Ian Willey

Social Media

I was out walking when a man ran
up to me saying “sparrows swiftly
berate the summit, pass it on!”
so I said “okay!” and said just that
to a woman walking her Shiba Inu
who said “sure!” and hurried off
towards someone else and I watched
as people bounced into each other
on the street like billiard balls and
though I have no idea how this began
and how it came to an end I can tell
you that the next day there were more
people out and about than usual and
some of them even had binoculars.

Ian Willey once drove from Akron, Ohio to Minneapolis, Minnesota to attend the first ever MST 3K Conventio-Con-Expo-Fest-a-Rama where he wore a homemade Gamera costume and had the time of his life.

 

 

Kathryn Ganfield

Frost Advisory

I saw a ghost through the living room window tonight,
only it just was my neighbor, the spirited one,
waving up a white sheet and sheltering her flower boxes from the cold—
proof that ghosts are tender too.

Kathryn Ganfield has always lived in river towns, and for the longest time in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she writes about the trials of family and the natural world.

 

 

Claire Bateman

Sweet World

Where I come from,
our currency is cakes,
each the precise
size, mass, and density
of the purchase,

so all of our vehicles
are permanently hitched
to refrigerated trailers
roomy enough for even
the Barcalounger cake,
the washer/dryer cakes,
the SUV cake,

though always there are
structural issues to consider—
foundation, scaffolding, support—
which is why culinary engineers
are universally revered,
as are, of course,
the hens, whose eggs
hold everything together.

Claire Bateman writes and creates visual art in her hideout in Greenville, SC.

 

 

Dagne Forrest

Reduction

The most volatile of elements,
like love, is with us,

inconsistent, inconstant, insistent,

until in an instant
it isn’t.

Dagne Forrest is a Canadian who lives with several other humans, an athletic labrador retriever who suffers from separation anxiety, three cats, and a small flock of chickens.

 

 

Cyril Wong

Milk

The white and mushy
interior of a cockroach
shouldn’t be the stuff
of poetry about sex,
the end of innocence
or even death, yet here
we are wiping the milk
of its insides from my palm
across the wall of this verse.

Cyril Wong is a poet and fictionist in Singapore.

 

 

Ross Thompson

The Survivors Club

Afterwards,

when I was dragged from the wreckage
of a four year stretch of grinding a furrow of ill health
and watching the world slip quietly
down the pea green tube that kept me afloat,

I woke to a world
that felt at once unspoken like an Indian summer
yet broken like the longest winter,

my heart now stamped
with the membership of an exclusive club
for those who have loved and lost
and lived to tell the tale,

and who now share knowing glances,
barely perceptible head nods
and compassionate smiles:

a coded language that goes unnoticed
by those
yet to feel the sharp sting of grief.

Ross Thompson is a Northern Irish writer, avid video gamer and Lego fanatic who oscillates wildly between taciturn and verbose.