by Lee Nash

pseudonym aside
we didn’t recognize

our cousin
on the cover of Cosmo

that lay on the nest
like any other magazine

waiting to be picked up,
pressed open down its spine –

the gloss of it on our lips,
its blade-thin edges smooth

its smell in our nostrils
acrid, addictive

yet inviting
as virgin snow –

neither did we recognize
her heavier build

her ghostly rouge
those slubs in her fabric of speech

the childish tee-shirt
and short white socks

by DavidKM

7 League Boots

No matter how fast Jack ran,

He couldn't outrun the electrons

Carrying his description

To every town the world over.

Wherever he went,

The wanted posters were already there.

If he'd had really good boots

He could have made it to other planets.

7 Trillion League boots might have done,

But he'd have needed an air supply

And who knew what else.

As it was he sold the boots,

Laid low, and took a job

by Bruce Boston

after Dali

i.

when a dream places its hand
on the neck of a man
the skin of the orchestra
quivers with anticipation

this is the thrum of vertebrate life
at its most prehensile
shorn of all pretense

an anthropomorphic land
where exaggerated musculatures
and graphic terrors
strain for release

engorged loaves of bread
lie draped with carrion flies

the sleeping bones of geology
rise up like stilts in procession

by Sara Backer

This Is Just to Add

by Sara Backer

The Man Who Is Never Wrong

He shreds paper into a top hat,
waves his wand, and pulls out a white rabbit

assured of his talent in misdirection. He, too,
watches his hand with the wand, ignoring

his hand in the hat. A magician is never wrong.
He adroitly shifts the world from round to flat,

several lies ahead of fact-checkers,
truth-seekers, and women who fall in love

with him by proxy for the idea that change is easy.
The man who is never wrong has no qualms

by Ciarán Parkes

Writing a letter to you
from hospital,
quoting Edgar Allan Poe:
'Helen, thy beauty is to me...'

I was nine or eight.
I never sent it.
I remember a warm glow,
saying your name to the child psychologist:
my best friend, yes...

A star that didn't move or fade all night,
watching it through
the big window; the sleeping beds
all around me
like ships at sea.

235th Weekly Poetry Contest

by Johann F. Potgieter

under threat of death
he built his house
upon a fault

235th Weekly Poetry Contest

by rickjstassi

so far, my God, so far away,
your closeness recedes from yesterday.
but, alas, as much as I feel spurned,
I am certain that my back is turned.

234th Weekly Poetry Contest

by KosmicKKWRogers

you sleep where gusted winds
are likely,
outside
five seconds

of finding the right
slit not allowing darkness
to take the room.
night is not
lonely

with mountains
to the west,
ghosts all
to the east, far

behind–
what else is keeping you awake?
count carcasses

across beige range
swirled
with transparent rivers,
meteorite paths…

with a roared
arrival,
overnight guests

by JP Davies

In the mariners’ church,
those dredged from the sea
laid out like fresh catch.

Identified by candlelight,
dried foam at their mouth,
the sea changed them.

Carried to the limits of water,
the waves rescinded their promise,
leaving them white as whalebone;

naked, seeing lastly
the ultramarine world
they occupied completely.

Ship impossibly stalled overhead,
skulking like some legendary creature
in the reachless dropdown light.