is the rain beating down on the empty streets.

*

Joshua Berida
Random Blurbs

found small stone: birthday girl

I got a fairy and a purse.

I want to show daddy my fairy NOW.

I don't want my fairy to fall down the toilet.

Maybe I should hide it so nobody gets it.

Mummy, where is my fairy?!
Here.
Good. I wanted to know where she was.

*

Fiona Robyn
a small stone

Chickweed grows through the discarded bricks: ochre, burnt umber, cracked and crumbling. They glow in the dusk.

*

Kaspalita
another small stone

Hidden in the neighbors’bushes, a dove
Repeats two sad notes over and over as
Clouds cover the sun.

*

Marian Veverka

On the kitchen window,
frost ferns stretch and arch,
mirror wind-whistled pines.

*

Sue Blott

Little Dharma

The trees lean in,
listen to poems,
flutter blushes of leaves in grateful applause.


This is a lesson in wind.

*

Michael Dwayne Smith

Driving down long stretches of road touching the sky, fields of canola greet me from the side, beaming their yellow smiles.

*

Connie L. Peters
Enthusiastic Soul

a single hare
among clovers and weeds--
summer evening clouds

*

Vibeke Laier

Sea fog
children build
sand defences
against a tide
that cannot be stemmed.

*

Jon Summers
Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements

five petaled Altissimo rose
staring at me in deep red
from a tiny bud vase

*

Kimberly Childers

burning sunshine. . .
the wallah tongues an ice cream
above the school children

*

Ramesh Anand

Last day on holiday
the mist is slow to clear
from the sea.

*

Jon Summers
Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements

HYDRANGEA

Four shavings of sky
perfect blue
held in place by
a tiny French knot

*

Claire Zoghb
SmallHouseBreathing

1AM buzzing pulse beneath my pillow perfect clockwork heart somewhere under there

*

Jessica Otto
Chewing Wormwood

APPROACHING THE TETONS FROM ABOVE

For hours now it's been squiggle-rivers bisecting countless sharp-edged blocks of greens and browns, rarely gold. Occasionally one squiggle runs right into a puddle-lake and even more occasionally escapes it. Now suddenly it's grey-black pokey-mountains and dapples of snow, solid white. As if a cluster of clouds decided to band together and come in for a landing. To take a break from endless wandering. To take a chance on being solid for a change. To cuddle together and rest.

*

Lynn Whittemore

California blues merge in the cooling light, as swaying by the surf,
skaters turn slow but sure, rolling with the punches as
scatter clouds splash across the mirrored windows of the pick-up trucks.

*

Gemma Mills McGrath

orchard

with blossoming apricot trees

an explosion of
colors & life
every petal the
smiling face of
a buddah in
oil on canvas

*

William Wright Harris

strawberry season
son finds a sour sugar pod –
one less berry bug

*

Craig W. Steele

Tiny yellow leaves
Falling everywhere
Like forgotten confetti after a wedding

*

David Ashton

Odyssey

Wild-faced
drunken men at three a.m.
urinate in your yard.
Freud said
everywhere he ever went,
a poet had been there first.

*

Michael Dwayne Smith

Cocktail Snooty

a banging of chords

weird screeching

nuzzling
like Gatsby

a very fine
ship-of-the-line

cooch dancer wiggle

*

Richard Peabody

Eye doctor’s office,
Its bus station waiting room:
Old men in white sox.

*

Robert Demaree

Moist smells of damp compost and that unique musky, growing scent of tomato plant, furry stems and perky leaves, tiny yellow flowers, harbingers of rich, red fruit.

*

Freya Pickard
Pure Haiku

Morning Rain

the
cascading
drizzle

a
black cat

born
with six
paws

*

Andrew J. Stone
Writing is Dead

Pollen Count

Wave of sunlight
tides ‘cross a cornfield
yellow
as a little girl’s bathing suit.

*

Ian Mullins

modest breaths balloon,

a shiver
as an arm is thrown above her head

*

Isabela J. Oliveira
stone and bits of sky