by Dylan

Happy Birthday, H.G. Wells - by Dylan

Hours of shooting
hours of screams, snot and lisps
on the playground.

They called it a 'shadow assignment'-

half the afternoon
spent in a standing camera cramp,
thinking I was getting something
perfecto.

And then I download.

And all I can think is,
aliens.

Disembodied
sinuous shapes
with levitating balls and rings.

Little beings from Mars.

And damn.
They are.

by Vera

Spying - by Vera

Crouching here
spying in on the Boys,
I am suddenly counting
how many
days of desert
I've scraped through -
have I worked for them a whole month?

I am raw,
like I've been itching
scratching on a cheese grater,
still
not trusting Lon
still doing crunches to make sour stomach
subside.

Hunkered in the scrub
with a crackling breeze at 6 am,
I spit out bile,
pissed off.

At Lon.
The Boys.
Tilly, Milo, Dempsey especially
the whole frickin mining town,
Carole, the Motherload,
maybe Amy,
yes, Amy.

Pissed off.

At myself.

by Aubrey

Manduca sexta - by Aubrey

Ms. Pellium's Solanaceae
are deranged,
devoured
demolished,

first by one
then by three,
and today
by many
too many Manducas
of four inch length,
fifth digit girth
(but squishier.)


The Administrators of Mastication,
leave branches denuded,
inflorescences demoralized,
till
lycopersicon esculentum
lies barren,
feeble.

Fruitless.

Ms. Pellium is tomato sauceless,
due to those
Manducas,

machinators of
end
l
e
s
s
frass.

by Clarissa

Mica Scales - by Clarissa

Low tide.
Miles of radiant silica.

Breathless,

breezeless.

I feel a dry rasping tongue
running up the shore

like a desiccating dragon -

End of Summer.

by Thomas

Bull - by Thomas

They're fake.

Look how green his face is.

Fake frogs.

Not even breathing.

On a real farm,

right?

they go and plant

fake frogs

by the pond.

Wait.

He blinked.

Did he?

C'mon frog,

blink again.

Blink.

Friggin' frog, blink.

He's not blinking.

He's fake.

Fake frog.

Look how green he is.

Fake.

He blinked!

He's real!

He's real!

He's--

gone.

by Thalia!

Hello, said the ghostly visage of the author...

Taking this week off, since I have just returned from the SCBWI conference in Los Angeles and am zooped out.

Tune in next Sunday...

by Philip

I Wanna Be Back In Oregon - by Philip


My first visit to Uncle Craig's.

So cool, SoCal! I thought.

But we walked
two concrete miles
to find the Pacific,

and there it was,
pacifically laying there
flat as the pavement shore,

with the rumble of traffic
instead of the sound of surf,

all the freeway
at 30 mph,
looking at my
skinny white chest.