Broken Shovels
By Travis Papineau

I squint
As I poke my head
Out of the terrain.
The light is a jolt
After keeping myself
In that hole
For so long.
I dug through numerous
Rock bottoms
Destroying many a spade
In the process.
With the remains
Of those
Broken Shovels,
I fashioned a
Rickety,
Precarious,
Unstable ladder
That I climbed
Towards this open ground.
I was in that darkness
A long time.
But my eyes
Will adjust.

October Afternoon
By Wayne F Burke

sky
black
baby blue
charcoal gray
streaked white
and full of specks,
birds, windblown leaves;
the hissing trees
jiggling
and a witch
with pointed hat
broomstick
shoots
like an arrow
behind two big pines
and goes down
somewhere
along the ridge line
and the air
turns ice-cold
and a mile-long train
of crows
ragged scraps
flap their fingered wings
over trees
blood-red and
tangerine.

snap-shot
By Wayne F Burke

the camera-carrying people are back:
they are taking pictures of the leaves
the trees
the church steeples
the park statues–
snap-happy people
from somewhere else;
people who have no names;
some who speak in a strange dialect,
some who don’t;
they stop and gawk,
take a snap-shot
and walk on
to the next view;
people a lot like me
and you
but not quite:
they’re peepers
and they live in
different time zones
different zip codes.

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