Your Body Is Gone but You Never Left Me

by Nick Fairclough

You’re the bird that comes to see me. The bird that perches on the power line above my letterbox and looks in. Your arrogant tweet pierces the air at random. You just watch me, stick your nosy beak into my private affairs as if I don’t know it’s you. I confront you, tell you I know who you are. You deny it. But I can see through your feathered cloak.

Who would’ve thought you’d be reincarnated into a starling? That you’d make your nest in the neighbors unmaintained spouting. Make your new life at the bottom of the sky.

Season of Lights

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

It is the season of lights.

In my window is a nine-fingered lamp. It is powered not by coal, hydro, oil, or gas. It is a lamp of feathers.

Blue jay. Cardinal. Junco. Chickadee.

Some feathers in my lamp repeat.

Finch. Finch. Tweet-tweet.

My neighbors prefer electric lights. They say Jesus was swaddled in a dream coat of electric colors. They cover their home with so many bulbs no bird can sleep. The lights wink like beaks.

Our street has become a mosaic of tails which, when stood upright, could be mistaken for candles.

No Journey

by Sarah Dabous

I used to crave an adventure that I never got to embark on, for there was nothing to seek out to begin with.

The mysteries faded like a fine layer of mist abating under the unforgiving heat of the sun. Rather than being surprised by a rewarding revelation, I was met with disappointment. There was nothing waiting there to begin with.

There is no mystery, there is no grand adventure waiting to begin. There is only nothingness under a scorching sun.

The Almost Invisible Man

by Tom Baldwin

He was short, with untidy hair and nondescript clothes. Few people noticed him, and women ignored him. He didn’t mind.

He found it hard to catch the eye of waiters and barmen, who usually served him last, if they noticed him at all. He didn’t mind.

When he spoke to people they soon forgot him, or at best would be hard-pushed to describe him. That pleased him.

Only he, and a shadowy government department, knew he had infiltrated and foiled the worst terrorist plot the country had ever faced. Now he was looking forward to his next assignment.