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
Red shoes. Gold shoes. Spikes. Mile high clogs. A different pair on my feet every time we have sex. Without them he goes limp, this foot fetished boyfriend of mine. He scours shoe stores, the Salvation Army, unlocked museum cases. Why couldn’t he have become fixated on corsets or wigs? He’s my big secret. I don’t discuss him with my best friend, hide my oddly shod feet from the Presbyterians around the corner. We go at it for hours. I’m in a daze. But what to do about the growing bunions, the swollen toes? One day I’ll be forced to give him up, spend my savings on a top podiatrist.
Pris Campbell
A time will come in your life when you too will feel like a prisoner. It may be love keeping you boxed in or hate sucking out the air around you. It may be illness clipping your wings, or simply the weight of years … no matter.
Bach cantatas…
unpicking stitches from
the kneeler
Stella Pierides
the scavenger sucks the vacuum out of a bottle of spring mineral water
one upon one
the puppies warm
her sagging breasts
R. Suresh babu
Shelling a nuclear plant is never a good idea.
Zaporizhzhia—
now you see us
now you don’t
Stella Pierides
the other bunny 