I’m out of toilet paper for three days.
Outside of my window, there is an eerie silence. Only the boy with this self-made tin foil hat bravely goes his way.
I open my last packet of paper tissues.
Thank goodness! There is still soap and water …
Covid Winter —
once again no one has set
the alarm clock
Eva Limbach
The carousel’s saddled horses go no slower than its zebras.
the
unicorn
in real
life gets
away
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
‘It’s just a bowl’
‘You’ve left a stain’
‘No no. It’s part of the glaze’
‘I told you. Go and wash it up again’
convex
within concave
a crack in her lifeline
Diana Webb
the nun processes along the cloister
asleep in her bed she dreams of who it will be
in the refectory she sips through silence
blare of radio one between toast and tea
daybreak
from every angle
a view of the sea
Diana Webb
(for Frank Williams)
A little brown pot that could fit in the palm of a woman’s hand. Too small a container for tea, for safety pins, for buttons lost for missing coins or even for a cactus. It holds it’s own small void.
a glaze
of memories
deep with time
Diana Webb
what are you doing?
nothing
people pay good money to learn to do that
do what?
do nothing
nothing?
like a pebble in the stream
ah like that
yes like that
me?
yes you
um, you drown?
drown?
the pebble
let’s take it from the top again, the nothing
ok
at the feet of the stone Buddha
who?
you
ah ok. nothing?
nothing. let the stone become nothing
the pebble?
the Buddha
from under
the blue cup
the root cause
for January rain
Samar Ghose
He longs to hear the music of the Spheres as he chants through evensong on this night of empty churches while Jupiter Saturn Mercury unite in close configuration in the west south west for those with eyes for synaesthesia.
rotating
in the palm
a marble’s coolness
Diana Webb
pickled light flickers on the doormat
my grandmother soured in dust
no one comes to see her leg
lost to infomercials
a web of blue roots animates
her hand with figures she draws in waves
the window opens to barking far off
are you there? she asks
her voice a rigor of words filling her eyes
the dog leaps off a hollow log
my womb, careful she giggles as I flip her like a pillow
the treacle dusk liquefies on the saucer a dying shore
I dip my finger in the sugar wand wafting in and out
here taste spit from the bottomed-out sea
she puckers her lips then gulps
the hiss of foam drowning
Alegria Imperial
E. L. Blizzard
