Untitled Tanka – by Robert Witmer
Each spring I wait
The blossoms come
And go one after another
Like the years
You are away
California Is A Fucking Home Wrecker – by Emily Watterson
We are naked
Together
When we are fully clothed
Save exposed toes
And twenty feeble fingers
Tracing spine
And greeting our corresponding prints with
Familiar and distinct satisfaction
No sound
But the plead and pull of gravitating hips and lips
Inconveniently cracked
And revived by your invigorating stem of hand
There are no words
But frequent upward turns of moistened mouth
And the occasional clash of bare and ruthless bone
Your face rests on my unembellished shoulder blade
And it is the most intimate we have been in months
We don’t speak
But you know
That I will never say goodbye
Visiting L.A. – by Richard King Perkins II
I’m fond of the ones who leave never having said a word—
the ones who speak the silent language fluently
at the edge of the slippage between home and homelessness.
We struggle to escape the burning continent.
The city remains stoic—
the oldest appeals condensed on the shores of La Brea.
I think I can live with you beyond the repressed ruins;
ownerless, abstract,
having captured the soft knock, the distortion of joy,
a convergence of bone burning in ancient sunbeams.
Animatronic replicas explain all—
wondrous creatures without material needs, the heft of soul.
Worth Your Attention? – by Mark Danowsky
Music trumps information
according to the author of Bug Music
We will re-listen, he says
when we will not re-read
Music came first, after all
and does not even require an instrument
But so much music is noise
just as words can be clutter
and certain plants are weeds
Black Sun Rising – by Darrell Black
(acrylic on canvas)Barking Trees – by Josh Brown
The trees talk to me
“Hey, fucker,”
They whisper
What the hell?
I don’t know what to tell them
Maybe fuck off
But no
I don’t want those trees to die
I love them
No matter how rude
They bark at me.