The squalid silence of the prison is shattered; the guards’ clicking tongues unfastened for their duty. Woken by rough hands, the disorientation of broken sleep takes a few seconds to pass. Partially clothed I’m led to the basement where a sloping floor and gutter drain blood and sinew. I think of the child whose joyous laugh I take to an unmarked grave. The executioner remains in the shadows as I stare at the timber-clad wall, cold concrete beneath bare feet. The log’s grain fascinates; its coarse texture apparent in the half-light. I hear the pistol cock. Nothing more.

empty chamber …
words drain away
into history

Tim Gardiner

i take the open top bus for the aquarium to bring snow to the seahorse in tank 56 who never believes me it would be gone by the time you arrived i explained again wiping my eyes and powdering my nose before emerging from the submarine I click the compact closed and fail to notice the glimpse of a seahorse determined to stowaway and see the snow from the top deck

the journalist
reporting from the frontline
wears no poppy

 

Sara Winteridge

You stay by the swings waiting for my covering fire. ‘Run’ I shout, before you thunder over, my oak rifle keeping the soldier on top of the slide occupied for a few seconds. Hiding by the tree in the corner of the park we ready ourselves for action. The Bolivian Army gathers at the park gates; outnumbering us, two against two hundred. ‘I suggest we go to the beach if we get out of this, Sundance’ I remark. ‘They have any ice creams down there, Butch?’ you answer before we charge from our shelter….Fuego! Fuego! Fuego!

freeze frame…
I wish we could hold the pose
a little longer

 

Tim Gardiner

Tonight I am bothered by the ticking clock. There must be a trick to counting sheep that I’ve not been told. To resist the nagging noises of a house worn down—its creaking 2-by-4s recite the reasons to keep standing, which may include a wrong one. I’m just the sort of madman to slip down the hall and rewrite iambs into allegories—hey old man poet, old Metronome clock, something has gone wrong tonight, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

outcast sleepwalker
climbing over barbed-wire dreams
into America

Bob Haynes

Ye Olde Cock Tavern –
I order fish & chips
and keep my hat on

I ask the young waitress:
“If I were a British gentleman should I take my hat off?”
“Don’t know” – her lovely Russian smile

Next day I meet Bill.
Bill is British, born in Cornwall, his father is  Welsh, his mother is Scottish.
Bill is a lawyer.

I present to Bill the “hat in the pub” case.
Bill looks down at my hat (he’s 7 feet high) and pronounces the verdict:
HATS, ONLY OUTSIDE!

Ye Olde Cock Tavern –
I order fish & chips
and take my hat off

 

Freddy Ben-Arroyo

You would follow the sound of my voice.

Hey, how was your day?

You are in a field of swaying grass.

Just the usual, nothing new or exciting. How was yours?

The colour of fresh green caresses your skin.

Pretty much the same. Listen. I know this might be a wrong time but I have been meaning to ask this . . . Is there someone else in your life?

Bathed in the soft sunlight, you open your eyes and there is a lake in front of you.

Please. Say something. Just say that it’s a figment of my imagination. That we have been married far too long and this mundanity is . . . I don’t know. Just natural!

Look at that stone by its embankment. You are that stone.

It’s not. I didn’t know how to say it. But I can’t lie anymore. I met her on a flight.

Can you feel yourself basking in the warmth of the sun.

And she makes me want things and do stuff I never had or did before. Never even believed I could have.

Now you would enter the lake with me. Feel the water enveloping you.

Somehow she makes me feel excited about life itself.

And there is nothing in the world other than the coolness of water all around you. No sound, except the deep silence.

She is everything you and I could never be.

Let yourself sink deep.

Are you there?

Deeper

Can you hear me?

Deeper
Deeper

spring cleaning –
dusting the cobwebs
from my shadow

Paresh Tiwari

Helen Buckingham

It was never something I was able to discuss; it felt like too harsh a criticism, or a professional assassination of character. I was convinced you had a terror of empty spaces and now, everything I remember seems to support this notion. You were constantly filling your immediate surroundings with new sounds, scents, colours, textures and ideas. I wouldn’t have called it vivaciousness, even then. It was more like a constant weaving of spells to keep the vacuum of space at bay. When I learned about quasars, I was struck by the parallels of their bright lives and dark hearts. I wonder what horrors death must have held for you? If you could ever bear to contemplate it.

Now you’re gone, I trust the rest will be peaceful.

fearing nothing …
the irony of that
empty boast

David J. Kelly

Michael O’Brien