I woke up in a basement with a headache somewhere in middle America and you were tightening your coat and planning to throw away my underwear. Outside, the Zeros Donut sign was creaking as the wind pushed it from both sides. America, I walked down Decatur street in Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi and wondered who this Decatur guy was and why I never learned about him in any classroom. I just want to come back to a chair, a desk, and a drink.

During rush hour,
we look for a place to sleep.
We soak images.

William Allegrezza

Wicked. For fear of God, some shun the word.
You ride it like a broom. You circle the moon
each dreary October, while glistening thunder booms.
You scratch out spells with a stick, eyes and voice
smokey as a hex. Unsexed, your tone faded jade
like a granny smith apple, you dazzle. You sizzle,
jazzy to dizzy . . . You came from a land of darkness.
You crept from a grove of shadows, a place
of dying and disorder, where light is midnight—
Circe’s pet, last of your league.

Anna Cates

“just look with an open mind and you’ll see the movement of the stars and the phases of the moon…the archaeologists haven’t got a clue…our bones are the rock, our flesh is the earth and our skin is the grass…this place was a fucking hippie commune before my ancestors arrived…”

orcadian dusk –
wind wolves running
away from the sea

Stephen Toft

notes of the piano ripple from the airwaves in syncopation filtering down the chimney the flute of a bird drips through the intervals to fill the ancient flasks along the mantelpiece

‘Scenes from Childhood ‘
another glass of water
sip by sip

Diana Webb

No memory of a coaster in that home. Tea or coffee always came in a blue-white patterned cup with matching saucer, so never a tell-tale mark was seen.

willow tree
dancing the circumference
of its field

Diana Webb

Metamorphosis laced with fault lines. The last flower withers, yet here, no win recorded. Upping his games watching buzzwords and catchphrases. Pick up lines not helping. Garden full of tinder raises a spark now and then.

buried
under thousand forts
forest fire

Daya Bhat