The sky has all the charm of a double homicide.
The black cloud above my car says to me:
“This will teach you for going out in this rain
with a five dollar umbrella.”

This light is balsamic, not illuminating the road
very well, but it is not dark enough make the
headlights effective. To my left, the storm cloud
curls its finger at me, it beckons repentance.

I drive on. Behind me in the rear-view, car lights
are diamonds against a seasick green horizon, a
green without a splinter of mercy. The wind picks
up and my eyes scan for a funnel.

Off to the east, where the dark has not yet surrounded
the leftover blue of day, thunderheads tickle the
ionosphere, glow angelically. Fat droplets fall, tears,
I believe – of all the sadness of this world gathers

into these mauling storms. The ones that throw-down
baseball-sized hail, crack windshields. Biblical stuff. The
sorrow, it has to go somewhere, I think. Then I comprehend
the punctuation of weather: if this dark-eyed storm is an

exclamation point, then that glowing thunderhead, the one
that stands majestically, resembling the archangel Michael,
replete with a broadsword and thirst for fighting,
that is God’s very own John Hancock.

Michael Biegner has had poems published in Blooms, Poetry Storehouse, Silver Birch Press, Silkworm, WordPeace, and the Poets To Come anthology, in honor of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday.  His prose poem, “When Walt Whitman Was A Little Girl,” was made into a video short by North Carolina filmmaker Jim Haverkamp, where it has competed at various film festivals around the world and is available for viewing on Vimeo. Michael was a finalist in the 2017 Northampton Arts Council Biennial Call To Artists.

A headless ghost,
its nightly visitations,
clanking chains
announcing midnight
and the witches’ hour,
when demons dance
with your daughters.

A ghost without a head.
Quiet as a black cat,
as a snake, as drowned kittens.
Its message obscured by fear,
yours truly trembling
like a hymn, like a flame
being kissed by the wind.
Like a reed stem
in an Assyrian legend.

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,400 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press); An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press); Like As If (Pski’s Porch); Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

We hear the thunder, the gales,
and we personalize them.
The gods have spoken ..
Storm Freya will make land ..

Two blackbirds larruping song,
from facing hedge and height.
Our rustic Pavarottis,
lyrical, wonderful.

Yet each is holding sway, surely,
marking out his territory?
Is each a property bragger?
Topshop and Trump?

They have built their nests, yes,
raise orange beaks in song
to guard their young. But as far as I know
they have no plans to grow the business.

Note for US readers: the British blackbird, unlike my understanding of the American one, is a hugely popular bird, whose wonderful song delights us from April to June each year.

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who lives about 30 miles down the coast from Dylan Thomas’s Boathouse. His poems have been published widely and in roughly equal measures in Britain and the USA, where he is a regular in SanPedro River Review, Jerry Jazz Musician and Panoply.

―after Andrew Wyeth’s Study for the Bachelor

Try to see what I see. First,
there must be sunlight.
Not just any sunlight,
but the kind that is only seen
pouring over your shoulder.

And it has to be enough
to dry the cloth, specifically,
the single white shirt
hanging on the line
strung across the porch.

And the shirt must hang
upside-down, fixed there
by three clothespins.
It will appear to be tortured,
those two loose arms

giving in to the loneliness
swept in on an afternoon
breeze. The scrollwork
that frames the porch
speaks a soliloquy

of someone who tastes
the bitterness of time,
who licks the crumbs
from his lips. The wash pan
is the only imperative

waiting below the shirt
to catch its gray shadow
and try to make it as white
as the cuffs and the collar,
the buttonholes and seams.

At the other corner,
a twig of philosophy grows
up behind a leaning board.
No. That’s not right.
A twig of forsythia

just touches the light.
You will not see a shadow
loosed from this greenery.
All of its substance,
all of its meaning stays there

in those leaves. And
is that a cat? Or is it
a black smudge with eyes?
Is it a small universe
with two as yet unnamed stars?

I can’t tell you.
You must determine which of these
drab colors are real,
and which are the flotsam and jetsam
of the life before us.

The weeds must be growing
through the slats of the porch,
and they must go to seed
on their weak stems
in the heat of every summer.

A few loose bits of shade hang down
like ripped fabric from the slats.
They must be there
or the rest of the world
would not make sense

I’m sorry. I mean the world
will never make sense.
I’ve been possessed by a strange solitude.
Look further.
Behind the shirt you will see

a demon hiding
where you would imagine
in the brushstrokes of darkness.
He comes to visit
when you least expect.

Give him room.
Let him breathe
the darkness of the air.
Let him pull on
your clean, white shirt.

David B. Prather studied creative writing at Warren Wilson College.  He studied with Steve Orlen, Agha Shahid Ali, Tony Hoagland, and Joan Aleshire.  His debut collection of poems, We Were Birds, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Publishing.  His work has appeared in several publications, including Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, The American Journal of Poetry, Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, and many more.

This sunny day
not enough
seeming transparent
flimsy as a paper kite,
it’s a pretense, a hoax;
the sun’s a bright enough joke
to poke through
its evanescent scenery.

Only one child
under the bright sun
plays alone
in the garden;     ​
beyond the garden gate
well lost in the wide world

the playground is empty.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal, and a number of other on-line and in-print poetry magazines. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. He has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, N.Y. Harvey was born and worked in upstate New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.

Do you ever reminisce?
The endearing times we spent together
sitting on a bench in the park
amidst the towering trees
replete with yellowish jacaranda cascading down
Or how we drew figures on the sand
with the tips of our fingers
while wandering along the sea belt

You promised me
caressing my hands
that you would never let go of them
And, one day, you would clasp my arm
and walk with me to the farthest horizon
Thus we dreamt of the dawn of a beautiful day

Yet, it didn’t take that long for you
to fade from my sight
Along with those sketches on the sand
melting away in the harsh waves
that abruptly broke on the shore

And I have no idea,
how incorrigible my heart is
The harder I try to refrain from lingering
The more I find myself immersed
Despite the awareness of the bitter truth,
I keep praying again and again
waiting for that beautiful day to dawn

Previously published in Tuck Magazine (October 12, 2015)

Indunil Madhusankha is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Decision Sciences at the Faculty of Business of the University of Moratuwa. Even though he is academically involved with the subjects of Mathematics and Statistics, he also pursues a successful career in the field of English language and literature as a budding young researcher, reviewer, poet, and content writer. Basically, he explores the miscellaneous complications of the human existence through his poetry by focusing on the burning issues in contemporary society. Indunil’s works have been featured in many international anthologies, magazines, and journals.