by Nathan Erwin

After Nastassja Martin

Last night’s wind is over the mountains now.
The lofty sky’s cast with red. The mountains
are red. The clear brook has become
an aorta, pumping red, giving counsel to the morning’s               rise:
my face is an open gulf,
crawling in wet snow, I can’t hear over                                 my throat
slickened by internal tissue & fluid. My face, a caul,
pledging to the sinews of this life
with                  a rattle-breath symphony.

By Richard Schiffman

photo by Mariam Gab

After the deluge, they’re popping up fast,
a pimpled pox of pallid shrooms,

puny members swell tumescent
cracking earth-egg’s humus shells,

donning post-apocalyptic bonnets,
daisy chains of moonlit domes,

gilled as sharks and cute as buttons,
hoisting clods of moldy duff,

fungal, Mongol-horded armies,
mountain-moving mycelia,

creeping up on sleeping cities,
hoodied toughs on every corner,

meek and dapper Mussolinis,
squat Il Duce’s of decay

casting nets in fetid mulch,

By Christopher Citro

photo by Allen on Pexels

Raised by retired parents I have that, why bother
I'll sit picnic tabled and watch the clouds go by.
The battle, that position worked out, I see through it all.
I tear packets, toss the seeds across the open ground.
The sky can do the rest. This boy burying plastic
Chewbaccas between beechnut roots, my boy.
Sit beside me, not too close. Here's how you open
the knife, straighten the short blade, pull the other
to an angle, balance it between your legs and
with a forefinger's soft tip,

By Helen Laser

art by Helen Laser 

Whoever thought to call autumn “crisp” deserves the Nobel Prize.
Imagine winning an award for a single word.
Imagine committing such an act of occult evocation that your body flies to Sweden
where there are umbels of apples
shrouded in blonde maple leaves
sequestered by hollow gourds:
their seeds rattling inside like a birthday party for a balloon child.

By Eileen G’Sell

photo by Marlene Leppänen on Pexels  

I didn’t hear you say Charles De Gaulle and thought you meant the mayor.
It’s true I held your hand like a man. Your fridge, clean as alien
spacecraft, makes me want to mess your mattress. Lie back now while I
pretend to be appalled at the things you think about saying. I love that you
love the name “Lina Bembe”.

By Riley Anspaugh

photo by William Santos on Pexels

The word “albeit”
has been in my mouth all day,
rolling on my tongue
like a Gobstopper. The sun
is warm, albeit slowly self-destructing.
Hummingbirds are beautiful,
albeit too fast to see. I’m in love
with this girl, albeit
she never looks at me.
I’m stuck using albeit
in all my sentences,
albeit I don’t believe
I’m using it correctly.
I mean, when is the last
time you ate a good meal
off a dangling chandelier?