—Debbie Strange

Every morning the magpies uttering their benedictions
a family saying grace over breakfast
and my father threatening to get his air rifle

—Angharad Williams

   

                    Stillborn water velvet golden hubcap

                    pristine heaven faded padding rhinestone
                    ashes sloughing lacquer warming lilies
                    hollow stubborn pillow welcome choking
                    stringing pastel hearted nettle leaded
                    fallow veiny fatting slump whatever fail.

                    —Michael Marcinkowski

   

                                        underwater blue
                                        the way
                                        I see myself

                                        —C.X. Turner

   

                    4 A.M.

                    the crucial aspects are
                    new hope gets its beauty rest,
                    old hope is
                    a zombie star

                    —Mark Jackley

   

Nothing Can Be Done

They say nothing can be done to prevent another
disaster after the first flood, even after the second,
but here hunches a man digging ditches with a worn spade.
They have all those shining machines,
so why won’t they do the same?

—Deron Eckert

   

                    unlearning my manners      dandelions

                    —Arvinder Kaur

—Arvinder Kaur / Deepa Patil

   

—Derek Beaulieu

   

—Atsushi Ikeda

   

—Shloka Shankar

   

—Shloka Shankar / Surashree Joshi

                                        joke

                                        ever notice how laughter’s
                                        where the teeth come in?

                                        —Ulyses Razo

   

                    Cup

                    She put the babies down too early
                    not-yet-sunk into the thick cake of night
                    but the milk so tired in its brittle cup.

                    —Jennifer K. Sweeney

   

Anthropocene Omen

Two ragged foxes curled into a single circle upon the rotted mattress
Underneath the bridge. Traffic their lullaby.

*
                    Doctor’s Office Erotica

                    Fingers cold inside me,
                    jellied velvet.
                    Silver shine:
                    ritual tools.

                    —Briar Ripley Page

   

                    Future Artist
                    A girl watches geese welter in a round
                    pent patch, glass on all sides,
                    open pad before ascent
                    to pointillism.

                    —Alastair Morrison

   

                                        Samson

                                        lion’s bones hived;
                                        skull still yoked
                                        to the hair’s strength

                    *

                    Lazarus

                    death’s negative recast:
                    c’è sempre un po’ d’autunno nella primavera,
                    the fragmentary seasons of the interred & the tillers
                    made whole in the irresistible hollow’s
                    equanimous night

                    —Joe Gross

   

my lover tells me the sound

the mourning doves make when they break into flight
is only air rushing over a special feather in their wing

still I know each leaving leaves more than we think
I know how bad the body wants to sing

*

through your open window

A man sees us fucking & stops
to lift his little dog so it can watch as well.

What I have in this world I know I have.
We all tip our invisible cap.

—Mikey Swanberg

   

                    Nano Second

                    Heat stroke at the salton sea
                    Bleary eyed and knobby kneed

                    *

                    North Park

                    Methodic aperitivo
                    neroli sequestrant
                    nodding off in grapevines
                    within the lab examined

                    —Emily Cronan

   

                                        tracking algorithm
                                        on the solar panel
                                        midnight stars (ha)

                                        dreams burned
                                        into sleep (rct)

                                        *

                                        you leave
                                        no, you leave
                                        geostationary satellite (rct)

                                        out of the blue
                                        this weightless argument (ha)

                                        —R.C. Thomas / Hifsa Ashraf

   

                    Every night I die in my dreams
                    pulling a stethoscope out of a cabinet;
                    there’s a mirror inside my camera
                    and it flips you ‘round ‘n ‘round

                    *

                    Jerry is turned off by a woman’s beauty mark.
                    George chases an apocryphal rat in his apartment.
                    >Elaine trains her date to chew with his mouth closed,
                    with disastrous consequences.
                    Kramer runs for mayor and wins in a landslide.

                    —Joshua Massey

   

Dewdrops perched,
moistened pages of ‘City Times’
burst
with never before festive offers.

—Chayanika Saikia

   

                    One reverse chemical reaction away
                    from crude oil for blood and worms for veins.
                    Sobriety is a recumbent unicycle,
                    moderation is standing still,
                    hovering over the pedals.

                    —Taya Boyles

   

                                        clock
                                        without
                                        hands
                                        ticking

                                        —John Paul Caponigro

   

                    Intersection

                    A faceless woman.
                    The light changes:
                    cars slip into
                    the haze.

                    —CG Inglis

   

                                        two unlit buildings,
                                        festival bass in between—
                                        a newborn
                                        wakes the night

                                        *

                                        a tire swing
                                        on a balsa boat;
                                        storm over the radio

                                        —Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo

   

                    The government is over(throne).
                    The page of the ca(lend)ar, like the page of history

                    of the Romanovs, is turned with the same ease,
                    as the severed head of an executed king
                    rolls.

                                                            March 19, 2020
                                                            Berlin/Kyiv
                                                            for my mother

                    —Anton Lushankin

   

Heartworm

When our third cat died I was in the north
room No one prepares you for CPR
on small creatures Buying your first
shovel Casablanca lilies
in the steel bucket

—John Oldenborg

   

pen at rest –
the robin is waiting
for me
—Barbara Anna Gaiardoni

   

—Koss

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