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
Those were the days, when zoom was the noise made by my sister’s Scalextric, while the rest of us huddled for warmth around a single blizzarding screen.
floods all around nostalgic for snow
Helen Buckingham
A skirt of syllables. A wing of words. And how does it feel to be touched by stars ?
swirled in cloaks of mist
shaking out a web of droplets
Vaudeville dancer
Diana Webb
The nun processes along the cloister lost in prayer
Asleep in her bed she dreams of who it will be
In the refectory she sips through silence
The blare of radio one between toast and tea
daybreak
from every angle
a view of the sea
Diana Webb
An accordion player with a pumpkin belly
sings songs of beer. With songs of beer
and lederhosen shorts, he shakes like jelly,
the accordion player and his belly.
Festivity fashioned by a Machiavelli—
The sizzling bratwursts prompt many cheers
while the accordion player with the belly
sing songs of beer, songs of beer . . .
day after
riddled with hangover
the town mortician
Anna Cates
Hidden eyes discern
Nostrils better interpret
Human decay
Beyond the quarry’s boulders,
Heavy as any burden,
Trees weed upward, all gnarled,
Hollow knot holes filled with darkness,
Open mouths forever silently screaming,
Shadows harboring sentient eyes,
Glowing gold . . .
Ghosts float past an autumn-tainted moon.
Distant Mack Trucks faintly growl.
A tired skeleton, growing old,
Stirs through the mist—stops
For some odd reason at the dead-end road,
Beside the smashed pumpkins—
Toothless and broken maws,
And scans a freshly crushed possum.
Rusted machinery—
Some say poverty is a black hole—
That bottomless pit can never be filled—
Others simply offer too many, too many
Mouths to feed . . .
People missing pieces,
Pussies, or things with “legs up to their necks”
That make a skunk ape shriek—
Children, empty mouths,
Game for the next shovel-full . . .
Blood moon—
A hairy arm parts
The bramble
Anna Cates
the age of the forest is negotiable
at the edge
of sanity
foghorn
Hemapriya Chellappan
the other bunny 