That Leucistic Alligator

by  KJ Hannah Greenberg

That leucistic alligator, all scaly coruscation,
Brought, among ladies taking afternoon tea,
Syncope of the worst kind.

I heard their cries, while parked in a commode,
At Randy’s, the neighboring bar & grill;
A stomach virus had unfastened me.

While I’ve shrugged off romantic love, preferring
Mundane synching up to flowers and candy,
Their shrilling fetched memories.

You were no rare reptile, but a common beast,
Habituated to painful biting, swallowing whole,
Gulping the most intimate morsels.

I mistook your beautiful eyes, your special colors,
As signifying rare, emotional limpidness.
All along, I missed your guile.

Crocodilians don’t think on duplicity; they naturally
Graze on muskrats, coypu, plus broken hearts.
Solipsists seemingly smile.

High Noon

by Tricia Knoll

Fantasies will end,
even swollen dream seeds
the red bird dropped
into your lusty loam.

Come a high spring sun,
let warmth pull forward
a green uneasy sprout
you never imagined.

Whispers of sacred dusk

by Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

1.
Meadow’s leaf-beats of heart’s red maple radiance
falling, one by one, upon earth’s deeply rooted love;
yellow ginkgoes double-winged fans falling like
Tree Yellow butterflies of Singapore fluttering;
along leaf strewn pathways vibrant burgundy oaks
slick as vinyl shine among all the faded and
forgotten, as if each existence only
a whisper or droplet in which the swift moving
seasonal flow rides it over the edge
the holding on, before the letting go.

2.  
Together dressed alike from caps, thermals,
jackets to Timberlands, we easily
step into natural rhythm with the
same solitude and freedom once felt as
children wandering inside woodlands. Old
warrior wind swords through trees; blue fire flame
of sky’s arms encircling; butterscotch sun
slowly dissolving; autumn elms yield, glide
as we hike inclines and declines, then the
sudden brilliance in blue jays’ blades cutting
the air, flashing; and goldfinches flickering
in and out-of  vision before resting
in nakedness of old limbs reaching, always
reaching toward the dizzying heavens.

3.
Long red rays of once lived days setting.
Deer’s night eyes stare into our restful steps –
white tails flickering as candles glowing.
Moon’s white underwing of protection,
as we cross over evening’s bridge,
hand inside hand, whispers of sacred dusk.

Found poem: Through this red haze Source- John Updike’s Rabbit at Rest

by Laurie Kolp

The sea is a vague sudden
fall impinging nature
sun unseen over moon.

Three stony feet, rotten mulch
a wheel’s hedge: yew shoulders
spread through crabgrass.

Weeds, the missing teeth,
muffle dry bark
as ominous as chicory.

Bewildered

by M.J. Iuppa

I doubt that Canada goose
wandering, then holding still
among the cornfield’s blind
of crushed stalks, is caught in
a moment of forgetfulness
or despair— the way it lifts
it head upwards, just above
the zigzag of the row’s ruin
to see what it’s missing,
(which might be everything
at this instant, who knows?)
it looks and looks without
 moving— yet I am, moving
without answers, thinking
about this— silly goose.

The Future

by David Chorlton

This is the bellowing, whimpering
world with stripes and dark spots
that appear in the snow
when it sparkles and crunches
beneath a firm paw. This is the world
whose wingspan is wide,
where a wolf chills the dark
and light is a drop on an ocelot’s eye.
It has tufts on its ears, a ruff
and a fin, and a dangerous glow
in a dart frog’s skin. This is
the chattering, whispering world
with canyons and caves,
snow around its edges
and fire in its deepest parts.
From saber-toothed centuries on
through jungles of steam, down rivers
that crested and soaked
into memory, by high tide and low,
wildfire and drought, its bright
feathers shone and the sea turtle’s shell
bore the weight of time
through distance and days
to the mysterious night
when she pulls herself ashore
to lay the future’s eggs in sand.

Black Mountain

by Matthew David Manning

It's called Black Mountain,
because of how it looked at night:
a void you could climb
and look out at the city
mirrored by still water.

Some made the mountain home.
Their houses filled with the dark,
slipcovered in moonshadow.
Young couples drove access roads
up the mountain in the evening

to speak, listen, and understand.
Their favorite songs glowed soft
on their faces. Sometimes, in winter,
when they could see their breath,
people from the bottom swore
they saw ghosts finding each other.

Untitled

by Stephen A. Rozwenc

The dust-billed motorbike path
that leads to the end of suffering
may well slither
out of this emerald green rice field
like a defanged cobra

once sorrow
is accepted as permanence

Three Haiku

Eyes slightly open,
Fog lying across the field-
Goosebumps on my arm

          -- Yvette Galicia


Drip, drip, no chirps heard
Look out through the door’s holes
Gentle breeze caress

          -- Alejandra Oregon


Ghosts of her giggles
linger frozen in the air
In the bitter frost

          --Sarah Garcia

Remnants

by Ion Corcos

Seaweed scattered,
browns and rots to wrinkled skin;
flesh shed on the high tide.

Sand worn down by the constant thrust,
the ocean surges, rushes to reclaim

prints of paws and long gone feet,
fractured sticks and relics
herded ruthless in a heap.

Colourless shells smashed on rocks,
tangled in stems;

only shells soaked in brine
show signs of life, then fade,
as the sea returns to itself.

Seagulls screech, waste time;
they have time to waste.

They scavenge among remnants,
threads of seagrass, a dead fish,
frail reminders of the deep.

Drip Torch

by Matthew David Manning

The scent of crop fires filled the car.
Kansas land always gave a slow blink.
Smoke rose in patches like freckles.
The lake was far, but sky stayed her eyes
like two index fingers by her temples
almost touching almost touching.

Untitled

by Stephen A. Rozwenc

4 unfair arguments
with nirvana
imprisoned in metaphysical hedonism
pea pods

Lines

by Terrence Sykes

hydrangea leaves
clinging in vain
knife cutting frost

Roses

by Carl Mayfield

Yellow and white flowers,
each one shaped like itself,
espaliered against the house,
neither host nor prisoner
to any mind, taking root
where the earth still lives.

Lines

by Hayden Bunker

Mercury glows red
as a coal banked in the stars—
rubbing cicadas.

Lines

Kelley J. White

late March
clothesline sagging with
melting snow

Corta Brunita

by Fiona Pitt-Kethley

A row of broken houses by the road,
a village of the damned, marks where it lies.
The path winds downwards to a jade green lake,
soft toxic sands gilded with pyrite dust,
marked with the footprints of the last who past. .
They planted trees here years ago…They died.
The withered saplings still have plastic wraps
This soil, it seems, will not rejuvenate.
Yet one thing “grows” here in this barren land,
small crystal sceptres springing from the rocks.

Etch

by Alia Hussain Vancrown

A barking pack of coyotes, cacophonous precision
nine distinct yups of the fox that answers me
when wandering the dead of night is an exhaustion
of darker questions.

Frogs overwhelm the swamps
that surround the house and emerge earlier each year
as the planet threatens to boil.

Too much physics to untangle, too much umbilical
to unwind.

Here is a broken thing, here I shape it beautiful
here is a dead brother, here I avoid bones and soil.

Savoring green apples, what sinks gets seeded so deep
gets swallowed, and sprouts—

what lightning does to a willow
how evening rain undoes morning sun
what birds do to their own reflection, here is

something chiseled, here is sound pollution
the erasure
of stone.

What word exists for when the ocean moves us
standing still, for miles, across continents
that are colonized by none other than a soul

what word exists to replace soul with a thing so biological
you can prick its vein and donate platelets
count the leaves, count the loves

what word exists for when the names you scream are names
too raw to be sung at divine, reverberating decibels?

He points out every new hawk that arcs in circles
and now there are twelve, and the clock is rigid
symmetrical, and life goes on, windswept chimes
jangling, noticed in the unnoticing.

Rare Morning

by Ed Hack

A chatty, misty morning for the birds
between the dawn and brighter light, a kind
of pause before real day begins, disturbs
this balanced and exquisite fragile time.
And here's the gold patina that ignites
the tree, but softly through the mist. A dove
repeats its hooting, dying call as light
clicks up one notch. This is what morning does.
But still no sharpness in the air, no edge
that shows this moment's passed--the day preserves
its gentleness as if this is a sketch
of paradise, which some few might deserve.
Another click, the light is plainer still.
The noise is coming soon. Now, peace, distilled.