absence
wild strawberries among clover; birds come, land, cock heads and feed but this is one more day without bees (I dreaded them as a child, past all points of pain – now I sit, wait, brood over hearing only feathered wings around me) time again
Three years since your last breath, and still I hear echoes of the word gone, of the silence after. entrance/entranced
a suddenness of full moon slipping from behind high clouds; Selene comes fashionably and beautifully late tonight, her silver set aside for gold (and I am too beguiled to play Endymion, feign sleep, draw her down to me) Steve Brisendine is a writer, poet, occasional artist and recovering journalist living and working in Mission, KS. He is the author of two collections from Spartan Press: The Words We Do Not Have (2021, nominated for the 2022 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award) and Salt Holds No Secret But This (2022). He was a finalist for the 2021 Derick Burleson Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in Flint Hills Review, Aji, Modern Haiku, As It Ought To Be and other journals and anthologies.
Flight of the dragonfly 