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      Weather Gods Winter arrived early in 1443. Prickling air laden with ice needles sweeping down the lagoon snow blankets shutting out light. Galleys half-finished abandoned. I fled from noise of cracking timber hulls my eyelashes matted with snow. I...

      The Candlemaker’s Office was sparsely filled. The worn brass door knob — a patina countless hands slipping over its surface, polished and discolored by each touch. That oak door — turning my wrist lean into it fighting the rub door against frame...

      Making is finding, troubadours know Making is finding, troubadours know, and all that comes to hand is an oarlock socket worn by salt, its oar somewhere freely parting water and a pilgrim soul finding rhythm. Have him push the boat ashore at...

      Workshop exercise For Kate Foley The river twinkles on my right. I’m walking briskly past a pair of disused shipyards whose noisy histories have been condensed to fit on plaques as neat as boiler-plates. The river’s banks are fidgety with ripples...

      The Last Carthusian The large metal bell with which I call myself to prayer is wanted by a museum. I sing in an affected accent the responses to the psalms but the jackdaws which laugh at me from the roof are not fooled. In a refectory which is...

      Heartland I am growing grass inside my ribs; fluted blades twisting their leading edge in meadows of flesh. There are fields of this. Where the lark has left, the wind gusts through – I have become its hollow short-cut and you are corridors...

      Realisation about a friend slowly and deliberately you draw information out of me the way my son eats a strawberry holding firmly onto the green stem sucking it down to the pulp     Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana lived in Japan for 10...

      Egg Inside, it’s containment: a smooth shell curving away into itself, taut around a thin membrane which closes on its viscous, one-celled strength; and it’s a silent circling of mass, unused to air, unexposed to the risk of strange heats, to the...

      Feasting She brought thoughts, words rather than grapes, slipped out among laundered clothes. Little offerings best but today he wanted more and she couldn’t deny him. Her tongue spilled stories he devoured, egged her on until the cough again,...

      Morning has broken Please bear with me one tiny moment while I try to explain: listen: a speck of a half-fledged sparrow doesn’t sit at the top thin twig of a late winter tree and throat his half-formed song for all he is worth, which isn’t that...

      I’m worn out by talk of devastation I walk out the door, turning back to twist the key in the sticky lock. On the street my first impulse is to look around, tilt my ear to the faintest sounds, summon a semblance of optimism; but looking for the...

      I Know Rainy Nights the wet cold touch the splatter and drip in wind swept mist and black as pitch streets lit by red and green scrawls and torches of scalding headlights.     Wayne F. Burke's poetry has been widely published online and...

      Hibernation Girl I feel the summer days in winter & winter days through summer. In transitional seasons I do nothing at all but revise how to survive. How easy it is to transmute between you and the next love that I can already see coming. As...

      Between Sunsets We danced like madmen all night in our tap shoes – knitter knatter, pitter patter. A prancing pair we were, from pub to pub. Always drunk, we puffed gutter-stubs. Knowing no daylight, we rose vamplike each sundown. We stank of our...

      canyon meme    we’re the kids so swole so cocksure cowboy cool in leather boots stampede serrating mountain ridge our lump-karst slick-boy Johnston gorge- ing on feathering algae, curious syntax, jagged gaps in the treeline behind—    telling...