The misshapen occurred when he was scouring the pooram ground for unburnt crackers. He wanted to gift a flower pot cracker to his son on his birthday. He goes around on his tricycle selling lottery tickets now.

timber yard
the bruised heel
of an old tusker

R. Suresh Babu

‘Doctors? You’re better off not going near them. They’re only good for lancing boils,’ said Joe, a house painter who suffered from asthmatic bronchitis. You could follow him to the pub by his trail of green mucus.

Shea had a little toe which turned black. ‘Maybe it’ll fall off’, he said. It was gangrenous and the smell off him was sickening. His wife forced him down to the local G.P. who referred him to the hospital. He died soon after.

When asked how he was, John would always say, ‘grand’. However, he would follow this with a litany of complaints. ‘I passed a torrent of blood. He was taking my blood pressure. I thought my arm would break!’

Willie was up in the hospital being examined by a young doctor. ‘I can’t find anything wrong with you,’ the doctor said. Willie replied, ‘well, will you send somebody out who can find something wrong with me!’

bodies queuing
XRAY, MRI, CT and ultrasound scans –
but terror will not show

Gerry McDonell

I wish I could see the stars every night, not just on clear nights, or from a place of high elevation, or from a place with low light pollution, or when the air is dry, or when the moon is waning or new.

locating Canis Major
and Canis Minor
neighbourhood dogs howl

Farah Ali

water shoots
I spread my cold fingers
in the pocket

I would really like to draw again. I have a lot of ideas. But my fingers are restless and
the scrawly lines hurt my eyes. My ego. How hard can it be to fill my cup?

I tell my therapist how joy is such a pain in the arse at times.

bare twigs
a tomtit headfirst
dangling

thinking
the yoyo of stars
in a cold field

At night I dream again of people I haven’t seen in a long time. We exist in the same
space, create rifts I dare not even think about. Pain: the mainland I do not want to
reach, but on which I stand.

Saturday morning. I find a handwritten note in the kitchen.

buy rolls for …
laundry

In my head I add

clear out the dishwasher
cut vegetables
clean the rabbit cage
buy snacks for the evening
decide what to cook
the kitchen floor is sticky
finish knitting that sock
write
edit
check deadlines

I know my mind will be tired before I have reached that kitchen floor. Maybe I will lie
down on it and stay there.
My thoughts take a stroll on the moorlands.

two   blackbirds
one   black bird
no     rustle

Plates into the open upper cupboard, cutlery into the drawer. I do not like these two
options: either trying to avoid triggers or exposing myself to them over and over
again. To prove to myself that I am stronger than I am.

I pull the compass out of my pocket and watch the needle dance tango and fandango.
Cues from the sky: this is where it hurts.

frost pine needles even more

I swallow the treatment like a poisonous mushroom. I take it without any patience
left. It says, “Wait.” When I am better, it still swallows my being. And sometimes I
manage to stick my head out of its row of teeth, and whisper, “Please, don’t bite.”

Kati Mohr

The candle-light sculpts anew the contours of the vase on the window sill. It holds the silence of this hour where the first sound of an unknown bird is an invitation, a call to song. A call to summon the music of words in your native tongue before the streetlights flick. Somewhere a fox is lurking along an alley where a voice from the past is whispering ‘listen’.

down the chimney
a breath of wind
syllable shift

Diana Webb

A cold clear sky. Denuded boughs and twigs self-etch in bark across the silkweave sheen of the horizon. A bird cuts through the silence with the sound waves of its wings. Damask pale or wrought iron flit of dark. They work in different media these avian creatures unlike their arboreal counterparts adhering to more traditional art.

build up
the crack between
two-layered cloud

Diana Webb

note: title extracted from Shakespeare sonnet 15

On a narrow hallway off to the left of the main stage, a row of private pleasure booth doors swing open and closed. Clicks of tokens in slots and glances of women adjusting themselves between customers.

She leans back; has a moment or two to herself. In the gallery of waist-down Mona Lisas, a pause before the next beholder.

anticipating
the old master
exhibition

Lorraine A Padden

* The title is taken from Shakespeare Sonnet V

A trio of trials. A trio of helpers. A trio of gifts. They follow her through relentless imprints through the longest of nights.

She refuses to cut the fast way out.
She refuses to uncork the chemical fix.
She refuses to call the online hope wrapped round despair.

Instead she conjures the avian creatures from beyond the pane in the darkest hour.

gleam mercurial on the feeder sparrow

skim between cracks a wagtail glimmer

squawk through swoop a gull segues light

at a fingertip
from dust of an unlit wick
a triple flicker

Diana Webb

note: title taken from Shakespeare sonnet 22