Few Good Things by Thomas Zimmerman

Like tiny lights by Jolene Knapp from Flickr

A sluggish walk in dewy woods with Ann

and Trey, who nearly snagged a fresh-dead bird.

The sun burned off some brain fog, thoughts began

to breach, and then submerged without a word.

Unshowered, stubble-chinned, I had a bad

night’s sleep: Trey licking, barking in his dreams.

Or maybe it was me, poor poet sad

enough to nurse his ironies and memes.

And now black coffee’s coursing through my wan

and tepid blood, spring-gleam in glacial shade.

Yet ennui clings like moss, chill hanging on.

Not hard to see how few good things get made.

How long this search for beauty, truth, gods’ signs?

Ad infinitum? No, just fourteen lines.

***

Thomas Zimmerman teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His latest book is Dead Man's Quintet (Cyberwit, 2023).  https://thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/

La renarde de Cathy Garcia Canalès

 

La renarde de Cathy Garcia Canalès

 

 

Elle songe la belle renarde, elle songe, juchée sur la lune a son amant coiffé comme un poisson, aux banquises cosmiques, au champagne, aux pattes de poulets et aux dents de lion. Elle songe la belle renarde vêtue de rouge à son sac usé de secrets et aux mystères bridés de son extrême Orient. Elle songe à la flamme dans la froidure de l’hiver et contemple la grande débâcle de son cœur.

***

Tout :http://cathygarcia.hautetfort.com/

Art : https://gribouglyphesdecathygarcia.wordpress.com/

http://materiossagesartnaturel.hautetfort.com/
http://ledecompresseuratelierpictopoetiquedecathygarcia.hautetfort.com/
Conseil littéraire & aide à l’écriture : http://cathygarciacanalesconseil.hautetfort.com/
Association : http://associationeditionsnouveauxdelits.hautetfort.com/
Photo : http://imagesducausse.hautetfort.com/

Landscape for Posterity by Fabrice Poussin

What will those scientists think
in a thousand years when they come to
the buried grounds of northern Texas.

They once found dinosaurs
arrowheads, sacred grounds and
great artifacts in those lands.


The great sequoia and giant redwoods
today dwarfed by the unlikely metal
to save a green earth with steel wings.


What will future archaeologists say
when they discover the ruins of
electric powerhouses and rusted cans?


What an odd excavated land they will see
in the same delight that was once Darwin’s,
at the food of ancient wind turbines.

***

Poussin is a professor of French and World Literature. His work in poetry and photography has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and hundreds of other publications worldwide. Most recently, his collections In Absentia, and If I Had a Gun, Half Past Life were published in 2021, 2022, and 2023 by Silver Bow Publishing.

Ramble by Texas Fontanella

 

 

 

***

 

A wealth of Texas Fontanella's work is available in the Otoliths archives. With Brandstifter, they have a book, Black Shores, available through Red Fox Press.

A cyberpunk poem by Volodymyr Bilyk

 

It's a machine-generated text redesigned to become human-like for machine-detection algorithms. And then I ran it through semantic analyzer to get it all crayoned to hell.

Pre-dawn by Steve Klepetar

 

Photo by Artur Mordvinov form PxHere

If I were to see you again,
walking across the little
country road on your way
to the neighbor’s farm
to buy your milk, if I saw
you there, ghostly pale
in the pre-dawn,
what would I say, now
after all these years?
The guy who killed you
died by careful suicide
because his woman cheated
on him and he wanted
to leave a beautiful corpse.
So I’ve been told.
I imagine the theatrical
courtroom like something
from a TV drama, young
lawyers braying, gray judge
leaning on the bench.
All ghosts now,
the living and the dead.
If I could call you back
to substance, reframe you
from this vague dream,
where would you ride?
Would you wander off
into the remaining woods,
your black dogs come back
darting around your heels in joy?