{"id":3927,"date":"2021-10-25T15:45:09","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T19:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ratsassreview.net\/?page_id=3927"},"modified":"2026-02-04T17:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T22:14:07","slug":"winter-2021-issue","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ratsassreview.net\/?page_id=3927","title":{"rendered":"Winter 2021 Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\n 
\n<\/a>
\n<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n 
\n(Cover Art Woman with Rat \u2013 Timidity<\/i> by Cynthia Yatchman<\/a>)<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n <\/p>\n

The Poets<\/h3>\n

<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBrian J. Alvarado<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nORPHEUS\u2019 ACHILLES
\n 
\nwhere, oh where
\nhas my eurydice gone?
\nfor i have traversed
\na new hell daily for
\nwell over an attic year,
\nplucking at electric lyres
\nwith chipped heart picks
\nand some sleepless nails,
\nwarbling metallic ariettas
\nthrough futile crawlspaces
\nof dense boxes left packed
\n 
\nhas she gone away
\nwhen i turned around
\nto look back on how
\ni had failed to die and
\nreturn a changed man?
\n 
\ndid she depart when
\ni about-faced to check if
\ndoubt was lying\u2014 or worse\u2014
\nlying in wait to collect the
\nspoils of a shattered
\nfaustian promise?
\n 
\nwas she ever even there
\nere i gave way to oblivion?
\n 
\nat the mercy of divine will,
\nand much too far behind you
\nnow, my mortal ditties
\ncharm no longer, and my
\ncardboard walls shan\u2019t
\nerode soon enough for
\nme to see you again
\neven in death<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nPeter Anderson<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nHATCHET<\/p>\n

\nDescribe the dream with a hatchet, or something finer. Hacksaw blade, piano wire. Make it sit still. This is harder than it looks. All the things you could\u2019ve been. Coffee cup, undergarment from an 1890\u2019s catalogue, a telephone pole. That pole rising from the earth wanted to be a tree but it could never lift the sidewalk, never send roots down to the sewer, and so it settled for its present position, connected to all the other branchless uprights. Wearing a nest of wires like a halo, whisperings of forest. It\u2019s like that, the dreams you\u2019ve buried under your skin, moving through your flesh, displacing another day.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJames Appleby<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCANAL PUSHER
\n 
\nIn two decades, police have pulled 77 bodies
\nfrom Manchester\u2019s canals. Most are young men.
\nThe Canal Pusher, their supposed killer,
\nhas entered local legend.<\/i>
\n 
\nPush \u2013 men in my city know
\nwalking the canals at night
\nand glance back over
\nshoulders at a tricky streetlamp:
\nbulb that needs replacing
\nor the shadow of a branch.
\n 
\nEven if we haven\u2019t seen, we know
\nthe victim hooked below the barge
\nand drawn up rigid from the concrete floor
\nhis eyes upturned, unblinking, fishmeal.
\n 
\nWe have our theories. Each of us
\nhas made the pusher of a passer-by.
\nThat hooded lad, that chronic loner
\nmust be the attacker who has killed
\neighty of us on a night like this.
\nThen he passes. Strike of gavel.
\nNot guilty tonight.
\n 
\nThe beer is warm inside us and the cold
\nunfelt a time \u2013 our step
\nis light now that we are alone
\nand we come to the steep brick lip:
\nthe edge of the canal
\n 
\nto feel the hands against our back
\nthe fingers in our unwashed hair
\nour disappointments and our hopes
\nracked up beside us. Now we are aware
\nof our reflection incoming. We know
\nthe man behind the men in the canal
\nand glancing up the empty path, we push.
\n 
\n 
\nSNOW DAY
\n 
\nBetween young and old, a line of snow.
\nThis side you\u2019re rolling heads
\nof snowmen through the city park \u2013
\nthat side you\u2019re housebound
\nor doddering on ice.
\nOutside, the street is under new control.
\nThe mouths of bins are frozen shut;
\nicicles like judgements hang above.
\nI walk in someone\u2019s footsteps up the road.
\nIn my path, in someone\u2019s print,
\na needle pointing up.
\nThe plunger has been drawn \u2013 the golden
\nresidue of blood.
\nIf I\u2019d found a baby I might not
\nhave wrapped it up so tenderly in my coat.
\nI thought of bins, then of the binman\u2019s fingers.
\nI thought, a night like that \u2013 snowstorm, gale \u2013
\nand still the hunger pulled someone outside
\nto shoot up on my road. I felt the cold
\nsteal through my jumper.
\nThe coat hung in my arms. I felt an ache.
\nI almost lost my balance on the ice.
\nA child was laughing over the white road.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nCatherine Arra<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nPARADOX
\n 
\nWe walked through war-zone destruction
\nto renovate Old Broadway.
\nWe walked steadfast, serene
\nthrough jackhammers, backhoes, noise.
\n 
\nTo renovate Old Broadway
\nour lives, dead marriages, torn-up love.
\nWe walked steadfast, serene
\nmoving forward, looking ahead, matching strides.
\n 
\nOur lives, dead marriages, torn-up love.
\nYou reached for my hand, folded fingers into fingers
\nmoving forward, looking ahead, matching strides.
\nAnd then, you let go.
\n 
\nYou reached for my hand, folded fingers into fingers
\nreliving the past, refitting a future, matching strides.
\nAnd then, you let go.
\nCracking concrete. The terror of touch.
\n 
\nReliving the past, refitting a future, matching strides
\nI reached for your hand, smoothed palms, folded fingers.
\nCracking concrete. The terror of touch.
\nAgain, you let go.
\n 
\nI reached for your hand, smoothed palms, folded fingers
\nlooking forward, matching strides, moving ahead.
\nAgain, you let go.
\nI said, “You don\u2019t like to hold hands?”
\n 
\nLooking forward, matching strides, moving ahead.
\nSilence, silence, silence. Jackhammers. Backhoes. Noise.
\nI said, “You don\u2019t like to hold hands?”
\nMidway, midstride on Old Broadway, a dead end.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSusan Ayres<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nPAINTING OF THE RED BRIDGE
\n 
\nThe color of truth is gray.<\/i>
\n   \u2014Andre Gide
\n 
\nThe red bridge squats
\neponymously over blue water.
\nDemolished years before the artist\u2019s
\n 
\nbirth, the red bridge is painted
\nfrom imagination, painted from directions
\ngiven over generations: “Take the Red Bridge . . .”
\n 
\nIn a place where things don\u2019t change
\nmuch, where grandparents may never
\nhave travelled out of the state, much less
\n 
\nthe country, the red bridge has been
\nreconstructed since slavery. Unlike
\nthe lead-colored smokestacks lurching
\n 
\ninto sight as I-95 curves into town, the red
\nbridge sits not in a place, but in collective
\nmemory, joining Providence to East
\n 
\nProvidence. How do you get there? You
\ntake the red bridge. Today\u2019s bridge is no
\nlonger red, but everyone knows what you mean.
\n 
\nThe color of truth is gray, like
\nsmokestacks. The color of nostalgia
\nis heart-hued. My bridge flies cochineal across
\n 
\nthe Seekonk River, your bridge hovers
\nrust-red like an abandoned train trestle. This
\npainted bridge squats carmine. Everyone knows
\nyou eat raw oysters in months that have an r<\/i> in them.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJeff Bagato<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nSEA OF SHADOWS
\n 
\nThis bitter sea of shadows
\ncan still warm your heart
\nas merrows require hot blood
\nin meat as raw as the shore\u2019s
\nbest rocks for breaking ships
\nand taking men; a golden treasure
\ncan\u2019t compare to one night
\nwith a fresh man, still half alive
\nfrom drinking air; the maid
\nhas her cake before the feast,
\nand the roast is all the sweeter
\nfor the effort, so they say.
\n 
\nTheir songs are not laments
\nbut keening pleas for twofold
\npleasures; creatures of the sea
\ndon\u2019t mourn a death, for every life there
\nsprings from that which goes below
\nwith black spots for eyes,
\nblind now to these reckoning
\nmachines, all carapace and claw
\nand sucking mouths, living stomachs
\nthat would devour the light
\nhad it the courage to plunge
\ninto this cold kingdom,
\npast these maids of doom
\nand their patient songs,
\ntheir hungry need, their beauty
\nhalved by the horrors of the deep.
\n 
\nHer first kiss invites nakedness
\nfamiliar to the start of life
\nor its end, where breath surprises
\nwith its pain, and the heart\u2019s
\nconfusion makes us lose our way;
\nagain, again, but the embrace
\nturns harsh; breath fouls in a chest
\nrobbed of its center, its source
\nof warm remembering; a thirst
\ncomes on, but let it in and it quenches
\nall love, all hope, all fire
\nfor life; escaping bubbles delight
\nthe maid, as they form his binding
\nvow of faith to never part,
\nor fade, or drift away untrue.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTina Barry<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHE POEM PRETENDS TO BE A TWIN
\n 
\nso it can swim beside
\nmy mother, her untethered sister
\nin a rocking, saline sea.
\n 
\nIt would like to neatly print
\nletters on oaktag, listen
\nto her lips form sound, perhaps
\n“C” like the “sea,” not “cuh.”
\nIt would not correct her.
\n 
\nThe poem recites her stories,
\nembellishes moments she\u2019s proud
\nof, thinks of them as gifts.
\n 
\nThe poem can tell you
\nwho broke my mother\u2019s heart.
\nFirst Sheldon and last Eddie.
\n 
\nIt remembers her
\nin the navy-dotted two-piece, sees the hat\u2019s swoop
\nof dark shadow across pale legs.
\n 
\nThe poem forgets,
\nbut like my mother\u2019s memories, the timeline
\nof history is fluid. It believes
\n 
\nthere\u2019s no shame
\nin confusing the date of her birth
\nwith her grandmother\u2019s.
\n 
\nThe poem says, “I\u2019m sanguine.”
\nBut I know better.
\n 
\nI\u2019m further along
\nin this trudge
\nfrom now to then. Ready
\n 
\nto fold
\nthe poem\u2019s hand in mine, to hurtle
\nbackwards together, past my mother\u2019s hobbled
\nwalk, last tiny apartment, her children\u2019s
\nchildren, the red-faced wail of a baby,
\nthe long train of wedding dress.
\n 
\nTo slowly lift the veil.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTeresa Blackmon<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWATCHING YOU
\n 
\nI hated watching your body deceive you, call it quits
\nway before the job was done. You made a swift
\nturn, from heavy and strong to weak and helpless.
\nI hated your worthless body.
\n 
\nI hated your tongue for showering profanity
\nover anyone who tried to help you. You said
\nthings that would never spill from your healthy lips,
\nbiting remarks which did not become you.
\n 
\nI hated pulling your pants up and down
\nlike a yo-yo. I hated the repetitive
\nchore of lifting you up out of your
\nrolling chair and lowering your body gently.
\nto a mobile pot.
\n 
\nI hated the new bed that held you hostage,
\ntrapped you in like an endangered animal.
\nYou looked odd, your stout frame
\nsettled in a metal trap with no escape.
\n 
\nI hated brushing your stained dentures
\nand replacing your hearing aid batteries. I hated
\nthat future meals would be pureed,
\nsoft and slick like slop.
\n 
\nI hated being your caretaker, when for fifty
\nyears I had been your baby girl.
\nYou lifted me high in the palms of your hands,
\nand I was not afraid. I could not lift you.
\n 
\nI hated being the one who watched
\nyour blue eyes slide shut for the last time.
\nI hated holding your cold hand, the only
\nthing I could do to help you cross
\nyour very last street.
\n 
\n 
\nGREAT GIFTS
\n 
\nDorothy Parker offered ways to die
\nthen talked us out of it.
\nJonathan Edwards warned of angry gods,
\nand Clemens had us watch a jumping frog.
\n 
\nOld Santiago lost a fish. Young Goodman Brown
\nmisplaced his Faith. The Bad Little Boy
\ndid not get punished, and the hare
\nlost a race with a turtle.
\n 
\nLaura believed in unicorns and Atticus Finch
\nforever scorned Faulkner\u2019s rotten South.
\nWidow Douglas prayed for fishing line
\nand Ellen Foster found a home.
\n 
\nRichard Cory put a bullet through his head,
\nand William Carlos Williams ate some lovely
\nplums. Plath and Sexton breathed their way
\nout, and Wordsworth left us daffodils.
\n 
\nFrost gave us apple trees and fences
\nand Sandburg showed us Chicago and fog.
\nBenet whistled the whippoorwill and God
\nsleeping in his long white beard.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLisa Creech Bledsoe<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nSCIENTISTS REVIVE ANIMALS FROZEN FOR 24,000 YEARS IN SIBERIAN SOIL
\n 
\nThey (a) rubbed their icy little cilia together,
\n(b) got something to eat, then (hell yeah) had sex.
\nJesus, Mary, & Joseph it had been a long-ass time.
\n\u0418 \u0435\u0436\u0443 \u043f\u043e\u043d\u044f\u0442\u043d\u043e. That’s Russian for no-brainer.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRose Mary Boehm<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nHUGH PAINTS CICADAS<\/p>\n

\nHugh specializes in stuff for budding composers. Makes new, intuitive user interfaces, lets the punters play a MIDI instrument, his software takes care of the details\u2026 you don\u2019t really want to know more. Unless you feel like buying-in. He called his software \u2018Ravel\u2019 and declared her to be his girlfriend. First Hugh taught Ravel to hum. Then she learned to imitate the sounds in Hugh\u2019s garden. Excited the wood pigeons, warbled the goldfinches, and scattered the African bee-eaters. For her next trick she scratched the cicada\u2019s love songs. While his girlfriend was communing with cicadas, he began–playfully at first–his series of untitled multimedia on canvas.<\/p>\n

 
\n 
\nALWAYS THE FIRST
\n 
\nShe always was the first
\nto thrust her hand
\nin the air, \u2018I know it, Miss!\u2019
\nEven if she didn\u2019t. Made
\nit up real fast. Most of the time
\nshe was right.
\n 
\nShe was the one who first lost
\nher virginity. Not that the guy
\nliked her that much, but couldn\u2019t
\nresist her insistence. We heard
\nall about it.
\n 
\nShe was the one who sat
\nin the first row with her blouse
\nhalf undone. The teacher we all coveted
\ncouldn\u2019t see anything else
\nbut her tits.
\n 
\nShe was the valedictorian and
\nonly talked about herself. We didn\u2019t
\nquite understand the choice they\u2019d
\nmade, but I later heard she\u2019d been \u2018nice\u2019
\nto the principal.
\n 
\nIt was her I found on my wedding day
\nwith her face between my new husband’s
\nlegs. In our new bedroom.
\nHe said there was no way
\nhe could not.
\n 
\nThey found her in one of the city\u2019s
\ngarbage containers. She’d been
\nhydraulically compacted. There was
\nnot enough left for the police to figure out
\nhow she got there.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDan Brook<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMORNING
\n 
\nyou wake up early
\nafter too few hours of sleep
\nalert, excited, anxious
\nyou\u2019re in the shower
\nlathering, rinsing
\nshampooing, rinsing
\nconditioning, rinsing
\nshaving so smooth
\nevery part of you
\nclean and fresh and ready
\npulling your nylons up
\ntightening your bra
\nslipping into your pumps
\nyou pack extra panties in your purse
\nalready feeling the reason why
\njust coffee this morning, black
\nfood will have to wait
\ntoo nervous to add weight
\ntoo excited to eat anyway
\ninstead of going to work
\nyou go to the hotel
\nwhere you meet him
\na twinge of ephemeral guilt
\noverwhelmed by your desire
\nto be touched so deeply
\nso deeply it hurts
\nyour desire
\nto be held
\nto be valued
\nto be loved
\neven for such a brief time
\n 
\n 
\nCEO
\n 
\nas CEO
\nof a small company
\na non-profit of sorts
\nI organize, strategize, supervise
\ndoing all jobs
\nin all departments
\nwithout pay and with little gratitude
\nyet so much slacking
\nconstant daydreaming
\nperiodic insubordination
\nbut if one loves one\u2019s job
\none never works
\nand I never do
\nDan Brook is a fine organization
\neven if sometimes disorganized
\nI am in good company
\nthis is a company
\nthat I will retire with<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nEric Burgoyne<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nLOVEBIRDS<\/p>\n

\nThere are wild lovebirds on our island. Not that they conduct their romantic lives with wanton abandon, they\u2019re just not domesticated. Ornithologists think they might be mutations of species introduced long ago, or perhaps something else. But they definitely travel as loving couples and are very good at it. If one flits past, its partner is seconds away and can be spotted before the other disappears to the foliage. They express affection by feeding each other; it\u2019s part of their continuous courting. They\u2019re monogamous, mate for life, and live with their partner 15 years or more. They set us all a good example. Only once did I see a lovebird all alone. It troubled me and I wondered what happened. Death? Divorce? Trial separation? Simple misunderstanding that couldn\u2019t be worked out? Avian homewrecker? Served a bad worm? I never saw that lonesome lovebird again and wondered if it flew forever into the sky to find its mate. If my love flew forever into the sky I would follow.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nNicole Callr\u00e4m<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCHEWING MY NAILS
\n 
\nI\u2019ve been in a lifelong battle with nerves
\n 
\nif you ever wonder how I am
\ndon\u2019t ask
\njust look at my hands
\n 
\nI console myself
\nit isn\u2019t chain smoking
\nan eating disorder
\ncopious drinking
\nnot that I haven\u2019t flirted with
\nother anxiety busters like those
\n 
\nI had perfectly manicured nails for
\nthese last three months
\nSakura<\/i> color
\nunderstated classy– in control
\n 
\nMonday I cut all my nails
\na preemptive strike against this need
\nto gnash and tear at myself.
\n 
\nTuesday I gave in to the more banal
\nurges, appeasing that lust for destruction.
\n 
\nToday I\u2019m down to hangnails.
\n 
\nI listen to you tell me how happy you are
\nlapping at a little drop of my own blood
\n 
\nthe salt brings such umami to the soup
\nof your sweet voice
\nand my bitterness
\n 
\n 
\nTO A GRAY HAIR-
\n 
\nI\u2019m having a hard time with this aging thing
\nit\u2019s not feminist or woke
\nI know
\nbut I feel like I am disappearing\u2026
\n 
\nI found a gray hair on my head and now
\nI\u2019m feeling jealous of men
\nstupid silver foxes
\nsteeped in that age = increasing power thing
\naged scotches of the world
\nvintage Rolexes and shit
\n 
\nI\u2019m all in on this jealousy
\ngiving that easy confidence some serious side-eye
\nin fact
\nI\u2019ve started fantasizing about being a man
\n–for a day, maybe two
\n 
\nI want to be a big boy\u2026nice and tall
\nnot because I want to have a man\u2019s body
\noh no
\nI already know how that hardware works
\nI just want to feel it\u2026
\nthe experience, I mean
\nI want the bromance
\nI want to interact with women
\nwalk into any space
\nhold court like the sultan I am
\nanother man in a man\u2019s world
\n 
\n(this daydream also has ulterior motives)
\nI want to see how you react to me in this man body
\nwill your eyes feel the same on my skin?
\nwill I make you feel small
\nor will you still vibrate through my entire universe?
\nwhen I talk to you
\nwill your breath still catch in your throat?
\nwill you look down, tugging at the hem of your sleeve
\na half smile on those lips
\nin that heart-stopping shy way that murders me?
\nI am dying to know.
\nyou see, I haven\u2019t told you about this gray hair yet,
\nI\u2019d like to see first how you react to it when I\u2019m a man
\n 
\nmy woman\u2019s ego is still reeling from the discovery.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nWendy Taylor Carlisle<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nPECKERWOOD
\n 
\nIt\u2019s not that I don\u2019t remember
\nyour name or the date
\nof my first marriage, or when
\nwe were friends, it\u2019s just that
\na combination of finick
\nand a childhood trauma combine
\nto keep me from recognizing
\nyour value or the value of those
\nforfeit years. I see pictures of us
\ntogether me\/you\/him, in various combos
\nso, I\u2019m sure those things I never think of
\nhappened, but calling the extinct to rise
\nis a picnic of the damned, although
\nI will think longingly of the big
\nIvory-billed woodpecker, appearing
\nas a specter in the Arkansas bottoms
\nthis century, no matter how many
\nPileated woodpeckers are in my yard.
\nMy memory has always been
\na precarious thing. I\u2019ve written
\nabout its treachery a lot.
\nBut I\u2019ve never written about
\nthe Red-headed woodpeckers that
\nused to be abundant in the woods
\naround our house, waking us with
\ntheir shrill cries and their pounding.
\nMy friend Harold says divvy up
\nthe land and sell it off, but what
\nwould we do with the money,
\nthe squirrels, the less-picturesque
\nwoodpeckers to say nothing
\nof the hummingbirds that summer
\naround our porch, the bats that live
\nin the eaves. There are a gracious
\nplenty of other animals to take up
\nroom in my hippocampus without
\nrecalling the random men who
\nloved me then changed their minds.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJared Carter<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nSCALPEL
\n 
\nNeither hot nor cold,
\nmy touch is smooth.
\n 
\nMany are not even
\naware of my presence
\n 
\nuntil moments after
\nI have passed through.
\n 
\nI am the faraway flash
\nof the muzzle, arriving
\n 
\nlong before your pain
\nreaches its destination.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAnna Cheung<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCHEAP AESTHETICS
\n 
\nI nit-pick another strand in tin can aluminium
\npubic and wiry as the scouring pad clumped
\non the kitchen sink the dishes can wait<\/i>
\nthe hydrogen peroxide gunk coagulates
\nthick like blood molasses because I\u2019m worth it
\ntwo for the price of one<\/i> dripping on dirty plates
\nknives and forks smeared in Tesco bean juice
\non the wine glass lipstick kissed in Candy Flesh<\/i>
\nbubble baked in last night\u2019s Chardonnay
\nmy frown puckers forward loose skin slack
\naround tight mouth laser-precision focus
\non the pearling plastic tip give it to me baby<\/i>
\nfingers jerking at my roots I wonder if
\nI\u2019ll see you again and if I have eggs
\nin the fridge to make that Botox mask<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJoe Cottonwood<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nFEMALE
\n 
\nRiding in my backpack
\nchattering gibberish
\nshe charms the man
\nwho is in a good mood
\nso he repairs my chainsaw
\non the spot, no waiting,
\nasking only for
\ntwo six-packs of Bud
\nwhich we buy
\nfrom the bodega next door.
\n 
\nWith greasy finger
\nhe touches her nose,
\nleaves a smudge.
\n“Don\u2019t tell Boss,” he says,
\nwinking at my daughter
\nwho giggles, who is as yet
\ntoo innocent
\nof her power.
\n 
\n 
\nLILY\u2019S SMALL HAND FITS INSIDE THE PEANUT BUTTER JAR
\n 
\nscraping corners that hide the best stuff.
\nAll the rainy ride to preschool in deep
\ndepressing December she licks fingers.
\nGoombye a peanut butter kiss.
\n 
\nToday\u2019s job an auto body shop
\nreplacing fluorescent ballasts.
\nAmid clanking wup-wup-wupping
\nI overhear one guy say on the phone:
\n“You mean he\u2019s dead<\/i>? Really? You mean
\nactually dead<\/i>? Did the kids see?”
\nNeighbor hung himself in the back yard.
\nHad children, a family. Jesus!
\nSo at lunch break we talk about why and about
\nanother guy who went out drinking with 5 friends
\nand shot himself in a bar. Splat. And we wonder
\nwhen dead do you care what people think?
\nYes, I say. You care.
\n 
\nI pick up Lily. Burritos to eat in the truck
\ndriving home in the spicy-stuffy cab.
\nToday she took a field trip, got to ride
\nan alligator (she calls it) to the second floor,
\ngot to push the button.
\n 
\nNext morning the rain has ended.
\nA new jar 100% peanut all natural, no sugar.
\nA spoon, she licks. That man, not here.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLenny DellaRocca<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nALL NIGHT IN A RADIANT STATE
\n 
\nI know my wife knows
\neven when she\u2019s dreaming,
\nthat I\u2019ve left the bed.
\nShe feels the weight of me lift
\nlike a dark balloon.
\n 
\nSwiftly each night she sleeps,
\nfalls to her playground,
\nchild running for swings.
\nI wish my feet could feel the chain-link fence,
\njump over it, run as fast as a boy can run
\nfull bore without a gulp of breath.
\n 
\nInstead, I step across the creaking floor.
\nFrom a window\u2014yowls\u2014cats at possums,
\nmockingbird reciting the declaration of independence
\nin trees powered by sodium lamps.
\n 
\nDull metronome thwacks my head, and the room disappears:
\n 
\n      Somebody said So what<\/i> the other day
\n      about my poem remembering
\n      the time I slept on the beach
\n      long ago with friends,
\n      woke up with that habit
\n      in my lungs craving more damage,
\n      but I had no smokes.
\n      A girl walked by at sun-up,
\n      sat beside me, lit a cigarette.
\n      We shared it, did not speak.
\n      She flicked the butt to sand, teasing gulls,
\n      then ambled, mirage toward a life-guard stand,
\n      and vanished in the last line of my poem.
\n 
\nIn a few hours I\u2019ll take my meds, make coffee, watch the sky
\nslowly wonder why I\u2019m here.
\n 
\n 
\nCHESTER\u2019S SMILE
\n 
\nI dive through the screen door of Chester\u2019s old house in Islip
\nas rain hisses
\nthe white noise
\nof summer.
\nAfter his old man\u2019s
\nporkchops dream of Alto,
\nGeorgia in my mouth,
\nChet says Let\u2019s go upstairs:
\nWooden room,
\ntwisted sheets
\non an unmade bed,
\npaintings of sunflowers
\nand Malcolm X.
\nChet flips through his LPs:
\nColtrane, Monk and Miles.
\nAnd I\u2019m like, Who?
\nHe places the Billie Holiday record onto the turntable gently, carefully,
\nmeticulously:
\nThou Shall Not Touch
\nHoly Vinyl With
\nHuman Hands.
\nAnd there she is:
\nA voice of barbed
\nwire caked
\nwith rust and violets.
\nIs Your Figure Less Than Greek?<\/i>
\nChet smiles seeing
\nmy white universe
\nbreak up into black holes,
\nmy shadow packing its bags
\nand heading out of
\nLilyville.
\nAin\u2019t it like raw milk, he says, ain\u2019t it like moonlight and blood?<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGeorge Donald<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nIN THE SUN BY GOD IN THE HAYWAGON
\n 
\nGod Bless the grass
\noutside, the grass the fields
\nThe fields to cut and bale and load
\nthe hay, bless the barn that will not
\nburn, bless alike the snake
\nthat bit itself crazy
\nand died in the sun days ago
\nBless how it moved even dead
\nbut not like dead, turning with worms
\nBless the big hungry dog loose
\nfrom its rope
\nBless it twice how it ran and in
\nthree swallows was done eating the
\nsnake the worms and ran again
\nin the sun. Bless the
\nSun.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nClive Donovan<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nBABYSITTER
\n 
\nThe children play with pots and pans
\nI have promised to keep them safe
\nwhile Magda fetches rations from the trucks
\nit is useful play \u2013 they learn about weight
\nand metal and receptacles
\n        and percussion
\nmy ears suffer din remembering
\nblistering rounds of bullets
\nruined glass and wasted copper and brass
\nI collect and hammer things from
\nto pass the days
\nI have fashioned plates and bowls
\nthey cannot resist fighting
\n     over biggest pot
\nI teach them to make communal drum
\nand then to fix firm shelter tent from carpet
\nthey know how to live like this
\n    huddled snug in den
\nthe pattern of carpet is helicopter
\nI shift to a book I cannot read
\nthose far-away stories
\nI make it all up
\nsprawled
\nupside down I look at sky
\nit is mostly blue these days and clear
\nyesterday I    saw a banana
\n     ate a kitten
\n    got smiled at by soldier
\nI grab a child before it climbs
\nperilous concrete stair
\nleading to nowhere<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAlexis Rhone Fancher<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n1. ODE TO MY HUSBAND\u2019S BACK HAIR
\n 
\nHow it births just above his derri\u00e8re, a dank profusion
\nof blackness, fuller as it reaches his waist,
\nclimbs up either side of his spine like kudzu.
\n 
\nLust, a determined furrow of dark confusion,
\nthe spring and flatten of his pelt embraced;
\nthe grip and tug of my exploring fingers.
\n 
\nHow he lowers his sweet face down to me,
\nnuzzles my neck, his nose in my hair,
\nbare-back, silken, thick.
\n 
\nA dense forest tangles the slope of his shoulders,
\ngrapples his neck. I starry night him in the shower,
\nsoap his back, whorl his eager flesh,
\n 
\nDon McLean\u2019s Vincent<\/i>*,
\nsung straight-faced, an homage.
\n 
\n*(O Starry, Starry Night)
\n 
\n 
\n2. ODE TO MY HUSBAND\u2019S HITCHHIKER THUMBS*
\n 
\nAsked what about him I love best, I confess:
\nHis thumbs. How they reach down, into me,
\ntheir hyper-extensibility, a jolt, a thunder bolt,
\n 
\nfresh from his double-jointed exploration,
\ncurved inward, toward my center, the nub he rubs –
\nhis heat-seeking digits for my clitoral amusement.
\n 
\nHe\u2019s won the genetic lottery, two recessive
\nalleles determining a thumb\u2019s nature,
\nits bend-ability to please instead of tease.
\n 
\nHow he slip-slides into me,
\ngrabs my ass with dexterity,
\nholding firm, bent on pleasure.
\n 
\nI give him free rein, his thumbs
\nhitchhiking all over my landscape.
\n 
\n 
\n*The Hitchhiker’s Thumb is a thumb where the distal joint can bend as far
\nbackwards as 90 degrees. It is often referenced as a visual trait of genetic inheritance.
\n 
\n 
\n3. ODE TO MY HUSBAND’S HERNIA SCARS
\n 
\nShe needs symmetry<\/i>, my husband tells the surgeon,
\npre-op, as if that explains everything. She\u2019s an artist<\/i>.
\nHe makes swashes through the air with his pointer fingers,
\n 
\nparallel, like two eyes, winking.
\nHe\u2019s considerate of my POV, fellating his cock,
\nstaring at his up-close groin.
\n 
\nThoughtful like that, always looking ahead,
\nhe knows the value of encouragement.
\nWhen the surgeon calls, post-op, she chuckles.
\n 
\nThe incisions are identical, perfectly symmetrical.
\nYour spouse wanted me to reassure you<\/i>, she says.
\nOnce home, my husband lifts his shirt.
\n 
\nWanna see my scars?<\/i> Like they too, are art;
\nlike they\u2019re every bit as sexy as back hair.
\n 
\n 
\n4. ODE TO MY HUSBAND\u2019S MOUTH
\n 
\nI trace his lips with my fingertips.
\nGenerous portal, housing
\nhis dexterous tongue.
\nWhen I suck it, he opens wide.
\n 
\nI push my body into his, hairy chest
\ntickling my breasts and belly:
\nheat-seeking, mesmerized,
\nspelunking each other\u2019s depths.
\n 
\nHis tiny kisses follow me down,
\nearthquake at the back of my neck,
\nsetting off fireworks, wet works,
\na deep trembling.
\n 
\nOh! How his lips respond to mine,
\nthe lick and pull as he nibbles my clit,
\nmy body\u2019s shudder, that hot-rush response
\nprogramed for his dining delight.
\n 
\nGulp. Lap. Guzzle. Quaff.
\nA mouthful. A gobble. A canap\u00e9.
\n 
\n 
\n5. ODE TO MY HUSBAND\u2019S DEVIATED SEPTUM
\n 
\nWhen we\u2019re missionary, eye to eye,
\nhis body wedged between my thighs,
\nand I look up into his face,
\nI see his nose is out of place.
\n 
\nthe only time I wonder why?
\nA biking mishap? Attempts to fly?
\nI ponder, from birth or accident?
\nA slip and fall on hard cement?
\n 
\nThen it hits me, when he goes “downtown”
\nit\u2019s his crooked nose that ruts around,
\nparts my labia, diddles my clit,
\nno reason to complain about it.
\n 
\nWhen asked, he shrugs, I was born this way.
\nI could have it fixed. \u2014 But why?<\/i> I say.
\nI don\u2019t want to change you, not one bit<\/i>.
\nBesides, I\u2019ve gotten used to it.
\n 
\nI caress crooked cartilage, smooth the skin,
\nthink of the places his nose has been.
\n 
\n 
\n6. ODE TO MY HUSBAND\u2019S HEART
\n 
\nWe call it afterglow<\/i>, this reluctance
\nto uncouple, heartbeats synchronized,
\nin cahoots. We linger.
\n 
\nI caress his pecs, circle his left nipple
\nwith my tongue, my ear close to his heart.
\nA human electrocardiogram, he ignites sparks.
\n 
\nWhen we fuck he is ventricles, arteries,
\nrimming my heart\u2019s surface, pumping pleasure
\nlike oxygen into me, into us.
\n 
\nWebster defines it: “Young, easily cut beef, and
\na sentimental heart can each be called tender.”
\nIf you\u2019re cooking, baby, make mine rare.
\n 
\nI hold my breath \u2014 will time to stop
\nin this heady space. Let us linger in his tenderness.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nVern Fein<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nFORTY-SEVEN AUTUMNS
\n 
\nago our old Volvo trekked
\ntoward the North Woods
\nfor our honeymoon.
\n 
\nI lost the car keys,
\ndelayed our passion,
\nleft the salami and cheese gift
\nfrom your parents
\nat that gas station,
\nforgot the take-out ribs
\nat that fancy restaurant.
\n 
\nHolding hands still,
\nworking through
\nthe differences no marriage
\ncan foresee.
\n 
\nThanks for your forbearance
\nas we made it through
\nthe ruts of our years
\njust as that Volvo
\nbounced through the ruts
\nin the road to the rustic cabin,
\nwhere you, dear wife,
\nslid cold feet out of bed
\nthat first morning
\nto light the pot-bellied stove.
\n 
\n 
\nMORE! MORE!
\n 
\nOnce was a girl who slid on the ice
\nas if the ice were frozen wind.
\nPink-cheeked and laughing
\nher plaid scarf wildly flapping,
\nwhenever her shoes reached
\nsidewalk end, she would cry:
\n“More! More!”
\nas if the ice were Life.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJames Fowler<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nJULY 1st<\/sup>
\n 
\nFrom the top of the driveway,
\nI sense that the farm has settled
\ninto stillness. Beyond the barn,
\nthe long limbs of the pines
\nhang unmoving. Not a needle
\nstirs. In front of the house,
\nBlack-eyed Susans nod,
\nhalf asleep. Everything waits.
\nThough it\u2019s been years
\nsince you died, Mother,
\nI remembered your birthday.
\nNow I wait for you to come out
\nonto the porch and tell me
\neverything I\u2019ve done wrong.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nKarin L. Frank<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMIDDLE PASSAGE
\n 
\nShe watches the couple
\ndepart under the glamour
\nof prom night magic, knowing
\nher innocent daughter will later
\nsit in an air-cooled caf\u00e9,
\neats fried pickles dipped
\nin Ranch dressing, and
\ndrink Vietnamese coffee
\nin the company of
\nher jeans-clad warrior.
\n 
\nDo you love me
\neven if my hips are big?<\/i>
\nthe innocent will ask him.
\nOf course<\/i>, he will answer,
\n how could I not
\nwhen the overhead spotlights
\nyour breasts just so?<\/i>
\nWith hot-tongued kisses
\nhe will gag her doubts
\nand lure her, bound
\nin silken lassoes,
\nto the hold of a rented limo.
\n 
\nAt home alone her mother
\nwaits for her return, knowing
\nshe cannot prevent
\nthese fried delights,
\nand sweet, caffeinated potions
\nfrom tempting the naive into cool cafes
\nand the dangers of dates with slavers.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMeg Freer<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nNO MOON IN TBILISI
\n 
\nI never saw any moon during hot nights
\nwhen sweet apricots, salty bread,
\nmint lemonade and coolness of turquoise
\nwalls relieved heat from sun bright
\nas the yellow bird in a courtyard cage.
\n 
\nPerhaps moonrise starts its journey
\nin the west in that mythical land.
\nSurely the moon shone over Tbilisi,
\nbut I only ever saw sunrise
\nthrough sheer white curtains.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJeffery Gainer<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nFIVE CLERIHEWS
\n 
\nVirginia Woolf, in a previous century
\nBeing a novelist most exemplary
\nPenned a fine, witty tome,
\nThen went for a swim and sank like a stone.
\n 
\n 
\nQuentin Crisp
\nAffected a lisp.
\nAnd wrote with acidity
\nOf his lost, regained virginity.
\n 
\n 
\nJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy, to friends, Jack
\nSuffered a serious drawback
\nTo his presidential aspirations
\nBy innumerable, intimate liaisons.
\n 
\n 
\nDonald Trump,
\nTo intellectuals, a chump.
\nTo the faithful robustus,
\nTheir own Iesus Christus<\/i>.
\n 
\n 
\nJean-Paul Sartre:
\nExistential upstart.
\nAlbert Camus:
\nGloomy, too.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGene Goldfarb<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHE MOUNTAINS OF R.I.
\n 
\nThere must be mountains in Rhode Island,
\nhigh rocky places, nothing as tall as Everest,
\nbut a snowy peak or two where you can scan
\nthe roofs of rich mansions and maybe hold
\na cool cocktail and sip it while you watch
\nthe regatta or a commencement at Brown
\nand pretend you had boodles of dough,
\nenough to wipe out an epidemic or change
\nthe University\u2019s name to yours.
\n 
\n 
\nMIDDLE SCHOOL
\n 
\nAt twelve
\nyou learn all these things,
\nI remember my Hungarian mom
\ntaught me “chokolat shegem”
\nwhich translated meant “kiss my ass,”
\nactually a polite way of saying
\n“go to hell”
\nthen there were worse things
\nso bad I won\u2019t repeat them.
\nI\u2019ll just say one of them
\nstood for that part of a male horse
\nonly truckers shout in a traffic jam,
\nmom then told me
\nwhere babies came from
\nand it\u2019s not really the belly,
\nand dad who\u2019s Polish told me
\nHungarians were wild people
\nwho rode into Europe
\nfrom Central Asia on short horses
\nand only knew how to cook goulash.
\nStill, I was assured I had inherited
\nthe best of both of them.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJohn Grey<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMEET THE CHILD
\n 
\nShe had been definitely
\nscrubbed clean, hair brushed,
\nfor this moment.
\nHer face glowed like polished peach skin.
\n 
\nThere was a touch of boldness
\nin her eyes,
\nand her mouth twitched
\ndespite her best efforts
\nto keep her lips straight,
\nas she fought back
\na loud burst of laughter.
\n 
\nI was confident enough
\nthat I wasn\u2019t funny looking.
\nSo was it the thought
\nof me with her mother
\nthat was so humorous?
\n 
\nIntroduction over,
\nshe was quickly ushered
\nout of the parlor
\nand into her room.
\nThere would be no audience
\nfor the comedy to come.
\n 
\n 
\nVISITING THE FORTUNE TELLER
\n 
\nTea leaves?
\nYou must be joking?
\nBut no, you take my cup
\nin all the seriousness you can muster,
\nexamine the arrangement
\nof the tiny black flecks
\nat the bottom.
\n 
\nI’m thinking that
\none extra slosh, shake, stir
\non my part
\nand my future could have
\ngone from trampled dead by moose
\nto CEO of Fortune Five Hundred company.
\nNot even luck is this random.
\n 
\nAccording to you,
\nneither of those fates is in the china.
\nInstead, I will marry a childhood sweetheart,
\nhave two kids, own two cars,
\na suburban house,
\nwhile holding down a well-paying job.
\n 
\nIn other words,
\nthe future is the present.
\nPlus, of course,
\nthe first cup of tea
\nI’ve drunk in years.
\n 
\n 
\nTHE TEACHER
\n 
\nShe has no husband, no children,
\nnot even a dog or a cat.
\nHer apartment building allows
\nall of these things
\nbut her life does not.
\n 
\nIt’s another morning
\nwhere she’s shocked by
\nthe rigidity of her
\nfeelings and beliefs.
\nShe’s forty-one in a week’s time.
\nBirthdays are for measuring
\nhow far life has gone
\nwith her less than full engagement.
\n 
\nThere’s always the comfort
\nthat some of her students
\nwill go on to better things.
\nIt’s also a copout.
\nBut a generous one
\nwhen someone thanks her
\nfor the start she gave them.
\n 
\nBut, for too long,
\nshe’s been no more
\nthan her job description.
\nAnd now her breasts
\nare sagging,
\nthe purple veins in the back of leg
\nare squeezing their way
\nto the surface,
\nand there’s a lump on her shoulder
\nshe may or may not
\ntell the doctor about.
\n 
\nShe wrangles oatmeal in a bowl,
\nmakes her own coffee,
\nmarks papers at the kitchen table.
\nIt’s another school day.
\nShe has much to teach,
\nlittle left to learn.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGoddfrey Hammit<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWHAT\u2019S WORSE THAN FINDING A WORM IN YOUR APPLE?
\n 
\ngoes the joke, the kind simple enough for a kid to set up
\nand deliver–a first-joke joke–and the kind an adult doesn\u2019t mind
\nrehearing, because don\u2019t both kid and grown-up know by now
\n 
\nthe truth that a bad situation can always get worse? And can\u2019t
\nboth see the humor in what\u2019s unsaid, in piecing two halves together?
\nThough it is a fine line, the humor of misfortune, because who,
\n 
\nfor a real belly-laugh, wants to consider the worm in all this,
\nwhose situation is certainly worse? What\u2019s worse<\/i>… the young worm
\nmight say to the older, setting up a joke the older worm remembers
\n 
\ntelling in his own salad-nibbling days, a classic of worm-humor:
\nWhat\u2019s worse<\/i>, it goes, than to find yourself munching through sweetness,
\nthe sun spilling in green-tinted and the sugar slaking your wormy body,
\n 
\nwhich tunnels along at the sour taste on your skin and the thought
\nthat this is more than you could ever eat: you could never eat a world,
\nwhich this is, a planet of light and life–you\u2019re no destroyer of worlds,
\n 
\njust hungry, and, just as you\u2019re feeling it\u2019s all too good to be true,
\nthis heaven you find yourself in is bitten in two (and you with it)
\nas a God with a black-hole maw makes a snack of existence itself,
\n 
\nand then tosses you aside with disgust at what was your home,
\nand you, and leaving you wondering what had happened and
\nwondering where, oh where, had your other half gone?<\/i>
\n 
\nNo punchline, but the older worm will laugh because one laughs
\nat what one can\u2019t control, and because don\u2019t both know by now that,
\nfor a worm, what one can\u2019t control includes nearly all of it?
\n 
\nLuck was all it was, being a worm born beneath an apple tree,
\nthe soil sweet from last year\u2019s rot, and the plunk<\/i> of falling fruit that
\ndrew you up, out of the dark, savory soil to sugary flesh.
\n 
\nAnd then there\u2019s the joke that nobody tells, because it\u2019s a joke
\nonly understood by apples, which goes, What\u2019s better than to be
\nan apple, so green after a summer of bobbing on the hot wind,
\n 
\nso fat from sucking the sweetness from the molasses-colored ground,
\nand so planet-round that someone, going in for a bite, hardly notices
\nthe worm-sized hole, edged in brown like a cigarette burn,
\n 
\nwhich, you thought, might mar you from being enjoyed again,
\nbut then–ahh–the snap of teeth sinking into firm, worm-riddled flesh,
\nand what\u2019s better? What, possibly, could be better than that?<\/i>
\n 
\n 
\nONION-EYED
\n 
\nMy mother was chopping onions,
\nand I said,
\n“Put a matchstick between your teeth:
\nthat\u2019s what I\u2019ve heard.”
\n 
\n“Lit?” she asked.
\n 
\nWhat do you think?<\/i>
\nBut, actually, I didn\u2019t know:
\nall I had heard was, “When chopping onions,
\nplace a matchstick between your teeth.”
\n 
\nWhat good was my advice if I couldn\u2019t say
\nwhether lit or unlit, or whether you struck it
\nonly to blow it out, letting the smoke
\nclaw at your eyes first, before the onion could?
\n 
\nDid you bite the wood bit, or did you crack
\nthe head between your teeth like a pink peppercorn,
\na spark shooting onto your tongue,
\nthe smell of sulfur in your throat?
\nDid you hold it sideways like a rose stem in a lover\u2019s mouth?
\n 
\nMaybe you did light it, and you looked down
\nto see the onion through fire.
\nYou chopped fast,
\n 
\nbecause if you thought
\nan onion<\/i> could make you cry,
\n 
\nwell, a lit match between your teeth,
\nscorched lips,
\neyelashes singed:
\nthat<\/i> would give you something to cry about.
\n 
\n 
\nSECONDHAND SONNET
\n 
\nIt wasn\u2019t anything at all, she said.
\nThough songs are written on the subject–no,
\nit wasn\u2019t poem-worthy, just what one did
\nwhen one was young and caught in hormone\u2019s throes.
\nI guess that I could see how anything,
\nincluding sneaking out on summer nights,
\na different boy each time, could turn routine:
\nfor some, hard to imagine–yet it might.
\nI could have said some dreamed of “just a kiss,”
\nthat she, in summer, blithely kissed away–
\nand yet, today I\u2019d thought the same: just this<\/i>
\nagain, just happiness, and just a day,
\nthe type of love that one comes to expect–
\nand who would think to make a song of it?<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nErin Hay<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nPERFECT STRANGER
\n 
\nMy Big Island Airbnb host
\nis sultry, a stoner, and
\nwonderfully fucked up. Wise.
\nHibiscus lips, always the lips.
\n 
\nButterflies are everywhere,
\nbusy little movements of air.
\nI ask her the word
\nfor butterfly In Hawaiian
\n 
\n“Pulelehua”, she purrs.
\n 
\nBut then she stops.
\nLeans to me, all serious,
\nkisses me first.
\nFast.
\nHer worn saddle hands,
\nhard. Warm.
\nThere\u2019s no coy anymore.
\nWe are fevered. Mad.
\nShe is ferocious,
\ntakes it all for herself.<\/i>
\n 
\nBut this hot animal
\nis only in my
\nmonkeyed mind.
\n 
\nWalking to the bay,
\nI listen-sort of, watching
\nthe small of her back,
\nher tattooed swale.
\n 
\nWhen I stop chasing
\nit, pussy-that is,
\nthere is a chrysalis,
\nand the freedom to fly.
\n 
\nI mean, she is straight,
\nbut crooked and twinkly.
\nBiggest doobie roller I know,
\nholds it close, like a bottle.
\n 
\nAnd I can say I know her,
\nbecause she cried
\nlike four times, over sadder
\npeople, she can\u2019t save.
\n 
\nHer easy tears,
\ndovey eyes, Koa brown,
\nlithe-hearted, willed by fire.
\nOur broken edges, fused.
\n 
\nSo I share my hopeful
\nlove of everything,
\nmy own sad knowing.
\nI let her see most of me.
\n 
\nBut I keep it collared and
\nreplay my pussy\u2019s own
\npet vignette, over and over.
\n 
\nFast walking, ahead
\nme, me-ing, along,
\nshe weaves her curvy
\nPulelehua tale.
\n 
\nAnd trailing behind,
\nI strain to hear
\nmy best intentions,
\nbreaking over the waves.
\n 
\nShe trusts a perfect
\nstranger, more than
\nshe really should.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Helweg-Larsen<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWHEN YOUR FLESH FRESHLY
\n 
\nWhen your flesh freshly and your face flushly
\nFace the imperatives of flesh,
\nI find your mind now unleashed lusty-lushly\u2026
\nMust we not then enmesh?
\n 
\n 
\nSHE LAMENTS
\n 
\nMany the tunes whistled, the songs sung
\nOf fiery loves that have gone sadly cold;
\nAs a girl, I loved when I was still too young–
\nBut now I\u2019m grown, and he has grown too old.
\n 
\n 
\nHE LAMENTS
\n 
\nThis multitasking stuff has too much asking,
\nI just can\u2019t handle it.
\nTake \u2018asking\u2019 out of \u2018multitasking\u2019 –
\nI\u2019d rather just mull tit.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSydney Henck<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nSHADOW
\n 
\nYou led the way and I followed.
\nThe shadow to your every movement.
\nNow the sun is overhead and I have come to where you stand.
\nBut as the sun moves behind you I move ahead,
\nTo make my own way.
\nAlways knowing that you are behind me.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMary Beth Hines<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nSUNDOWN
\n 
\nHe cradles the ivory pendant between his palms
\nwhile behind him shadows climb, flicker and spin,
\nand when he presses it softly, squarely in the middle,
\nan angel slips in through his moon-washed window.
\n 
\nShe glows in her nurse\u2019s white, her soft words soothing,
\nas she settles the alabaster charm with quiet hands,
\nand they stare into the dark courtyard together\u2014
\nhair pale, eyes milky, though not just because he\u2019s old.
\n 
\nIt\u2019s a trick of light, a match, a flare that falters
\nafter twilight when all color seeps and alters.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nChristine Jackson<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nESCAPE FROM KABUL
\n 
\nDistant bombs thud a steady drumbeat through the night.
\nAt dawn, blasts seem to explode in my head
\nas flames crack open the purple sky.
\nThreads of black dust rise from the hills.
\nThe Taliban wait, ready to close in, like a creeping bloodstain.
\nLong ago, they killed my uncle, stabbing my mother
\nwith heart sickness until she died. One night,
\nBaba<\/i> never came home.
\n 
\nI work hard at the network, proud
\nto help them speak in clear Dari
\nas I haul stacks of files, scramble for
\nRon\u2019s camera crew, and run messages
\nfor producer Toni. Today they say we all must leave.
\nNow.
\nI am to meet them at the airport.
\nJaleel<\/i>, Toni says, be sure to bring these<\/i>.
\n 
\nAt the runway, my eyes sting from oily smoke. Heated air
\nstreams up in waves from roaring monster engines.
\nJet hatches are locked, but my people still form lines
\nlike saw-scaled vipers, crooked and dangerous.
\nThe two thumb drives from Toni sit heavy in my jeans pocket.
\nWhen giant tires start to roll, I break
\nfrom shouting men with knives, duck under a wing
\ninto shadows. A hot chrome bar helps me to swing my legs
\nabove the wheel. Below me, rushing pavement drops away,
\nand the plane tilts back.
\n 
\nGripping hot metal, I hug the scene to my chest.
\nA fringe of green encircles our domed mosque, its minaret
\nlike a gun pointing at the sky. Flying high, I watch
\nhard-baked desert spread a brown river
\nflowing over mountains and far off lands.
\nThe burning metal bar folds up into the jet\u2019s belly.
\n 
\n 
\nMEMORIES OF PRAGUE BY NIGHT
\n 
\nA misty rain dissolves the time before, safe time.
\nThe caf\u00e9 waiter clears our dishes,
\ncrouching to retrieve a crumpled napkin beneath your chair.
\nEven with your warm hand cupped over mine,
\nwe are numb to each other\u2019s pain, focusing only on the brie,
\na buttery pool melting into a baguette.
\n 
\nFeral night creeps from the dark
\nwhen merlot flows like blood in a rich stream.
\nTasteful stringed music covers our murmurs
\nas we struggle not to speak of diagnosis, prognosis.
\nHand shaking, you drop your napkin.
\nLights twinkle off the savage cutlery.
\nThe waiter uncorks a bottle, leaving
\na gleaming plate of bread and cheese.
\n 
\nWe settle on a caf\u00e9 beside the gurgling river.
\nPrague Castle looms over the Square, lit spires
\njutting into twilight, questioning,
\nsearching. Festive strings of lanterns
\nguide us along the cobblestones, the astronomical clock
\nticking our every step. Its hands resist our urgent pleas
\nto pause or halt or reset to the time before.
\n 
\nLights shimmer on the banks of the Vltava.
\nThe air smells of rain yet to fall. Halfway across Legion Bridge,
\nwe stop to admire other crossings upriver,
\ngraceful arches marching in a row,
\ndoubled, quadrupled,
\nan illusion of infinity while we struggle over this bridge
\nand the next, and the next, and the next,
\nor refuse to cross any bridge all.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nNate Jacob<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nFATHER TO SON
\n 
\nYou are unlikely to understand this any time soon,
\nperhaps not until you are blessed as I am
\nwith a child who behaves perfectly childishly
\nat all the right moments,
\nmetronomically and always on the right beat.
\n 
\nLike when you sense the pressure of my hand
\nincrease between your shoulder blades
\nas I steer you in the humane direction
\nof good choice and right living,
\nlike all good fathers should do.
\nYou push back, step away and fast,
\npull me level with flamed eyes
\nso that you can deliver the proper verbal punch,
\ndirect and perfectly placed in my old solar plexus.
\n“I don\u2019t love you” sounds an awful lot like
\n“I hate vegetables” with the added perk
\nof rendering me breathless.
\n 
\nI smile and let you know that I\u2019m okay with you,
\nthen gently return my hand to your upper back,
\nturn you right again, wipe my lids and
\nresolve to commiserate more regularly
\nwith the broccoli and the Brussels sprouts,
\nwith the green beans and the asparagus,
\nall of whom are surely told how little they are loved,
\nnot only by my own childish children and
\ncountless other millions of misguided children,
\nbut saddest of all, by their own little sprouts,
\nwho would benefit greatly from the wise guidance
\nof their patient and loving vegetal parents.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMelissa E. Jordan<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nHEEL TURN
\n 
\nOur happiest days were spent thinking of shoes \u2014
\nballet slippers, split-sole taps, and worn cowboy boots.
\nAnd he sketched by the hour, the washed greens and blues.
\n 
\nYou\u2019d think that their stories would be easy to choose.
\nThey\u2019d be married, or twins, or thieves in cahoots.
\nThe happiest days were spent thinking of shoes.
\n 
\nWe didn\u2019t mind lost time; it was our time to lose;
\nto spin wallpaper stories of peacocks and fruits
\nfor him to sketch by the hour, the washed greens and blues.
\n 
\nAnd we plotted the Oz-turn, a burst of chartreuse,
\nfaded vines sprouting sudden, lurid red shoots.
\nThe happiest days were spent thinking of shoes.
\n 
\nSoon enough each pair began dropping more clues \u2014
\nlittle hints of backstory, with us in pursuit.
\nAnd he sketched by the hour, the washed greens and blues.
\n 
\nFinally story joined image, our usual fuse
\nof last minute magic and rude absolutes.
\nThen came the book of our beautiful shoes.
\nAnd after, the bruises, the washed greens and blues.
\n 
\n 
\nTHE SEVEN CARRIES
\n 
\nHe tells me that the girl that he marries
\n(teasingly, as I stumble through my first portage)
\nwill have to conquer the Seven Carries;
\n 
\nThat she can\u2019t be running away with the fairies,
\nbut stay firmly with him, bundling the cordage.
\nHe\u2019s speaking, remember, of the girl that he marries.
\n 
\nWhen the canteen tastes of iodine and berries
\nand free-running streams are at a keen shortage,
\nshe\u2019ll still have to conquer the Seven Carries.
\n 
\n(One night at a wine bar north of Kingsbury
\nhe frowned when I laughed over paying for corkage \u2014
\nnot<\/i> something he wants in a girl that he marries.)
\n 
\nI got three paddling books from the library;
\nI\u2019m learning about the sins of keel warpage.
\nSoon he\u2019ll trust I can conquer the whole Seven Carries.
\n 
\nI try campfire tricks with franks and Pillsbury;
\npractice roping high branches for bear-proof storage.
\nStill he keeps saying that the girl he marries
\nwill have to conquer the Seven Carries.
\n 
\n 
\nSTATION CABIN
\n 
\nI had no choice but to build a cabin
\nfrom nesting boxes and blue milk crates,
\nthere in the bed of a woody wagon.
\n 
\nI laid down every blanket I could drag in
\nbut left my school clothes to the fates.
\nI had no choice but to build a cabin.
\n 
\nI chinked the crates with flannel-back satin,
\n(a scrap bin score, from some lower state)
\nthere in the bed of a woody wagon.
\n 
\nIn one crate shelf I set a pewter flagon,
\nthen a specked bowl and a green-rimmed plate.
\nI had no choice but to build a cabin.
\n 
\nIn this tiny space I was the new Aladdin
\npillowed time out of mind, snacking on dates,
\nthere in the bed of the woody wagon.
\n 
\nSome nesting boxes held crystals and dragons,
\ntotems to cheer me when the driving went late.
\nI had no choice when I built that cabin
\nthere in the bed of a woody wagon.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSarah Mackey Kirby<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n“CASTLE EARLY
\n 
\nto protect your king,” he said during
\nthe first game we ever played.
\nAsh brushed jacket and Naval yard
\nship-build-callused fingers
\nclad with a cigar, pointing toward my rook.
\nAs he slid his black pawn forward.
\nEven two phone books high, I sat
\ntoo low to be an equal. But my grandpa\u2019s
\neyes scanned the board as though
\nI was a formidable opponent,
\na Master-in-the-molding.
\n 
\n“If the move you make\u2019s not
\n\u2019cause you\u2019re thinking of mine
\nfour moves down the line, you\u2019ve lost.
\nAnd take control of the board\u2019s center.
\nYou understand?”
\nI nodded but didn\u2019t.
\n“It\u2019s like everything else, you know.
\nHave a plan, and if you\u2019re down too
\nmany pawns, your bishops are better
\nthan your knights. Most times they\u2019re
\nbetter anyway. Strong on the flanks.”
\n 
\nThe longer we played, the rougher
\nhis coughs got. Pain-scrunched face
\nstaring deep concentration.
\n“Never drift your mind, girl.
\nAlways watch your surroundings,
\nor you\u2019re liable to get mated.”
\nAs I sat, butterfly sandals dangling
\nwell above the floor.
\n“Be smart,” he said,
\nthick Brooklyn spilling spit-crumbs,
\nimparting grit square across the board.
\n 
\n 
\nCOMING TO JESUS IN THE BACKSEAT
\nOF A DENTED 1992 FORD EXPLORER
\nWITH A GUY NICKNAMED MOSES
\n(SWEAR TO GOD)
\n 
\nIt was one of those Oh God<\/i> nights.
\nThe kind that was a waste of breath mints,
\nthat required prayers for more leg room
\nbefore dipping salty
\ninto a Dead Sea Friday float,
\na week after Y2K turned out to be
\njust another turnkey into icy
\nJanuary disappointment.
\n 
\nWhere the waxing crescent moon
\nshined through the window,
\nand the back-digging seatbelt buckle
\ngave you the impetus for a
\nseries of hail marys that could fool
\neven the most insecure man
\ninto believing he was leading
\nyou along the sparkling sacred
\nwaters of the River Jordan.
\n 
\nWhen honest-to-Jesus,
\nLimp Bizkit\u2019s “Nookie”
\npopped in loud through the radio,
\nin a coitus interruptus
\nsin-stomping bounce from glory,
\nstopping the hollering of
\ndrawled-out holy beatitudes
\nin the West Ormsby Street
\ndelivery of your sermon on the mount.
\n 
\nAnd how that was the moment
\nyou confirmed Moses was a prophet
\n(with dyed-black spikey hair
\nand a Mr. Magoo tattoo
\non his neck).
\nAn exodus of your straw man
\nrationalizations seeping through the cracks
\nof the window with his cigarette smoke,
\nblessing you with the knowledge
\nthat for God\u2019s and fuck\u2019s sake,
\nthere had to be a better plan.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nKoss<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTV<\/p>\n

\nWatching the TV, it seems as though everything is about the same distance from me, and consequently that everything has equal value. A tube of Crest falling through an ethereal sky has about the same impact as the latest plane crash on the six o\u2019clock news. There they are, neatly contained in the little box behind glass. One appears right after the other. The sameness may be enhanced by black and white, which I happen to have\u2014and the black and white can render an otherwise threatening event quite harmless since I know the real tangible world in which I live is multi-colored. Usually. Sitting in my armchair, I am safe from the TV, its explosions, its propaganda, and its subliminal messages. And it is safe from my occasional verbal interjections and other less overt responses (which occur infrequently). The perfect equilibrium attained through my static vantage point (from the armchair) allows me to transcend all horror and experience television images aesthetically. This equilibrium is disrupted, however, if I move my chair in relation to the TV or switch the stations. It\u2019s during these moments of chair scooting and channel changing that art is conceived.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJerry Krajnak<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nAFTER READING ED DORN\u2019S GUNSLINGER<\/i>,
\nI GO OUT AGAIN TO FACE THAT OBSTINATE BASS
\n 
\nHe clenched truculent fishy jaws and stared
\nat the clumsy lump of stuff that stumbled on shore,
\n 
\ndismissing me with scorn. All mythic smoothness,
\nhe eased inside his liquid moving home
\n 
\nand lingered just enough to let me know
\nthat he, not I, would determine the time to leave.
\n 
\nThen like that self-assured cosmic gunslinger,
\nhe made a choice, flicked a fin, and pivoted
\n 
\nto face infinity where unbound by constraint
\nof time or place this self-propelling missile
\n 
\nmost elegantly detonated himself into the West.
\n 
\n 
\nREMEMBERING BEN
\n 
\nWorkers used to complain that my Australian shepherd
\nwould tear the flesh from a leg or else disable one\u2019s tire
\nif they came up the drive in a white truck or dressed
\nin a uniform unless I was there to tell him no.
\nThe UPS guy, though, he smothered wetly with kisses,
\nas he did an ugly cat who appeared some mornings
\nto share his nest. Reluctantly, I gave him to a rancher
\nwho offered a fenced and safe new home across the county.
\nOnce that dog was gone, the homeless cat
\ndisappeared too. I never discovered where.
\n 
\nA year passed, and out of the fog one day the cat
\nshowed up, minus an eye and lots of fur, and was followed
\nby my old dog and then an ecstatic polyphony
\nas the reunited pair joyously adjourned
\nto frolic where the dog house used to stand. “Been gone
\nfor months,” I was told, “kept digging out and was attacked.
\nIn time, we found his fur, some bones. Bear, maybe,
\nor coyotes.” I hung up, looked around, was alone.
\n 
\nThat dog was like my often-frowning neighbor
\nwho lived by himself in a house full of cats. Old Ben
\nscared children and their mothers but brought me melons
\nfrom his garden, and we sometimes talked
\nof fish too huge to catch that sulked in his pond.
\nHe lived alone but plowed his neighbors\u2019 drives
\nof snow in winter and shared the deer he shot,
\nnot accepting payment. A private man.
\nI never would have guessed at what later was found
\nin rooms behind the kitchen where at times I had sat
\nwhile Ben shared his wine and his lies with just me:
\nIn his bedroom twenty loaded long guns
\nleaned against unpainted walls. Chests crammed
\nwith shells and pistols stashed under pillows
\nwere left to be catalogued the day I discovered Ben
\non the floor in front of his stove with a note
\nentrusting his remains to me. When the sheriff
\nlocked his door one last time, a few neighbors
\nlingered on Ben\u2019s porch, questions in our eyes.
\nThen we all silently nodded to one another,
\nstepped off the creaking boards, and went to our homes.
\n 
\nToday, as I gaze across an empty field,
\nsummer dreaming and thinking of that day,
\nI again sense movement among the brown and gray,
\nand for a moment I swear that I can see
\na cat, a dog, and with them a gnarled old man
\nwhose long missing smile has suddenly rebloomed
\nas he holds out a bucket of red tomatoes
\nand a platter of ribs that he has seasoned
\nand smoked for me on his Big Green Egg.
\n 
\n 
\nJUST OFF HIGHWAY 12, OCRACOKE
\n 
\nI watched a gleeful
\n      naked little boy
\nhold up one hand
\n      and offer bread to gulls
\nand with the other
\n      aim a stream of pee
\nand paint the sand
\n      until his interest waned
\nand he abandoned
\n      birds and art\u2014
\n        and shifted
\nattention to the waves
\n      that lashed the shore and the wind
\nthat howled and stung,
\n      to the sun that erased his work,
\nto the sand where ten
\n      incautious little toes
\nwere being pulled
\n      toward a frothing sea.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAndrea Krause<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nHEADSTRONG PERENNIAL
\n 
\nWhy do hydrangea flowers
\ndesiccate, stubborn stalk
\npoised posture unbroke\u2014
\n 
\nwhile we shimmy down
\nfeathers over wool,
\nand slip and loop knits\u2014
\n 
\nin self-preservation? Out-enduring
\nchlorophyll muted dim, shriveled
\ncrunchy decay, sacrifice
\n 
\nchapeau worn by searching roots.
\nOther flowers wither
\ntrailing goodbye, whisper
\n 
\nshushed with snapped crunch,
\nSee you again soon<\/i> telegraph
\nsent to the mud via seed. Iridescent
\n 
\nfluorescence, instead spills ink
\ninto blot skeletons.
\nWhy are the fluttering paper
\n 
\nbones waltzing\u2014
\nfrigid and lonely, no
\nlead nor follow\u2014
\n 
\ninto the wind? They say
\nopen blooms are 95% water.
\nCan parched ghosts\u2014
\n 
\ncatching dripping showers, hands
\nthrust open, pockets wide
\nin ask\u2014
\n 
\nmake up for their loss?
\nWhen we are empty,
\ncan we be poured full\u2014
\n 
\nif we can catch it?
\n 
\n 
\nTHE SPRING BEGINS WITH ADORATION
\n 
\nWe wander by the reservoir,
\npausing
\nto breathe the exhale
\nof the firs, to admire
\nthe ducks, paired off
\ndiving, focused in search.
\nThe breeze rests in same.
\nAbandoned ripples
\nflatten, leveled polish.
\nI look in the mirror
\nfor reflections
\nof the sky. All I catch
\nis your eyes
\nsmiling, before
\nthe wind ruffles
\nstill feathers
\ninto waves.
\n 
\n 
\nHAM AND BUTTER SANDWICHES
\n 
\nIn the carpeted gym, piled
\nhigh on trays, pedestrian white
\nbuns, numb bland slabs,
\nslathered with butter, or maybe
\nfrugal margarine, it was the Midwest,
\nafter all. Closed inside, cold slice
\nof ordinary deli ham, not the type
\nserved at a celebratory feast.
\nAfter the sad ceremony comes
\nthose mournful sandwiches,
\nleftovers, accompanying our grief home.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJudy Kronenfeld<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nRANK HISTORY
\n 
\nSweat and smell in the regalia
\nof Archduke, Pope, Chancellor, Lord
\nPrivy Seal, in the fur-lined robes
\nof the Empress Dowager\u2014in spite of
\nrosemary, bergamot and lemon in enemas
\nor an orange studded with cloves
\nheld to the nose,
\n 
\nand in the gowns of ladies of the court,
\nwho gracefully dipped down in the royal,
\norderly gardens, and left behind
\ntheir droppings,
\n 
\nas in the plain black of the scullery maid,
\nthe coarse wool of carters and draymen.
\n 
\nBeshat and bepissed silks,
\nvelvets, brocades, chemises
\nof fine linen\u2014brushed and aired by keepers
\nof the royal wardrobe, or soaked, pounded
\nand scrubbed by laundry maids, backs bent,
\ntheir own simple shifts consigned
\nto even lower laundresses
\n“whose privilege it is to serve.”
\n 
\nOur common being, naked
\nunder hierarchic layers,
\nso weak in itself\u2014yet that certain
\nknowledge, century upon deafening
\ncentury, almost never power.
\n 
\nLong after money and race replaced
\ninherited blood, even my immigrant
\nmother, who served coffee and cake
\nfor the Black maid from Harlem
\nwho cleaned our three-room
\nBronx apartment, when we could afford it,
\nmy mother, who sometimes cleaned
\nwith her cleaner (as though they were working girls
\nliving together) behaved as if her “woman”\u2014
\nwhom she\u2019d instructed to use
\na newly discovered toilet bowl scourer\u2014
\nwas personally<\/i> pleased to appraise
\nour crapper that she\u2019d made gleam
\non her knees.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJennifer Lagier<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nPASTORAL COUNSELING
\n 
\n“Puberty begins under your arms,”
\nthe parish priest earnestly explains
\nduring our mandatory counseling session.
\nHe instructs us on sex,
\ntells us laws of gravity must be observed
\nduring marital embrace.
\n 
\nWe\u2019re told to reject sinful birth control,
\nreproduce as often as God demands,
\nrevere the sacraments, attend Sunday mass.
\n“It\u2019s the woman\u2019s role to model Mary,
\npray, sacrifice, obey,” he admonishes,
\n“Give your husband
\nunconditional love and respect.”
\n 
\nI glare at this man in a dress,
\nCatholic cult-leader who probably prefers
\nhis altar boys pre-pubescent,
\nvow to break as many archaic rules
\nas often as possible.
\nAfter an hour of misogynistic bullshit,
\nresolve to erase medieval dogma with tequila,
\nnever set foot in Father O\u2019Dollar\u2019s
\ngrifter cathedral again. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRichard LeDue<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTOILET TRAINING
\n 
\nTo see his terror at sitting on the toilet,
\nonly to realize it’s a fear of change
\nthat most hide
\n 
\nby punching a wall
\nafter too many beers on a Friday night,
\n 
\nstaying up until after midnight
\non a Wednesday
\nrewatching an old sitcom,
\n 
\nor accepting a silence that asks no questions
\nof the minutes we flush away.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMichael H. Levin<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nKUNSTOVO
\n 
\n(5 March 1953)
\n 
\nThey say [Maria Yudina\u2019s] recording of Mozart was on the
\nrecord player when the \u2018leader and teacher\u2019 was found. . .<\/i>
\n— Shostakovich, Testimony (1979)
\n 
\nThe fast-play disk
\nspins, stylus
\nscratching spindle.
\nThe Hetman\u2019s defunct
\nthough no one yet knows.
\nIt\u2019s three AM; when
\nminions arrive, fearful
\nto knock, there\u2019ll be hell to pay
\nand savage successions.
\n 
\nHe sprawls on
\nhis couch in Red pseudo-garb,
\nshort as a toadstool, webfoot
\nconcealed by tall boots
\nnicotined fingers flung
\noutward; pockmarks for once
\nnot erased. The disk
\n 
\nwas made from pure panic:
\nhearing her broadcast, he
\nasked for the record — the
\nsession was live. Pre-dawn
\nsaw a terrified
\norchestra, quivering
\nconductors, marched to fulfill
\nhis \u2018wish.\u2019 One round
\n 
\nquickly was pressed.
\nWhen he sent her a cash prize
\nshe gifted it whole to the Church
\n“for your sins.”
\n 
\nWarrants to wipe her
\nlay blank on his desk
\nthough millions were inked
\nwithout pity. Opaque
\nas Asia, did the ogre
\nhave feelings? Was it
\nmerely a whim of power \u2013
\nof \u2018could, but choose
\nnot.\u2019 His cause
\n 
\nheld lives less than zero,
\nyet she played on:
\nforce steely and strange
\nto faint applause.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJames Lineberger<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHE LAST TIME WE SAW BUCK
\n 
\nwas when he and Ruth drove down
\nto visit us in Atlanta.
\nBuck was already in the throes
\nof dementia but Ruth somehow refused
\nto accept it letting him
\nget lost three times within a mile
\nof the house before Barbara
\ndispatched me to lead them in.
\nAt first he was much the same
\nand did the old tricks for our sons
\nlike the one where he would put
\nhis thumb between his lips
\nand blow pretending to pump up his bicep and make it wiggle
\nor the old jingle about
\nOoey Gooey was a worm Ooey Gooey liked to squirm
\nand at the end the boys would get to scream Ooey Gooey!
\nbut we had to balance the tricks
\nand laughter against the rest of it like
\nhis pacing the carport
\nand mumbling about who Ruth was out fucking now
\nwhen she and Barbara went to the mall
\nso when I suggested
\ntaking the boys and him to the Braves game
\nthe women were so relieved
\nand Ruth tried to slip me a twenty to pay his way
\nbut Barbara said our treat and hugged Buck
\nand kissed him on the cheek and said
\ny’all just have a good time daddy and give them Mets hell
\nfor me. But he couldn’t help but take
\nthe hell upon himself
\nfirst whimpering for Ruth
\nand crying out Ruth Ruth at some woman
\nwho was kissing her lover
\nand then he spilt beer on his pants-leg
\nand kept getting up and trying to leave
\nand finally just started bawling
\nlike a baby until the boys led him off to the rest room
\nand this lady in the seat behind us leaned over
\nto tell me not to worry
\nbecause she had an uncle that was the same way
\nevery time the Mets came to town.
\n 
\n 
\nELEGY, ETC.
\n 
\nWhen mama called to say daddy
\nwas dead from a stroke, she tried to convince me
\nto stay home, too expensive, she said, and besides,
\nshe was having him cremated, and they make everything so simple, she said,
\nnothing left to do but stop by for the ashes,
\nbut then her voice broke
\nand she fell apart, and then me too,
\nuntil neither one of us could understand the other one,
\nso i caught the next flight out, which is how
\ni came to be sitting in the kitchen of the two-room apartment
\nover their little grocery store,
\nsharing a warm six-pack of miller’s and a partial fifth of daddy’s wild turkey,
\nas we recited old stories and tried
\nto console one another until we ran out of things to talk about
\nand just sat there holding hands.
\nBut then she saved us and got out the photo album
\nso we could go through the old
\nbrownie photos and polaroids of them and me, and me and my little brothers,
\nand this relative and that, and don’t forget
\nthis one, she said, turning the page
\nto the full color naked butt studio portrait of when i was a baby
\nwhich made mama laugh and put a hand to her heart, saying
\njust look at yourself so proud mister man.
\nAnd so it went till the fifth was a dead soldier and she found another bottle somewhere
\nwith the seal not even broken
\nand the radio was playing in the background, tuned to the opry on wsm
\nwhen somebody, like we punched a button at the jukebox,
\nstarted in on the wild side of life
\nand mama gave a low grieving moan
\nsaying listen listen oh god honey
\nthey’re doing your daddy’s favorite song it’s a sign feel it can you feel it?
\nAnd then she stood up and held out her arms to daddy’s ghost
\nwaltzing around the table, whirling and whirling,
\nuntil all of a sudden they stopped
\nand mama stood there mumbling some sweet something
\ni couldn’t understand, but when daddy said something back, she cocked her head
\nlike a mockingbird and turned on him so quick and cold, saying
\njust go then, do what you have to,
\nsee if i care, you miserable fuck you motherfucking fuck,
\nand slapped at him so hard she fell over
\non her hands and knees, straddling him and hitting out again and again at nothing
\nuntil i managed to get my arms around her waist and lift her up
\nwhere we could hold on to each other to keep balanced,
\nneither one of us saying a word,
\nand if mama wouldn’t look at me, what did that matter? Grief is grief.
\nBut then, quick as it came up, the storm clouds
\nseemed to disappear
\nand on the radio, some little girl way off in opryland was doing
\nyou are my sunshine, all alone,
\nlike joan baez, like a hymn,
\nand mama just relaxed against me and put her head on my shoulder
\nhalf singing half humming along
\nand i can’t believe this<\/i>
\ni’m dancing with my mama for the first time ever
\nlike so far away, like that girl from winston-salem, what’s-her-name at the senior prom
\nand then she lifts her face up and closes her eyes
\nand how it happened i don’t know
\nbut there we were kissing yes oh yes<\/i>
\nand i could taste the frozen strawberries
\nwe had for dessert
\nuntil she pulled back, eyes wide, and shoved me away
\nlike i was a stranger,
\nand ran off to the bedroom, slamming the door.
\nJesus, no understanding some things,
\nespecially on a day like this, so i shrugged it off, and it wasn’t
\nbedtime yet but i took two greenies anyway what the hell<\/i> and chased them
\nwith the last beer thinking, fuckit<\/i>, if i’m early, i’m early,
\nwhen, without any warning,
\neverything seemed to take hold at once
\nand there i was, jabbering and shushing myself, half asleep,
\nback at the catawba river, like in a movie,
\nand we were just kids, me and ray and richard,
\nplaying cowboys on our broomstick horses, laughing and shooting
\nand falling over dead, but even then i hated it,
\nhated there wasn’t anybody but us for miles around,
\nand i’d lay awake at night gritting my teeth and swearing if i ever got a chance,
\ni’d run off to california
\nand i almost made it, too, sort of,
\nanyway,
\nfar as atlanta,
\nexcept the whole time, without knowing it, all i really accomplished
\nwas a full circle back
\nto this pissant grocery store barely thirty miles
\nfrom our old pier where daddy first picked me up and threw me in the water
\nsaying swim you little shitass, swim!
\nand i stumble to my feet now dog-paddling to the surface<\/i>
\nthinking i don’t know what
\nthinking maybe if i was really the firstborn son they dreamed about,
\nsomebody they could talk to or cry to,
\nnot like my brothers, richard, divorced and whoring in miami, and ray, in his f-16,
\non a aircraft carrier, god knows where,
\nleaving just me, always a shoulder to lean on,
\nsomeone to offer his comfort, like now, in a time of real need
\ninstead of going in there like this<\/i>
\nto stand by mama’s bed
\nwarm from the soft glow of the burning hickory in the fireplace
\nlike it’s, like i’m five years old again<\/i>
\nand i tug at her gown, whispering mama i’m scared mama can i sleep with you
\nbut no she moans no baby no no
\nand pulls the covers over her head and turns to the wall.
\nSo okay then
\nokay you bitch!<\/i>
\nand i march off to my roll-away across the room
\nwhere she’s laid out daddy’s flannel pajamas ironed and folded so nice
\nand i grab them up impulsively,
\ntossing them into the fucking fire<\/i>
\nand strip down naked
\nbefore the gabardine flames
\nshouting look at me dammit mama damn you!<\/i>
\nand she does, at last, her eyes like wet stars, but not for me, not with me,
\nnot here at all, just somewhere way off alone
\nas i crawl into my bed
\nand kneel like an incubus from the coals
\nmy hard cock in plain view
\nand just give up
\ngive in
\noh goddamit
\nand begin to masturbate
\ncrying look mama
\noh christ
\nlook
\ni\u2019m alive alive<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLorraine Henrie Lins<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nAWAKE
\n 
\nOur friends
\nbury their son today.
\nI worry about how
\nto juggle work coverage,
\nand is there a gas station
\non the way, what
\ndoes one wear
\nto a funeral like this;
\nis it too cool
\nfor stocking-less legs
\nand she,
\nif she’s even slept,
\nfigures out how
\nshe’s going to remember
\nto inhale
\nonce she’s let the breath out.
\n 
\n 
\n$14.99
\n 
\nI bought a porcelain butter dish;
\nwhite with a small-knobbed lid
\n 
\nand round-edged corners
\non a flat fluted base
\n 
\nnot because we needed one
\nbut simply because it was the most
\n 
\nnonsense thing I\u2019d picked up that day
\nand because that morning
\n 
\nafter three days of unanswered
\nphone calls, she told me
\n 
\nthat his landlord found him,
\nhis almost-green eyes closed over
\n 
\nas if he could have been sleeping,
\n 
\nand because we\u2019d always
\njust put our butter on an oval
\n 
\nblue-rimmed plate where toast crumbs
\nwould nestle in the blunt cut edge
\n 
\nand because no one
\nreally needs a white porcelain butter dish
\n 
\nwith a flat fluted base and a small-knobbed lid
\nbut me, then, that day.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nEllaraine Lockie<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTONGUE IN CHEEK
\n 
\nThe submission guidelines say No obscenities
\nsexually explicit material or violent language<\/i>
\nWhat could be safer than the tongue
\nThat essential organ to chew, taste, swallow and talk
\nAs innocent as a child\u2019s first words
\nThe pink-tissue purity in licking a lollipop
\nor sucking on a cinnamon stick
\n 
\nThe protraction useful for a mock or otherwise insult
\nThe knocked-out daze of a cartoon character
\nAn outthrust of photography fun in Einstein mode
\nA kindred gesture if you were a Maori warrior
\nPerhaps a flash of flesh to display distaste
\n 
\nOr to show what shan\u2019t be shown
\nby the poor handicapped poet
\nHow the tongue can slither
\naround in another mouth
\nThat French invention inviting
\nother organs to intermingle
\n 
\nThe poet wouldn\u2019t dare describe
\nhow a streetwalker calls to cars
\nwith her curled come-on tongue
\nFlat yo-yo flicks for fucking
\nThe tongue tail wag for doggie style
\nAround the clock of lips for fellatio
\n 
\nThe alliteration of cock and cunt
\nwould be contraband
\nNor should she comment on the size
\nof Mick Jagger\u2019s monstrous tongue logo
\nas anything other than a genetic mishap
\nOr detail the KISS tongue length of Gene Simmons
\nentertaining an ovary
\n 
\nNo, the poet must turn prostitute herself
\nfor her words to appear in this book of fairy tales
\nSo pristine they polish the publisher\u2019s ass
\nOops, she means apple<\/i>
\n 
\n 
\nIRRELEVANT
\n–After a partially-nude photo of a Well-Hung Man<\/i>
\n 
\nGod of Optics, I can see you but am blind
\nto the routine recipe that defines desire
\n 
\nI can taste the sweet kindness of your lips
\nTheir hot spice from phrases
\n 
\nlike My little crotch blossom<\/i>
\nor Sexier than a banned book<\/i>
\n 
\nI can feel the words Let\u2019s go slow Baby<\/i> crawl up
\nmy thigh in their Antonio Banderas voice
\n 
\nHear the soft steps of ache
\nas it traverses my neck
\n 
\nI can smell that scorched brown
\nheartbeat in your naked chest
\n 
\nthat rises like imagination of what
\nunderlies those low-cut tight jeans
\n 
\nBut size of what lies there whispers the word irrelevant<\/i>
\nacross my prescription for pleasure<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nFay L. Loomis<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWINTER\u2019S EDGE
\n 
\norange-fingered flames
\nwrap round logs
\na purple crocus
\ndares snow<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nKen Massicotte<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nOUTPATIENTS
\n 
\nThey approached from nowhere
\na drop-in centre, a rooming house
\na big man and his smaller friend
\nwalking fast. The little guy
\nten paces ahead, cursing and crazy;
\nthe big one in his Blue Jays toque
\nand brown Goodwill suit \u2013
\ntwo hundred and thirty pounds on a six-four frame \u2013
\nbounding down the sun-flecked sidewalk.
\nTheir synchronicity an ancient code
\nwelded by oath of brother\u2019s keeper;
\ntheir tandem a ship breaking waves,
\nan outpatient drama past discount stores,
\ndonut shops and people moving away.
\nThe big guy loud with hawker\u2019s singsong,
\nhis refrain a peacekeeper\u2019s mission,
\nhis face bewildered by love:
\n“I know how hard to hit him.
\nI know how hard to hit him.”<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJoan Mazza<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMASQUERADE
\n 
\nThis Halloween, I\u2019m wearing my usual
\ndisguise, no frantic digging through old clothes
\nfor bell bottoms, tunics, head bands.
\nInvisibility is my superpower. I fade
\ninto the background, match the woodwork
\nwith my splotchy, thinning skin and hair.
\nMy eyebrows have nearly vanished.
\nI\u2019m quiet, no longer shouting to be heard,
\nbut I listen and I watch. Not much is lost
\non me, although you won\u2019t remember our
\nmeeting or my name. As usual, I\u2019m wearing
\nsturdy jeans and sneakers, comfy long-sleeved
\nshirts in dark colors, not the bold, bright
\nprints of Laugh-In nights. Even my car
\nis dull and boring. Lost in the sea of other
\nCamrys painted beige, no need for
\na cloak of anonymity, I disappear.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLisa McCabe<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nPRAYER BEFORE BIOPSY
\n 
\nOf all the body parts to lose \u2014
\nyour arm (the left) with which you write \u2014
\nwould never be the limb you\u2019d choose.
\n 
\nYet you may wake tonight to find
\nthe things it held or tried to hold
\nnow lost to touch though not to mind,
\ngone ghostly, yes, but not grown cold;
\n 
\na curve of hip your fingers traced
\nand memorized, another hand
\nyou took in yours, all loves embraced \u2014
\ntheir print preserved as bruise or brand;
\n 
\na map of scars your forearm bears,
\na tattooed rose and thorn brocade \u2014
\nyou still remember when and where
\nevery cut and line was made;
\n 
\na wedding band you couldn\u2019t shed
\nand wore well after he was gone \u2014
\nso you<\/i> to cede the arm instead \u2014
\nall these things you think upon;
\n 
\nsmall sparrow eating from your glove
\nand how you got the lyrics wrong
\n(you swear she sang \u2018a one-winged dove\u2019)
\nto a favourite eighties’ song
\n 
\nand how it lost its wing and why
\nand how you prayed it still could fly.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nElizabeth McCarthy<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCLIMATE CHANGE
\n 
\nOur neighbor\u2019s crops died.
\nThey dried up in May.
\nI blamed April, who brought
\nno showers.
\n 
\nWe had floods in June.
\nWashing out the bridge
\ndown the dirt road
\nleaving us stranded
\n 
\nat home with
\nmosquitoes and blackflies
\nwho didn\u2019t seem to care
\nabout the weather.
\n 
\nJuly there was one lovely day
\nwhen we picnicked and played
\nuntil more rains came
\nand drowned most everything;
\n 
\nplants, worms, farmer\u2019s hens,
\nand the woman who
\ndrove her car through
\nthe flooded out road.
\n 
\nNow, it\u2019s hot and humid
\nwhere nothing moves
\nexcept the goldenrod
\nwith her yellow rags waving
\nflags of surrender, giving up
\non summer all together.
\n 
\nI was wrong to blame April.
\n 
\n 
\nMUDDY WATER
\n 
\nI look down into the muddy water
\nthinking it should be clear, but then,
\nwho am I to judge the world of a frog?
\n 
\nWhere they leap and swim from my curious eyes
\nthat hope to see beyond the shallow edge
\ninto the depths of a brown-green pond,
\n 
\ninto a world as obscure as the homeless man
\nwho sleeps in the tent across the railroad tracks,
\nhidden behind the overgrown chokecherry
\nand poison oak where I see nothing of his life.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBruce McGuffin<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nKATIE O\u2019CONNOR PERFORMS A MIRACLE
\n 
\nA miracle it was, you know,
\nand happened in this very place.
\nWho did it only goes to show
\nthe loving bounty of God’s grace.
\n 
\nOur neighbor\u2019s youngest daughter Kate,
\nwho was a sweet and winsome child,
\nis gown up now, and changed. I hate
\nto say it but she\u2019s rather wild.
\n 
\nShe goes out dancing every night.
\nAnd every night with different men.
\nCome morning it\u2019s a common sight
\nto see her walking home again.
\n 
\nOn Sunday Katie at Saint Brigid,
\nher granny\u2019s missal in her hands,
\nsees Father Flynn. He\u2019s not too rigid
\nabout her frequent one-night stands.
\n 
\nLast week when Katie made confession
\n(her in a tiny little dress)
\nit took a thirty-minute session.
\nShe had a lot to say, I guess.
\n 
\nLike any conscientious priest
\nthe father has his little ploys
\nto tamp down lust. I mean, at least,
\nhe stays away from altar boys.
\n 
\nBut Katie\u2019s long and detailed tale
\ncombined with Katie’s pulchritude
\nwas just too much and couldn\u2019t fail
\nto put that poor man in a mood.
\n 
\nSaid Father Flynn “The Church is Love.
\nCome to the vestry, we’ll explore
\ntranscendent metaphysics of
\na deeper physical rapport.”
\n 
\nWell Katie thought it very strange
\nwhen Father Flynn there in the nave
\nproposed she shag him in exchange
\nfor benefits beyond the grave.
\n 
\nSo many boyfriends, what’s one more?
\nBut Father Flynn? She didn’t stay.
\nWhen Father tried to block the door
\nshe slipped around and ran away.
\n 
\nThen Father Flynn put on some speed
\n(he goes out jogging sun or rain).
\nKate only had a tiny lead
\nand Father Flynn began to gain.
\n 
\nSaid Katie to herself “Well this’ll
\nnever do, not Father Flynn”.
\nShe used her missal as a missile
\nand saved that priest from mortal sin.
\n 
\nShe hit him hard and laid him low.
\nThe priest gave up, his lust deterred.
\nAnother miracle to show
\nthe power of God\u2019s Holy Word.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJessica Lee McMillan<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWHIPLASH
\n 
\nThe pavement was dry and February grey
\n\u2014enough traction
\nfor the drunk to correct his turn
\n 
\nIn physio, I took care of the whiplash
\nbut my left side twisted hot
\nwhen the baby missed their turn
\n 
\nAfter they were cut away
\nalong with the faulty route,
\nit felt part of the same bruise;
\nthree weeks of black and blue
\nand building of scar tissue
\n 
\nStaring at the mirrored closet,
\nfrom the bed in keloid March,
\nmy eyes emptied in the glaze,
\nand up at the pock-marked ceiling
\n 
\nImagining curves and limbs
\non my ceiling of lunar terrain
\nI remodelled from whiplash
\nand birthed new silver lanes
\n 
\n 
\nBABY TEETH
\n 
\nAutumn is the season of falling leaves
\nchildhood is a season of losing teeth
\n 
\nThe loss of the first incisors
\nstarts at the dissolving of roots
\nas though child pulls from their soil
\nlike fish who then walked on land
\n 
\nThe metamorphosis entails
\nshedding vestigial organs,
\nthen the parent
\n 
\nPerhaps gratitude for what remains
\nonly comes when parts of the body
\nno longer regenerate.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMike Mesterton-Gibbons<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nBRISTOL FASHION
\n 
\nB<\/strong>ristolians aren’t sure what they should do,
\nR<\/strong>egarding Colston’s statue in their town\u2014
\nI<\/strong>f he should be restored for public view,
\nS<\/strong>hip-shape and Bristol fashion, or stay down.
\nT<\/strong>he range of views expressed is very wide:
\nO<\/strong>ld fogeys want him upright, in good name,
\nL<\/strong>eft-leaners want him toppled on his side,
\nF<\/strong>orever daubed with paint to mark his shame,
\nA<\/strong>nd some would dump him back at sea. I say:
\nS<\/strong>et Colston on a spindle, and rotate
\nH<\/strong>im clock-like by the sea, so half his day
\nI<\/strong>s spent submerged, yet twice a day his pate
\nO<\/strong>btains top spot, as briefly he stands tall\u2014
\nN<\/strong>ow surely that’s a compromise for all!<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMark J. Mitchell<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nBIRTH OF TRAGEDY
\n 
\nThe air is blue and cold today.
\nSo hard that, if you struck it
\njust right, a note would sound.
\n 
\nFrom that note, a song could rise,
\nvoices of a mixed chorus singing
\nthe prologue to a play:
\n 
\nA husband returning years too late
\nto a wife drunk with blood desire
\nafter a war that never should have been.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJuan Pablo Mobili<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHE SECRET
\n 
\nDo you remember when the heart rowed
\nclose to the world?
\n 
\nThen, we were not so averse to risk a fall,
\nand the traffic up the mountain to the oracle
\nwas lighter.
\n 
\nThose were the times when our mind
\nwrestled with itself before we made a choice,
\nwhether the choice was to telephone a friend,
\nor write a poem you\u2019d leave casually
\non a table,
\n 
\nor a secret,
\nsomething so close to the hull
\nthat you had to keep it to yourself.
\n 
\nAt least for a while,
\n 
\nat least until you found out what flag
\nthe ship was flying
\nbefore you surrendered your oar,
\n 
\nbecause you<\/i>
\nwas all that secret needed,
\nat least then.
\n 
\n 
\nTHE RIVER
\n 
\nI dreamed I rowed a river of regrets,
\nfloating like lilies close to my oars,
\n 
\nmy mother\u2019s wish to be noticed and adored
\nfloating near my father\u2019s hope that justice
\nwould mend our country\u2019s broken bones.
\n 
\nIn the dream I let go of the oars.
\n 
\nMy shoes are damp under my bed.
\n 
\n 
\nTHE MAGIC OF NUMBERS
\n 
\nI don\u2019t remember why my brother and I
\nwere so ill at ease with thunder the summer
\nof 1961, above our small apartment.
\nPerhaps it was the frightful magic of numbers
\nlike our ages, or a decade barely crawling
\naway from the fifties, or disgraces
\nbeyond our comprehension.
\n 
\nMy father\u2019s aunt would tell us not to worry,
\nshe lived with us because she lost her home,
\n\u2014once you had a roof over your head again.
\nthunder was barely worth worrying about\u2014
\nand reassured us that it was God
\nrearranging the furniture in heaven.
\n 
\nThat was the magic of small living spaces,
\nwhat you lacked in square feet,
\nyou made up for with your imagination,
\nthe magic that had numbers kneel down
\nand let you dream that God was the rabbit
\npulled from a top hat, quivering.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nCameron Morse<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nSHATTERED LIGHT
\n 
\nI pluck a teardrop
\nof glass off a floor plank
\nin the hallway
\nmorning after a kids chair
\nfrom IKEA shatters
\nthe ceiling light. The more
\nthings we buy at IKEA,
\nthe more I feel at home
\nin the showroom, the more
\nhome begins to feel
\nlike a showroom
\nof shattered glass. The chair
\nrequired assembly by
\nan Allen wrench that came
\nwith the chair. I\u2019d prefer
\nnot to say what it was doing
\nup there with its feet
\nflailing in the dark of Theo\u2019s
\nbedroom after the blackout
\ncurtains flapped to their
\nrespective rods and blotted out
\nthe last bleed of daylight.
\nBut there I was, vacuuming.
\nListening for the clickety
\nclack of the vacuum cleaner
\nsaying, yes, another splinter
\nof glass, and now what I can\u2019t
\nget out of my head is this
\ncartoon from childhood about
\na little girl and a boy who
\nis held captive by the snow queen.
\n 
\n 
\nTHE STALEMATE<\/p>\n

\nOmi is easy enough to fasten in her car seat. It\u2019s Theo who wavers, not wanting to leave mommy alone in her trembling rage. Sticking the key in the ignition, shifting into reverse, and backing down the driveway requires more courage than I have ever needed. Yet the stalemate stands: Lili demanding an apology, me unwilling to apologize: I just can\u2019t<\/i>\u2014more a surrender than an offensive, my late night brain so soundly beaten. And Theo appears at the front door, finds me parked in the street, the white whale of our Toyota Sienna opening askance, and I buckle him brimming with where\u2019s mommy\u2019s<\/i>. Turn onto Lynn Street.<\/p>\n

A knot of hair
\non the shower wall
\nNearly nine years married<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nElizabeth Morse<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nHONEYMOON
\n 
\nWe arrived in narrow Fall streets
\nto walk up steep hills,
\ncarrying baskets into the night sky.
\nThe room had no TV.
\nYou traced ideograms on my back,
\ndrank my juice.
\nWe sat up late by the window.
\nYou started losing your leaves in September.
\nWe would hold hands and jump
\ninto streets of brightly colored houses,
\njust a month before the earthquake,
\nriding the Bay Bridge to Emeryville.
\n 
\n 
\nDREAM VISITS
\n 
\nYou walked through a gate
\nas though you were never gone.
\nToo cold for the pool.
\nOctober\u2019s leaves spoke softly.
\nWhy do I dream of you night after night?
\nNo warning before it all began.
\nSand we used to visit
\nturned cold, dark;
\nblack curls fell over your ears.
\nYour hair must be gray now,
\nif you are still here.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBruce Morton<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCHURCH CAMP
\n(for Stella)
\n 
\nSo she tells me that
\nChurch Camp has rules.
\nWho would have guessed?
\n 
\nAgape, she cannot believe
\nit, she tells me. The rules
\nfor the Church Camp
\nwill not permit bra straps
\nto show. Easy solution she
\ntells me. She will not wear
\na bra. That will show them.
\n 
\nAnd can you believe it?
\nshe asks me. Shorts must
\ncome to the knee, she says.
\nShe says she does not have
\nany shorts that long. Can you
\nbelieve it? She asks again.
\nNo, I cannot. Yes, I can.
\n 
\nShe is just starting to get
\nthe hang of this teen thing\u2014
\nangst, rebellion, and spirit.
\nI can only hope\u2014OK, pray,
\nthere is no ghost of a chance
\nthat any father or son confounds
\nPatristic and eucharistic.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJBMulligan<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n2:00 AM
\n 
\nThe mind and body ache.
\nThe crickets rattle, ceaseless in the night,
\na senseless noise to make,
\n 
\nperhaps a small mistake
\nof meat convinced that going on is right.
\nThe mind and body ache.
\n 
\nYet it is hard to break
\nthe heart’s habit of beating under the light \u2013
\na senseless noise to make
\n 
\nsince you can never shake
\nthe quick skeletal wings, the gape and bite \u2013
\nthe mind and body ache
\n 
\nand still won’t stop. You take
\neach breath like nectar in, and sigh \u2013 a slight,
\na senseless noise to make
\n 
\nperhaps. You lie awake,
\nuncertain of waking. You groan, and that’s all right:
\nthe mind and body ache.
\nA senseless sound to make.
\n 
\n 
\nSARAH IN THE WOODS
\n 
\nI do not want a man
\nto free or to bind me.
\nNo meaty presence
\nabove or below or behind me.
\n 
\nI want to live
\nfree in the hot still air
\nof my juicy summers,
\nbefore I come to bear
\n 
\nmy load and children,
\nbefore my eyes grow dim
\nand dry, and it\u2019s the same
\nto tend to them or him.
\n 
\nI want the hawk\u2019s cry
\nof the young loose man
\ndistant from the future
\nof an ordained plan.
\n 
\nAnd yet, the wrinkled men
\ndragging the tail of their lives
\nlook no less worn,
\nno happier than their wives.
\n 
\nHere I would stay, content
\nwith sparrow and salamander,
\nand would not look at the web
\nand the fly\u2019s brief wander.
\n 
\n 
\nTWINKLE
\n 
\nTwinkle, twinkle little man.
\nThink you’ll reach us? That’s your plan?
\nThink again, you little shit.
\nYou don’t know the best of it.
\n 
\nWe’ll be here when you are gone –
\nwell, some of us. The ride goes on,
\nlong past flickering of a star.
\nYou’re half a blink. You won’t go far.
\n 
\nYou think the Pyramids are grand?
\nThose monuments to brief command?
\nA star’s small fart is, by compare,
\nlarger and stronger, and still hot air.
\n 
\nA word of ours takes more of time
\nthan your existence. We’ll still rhyme
\nlong past when all your songs and ears
\nare crushed in vanishing atmosphere.
\n 
\nSo make your planet sweltering Hell.
\nIgnore that loudly tolling bell.
\nSurely it cannot ring for thee:
\nGod said you’re special? We shall see.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBarbra Nightingale<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCROSSWORD CLUES
\n 
\nThirty-five across is a newborn\u2019s
\nvocal milestone, three letters
\nwhich is just as silly as
\nthirty-nine down which is a name.
\nI never know any names for actors
\nin The Office<\/i> or Newsroom<\/i>, or
\nJon\u2019s dog. Who is Jon?
\n 
\nBut my millennial grandson
\ntells me he doesn\u2019t have enough knowledge
\nfor most of the answers I know,
\nwhich makes me feel just a
\nbit better, though still frustrated
\nat what a joke is called in (59 Across)
\nor that trail mix is called “Gorp.”
\n 
\nI want to call the makers
\nof these puzzles and rail
\nat their obscure and devious minds
\nin a game that\u2019s supposed to sharpen
\nmy brain\u2019s function, not hone it to a point
\nI can jab through my eye.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nToti O’Brien<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nUNTITLED, 2
\n 
\nSo they asked Joan of Arc
\nwhy always your thighs?
\nThey allow, she replied
\nthe longest consecutive lines.
\nThere would be my back
\nit is true. But the story, then
\nshould be written by somebody
\nelse. My thighs are at hand.
\nWhy the inside? The surface
\nis softer, a bit easier to carve.
\nThey open and close
\nlike a notebook.
\n 
\n 
\nMY PLEASURE
\n 
\nStarting isn\u2019t a problem, she explained.
\nDon\u2019t look for beginnings. There isn\u2019t one.
\nYou shall start the poem, she said
\nat the very center.
\n 
\nIn the middle? Sure, darling.
\nThe way you came into life.
\nIn the middle of things. Didn\u2019t you
\nintrude? Interrupt?
\n 
\nThe end of the poem, she said\u2019s
\neasy to figure out. You
\nshould leave it exactly
\nas you found it
\nlike a public toilet.
\n 
\nIt\u2019s the least you can do.
\nLeave it as you found it.
\nDoor unlocked.
\nAjar is fine. Thank you.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSteve Passey<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nINTERNET DATING STORY
\n 
\nThere are those that get away
\nand then there are those that just go.
\nIt was physical for my part,
\nyes, physical.
\nIt was the color of her hair, the color of her eyes.
\nHey Mormon girl, have you ever served a mission?
\nHey Mormon girl, do you still wear your garments?
\nShe told me that it was easier to divorce her husband
\nthan it was to leave her faith.
\n(She said she\u2019d burnt her garments.)
\nShe\u2019d taken up with a handsome man, she said,
\nseparated from his wife,
\nwho then moved back in with the wife
\nbut
\ndeferred telling her about it.
\nThis is internet dating, isn\u2019t it?
\nTrading stories about our scars
\nand how we got them
\nand the people we knew
\nand the conveyances that brought them.
\nAfter that first date, it was like a horoscope had been cast
\nand its spell revealed in rhyme, but in another language,
\nand she,
\nand her eyes and her hair and her scars,
\nwent back to that married man who had, again,
\nseparated from his wife
\nand who, again,
\nwent back to that same wife.
\nHistory\u2019s rhyme, incantation
\ncome to compel her and to bring her to ruin.
\n(For the wife there is no room in this story,
\nsave that she too,
\nmust have suffered something,
\nand that should be acknowledged too.)
\nThe woman I had sat across from,
\nto say that this is how I got this mark,
\nand this one,
\nand to laugh at old pains,
\nshe moved somewhere, anywhere,
\nto not have to go through that again
\nto be made a fool of a third time,
\nat least not in front of me,
\nand I never did get a second date.
\nSome people
\nthey get away, man,
\nand some people,
\nthey just go.
\n 
\n 
\nROLLING
\n 
\nThe toughest motherfucker I knew
\nwas undefeated
\nin barrooms,
\nbathrooms and
\nphone booths.
\nIt wasn\u2019t a Saturday night without a fight.
\nAt bush parties,
\nlit by a bonfire and fueled by rye,
\nhe\u2019d fight three times a night.
\nHe entered a “tough man” contest,
\nin Medicine Hat of all places,
\none of those last man standing things,
\nand two carloads of locals went out there
\n(again, to Medicine Fucking Hat)
\nto see him kick some ass.
\nClub beer in a cooler on the back seat
\nand AC\/DC on the stereo,
\nbecause that is music to fight to,
\nfuck all that other shit.
\nForty-five seconds into the first round
\nsome Hell\u2019s Angel knocked him out
\nc-co-co-co-cold.
\nThe boys brought him back,
\ndriving at night under the clear
\nwhite stars,
\npast the flowering mustard and the moonlit flax,
\nuphill all the way
\nand back to my hometown
\nwhere he stayed
\none of the toughest motherfuckers
\nI ever knew,
\nbut only one of them.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGeorge Payne<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMEXICO CITY
\n 
\nCharred by the deep gold bar colored sun, we picked
\ngemstone sized bulbs of potatoes from a wooden shelf in the market
\n 
\nI watched you hold a smiling child on your lap, and
\nlike the tree in the jungle with no one there to hear it fall,
\n 
\nI could love you without making a sound<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRobert Perchan<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nANECDOTE OF THE
\n 
\ndifference between
\nbuttholes
\nand buttonholes:
\n 
\nOne is for the
\ninsertion
\nof our buttons
\n 
\nThe other we
\nwear
\nbetween two cheeks
\n 
\nlike a secret
\nmouth
\nExcuse me, said Jean
\n 
\nGenet excusing
\nhimself
\nfrom a buttoned
\n 
\nup dinner
\naffair, but I have a
\ncigar
\n 
\nbetween my lips
\n 
\n 
\nTHE CLAW HAMMER (IMDb)
\n 
\nThe Claw Hammer has a rakish profile.
\nIt loves to see its silhouette shadow
\nup there on the screen behind its noir
\nmurder namesake thriller. Its face all
\nblunt nose and its swept back sinister
\nhair bespeak the hardscrabble toolbox
\norigins it can never escape. Just looking
\nat one you know it belongs behind bars.
\nI bunked with one in Marion once. It had
\nnot lost its stroke. Just think, it pounded
\non our sink, if I had been born the gavel
\nthat put me here. Then we would have
\nour sweet poetic justice, wouldn\u2019t we?
\nNext time you go rummaging around
\nyour workbench brain for inspiration
\nand sympathy, try giving this a swing:
\nMy paw banged my maw between two stints.
\nThe wretch rocked my cradle with a claw
\nwhere I stretched and hardened into a thing
\nonly a mother could love and never tried.<\/i>
\nNext Tuesday I go up for parole again,
\nit winked, and sized me up, and smiled.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nD. Larissa Peters<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nFUCKED
\n 
\nDoes every girl remember that time? Tonight\u2014
\nwith you and a cliche vodka-cranberry, I thought
\nof that guy and the tequila haze of uncertainty.
\nHow I\u2019m gun-shy sorry\u2014and now
\nI still can\u2019t tell what I want
\nwhat I like
\nwhat I need
\nand I guess\u2026I know I did you\u2014and me
\na disservice when in a tentative, brave moment,
\nI said yes to a simple bar side swipe. But I\u2019m scared
\nshitless, paralyzed
\nin all that I don\u2019t know
\n\u2026don\u2019t feel.
\nIt\u2019s not you \u2026 I trust
\nno one. Least of all
\nme.
\n 
\n 
\nLANDING IN THE UNKNOWN
\n 
\n      Uncertainty is only a merging of curiosity and desire to just stay
\nunder the covers. The trip to the store
\n 
\n      turns into a detective\u2019s search for tones and facial movements,
\nexpressions of a friendly face. That question:
\n 
\n      “Did you find what you\u2019re looking for” opens
\neager flood gates of tales:
\n 
\n      rental issues, parents calling\u2014inquisitive and caring, the weather
\nunchanging, until the realization dawns
\n 
\n      on both your faces: this conversation is awkward\u2014somewhat inappropriate.
\n“Can you tell me where the Tahini is?”
\n 
\n“Aisle 3, on your right.”<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nPenny Peyser<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWAX AND WANE
\n 
\nMy aging body no more will behave!
\nThe things that waxed and waned now wane and wax.
\nSome areas that once required a shave
\nhave shifted and the tightened parts grown lax.
\nMy mem\u2019ry comes and goes much like the tide,
\nso please forgive if I misplace your name.
\nDespite these things my spirit will abide.
\nBelieve we\u2019re never meant to stay the same.
\nBut never fear there are joys to be had
\ndespite the way the seasons carry on.
\nNo sense in dwelling on it, being sad
\nis not a useful way to greet the dawn.
\n  I\u2019m proud to say my heart is ever growing,
\n   while nether regions no longer need mowing.
\n 
\n 
\nDEAR HUSBAND
\n 
\nHow \u2018bout a short experiment, my love?
\nIt\u2019s possible you will enjoy it, too
\nand may be something you\u2019ve been thinking of.
\nBut I can see you haven\u2019t got a clue.
\nYou often ask if I have missed your presence
\nupon returning from the grocery store
\nWould be so nice to really feel your absence,
\nthen for your company I might implore.
\nToo much togetherness can surely smother
\nlove\u2019s tender flames and turn desire to ash.
\nConsider, please, a visit with your mother.
\nAnd on your way for once take out the trash.
\n  Dear, from your company I need reprieve.
\n  How can I miss you if you never leave?<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLinnet Phoenix<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHE TIME IS NOW
\n 
\nYour first ex-wife
\nhad the lyrics of ‘Good Riddance’
\ntattooed across her back.
\n 
\nI don’t need that
\nI would settle for forgiveness
\ninjected chest deep.
\n 
\nBut we both know
\nyou have zero capacity for
\na cold day in hell.
\n 
\nDid you burn our bed too
\nupsetting the new neighbours
\nwith smoked dirty laundry?
\n 
\nMy vanity is petite ego.
\nI hope you find happiness
\nbeyond our potash.
\n 
\n 
\nFOR THE RECORD
\n 
\nI can’t recall her name
\nany more, something unusual
\nsounded elf-like or Irish.
\nHer mother drove a turquoise
\nold Morris Minor van.
\n 
\nThe girl, she smoked roll-ups,
\nleft some in your bedroom.
\nShe had a frond bob cut,
\nhair dyed that plum-reddish
\nso popular back in the 90s.
\n 
\nWhen you finally admitted
\nyou had slept with her,
\nall I could remember
\nwas her saying her boyfriend
\nhad recently died of AIDS.
\n 
\nI wanted to rip you apart,
\nset your intestines free.
\nA buzzard feasting on
\nan old carcass, rotten flesh.
\n 
\nI wished I had burnt
\nall your stolen vinyl,
\nwatched the flames leap
\noff your Iron Maidens.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDrew Pisarra<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nDRACULA FEASTS FAR FROM HOME
\n 
\nInitially, this realm was too scary for me.
\nNow it’s kind of my hideout where no bodies
\nfrighten me at all. The waiting room overflows.
\n 
\nI eat my friend by way of his wound;
\nThere\u2019s a hint of gangrene on the knife.
\nAnother friend gets angry then asks for help.
\n 
\nYou can\u2019t tell them they\u2019re way too rich.
\nInstead explain why when sucked through teeth,
\nflesh tastes like dry roots, veal and horsemeat.
\n 
\nChildren drinking blood are no worse.
\nSurvival means losing more immortal blood.
\nDid I mention I have red on my incisors?
\n 
\nIt\u2019s such unnecessary damage: the fingersticks
\nand venipunctures. I wonder what would happen
\nif we found a way to turn drinks cold in the vein.
\n 
\n 
\nFRANKENSTEIN\u2019S CREATION GETS DRUNK ON LAKE GENEVA
\n 
\nGradually his mind grew clear,
\nclearer than the water
\n(not that he was drinking water),
\nand the trees watched him
\nthrough their secret leaves.
\nHe\u2019d earned this first day
\nof his new life with stolen bread
\nand a cup of comfort, pure retreat.
\n 
\nEventually, he laid down
\non the bottom of the boat
\nand observed the cloudless sky.
\nHe drank with a calm
\nlong alien to him then cursed
\nthe hellish monster who\u2019d made him.
\n 
\n 
\nMRS. JEKYLL HAS DRY SKIN
\n 
\nShe was a slim-faced woman who never smiled. Cool, thin and uncomfortable in conversation, she hid behind her temper; pretended to be dull and soft. She knew he got dirty from the bad things he\u2019d done.
\n 
\nThey dined in a large room, encased in stained glass that projected tiny prisms on the table and desktop, as if fairies from the courtyard had snuck past the windows\u2019 iron bars. Outside, the square was full of dust.
\n 
\nEvery surface, every drawer needed only a glance, because everything was barren, empty, and everything , accordingly, was spotless to a fault. For a long time. Point to the sinner, not to the sin.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nFrederick Pollack<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nLINED PAPER
\n 
\nBecause of these remarkable events
\na nurse makes time
\nafter her shift, and after playing with and feeding
\nher kid, arguing her
\nto bed, and washing up,
\nto write, in longhand on school paper.
\nShe has poured a drink but ignores it.
\nOne of the doctors died today.
\nWe all loved him. I was there. He was brave.
\nI\u2019m exhausted but I want to write this.
\nThree other patients died.
\nOne screamed all week that he didn\u2019t have it
\n(didn\u2019t scream<\/i> really). Two were old,
\none was a cute guy. He was already comatose.
\nI looked at them all, before and after.
\nI had the thought that whatever
\ntheir personality or craziness
\n(and the ones in denial are crazy)
\nthey\u2019re all human beings. Beneath all that. Apart<\/i> from
\nall that. As a nurse you\u2019re supposed to feel that \u2013
\nthey\u2019re patients. But this was something else.
\nI used to stop in the chapel awhile
\nafter shift, and I always pray a lot
\nat night, but I don\u2019t think I will any more.
\nExcept to beg him to keep
\nmy daughter Janet healthy, but that\u2019s different.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTrevor Price<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nEMIGRATION FOR ALL
\n 
\nFrom the laughing, sunlit shore
\nthrough the city and across the kitchen floor
\nruns an invisible and inadequate fence,
\nbuilt without a notion of defence,
\nto mark the border with a peaceful land
\nat which a deft and well-scrubbed hand
\nmay present a final prescription,
\nthat, or a lurid crime-scene description.
\nVisas like these grant permanent residence,
\nbut then, some don\u2019t wait for official licence,
\nthey just go ahead and slip the border . . .
\nStrange \u2013 they never get a deportation order.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nPeter Relic<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nIMPOSSIBLE LASAGNA
\n 
\nCompliment Cheryl\u2019s spidery shawl
\nshe says this old thing, I\u2019ve had it
\ntwenty years, meaning You Didn\u2019t Have
\nTo Be So Nice, buy these underripe
\nbananas if you like, work can\u2019t deflect
\nthat smile, placing pea shoots and carrots
\nin paper bags, two wholesome take-home
\nmangos too. Exact change. Into the street
\nboth sides sunny. Beautiful day for a day
\ndream and a towering coffee, black.
\nLung puckers. Climb out of the hole in
\nyour head. Thinking of Zal Yanovsky.
\nShow the barber his picture. Can\u2019t get
\nyour hair there. That was twenty years
\nago, long as Cheryl\u2019s shawl. Apartment
\nstairs send you singing again. Bundle,
\njoy. Hour of beer, you pull impossible
\nlasagna from the oven, wonder
\nwhat she\u2019s doing for dinner.
\n 
\n 
\nTATEMVILLE DUNGAREES
\n 
\nDoing my best with what
\nI got left wheezes
\nOl\u2019 Buttonthroat
\nwho could be doing worse, to us
\nsince we\u2019re trespassing on his land
\non our way to the pond
\nin the middle of the city.
\nOnce we\u2019re clear you say
\nthe words I long to hear
\nhawk at five o\u2019clock
\nas if you\u2019ve just made down
\npayment on an audience with God.
\nGriffinflies flit in rutted mud,
\ncruciferous rulers
\nmollified by fermenting fern juice
\nand two verses of No Rain,
\ntire tread tracks mucking
\nup the geologic record.
\nWe\u2019ve gone way off piste
\nand that\u2019s half the point
\nof escaping clanging buildings,
\nstripping off shredded denim
\nand Pull Your Part tees.
\nCoastal empiricists exchange
\nclouds in this clearing.
\nWe achieve the clarity of tears.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJudith Ren-Lay<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHREES
\n 
\ndid a dangerous thing
\nfelt my way through time
\nthis, an unacceptable regression
\n 
\njumped off
\nas though having run away
\ninto a bed of brick
\n 
\nfingering the trigger
\nlearning to shoot
\nand kill some wildlife
\n 
\nglorious pots of dishes
\nfrom twelve boy curry
\nto meatballs stuffed with stilton cheese
\n 
\nand a drink, a drink, a drink we go
\nleaving a mess
\ndrowning in snoring
\n 
\nthe first wounding bled
\nover my ice white nightgown
\nstained in pain
\n 
\nwe seem to have a language together
\nI do not wish to be rude
\nbut the sensibility is inviting
\n 
\nI have no idea what he’s saying half the time
\nwe laugh and shake our heads a lot
\ndressed to kill
\n 
\nhe gave a gift
\nthen took it away
\nI paid and lost
\n 
\nunless that conversation
\nwas a deeply
\ncoded one
\n 
\nnow and again
\nshaken into language and remembering
\nwe meet a formidable alien
\n 
\nso we kick back
\nhave a good time
\ntrying not to offend
\n 
\nwitness the cumulating exchange
\ngame by game
\nlearning to play
\n 
\npracticing smoke and mirrors
\npretending enjoyment
\nthere’s flesh between the skin and bones
\n 
\nfeelings surge, liquid or dry
\nrunning all out and over
\nwe get beaten, we beat
\n 
\nthinking of savage acts
\nspreading
\nsifting easily or lightly among cracks
\n 
\nmolasses actions
\nsticky
\nin the way thoughts blend one into the other
\n 
\ndeflate or elevate
\nas the moments pass
\nand life crowds itself into a corner again
\n 
\n 
\nCOUPLING
\n 
\nmarriage is an attempt
\nto make something substantial out of
\nan incident
\n 
\nvery dangerous
\nfor such a little thing
\nstrong as it is
\n 
\nsaid facetiously, “well that went very well.”
\nafter his still partner
\n(with whom therapy is worth it)
\n 
\nbrushes me off cold as ice
\nand I think – what must he have told her about me
\nthere’s certainly more here than one can discern
\n 
\nshe could hardly have been more rude
\nmore rigid
\nmore angry and tense
\n 
\nwith a beautiful face
\none shiny stud in the nose and gold earrings
\nbut dressed badly, as though witches still ruled
\n 
\nthere is such anger there
\nsad synchronicity
\ntwo parts of a brain
\nborn in phases of the moon
\nchanging
\nbirth, death, rebirth
\n 
\nfemale transformation
\nof fertile mood swings
\nand symbols in the sky<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMichael Russell<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nAGAINST A CLOUDLESS SKY
\n 
\nOnce, I caught a moth
\nmid-flight, pinned it
\nagainst the wooden plank
\nof a picnic table, watched it
\nthrash under my thumbs.
\n 
\n      My mother\u2019s boyfriend
\n      loved to punch violets
\n      into walls, tear
\n      the back end of her jeans
\n      in front of me.
\n 
\nDust bronzed my fingers
\nwhen I pulled its wings,
\nripped, easy as newsprint,
\nthe metallic thorax,
\nthe bloodless scales.
\n 
\n      He\u2019s too young
\n      to remember<\/i>, he said
\n 
\nwhen I punched glitter
\nin the air,
\nhung two dead planets
\nagainst a cloudless sky.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nClaire Scott<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nA MIRACLE
\n 
\nlimping on a crutch
\n      of a lost childhood
\na father who didn\u2019t
\n        a mother who couldn\u2019t
\n      no taste for life left
\n 
\nyears on the scratchy couch of Dr. Danna Slate
\n      thousands of dollars spent
\nblaming parents for never practicing the piano
\n      for picking the wrong partner
\n        for being unpleasingly plump
\nwhile she smiles and nods
\n      and suggests five times a week
\n 
\ncheaper to travel to Lourdes
\n      where Bernadette had visions of the virgin
\n        when she was only fourteen
\nwhere people have been cured
\n      of cancer     of cataracts     of cold sores
\npass through the Grotto
\n        pray for a miracle
\n            sip the holy water
\n 
\nfeel the blessings flow through your body
\n      feel the ragged longing lighten
\nshedding memories of belts and bruises
\n      of missing meals and murky closets
\n 
\nleave the crutch and couch behind
\n      your heart riding high and run
\n        on solid legs toward the life
\n      that belongs to you
\n 
\nnever too late, even if you are fifty
\n        not fourteen
\n      and you didn\u2019t have any visions
\n        in the shrine, not a single one<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nPaul Smith<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nI LIKE IKE
\n 
\nWe had campaign buttons
\nand slogans
\nL.S.M.F.T.
\nan Interstate
\nprosperity
\nwe could even see ourselves
\nor facsimiles thereof
\nand not leave the house
\nfigures that tried to be like us
\nas we tried to be like them
\nso we became a copy of a copy
\na replica in sepia
\nwithout noticing
\nwe were being watched
\nwe were being laughed at
\nuntil now
\n 
\n 
\nLONG FACE
\n 
\nDad had a long face
\nlike a horse
\nnot a racehorse
\nnot a thoroughbred
\nmore like a draft horse
\nused to plowing
\nthe plow was us
\nme and my brothers
\nwe liked having fun with dad
\nwhen he came home
\nwe liked to fight at the dinner table
\nand call each other dirty names
\nmom hated it
\nwe wrecked her nerves
\none night we saw dad help her
\ntake her clothes off
\nthrough a half-closed door
\nshe was so drunk
\nshe couldn\u2019t do it herself
\nwe threw each other off the porch
\nwe wrecked cars
\nwe brought home animals we caught
\nin the Forest Preserve
\nwe stole bicycles
\nwe threw up in the front yard
\nwe set dogs on fire
\nwe threw firecrackers
\nat the people next door
\nand opened a hydrant
\nthat flooded our block
\nwe hurled snowballs at cars
\nand sometimes, rocks
\nwhen dad died
\nsomeone sent a wreath
\nlike you see sometimes
\non a thoroughbred at Churchill Downs
\nwe put it on dad
\nat the funeral home
\nhe looked like he won
\nthe Kentucky Derby<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTricia L. Somers<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nPAPER=$
\n 
\nAt the liquor store
\nand strapped for cash
\nAt the liquor store strapped
\nwith required mask
\n“Take all that fuqin paper
\n n put it in the fuqin bag
\n NOW!”
\n& just roll
\n 
\nRoll like tears
\ndown grubby little cheeks
\nEvery day dashed hopes
\nA child\u2019s resiliency
\nDays into weeks
\nand yet they still wait
\n 
\nWith all of the emptiness
\nyou have ever had
\nroll down the road
\nlike an empty paper bag
\nAs weeks melt into months
\nare satin tears into pillows
\nmade of cement
\n 
\nWith all the trash and
\nthe litter of the whole
\nwide filthy world we spin
\nAnd still they are waiting there
\nPut the money in the bag
\nand cast it to the wind<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJos\u00e9 Sotolongo<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nREPOSE
\n 
\nI sit alone in my garden these days
\nthis spring, this fall
\nthere\u2019s nowhere to go.
\n 
\nThe birds are used to me now, they
\nperch when I appear. The robin hops
\nby me and stays, cocks his head
\nat a worm, or at me.
\n 
\nHe flies low and fast and gray,
\nthe oriole higher, orange streak,
\nhis song a treat, the stakes
\nso high\u2014a mate.
\n 
\nWhere is she? Let her not appear,
\nor no, not yet. I want to hear that song again,
\na reminder of what I could be.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJohn L. Stanizzi<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCONNECTICUT DREAMIN\u2019
\n 
\n“East Windsor strives to preserve its quiet, small town feel.”
\n \u2013 The East Windsor, Connecticut Website
\n 
\n\u2014for Jim Landwehr, with gratitude<\/i>
\n 
\n\u2026it\u2019s a narrow two-laner penciled in between huge squares of shade-grown tobacco which billows and glows like a field of ghosts at one-thirty in the morning, when you\u2019re high. And you\u2019re making my broken heart smile this morning, Jimmy. You were so lucky to have Sal and Damion. My boys were Andy and Phil, and they came from different planets.
\n 
\nAndy was a clean-shaven, straight from Ukraine, thick-glasses-wearing, neurotic-to-the-max and just as eccentric, classical pianist who I once saw play 17 minutes of Rachmaninoff from memory, until he touched one wrong note, smashed down the piano cover, screamed YOU MOTHERFUCKER!! and went directly for the vodka, any<\/i> vodka.
\n 
\nPhil, on the other hand, had hair down to his waist, a beard like Billy Gibbons, and when everybody else was jamming to Iron Maiden, Phil was head banging to Coltrane\u2019s Live in Seattle<\/i>, and draining a bottle of Stoli.
\n 
\nOK, so maybe they weren\u2019t completely<\/i> different.
\n 
\nJust sayin\u2019.
\n 
\nI fished with them \u2013 when I went with Andy we went in his brand new Saab.
\n 
\nWhen I went with Phil we went in his 67 Dodge.
\n 
\nWith Andy, I never worried.
\n 
\nWith Phil, I worried every second.
\n 
\nWe fished the mouth of the little Scantic River where it gently joined the massive Connecticut in East Windsor, Connecticut, an absolutely bucolic paradise of tobacco fields and cows and cottonwoods whose blooms in late May covered the field along the riverbank with so much white fluff you\u2019d think there had been a blizzard. I can\u2019t tell you how beautiful and incongruous a sight that is in early summer.
\n 
\nBut I digress.
\n 
\nThe poem you sent me called to mind our ritual at what we referred to as The Mouth<\/i> \u2013 the fishing spot was the mouth of the Scantic River when it emptied into the huge Connecticut, The Long River.
\n 
\nWe\u2019d take our tackle boxes, poles and nightcrawlers, plenty of herb, and a bottle of mescal, with that little rigid orange-ish worm bobbing around the bottom of the bottle.
\n 
\nThis behavior always made the ride home an adventure as Andy or Phil negotiated the narrow back roads.
\n 
\nWhen his cassette player wasn\u2019t eating the tape, Phil would blast Pharoah Sanders or Sonny Stitt,
\nand steer with his left hand while he banged the dashboard with his right, his wild hair alive and flying out the window, the hot summer air blasting in and wrapping us both in invincibility.
\n 
\nAndy wouldn\u2019t blast anything \u2013 he needed to concentrate on driving.
\n 
\nBe cool, Johnnie<\/i>, he\u2019d whisper nervously, as if someone heard him talking we\u2019d get busted. What a character.
\n 
\nDon\u2019t turn the radio on. Be cool.<\/i>.
\n 
\nWhen you wrote in your poem, \u2026a cool reminder that he shouldn\u2019t be driving\/but he is the best of the three of us\/and that ain\u2019t sayin\u2019 much<\/i>\u2026, you brought me back there, Jim.
\n 
\nPhil and me coursing along skinny Abbott Road between the shade-grown fields. It\u2019s late \u2013 one-thirty, two o\u2019clock in the morning, and Phil\u2019s doing his thing \u2013Freddy Hubbard \u2013 Live at Fat Tuesday\u2019s<\/i> \u2013 he\u2019s banging the dashboard\u2026 Oh, I should say, Phil had eaten the worm this time,
\nand that meant we’re gonna get home<\/i>.
\n 
\nI said, How fast you goin\u2019, man?<\/i>
\n 
\nPhil said, Hundred and ten, muthafucka.<\/i>
\n 
\nI said, I didn\u2019t think this piece a shit could go that fast<\/i>, and I laid back in the passenger seat, closed my eyes. hoped for the best and saw those fields of ghosts roar by every time I opened my eyes.
\n 
\nSomehow\u2026somehow\u2026we made it every time. Luck of the draw.
\n 
\nWith Andy it was different.
\n 
\nYeah, he\u2019s negotiating Abbott Road and it\u2019s just as late. He had also eaten the worm, but he starts his Johnnie be cool<\/i> routine, all in a very quiet whisper. So weird. Like I\u2019m the one
\nwho\u2019s gonna get us busted. And why\u2019s he whispering anyway. Just fucking weird.
\n 
\nAt two in the morning you don\u2019t see a single car, not one, on Abbott Road. But this particular night we see three. Three cars, Jim.<\/i> And we see them because
\nthey passed us!
\n 
\nRemember I told you that Andy had a brand new Saab, a 1983 beauty, loaded. Well \u201883 loaded<\/i> included a digital speedometer \u2013 no needle on this baby \u2013 actual numbers went by, big orange neon numbers. I remember thinking, “Dude, that looks just like the New York Stock Exchange.”
\n 
\nI say, Yo, did you see those three cars pass us?<\/i>
\n 
\nAndy whispers, Yeah. Yeah.<\/i>
\n 
\nI say, What\u2019s up with that?<\/i>
\n 
\nAndy says, I don\u2019t know, man. I don\u2019t know<\/i>. Then he whispers, Be cool, Dude<\/i>.
\n 
\nI say, How fast you goin\u2019, man?<\/i>
\n 
\nAndy begins to get a little frantic. I\u2019m asking too many questions.
\n 
\nI don\u2019t know, man. I\u2019m drivin! Be cool. I don\u2019t know! You check.<\/i>
\n 
\nI lift myself up from my fully reclined, leather passenger seat and try to get the New York Stock Exchange speedometer in focus, and I can\u2019t believe what I\u2019m seeing. I truly can\u2019t believe it. I\u2019m in complete shock.
\n 
\nAll worked up and nervous, and completely disregarding the “whisper rule,” I shout, Andy, yo, yo! Andy. Andy!! You doin\u2019 FOUR<\/strong> man. You doin\u2019 FOUR!!<\/strong> FOUR!!<\/strong> You gotta speed up, MAN!<\/i>
\n 
\nAndy says, Yeah, yeah, I know, man. I know. I KNOW<\/i>, he whispers, loudly. Be cool. Be cool!<\/i>
\n 
\nAnd so I was cool.
\n 
\nI sat up in the passenger seat and I talked us home at a cool thirty-five.
\n 
\nThey\u2019re both gone now, Jim. Both of \u2018em.
\n 
\nThat\u2019s why I say you made my broken heart smile with your poem, man.
\n 
\nThank you.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMichael Angelo Stephens<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY FATHER
\n 
\nHe was five years old, wandering alien
\nStreets in Brooklyn, his mother having just
\n 
\nDied and his father nowhere to be found,
\nThe young boy walked around the world that way
\n 
\nOut in traffic of the borough until
\nTwo of his County Mayo uncles found
\n 
\nHim wandering around, raggedy and
\nDazed, and already hardened, suspicious,
\n 
\nHungry, but he accepted their food as
\nWell as comfort and let them search the bars
\n 
\nUntil they found the drunk, missing father,
\nWho didn\u2019t seem to know his son or them,
\n 
\nHis brothers-in-law, until much later,
\nSober, he asked them how his sick wife was.
\n 
\n 
\nAFTER FORTY
\n 
\nIf she could recall that old song dancing
\nAround in her head when she was young and
\n 
\nSo alive with pleasure for life, if only she
\nCould remember, she would see that as much
\n 
\nAs it was good then, it is still good now,
\nAnd if she could sing, this is what she\u2019d sing,
\n 
\nThis song about her life, and how it is
\nRemarkable, and so she might tangle
\n 
\nAnd untangle those years until they were
\nUnknotted and smooth, almost as though years
\n 
\nBecame seconds, unraveled like a skein,
\nUntil she stood there in front of the hall
\n 
\nMirror, clothed or naked didn\u2019t matter,
\nNeither old nor young, and yet beautiful,
\n 
\nIn this predicament called life, if she
\nCould run or kick or scream, it would not make
\n 
\nOne bit of difference to this quiet
\nMoment there with herself, and herself who
\n 
\nAccepts who that person is before her.
\n 
\n 
\nA ROGUE WAVE
\n 
\n      Ocean gardening was the challenge, how
\nto make vegetables grow in the salt
\n 
\nair, or going the back road that led to
\n      Truro, searching out blueberry patches
\n 
\nthat, like wild bears, we used to ravage with
\nour purple tongues, bringing home oysters by
\n 
\n      the bucketsful, freezing the pieces of
\nstriped bass–not yet become contaminated\u2014
\n 
\nand smoking bluefish to be eaten with
\n      olives and onions. All of these things broke
\n 
\nlike a rogue wave over me as she stood
\nin the doorway talking about summer.
\n 
\n      Boston still lacked sunlight, and yet as I
\nwalked to the T, the sky turned oystery.
\n 
\n 
\nWHAT THE BUTLER SAW: A WHODUNIT
\n 
\nIf you please, if you will, sir, right this way.
\nMadame is under the weather, but she
\n 
\nWill be down shortly. His lordship is here,
\nBut he is occupied at the moment.
\n 
\nThe children and grandchildren are away,
\nSir, I am working with a skeleton
\n 
\nStaff, just a maid, a cook and me.
\nIf you please, if you will, sir, right this way.
\n 
\nMadame has had a fall, only a slight
\nContusion on her forehead, some bumps and
\n 
\nBruises on her arms and legs, but is well.
\nIf you please, if you will, sir, right this way.
\n 
\nAt the same time, sir, my lord hurt his hand
\nIn the bathroom. If it is all right with
\n 
\nYou, we\u2019ll let you wait here in this parlour.
\nIf you don\u2019t mind, if you\u2019d be so kind, sir.
\n 
\nI\u2019ll call the lady of the house for you.
\nI\u2019ll tell his lordship that you are now here.
\n 
\nIf you\u2019d be so kind, sir, if you don\u2019t mind.
\nIf it is not an inconvenience,
\n 
\nPlease wait in this parlour to the right here.
\nHave a seat. Have a cigar. May I park
\n 
\nYour car for you, may I offer a drink?
\nIf you don\u2019t mind, if you\u2019d be so kind, sir.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nShelby Stephenson<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nRUBAIYAT FOR THE BOYS LOOKING FOR ONE THING
\n 
\nDick Fuller was leader of The Gang.
\nHis motto was “Everyman Does It” \u2013 along
\nwith ducks and birds, dogs and chicks,
\nhummers and drummers, possums \u2013 bang<\/i>
\n 
\nthey go \u2013 and that is it, and if you don\u2019t believe it,
\nhe\u2019d put another empty drink bottle in a crate \u2013 and say, “No shit!”
\nDick kept his car full of gas
\nthat way, selling the empties, plus siphoning
\n 
\ngas from school buses in yards
\naround the neighborhood, especially if they sat like blobs
\nof yellow far enough from country roads
\nto give him ease in his role as Thief in Charge.
\n 
\nMeanwhile, the girls he took to his backseat
\nto rock and roll, he\u2019d say, as his culprit
\nin arms turned the steering wheel into Booger Branch
\nor the Goat Pasture: sometimes the boys hit
\n 
\nhome runs, they\u2019d chatter, when they took turns.
\nWhat a memory: I never would participate in such except to yearn
\nfor better days for the girl they groomed for such atmosphere,
\nshe, alone, forsaken, no mother, a father whose soul for God just burned
\n 
\nall the time to have his sentence multiplied,
\ncharged from “thou shalts” to will
\nthe judgments he pronounced in church,
\nhis refrain, “God\u2019s will be done,” he supplied
\n 
\nto make a case of eating under Eden\u2019s Tree so bright,
\nall this before TV and Me-Too, where right
\nnow brims Sorrow all the days of our lives,
\nas she and she and she, though blighted, brave hindsight.
\n 
\nBut that\u2019s not good enough, Dick,
\neven though later your life you clad in clothes thick
\nwith fire-engine red, even drove the truck,
\nwon awards for your service to quicken
\n 
\nothers to join you in helping in the community;
\nwhen I see you, I smell the taint of unity
\nin my having to go on, inside my skin of what-beast,
\nI cannot say, to try now my puberty.
\n 
\nA man by any inwardness is older-younger,
\nnever forgetting the righteousness, the lingering
\narray showering memory to installments imperfection
\ncraves to cover the goodness you have done as you belong
\n 
\nto seeds which grow, however bruised, beyond your foe,
\nthat adolescence, the damage, the bullying, and more:
\nyou married first the sweetheart in your class,
\na high-school romp; the marriage dropped in woe,
\n 
\nyou grew up: hail to thee: your grin
\nstrengthens the women who were girls once in your thin,
\npush-over, raging supply of backseat dramas.
\nIf a frog had wings, I swear, you would be Dunce-king of Backseat Springs.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nNathaniel Sverlow<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nA SCREAM
\n 
\nI have a scream
\nfor Valentine\u2019s Day
\nsix white words
\nsix red words
\na pain bouquet
\nfrom me
\nto you
\n 
\nI have a scream
\nin my back pocket
\nswirling silver band
\nprincess cut
\non one knee
\nreaching
\nunder moonlight
\n 
\nI have a scream
\nto empty into you
\nas you look back
\nlongingly
\nnaked
\nas the fresh
\nspring grass
\n 
\nI have a scream
\nto fill his bottle
\nas you hold him
\ncrying
\nwith tired eyes
\nand a wilted smile
\nwe share
\n 
\nI have a scream
\nto tell you
\nhand extended
\nfingers intwined
\nas the sun rises
\nmy life is yours
\nmy love is madness<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBarbara Tyler<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nREADING IN BED: A LOVE POEM
\n 
\nI made a man out of books,
\nthe body of which rests beside me
\non a queen-size bed.
\n 
\nThis man cannot keep me warm once
\nmy lamp is switched off, but until then
\nhe does keep me company quite well.
\n 
\nThe shape of him shifts, depending on my mood.
\nHis feet might be poetry or some epic tome,
\nhis torso a coffee table book about art.
\n 
\nCurrently his legs are of science and the natural world.
\nHis groin has a history\u2014the account of men driven by desire
\nto form civilizations they like to call their own.
\n 
\nI cradle his head\u2014a constant novel\u2014in my hands.
\nIt\u2019s filled with romance, adventure, and that certain kind
\nof cruelty humans heap upon each other.
\n 
\nAt the end of each night before turning out my light,
\nI run my hand over his form, thinking about my husband
\nwhose warm body rests on the other side of the house,
\n 
\nsnug and snoring on one side of a king-size bed.
\nI\u2019ll visit him tomorrow\u2014a Saturday morning\u2014and share
\nwhat my book man has whispered all week long. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRonja Vieth<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nFALSE TREASURES
\n 
\nHe fucked himself into
\nan “emotional shock.”
\nWell, maybe
\nthis is not the right expression;
\njoggled<\/i>, physically as
\nwell as emotionally,
\nfits better. He says,
\n“it\u2019s the opposite of losing someone”
\nand he\u2019s “just not used to it.”
\n 
\nWhat exactly did he find,
\nI wonder? What
\nis it about me he has discovered
\nto keep? Did I spill
\nany keepsakes to take
\npossession of?
\n 
\nI did not know I was
\na treasure hunt: G-spot \u2013 check;
\nclitoris \u2013 check; boobies \u2013 check (not
\nstrictly in that order, as we approached
\nthings slowly, rather
\nlike island-hopping of two desperate
\npirates). What exactly
\ndid he pick up, is keeping close
\nto his heart when
\nI don\u2019t even know myself
\nwhat more I had to give?<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTim Walker<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nDONATION
\n 
\nAs a still stone garners moss
\nyou gathered the wraps, some barely worn,
\nyou kept them all on hangers and hooks,
\nleft no instructions.
\nMonths after it stilled, your heart was in
\nour donation\u2014I felt it quicken
\nin time with mine.
\nAt homeless services the guy took them
\nin his arms like great bundles of flowers, gave
\na radiant smile, already matching each
\nto a favorite, seeing it brighten her day
\nand warm her nights: a bulky coat,
\na feathery scarf, a neat pair of knitted gloves
\nin blue or green.
\nOur hearts were in it and rejoiced,
\nfor small vanities are that rare
\nunmixed pleasure of the dispossessed\u2014
\nas of the dying, drained and disfigured by
\nunavailing care.
\nIn the final week of our four decades, we
\nconspired to cheat the nurses of your care:
\nI washed and combed your hair, made you look pretty
\nfor your nap.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMelody Wang<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nI COULDN\u2019T HAVE KNOWN
\n 
\nwhat lay beneath
\n      this humble man of science
\n      seeking truth in a whirlwind
\n      of possibilities, complex discoveries
\n      that roused him from sleep
\n      and sent him dashing to the lab
\n 
\nit would be our last trip
\n      as I kicked my way
\n      across cobblestones
\n      during dull off hours
\n      from the AACR conference,
\n      my perma-scowl at endless trek
\n      to see museum after museum in D.C. \u2014
\n 
\nmy father and I would walk
\n      the same path for the last time
\n 
\nwhat would happen
\n      when I no longer know
\n      what his voice sounds like<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGabriel Welsch<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nHARD CHOICES
\n 
\nThe words you can
\nnot say because the catch
\nin your throat swells
\nwhere you dream a hand
\ngrips it, from the arm
\nof a former journalist
\nturned hack, Air Force vet
\ngone soft and bitter,
\nwho grips to stop the sounds
\nthat mean a daughter
\nwill look away or not say
\na few words, new silences
\neach year, for something
\ngutless and guttered
\nhe slowly earned but that you
\ndescribe like a toothpaste flavor,
\na car amenity. Look:
\nif you can\u2019t say fire<\/i>
\nor change your life<\/i> or
\nendanger a home<\/i> or any
\nof the real, hard things,
\nthen you have made
\nthat hard choice to lie
\nabout the span
\nof what you do.
\n 
\nLater\u2014an entire marriage
\nlodged in her teeth\u2014his wife says
\nYou were nothing but fair.
\nYou were nothing
\nbut fair.
\nYou were nothing but
\nfair.
\nYou were
\nnothing
\nbut fair.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDick Westheimer<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nBROKEN SWINGS
\n 
\nMy childhood was a collection of lost things:
\nrolls of yellowed tape, spit-stained cigarette butts
\nwith a few desiccated puffs left in them,
\nCharles Atlas ads torn from comic books,
\ntarnished silver dimes found around
\nthat I counted and rolled into paper sleeves,
\nplaced with others of their kind
\nin a scuffed-up cigar box\u2013
\nstill sweet-smelling of the stogies
\nmy dad snuck puffs from when the boys
\ncame over to play poker\u2013
\n 
\nmy frayed-lace six-finger baseball glove,
\ngood enough for one inning a game in right field,
\nand the broken backyard swing-set with its chipped wooden seat
\ndangling from one rusted chain. And me, part of the collection,
\n 
\nstriking out at everything, baseball, being a hit
\nwith the girls, or even the boys for that matter \u2013
\nexcept when I was ten, there was Donald
\nwith whom I\u2019d sit for hours, us wielding
\nsharpened pencils and fine-lined graph paper. We plotted
\nparabolas, calculated the areas under arcs,
\nforgot our lonely hearts until we parted,
\nwent the next day to school where
\nour lessons in loneliness and basic
\narithmetic carried on.
\n 
\n 
\nFAILING NINE ELEVEN
\n    (after Chen Chen, Circle “C” If You Just Don\u2019t Know<\/i>)
\n 
\nOn nine eleven, I watched as people
\nfailed at being birds, as clouds of dust
\nfailed to rematerialize as people,
\nas the morning sun failed
\nto raise up pieces of a falling sky.
\nAnd all these years, I’ve failed to write
\na nine eleven poem because I failed
\nat nine eleven, failed the death and desolation
\nfailed the drama in our home, the oh-my\u2019s,
\nthe looking away from the TV bodies falling like ash,
\nthe can\u2019t look away. I failed to feel anything but me
\neven the flower-flame\u2019s bloom on the sides of towers.
\n 
\nI failed my eighteen year old – a sparse bearded boy
\nwho as a babe I called “Taterhead,” sometimes still do,
\nwho hopped nervously in our living room,
\nsaid he was down with enlisting, going a round or two
\nfor his country and though I was quietly proud,
\nI hoped no cause was worth him dying.
\nBut I was OK with the boys in his senior class
\nsigning up because they needed the work and college
\nwasn\u2019t in the cards for them and someone had to fight
\nfor America. In the school gym they brought
\nrecruiters, all creased and smart in their camo,
\nsurrounded them by cheerleaders who whooped
\nthe teens into a tiny-flag waving frenzy.
\nI failed to go there, to stand and shout, “STOP”
\neven though I knew in the still dimly-lit parts of me
\nthat “with us or against us” was an evil worse
\nthan planes penetrating buildings.
\n 
\nI did not fail to raise a righteous teen, a girl
\nwho sat on her angry hands
\nwhen the other kids rose and proclaimed
\nallegiance to a flag which stands for nothing
\nexcept an America that strapped men to boards,
\npoured water over them until they broke into tiny pieces
\nof America – the tortured, the torturer, the brown,
\nthe white, the naked and the jackbooted. I failed
\nall of them, if failing is just complaining
\nand doing nothing.
\n 
\nAnd finally I failed to understand
\nthat before nine eleven, America was a jewel
\nand bile encrusted coffer, much like
\nan inside-out Pandora\u2019s Box, lid cracked open,
\nwith hope trying to get in and all these evils
\nthat have always been America slipping out.
\nNine eleven blew the whole thing open,
\ndoused the hope in jet fuel and disgorged white hot
\nentitlement in all its guises over the browner half
\nof the world.
\n 
\nSo, on this the anniversary of the eleventh day
\nof the ninth month of the two thousandth and first year
\nsince the birth of the lord of peace, I kept the shades drawn,
\nthe radio off, blew by the day-long nine eleven porn
\nfestival of forgetting what was really lost that day
\nuntil I eventually failed at that, too.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRussel G. Winick<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
\n 
\nWhy did the chicken cross over the road?
\nTo get to a place less corrosive.
\nWhere chickens are free to cross roads as they choose,
\nAnd no one will question their motive.
\n 
\n 
\nOBNOXIOUSNESS
\n 
\nThose never quiet
\nSure ought to try it.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Wright<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nBLUE
\n 
\nI wander the blues,
\nlong to twirl my skirts
\nin the purple, the pink,
\ndance round and round
\nuntil I\u2019m dizzy. No more
\ndragging gray behind
\nlike a shadow in the corner.
\n 
\nCIRCUS ACT
\n 
\nFather could have performed
\nlinguistic tricks,
\nbut juggled a sales job
\nand kids,
\npaid a mortgage,
\npacified a wife
\nwho wanted a house
\nthe size of a Big Top<\/i>.
\n 
\nHe could have left selling
\nto the ticket man,
\njumped from the audience,
\nperformed his act.
\n 
\nInstead, he wrote occasional poems
\nfor weddings and funerals,
\n 
\nfinally found
\nthe words he needed
\nto say good-bye.
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n<\/p>\n

The Contributors<\/h3>\n

<\/strong><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n<\/p>\n

Cover Artist<\/h4>\n

<\/strong>
\n 
\nCynthia Yatchman<\/a><\/strong> is a Seattle based artist and art instructor. She works primarily on paintings, prints and collages. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections in the Northwest and she has been shown nationally in California, Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Michigan, Oregon and Wyoming.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n<\/p>\n

The Poets<\/h4>\n

<\/strong>
\n 
\nBrian J. Alvarado<\/a><\/strong> ( @wrdsrch<\/a>) writes and sings. Recent work is featured and\/or forthcoming in Thimble, FERAL, Trouvaille, Sledgehammer<\/i>, and Versification<\/i>, among others. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from Susquehanna University. brianalvarado.com\/writing<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nPeter Anderson<\/a><\/strong> fled Michigan for Canada and never looked back. Well, actually he did look back but despite Satchel Paige\u2019s warning nothing was gaining on him. He lives in Vancouver where he acts, writes plays and poems. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Unbroken, Better Than Starbucks, Sublunary Review, MoonPark Review, Flora Fiction Literary Magazine, Last Stanza Poetry Journal<\/i> and The American Journal of Poetry<\/i>. His plays are available online at the Canadian Play Outlet.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJames Appleby<\/a><\/strong> is a poet and translator. Commended in the 2021 McLellan Poetry Competition, his writing has been featured in Marble Poetry, Litro Magazine, and others. jamesapplebywriting.co.uk<\/a>
\n<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nCatherine Arra<\/a><\/strong> is the author of Deer Love<\/i> (Dos Madres Press, 2021), Her Landscape, Poems Based on the Life of Mileva Mari\u0107 Einstein<\/i> (Finishing Line Press, 2020), (Women in Parentheses<\/i>) (Kelsay Books, 2019), Writing in the Ether<\/i> (Dos Madres Press, 2018), and three chapbooks. Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. Find her at catherinearra.com<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSusan Ayres<\/a><\/strong> is a poet, lawyer, and translator. She holds an MFA in creative writing with a concentration in translation from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a PhD in literature from Texas Christian University. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in many journals, including Sycamore Review, Cimarron Review, Valparaiso Review<\/i>. She lives in Fort Worth and teaches at Texas A&M University School of Law. Find her at psusanayres.com<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nA writer and artist based in San Antonio, Jeff Bagato<\/a><\/strong> produces poetry and prose as well as electronic music and glitch video. His published books include Savage Magic (poetry) and Computing Angels (fiction). A blog about his writing and publishing efforts can be found at jeffbagato.wordpress.com<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTina Barry<\/a><\/strong> is the author of Beautiful Raft<\/i> and Mall Flower<\/i>. Her writing appears in numerous journals, including The Best Small Fictions 2020<\/i> (spotlighted story) and 2016, Drunken Boat, The American Poetry Journal, Nasty Women Poets: An Anthology of Subversive Verse, A Constellation of Kisses<\/i>, and Yes, Poetry<\/i>, and has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, as well as Best of the Net. Tina is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn, Gemini Ink and Writers.com.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTeresa McLamb Blackmon<\/a><\/strong> is a retired English teacher who lives on a farm in eastern North Carolina. She received an MA in English from N. C. State University and an MLS from North Carolina Central University. Her first book of poems, Daddy Said<\/i>, was published in September 2020. A chapbook on literary characters is forthcoming.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nWatched by crows and friend to salamanders, Lisa Creech Bledsoe<\/a><\/strong> is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of two full-length books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020). She has new poems out or forthcoming in Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Chiron Review, Otoliths, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and Quartet, among others.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRose Mary Boehm<\/a><\/strong> is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her fourth poetry collection, THE RAIN GIRL, was published in 2020. Her fifth, DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS, has just been snapped up by Kelsay Books for publication May\/June 2022. Her website: www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDan Brook<\/a><\/strong> teaches in the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at San Jose State University in California, from where he organizes the Hands on Thailand program. His most recent book of poetry is Sweet Nothings<\/i> (Hekate, 2020).<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nEric Burgoyne<\/a><\/strong> lives on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii. His degrees are from Reading University, Berkshire, England, and the University of Utah. Later this year he completes a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Teesside University, Middlesbrough, England. His poems have appeared in As It Ought To Be Magazine, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Brickplight-Poetry Beyond the Pale, Spillwords, Skink Beat Review, and elsewhere.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nNicole Callr\u00e4m<\/a><\/strong> is a professional paper pusher and lover of hot pot. She currently lives in Shanghai, China and loves to drink wine and ride bike (preferably on a sunny day and in that order).She has been published in River\u2019s Meeting Project, ASPZ, Alluvium, and Visions. She has found a home with Shanghai\u2019s Inkwell Poetry Workshop and is a better human for having found this group.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nWendy Taylor Carlisle<\/a><\/strong> lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of four books and five chapbooks and is the 2020 winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Award for The Mercy of Traffic. Doubleback Books reprinted her second book, Discount Fireworks as a free download.<\/a> Her website is wendytaylorcarlisle.com.<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJared Carter<\/a><\/strong>‘s most recent book of poems, The Land Itself<\/i>, is from Monongahela Books in West Virginia. He lives in Indiana.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAnna Cheung<\/a><\/strong> is a poet based in Scotland. Her debut poetry collection will be published in September 2021 by Haunt Publishing. Her poems have been published by Dreich, Potluck, Zarf, Haunt, Dark Eclipse and Dusk and Shiver. Her poem \u2018Survival of Solitude\u2019 was included in From Them, To You<\/i>, an illustrated book by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (published by Speculative Books) gifted to breast cancer patients in the UK to help improve women\u2019s body confidence and mental health. @annsmcheung<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJoe Cottonwood<\/a><\/strong> has repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest book of poetry is Random Saints<\/i>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLenny DellaRocca<\/a><\/strong> is founder and co-publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal-SoFloPoJo<\/i>. He has published two full-length collections and two chaps. His poetry has appeared in many places over the years, including Rat’s Ass Review<\/i>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGeorge Donald<\/a><\/strong> was born in 1957. The son of a minister, he grew up in a series of rectories in the Deep South, before leaving home at the age of 15. Trained in Languages (Russian, English, Spanish), as well as in Voice performance and Phys Ed, he works as an Interpreter in a large urban Trauma Hospital. He was a member of writing groups both on the West Coast and in the DC area.
\n 
\n 
\nClive Donovan<\/a><\/strong> devotes himself full-time to poetry and has published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Fenland Poetry Journal, Neon Lit. Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, Prole, Sentinel Lit. Quarterly and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, U.K. quite close to the river Dart. His debut collection will be published by Leaf by Leaf in November 2021.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAlexis Rhone Fancher<\/a><\/strong> has authored seven collections, including The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press) <\/i> and Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press). EROTIC:New & Selected<\/i>, from New York Quarterly<\/i>, dropped in March, 2021. She\u2019s published in Best American Poetry, Nasty Women Poets, Cleaver, Diode<\/i>, and elsewhere. Her photos are published world-wide. Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Daily<\/i>. She and her husband live and frolic in San Pedro, CA. Find her at alexisrhonefancher.com.<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nA retired special education teacher, Vern Fein<\/a><\/strong> has published over one hundred fifty poems on over eighty sites, a few being: *82 Review, Bindweed Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Courtship of Winds, Young Raven’s Review, Monterey Poetry Review, Sledgehammer Magazine, and Rat’s Ass Review.
\n 
\n 
\nJames Fowler<\/a><\/strong> retired from the Navy in 1994 and returned to school to graduate with a Master\u2019s in Environmental Science. His final practicum was to edit the poetry anthology, “Heartbeat of New England” (Tiger Moon Production 2000) Finishing Line Press published his chapbook “Connection to this World” 2012. “Falling Ashes” was published in the Hobblebush Press Granite State Poetry Series as volume VII in 2013.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nKarin L. Frank<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s @klfrank1<\/a> and karinlfrank.com<\/a>) poems and stories have been published in a wide variety of venues both literary and genre, in the U.S.A. and abroad. Nurtured by the fantasies and sciences of both coasts, she is now officially an old lady disintegrating on a farm in the Midwest. A Meeting of Minds, a collection of her science-based and science fiction-based poems is available through Amazon.
\n 
\n 
\nMeg Freer<\/a><\/strong> grew up in Montana and lives in Ontario. She worked in book publishing, and now teaches piano and enjoys being outdoors year-round. Her photos and writing have appeared in journals such as Ruminate, Vallum, Arc Poetry<\/i>, and Eastern Iowa Review<\/i>. She co-authored with Chantel Lavoie a chapbook of poems, Serve the Sorrowing World with Joy<\/i> (Woodpecker Lane Press, 2020). Her poems have won awards in several contests in the U.S. and Canada.
\n 
\n 
\nJeffery Gainer<\/a><\/strong> has been a published writer since 1976. A precocious high-school student, he contributed frequent book reviews to his hometown newspaper, The Charleston Gazette<\/i>. Since then, he has published social criticism, management essays, technical articles, and fiction in numerous publications. Mr. Gainer now lives in the Park City, Utah area, where he works occasionally as a private chef. On quiet summer evenings, he dons a patriotic costume, flies through the air, and fights crime.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGene Goldfarb<\/a><\/strong> now lives in Manhattan having recently moved there from Long Island. He loves reading, writing, travelling and is a foodie and film afficionado (all kinds). His poetry has appeared in Black Fox, Green Briar, Quiddity, SLANT, The Daily Drunk and elsewhere.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJohn Grey<\/a><\/strong> is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Penumbra, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner and Held.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGoddfrey Hammit<\/a><\/strong> was born and raised in Utah, and lives in Utah still, in a small town outside of Salt Lake City. Hammit has, most recently, contributed work to Neologism Poetry Journal, The Loch Raven Review<\/i>, and Riddled with Arrows<\/i>, among others, and is the author of the novel Nimrod, UT<\/i>. Website: goddfreyhammit.com.<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nErin Hay<\/a><\/strong> is a poet living in Santa Cruz, California. She lives with her sweetheart, in a menagerie of pets and plants.<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Helweg-Larsen<\/a><\/strong>\u2018s poems, mostly formal, have been published in Rat\u2019s Ass Review and other magazines in the US and elsewhere. He is Series Editor for Sampson Low\u2019s \u2018Potcake Chapbooks \u2013 form in formless times\u2019 and blogs at formalverse.com<\/a> from his hometown of Governor\u2019s Harbour in the Bahamas. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSydney Henck<\/a><\/strong> is a social worker by day and a poet between clients. He received his bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Sarah Lawerence College and his masters in social work from the New York University Silver School of Social Work. Sydney is an asexual transgender author, who loves swordfighting, beekeeping, and baking bread from Yeastifer the wild sourdough starter. Sydney lives in Connecticut with his husband and their misbehaving cat, Lady Capulet.
\n 
\n 
\nMary Beth Hines<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s debut poetry collection, Winter at a Summer House, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2022. Her poems, and short fiction and non-fiction, appear in journals such as Crab Orchard Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, FERAL, Madcap Review, Rat\u2019s Ass Review, and Snakeskin among many others. Following a career as a communications and outreach program manager, she writes from her home in Massachusetts. Connect with her at marybethhines.com.<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAfter a thirty-year career teaching literature and creative writing at a South Florida university, Christine Jackson<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s latest retirement addictions are poetry and pickleball. Her poetry has been published in many online publications, including South Florida Poetry Journal, Ekphrastic Review<\/i>, and Verse-Virtual<\/i>. Chris lives with her husband in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nNate Jacob<\/a><\/strong> is a full-time stay-at-home father to six, and a part time slave to an on-again, off-again Muse who drags words out of him at the most convenient times, to varying degrees of success so far as poetry is concerned. He is a newcomer, having only recently seen his first publication, but he plans to ignore his children\u2019s pleas for love and sustenance more so that he can write more and better poetry.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMelissa E. Jordan<\/a><\/strong> lives in northwestern Connecticut. Her poetry collection, Bain-Marie<\/i> (Big Wonderful Press) was published in 2015, and was also a finalist in both the CutBank Chapbook Contest and the Slate Roof Press Chapbook Contest. Jordan\u2019s poems have appeared in The Cossack Review, Word Riot, Otis Nebula, Terrain, Off the Coast, Squawk Back<\/i>, and elsewhere.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSarah Mackey Kirby<\/a><\/strong> is a Kentucky poet and writer. She is the author of the poetry collection, The Taste of Your Music (Impspired, 2021). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Chiron Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Rat’s Ass Review<\/i>, Cajun Mutt Press, and elsewhere. She holds an MA in teaching and a BA in political science from the University of Louisville. She and her husband live in Louisville. smkirby.com\/<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nKoss<\/a><\/strong> (she\/they\/them) is a queer writer and artist with an MFA from SAIC. They have work in or forthcoming in Diode Poetry, Hobart, Five Points, Spillway, Cincinnati Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, North Dakota Review, San Pedro River Review, Chiron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Rat\u2019s Ass Review, Moist, Amethyst Review, The Lumiere Review, Filth and many others. They also have work in Best Small Fictions 2020 and won the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry 2021 Contest. Keep up with Koss on Twitter @Koss51209969<\/a> and Instagram at @koss_singular<\/a>. Their website is koss-works.com<\/a> For writing, poetry, art, web design. copywriting, and marketing services, use the same link.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJerry Krajnak<\/a><\/strong> is a former altar boy and a Vietnam veteran who is now retired in the North Carolina mountains after almost fifty years of accumulating degrees and teaching. Happiness these days depends on having ripe tomatoes on the vine, grandchildren on the phone, and mountain internet that is actually working. Recent poems have appeared in Wingless Dreamer, Novus<\/i>, and Plants and Poetry<\/i>. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAndrea Krause<\/a><\/strong> (she\/her) lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, daughter, and snoring greyhound. Her work is published or forthcoming in Kissing Dynamite, Autofocus, Eunoia Review, Moist Poetry Journal,<\/i> and elsewhere. She nods along on Twitter at @PNWPoetryFog<\/a>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJudy Kronenfeld<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s fifth full-length collection of poetry, Groaning and Singing<\/i>, will be published by FutureCycle in early 2022. Her most recent prior collections are Bird Flying through the Banquet<\/i> (FutureCycle, 2017) and Shimmer<\/i> (WordTech, 2012). Judy\u2019s poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Connotation Press, Ghost Town, New Ohio Review, One, Rattle, Slant, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verdad<\/i> and other journals, and in over two dozen anthologies.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJennifer Lagier<\/a><\/strong> has published nineteen books. Her work appears in a variety of anthologies, ezines (including past issues of Rat’s Ass Review) and literary magazines. She taught with California Poets in the Schools, edits the Monterey Review, helps coordinate Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Second Sunday readings. Recent publications: work included in Humana Obscura, Harbinger Asylum, The Pangolin Review, The Rockford Review, Syndic Literary Journal, Fog and Light: San Francisco Through the Poets Who Live There, Second Wind: Words & Art of Hope & Resilience. Her most recent books include: Meditations on Seascapes and Cypress (Blue Light Press) and COVID Dissonance (CyberWit). Forthcoming: Camille Chronicles (FutureCycle Press) Facebook: JenniferLagier<\/a> Website: jlagier.net<\/a> <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRichard LeDue<\/a><\/strong> (he\/him) currently lives in Norway House, Manitoba. He is a Best of the Net nominee. His first chapbook came out in 2020, and a second chapbook, “Winnipeg Vacation,” was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2021. As well, his third chapbook, “The Kind of Noise Worth Writing Down,” is forthcoming in early 2022 from Kelsay Books.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMichael H. Levin<\/a><\/strong> is a lawyer, solar energy developer and writer based in Washington DC. His work has appeared on stage and in three collections, multiple anthologies and numerous periodicals \u2013 most recently in a full-length nonfiction book, A Border Town in Poland<\/i> (July 2021). He has received poetry and feature journalism awards, and is a recent Best of the Net<\/i> nominee. See: michaellevinpoetry.com<\/a> and A Border Town in Poland<\/a>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJames Lineberger<\/a><\/strong> wrote the book and lyrics for the rock opera, The Survival of Saint Joan<\/i>, and the screen adaptation of the movie Taps<\/i>. His poetry has appeared in Boulevard; The Cortland Review; The Main Street Rag; UCity Review; Natural Bridge; Rat’s Ass Review; Pembroke Magazine; Quarter After Eight; B O D Y; and New Ohio Review.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLorraine Henrie Lins<\/a><\/strong> is a Pennsylvania county Poet Laureate and author of four books of poetry. Lins serves as the Director of New and Emerging Poets with Tekpoet and her work has appeared in wide variety of publications, including a small graffiti poster in New Zealand. Born and raised in the suburbs of Central New Jersey, the self-professed Jersey Girl now resides along the coast of North Carolina where she pumps her own gas.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nEllaraine Lockie<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s recent work has won the Oprelle Publishing\u2019s Poetry Masters Contest, Poetry Super Highway Contest, the Nebraska Writers Guild\u2019s Women of the Fur Trade Poetry Contest and New Millennium\u2019s Monthly Musepaper Poetry Contest. Chapbook collections have won Poetry Forum\u2019s Chapbook Contest Prize, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Chapbook Competition, Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest, Best Individual Poetry Collection Award from Purple Patch<\/i>, and The Aurorean<\/i>\u2019s Chapbook Choice Award. Ellaraine is Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, LILIPOH.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nFay L. Loomis<\/a><\/strong> lives a particularly quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and Rat\u2019s Ass Review Workshop, her poetry and prose have appeared most recently in Burrow, Amethyst Review, Bindweed, True Chili, Blue Pepper, Al-Khemica Poetica, Sledgehammer Lit, Spillwords, Undertow Poetry Review<\/i>, and Love in the Time of Covid<\/i>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nKen Massicotte<\/a><\/strong> lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He has published in several journals, including Wilderness House Literary Review, Gray Sparrow, Poetry Quarterly, Ginosko, Crack the Spine, Matador, Sleet, and Grain.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJoan Mazza<\/a><\/strong> worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops nationally on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self<\/i> (Penguin\/Putnam), and her work has appeared in Italian Americana, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner<\/i>, and The Nation<\/i>. She lives in rural central Virginia.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLisa McCabe<\/a><\/strong> lives in Lahave, Nova Scotia, Canada. She has published poetry, reviews, and essays in various print and online journals including, The Sewanee Review, The Dark Horse Magazine, HCE Review, Better Than Starbucks, The Ekphrastic Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Front Porch Republic.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nElizabeth McCarthy<\/a><\/strong> lives with her husband in an old farmhouse in northern Vermont where they raised two children and several generations of free roaming hens, and made numerous attempts at keeping honey bees alive despite cold winters and marauding bears. She retired from teaching in 2018 and turned to poetry in March of 2020 when COVID-19 closed the world down and time became a windfall. Her collection of memoir poems and essays, The Old House<\/a>, was published in October of 2020. She is an online member of the Lockdown Poets of Aberdeen, Scotland.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBruce McGuffin<\/a><\/strong> divides his time between Lexington Massachusetts, where he has a day job as an engineer in a radio factory, and Antrim New Hampshire, where he lives with his wife and pretends to be practical (when he\u2019s not writing poetry). His poetry has appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, Blue Unicorn, and other journals.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJessica Lee McMillan<\/a><\/strong> is an emerging BC poet with an MA in English. She made her grade 12 Literature teacher cry. She likes crooked, shiny things and her writing explores architectures of perception, existentialism and longing. You can find her work in A Poetry of Place: Journeys Across New Westminster, ShabdAaweg Review, Bewildering Stories, Goat\u2019s Milk Magazine<\/i> and Pocket Lint (A New Journal)<\/i>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMike Mesterton-Gibbons<\/a><\/strong> is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat\u2019s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMark J. Mitchell<\/a><\/strong> was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection, Roshi San Francisco, was just published by Norfolk Publishing. Starting from Tu Fu was recently published by Encircle Publications. He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, like everyone else, he\u2019s unemployed. He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and two full length collections so far. Titles on request. A meager online presence can be found at www.facebook.com\/MarkJMitchellwriter\/<\/a> A primitive web site now exists: mark-j-mitchell.square.site<\/a> He sometimes tweets @ Mark J Mitchell Writer<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJuan Pablo Mobili<\/a><\/strong> was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has been an adopted son of New York for many years. His poems appeared in The Worcester Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Mason Street Review<\/i>, and The Banyan Review<\/i>, among others. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. His chapbook, “Contraband,” will be published by Poetry Box in April of 2022.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nCameron Morse<\/a><\/strong> is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review<\/i> and the author of six collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk<\/i>, won Glass Lyre Press\u2019s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Far Other<\/i> (Woodley Press, 2020). He holds and MFA from the University of Kansas City\u2014Missouri and lives in Independence, Missouri, with his wife Lili and two children. For more information, check out his Facebook page<\/a> or website<\/a>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nElizabeth Morse<\/a><\/strong> is a poet who lives in New York\u2019s East Village. Her work has been published in literary magazines such as Blue Mesa Review, Hazmat Review<\/i>, and Freezer Burn<\/i>, as well as anthologies such as Crimes of the Beats<\/i> and The Unbearables Big Book of Sex<\/i>. Her new poetry chapbook, The Color Between the Hours<\/i>, is forthcoming from Train River Press. A previous chapbook, The Future Is Now<\/i>, was published by Linear Arts Press. She has her MFA from Brooklyn College and supports her poetry with a job in technology. .<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBruce Morton<\/a><\/strong> splits his time between Montana and Arizona. His poems have recently appeared in San Pedro River Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Loch Raven Review, Ibbetson Street, and Sin Fronteras\/Writers Without Borders. He was formerly a librarian at Montana State University.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJBMulligan<\/a><\/strong> has published more than 1100 poems and stories in various magazines over the past 45 years, and has had two chapbooks: The Stations of the Cross and THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, as well as 2 e-books: The City of Now and Then, and A Book of Psalms (a loose translation). He has appeared in more than a dozen anthologies, and was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBarbra Nightingale<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s 10th book of poetry is Spells & Other Ways of Flying<\/i> (Kelsay Books, 2021). She has seven chapbooks and two other full volumes of poetry with small presses. Over 200 of her poems have appeared in National and International Journals and Anthologies. She is an Associate Editor with the South Florida Poetry Journal<\/i>, a retired professor, and lives in Hollywood, Florida, with her two and four-legged menagerie.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nToti O’Brien<\/a><\/strong> is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. Born in Rome, living in Los Angeles, she is an artist, musician and dancer. She is the author of Other Maidens<\/i> (BlazeVOX, 2020), An Alphabet of Birds<\/i> (Moonrise Press, 2020), and In Her Terms<\/i> (Cholla Needles Press, 2021).<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSteve Passey<\/a><\/strong> is originally from Southern Alberta. He is the author of the short-story collections “Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock” (Tortoise Books, 2017), the novella “Starseed” (Seventh Terrace, 2019), and many other individual things. He is a Pushcart and Best of the Net Nominee and is part of the Editorial Collective at The Black Dog Review.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGeorge Cassidy Payne<\/a><\/strong> is an independent writer, domestic violence counselor, and adjunct instructor in the humanities at Finger Lakes Community College. George’s blogs, essays, letters, poems, and photographs have been published in a wide variety of national and international outlets such as USA Today, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, The Buffalo News, Albany Times-Union, Syracuse Post Standard, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, The Toronto Star, The Minority Reporter, Chronogram Journal, Ovi Magazine, CounterPunch, Moria Poetry Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, Adirondack Daily Enterprise<\/i>, and more. George’s first book of poetry, A Time Before Teachers<\/i>, is available at Amazon.com<\/a>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRobert Perchan<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s latest book is Last Notes from a Split Peninsula: Poems and Prose Poems<\/i> forthcoming soon from UnCollected Press \u2013 a steal at 128 pages for fifteen bucks. He still eats and drinks in Busan, South Korea. Find him at robertperchan.com<\/a>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nD Larissa Peters<\/a><\/strong> grew up in Indonesia and has been somewhat of a nomad. After meandering around the East Coast for more than 10 years, she moved to California\u2014in the middle of a pandemic. This is only one of the many cities of residence in the last 40 years. Her poems have appeared in Adelaide Magazine, Plum Tree Tavern, Rabid Oak, Pangolin Review, Corvus Review, and Louisville Review.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nPenny Peyser<\/a><\/strong> is a writer \/ actress \/ documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles. She is a 2018 winner of the Maria Faust Sonnet Contest and her work has been published in Defenestration, Blood & Bourbon, Lunaris Review, Page & Spine, Chantwood Magazine, Rat\u2019s Ass Review<\/i> and White Ash Literary Magazine<\/i> among others. @penpeyser<\/a> on Instagram, TikTok: @real_LadyPenelope<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLinnet Phoenix<\/a><\/strong> is a poet in North Somerset, England. Her work has previously been published in Red Fez, Fearless, Heroin Love Songs, New Verse News, Rye Whiskey Review, Gasconade Review, Rat’s Ass Review, ImpSpired Magazine, Poetica Review<\/i> and others. Her chapbook Rusty Stars & collection Urban Mustang have both been published in 2021. She has poems forthcoming in both Cultural Weekly and Raw Art Review in December 2021. She also enjoys horse-riding in rainstorms.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDrew Pisarra<\/a><\/strong> is the author of Infinity Standing Up<\/i> (2019), a collection of homoerotic sonnets, and You’re Pretty Gay<\/i> (2021), a collection of queer short stories. A words grantee of Curious Elixirs: Curious Creators (2021) and literary grantee of Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation (2019), he’s also the co-founder of Saint Flashlight (with Molly Gross), an art activation project that gets poetry into public spaces.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nFrederick Pollack<\/a><\/strong> is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both Story Line Press; the former to be reissued by Red Hen Press. Two collections of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015) and LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology<\/i> (Ireland), Magma<\/i> (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review<\/i>, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish<\/i>, Rat\u2019s Ass Review (2017, 2020), etc.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTrevor Price<\/a><\/strong> works in the textile industry. Other than verse, he writes novellas in Latin. Favourite poet: Alexander Pope.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nPeter Relic<\/a><\/strong> is a writer, photographer, and collage artist inspired by the Georgia Barrier Islands. He has worked as an usher at the Rose Bowl, tour manager for Grammy-winning rock \u2018n roll band The Black Keys, and as a journalist for Rolling Stone, where he interviewed artists from Neil Young to Snoop Dogg. He works at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and lives in Savannah, Georgia.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJudith Ren-Lay<\/a><\/strong>, born in Denver CO in 1943, began writing scripts, songs, stories and poems after moving to NYC in 1975 to dance in the company of Gus Solomons jr. A concerned human doing the best she can, she works in music, performance, small sculpture, drawing, photography. Her four decade body of work is archived in music and dance at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. website: judithren-lay.com<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMichael Russell<\/a><\/strong> (he \/ they) is Mama Bear to chapbook Grindr Opera<\/i> (Frog Hollow Press). He\u2019s queer, has BPD, Bipolar Disorder and way too much anxiety. His work has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, Homology Lit, Plenitude<\/i> among other places. He lives in Toronto and thinks you\u2019re fantabulous. Insta: @michael.russell.poet<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nClaire Scott<\/a><\/strong> is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called<\/i> and Until I Couldn\u2019t<\/i>. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters\u2019 Journey in Photography and Poetry<\/i>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nPaul Smith<\/a><\/strong> writes poetry & fiction. He lives in Skokie, Illinois with his wife Flavia. Sometimes he performs poetry at an open mic in Chicago. He believes that brevity is the soul of something he read about once, and whatever that something is or was, it should be cut in half immediately.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTricia L. Somers<\/a><\/strong> is a native-born Californian residing in Los Angeles. She can be found at Outlaw Poetry, Milk Carton Blog<\/i>, and New Verse News<\/i>, and also in the semi-annual print journal The American Dissident<\/i>, (Issues 39, 40, 41, and upcoming 42), which includes poetry, essays and debates with the editor, who is known to be somewhat testy.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJos\u00e9 Sotolongo<\/a><\/strong> was born in Cuba. His work has appeared in Atticus Review, The Cortland Review, The Southampton Review, Third Coast, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His second novel will be released in 2021. He lives with his husband in the Catskills of New York. More at sotolongo.net<\/a>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJohn L. Stanizzi<\/a><\/strong> – author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide \u2013 Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, Sundowning, POND, The Tree That Guides Us Home<\/i>. Besides Rat\u2019s Ass<\/i>, John\u2019s poems are in Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, American Life in Poetry<\/i>, and others. John\u2019s nonfiction has been in Literature and Belief, Stone Coast Review<\/i>, and others. He was awarded an Artist Fellowship in Creative Non-Fiction, 2021 from the Connecticut Office of the Arts. johnlstanizzi.com<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMichael Angelo Stephens<\/a><\/strong> is author of 25 books, including the novel The Brooklyn Book of the Dead<\/i>; the travel memoir Lost in Seoul<\/i>; and the award-winning essay collection Green Dreams<\/i>. His most recent books are Hobo Haiku<\/i> (Moonstone Arts, 2020) and the prose poem collection History of Theatre or the Glass of Fashion<\/i> (MadHat Press, 2021). His next book, When Poetry Was the World<\/i>, a nonfiction work, is due out shortly.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nShelby Stephenson<\/a><\/strong> was poet laureate of North Carolina from 2015-18. For over three decades he was editor of the international literary journal Pembroke Magazine<\/i>. He is a member of the Society of Distinguished Alumni, Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison. His recent book is Shelby’s Lady: The Hog Poems<\/i>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nNathaniel Sverlow<\/a><\/strong> is a freelance writer of poetry and prose. He currently resides in the Sacramento area with three cats, one incredibly supportive wife, and a rambunctious son. His previous publishing credits include Typehouse Literary Magazine, Black Fox Literary Magazine, The Fiction Pool, Squawk Back<\/i>, and Bone Parade<\/i>. He has written two poetry books: The Blue Flame of My Beating Heart<\/i> (2020) and Heaven is a Bar with Patio Seating<\/i> (2021).<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAfter working many years with visual art and graphic design, Barbara Tyler<\/a><\/strong> began writing poetry in her 50s. Since then, she has been shortlisted for the 2021 Fish Anthology Poetry Prize<\/i>, judged by Billy Collins, and published in the online journal Golden Walkman Magazine<\/i>. Her work also appears in several poetry anthologies from the Utah-based group Rock Canyon Poets. She has two self-published chapbooks featuring her writing and artwork.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRonja Vieth<\/a><\/strong> is a Texas cowgirl at heart, an energy healer by profession, and a poet by passion. She regularly publishes and presents her writing in the USA as well as internationally. Her works have appeared in the Cincinnati Review, Texas Poetry Calendar 2017, Southern Poetry Anthology – Texas, Lindenwood Journal, Bohemia, ROAR, The Southwestern Review, the Linden Avenue Literary Journal, the Brooklyn Review, and the Taj Mahal Review.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTim Walker<\/a><\/strong> read, for pleasure, the complete novels of Charles Dickens while earning a BA in Environmental Studies, and the complete novels of Anthony Trollope while earning a PhD in Geological Sciences. He lives in Santa Barbara and has worked as a computer programmer, healthcare data analyst, used book seller, and pet sitter. His essays and poems appeared in Entropy Magazine, Ragazine, Squalorly, DIAGRAM, and pacificREVIEW.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMelody Wang<\/a><\/strong> currently resides in sunny Southern California with her dear husband. In her free time, she dabbles in piano composition and also enjoys hiking, baking, and playing with her dogs. She tweets @MelodyOfMusings<\/a> and reads for Sledgehammer Lit.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGabriel Welsch<\/a><\/strong> is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent being The Four Horsepersons of a Disappointing Apocalypse<\/i>. His first collection of fiction, Groundscratchers<\/i>, appears in October 2021 with Tolsun Books. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his family, and works as vice president of marketing and communications at Duquesne University.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDick Westheimer<\/a><\/strong> has – in the company of his wife Debbie – lived, gardened and raised five children on their plot of land in rural southwest Ohio. He has taken up with poets and the writing of poetry to make sense of the world. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. In addition to Rattle, his poems have appeared in Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Rise Up Review, and Sheila Na-Gig, among others.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRussel G. Winick<\/a><\/strong> recently began reading and writing poetry at nearly age 65, after retiring from a long career as an attorney. Over 100 of his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in over a dozen online or print journals.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Wright<\/a><\/strong> lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in Rat\u2019s Ass Review, Sledgehammer Lit, Muddy River Poetry Review, Bombfire, Spank the Carp, Sanctuary, Black Bough Poetry, Ariel Chart, Re-side zine<\/i>, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not<\/i>, was published by Finishing Line Press in October of 2020.
\n 
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\n <\/p>\n

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\n 
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\n 
\nEdited by Roderick Bates
\n 
\nRAT\u2019S ASS REVIEW WINTER ISSUE 2021 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<\/div>\n

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      (Cover Art Woman with Rat \u2013 Timidity by Cynthia Yatchman)       The Poets     Brian J. Alvarado     ORPHEUS\u2019 ACHILLES   where, oh where has my eurydice gone? for i have traversed a new hell daily for well over an attic year, plucking at electric lyres with chipped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":15,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3927","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nWinter 2021 Issue -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ratsassreview.net\/?page_id=3927\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Winter 2021 Issue -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"      (Cover Art Woman with Rat \u2013 Timidity by Cynthia Yatchman)       The Poets     Brian J. 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