The dark summer clouds are roaring and hanging. She dreamed again of the white-Walled room…

borage tomato maracuya pepino dulce and lemon home is an island, a corner of peace, my small imperfect paradise and the city roars outside, blistering under the sun   helicopters coil the sky searching for a man on the run chopping the air the children bewildered they paralyze borage tomato maracuya pepino dulce and lemon   my nerves strain, suffering abounds, a terror spun from violence and gangs and neighbors not having what would suffice and the city roars outside, blister

helping a friend with a bed out the door of their rental. the van parked in rain on the corner. their home like ants with a grasshopper being taken to bits. biking the quayside and toward a small house out in eastwall. all pieces about, and leaned on in corners, of their lives (I don’t see them often since they moved out to here). a garden as messy as a turned over pizzabox – beautiful to leave when you leave. they are selling the bed and have promised delivery – it's the bit

Join me, my wonder, palm to palm a walk in the wind with me under palms   or pines or firs, such mercy skin to skin, a thirst holding fingers and palms   our rhythm, our breathing. Walk with me through ribbon grass and leaves palm   to palm before you eyelash me, flash me your blue-eyed smile. Feel it in your palm   when crunching gravel, balancing on logs— come walk with me. Feel the quiver in palms   that slide above the forest floor, our music our silent hymns. The wind is

Tree leaves clatter on the attic and wake you up this morning, that might be fragile otherwise.   A tile rattles – not in your brain, and geese are flying in a V or A, a cloud collides with the sunlight.   A cyclist on the river dike makes a u-turn, left or right. He asks me for resilience in limbs and mind.   The yard path is full of my gold, sees the beech from which it falls. “At my feet,” says a human being.   Ah, if I had those – who speaks? – I’d be happy to play games.

How do we capture experience? Trap words in a jar and seal it tight?   Words trapped in a jar and sealed up tight are muzzled, silenced and never heard.   I don’t want to be silent, not heard. Let my shouts echo across canyons.   Sounds – even whispers – echo canyons. The message can alter the landscape.   Now we witness the altered landscape. What we once knew no longer applies.   The world before no longer applies. The clocks have all melted – time is merged.   The clocks h

Capture for me in vivid and moving verse The essence of a summer day, distilled Down to the happiness in a honeybee’s dance. Sing for me in lyrical ecstasy of that conga line Of advancing tesserae moving together In this living mosaic of a hive.   Let me feel the unbound and jumping joy In bursting white and red blooms, Of pistil peeking, tender and trembling, From deep within a flower’s core, The passion of the beating wing, Pathos in each antenna’s twitch.   Note with me th

His feet touch earth, and the soil recalls his heft, every step a soft murmur of unwilling return. The sky unmoved...

“Unhand her, vagabond,” was my one line  in the school play. I had the part of the cop,  a minor role compared to Beth Levine’s,  the heroine, or Billy Wiesenkopf’s  the vagabond. Still, I took my part seriously.  So although he forgot to take her hand, right on cue I yelled, “Unhand her, vagabond,” and it struck me and everyone else that my line made no sense. Then I knew: this is the kind of mistake that will end the world. A question of bad timing will hang in the air like

Porch light haloed  in moths, house leaking into the night.  Inside, my father drinks, dark rum cleaving memory from throat,  I take it all back. We do what we have to,  to stay alive.  John Pring  is an author and poet based in the UK. His work has been featured in The Passionfruit Review, MONO, Oroboro, Dolorem Ipsum, Letter Review, Qu Literary, Banyan Review, Tomahawk Creek Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Rising Phoenix Review, and others.

Like supernovae artists, clouds disperse behemoth art,

Look out, Ophiuchus, Voyager’s near! Earth has randomly shot some gold your way. We hope our sounds and music suit your ear and you’ll get back to us without delay. The complete instructions are included for how to hook it up to get your tunes. Note that, if depiction seems deluded, we tried to use the simplest of runes. We showed ourselves as naked, but, in fact, much of the time, we really do wear clothes, and we omitted fingernails, for tact, since claws convey predation,

five thousand feet above Sing Sing, you talk of your father, how thieves left him to die

Figures sprawl around the fountain, stretching out Like cracks across gray stones,

A city with no factories smolders in the afternoon, Above it, a dome of exhaust rises without a train

Golden brown parasols clustered near oak stumps, as if an artist

The dark woods invite me in to walk on pine needles between tall spruce and fir,

Without a hope of getting it right, the lake, calm and round, like a patch of mirror...

the week before you should have returned it you died without warning, the last pages

… my imagination spins entire lives lived in the infinite spaces between seconds.”