December, 2002 by Alan Britt

Whoever heard of a photograph
staring back at you
making you uncomfortable?

I mean, what’s that all about?

Making you nervous,
like you needed to stand up
and perform some official duty?

Damn photograph just found me
in my burrow
deep in December.


Alan Britt, MD, USA

Child by Christian Ward

The curiosity of a child
new to the world is musical.
Notes are composed
with images from a world
we keep in our back pockets:

shadows on a suburban
lamppost, clouds casting off
their uniforms over shorn
fields. These are tossed
like unwanted Polaroids,
ready for the daily sacrifice

of dust and dark. To prepare
ourselves for becoming human
we must unlock each song,
connect it to our cities of flesh
and bone. And be still, be still.


Christian Ward, London, UK

Yang Chung's Poem 72 by Duane Locke

Tea leaves, a lacquer-black, crossed
On cups
...........Orange coolie hat bottom
Spoke
The words that clothe
............................The sounds
Of wood pigeons
.........................By the woodpiles
Whose
..........Irregular round edges, the ends,
Are lit
By
Evening fireflies and a reflection
From
A rooster's red comb.

The sun and her blonde hair
Are both wet.


Duane Locke, Florida, USA

Caricature Of An Early Planter by Michael Lee Johnson

(Edmonton, Alberta Canada)

He is a gardener
with a spyglass.
With an ice pick
cavities are chopped
out of the earths torpid
mouth, dry seeds are packed
in with frostbitten fingertips.
He rakes his yard clear
of all snow in winter
so green blades of grass
will pop through frozen
earth.
He will weed, thin his garden early.
He is a realist; he writes poetry also.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, USA

Nose in the Wind by Mike McCulley

We call the dapple-gray
Snow-Ghost, we ride
her in the night

where the winter storms go.
We call the dog
Handrail.


Mike McCulley, WA, USA

The Snow Diary by Christian Ward

Snow slipped out of the straightjacket
of my diary when Father left. Morning

came and I found tracks on its pages,
along with a fox peering at me, wondering

why I had never noticed it before, why
it had never been so cold before.


Christian Ward, London, UK