by Andrea Tillmanns

After the rain, the air tastes like summer, blowing in through the open window and enveloping you in night. The quiet grunting of hedgehogs in the garden, above which bats flit silently through the dark. A single blackbird sings timid notes from the fir tree before settling down to sleep.

These quiet moments write notes inside you, which you may transfer to sheet music and later to strings, and even later release to other people who listen to you in small groups and perhaps remember: the taste of the air after the rain and the summer night that envelops them.

* * *

ANDREA TILLMANNS lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. More information can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de.

by Terry Trowbridge

I did not know my kid likes kingfishers
until, 24 years old, they saw one
flying over the orchards,
tilting itself during a long glide,
shoulders facing the sun
within earshot of Lake Ontario.

My kid was all smiles and surprise,
noting they did not know we had kingfishers,
remarking on the bird panoply that soars above us.

Now they live away, at college, home weekly.
One of my privileges of parenthood
is learning what they see here, renewed,
educated to reinterpret our place.

* * *

Canadian farmer TERRY TROWBRIDGE's poems have appeared in CV2, The New Quarterly, Dalhousie Review, Nashwaak Review, The Great Lakes Review, Pamenar Press, The Ex-Puritan, Studies in Social Justice, and ~200 more places. He is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for funding during the polycrisis.

by John Grey

As I nod off,
a white egret
occupies the edge of my eye— 
no sound, 
only the peace
of being stone-like
in the shade,
a body open to breeze,
but forgotten by daylight.
 
The bird moves
surreptitiously--
a flash of wing,
a flick of beak,
that tuning fork
for the hidden pulse
of fish and frog.
 
I’m busy with memory
so I miss the kill,
the sudden lunge,
the silver writhing
swallowed whole.
 
The egret pauses
for a moment to digest
then resumes its ritual
of stillness and motion.
 
What’s instinct for a bird
is my way of thinking.

* * *

JOHN GREY is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters, and Between Two Fires are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, White Wall Review and Trampoline.

by Bonnie Demerjian

His glinty eye,
alert for the shiny,
avid for the curious.
He’s a connoisseur of beauty
and feels no guilt.

I too am a collector— 
subjects for poems,
bright objects of delight
brought home to my nest, my desk
to sort and muse upon.

* * *

BONNIE DEMERJIAN writes from her home in the Tongass National Forest, a place that continually nourishes her writing. Her poetry has appeared in Tidal Echoes, Alaska Women Speak, Blue Heron Review and October Hill Magazine, among others.

by Michael Brockley

My white German shepherd’s ghost sleeps in the passenger seat as I wrestle my road-weary Silverado onto the Ghost Road. We have survived half-resurrection and tombstone blues in magic cities. And practiced nighthawk songs with devils in blue dresses. Sadie barks as I shuffle through the biography of a phantom. As I grope for the name of Bluebeard’s first wife. Lady Blue or Black Cherry. Last night a blue angel serenaded us with a song coaxed from a rose drum. I’ll let Sadie sleep through the cross-dog hours. Through the three shades of dream. Even ghost dogs get the blues.

* * *

MICHAEL BROCKLEY is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Prose Poem, Superpresent, and Dreams of Rust and Glass, Volume 2. Poems are forthcoming in Last Stanza Poetry Journal and confetti. 

by Chip Houser

We are the occupants of the village you created, the village you abandoned. We are here because of you, but we are not yours. We are not your property or your prisoners, your mistakes or your consequences, your problems or your solutions. We are all of these things, and not. We are here because of you, but we are not here for you.

We are the street cobbles, heel-polished and moss-ringed. We are the cats, languid wanderers, sprawling on sun-warmed stoops. We are the dry leaves skipping along empty streets.

We are the rocks cleared from surrounding fields, set into walls. We are the mice, eyes shining in the damp shadow of a broken terracotta pot. We are the grapevines climbing the tower, roots grasping plaster.

We are the brick archways, mortar receding like gums from the pocked teeth of our inverted smiles. We are the lizards, darting out of sight. We are the lichen blooming across clay roof tiles.

We are the empty windows, the sagging doors, the crumbling defensive walls. We are the wild boar, foraging for pomegranate and fig in overgrown gardens. We are the pines, stretching for more light.
​
We are not your village, we are ourselves, and we are all each other. We are the village now, together, and we have grown beyond your reach.

* * *

CHIP HOUSER's short fiction has appeared in Pulp Literature, Bourbon Penn, Every Day Fiction, and elsewhere. Red Bird Chapbooks published a collection of his very short fiction in 2023 called “Dark Morsels.”