I did not like to be held as a child trapped in my mother's lap. Her arms constricting, every fidget of my body. Nowhere for my head to go, except the shallow blanket of flesh and bone cradling her hummingbird heart.   It beat like a windstorm. It shifted And could gush like molasses or spit like lighting and no matter what I could not move just lay there eyes wide open, feeling everything a child shouldn’t   It did not mean I did not love her I just hated thinking, that’s al

High above Locarno’s port with outside eyes to east at  midnight: fires of the skies  come speak to me in staccato  forks flashed seconds apart.  All people down, radio silence around, except for  sonic summer booms that trail up to five beats past of lightening strobes in code  to lake black heights.  A Norse god’s gift to pinch the south. I doze to rolling burst and durm, and wake  upfreshed before the dawn. July-November 2021 Lake Maggiore, Switzerland Rob Bunzel  lives in

Bodies heavy with rifles, we gorged on meat, fresh from the river and yellow fields, just boys learning to carry  death on our tongues,  marrow to spit  back into the world,  pale bones  leaving the throat like a prayer. 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 othe