She pours the tea. The darkness pours itself through the kitchen window, surrounds the cup and the cigarette that droops from her lips. Somewhere out there is an icy lake. Somewhere out there is a crack sucking everything down – her son, even the light. Snow piles up against the door. Icicles point down from... Continue Reading →

I keep a list of my thoughts a rope thrown something to clutch when I remember and plunge remember and melt if you are up to anything it is a sight beyond dog-eared notebooks you would not tolerate an underwhelming afterlife reading scribbled musings remember when I bought the volumizing shampoo by mistake three trees... Continue Reading →

Is it so strange after two years, still no peace with your leaving? The horizon never moves, lying quietly in its bed of distant scars and slants. I look above the tension wires over the sky darkening at four o'clock. The wire leads somewhere, brings something into a house where the cabinets are stocked with... Continue Reading →

The stars are naked And when they cast their eyes down upon me, Tossed like a million dice, I shiver in my clothes and blankets – Wishing I could be concealed. Photo by Andre Moura on Pexels.com About the Poet: John Tustin is currently suffering in exile on the island of Elba but hopes to... Continue Reading →

The storm’s fireworks will be nothing by midnight. So quiet, you’ll hear the worms in the soil, the ants in the rafters. For an hour or so, the world will be in the sky, flashing and pounding, pissing down like a locker-room of giants. But later, when clouds drift away, the night becomes transparent all... Continue Reading →

Here at the periphery of chaos my longing surrenders into the slant shadows [ earnestly] There in the middle of hatr'd my voice stops on a numb'd note [ weightlessly] In a graceless reign where my way I am losin' [ effortlessly] by a shackl'd ray. In a dried desert where my sighs are hangin'... Continue Reading →