By Alan C. Smith There are poems hiding under the clothes strewn on the floor of my bedroom, under the open unpaid bills, caked dead skin in corner sills, many legged wasp-red creatures with stings. I tiptoe through in darkness lest I trample them, get stung, inject with punishing pain, potent poison. There are poems hidden in my water-heater closet under the dust bunnies and petrified roaches on their backs, crisscrossed legs tight to their abdomens, poems squirming in the

By Zofia Koren Here, in the town that life forgot, Beware, O, dreamers of this place, — where lovers, weavers go to rot. Here, puddles pool in hollow heads, Stillborn of fouled liquified thoughts, — still and born of spore-spreading dreads. O, Fear feeds on the wretched lot, Festering fools who fumble in, To the town that life forgot. An early grave awaits you there, A death so foul — so void of soul, It eats your heart and strips you bare. Fools’ll twist your tendons as a kn

By Arran Potts Thinking about the end of the world, dad idly pours coffee onto an anthill. Perched against the peppered stones of a ruined abbey; he feels the sharp edges of endings that line his skin. Clouds of crows croak and bark in the air around him. Ravens rustle in the trees; while jackdaws and rooks settle like shadows on the yellowed grass. ‘We could eat them, I suppose. We could lure them and hunt them and farm them to survive. Pull out their black feathers, rip off