Letting Go of the Conceit by Holly Day

Imparting tiny grains of colored sand with intricate thoughts

One giant flower covering the ground. It was so beautiful

I wanted take it home with me.

After it was done, he smeared great swaths of color against itself until

It was nothing but white sand.

It should have changed my life. I should have taken it away with me

Let his day disappear in the pursuit of beauty, but just the beauty of the moment.

I fully intended to go home and erase everything I had ever written

With the artist’s apparent satisfaction at the act of creation

Should be enough for me, too. 

Holly Day, Minnesota, USA 

The Black Button by Richard King Perkins II

It could become

part of a teddy bear or snowman

but it’s held the portion of my coat

nearest my heart together for three years

and there’s no reason

for major alterations at this time.

In the still darkness of morning,

I stand in front of her

as she sews the button back in place.

She grimaces when she sees

that the thread she thought

was black is instead brown.

She worries that the contrasting

blossom of thread will spoil

the polished elegance of my coat.

I kiss the top of her head

and remind her it’s not

the color of the string that matters,

it’s only the attachment that counts.
.
.

Richard King Perkins II, IL, USA

haiku by J D Nelson

the computer hums —
the black moth on the ceiling
has been there for hours


J D Nelson, Colorado, USA

The Corner by Holly Day

the beetle in the
web clicks soft
in time to the spinning of its
body in the long arms of the spider
that has made its home in
the dark corner of
my office. it clicks
so regular I turn off my computer, my
desk clock to make sure it's
really him

the clicks speed up
when the spider
reaches out
with one long, pale
leg to spin
the trapped insect
another turn, they slow down
fade to near
silence whenever
the spider
pulls away


Holly Day, Minnesota, USA

Ladybird, Ladybird by Alison Lock

I stop the sh sh across my page

to watch a squirrel nuzzle the ground

all auburn fuzz,  nose down

re- checking the co-ordinates

on a mental map for a nut called X

the shrubs wear their prettiest bonnets

of permed seed heads, legs

black stockinged from stalking

the late summer rains

the lawn has had its last trim of the year

concentric, whorled

shaved into an Italianate maze.

A four spotted ladybird comes to my sill

I lend her my pen for a bridge

I am curious

now there are six spots

two on the edge of her shell

as if about to fall off, and they do

with a shiver, she splits

into a pair of dash away wings

taking her back to her home.

I carry on with the sh sh across my page.


Alison Lock, UK

This poem is from Alison's collection  'A Slither of Air', published by Indigo Dreams Publishing

Samara by Joseph Harker

Where did we

learn about gravity?

The playground--

but not from

Newton's apocryphal apple

plummeting to earth.

Our source was

September maple

gone slow gold,

the sunlight

preening the paper wings of

its whirligig seeds.

And since then,

the verb to fall is

less fearsome.

We learned it

as slow rotation; we don't

believe in impact.


Joseph Harker, USA

Space Station Blues by Les Merton

in an interplanetary space station

with bustling pedestrian zones

he sits on his own in a buzz bar

drinking a glass of cloud nine nectar

it is an orange sky day

with smile impregnated air

he doesn’t respond

to the feel good waves

he’s thinks he is the loneliest man

in the universe and he’s feeling down

wondering will he ever hear

a language he can understand again

Les Merton, Cornwall, UK

Cassini Vision by Lark Beltran

This blue-dot world,
far outshone by the surreal ringspan
of big-brother Saturn,
is of so little consequence, any might say,
who was not of Earth.

Countless such dots
evolve then thrive,
their cultures and cataclysms
utterly remote
to a kaleidoscope of far-flung peers.

To be or not to be:
a synchronicity
of force and Deity?

The void is neutral:
no up and down
no left and right
or right and wrong ...
no sound!

Seeing our world so like a jewel
in minuscule under Saturn´s rings -
it rings of magic.


Lark Beltran, Lima, Peru

Superdense by Josephine Shaw

In quantum theory the inconceivably small
can give rise to the unimaginably large.
And that means that somewhere there exists

a diamond the size of a planet

made from a cold, corroded star.
And also that the more precisely you know
where something is, the less you know
about where it’s going.

Or how fast. We reach for little hopes,
craneflies skating on the skin of life.
Hoping, each sunset, that where we are says 

nothing about the dark matter of our own journey.


Josephine Shaw, London, UK

Watch Swallows by Matthew Friday

To watch swallows flying over water,
weaving in and out and around
each other, lacing the air,
skating the corners, cutting
the finest lines between air and liquid,
a cloud of flick-bodies photons,
fantastically quick. Such agility is
the luckiest accident of evolution;
an acrobatic show for no one.


Matthew Friday, UK