qarrtsiluni

And the hunger of loving is so acute that it becomes larger and more real than hunger. It turns itself inside out, and — flayed and tender side outermost — it whispers: I am not hunger. I am something deeper. I am what reality is made of.

by Dale Favier of mole

That winter the cows would surround us
In the darkness, feeling like omens
Against our fearful skins, fat tongues unrolling
To taste us, fermented straw-mist on their breaths
And ours, them coming through the thick mists
On our hillside, us across fields returning
To the cottage from drowning our terror.
Sometimes on no-moon nights the jigsaws
Of their hides appeared so quietly from the dark
There was almost no time to scream and scream
As they bumped and pushed us from their peace.
Now they are long dead. Still their generations
Do the same. Their children know us, harry us.

by mikey

At night I reach over to your side of the bed - that cold spot with its frozen memories. The warmth of my hand brings them out of their icy suspension. I can almost feel your nipple growing hard between my fingers. Thawed memories and maybe flawed memories begin to mix in with my body’s involuntary muscle twitches and my random mental twitches - until your side of the bed freezes up again.

by Fred Garber of Factory Town

The Lagosians of Isale Eko come here with great fanfare when an old person dies. They order the most expensive casket, hire out a school’s sports field, throw a large party with canopies, live music and colorful outfits. The gift of longevity is celebrated. But if the deceased is a youth, fallen before life’s fruition, they buy a simple box. The rites are performed under grief’s discreet shadow: a small afternoon burial on a weekday, a somber brass band, and everyone in black.

by Teju Cole

Evolution scrimped for ages, only
to have ungrateful kids at the end
rather wear halos and pretend they’re
too pure to enter colleges of fittest

survivals on the wrong sides of seas,
where sharks open jaws on smaller fish
chomping tinier ones still. Death will
wait for a giant asteroid then, when

peaceful people who dismantle bombs
can’t stop it. They make love one last time,
happy they won’t have to wake again,
turn on lights, and remember the sun.

by Donald Illich of The Church of Tony Hoagland

There was a seizure — she shook her husband awake.
Now she lies on this bed, won’t open her eyes.

Her husband sits beside her, thinks of the cancer.
Every day there is more of her hair on her pillow.

The roots of it are slipping out of their sockets
as she lets out each breath. There. There.

by Fiona Robyn of a small stone

The thin curtain pushed gently into the room by the breathing of the breeze. Where it lifted, sunlight splashed and stretched across the floor.

He lay on the rumpled bed, lapped by blown light, shifting shadow. He turned his head to look at her. She was busy with day-start, pulling on clothes with brisk efficiency.

“I’ve got a lump under my arm, in the armpit, could you look at it?”

She fastened something with an audible snap and leant over the bed.

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t show.”

As she turned and left the room the breeze fell, the curtain dropped.

by Rachel Rawlins of frizzyLogic

Earrings

Long dangling earrings in the shape of thoughts falling out of her head.

*

Jumping

No doubt about it, the older I get the less jumping I do. Lucky grasshopper is short-lived.

*

Octopus of wings

Lots of flapping,
but no grasp.

by Catherine Ednie of louder

Light hooks the soft edge of things, holds them in the moment. Light lifts the cover off the sky. A sun dog stands straight up in the southeast: a lovely pillar. There is another pillar to the other side of the sun, making a matched set. The wind blowing hard to the east cannot blow away the morning’s color.

When the world rages, rage back your love for the world, I tell myself. Out-shout God.

by Tom Montag of The Middlewesterner

by Natalie d’Arbeloff of Blaugustine

Straight talking,
that was what
was needed, so
you said. And

you smiled a thin
and final line,
and you turned,
as they say,

on your heel,
on a sixpence,
and you strode,
straight-limbed, along

the coastal path,
direct, unswerving,
to the jetty, walked
its slick rectangle

to where the ferry
rode at anchor.
Just in time:
the straining lines

released, the anchor
hauled, the ferry
drove a silver
track, straight as

a rail, towards
a flat horizon. And,
as I watched
unmoving, you

slipped at last
around the slow
unyielding curve
of the world.

by Dick Jones of Patteran Pages

by Polyxena

The children sing songs of times long gone
and they play games of forgotten wars.

The sea cannot be seen from here.
The colors are broken, made of wood,

the children use them as white weapons
sharpened like pencils, daggers to survive.

Listen to the breeze, far out, elsewhere,
where green boats patiently await the end.

The sea cannot be seen from here.
It exists only in the minds of children,

small drawings of unreal landscapes,
the sky a color not included in this case.

Their small hands draw conclusions in gray,
the paper assumes the depth of clouds.

by Ernesto Priego of Never Neutral

by Lori Witzel of Chatoyance

In spring I heard a new bird across the road. It was red-brown and easy to locate in the young leaves of a maple. I couldn’t figure out what it was, which was pretty thrilling.

Summer has now hidden the bird in leaves and I still haven’t made an I.D. The creek branch has gone dry. A week ago minnows roiled and smothered.

The bird calls. It calls from over my shoulder. In the yard I walk under the ash tree, battered by a nameless din.

by Bill Knight

Where are my other daughters or sons?
I ask as if I, learning of them, of those grains
Waiting for my arms and lips and heart, didn’t turn
My heart from them, and instead rushed here and there,
Even to cold rooms in buildings named (can you believe?)
After saints, to plead for freedom from them. Please!
You can save us! But they are always there,
These ghosts; they have followed me everywhere
Ever since, taking me to mirrors, showing me to myself.
My sweet darling, here into my once red hands
I’m weeping for love of you, and them.

by mikey

by Natalie d’Arbeloff of Blaugustine

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An old pop song: the lyrics rise up
from the silted depths intact.

Just when we think we
know it, the world pulls away.

No wonder we hold on tight
to these strings of words.

by Fiona Robyn of a small stone

A quiet rustle of leaves reached into his pocket and took out a dollar. It was a simple theft, not soon discovered, if ever. It could feed her and nourish her wooded home. She could plant some flowers. Oh, but she would enchant a black-capped chickadee to carry her to market, and she would find her true love nestled amongst the parsley. It had been foretold. Lost in the glow of that vision, she didn’t notice the wind carrying the dollar away into the forest of barren trees.

by Daniel Ribar

On the bus home, I was listening to Brendel play Beethoven’s twenty-seventh sonata. I was lost in the music, eyes closed, fingers racing to and fro across my knees.

When I opened my eyes, I noticed that the sandy-haired six-year-old in the seat opposite mine was also playing air piano. I looked up and gave him the smile of equals. He looked at me expressionlessly, his tiny hands darting expertly over the unseen keys.

Our gazes locked; I continued playing (it was an especially tricky passage).

And, to my delight, so did he.

by Teju Cole