Usual and casual: they look good together;
like a pair of sandy camels in a desert caravan,
loose and meandering from oasis to cool oasis.
They carry cargo in canvas bags.

The components of cargo in the canvas bags
fit together like Tetris blocks.

This is what I love about words:
Not the feeling, but the fitting.
Could this flock of words be a poem
if no one’s heart is bleeding?

Patrick Shaw

Lighting a sour cigarette in
the middle of the night.
I slowly slide the wet window open
so the smoke doesn’t crawl on eight legs
underneath my door, screaming murder
to wake up dreaming friends.

I can only exhale so many gray clouds
before a fire ignites beneath my bed,
dancing out of my doorway,
engulfing my charred body
in black flames.

Melissa Demott