Poetry: “Close,” by Tor Strand

Since we looked at each other and couldn’t
make much of anything.

How are we ever supposed to
with hands unable to hold more than

Poetry: “Who is calling?” by Johnny Elder

One night, a cold night, he drove through the dark, investigating the convenience of a plain of
no rocks or cavities, of the mildest undulations, the gentlest of seas, for this was an oceanic

Poetry: “Saturday Evenings,” by Peter Cashorali

On Saturday evenings time ends but we keep going.
The furniture runs out and the empty rooms go on without it.
Not empty– full of sadness and weird pain, appetites that don’t know what they want but insist that it’s something.

Poetry: “Fall or fly?” by Trevor Cunnington

for Bernice Gardner, may she RIP

Ringed around the rosy twilight park,
A cocoon on a leaf falls through the dark.
It lands on wet asphalt streets above the bulwark

Poetry: “A Fragment Lost,” by James R. Hannah

Night relaxes its eastern hand
Dawn inches forth, Quiet a vigil keeps.
The house about me now is still.
I sort through words while my lady yet sleeps.

Poetry: “On Remembering the Polished Jewel in My Pocket,” by Frank LaRussa

I.
In the fall morning sky, high above the white glaze
of the brown mountain range, a raven would fly.
She’d flutter then plunge through the dawn light and fog
over fields filled with songs of the killdeer and dove –

Poetry: “Strawberry Shortcake Footholds on Luggage,” by Christopher Barnes

Bustling check-in desk, suited men. Orderly queue –
duty free sake. Vexed boy humpfed away.
Eleventh hour tannoy inspirits discomfort. She lays
Japanese Red Army’s blasting cap. Oyster-white
peripheries shock to black

Poetry: “Chum,” by Susan Shea

He puts himself
at the head
of the long table

in front of the
killer whale-sized

Poetry: “Ghosts Come,” by Jane Wiseman

In the blackout storm, our wings
shear through ravages of cloud
seen only in flashes. Compassing
our trackway toward you, we wheel
into dirty weather.

Poetry: “Snow Leopard Villanelle,” by Raphael Kosek

Snow leopards are graceful animals with soft fur
the students type over and over again as well as
They live in the high rugged mountains of Tibet.

Does each word imprint like the leopard’s paw
set down in stealth on the cold white world where