The Dimmest Forest by Lee Stern

Let me walk in the dimmest forest without you,
unstringing the lights that you left on the pole.
Let me do this without wavering
and without making excuses
for the fact that I didn’t want to do it when it was dark.
And let me wear my best clothes when I’m doing this
so that people know that I wasn’t upset.
Let them think that when I put the lights in a different place,
a boardroom of people I happened upon made noises.
And then retreated, I think,
to a place they knew where it was no longer possible to discuss their
...........myths.
But where it was possible nonetheless to enjoy themselves
and to marry the sanctimony of their lawful tears
in one way or another, perhaps,
to the bulb that departed from the lasting socket of their shame.


Lee Stern, Los Angeles, CA, USA

…Until It’s Gone by Joseph Harker

After we’d dug down deep beneath the surface
of Alaskan untamed wilderness
or the heartbreaking cerulean of the Gulf
and harmattan-swept sands of Arabia,
sucking up our fill of light, sweet crude,

when the gas fields of Persia and Siberia
ran dry, and the plants fell quiet,
and the coal mines were empty shafts of granite
full of dust and the smell of men,
and the rivers whose water we stole
for the Kazakh steppe and the Sonoran sprawl
dried up behind the dams,

one day, when the fluorescent bulbs flickered out,
and the engines refused to fire,
when our computers switched off,
and the sprinklers slowed to a trickle,

we stood up as one

and we walked outside into the humid air,
blinking against the sudden sunlight,
saw the struggling trees and intrepid squirrels,
heard the interrogatives of sparrows
(instead of the whirr of central air
or the roar of SUVs in the street),

and as one, unsure what to do next,
for the first time in a long while,
we looked up into that sapphire sky
and saw just how big it really is.


Joseph Harker, USA

V by Jan Harris

Geese

honk their

way across

the blue sky in

perfect formation

as if they are spelling

a v-sign for nature. On

this too warm January day

when mankind has forgotten his way

omens are more comforting than science.

Jan Harris, UK

alice abandoned by Linda Schram-Williams

i have misjudged the ease of the fall
the tumble into the poet-hole
the rabbits have long abandoned..
you have a sky to watch, he remarked
a vantage point with which to
check out a galaxy’s latest dance..
your view is unmarred by the distraction
of the city’s light
it just might be
all the tug
you need…
and he
was
right





Linda Schram-Williams,

Untitled by Alishya Almeida

You
will find me in disasters.
In the veins of your
sadness, the empty sky
blue, the memories
of black dresses and
the feeling of doom unfolding.
We could wash out this morning,
stay in bed, the world
will do without us.
I could be science,
the furniture of my thoughts
evolving
perhaps become a planet,
revolving
disguising my instability
by reflecting the light
you shed.


Alishya Almeida, Bangalore, India

The Fallen Niche of Apollo by Holly Day

Hand over hand up the side of the cliff
we grappled with the side of Olympus
no one sane had ever tried before, especially not
in the middle of winter. The world stretched around us
like Galileo’s Europa; we were a million miles from Earth
on our way to meet the gods.
Not even mountain goats disturbed the breathless
quiet—we passed a blocked-up cave that one man said
had once housed an oracle. I could picture
the crazy old man who had lived there, years
before Christ, brown arms wrapped around anemic knees
shaking, begging Apollo
for an end to the winter.




Holly Day, Minnesota, USA

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