Guest Writer

These Wood Entities by Jordan Eve Morral

It’s the trees that make me cry

more than anything.

The hemlock stands strong

with its twigs of green and cones

until the last moment

when snow hides the earth

and deer eat the branches bare.

The red cedar stands alone

in fields long abandoned.

Slow but steady it grows

Only to be chopped for chests and posts.

The blue spruce lives long,

valued for its beauty,

but outgrows its friends

well after they are gone.

The red pine feeds mice and birds of song,

but, in eating the seeds,

these creatures devour descendents.

The catalpa with its beans

would seem exempt from my sorrow,

but it too has flowers that quickly fade.

The syrup maple is kind with abundance,

and thus has its sweet sap stolen

before it ever has a taste of itself.

The reason, my friend, these wood entities

bring such strife and pain

is because of the human struggle they endure.

Mankind inflicts the destruction,

and suffers the denouement.

Jordan Eve Morral

(Image is of the author)

Haikus by F.S. Blake

Haikus by F.S. Blake

(Ed. note–F.S. Blake is a recipient of the Bronze Star, which is a hell of a good thing to be known for. He also writes poetry, and it is our pleasure to present a pair of Haikus written by Mr. Blake. He will be appearing again with more, soon–The Eds.)

Our dog on warm days
runs with pure joy, back and forth,
she gets double treats.

Buzzing mosquito
stumbles over the porch light
still drawn to warmth gone

F.S. Blake

(Image of a brave cherry tree in February)

Creature Comfort by Jordan Eve Morral

This evening, there was a road crew

in the streets of a colonial town.

They blocked traffic and began work at dusk.

The sunset against the faded red bricks

made the scene–and the big-bellied crew–

look like guests at a late-day garden party.

It appeared that one man ran the excavator

while the rest looked on,

the audience of an outdoor theater performance.

Their mundanity and at-odds presence

made me want to cry

and become one of them.

Never did laboring over asphalt and drains

seem so appealing–just a step down from the divine.

More than anything, it was the unspoken comfort,

the unrecognized camaraderie,

that made these humans glorious,

made them creatures I wanted to embody.

Or maybe it’s just that I forget I am perceived

and felt seen by them.

Jordan Eve Morral

Leah by Geraint Jonathan

in her pyjamas

out in all weathers

hardly the way to go is it

whatever she was she isn’t that now

look at her

if ever hair needed cutting

there’s hair could do with it

seems all it takes is promise of bad weather

she’s ready for the hills

almost paces

animal like

old as she is

you have to tell her

naughty-night-to-be-out-in

the look she gives you then

none like it

and I’ve been given looks you wouldn’t believe

or maybe you would

come to think of it

Geraint Jonathan

(Image by Leila)

The Martyrdom of St. Peter by Tony Dawson

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio,

a troublemaker who gloried in sadistic

violence, especially in his paintings,

was the Prince of Darkness of Baroque,

the pioneer of the style dubbed tenebrism.

Together with his realistic portrayals

of the subjects who populate his canvases,

“the terrible naturalism that attracted

and ravished human sight”, as Scannelli put it,

they are the distinctive features of his work.

His painting, The Crucifixion of St. Peter,

commissioned by Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi,

is an archetype of Caravaggio’s tenebrism

and how he exults in depicting brutality.

The distribution of the four individuals

conjures the shape of St. Andrew’s cross.

A beam of light traverses the canvas

from the top left of the frame

to the bottom righthand corner

illuminating St. Peter’s torso, left arm,

and hand nailed to the crosspiece,

every muscle and sinew of the martyr

tensed. A blend of pain and terror cross

the face of the Saint. High to the left,

the only executioner to escape anonymity

embraces Peter’s shins and the upright

of the cross to help a second executioner

whose woollen jacket is rucked up

by the rope he’s using to haul the cross

upside down as it is placed in the hole,

dug by the third executioner’s shovel.

Petra, the rock in the foreground,

evokes Peter’s name, the rock

upon which the Christian Church

is unified, emphasised further

by the shadowy rocky landscape

in the background darkness.

Tony Dawson

(Image is of the author; would be strange if another fellow, now wouldn’t it?)

Your Jesus by Geraint Jonathan

It’s true that your Jesus came back. His bar mitzvah coincided with the end of the First World War. As eldest scion of second generation Nazarene immigrants, he no doubt had his work cut out for him in the heartlands of a newly ruined Germany.

As you’d expect it was his talk brought the grief, the trouble. Said he had such news as would overturn the world and so forth. In short, words best whispered, or better yet, left unsaid. Those who rejoiced to hear them would soon lose their ears. And soon enough he and his raggletaggle crew were among the ten thousand others on the slow train east.

He did everything he could, your Jesus. But it was no good. Some clocked him as a collaborator – owing to that enemylove spiel of his. The bread not in his belly started to show on his face; but still he shared what few scraps he could procure, making himself no friends by doing so.

As for his ‘fate’: it came without warning, during morning roll-call: he was hanged along with two others before the work detail set off. His executioner was a man known as ‘Ape’ – a sobriquet supposedly derived from his reputation for “going ape” when beating people to death. ‘Ape’ himself was promoted to captain shortly before the end of the war. He disappeared soon after.

Geraint Jonathan

(Image by Christopher J Ananias)

Third of May 1808, by Francisco de Goya by Tony Dawson

is a virtuoso display of dynamic brushwork.

In his visceral need to capture the moment,

his depiction has anticipated impressionism.

The speed at which he applied the paint

has infused the canvas with ominous terror.

The left side of the canvas is bathed in light

from a box lantern at the feet of the faceless,

hooded, firing squad of Murat, on the right:

evil is being perpetrated under cover of darkness

by the French incarnations of Death.

The Spanish victims, each a non-combatant,

standing beside three slaughtered patriots

whose bodies lie bloodied in the dirt,

show a mixture of fear, resignation and defiance.

One of them, a monk, his hands clenched in prayer,

seems to be hoping to receive clemency.

The man in the white shirt throws his arms

out wide, challenging the soldiers to shoot him

as more civilians are herded up the slope

to meet their deaths like cattle in an abattoir:

the horrors of war laid bare by an artist in despair.

Tony Dawson, 12 February 2026

word is by Geraint Jonathan

don’t you dare say marl

nothing deserves it

likewise heft or skirl

avoid them as you would

verdant

& if it’s evening keep it that way

don’t go with gloam

anymore than you would darkfall

darkfall being

like gloam

down there with

verdant

the sky can never again be azure

anymore than the stars above can twinkle

though sooner by far the stars above twinkle

than a sky ever again be azure

& if deny yourself mulch you must

then do so

mulch having about it the very vetch & sedge

& graunch to convey the earthy

itself a proposition of dubious provenance

wouldn’t you say

mulch?

it’s not down there with verdant

but it’s close

there’s a leatheriness survives i suppose

a compact sogginess

wet as mulch is

generally

Geraint Jonathan

(Wonderful images by CJA)

Al Through the Looking Glass by Geraint Jonathan

Miami sunshine put Big Al’s garb to shame. It blazed yellow, much like Al, but, unlike Al, it was the source of life on the planet. Al was human, as he himself would have been the first to admit. “There’s many things I am,” he said, “but a seething ball of molten fucking gasses ain’t one of them!” Miami’s finest laughed. Al was known for the size of his heart, and often spoke about it. It sometimes made for confused but lively exchanges with those more fortunate than himself. In ‘matters of the heart’ there was, after all, Al’s deep love of opera and there was also that which lay in the middle of the chest cavity between two lungs. Monogrammed silk might be said to cover both in Al’s case. As was his wont, Al made much of the confusion, hoping thereby to lighten matters that might otherwise furrow the brows of the young. If nothing else, the yellow of Al’s Miami experience would be a crucial factor in forming much of what he later came to call his “disposition”. For whatever his foibles, this much is certain: Al sought to shine on all, whether they wanted shining on or not. He would be the man dressed as the sun: a vision in yellow serge, with matching hat, silk tie and shirt, just the kind of solar presence a windy city on earth might require. That was Al all over. It was the opera in him.

Symmetry by David Henson

His fractured kaleidoscope

of a childhood obsessed him

with symmetry. He’s transfixed

with how it glistens

in snowflakes, sparkles

in diamonds, graces

the wings of butterflies

he pins to savor

up close. He forces

snips for his girlfriend’s

lazy eye, insists his wife

arrange the furniture

just so, and requires symmetry

during sex. He balances

his desire with an equal

measure of deceit.

When he overhears

his wife’s phone whisperings,

she laughs

How do you like your fucking symmetry now?

For the first time he knows how it tastes.

(end)