Someone I care for passed away
But that isn’t true on social media today
Their birthday notice continues to lives on
Compelling “friends” to comment upon
So I learn the flesh may rot but we never really die
When we can still be liked in the digital by and by.
Kent Oswald writes, edits, walks the dog, and pedagogs in NYC. Additional words at kentoswald.com.
Starlight city nestling inland
Where Magic is humming
And Mystery glows
Interwoven between threaded crossed lines
At each end is a watcher
A tall figurine
Stop centrally now, take care with your step
Yes, just there, on that same pinprick where
Stand the Artists who painted
The wild silken road.
Peter Li-ping lives far from the Silk Road but it’s always with him.
The Stars fade gently into a glowing horizon as the Sun arrives in the East.
Some remain still glistening to complement the radiant canvas of colour and light.
This visual spectacular provides a challenge to every artist’s palette
as they strive to capture the new dawn before it vanishes forever
John B. Sinclair is a much-travelled Scot who has now returned to Scotland, where he enjoys freelance writing on a variety of subjects.
Like the rain,
A poem falls
When conditions are propitious.
Emotion builds
Like condensation,
Then drip-drop,
Words patter down
Sometimes the flowing
Quenches your thirst
Or washes you clean.
Sometimes the flooding
Strips you bare
To your foundation.
When a poem falls
Into your heart,
It is best to listen.
Casey Laine comes from a long line of talkative women. She works as Fantasy Editor at Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores and publishes an annual anthology of fiction and poetry for her writing group, Writers Assembled. In her spare time, she chases butterflies with her camera. Find her on Facebook.
I walked along the winding trail,
the dog running before me,
my wife next to me,
with cliffs to one side,
and a river to the other.
Tall grasses, as tall as me,
and evergreen trees, everywhere.
The wind blew gentle,
as grey clouds drifted by,
and I pondered existence.
This poem was selected as the winner of the Commaful.com 50WS Contest! Read the original post here.
This relationship feels hopeless,
Unadulterated frustration.
Yet…
To abandon now? Impossible.
Too much time invested.
Amazing highs,
But oh, those lows.
Sometimes unbearable.
“Walk away!” an inner voice screams.
But I can’t. I’m in too deep.
So with a cleansing breath and renewed resolve,
I pull out the half-finished manuscript.
Judi MacKenzie is a writer whose unfinished works are actually starting to growl from inside the filing cabinet.
He hadn’t planned it,
at least not consciously.
They were twins, after all,
each incomplete without the other.
He could not be a failure
without his brother’s disproportionate success.
It was a wild night of shared mayhem,
careening, crescendoing
to the perfect finale:
matching death dates.
Twins to the end.
Jackie reads 50-Word Stories and writes religiously. She has never submitted her work, save to this site.
Columns of raindrops
trailing from the parapet
They skip
and dance
into oblivion
Like faces in the crowd.
I scan
the busy sidewalk
For that one face
Him
Who meant the world
I’ve lost forever
My
Chronicler of pain
Exultations, ecstasy
Melted to the soil.
Faces stare back
Hollow, disconcerted.
Mandira Pattnaik writes in India. Her work has appeared in The Times of India, Editor’s Pick Juggernaut Publishing, Microfiction Monday, Paragraph Planet, FewerThan500 and (Mac) ro (mic).
By the Angsana tree I sit, waiting for her arrival, but reading becomes dreaming once the Angsana’s crown starts weaving a lullaby with the breeze.
In dreams, gliding, she surpasses my wake and I, receding, cannot reach her pace.
I awaken to remember that here too she has passed me.
Benjamin Lo is an English undergraduate student from Nanyang Technological University trying to understand life. In his spare time, he is trying to complete a short story collection.
A man wrote a song and died.
Trembling, the song tried to sing herself. Each day she practised, flexing melodic limbs, strengthening pale notes, until she came to understand discordant beauty.
That day, her song spilled into rivers and comet trails, spread throughout galaxies.
The universe leaned in to listen.
Lisa Alletson is an emerging writer whose work has been published in The Globe and Mail, Ginosko Literary Journal, and The Write Launch. She was born in South Africa and lives in Toronto, Canada. Follow her on Twitter at @LisaAlletson.