AS BLACK AS WHITE / DREAM

Phantasms of the mind
stir restless in the night,
and lead down chiseled steps,
into a room, pure white.

Run hands across the walls
encased in sheets of ice,
the window disappears,
with slowly fading light.

You turn to find the door,
the entrance to this tomb,
the portal disappears,
no exit from this room.

You’re standing there alone
in pristine purity,
so cold, so far removed,
it’s emptiness you see.

You hear a voice that calls
your name on that cold night
and see the open door
that leads up to the light.

Phantasms of the mind
stir restless in the night,
let sleeping minds divine
the blackness in the white.

MaryLee Treistay

BIRD PAINTER

I didn’t use to like the ones with birds in them –
she’d paint alluring skies and water – minerally
brimming glints – then seem to feel she had
to punctuate their ambiguity with some expected

order – carefully assorted gulls: culled illustrations
out of greeting cards – obligatory birdies dotting
gleaming shards of sky and sea to add cliché
to the topography: some expected notion of what

ought to be above, beyond, around an ocean:
turned the beach from vague-and-haunting-lone
to Jones. But I was an elitist prig. Now I look at
each meticulously painted sprig of wing and breast

and tail and beak: and almost hear my mother
speak: each fine careful flying thing belies her
death: bears witness to what’s left – lifts the gulls
and deftly keeps them up: her artist’s breath.

Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett)

UMBRELLA

Umbrellas pop open across the city
One by one, like blessings.
I count them
like rain drops.

If the umbrellas burst upon my tongue
they would taste like lemon juice
bright and acidic
falling rain.

One umbrella remains closed
angled sharp against the wall

holds the sunshine close within its folds.

Lily Chan (BlissBuddha)

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