By: Prathap Kamath Everyday my window opens into a little patch of paddy laid to waste. Some later owner had grown coconut trees there. All of them turned out to be barren with mournful, drooping, long, yellowish green leaves. They all…
By: Prathap Kamath As the fourth one I always smelt victory, mouth watering standing close to the third, but never had it. The victory stand had room only for three. I lived in the middle land between the wanted and…
By: Emily Strauss woolen wraps, down quilts piles of dry leaves a tent tethered in a desert wash bowed against a lashing storm a sail tearing from a small mast. a lone figure inside, fighting to breathe against the wind ripping…
By: Emily Strauss Black tire marks on the pavement— high school toughs with their cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon challenged each other to drag races in their Chevy hot-rods, peeling out, tires screeching down the cold empty streets late at night…
By: Milton P. Ehrlich Hurt pricks like a thorn, waiting when waiting pains. Routines of humiliation and kindness shape the changes in your heart. The wail of Minarets reminds us to weep. Infidels in a foreign land reside in an Indian…
By: Milton P. Ehrlich My old lady is now an old lady. She used to cut a rug as a jitterbug at the USO back in the 1940’s. These days she sashays across a kitchen floor in a sedate but sensuous…
By: Milton P. Ehrlich Casualties of agreed-upon lies fuel their guts with fire and smoke, in a rage that cannot be quelled. They feast on glassy-eyed fish heads that even the seagulls throw away. Buckets of bumblebees sooth the palate. Like…
By: James Aitchison The weather washes away yesterday’s words. Exhausted leaves carpet the feet of scholarly trees. Birds peck at grammar on the roof. The drizzle embraces my solitude. It is a very fine day for writing.
By: Jimmy Coker It was the walk that drew me As though she were going somewhere fast Then the eyes deep and brown. These impressions never fade. We were sixteen What did we know of the tangle of love? I knew…
By: Kayla Swanson Clothed, as in darkness, of serious amethyst hues binding in mystery to reveal hiddenness your secrecy a vague wanderer led by hopes from the inside. Into the din of chatter you enter stiff as a tightrope walker I’m…