Dear Reader,

With the new lunar year just around the corner, Expanded Field enters a new cycle of its own. New ideas and opportunities remind us of our fluctuating existence, and reveal the eternal paradox of the cosmos. We are in constant flux, forever in motion, but in this chaos we find stability.

My wife was worried about the dead limbs in our backyard walnut tree. It hadn’t really dropped many limbs, but there was one huge dead limb that loomed over the back porch and the kitchen. If it decided to let go, there would be a lot of damage.

in the cab home, i remembered an old classmate

whose last name was the only thing i could recall

as it sounded so close to aparador [1]

and how in a small school talent show

In my garden the flowers

are dead. Clouds

gather for snow. Wind

shakes the branches.

My cat steps to a window,

I take coffee with my copy of Slaughterhouse-Five beside me. I flip through the book wondering where in the plot this page-turning will land me. I plan to read the first passage I see, suspecting that it will shed light on the present moment. I treat Kurt Vonnegut’s novel like the I Ching.

Ancient wood desk, dark wood paneling, my father’s office in darkness. Life-light burnt out, hard to read. Books with leather binding, high to the ceiling. Bookmarks of newspaper clippings & torn pages of poetry buried.

an analog understanding of a shattered memory; re: a failing reality from: 9p99a4@.telecommunications

So great to hear from you, (redacted)!

Respectfully, I must decline all possible opportunities for the time being,

As a child, I spent hours in the tub

playing with dinosaurs, imagining

them swimming to islands without

There were so many of them. For a second, one was isolated above Gil, as if frozen in the air, near enough for him to study. That’s when Gil came to the realization.

Somewhere in the alcoves a man is faint,

The set-up has cruised him through the seats,

The punchline peeled sense until the pulp of his brain,

Questions starting with W—as in

Wings—fap-flap about.

Startled crows in crowded cabin.

No chute out of plane in flight

and anyway you’ve been blinded

Because I’m an old crusty muck my back ails me greatly and I suffer and groan in the morning. Because I suffer in the morning I lie stationary in bed far longer than I should, bypassing an early breakfast and a productive start to the day, sometimes until as late as ten in the morning.

I see my small hands cupping snow,

pink fingertips outlining white magic fluff.

I feel confused by my numbed digits,

sheer joy at this landscape

and mood-transforming substance.