fantastical tales of the inane

among the trees of my sister’s fantasy I realised I’m a touch too sane to be happy, I consulted widely but all anyone could offer were drugs, the sweeping-broom sadness felt like arthritis biting into my tongue, and the tar-black rain with its stories of early Carthage troubled me and tussled with my mood, we are beginning to end my friend and I’m not going to wait for the skeletons to start popping up in the bath

no-one’s listening

that moment when you realise no-one’s listening, too many wolves crying too many warnings and now I’m holding up the bar, a little grey thing hanging from my chin, unclipped fingernails that let women slip through, shaved head that sits weightily on bent shoulders, haven’t caught an eye in a while, want to float, want to re-engage with the pair who sent me to school, don’t love or hate anymore, a wispy haunting disappointment envelops me, there’s too little left to provide, and here it comes – I’m falling out of my body but it’s okay, the floor’s not far away

Keith Nunes (Lake Rotoma, New Zealand) was a newspaper sub-editor for more than 20 years but now he writes to stay grounded in unsanitized bulgur wheat. He’s been published around NZ and increasingly in the UK and the US. He’s been anthologised many times and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His chapbook Crashing the Calliope is sold by a handful of lunatics.