Love Letter to Autumn by Ana Prundaru the last rose petals in the morning mist eye the bare branches waiting to join to the crinkly coat of leaves Ana is a writer/artist who roams the globe sometimes. Her work has most recently appeared in Agave Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Toad, Rio Grande Review, SmokeLong…
Ceaseless is the process of fitting our September souls into a January world, the sharpened pencils of our hopes into a bag of half erasures, the virgin blankness of our planners into boxes at the door. Imperceptible is the process of the treetops turning brown, of gray horizons slowly closing in their bounds. And yet…
Collisions in Retrograde by Amaryllis Lyle There were once November afternoons When he helped me over chain-link fences or held my hot coffee for me while I smoothed my skirt and blinked into the mirror. How many Novembers have passed since then? Not many, but I lost count. And on this particular November…
Unchained and a Spoonful of Gin by Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas Folding the skeletons one by one I pack them tight for storage inside their plastic coffins. Legs twisted and bent, arms tucked just right for another long year of slumber. It’s time for the cornucopia and ornamental trees while old bones without names…
Grave Reflections It’s the smallness, they say,in the depths of the clayin a coffin that’s most terrifyingto a corpse not quite deadwhen he comes to his headand senses his air rarefying. Devil’s GotchaYour soul he took, your corpse he left It’s all we’ve got to show. We’ll paint your cheeks up rosy red…
Autumn by dl mattila sheds scarlet hued, crunch-n-rustle, bone-brittle leafchips, airborne whirling windships, inebriated petals guzzling chilled autumn swill. Stunt pilot yellowreds crazy-eight overhead, featherweight drifters on blade-burnished air. Swirling trees dance striptease while whispered leavings from lofty berths parasail down to earth’s muted palette of felled festooning. Bio: dl mattila is the author of…
Jaime’s Summer by Jared Pearce It should begin along the lines: sorrow, red moon above naked maples, only a sole lamp lit in the house; gather like the late August rains, like the heat in September, the folds in the living room drapes; slip away from touch, see how the spiders lift…
Scarecrow part 2 R.K.Riley The winter wind calls shrieks whispers my name through her frozen unmoving lips. Beneath still eyes …baby…baby…get mama down… the dead corn smears rough brown blood against my naked feet. My gaze locked there nowhere as her straw hand scratches claws tears at my hair cheek throat. …please…please…baby…get me down… Can’t. Won’t. Shouldn’t. Lost down…
Lover, I feed on my prey, like an unkindness of ravens, circling a carcass, set to be ravished. I will devour you to plug my boredom and loneliness. I am empty, a vessel subsisting on blood-lust. I am a parasite. If you love me, teach me to be my own happiness. Carolyn D. Elias’ work…