Meg Pokrass: Swimming Pool Boys

Easier to live in the shade with our dogs

than beneath the sun with the boys.

To sit in the sun and feel our skin crinkle.

Feel what it would be like to be old

and dappled by time, or

sad and alone like our mothers.

Boys clumped around swimming pools

with their haunted eyes, lolling their

white-coated tongues like cows,

stared at our nipples as if they had entered

a strange new living room.

These are mine, we learned to say

to the animals who lived in the sun.

Meg Pokrass is an expat American writer living in the Scottish Highlands. A two-time winner of the Blue Light Book Award, her work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including New England Review, Electric Literature, Five Points, waxwing, Plume, RATTLE,  Atrium, Cottonmouth, Unbroken and elsewhere. 

Irma Kurti: Petals

Tell me, did you touch these palm trees, Dad?

Did you look at the immense field of lilies?

Did you stop for an instant with the camera

in your hand to stare at the slice of sea that

appears in the space between the buildings?

Did you think of me in that instant, just as

you are now my fixed thought? Did you

marvel at the peace of the green trees? Did

you try to decipher at dawn the rustling of

leaves?

I gather fallen leaves from the ground and

hold flower petals in my hands. They are

the few and rare memories left from your

walks then.

Irma Kurti is a poet, writer, lyricist, journalist, and translator. She is a naturalized Italian and lives in Bergamo, Italy. Kurti has published 119 works, including books of poetry, fiction, and translations. She is one of the most translated and published Albanian poets. Her books have been published in 24 countries

Phil Wood: Snail Trails in the Rockery

Eyes, located on tentacles,

see light and dark, shadow.

No colour flowers their world,

no focus to see the details.

And yet the lower tentacles...

Touch will navigate their quest.

Crevices to cross, mountains

to ascend, moist leaves delight.

Intimacy is filigreed in silver.

Am I to resent their success?

Phil Wood was born in Wales. His lifestyle interests include learning German, watercolour painting, and chess. 

Holly Day: Da Capo

He’s too afraid to name the storm clouds

building up behind her eyes: it’s another migraine, it’s not,

it’s something worse, and they won’t give it a name,

this feeling, even with the ease

that classifying dangerous things sometimes brings.

Even with a name, it’s still cancer rotting her out,

even with a name, it’s hard to talk about

like an unwanted pregnancy, like an impending abortion,

like a dog you have to get rid of. If only they could talk about it,

if only we could talk about it, if, if. If.

Your hand brushes the spot in my breast

where the lump can’t be removed, the knot

that wells up bigger than our future, bigger than the two of us

could ever be together. In your sleep, you whimper

as your wrap your palm around my poisonous breast, pull me close;

this is as close as we will ever be

from this point on.

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in The NoSleep podcast, Talking River, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in  Minnesota, Hugo House in Washington, and the Indiana Writers Center.