by Miles T. Ranter

Some bugs have big heads, whereas others have fangs
that pierce their own kind; some form sizable gangs
which attack other gangs; and then some are ascetic,
some puny, some tough, and some truly athletic.

One can swivel its head and, resembling a nun
in a trance, is as still as a stick. Who would run
from a stick? Yet its deadly front legs full of spikes
will grab beetles and flies, even hummingbirds. Yikes!

by Miles T. Ranter

by JP Davies

The men at the street-side café
do not look up from their cards
until the old woman’s shadow
drips from their table.

Knuckle-bones for dice,
smoke coils from their coffee
like thin souls on the rise.

Black skirts scatter leaves,
birds pulse in broken trees,
birds explode at her voice:

Our dead are your dead,
turns her head to the tomb-niches,
to the flame-flickered portraits
of mothers and fathers.

Down the hill
children play Vasco da Gama
at the last of waves

by Miles T. Ranter

There’s plenty of it on this sphere of ours,
in solid state, in liquid, and in steam.
Life’s brimming with it, from lobelia stem
to giant redwood bole. I’m free with oars

to row a boat, or in a canoe to paddle
to Boston, Antwerp—anywhere I wish.
If I get mucky, I’ll jump right in and wash
or watch the buntings bathing in a puddle

by rickjstassi

by Fabiyas M V

by JP Davies

The shock of continents.
Film over the eye, the steam
of Rio De Janeiro.

Airport tannoy drips slow evil.
Currency on short loan.
Gringo in each clenched fist.

Cristo Redentor, arms deadlocked scales–
good and evil in equal weight.
Copacabana crawls.

Carioca boy of eight or nine opens taxi doors,
heavy with the twisted spire of his head;
broken-windowed, limbs lopped trunks.

I offer Five Reals and no answer.
Eyes in a doorway,
his father had hoped higher.

by Heinrich von Wolfcastle

X is a funny letter-
not funny like how cartoon characters die
with X's for eyes,
but funny like how you can take the letter S
and fuse it with laughter
to make slaughter.

X is funny, you see,
because it lays its black skin against white sheets
of paper with its arms outstretched
and its legs open-
a seductress asking, begging, pleading
for attention.

by Miles T. Ranter

I feel no chill. The trees are still
    as leafy as September.
The last cold spell that I can tell of—
    well, I can’t remember.

Ticks and skeeters, stealthy feeders,
    meet their gluttonous needs,
caterpillars crawl and trillers
    clitter in the weeds,

by Miles T. Ranter

The lion of the city came to feed
at night on sounds of trains and taxi honks.
He smelled the chili dogs. He had no need
to hang with all his zoo friends in the Bronx.

The lion of the city, belly grumbling,
padded on velvet paws along the street.
In echo to his belly, trains were rumbling
under the jungle molded of concrete.