Recently I was sitting on the toilet waiting patiently for nature to takes its course when I realized that I was making hand shadows on the floor. I forgot about nature and studied the brightness and placement of the lights. I recalled that I used to do this as a child. When I abandoned hand shadow puppetry, and for what, I can’t remember. Subsequently, I’ve learned that lighting, properly exploited, can enhance many things.
Bob Lucky
The Other Bunny will take time out for a quiet celebration and contemplation of the Word becoming flesh. Publication will resume January 8 2024.
Same link, same picture every time, all grainblurr and smudge swipes. A long time ago in the 90s–oof, try to ignore that part but the figure all grunge hang and parted bangs bursting the woods in the pic won’t leave you at night. Always someone’s cousin, but no they don’t live around here anymore. Ask three people what’s chasing him, get five answers. 2 a. m. and your brother forgets the time difference and wants to know which cryptids you think are really spirits, which would explain why nobody’s caught any of them of course. Lack of data leads to bit rot. Copypasta boils in the airwaves between bro country hits on KLAW 101. Library microfiche a dry lakebed, mud-mouthed corpses drained from Deep Red Creek. Now the story goes full Bloody Mary: If you turn off all the lights and open the picture on your phone he’ll show up behind you. You ask your brother if he remembers woodsy.jpeg. Oh yeah, he says, that’s me. You both know he’s too young, but then you remember the time he followed the dog into a neighbor’s woods, how they found him in their yard with a big stick “for the beasts.” Whoever’s trying to run out of that picture, maybe the beasts found him instead. Maybe he made it home, a flat half-empty can of Surge on the floor next to his bed. I don’t know who burned what sigil into our backwoods alone, but don’t forget to subscribe and thanks for watching.
Seth Copeland
In the translation of the story of my life, I’m the hero. I kill the monster and marry the beautiful princess. The people love me. When I walk down the streets it’s like treading through a fragrant swamp of rose petals, and the cheering is deafening. But here at home old ladies push me off the bus and my neighbor’s lawn clippings carpet my sidewalk. After I take the garbage out and bury the dog, I’m moving to a country where no one takes me literally.
Bob Lucky
Judges and Evangelists ponder, then make new lists for their next take away. Apples fall from the trees. Ignoring them, Eve runs before Paradise completely crumbles and Adam finishes implanting his rib.
the things we carry —
laws add to stashes
of guns and babies
Pris Campbell
When he fulfilled his first contract, a crow landed in the branches outside our gray brick home. After the second, another. He collected crows like a headhunter skulls. The dark specters speckled his conscience like drops of blood, drips of corrosive acid, eating everything: bodies, fingerprints, metal, guns. As he once told, this future tumbled out of tarot cards when he was but a teen.
As a child he dreamed of beauty, meadows and rainbows, a girl next door. Yet life hardens you. As silver streaked his temples, and the knife wound brought on his limp, his mind grew too crowded with crows, his worship too splattered with bird droppings for any light to break through, leaving only shadows, demons, the acid, the crows.
Mars—
the glory of our lives
and the stain
Anna Cates
Down in the valley, valley so low,
You plant the garden; I’ll bring the hoe.
I’ll bring the hoe, dear; you plant the beans.
We will have cornbread, and turnip greens.
You make the cornbread. I’ll fix the greens.
We’ll live it up, dear, like kings and queens!
Ham in the morning, chicken at noon,
Biscuits for supper; twin silver spoons.
Ladles of gravy; platters of meat—
Down in the valley, life will be sweet!
Cows for the cream, dear, apples for pie,
No sad goodbying; no time to cry.
Down in the valley the sun always shines,
And we will be happy, all of the time!
You tend the chickens. I’ll fish the stream.
And we will be well, dear, like a good dream.
No sad goodbying; no time to cry.
Down in the valley the sun always shines,
And we will be happy, all of the time!
sky-high climb
hobo bag heavy
with golden eggs
Saundra Cates (1944-2021) and Anna Cates
The click of Lego syncopates with a motet of choral scholars all the way up and down the scale contralto to treble to bass, a sorceress shifting. Look out. He who lurks in a shadow could just be a minifigure of Reverend Green disguised as a mechanic waiting to do mischief in the ballroom with a spanner. Could it be that he is turning all the nuts and bolts to release his inner self in a scythe-like manner around a fleckle…
crescent moon
in a shroud of mist
one single breath
Diana Webb
Notched and ridged and splintered, clad in the herringbone weave of time to a fingertip. It was whittled away to the arc from the ark that floats her over the rise and fall of the waves of the path ahead.
horizon
the print of wings
on her palm
Diana Webb
This scorching heat is unbearable. I can’t sleep and I can’t speak. The only things I can say are “yes”, “no” or “yes, of course”, “not at all”… Ah! And “okay”… okay…
annoying fly
there’s no reason
to write a haiku
Andrea Cecon
the other bunny 