I have realized my mortality! I have told my story! Have I found peace? Sporadically, in acceptance that I am divided in my belief in whether the earth is on its way to a new ice age, or on the contrary.

Finding peace is the same as allowing it . Am I not allowed to drop the fight, surrender to my flower life, and drink nectar?

my head is
openly filled with cells
a beehive

Mona Larsen

Dusk. As if someone had placed a paper bag
over the sinking sun’s head. Deserted streets.

On the corner, a small diner with one man
inside, sitting in a both, a glass of ice water
near his right hand.

Snow begins to fall. The man in the diner
stares out the window, his face, a bulb
without a lampshade.

Down the street, a barrel full of fire.
Three figures huddled around it.
No one speaks.

The man in the diner puts a dollar bill
on the table and leaves. The empty diner
shines like someone about to go to sleep.

The houses are all dark. One of them
is mine.

close to no
flat and fatherless
there is

Keith Polette

The blackberries are blighted, but we managed
to make jam from them anyway. Even though
our teeth have been vandalized by age,
and our socks have lost their twins,
we walk into a world stubborn as a mirror,
where the low sky scrapes our backs.

We hold the road like a clarinet, our blackened
tongues searching for the reed, the only music
the treefall behind us. Our faces etched
and angled like keys, we are searching for
some mystery to unlock, knowing that
when we do, one of us will vanish, one
of us will stay.

wolves in the walnut tree
doubt
wild vista inside

Keith Polette

red-eyed dog
nose
the world

Keith Polette

torn pages…
the sound of her voice
breaking apart

He tells me not to scream, not to shout, not to complaint of pain, not to tell him to stop. No, I am not supposed to fight back.
I must obey him, after all he wants to love me.

They tell me to shut my mouth, not to say a word about him to anyone. I cannot reveal this secret, it might ruin family’s reputation.
I must obey them because they love me.

She tells me to obey them and not argue. They are my elders. Little girls should behave properly.
I learn from her daily, she is my mother.

Bunny Bear doesn’t tell me anything. He just sits, gives me a beautiful smile and listens to me.
I am glad, Bunny Bear doesn’t love me, so I love him.

iron bars
who placed them
at the window?

Shreya Narang

Well that was a nightmare for sure. I wake up in a muck sweat and you’re already awake so I ask you did I call out. No, you say, not that I heard. Hah, you were the main protagonist. You’ve got a vested interest in saying nothing.

bead curtain the jangle of mary jane

Marietta McGregor

Where I live now, I dreamt of in my sleep in exact detail from the lights to the sound, the air I taste and the feel of my surroundings as it continues to unfold from more than a decade ago. This tells me that the past, present and future already was which is enough time for over two billion years of repetition in my logical thinking.

summer bloom
a fleeting moment churns
in the compost bin

Fractled