Aneek Chatterjee writes

Birthday

Don’t tag me to white 

and red balloons

Pink and violet flowers

golden ribbons

Don’t tag me to wild music

I can’t dance

I’m unable to move my feet

and graze the floor

My autobiography is read

everyday inside the refrigerator,

along with dry vegetables,

pancakes 

Open the door, light flashes out

occasionally; but dark and cold.

The warmth outside fails 

to  reach its pages 

Tag me to your woes,

wrinkles on forehead,

injured legs and faded memory

I can dance with. 

Autobiography does not

record my birthday 

Birthday Girl -- March Locust

Octavio Quintanilla writes

Migrations

When my father lost his memory,
he went on remembering he was lost.
I’m in a desert, he said.
Now I’m in a river.

He was always in another country
even as he sat on the sofa.
Where am I? he would ask
the news reporter on television.

When he slept, his eyes went on seeing—

The ceiling cut into pieces like cake
by the streetlights. The strange woman
leaning close, watching him sleep

Woman Watching a Sleeping Man (Second State) -- Erik Renssen

Duane Vorhees writes

Mistress Mine

She intrudes, unbidden, insistent.

And, unamused am I, as I anticipate 

the sleepless nights 

of groping -- poking -- stroking

through darknesses and light,

through darknesses and light,

until, satiated, she abandons.

And, emptied like a snakeskin,

sucked grapeskin dry,

anxiously I await an assignation.

Be she succubus

or be she muse

matters not to me.