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      River Teviot, Borders, 2020 The Bridge Guest House is peeled open, emulsioned walls still hung with summer landscapes, boys fishing, bedroom doors politely closed against the swell that excavates my sleep, unearths the time our neighbourhood was...

      Capital ‘A’ Arches to begin: a gate, open to possibilities: a tree, sea, person, storm, war, religion, a nameless rose, as yet, unclaimed by labels. Are not divided by ‘The’.     Lesley Burt has been writing poetry for about twenty...

        WHEN an attic becomes garret                                           SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 and we move away the furthest we can   from street life coughs and kisses handshakes, smiles of love, in love   and fear makes us shrink...

      Besançon : October 1991 Motorways in France stripped to their flesh of cars, of trucks with names of families who run small to medium fruit and veg companies near the Swiss border. France is mine, though - I'm almost sleeping, I know - France is...

      A Field Guide of Our Skin This invisible body is a lithe sacrament of flora, bluebell petals reel dizzily from our thick drench of pores, lilac deaths reek in our morning peeling. This ill-lit musculature of fungus is in a state of grace,...

      Tzedaka box On Friday nights I slipped a coin through the thin lips of the blue box. It was satisfying to hear it clatter ; I could feed the tin but not myself.     Sally Michaelson is a recently retired Conference Interpreter living in...

      Today everything is on fire & it’s dangerous the wind claws crimson back & forth running across grass trees catch leaves ember & cinders *** I pray please rain save some green there’s a grasshopper poised for flight at the bottom of...

      Where you took me I had never cut my fingernails; would only retouch occasional casualties – cracks on thumbs, hooks on index fingers, too long witch-like pinkies. Not once did I sit down with a pair of tiny curved scissors to trim down all ten....

      Cold Cream If there’s a record for the consumption of celluloid, you’ve made it a life goal to break and, of course, there is a record for everything on the planet from smallest fish consumed by a tiger to most daffodils snorted by a Catholic...

      what is missing is touch — is cotton to wool, sheer to slub is holding hands is hug — forms moulding each to each, body to body rise to hollow what is missing is skin warm against cool, is the cheek-scuff of familiar stubble is rough sunbrown...

      On the Dangers of Re-entry on my long list is the “borderline” thing— it is said that there are few male versions of the species (my experiences in group therapy can attest to this) maybe most are locked up— a fate I’m not sure how I managed to...

      from The Woman in an Imaginary Painting Do not stretch your imagination so far the world flattens. Do not stray farther than your promise reaches. State only your belief about true matters. Light is light -- don't stretch it. Color is color. Line....

      Nika is the pen name of retired educator Dr. Jim Force. His haiku and haiga have been widely published in print and online journals and anthologies.

      Daylight and Dust The real horror is a body like an empty glass slowly forgetting itself – trying to remember how to hold anything but daylight and dust. This is how men are taught to feel pain, learn which parts are allowed to break whilst they...

      Corner Block Vigil in Cowboy Hat I’m five years old, crouched on the knee-high brick fence next to the letter box. I’ve scraped my legs getting up there. I’m wearing a cowboy hat and a man’s striped dressing gown with long red beads, and watching...

      At the Royal Ontario Museum Four hundred pounds of rose pink muscle, the dead heft of a whale’s heart, a mass worthy of Rubens, worthy of Moore. Visitors lean in to feel the quiver of sea, pinned and plinthed under glass, the thought of Arctic...

      Turned Injun I Turned Injun, didn’t yeh. Riders whoop across the screen, red skinned, paint, and painted Paints. And the boy’s jolted by her cheers – outlaw to his young years, music to such green ears: Auntie Val’s rooting for the baddies. More...