Diana Webb

wrinkled paunch speckled with eruptions of ermine the emperor is naked see how he fondles a child
forces himself onto nearby aide while the cameraman pans awkwardly away aims his lens toward the adoring crowds disembodied voices gush from the speaker about how magisterial and dignified he appears what a storybook marriage has with the missus how great it is to finally at long last have someone with empathy and civility back in power hashtags are suggested memes hastily produced on the spot in real time oh look now he’s invading Venezuela perfectly charming give us hell

butterfly
on a solar panel
coral lawn ornament

Jerome Berglund

Here comes the moon moo moo moo moo
Here comes the moon and I say
It’s so bright
sleeping beauty, It’s been a long cold growing splinter
sleeping beauty, it feels a century since it’s been here
Here comes the moon
Here comes the moon, and I say
It’s so bright

Moon-moon-moon-moon here it comes
Moon-moon-moon-moon here it comes
Moon-moon-moon-moon here it comes
Moon-moon-moon-moon here it comes
Moon-moon-moon-moon here it comes
sleeping beauty I feel that inkstone slowly melting
sleeping beauty it feels a hundred years since it’s been clear

Here comes the moon moo-moo- moo-moo
Here comes the moon and I say
It’s so bright

Here comes the moon moo-moo-moo-moo
Here comes the moon
It’s so bright

It’s so bright

hoofprints
bovines skim the surface
who’ll make the leap

Diana Webb

Just before fireflies light up a dark night, a swarm of dragonflies buzzes in your brain. You ponder how, a couple of your own, dissuaded you from being what you could be. You pull aside the curtain of time to see yourself not doing what you should’ve done then for the fear of being left out. Then you see them, the ones who followed the same path after leading you astray. You gasp for fresh air, realizing that it is what is within yourself alone that is to be trusted. That same night your favourite contestant on a reality TV show makes the same mistake and gets eliminated. For you, she is still a winner.

glabellar lines an epiphany

Tazeen Fatma

How bittersweet all these punctuations,
as if the worship of a thing might be the thing that breaks it.

The inch of time’s protracted to a foot.
I think without you I might just spin off

to every period ever printed.
I’d like to write, in a continuous swoon.

I blinked. And you were gone.

Richard Matta

The Universe dreamed I was in a wooden room. All the lights were out. My eyes were well-adjusted to the dark and the fine grain of the wood shone through. The Universe checked in on me, as it did from time to time. I told it a galaxy might come and stay with me for a few days next year. The Universe said that would be fine. It would liaise with its calendar and pencil in a good date. Then it closed the door.

rooted to the spot
life grows on me
then leaves again

R.C. Thomas

I dreamed the Universe clung to me. A growing cloud of smoke billowed through an airport full of escalators. Escalators that took us up just to bring us down again. As well as escalators, this was the airport of unreachable terminals. And the smoke darkened. It poured into nooks and crannies. All clean air was blasted with acrid black, and in our acute panic, the Universe and I held each other. We coughed on the not knowing what would happen next.

Later, the smoke had cleared. I was not dead, the Universe was still alive, and I ran freely around a wooden rooftop terrace. A terrace to a property I now owned. Climbing up the steps came a shaded figure with no face. The way it stepped up towards the terrace was automatic and soulless. This, I gathered, was the smoke of the airport in a new form.

The smoke should not have come for me, nor the Universe. I rummaged through a pile of documents until I found the sheet of paper that proved it should not have come for us. In cold silence, it pulled the proof from my hands, turned, and marched away.

Having only arrived onto the property moments ago, I’d not seen the garden before. I looked down over the patio from the terrace. ‘A little weeding is needed between the slabs,’ I thought, but whilst it’s nice out, I’ll invite the Universe over for a picnic.

jigsaw pieces our cracks brought together

R.C. Thomas

there are lakes, rivers, mountains
then there is drought, bush fires, acid rain …
then there are earthquakes, floods

then there is war
there is rubble

an empty house with dilapidated walls
an empty chair where an old man sat and watched his grandson play
an empty playground

an uninhabited earth

then silence

funeral rain —
my foot stuck
in a pothole

Mona Bedi

They were standing in the checkout queue in the supermarket.

– Don’t look now. Kevin is behind us.
– Where?
– At the fruit stall, on his phone, boring some poor sod, no doubt.
– You know, he pinned me to the wall in the café one day. I could feel my blood pressure going up as he talked on and on for a good hour.
– Well, I got my chance to seek revenge. He was sitting in the cafe with a man who is another inveterate talker. As I was passing their table to leave I said loudly, ah, you’ve met your match now! Two great talkers!
– Did you really say that?
– Yes. I could see Kevin bristle, go red in the face. The other man took no offence. He replied in a self-deprecating way, ‘when I told my mother that I got a job as a tour guide, she said, ‘well at least you’ll get paid for talking now.’ Kevin hasn’t come near me since.

all is silent now
lights out, curtains drawn –
but not in dreams

Gerry McDonell