Winter

I peered suspiciously beyond the chipped lacquer of the oaken balcony. I had seen this before. The wind was coming.

Somehow, this place had now become my opus. I mean to say of course that it had supplanted my imagination. The verdurous landscape below appeared at times surreal; dioramic. And yet, at almost the same moment, conscious; alive to the rhythmic pulsations of the earth. Living in the trees was an idyllic stillness; in the air, an inscrutable entropy.

Soon, without warning, the wind would be be upon us, and a pervasive cold would grip the house for many days.

From Guest Contributor L.S. Worthy

If This World Would Allow It, I Would Curl You Into Me, Caught From Flinging

If This World Would Allow it, I would Curl You Into Me, Caught from Flinging

I will build a catapult against instruction, an implication of backward, showing you from the cupped seat to base, flat and without lacquer, just how far necessity sounds through an ear’s tunnels, when the breath propelling the assertion is something past love. Sentiment is reactionary, but I promise fullness and recompense after the flight. Thatches of bendy straws still wait, splayed in divided nests under my pillow to serve as extra reminders after you inevitably ask: “What does it mean to land, to really land?”

From Guest Contributor, Kelli Allen

Kelli Allen’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the US and internationally. She served as Managing Editor of Natural Bridge and holds an MFA from the University of Missouri. She is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Allen gives readings and teaches workshops throughout the US. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, from John Gosslee Books (2012) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.