by Fabrice Poussin

There was no desire to walk the realm

safe inside the warm prison of the dream.

by Ed Meek

The chinook was a lullaby

Sung by the trees—

The lithe sequoias swaying overhead.

by Fiona Vigo Marshall

How can I tell the blue mystique of orchids,

The way they breathe, their luminous-numinous

Cut out from living sky, pulsating blue light.

by Ed Meek

Some say “he passed”

as if he just went by

a minute ago.

by Diana Raab

I’ve pondered lately.

Will my mother cry or clap at my passing?

Will she ride her horse into the chapel

by Jacqueline Wallen

It starts as a stock dysfunction myth

A diseased hero looking for a royal cure

by Fabrice Poussin

The sight may recall a photograph turned to gold

when they used to hold hands into safety

dancing a slalom to the other world

by Kate Maxwell

We found a yellow paged

‘Famous Five’ edition

behind the boxes of missing

pieces puzzles,

by L. Ward Abel

When 

the last frost comes to rest 

on survivors, and powder-yellow 

branches wait for the rattles 

by Jeff Burt

It’s a body of water without name, a short run,

not a wide creek or small river though about the size,

not a pond or a lake because the water

migrates from one elevation slowly downhill then disappears,

by Jeannine Marie Pitas

1.

I met a man who walked beside it every sunrise

taking pictures of lacy ice in December, red-winged

blackbirds in May, flaming leaves in October.

by Jeannine Marie Pitas

A woman walks a thousand miles

along the coasts of England and Ireland

telling people about curlews.

We have seven years left

to save them. “These birds mean

by Rose Knapp

Sleek skittering silver sharp metallic ice hi hats

Sink, ricocheting ping pongs of dance until dawn MDMA

Enlightenment underneath the aglow red epileptic strobes

- William Matthews: Cento*

by Kathleen Gunton

Music’s only secret is silence. It’s time

Weeping as you go on in, through

Energy, the speed of light, the universe

Love’s radiant play and refraction

by Matthew J. Andrews

(after Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Instead of consolidated on heaven’s throne,

the multiplicitous body of Christ

fractures: the dour one with closed

by Rachel Grandey

Forest matins:

in the canopy a sudden brilliance

of sun-breathed air.

A squirrel leaps, light-hung

— from the French of R.M. Rilke

Translated by James Owens

Keep yourself free from the over-complicated.

Look at your hand on the table, beside the bread:

on this clean cloth, the two things could not be clearer—

from father to son and son to father.

by James Owens

A hollow in the nubbed lacework

of seconds, the centuries' lens

has focused you here, burning

a beginning in the breathturn,

a shift of silence toward word

by Laurie Klein

Begin with the wound—

a seeping willow, post-squall:

the tree in its wisdom conceives

an outgrowth, enveloping

harm, each burl singular 

by Mark J. Mitchell

A cool moon chimes softly in the winter sky,

swelling like a bell in an empty church.

The stars twinkle as soft as some nun’s sigh.

Tonight is lousy with liturgy. I search

for secular symbols, untouched, unglossed