Your Words Still in This Place

soon after we parted
but then against the General’s command
we drove the boy out beyond the salt flats
to the northern edge of the mountains
where he said for a thousand years
no one would wake him

you spoke you remembered
how he could not grow a mustache
not like the revolutionaries and caudillos
he could not clear his lungs
in the desert air
we stoned him for taunting the Chihuahua
stolen from Arango himself
but he loved his family name and honor
more than all men

Horizon Views

Ocean to horizon…
land to horizon…
a woman stands
between.

She stares at the distance
and dreams of where
driftwood was born
as its temporary home
snags her shore.

The Woman Lifted Her Water Jar

The woman
sat by the well,
weary and hot,
with droplets
falling from
her brow.
In her eyes
(if you looked
between heartbeats)
was a yearning
for someone
far away.
She was wistful,
with a tiny tear
welling up
underneath
her fragile face.
I could almost
hear his name
spoken
on the winds
of the desert.

Well of Souls

Robert Walton is a retired middle school teacher and a lifelong rock climber with many ascents in the Sierras and Pinnacles National Park. His publishing credits include works of science fiction, fantasy and poetry. Walton’s historical novel Dawn Drums won the 2014 New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best fiction and first place […]

Druid Dream #4

Mary Shanley is a poet/storyteller living in New York City. She has published four books and frequently publishes online and in print journals. Druid Dream #4 Let this be your baptism of wild mind, as you untangle yourself from the regimentation of multiplication tables. Walk into the emptiness without light. This may not feel as […]

Cliff Ruins

Kyle Laws’ collections include This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017); So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015); Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014); My Visions Are As Real As Your Movies, Joan of Arc Says to Rudolph Valentino (Dancing Girl Press, 2013); and George Sand’s Haiti (co-winner of Poetry West’s 2012 award). Faces of Fishing Creek is forthcoming in 2018 from Middle […]

Talk of Desert at a Music Festival

Debarun Sarkar lives in Calcutta and spends most of his time juggling between freelancing and writing. Recent works have appeared in or are forthcoming in 1:1000, Visual Verse, Former People, Burningword, The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Your One Phone Call, Wild Plum, Tiny Donkey, among others. Talk of Desert at a Music Festival I […]

Fig

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over a thousand of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. He lives in […]

birding / breakage

living so close to nature nature is forced to live too close to us barking, braying, biting animals on wheels endless animals — ourselves and others crushed beneath the treads in the desert, murderers steal her name slip into the crown of Isis, an empty throne a horned sun, a winged kite play-pretend at Calipha […]

On Floaters and Flashes

I’m filling my Earl Grey tea cup this morning at work when the weirdest water cooler conversation bubbles up. “Let me ask you a strange question.” I smile nervously, “OK.” “You ever close your eyes and press your fingers into your eyelids?” “Yeah, fireworks light show.” “Exactly!” He flutters his eyes closed and lightly demonstrates […]

Visitant

Literary pilgrims welcome

desert