By Anders Howerton

photo by Colin Remas Brown on flickr

“Vulnerability. The ideal state of a painter. You have to cultivate it.”
– Francesco Clemente

The light has shifted since. It isn’t rushing through the glass
the way it did the day you swirled the cayenne like tiny flames
in the lemon-filled honey jar. It circumvents me now
with its set of parallelograms,

kicks pebbles down my avalanche back.
You are no longer you but a ferryman instead, taking your time
to deliver me at the edge of the blazed bird sanctuary,

By Savannah Slone

photo by Ivan Babydov on Pexels

we were all born during the slow 


fast shift of all things, oil on 


canvas     no time stamp,


among stained glass and wildlife and 


a sea of velvet earlobes and disco glitter


pageantry     while language swelled 


into watercolor during telomere 


replication and 


extreme weather turned our


nothings into artifacts of survival or 


remembrance and colors disappeared 


underwater,

By Christina M Scott

photo by Engin Akyur on Pexels

At night, she feels for the invisible restraints clutching her throat.
Bound by circumstance, she’s unable to freely breathe.
Coveting the blade in her hands,
Death is her fateful companion.
Everyone dies alone.
Forgotten memories of better moments dance at the edge of her mind.
Guilt has set up home here in her thoughts,
Has taken up so so  much space, with no intent to leave.
Inescapable shock paralyzes and pervades her fleshy shell to
Just below her rib-cage,

by Michelle Hulan

photo by Tala Dursun Marko on Unsplash

When I was young, my future
was as sure as static on the screen.

There were backs arching. A woman’s hand
reaching past shadows. Torsos

tethered to no discernable plot. I felt my way
toward desire blindfolded in a hum

of bees. Sometimes I bang my fists against sheet metal
just to hear its sound hit walls and return as echo—

My past always has the last word,
but I never met a future I didn’t like.

By LP Patterson

photo by Alev Takil on Pexels

The world has moved on from its earring,  

from its bells, far away silver and gold   

that impose, intractably, this burn  

in sunlight, the hissing sound and mettle.

The world has moved on as a traveler   

that reaches the deepest recesses of its mark.  

Disinherit the world, disinherit the mark

of your crystal knife fashioned in an earring.