Strip the Gilded     Urgency in your (impulsive)                          methods of transgression                     (faltering/declined transactions)          see just how                 flying off the (cuffed) handle           leaves us backwards                         from where we started   Aggression in your (silent)                            lack of observations                     (obstinate/scaredy-cat stubbornness)             careful not to cut                  too deep in (captured) organs               though there’s no threat of such                          if you forget to finger keys   There is a world           (life is full                   & more wealthy               than simple riches                         will ever offer)        that exists outside                       … Continue reading Scott Thomas Outlar

I play the perfect cover drive   Easing on to my back foot Saturday early early Summer, elevenish a sound of cork like popping the axe fall of linseeded willow throughout the mowing suburbs   My spine straight as a … Continue reading James Walton

Harvest   The corn has toiled all summer, gasping for air on hot days, braving storms, riding insymphony with westerly gusts.   An orange, blood moon arrives early and sits, ballooning, fixed low on the horizon, mesmerising the thin clouds,holding … Continue reading Matthew Spittles poetry

Burning the Directories On a pyre, kindled from general rubbish, I am burning old phone books. The Thompson goes on first, a little local conflagration, a hundred burning names, five hundred. Five white ones go on next, opened flat, middle pages crumpled so the flames catch. The names blacken and curl, a thousand names, a hundred thousand.   Seven yellow ones go on next, burning stars float up on the smoke, pages flick over in the firestorm. I watch the names vanish, the baker, the hotelier, the musician, the shoe seller. Seven tribes of names, a thousand thousand names, seven … Continue reading Teresa Mclean

Thoughts that come while lying on the ground I. From a pine scented,  needle-soft forest bed a bald eagle’s whistle draws  my eyes skyward, to paint-speckled clouds.  II. In rainwet soil, we bury seeds to sprout and plant bones for their last sleep. The difference between life and death is six inches or six feet.   Things that make me feel better A palm on my forehead stroking brow to crown, my hands cupped around a hot mug of honey-kissed tea, the suffused glow that is light and dark just after a storm before a rainbow; the ocean lapping  at … Continue reading Tracee Clapper