In the chicken house this morning. The second one this week. I carry the stiff hen out to the back pasture for the coyotes, since fall is coming on. In spring and summer I’m happier treating turkey vultures. Several of my hens are old–and chickens of course are not ordained for long lives. Commercial hens lay themselves out in one to three years.
After their laying slows with these battery-caged chickens it’s off to the slaughter house and chicken soup–or other worn-out laying hen products. My uncaged, roam free hens can last 6 or 7 years, depending on the breed. Occasionally, one of my barnyard and pasture grazing chicken can reach 12-15 years. Because I am old myself, far beyond any chicken years, I am not indifferent to how my hens slip into eternity. So I do not early-cull my layers when they slow down, or stop laying altogether. This hen I am carrying to the back field has her dignity still intact, if no longer her well-being.

wind ruffled
feathers
hen unriled

Ed Higgins

A dancer is always naked— When clothed has
forgotten is a dancer. There are only clothes
then. And a head. Like caught committing a
crime. Like face vanished become body and is
planning a crime. Moving about a subway of the
earth. With its wrapped-around map fallen off.

slipping into the sea exposed cliff

Vishal Prabhu

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