photo by Sarah Brockhaus

by John A. Nieves

Because it started in pepper spilled on a diner

table, this sad little opus was born grains

and grey. And I think of the pebbles that dull

the mower as they sleep in the grasses pushing

up toward your sun. And your front lawn is

sloping and your driveway is filling with family

cars and the stains of routine.

photo by Mirto Kon on pexels

by Lance Larsen

Like water I know enough to follow
cobblestones and gravity
to the busking sea half a mile to the west
cigarette butts underfoot
broken light drifting in from above
through laundry hung from windows
such twisty passages awash in a tongue
almost Spanish not quite French
I could be walking a primeval forest
dense with hanging moss
each path tagged with graffiti
a new way to be lost
motley hieroglyphs of here I am
touch me nope too late now I’m a ghost
smells and commotion spilling
into the street from open doors
a mother frying onions
someone vacuuming the world
a teenager sitting at an open
window channeling her darker twin
why are they so much happier than me
somewhere a couple has locked
a bedroom door behind them
maybe he’s shaved his beard
for the first time in seven years
maybe she has one sock on make it pink
make it the left I can intuit
these sacraments just by looking
up at a week’s worth of wash
pinned to the improvised sky
clothes trembling now in the breeze
tablecloths furthest from the window
then the gray workaday work pants
and bleached house dresses
finally closer to the sill scrubbed
boxers and delicate underthings
what decorum what clean
rustling bras like sideways angels
swimming in this bright quickening air

Lance Larsen has published six poetry collections,

painting by Auguste Renoir, 1881 

Full Moon Over Las Galeras

Islands surface as the mist
lifts and if the light is right
you see bodies phosphorescent
in moonlight like oversized
bioluminescent specimens
with one (me) awkward,
gawky, a self-conscious caricature
of inhibition.

I try to disguise my vulnerability
with serenity. I knew to move
through your affection gently.
I hold you close in a float of elation,
drifting toward myself drifting
with you, entangled in your body,
settling toward something like peace.

by Anastasios Mihalopoulos

Photo by Öz T. on Pexels

Here, at ocean’s mouth, I pour and pray.
Sea-water sloshes its tongue on the shore.
Scent of barley and burnt honey vex the air.
Urge the dead to drink from my cup.

I bleed a sheep. Black night
pours from its throat—the spirits come.
Clamor of armor and footsteps fill the beach,
men I could not save. Worse sounds came

from those I could have—from you
standing there, hair turned silver, an opaque gloom
running through your skin.

by Matt Schroeder

art by Emmanuel de Witte

the only thing worth worrying about
        is a palmful of honey on a summer day
                 or the heart         hot as an eggless pan

        if it doesn’t make sense make it over-easy
make it so sweet men would die for it
                     make it in the image you were made in

whispers believe said-image is who you loved most
                        in your last life which could have been