The Winter People, by Misky

The Winter People
by Misky

Winter wrapped us in a blanket,
into foggy black and white trees.

Twig-fingers, a writer’s ache
on sheets of white paper.

Fog. Fog. A silent semaphore
language

that reduces
the sun to a small white stone.

It tosses ice on my flame, and
turns rainbows black and white.

And the clouds
are hanging upside down,

floundering in frozen fields,
and in-between tufts of weeds.

Winter. It’s no longer looking
for a place to settle.

‘Misky’ lives in the UK surrounded by the rolling hills of West Sussex. She never buys clothing without pockets. Her work is regularly published by Waterways – Ten Penny Players, Visual Verse Anthology, and Vita Brevis Press. Her photography is published with Unsplash.

Leaving, by Larry Oakner

Leaving
by Larry Oakner

Autumn falls and dances
spinning pirouettes.
This is the season’s ballet
of death and awaited resurrection.
What was once verdant
is now sere
and clutters the gutters
in shades of crimson, salmon,
mustard, golden, orange.
I am grey
and when my Fall finally comes
and I am swept away
there will be no greening sprout of me
come Spring,
only memories
on these leaves of paper.

Larry Oakner draws his sources from his life and popular culture. With a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from UCLA and training to be a professor, Oakner has written and published poetry for well over four decades. He is the author of two books of poems, including SEX LOVE RELIGION (Blind Tattoo Press), The 614th Commandment (under his pseudonym, Eleazar Baruch) (Blind Tattoo Press), along with the chapbook, The Canticles of Private Lucius Swan, (Pen & Anvil Press). His poems have appeared in Red Eft Review, WINK, The Oddville Press, Pink Litter, Tricycle: Buddhist News, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Lost Coast Review and many others. Oakner lives in New York.

A Sketch of a Wilted Flower, by Timothy Resau

A Sketch of a Wilted Flower
by Timothy Resau

Somewhere in this city, she stares,
spending her dreams like pennies.
Months are between us—
Slowly we’ve become strangers.
I can only wonder where she is?
Who listens to her voice?
She remains constant, steadfast, the same—
a memory.

Timothy Resau has been internationally published. Most recently his poems and prose have appeared in Sideways Poetry Magazine, Sylvia Magazine, The Beautiful Space, Loch Raven Review, Poetry Quarterly, Babel Tower Notice Board, Native Skin, Better than Starbucks, among others, and forthcoming in Fictional Café, and Burrow. He’s just completing a novel Dirty Blonde.