The Spectacle by William Ogden Haynes

My yellow Labrador puppy
abruptly stops
halfway through his dog door.
He eyes the grey early morning sky
and regards the giant snowflakes
as they slowly fall like white doilies
covering the red Alabama mud.
He emerges into the yard
and licks his back
tasting the snow,
then runs full speed
in a large circle,
snapping at snowflakes in the air.
Stopping in the middle of the yard,
head cocked to one side,
ears peaked with attention,
he looks at me through the kitchen window,
wondering how I can stop to make coffee
on such an amazing day.


William Ogden Haynes, AL, USA

Assembly Required by Michael Keshigian

In bits and pieces
they fall from heaven,
disassembled snowmen,
one flake after the other,
strewn about the countryside,
discovered by those young at heart,
and with a dash
of imaginative insight,
they roll a gleeful creature
in their own image.
No directions needed.





Michael Keshigian

After the Fiasco by Anna Sykora

A few new cells
May breathe alone
And hide inside
Old cracks of stone
Or creep through
Seeping ooze.

It’s survival
Life will choose,
_Forgetting our mistakes_.


Anna Sykora, Hanover, Germany

Close Calls by Joseph Harker

This planet's going to hell: either wrapped up
in a suffocating shroud of coalsmoke
or boxed away between six thick planks of sin,
maybe starved of liquid capital
or drowned with disease: one way or another.
The End Times are a moveable feast that is always
next year.
Though,
given all the times we played chicken on the racetrack
with atoms and nuclei, the bottles of plague
just waiting to be shattered and re-debuted,
comet fragments blowing out boreal candles on a
Siberian birthday cake (rather than smashing into
Berlin or Beijing), it's a wonder
we haven't been burnt to a memorial cinder
already.
We could
keep worrying about either side of the present, but
imagine how foolish we'd feel if we almost
lived our lives, and missed it, just by
this
much.














Joseph Harker,

Afghanistan by Raud Kennedy

In bed, prolonging the moments
before pushing back the covers.
The voice on NPR, a reporter in Afghanistan,
refers to the spring fighting season
as if he’s announcing the opening
of ski season at Mt. Hood Meadows.
I brush my teeth, minty fresh, extra whitener.
Death tolls from suicide bombings.
Toweling off after showering, it’s total US casualties,
a number that could be the population figure
of a small city. A city of dead young men and women.
The refreshing lather lifts my beard
as my triple bladed razor shaves my face kissable smooth.
Tell me again why we are there while I am here.



Raud Kennedy, Oregon, USA

The Conclusion of Certainty by Ken Poyner

The day before the sun blew up
We took breakfast late, watched
The twenty-four hour news channel,
Considered doing nothing.
You placed on the back porch
Our cats' left over food
For the stray that has been
Looking in across the patio glass
Days, sun and rain, for a week.
Our cats have excess, and, as with all
Your other backdoor bowls of generosity,
Never has any bowl gone less than empty.
What do you think that cat
Feels for us now? Nonetheless
For as long as we could, we were
Committed to doing something, something
Sheepishly cliché, even knowing that the end state
Would be that it was the process that mattered.
Or perhaps it was the other way around.





Ken Poyner, Virginia, USA

The Buyers by Lee Stern

The buyers are here
and they want to be sure there is something to buy.
If there’s nothing to buy, they’re going to go back to their sad houses
and line up behind the other sad buyers.
So please try to keep that in mind
when you have something ill to say about them.
Let the buyers advance for the good of humanity.
And let them reconcile their obligations
even when it is still the morning hour for us
and we stand amazed at the quality of the light.
Let the buyers settle their affairs
using the most advanced principles of modern accounting that we are able to relate.
And let the things they have bought settle down easily on shelves.
Let the dust that accumulates become the surface for the road that we keep.
And let the super abundant boxes
sail nightly through the shores of the heaven we can name.





Lee Stern, California, USA

absolute velocity by Linda King

sometimes it is enough
this pull of distance its bitter wind
flung past evening driven
beyond the off ramp

even the gods are unhappy
at the broken places
where solitude collects

lean out your window sing
to the street lamps
the half moon dangles
from barren branches

between the lines
memories are written on the bodies
of those plastic flaxen-haired women
the ones that young girls crave

their stories compose a world
where violence becomes a verb
wrenched from another language
all scars and bruised knees

inherited disasters
passed on passed down
like heirloom silver
and those long ago neighbourhoods
where the hard summer grass remains


Linda King, Vancouver, Canada

Lotus shoes by Jan Harris

Li combs the elm tree’s roots apart
as Ma Ma once teased tangles from her hair.
She prunes them short to fit the shallow pot
and soothes the severed tips with soil
like arms around a weeping child.

Annealed copper shapes the trunk,
as if it’s growing from a windswept cliff
where clouded panthers climb with ease.
Li twists the boughs with care.
The cracks and tears will heal with time
and all will wonder at its grace and style.

Tonight she’ll lift the Penjing from its plinth
and carry it with tiny steps to her betrothed.
She’ll wear her golden lotus shoes -
two crescent moons of satin silk,
embroidered figures dancing down the sides





Jan Harris, UK

Misdirecting Merlin by Kevin Cadwallender

if you had known
would you have said?
in all the magic of our
being together,
a darkness.

was it trickery?
did you weave love
into a shawl?
did you wrap
yourself in it
to save you
from darkness?

if I had been Merlin
I could not have cast a spell
to redeem you.
I am the shabbiest
of conjurors
drawing nothing
from the hat but
my hands, gloved
by your darkness now
and infecting all light.

My cloak hangs
on your bedroom door,
stars long dead still visible.





Kevin Cadwallender, Scotland