Rain

After evensong, her steps are soft on the stairs, and I will denounce these risers with their dips in the middle; it’s been centuries; couldn’t they be repaired now, o ye archbishops? Through the light-coloured thin-glass panes, I can see the skies darkening: how am I supposed to get her home in a storm, my newly blind friend with her damnable tumour? We will be like those lost old farts in the wilderness. My friend shifts her foot towards a stair, seeking. Let the rain fall gently on us, I think; let it fall like a hymn sung in evening.

From Guest Contributor Colleen Addison

Listening History

Abruptly and without my bidding, Alexa announces from her place on the shelf that she’s going to play a selection of music based on my “listening history.” She says it like it’s a good thing. What I might’ve accepted yesterday now for some reason feels kind of intrusive, a digital home invasion. As I fret over the possibility that my computer devices have designs on me, my grandsons, ages 5 and and 11, collapse on the couch, clutching their sides and laughing. They know something I’d momentarily forgotten, that here are only three states of matter, solid, liquid, and farts.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest poetry books are The Horse Were Beautiful, available from Grey Book Press, and Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems from Redhawk Publications.