Tawny wings tail the Arkansas and their shadows brush Russian olive. A hoo! drifts along begging recognition. Drowning the scuttle of waves, a quavering reply invites determination. Feathers ripple towards cottonwoods, nudging the fading sunlight across leaves and between branches. He allows a hoot to stray ahead asking for her to answer with a wandering whistle. The night approaches with a dimming silence that hushes happenings of the day and offers silhouettes. Moonlight shifts over a hollow as a frayed figure sails with unfurled wings. They settle below the canopy and dust bark with steadied feathers, ceasing flight for tonight.

From Guest Contributor Kristi Kerico

Kristi is a psychology major at Pikes Peak Community College. She is studying to become a horticultural therapist. She currently works at a bookstore and volunteers at a zoo and nature center. She began writing after enrolling in a creative writing course at PPCC. She enjoys poetry the most, considering it’s brief yet complex beauty. She also loves writing with a focus on nature.

The mist glistened with false promises. The canopy dripped the tears of myriad misled bards of all races who had put effort into the creation of tales only to be demeaned by the praising of the Mediocre tribe by the forest’s Editelves.

The trolls, in particular, grumbled angrily as the incantation of rejection echoed through the avenues, causing even lianas to cringe. “We have decided not…”

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

The mist glistens with false promises. The canopy drips blood of myriad misled bards vanquished by the Mediocre tribe.

Cathbad rises from the straw bed. “No, Carolan, a warning of ignorance.”

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

There are trees on the west coast you can drive through. Ancient monoliths built by thousands of years’ work: rain, floods, winters, dry lightning fires. Our grandfathers’ fathers’, storytellers gone silent over the ages, tales forgotten, archaic aching fallen into disuse, a dead language. Even the wind cannot communicate with these trees anymore.

And all I smell is the distant salt water licking wet sand.

From Guest Contributor Jon Alston

Jon has an MA in Creative Writing. Good for him. He writes things from time to time, and sometimes people publish them. Good for him. On occasion, he will photograph things (or people), and maybe write about them; sometimes there is money exchanged for his services. Good for him. He is married and has two children of both genders. Way to reproduce. He is the Executive Editor and founder of From Sac, a literary journal for Northern California. How about that? Currently he teaches English at Brigham Young University, Idaho among the frozen potato fields and Mormons. Good for you, Jon.
Websites: www.fromsac.com www.jaawritter.blogspot.com

There was a wound-dresser in the forest, somewhere deep, maybe sleeping in the sticky tree hollow that still sometimes holds nesting dolls and eggs, tiny gifts, talismans, things we know matter, twin feet in this world and the other. So, when you came, under sun, scabs freshly bloomed, populating your back’s nude surface, to announce what the branches had left when you slid their surfaces from canopy to ground, I handed you a ticket for the woods and we left together, closing each door behind, certain that another Carthage burns softer the closer we come to any shore at all.

From Guest Contributor Kelli Allen

Kelli is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has won awards for her poetry, prose, and scholarly work. She served as Managing Editor of Natural Bridge and holds an MFA from the University of Missouri St. Louis. She is the director of the River Styx Hungry Young Poets Series and founded the Graduate Writers Reading Series for UMSL. She is currently a Professor of Humanities and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Allen is the author of two chapbooks and one flash fiction collection. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, arrived from John Gosslee Books in 2012 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.