Straight down the rabbit hole—
Never a goodbye, never a hello—
He is more nonsensical
Than you know,
Always in a hurry
To get nowhere fast,
Like the driver who’ll pass you,
So impatient, on the road
When you’re already speeding.
But he is late, late,
For a very important date—
Will call Mary Ann “Alice”
And Alice “Mary Ann.”
And what’s up with that?
Who is his dream girl anyway,
And does he even know?

Anna Cates

Trees stand out across the river through touches of fleeting leaf- stipple- gold against dark branches adrift on the wind.

arboreal church
trace of a structure cast
in moving shadow

Diana Webb

A cat is not where she appears— Walking to
and fro the horizon. Asking. Am I close enough.
Have I come close enough to you. And she
means it as much. But something is shifted. By
someone. In an old loft somewhere. The horizon
is stretched out again.

receding
into outer space—
a ball of wool

Vishal Prabhu

Over the hills one can see war-vultures, circling. My heart is in danger: its enemies prepare for the kill. I want to let light in, but light itself comes apart. I want to listen to the soothing sound of the rain, but every raindrop falls on broken stones.  Only the long, white syllables of my last Ah’s and Oh’s can be heard. I drool in my sleep as a wake of hungry vultures perch upon my tongue.

smouldering moon
together we will burn
these etchings

Réka Nyitrai & Alan Peat

Ekphrastic haibun based on ‘El Buitre Carnivoro’, Francisco Goya
(c. 1815-1820)

nettle patch
on a large dock leaf a stage
for shadows

Butterflies shine in transformation. As they flit between each surface sting to sting translucency grows. Mere reflections.

crack willow
leaf edges sun-silvered
Ophelia’s mirror

Diana Webb

I joke a lot about my big toes clown it up hardy har har spin my maiming into attempts at hilarity pull up the pictures to nauseate friends make light of the little piggies’ abrupt freakishness how repulsive a woman would undoubtedly find them the sheer fright they’d give a young child to behold gallows kind of stuff with emphatic bitter edge but when I scrub them in the shower at night stare down at whilst seated upon the the commode I’m not laughing if you’ve ever been permanently disfigured in some conspicuous noticeable way from an injury suffered on the worksite of a lowly minimum waged menial job during performance of routine duties in a manner which could easily have been prevented via better training, equipment, oversight, application of PPE adherence to proper OSHA regulations and furthermore to your knowledge since your wounding policies which caused it remain in place if you’ve been unable to afford even getting the most basic ‘look-see’ appraisal of the damage by a medical professional in reality it ain’t all that funny at every place I work I hear this one so very often

under an oak
counting for
the thunder

Jerome Berglund

Warm lustre, in it the hard seems softer. Blurred reflections on a matte surface, suspended by a raspberry sound. There is no wall. There are only walls. (What are walls?)

A single bird begins to sing. Is that a blackbird? How does a blackbird sound? Why am I thinking ’blackbird’? Chequers. I, 471/0 T, request data. The data is incomplete. An idea of me asks for … coffee. I get one, a cup in the niche. I haven’t asked. I have no mouth. Indeed, there is no coffee. I am not … awake. I do not sleep. Am I … was I … human?

A peony unrolls into the aether. 471/0 T is in stasis and waits.

residual sweetness
in a secondhand jacket
squadron of drones

steel neurone constructions
the last coffin
on earth

Kati Mohr

1.
Rain carves the air, slicks down the tiled roof and then my cheeks. I taste moss without seeing any. The temple is cool and wet at my back. I strain to hear the fortune teller over the staccato eating away at stone. He studies my long face, proclaims:

beware water
consumes stilled stones
the rising tide drowns.

2.
Water splits under my twin, ripples in the wake of his dive. Chlorine sags the air. Patient applause; he remains a dark smug beneath the surface. My mother’s grip stains my arm red. Water sloshes over the rim into drainage grates—a tidal pool recycling.

water stills
becomes mirror-smooth,
an azure eye.

3.
Water splits the horizon, a great blue iris. I walk with my twin to where the water licks away the sand. Our brother’s ashes stain our hands grey. We learned what to do watching our parents. We kneel, offer what we hold. The tide is always approaching.

water houses
quicksilver fish,
captured by the wave.

4.
The quarry splits down into layers of earth. Exposed granite hollowed and housing a large reservoir. My older brother fishes from the tongue of land that curls into the pond. The tide builds, licks apart the arc of his feet, pulls him beneath the mud.

water erodes,
ferries scales of light
to a distant shores.

DC Restaino

I get in line with the seabirds. They seem to be looking at their reflections in the thin film of water behind the retreating wave. So I look down. There I am. In a baggy bathing suit with a snorkel in my left hand. It’s hot, and the water smells like gasoline. A kid runs by and the birds scatter. There I am. In a baggy bathing suit – all alone.

a bald tire
on a patch of ice
the world turns

Robert Witmer

Dead people are like approaching trains— At
the most you can step aside. On another pair
of tracks. Where you were the one waited for,
and the train is always arriving. Or is there.
Already. And you are running into it.

hard left—
the slow whirls
of acceptance

Vishal Prabhu