by John Greening

‘Who ever heard of a pleasant dream?
~ Robinson Jeffers

Once again, winding them in and about
the bare branches of our dead apple tree
across the dormant cherry and into an
erupting hazel, I thread buds on a string

trying to recall what pleasant thing
I was searching for in last night’s castle,
unable to retrieve from wherever I buried it
that story with its friendly opening faces.

I twist them up to hang there in the spaces
left by the squirrels and only a vague picture
(like those photos the light had interfered with
in our childhood albums, a ghostly smear)

of a crowd, of a woman taking a broom to clear
display cases, of a hurrying old man
inviting me in Arabic. It all
fades to darkness. But the dream was good.

And so are those pear-drop lights of childhood
that clunk to life and catch for me a distant
era of sweet carols and lit candles
balancing on spruce. This LED

obliterates what it thinks we need not see,
the real stars and their stories, hanging there
like so many irretrievable dreams,
follies a human sky can do without.

John Greening is a British poet, a Bridport, Arvon and Cholmondeley winner with over twenty collections, including two from Carcanet. The Interpretation of Owls: Selected Poems 1977-2022 (Baylor University, USA, ed. Gardner) came out in March. He has edited Geoffrey Grigson, Edmund Blunden, Iain Crichton Smith and U.A.Fanthorpe, plus several critical studies and anthologies, most recently Contraflow: Lines of Englishness. His essays, Vapour Trails, appeared in 2020 and his Goethe translations in 2022 from Arc. There is a forthcoming Rilke. You can connect with John at johngreening.co.uk, on Facebook (john.greening.10), and on Twitter (GreeningPoet).

by Adam Haver

A train of geese
tugged
by an invisible
hand,
along a track
of stars.

They sound like
gossip,
if gossip had
wings,
and complained
of wind.

Adam Haver is a poet living in the Rocky Mountains. His poetry received the Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry and an award from the Utah Division of Arts & Museums. His writing has been featured in Popshot Quarterly, Poetry Scotland, Ballast, and elsewhere. He is deeply interested in wolf conservation and enjoys exploring languages by translating their verse. You can connect with him on X: @ac_haver.

by Dr. Alice Twemlow

Droppings—green, chalked.
Goose duty for a morgen’s sward
of plush grass grazed
before arrowing on south.

Logs, bundles, tumble.
Unfastening into the brack water,
where salt meets sweet
and clay slip-silts its cycle.

Deposits dissolve.
Phosphates prosper, mineral milk spills
scud the puddles,
exchange with counterfeit clouds.

Soft compost, still strives
Though the third tide seeps, tithes due;
skewing skyward
with each plunge-suck of my boot.

Droppings—in suspension.
Solute seeds yearn to disperse
over the dyke,
boot-boosted to drier muds.

British-born Dr. Alice Twemlow lives in The Netherlands where she leads the Design & the Deep Future readership, a project situated at the intersection of design history, creative practice research, and the environmental humanities that seeks to contribute interventions and imaginaries to climate justice research. Twemlow is a member of the Amsterdam-based International Writers Collective. One of her poems was chosen as one of the seven Honorary Mentions in the 2021 Fish Poetry Prize. She is writing a series of poems about punctuation marks and a novel about a cantankerous octogenarian wild swimmer with a dark secret, which is based on the events of the Great Flood which decimated much of the south of the Netherlands in 1953. She is on Instagram @alicetwemlow

by Bobbi Lurie

don’t die so easy pilfering pills
still wanting to live hanging on
by a thread reprimanding myself lack
of courage brings deep regret service
to others is the first rule
seeing this homeless woman on the
street in front of me murder
me murder me murder me and
those who emulate but spare themselves
a letter such as this requires
so much silence inside me now
those who emulate but spare themselves
when the light goes down it
is best to keep your brilliance
hidden from view my broken body

Bobbi Lurie is the author of four poetry collections: The Book I Never Read, Letter from the Lawn, Grief Suite, and the morphine poems.

by Dale Cottingham

Searing, seared: where he shrivels from her
after trying one last time. One way the self, having
grown used to a surround, sees it—

suddenly, starkly, stunned by it—

for what it is.

Outside, cars, trucks on the Interstate
downshift, over-shift, make efforts to slow down,
speed up, heading to a future,
what can be bright, or painful,
yet to be written.

There’s a passing that we sometimes stumble
into, sometimes we think we know what to do. There are
shadows that come overhead, burden us for a time, then leave.
He lies flat on his back, silent but thoughts race,
more than electric, more than lucid, more like
hitting bottom, like he’s reached a crossroad:
how will he live now.

Dale Cottingham has published poems and reviews of poetry collections in many journals, including Prairie Schooner, Ashville Poetry Review and Rain Taxi. He is a Pushcart Nominee, a Best of Net Nominee, the winner of the 2019 New Millennium Award for Poem of the Year and was a finalist in the 2022 Great Midwest Poetry Contest. His debut volume of poems Midwest Hymns, launched in April, 2023. It is a finalist in the 2023 Best Book Awards for Poetry. He lives in Edmond, Oklahoma.