torn pages…
the sound of her voice
breaking apart

He tells me not to scream, not to shout, not to complaint of pain, not to tell him to stop. No, I am not supposed to fight back.
I must obey him, after all he wants to love me.

They tell me to shut my mouth, not to say a word about him to anyone. I cannot reveal this secret, it might ruin family’s reputation.
I must obey them because they love me.

She tells me to obey them and not argue. They are my elders. Little girls should behave properly.
I learn from her daily, she is my mother.

Bunny Bear doesn’t tell me anything. He just sits, gives me a beautiful smile and listens to me.
I am glad, Bunny Bear doesn’t love me, so I love him.

iron bars
who placed them
at the window?

Shreya Narang

Well that was a nightmare for sure. I wake up in a muck sweat and you’re already awake so I ask you did I call out. No, you say, not that I heard. Hah, you were the main protagonist. You’ve got a vested interest in saying nothing.

bead curtain the jangle of mary jane

Marietta McGregor

Where I live now, I dreamt of in my sleep in exact detail from the lights to the sound, the air I taste and the feel of my surroundings as it continues to unfold from more than a decade ago. This tells me that the past, present and future already was which is enough time for over two billion years of repetition in my logical thinking.

summer bloom
a fleeting moment churns
in the compost bin

Fractled

Anna Cates

 

In Tibetan Buddhism, sufferers of bad and good karma alike succumb to three cardinal sins, incur six spheres of existence, experience the chain of causation, and death holds together the Wheel of Life . . .

I The cock (passion)
August air
full of feathers . . .
pecking order

II The serpent (hatred)
dusky pines . . .
where campfire flickers
a rat snake’s forked tongue

III The pig (stupidity)
summer haze . . .
along with some comrades
a pot-bellied sow

Anna Cates

Loved by millions of people. It is cruel in return. Still people send postcards from there. Get married there. That kind of thing. Also there a few trees. And sometimes migrating birds – that poop. Good.

you spit on the grass
the fish
becoming green

The week has been very hot. Global warming – if you’ll forgive the edginess. Anyway it’s so hot the smell of birch trees is really strong – everywhere smells like sauna.

on a bicycle
you
and some terrapins

The island thinks to itself that it would like to be a beach. Just a metre stretch of yellow dirt. Where people forget their underwear. Where people take pictures and post them on instagram.

I spit on the grass and die

Michael O’Brien

I go to see the great leader’s statue, but it is too hot, so I step into his great shadow. Immediately I hear the tinkling of a stream. When my eyes adjust to the darkness I make out a young boy standing close to me, along with his goat. He smiles at my surprise. He spits out the blade of grass that he is chewing and says it takes a while to get used to the shadow—’you’ll be able to see more and more as your eyes fill up with the void. There are many of us here and more keep coming. We spend most of the day under the shadow and move across the landscape from west to east.’ Where is the stream, I ask. Oh, that’s the sound of all the streams that went dry, he says. Are you a ghost, I ask, and then seeing the hurt in his eyes, I mumble that it is unhealthy to live away from the sunlight. The boy smiles again and lifts his foot. The sun is shining under his soles. That is where the grasses are growing.

summer noon
the wind shifts
mid-sentence

Salil Chaturvedi

a broom-handle his staff, his throne the trash bin, zit-dotted cheeks cushioning his longings, with vacant eyes on a gull he struts like a man of some importance until a shoulder-tap and he blinks

back-tracking steps—last night’s moonrise mom’s chicken wings on a tin plate, a beach stroll kicking sand dunes his toes a hermit-crab-moment

past brambles the bus stop: red-haired Norma Jean flags the #10 with her legs sheathed in printed tights takes the seat opposite his by the window with the warning sign, “for your safety please hold on”

on a cloud he gets off at Starbucks puts on his dress-length apron, takes his broom with the canary-yellow handle and stands by the trash bin with vacant eyes

the slow lick
to the tip of her
snow cone

morphing in bulk shadows a life-story

Alegria Imperial