by Sarah Das Gupta

Witches steal the milk from cattle,
shapeshift into brown hares.
In the hidden witches’ garden
grow pink foxglove fingers,
yellow clumps of spindly ragwort,
deadly to man or beast.
Witches ride in the Wild Hunt
high in inky darkness,
they form dark silhouettes
across the face of the harvest moon.
In elder trees they hide,
under the spiked blackthorn,
among monkshood and aconitum,
mixing strange concoctions,
bringing certain death and gloom.
Yellow and red flames
consumed them once.
Yet in the darkness of the pinewood,
in that other land under the hill,
they survive, to curse and cure us still.

* * *

Sarah Das Gupta is a slowly emerging poet from Cambridge, UK who started writing a year ago when her mobility became limited to 20 metres. Her work has been published in over 20 countries and she has been nominated this year for Best of the Net and a Dwarf Star award.

by Cortni Merritt

I saw you with the box today,
pink and mirrored,
dark-skinned figure,
twirling to that tune I know but not by name.
It was in your hand but it held something you'd forgotten or maybe misplaced,
a dream or a wish or a past person you thought you would be.
I pretended not to see you
wipe your eyes when you asked, 
"Do you think she'll like it?" and you whispered,
"my little girl." 
It was perfect, even though empty. 

* * *

Cortni is a mother, writer, editor, and college instructor living in Central Florida. She enjoys cats, karate, and a well-cooked curry. Find her at www.srdeditingservices.com.

by Lynn White

​Just a raindrop
falling,
falling into wetness.
A silvery teardrop
which splatters
then disappears
into wetness,
to become invisible
as if by magic.

​* * *

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. Visit Lynn's Facebook Poetry Page here. 

by Petra F. Bagnardi

Under the moonlight you showed me the line of your story;
it appeared not like the silvery path of a boy,
and it did not look like the tale of a purple girl.
It involved a complicated soul and the broken being of a human.
It took all your courage to tell me about your journey;
and for your brave honesty, I loved you.

* * *

Petra F. Bagnardi is a screenwriter, a theater playwright and actress, and a poet. She was short-listed in the Enfield Poets' Twentieth Anniversary Poetry Competition, and her poems are featured in numerous literary journals.

by John Grey

Trilling air
in morning fog
flutters the treetops.
 
Then mist lifts,
warblers emerge,
lake mirrors sky
from here
to the mountain foothills
 
And huge vistas
now encompass the small,
from a beetle on a leaf
to the roses in a garden.
 
The opaque has its charms
but clarity gives voice
to depth and distance
 
With light in abundance,
all colors are accounted for.
 
And ghosts are now people
with long lives ahead of them.

* * *

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.

by Joshua St. Claire

summer revival
a cicada
thrums down the sky

cosmic strings
a daddy-long-legs casts shadows
onto asbestos shingles

a common swallowtail floats
through the hydrangea sky
deepening blue

sunset
the horizon bent under
the weight of peaches

dog days
the islands of the Susquehanna
lost in their haze

Shakespeare in the park
a red-winged blackbird becomes
the king of infinite space 

the sky
growing violet at the edges
crowcaw

golden hour
an evening primrose blossoms
into deep time

the press of blue on blue hydrangea moon

* * *
​
Joshua St. Claire is an accountant from Pennsylvania. His haiku have been published broadly including in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Mayfly. His favorite thing to write about is the sky.

by E.C. Traganas

​That look of yours!
As if the whole forest
would bow in your presence 
willows waving their hands 
in salute, larch trees
snapping to attention,
a copper beech in deep,
resplendent curtsy.

How like an unsuspecting moth
was I, a simple speck
on that faraway bark;
Aiming high, flying straight 
and swift like a pin, burning,
falling dead at your feet.

Such were the magnets
of your eyes.

* * *

Author of the debut novel Twelfth House and Shaded Pergola, a collection of short poetry with original illustrations, E.C. Traganas has published in a multitude of literary journals. She enjoys a professional career as a Juilliard-trained concert pianist & composer, and is the founder/director of Woodside Writers, a literary forum based in New York.