Snowshoeing At Night by Chris Crittenden

wigwams of moonshadow
cast by trees
across drifts that host
sparkling Orions.

only i alien,
gigantism
of pulse and huff,
the spruce like a weir
catching my blunders
with quiet.

cairns left by squirrels
guide the way,
middens like glyphs
on half-sunk knotholes.

where the thread leads
witching hoots might say,
lust-tuned staccatos
sounding the labyrinth.

and yet the forest
is too deep to explain.
even owls will never know.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

When The Sky Decides To Marry by William Soule

When the sky decides to marry
the earth, it will be winter. The snow
will be the rice thrown
by heaven's congregation of onlookers, angels
casting their trumpets aside
to sprinkle handfuls below. Snow
is silent this way; the summer thunderstorms
are brass instruments, the lower notes
vibrating the windows of every house.

It is understood that summer
is a woman demanding a divorce, the earth
a lazy man turning his back
towards the static-filled television set
of the sun. You must stay inside
those days, avoid trees.
They are hairs split
by crooked, strangle-shaped fingers
we confuse for lightning.



William Soule, Utah, USA

Ice Age by John Kuligowski

Inside my cupped hands the wind
was a wintering eye shaped by thought
to permanence and by whispers to break.
Inside the unctuous sky, each word
crystallized by your breath reminded the air
it was slowed and sharpened, made to pry
open an ambient screen of flesh.
Each molecule was parsecs in distance
from any point of reference, expanded
to epochs in that warp and woof,
and unintelligible as any of the living dead.
All permanence is thought until shattered,
your voice crying “look out!” as an icicle
plummets, viewed before voiced.




John Kuligowski, USA

My Pretty Girl by Amir Elzeni

I dream not
of yesterday's moon

but the two moons
in your eyes

the softness of us
when we touch

far away
from the world
far away
from our hurt

not knowing
what pretend
means.



Amir Elzeni, USA

Simplifying Animals And Objects by Christopher Barnes

The line. Painting, absterging. Meticulousness
Pinched, boundaries of opal blues, fire-lit
Boleros. Radiance of a bull’s curve spiked,
Pricking dealers who thought he was mad. Drawings
Sold, ten rusty sous in a Paris-shade junkshop:
Marks on white paper, depictions of common people,
Cubed segments planed in earthly chizzled-out strokes.
There is meaning in colour. A garnet-red mattress
Can be delicious.

Through haze of xanthic squalls memory of man
To man, love in the pleasing rub of afternoons,
Harlequins, saltimbanques parading rough-toothed
Canvas, sensuous as drawing, a line.
Devil-may-get-you twist spins his Surrealist verse,
Unpunctuation learned from plays acted out
By lamplight. Smell of oil, Max Jacob,
Moon crumbling on books. War, undoing,
Necks twisted, broken lines, dinner with Matisse,
Smudging Thursday evenings. A request
“Pablo pass the wine”.


Christopher Barnes, UK

cloudless by Wendy Kwok

i have a head full
of love and a heart full of
sky to show for it.

i have a handful
of hurt and a mouthful of
birds to go with it.

their flight is painting
the story i could not speak;
you stole all my words.


Wendy Kwok, Scotland

why I always come running by Angie Werren

I hear you call my name-
soft
urgent;
come-here-quick.

Exasperation races to my lips.
The words hide behind my teeth waiting
while
I put down all the things I need to do.

Can't you see I'm busy?

What-is-it-this-time becomes a hiccup when
I see your face
beaming like a five year-old with
a handful of tickets at the county fair.

It's not the bird you point at while you shush me.
It's not his proud red-ringed head or the feathers
on his belly:
I'm not even looking.

It's the little boy who forgot the old man,
unrestrained by responsibility,
who makes me run to the window
and leave the kettle
boiling;
who shows me pink sunsets,
yellow-shafted flickers
and little white flowers.

He brings me smiles.

Angie Werren, Ohio, USA

I Am Old Frustrated Thought by Michael Lee Johnson

I am old frustrated thought
I look into my once eagle eyes
and find them dim before my dead mother,
I see through clouded egg whites with days
passing by like fog feathers.
I trip over old experiences and expressions,
try hard to suppress them or revisit them;
I'm a fool in my damn recollections,
not knowing what to keep and what to toss out--
but the dreams flow like white flour and deceive
me till they capture the nightmare of the past images
in a black blanket wrapped up and wake me before my psychiatrist.
I only see this nut once every three months.
It is at times like these I know not where I walk
or venture. I trip over my piety and spill my coffee cup.
I seek sanctuary in the common place of my nowhere life.
It is here the days pass and the years slip like ice cubes--
solid footing is a struggle in the socks of depression.
I am old frustrated thought; passing by like fog feathers.


Michael Lee Johnson, Chicago, IL, USA

Dots by Brad Frederiksen

Ancients gazed to heaven and detected dots
Winking points of light became connected dots

Embracing in a field of forget me nots
Devoted lovers dwell within dilated dots

The frame that sets our vision leaves a world without
Silent, unseen shadows – disconnected dots

The static on the edge requests of patriots
To trace their borders well beyond selected dots

My name does not determine who my friends are not
Nor ought my place of birth impose rejected dots


Brad Frederiksen, Sydney, Australia

Wild Wind Dance by Chris Crittenden

insistent wind
licking my window,
accosting the glass
till it shudders
from chilly frissons,

labile wind
sighing to accelerate,
plucking stars
and hurling them
into an allegro of rain,

wind moaning arias
too fierce to hear,
aerial tongues splitting
in loquacity-

trees dance to its rhythms
beyond midnight,
swaying on a carpet
of lost limbs-

the price of tarantellas,
too much mad whirling,
too much clapping for a goddess
invisible except for the spell
of her skirt.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA