Storm Fear by Phil Lane

Before the snow, the fear
of being homebound
with only my thoughts,
my brain overfilled with time
like too much fodder in the shock.


After the snow, the fear
is realized, the mind stutters,
eyes scour the same walls
for a change in landscape
when out of the tundra
comes the sound of nothing,
the distant buzz
behind the bunker of winter,
the pang of pins dropping
like long thoughts falling
into snowy stillness—



Phil Lane, New Jersey, USA

How an Egret Saved Me by Chris Alba

I lay prostrate on the couch & worried & worried
The newspaper scattered like leaves around my bier
The syllables of war trip over the tongue like poetry
Afghaniraq darfuristan & the birds are fluttering
Into extinction In the latter days the seas arise
My aunt says God is coming soon but where is he
Where is his sign I’ve lost you to the television
& the latest tennis match among the titans
Worried & worried until I saw the water’s reflection
On the wall there A dancing curvature of light
& through the glass I saw the egret winging past
The long white neck folded & long dark legs folded
Trimly as a package born aloft on broad white wings
A love letter airmailed from a distant God


Chris Alba, California, USA

The Cello by Kristina Marie Darling

On nights like this I would play my cello, the snow like tinfoil under a phosphorescent moon. Before I knew it, you were there, with your handkerchiefs and your melancholia. The light on my windowpane, a struck match all aglow. We would take turns cradling the instrument’s long neck, its cavernous belly, watching the cold metal strings shiver and hum. After each chord you’d swallow glittering nerve tablets, whispering: Be still. Be. Still. Its sonorous voice faded with each blue pill. And when the snow eddied and slushed, the cello safe in its towering white box, I took up sainthood to pass the time. On winter mornings my teeth still ache.





Kristina Marie Darling, USA

van goghism by Adam Moorad

i've seen people throw themselves from windows
while staring at my own elbow
without an anxiety reaction,
fortunately

i see doorknobs
appear to revolve

and colors
with all those swirls

and the crackle
of the universe



Adam Moorad, USA

Lighted Sky by Eric Miller

At the top of the world, we hung
from a blue, cork, bulletin board
sky in a hot air balloon, looking
down on a circus tent whose big
top was open wide, revealing a
table on which a birthday cake
brightly blazed, surrounded by
buoyant children floating in
laughter

A circle of cartwheeling clowns
tethered our ropes to the table,
and a gust of wind lifted us higher
and higher, bringing the table and
children along

The sky gave off a greenish glow
tinted with a faintness of red, and
the happy children danced on the
sky to the music of a band called
Northern Lights and the voice of
a singer named Aurora Borealis


Eric Miller, Pennsylvania, USA

Tumbleweed at Shining Tree by Denis Robillard

For Luke Wilson

Your freedom of the Odometer covers a lot of ground.
To see the world in a grain of sand.
For what it really is. Outpacing yourself in that
tumbleweed camper. Fading into another sunset.
Tracking the distances in your brain.
Living Outside.
Your second skin. The weathers.
Reading the weathers. Nuance. Nuage. New Age.
How it drenches a landscape. Renewal.
The sun makes another snowman drunk.
Throws an insect into your words.
Like a dog barking into evening
car chasing spectral shadows.
The ills. What ails you, bends you.
It all becomes willow in the weathers.
When the comfort of your heart-shaped
furniture breaks down and
emotions go thread bare
You seek the weathers.
Make a hop pillow for your head.
Lay down in the cocoon arms of Your Master
Smoothing out the rituals there.
Remembering angles of light
the quality of a waterfall.
How everything goes suddenly gray.
And you still perpetually wrapped, trapped
in a west coast shroud rain
and looking for the illusive shining tree
where it’s all written down. The weathers.


Denis Robillard, Canada

Swim in the Rain by Luis Cuauhtemoc

I swim in the rain.
I don’t know the consequences of such a thing.
Life is a Trojan horse.
I seek less deception.
I set out to sea
bent on swimming as far from shore as I could.
I want to cleanse my heart.
I seek immediate relief.
The rain coincides
with the situation I am experiencing.
I lost out on love.
I don’t know what else to do.
It is night and I am afraid to fall asleep.


Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, CA, USA