Untitled by Regina Green

take it out back, i say
and you do
scooping up the
lifeless gray remains
like you
might scoop up a bit
of warm earth in which to plant
a tulip bulb so gently
and carefully
waiting for the spring to
waken it finally
the long sleep of winter
ended
but not for this little house mouse
the one who ate through the
cheerios box and caused
me more than once to climb
on top of the kitchen counter
it's so small really
our eyes meet
are you sure it's not just sleeping
the back door slams
and you don't come in for
some time



Regina Green, Florida, USA

One Squirrel by Janie Hoffman

It was February that day
that only one gray squirrel
came out to play;
he was sleek as midnight,
with a great plumed tail
and his eyes were the dark
beads of childhood games
he didn't dig under
the walnut tree
or scramble up
the bird feeder pole
to snatch at finch seed
like most of his kind
he was graceful, ungrounded
as a cloud, his jumps were pirouettes
and when he landed
his tail never touched ground
he sprang from tree limb
to fence and back again,
spinning like a top
he could have cocooned
in the woodpile, the cracked
trunk of the willow tree
or anywhere safer, warmer
but he just wanted
to dance, his tracks
criss-crossing like scattered
stitches sewn into the snow
going nowhere but back to him
and I thought he was the fish
I always dreamed
of catching just so I could
throw him back
as he leaped from tree to ground
a creature so unafraid
of the coldness
any human could know


Janie Hoffman, Vancouver, Canada

Tongue by Felino Soriano

After what language holds inside its
many hands,
clenching, as in the diving attribute
of beautified dolphins,
slicing stilled portions of elongated light—
language, the blossoming translucent or
opaque obscurity, the concrete versus abstract
ability to delineate listening from the messengers
of nonchalance—

language dances the twirl
dialect within dialectic verbal observations
whom the philosophical debate while dueling
amid the running wind of
conversational balances.


Felino Soriano, California, USA

Over Weekend Washed Cobbles by Dave Lewis

Over weekend washed cobbles
.....dawn damp beer brown
...coughing men trudge
back to hell


oblivious to the velvet hills
..where flowers salsa and sing
....the cough gets worse
......through sugar-lonely tea


now time has seen enough
..injects sunshine - brief like heroin
....to cut diamond sharp
..and wash away pebbled-dashed bones


while Mammy’s shoes
....tap-dance on and on
..‘till photographs rot
out of children’s memories

Dave Lewis, Wales, UK

In the Headlights by Stuart Sharp

Just beyond the full beam
Caught more as an afterimage
The hare weaves haywire patterns

Leveret, young enough
To thrill in running from shadows
Cast by this artificial sun

It catches the edge of lit space
More movement still than shape
Playing at unreality
In the seconds before I pass

Stuart Sharp, East Yorkshire, UK

Coyote in Blue Quill by Kelly Shepherd

there are still coyotes here
you can hear them at night,
they’re in the ravine

he’s here all right
you can tell by the unpredictable weather
the electricity and the danger in the air

we should have known
a few simple roads wouldn’t stop him
why did we even try

we choose not to hear the howling
we like to believe it’s a long way off
or that the city will protect us

these roads, fences, these lines on maps
it’s all arbitrary:
he does whatever he wants


Kelly Shepherd, South Korea