The candle-light sculpts anew the contours of the vase on the window sill. It holds the silence of this hour where the first sound of an unknown bird is an invitation, a call to song. A call to summon the music of words in your native tongue before the streetlights flick. Somewhere a fox is lurking along an alley where a voice from the past is whispering ‘listen’.
down the chimney
a breath of wind
syllable shift
Diana Webb
A cold clear sky. Denuded boughs and twigs self-etch in bark across the silkweave sheen of the horizon. A bird cuts through the silence with the sound waves of its wings. Damask pale or wrought iron flit of dark. They work in different media these avian creatures unlike their arboreal counterparts adhering to more traditional art.
build up
the crack between
two-layered cloud
Diana Webb
note: title extracted from Shakespeare sonnet 15
On a narrow hallway off to the left of the main stage, a row of private pleasure booth doors swing open and closed. Clicks of tokens in slots and glances of women adjusting themselves between customers.
She leans back; has a moment or two to herself. In the gallery of waist-down Mona Lisas, a pause before the next beholder.
anticipating
the old master
exhibition
Lorraine A Padden
* The title is taken from Shakespeare Sonnet V
A trio of trials. A trio of helpers. A trio of gifts. They follow her through relentless imprints through the longest of nights.
She refuses to cut the fast way out.
She refuses to uncork the chemical fix.
She refuses to call the online hope wrapped round despair.
Instead she conjures the avian creatures from beyond the pane in the darkest hour.
gleam mercurial on the feeder sparrow
skim between cracks a wagtail glimmer
squawk through swoop a gull segues light
at a fingertip
from dust of an unlit wick
a triple flicker
Diana Webb
note: title taken from Shakespeare sonnet 22
His was always a complete circle, difficult to remove. The cup of unfinished coffee would lay on the table for hours. He would place his cup on the exact same spot. There is a permanent stain on the unpolished wood table out on the porch.
spring breeze–
all the wildflowers
on his grave
Mona Bedi
High tide in Dawlish but low tide at Plymouth. Between red rocks, each beach contains the same swimmers, sunbathers and a kayak out at sea. Every park and green space is empty; it is too hot for football but there is probably a match on TV.
The longer we travel the fewer there are of us. Every town has abandoned factories with roof tiles missing and dead grass between paving stones. I try to imbue the scenes with meaning – melancholy, decay, decline – but it’s all too familiar.
The book I am reading suggests memory contains traces of happiness amongst facts and figures, certainties and stories told over and over again, moments we repeat,
convincing ourselves they mean something.
I cannot remember what I remember and what I do seems rooted in the photo album curated for me when I was young, events I have been shown. The rest is gone: weddings, parties, trips and meetings all in the wrong order.
I think events happened before they did. Oliver sometimes seems more sure, offers specific dates yet is confused about others. I do not know my end or beginning, am not very good at living in the now.
Rupert M Loydell
I bought some organic bananas and took them home on the bus. No one knew the fate of those bananas, not even the bananas. I have a rabbit in my heart who’s dying wish is to eat a banana. It’s the least I can do. I’m going to give him all the bananas he can eat and when he dies I’ll bury him with all the peels. The goldfish in my bladder feels neglected and has been demanding beer. I got kicked off the bus for trying to make his dreams come true.
Bob Lucky
Look! Look! Seeing does not lighten the burden of changes with which light redefines the musculature of envisioned hills and valleys on this side of the Eastern horizon. A pen scratches away that which is not bone from the remaining two dimensions.
a momentary less of now
Stephen Bailey
Hear that? It is time running out. From lily pad to lily pad it side-skips the reflections on life lived in darkness.
just words blindly sifting silences through an hourglass
Stephen Bailey
When I woke up this morning with a strange woman in my bed, I told her she wasn’t there and had to leave. She quickly poked holes in my logic, but I was adamant. “Let me make some coffee,” she said, “and tell you a story.” She’s still here. She’s worse than an old Japanese film when it comes to ending a story. When she’s not looking, I throw a knife or a pair of scissors out the window, and I’m keeping an eye on how she files her nails.
Bob Lucky
the other bunny 
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