most recent first
Roadside Encounter1
Another cardboard box, split at the sides,
has toppled off the back of a pick-up truck—
Or is it a bag of leaves tied in haste?
The animal-shaped spill lifts its jaw,
the angled box carving to a backbone,
the entrails like styrofoam peanuts
coiling strangled and pale.2
Nearing, I see its deer shape, unmistakable,
I lower the sun visor,
fiddle with the radio,
look to the left (surely there’s something else),
but my eyes drag back to the scene,
where the deer has elongated,
as she did yesterday,
after gathering herself for the leap.
My foot eases up as I crane for a closer look,
see where metal met flesh,
a chest wound, the jaw thrown back
like a saint’s agony, reaching toward the
shoulder of the road,
toward something watching in the brush.3
Someone has veered across her—
it, the carcass—leaving tire marks
bold as the sign of a cross.
Crawling by, I see that other life has descended.
Not only the grackles that circle the air,
but their crawling cousins,
burrowing into niches
cold as the outdoors—
even their furious squirming can’t warm this place.4
My eyes skim over the dried husk,
flattened as leather—
a saddle seen better days,
old car seat from a luxury model,
shoes, boots, piles of them,
stretched out tongue to tongue,
lascivious as a drunken cobbler who comes back—
couldn’t he?—rising out of the past
to take what’s his,
material for patching,
something worth keeping.5
My tire blows just beyond and I pull over,
call for tools I’ve foolishly left at home,
lean against my car, as if it doesn’t bother me
that grackles cross her flank,
their tails lifted, like waitresses
in short skirts reaching for the floor.
I shoo them away—“nasty things”—
now closer than I’ve ever been,
then closer, the only tool I could find in hand—
the tire gauge like a physician’s pointer, lifting the skin.
Inside, things have quieted down:
colors decoded into meaningless statements.6
The next morning, mended, my car hurtles past.
I almost forget to look, then in the last moment
I do look. I owe it to her,
to acknowledge our short history,
what she meant to me in those moments
that fit into the day so neatly,
there, gone, a moment’s puzzler,
then the clarity of everyday business.
Her ribs arc like a big cat’s swipe,
claws extended for maximum purchase,
or like the grand entrance to a public domain,
a sculpture garden, a place of prayer,
the bones domed as fingers, exquisite,
swirling with bits of cosmic gravel and soot.7
Another day.
She’s finally gone, delivered into the dump truck
just before I crest the hill.
I see the man throw a shovel into the back,
then climb in the passenger’s side.
I slow down to let them enter the lane,
I want them to go first, I want to follow.
Good workers, they’ve left nothing to imagination,
only this knowledge:
behind that swinging gate, now latched,
a skeleton un-enamored of flesh
emits what’s left of the sun
a faint heat, for sure,
almost enough to see, rising.copyright 2006 Jane Olmsted
bio
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Hunger
We are splitting a chicken dinner- Ganges, Saltspring Island
in the late sunlight, when the man who
has been watching, approaches us.
He sits down nearby, begins talking
in the way that requires little response,
although we feel we have to
say a word now and thenHe is drinking, is older, tells us
he is a master carver: his dog just
died, he's divorced, his only son
lives in Vancouver--in my house!--
but he is my only son, you know. He doesn't
like me to stay long. I'm carving a piece
for Bill Gates, you know. Whenever
I travel to the city, I come back here
as soon as I can. I've lived here for 14
years. I sell my work in the states--
they aren't as cheap as Canadians.We continue eating, nodding, turning
back to each other when he takes a long
pause. A Mountie walks by and the man
expertly hides his beer, then laughs
about it--you guys missed it! He didn't
even see my beer! He laughs again
and drinks some more, studying us,
the green grass, someone's small
dog, on his way over. The dog
crawls under my legs, looking
for scraps from our dinner.I have to confess--I want to walk away.
I know--I'm the lucky one here--
husband beside me, warm dinner in my belly--
and so dogs, lonely old men appear
out of the grass and blue sky, asking
for everything they need.
But I do want to go; I want to pretend
I'm not growing older, that I won't
lose anyone, that I'll never
hungrily watch a woman
who casually eats her richly laden life.copyright 2006 Emily Wall
bio
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Poem
The window, visible from the pillows- for Michele Murray
fills and shakes with yellow leaves.
They are ash leaves, not the gray of ash
but the gold of old paper, dust
and saffron-dyed ribbon, the gold
of things locked in attic trunks.
They fall, lost under the sill's white ledge.
You can't see them touch the ground.Collected belongings of the bedside table:
the chosen photos, bottles, empty page
and pen that points like a compass needle
toward your hand, wavering with readiness.
The minutes hang on their thin threads.Waiting. There will be no more waiting
after this, the last crease smoothed,
last child dressed, sent down the steps
with lunch packed in a crinkled sack,
the last book closed gently toward the left,
settling like the lid of a jewelry box.
The click of a latch is all it is.
The soft sound of closure, the tiny snap
of a dry leaf pulling from its stem.copyright 2006 Jacqueline West
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Obit
She died of too much amazement at this life
And insatiable curiosity about the next.Already she's started a poem about the fog lifting
And the chocolates. They have different names there.What a relief. There is no gender difference,
Only love in its many entrapments.Always peace.
Always poetry; somethimes painted, sometimes danced.Old movies. Barbara Stanwyck and Joseph Cotton.
Goulash and bagels and smoked salmon.Everyone is over eighty
In robust health, sexy, and quick of mind.There are no diets. Only shapes of former Oscar winners.
Choose the one you like.Say your favorite color and the ethereal
Designer will have your hair dyed to match.You'll learn Argentinean tango in one day
And all the old songs will come into your head.How do I know?
Oh, there are thought messages.
And every now and then, a fear.copyright 2006 Ann McGovern
bio
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Just After Forsythia, After Iced Rain
Rattle Snake Mountain
pokes up thru the clouds
and we drive past pastures
and tangled orchards.
Trees squeak, green fur
in the wind sounds like
dolphins calling. Above
a field of trillium, the
Liz Taylor of wild flowers,
a nipple hill of snow
dotted with may apple
and blood root. Indians
used it for war paint.
Wintergreen we pick for
tea. Deer berries and
yellow lady slippers. In
this quilt of pastels, I
think of what the blind
would smell, the musky
damp wood, the earth
opening. I think of those
on the island where no
one sees in color seeing
70 shades of grey in
the leaves and as the
light goes, the glint and
shimmer, the texture of
petals in near darknesscopyright 2006 Lyn lifshin
bio
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The Man with the Broom
All summer, wind irritated jacarandas
while sunlight continued to butter them.
People had vaginas but didn't take them out.
Outhouses contained everybody's irony, I faced
the years head of me like slightly dry air,
and wisteria, and light, and the present:
a cool, clean hand offering a piece of fruit.
At a bar called The Spike, I ate soup and bread
as pages started falling from my favorite books.
How could they have fallen so quietly?
You said, welcome, come in, sit, but I stood
at your door, ashamed of my homemade clothesI saw you as a crow, wings folded in readiness.
You were reading a thin white paperback, a single
candle drawn on its cover, and you sang
me the line you had just read -
"Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight..."
We made love on the hostess' couch
right as the last guests were leaving, about
two-thirty on a late September morning.
I felt we were sneaking into a coat-locker
at Hidden Farms Elementary with Stuart Little:
I felt spiders scoot across the wall above our heads.We should get a broom, I say, but the webs' prism colors
make visible the surface of the air, as though a membrane
protected us from whatever waited outside it.
I want to sleep naked next to that membrane
in a secret Vegas of music and dreams. But the light
has shifted, and the man with the broom has arrived.Copyright 2006 James Cushing
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printfriendlyLater Chapters
The shimmer beneath the granite we learned in school
along with how to act cloudlessly, like eagles,
and what prowlers believe. The prince of lamb chopswas just a boy, learning his first things about love
from Sinatra albums, and his serving-men played
a little longer in the salt. The water rippled like taffeta.We watched a limited edition DVD of our lives
with additional years of sexual fantasies, financial regrets,
political catastrophes, doomed marriages and, just asJune got nasty, the scent of burning leaves and twigs.
Hands emerged from our wishes like flowers. Each
petal seemed to say, "I was free to choose this shape."But we could neither see nor hear them;
we'd been working too long in the summer
sun, and the animals living behind us needed meat.Copyright 2006 James Cushing
bio
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For a Woman Who Looks Like Georgia O'Keefe
In my portrait I would have her sit just
as I first glimpsed her, sitting with one leg
drawn under her and the other foot outward,
her face in full profile as if she sees
across the valley the lost dinosaurs
rumbling back to Ghost Ranch after
their many millions of years under ash.
The morning seems made for them,
as they must have experienced it, not
for us, latecomers come to escape
hells men have made, not asteroids
or volcanoes, floods, or hurricanes
of these days when all catastrophes
are said to be of Biblical proportions,
hence only to be suffered. I yield
to the do-nothings. I gaze upon beauty.I would ask that she lift her left hand,
touching her braid, then reach for me
with the other so that I might be allowed
to lift her to her feet and lead her toward
the canyon, high up the path where we
might sit and look down upon the world
Georgia painted, the cow and horse skulls,
the fossilized bones of the dinosaurs,
the sun-seasoned wood weathered like her
leather face, the sky as blue as Ming cobalt.On the cliff face behind her I observe the top
layer of stone as if the first ash from an eruption
that took off a mountain top is just now
beginning to fall, a snow laying down white
upon ochre, enough to blanket every living
creature and all the dead in their keeping,
as if nature whether gentle or aroused
to fire works only for the birthing of beauty.copyright 2006 David Ray
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printfriendlyTo My Dear Friend and Admirer
You have long urged me to board a steam ship
and cross the Pacific Ocean, and I in turn
have often said I would get around to doing so.But it is time to be candid with you, for friendship
demands nothing less. Why should I do such a thing?
I am not a little bird that needs to leave the nest.And with a war on there is always a good chance
that passengers might reach not the farther shore
but the bottom of the sea. I know it is fabulous down there,for the American poet Walt Whitman has written about it
as if he takes regular walks amidst the coral and sea weed
and waving fronds. But please do not imaginethat I have forgotten about your many invitations.
Please go ahead with whatever festivities you have planned
in Australia, Japan, America, and other placesalong the way just as if I had arrived and settled down
comfortably as your guest. I am sure that your home
would easily meet my standards and that you are eitheran excellent cook or the employer of one. However,
it is only fair to inform you that I would be sure to rebel
against any dish not prepared with close attentionto my diet. I mean no disrespect whatsoever to your chef,
but western cuisine would never do for me. I shall not say
anything more at present about these sublunary matters.But just in case I should clear my desk and the war ends soon
and I get around to packing my trunks I shall send you
a list of those items I have often forgotten in the pastwhen I have undertaken journeys. With this list in hand
you can keep replacements handy and upon my arrival
we can go over the list and make sure everything neededis within reach should I find such items missing again.
This small problem does not originate from any insufficiency
in my trunks, for they are ideal for both trains and steam ships.They have many compartments, including secret ones where
I suspect I could find many things sequestered there
from long ago. At this stage in my life I am not curiousabout such matters, and I never open a trunk during a journey.
As you may know, it is quite risky to shave while one
is aboard a moving train or ship. And the convenienceof not having to sort through one's trunks is well worth
the small sacrifice of limiting ablutions to the basics.
My philosophy, as you know, does not call for descendingto the lower domains that would force me to think about
such matters as shaving or changing clothes simply because
they have acquired the sacred patina provided by the dustof our provinces or the glitter of the sea. I must leave off
this letter, for I must depart Calcutta by a three o'clock train
and need to arrive one hour early due to my knack of missingtrains, ships, buses, and even rickshaws. You have by blessings
for the New Year whenever it arrives -- there is not time to check
the almanac on that matter. I must rush off to buy my ticket.
Rabrindranath TagoreThis poem will appear in David Ray's new book, After Tagore,
soon to be published in India.copyright 2006 David Ray
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printfriendlyThe Compassion of Walt Whitman
Walt never got to watch the Nature
Channel or Discovery or even History.
So how the devil did he know
what the world was like down below
the foam, including forests
at the bottom of the sea as if
he had bright lighting for his close-
ups of each species? He wrote
like a journalist familiar with green
gardens on the sea floor, with dancing
leafy lettuce and lichens on the coral.You might think that Walt had strolled
for hours amidst sluggish beings
grazing far down there, but then
he surfaced like a whale and told
about his friends disporting
at every depth. Like a marine
biologist he lectured on sharks
and turtles and leopards of the sea,
not to mention wide-finned
sting rays that flapped their fins.Or were they wings he claimed
to see fluttering not far offshore?
However you explain his visions,
could it be that Walt was trying
to escape the war he wandered through
and preferred the bottom of the sea
to tents with bloody earthen floors?
Did he tire of reading to the wounded
and wrapping bandages that became
their shrouds, as well as bestowing
kisses as they died? Walt cared
so much that, even when he knew
not what he wrote of, he loaded up
his effusive lines with near universal love.copyright 2006 David Ray
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Plainsong
woke in a foreign hotel
reached for you, then
remembered the canvas slingand men I didn't know
taking your body down the steps
too early for anyone to see,knew you died years before,
heard whistling outside
saw light on the wings of a birdcopyright 2006 Jeanne Lohmann
bio
printfriendlyBedoins in a Long Marriage
The shadow of the sphinx falls into my cup.
Our old camel sinks to its knees in the sand.Holding this cup requires both hands,
Raising the tent takes longer.The stars are cold enough to burn.
The moon-mountains send no invitation.After many mistakes, the pattern
Simplified, the rug nearly finished.Praying for death, we pray to begin.
How lucky, to be expert at nothing.copyright 2006 Jeanne Lohmann
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Under the Glare of the Hindu Kush Mountians
Here, grains of opium bartered for terror
on the scale of visible apocalypse,
and working guns, Soviet made or Polish refurbished,
for the price of two aggressive hours of love.
Single rooms in Muhammad hotel or Ali
come equipped with working ceiling fans,
which circle blindly
like doomed helicopters,
collapsing to earth.
In search of gangs of bee-killers?
Wanting to make a mockery of crucifixion?
Stand in line, sip the cinnamon tea,
wait out the serenaded general
with claims of heritage
in three overlapping continents.
The geographical center of the earth
is a voracious vacuum where benign souls
come to eat themselves alive.
Once evening creeps up,
throwing its dark blanket
on these slit-eyed streets,
watch how the dealers and mercenaries
draw like magnets
to the blaze of sorrow
that follows the devil's gaze.Copyright 2006 Anis Shivani
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printfriendlyWalking in the Bowl of Dust
Black weave of your coat, daughter-in-law, becomes your beauty.
Your stockings, high heels, the twist of your hair finish the setting.We have broken mirrors at the doorstep of this house in chains,
we have fed the roosters yellow ground corn powdery as dust,
before setting off for Hyde Park in the first hours of summer.There we will meet the horsy set, child-men and child-women
who move from tennis game to tennis game like ripples in water,
amid their beaus and charges, long-limbed and well-fed, as if on
the unseen flesh of the land rising each time before the count to ten.Beryl, my daughter, asked the kinds of questions we were taught
in grade school not to ask, except at the risk of our sanity.
None of my sort wanted to land in Huysmans House watched by sentries.Along the highway we will pass steel carriages of the horseless age,
their masters killing invisible Indians, getting sleep.
Along the road we will ask for directions from lonely gas station men,
who will not have known the blessed smell of woman since TR's day.
I may be old but the lessons I know in bending low will serve us well.On certain midsummer days the blue sky and brown earth meet
at a distant point close enough to touch with the reach of the hand.Copyright 2006 Anis Shivani
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Belief in a winding road
The belief that a road goes somewhere,
that somewhere is destination worth
exploring ruled my early adolescent
summers and my twenties and thirties.Any ticket could fly me to the place
dreams turn slowly dark red on branches
until they pop with sugar and juice
falling until they weigh down your palm.Any smile across a room could open
into a bed where pleasure could ex-
plode into fountains of sweet sparks.
Any touch could ripen into love.Now that glance is something I
dismiss, when roads lead only
to strip malls and gated developments
I would never willingly visit,is it wisdom or inertia that guides
me? Can I love any place more than
this hill tall with trees I planted?
A singular love has run its tendrilsthrough my flesh and netted
my bones. At last finally I belong
to a place, a partner, a life I mean
to work in till I finish.Copyright 2006 Marge Piercy
bio
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wake up
March breathed.
the buds trembled.
a girl sat on an empty lawn, watching
the purple puffs of the everlasting
clover. a dream of wild stallions,
glinting sun, flickered through
the slatted fence. in the clattering
wind, she heard hooves, eyes rolling. butit was just the trees
straining for green and
a hibernating lawn,
yawning.Copyright 2006 Laura E. Bontrager
bio
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you, in whom dreams
Beneath the gypsy moon
all things look at her
but she cannot see them.
--Garcia-Lorcayou, in whom dreams shake themselves
to death, around whom air stands trembling,
suddenly visible and uncertain
of its surroundings; you are flawed, yes,
but so is our earth, our sleep, our breathyou, in whom dreams know how to live
for they have found a home;
in their happiness, they pull
on the water, on the shore, and anyone
who stands dazed between the two,
unsure of whether to be buried
in land or at sea--(let us look under this smooth blond stone,
and what creatures do we find:
dreams, and more dreams, swarming and growing
the stages from larva to foal)you, who have drawn me out over miles
of phone wire and train track,
who have tested my magic, white and black,
you are like despair become friendly:
to be ever approached, but never embraced,
the summer icicle that hangs above my door
you are as patient as a tidal beast,
and as lacking in intention,
spilling only part of yourself yet turning
rock to sand nonetheless, breaking down
what I have called mine in both
your ebb and your flow:
reminding me how large I am, and making me small
reminding be how large life is, and making it small
reminding me that waiting is the next best thing
to death itself--
yet somehow with the thought of you, time becomes
a thing of the clocks and age
becomes a word that rings once, and fallsyou, inside whom dreams the wise young fool,
finally awake and blinking, his stitches
removed but days ago, and his skin
forgetting, so that in the end he will know only
that which was not meant to be forgotten;
he who cannot decide between burial at sea
or land, and by choosing both withers inside
the raindrop on its way into the soilhe has seen many good rainfalls in which to die,
and he has seen many days and nights,
but you--you, in whom dreams--know what he means
when he says last night was different,
that it rained so hard,
fires were startedCopyright 2006 Peter Gutierrez
bio
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Three Seconds in Winter
One February afternoon
as I hurried toward the rest of my day,
I looked up from the pavement
to see a man approaching.
He was tall and awkward.
He wore a small coat
and a fur cap with ear-muffs.
He carried himself on old man's legs,
or legs made stiff by illness or injury.
His face was younger than his walk,
his features broad and round--
not fat,
not smiling,
but warm beneath the squinting effort
that told of the pain in all he did.
And there and then
I felt a rush of love that shocked me,
an impulse to interpose myself
between this man
and whatever would come to hurt him.
I did nothing of the kind, of course.
We passed each other without a pause.
He vanished into the rest of the day.How long does it take the heart
to hang a portrait in its gallery?
(Or was it really a mirror?)Three seconds at most.
A full three seconds.Copyright 2006 Joseph Hart
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printfriendlyLittle Words
The littlest words are always in charge.
They herd the other words down the page.
Like snapping dogs
they move the heavy adverbs along,
lumbering under their ribbons and bells
like the cows in a Hindu parade.
Even the big-balled verbs,
snorting and goring the steers of the nouns,
and the adjectives like frisky calves,
butting and nuzzling each other by turns,
hop to a nip on the ankle.
It's the littlest words
that bark and dart and move the mass
along the lines and into a meaning:"Is" and "Was,"
"Has" and "Had,"
and the tiniest words of all,
"A" and "The,"
as most recently in my subway encounter
with a gleaming girl
and her gilt-edged Book:
"I have found
THE
true faith.
Will you let me tell you?"
"I have
A
true faith," I answered her.Then the little words growled
and went for each other.Copyright 2006 Joseph Hart
bio
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Chain of Being
Now I understand our lies.
When her water broke, the rupture
widened to rapture: soft music, clean
waiting, coffee. Fourteen hourswrenched the rapture to torture; still life
with sweat, shakes, and needles.
your mother groaned, you father wept.
Into the burdened world you crept,a last reluctance.
How blind you, how blind
I! Only in the transluminary
mucus of the cable did I first seethe chain of being
human: buried snare in the light
of wedding bands, shackles
snapped on the breathwhen the cord is snipped.
Was this the higher mystery?
to come to knowing unknowing,
like a head thrust through glass to see?We say it grows a heart to make one,
we call it sugar, laud our neighbors
when they return with little toes.
Now I undersand the trap,its doubled jaws twining us:
wanting to know your entire life,
if I had my want, it would mean tragedy.
If not, I would die wanting.Either way, we are only partial relatives--
even we.
I hear the chain rattle
behind your sleep-sighs.It winks in your solemn eyes,
threads through me, back
to those whose names are lost,
and through you, to the oneswho wait for naming. But
I put my arms around you.
She puts her arms around us. Interlinked
in love, we will pull our own ways, strainwith alien bodies, dragging
lodestones of grief that gather
mountains through decades.
Each of us a blink, a nodto strangers wearing our faces.
This freight I have inherited
from you--what will you loose
when you tie for your childrenthe next rung on this eternal
rope ladder? Will you,
as I, take the scissors slowly?Copyright 2006 Trevor Kearns
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The Pearl Fisherman
This evening and part of the night
I sank again into the dense sea
where we beings and things float.
I descended for pearls to show to men
who fear even the risk of the border.
This evening and part of the night
I was amidst that silence, in that deepness
where the most infinite pleasure would be dissolving
and I knew that on all roads
there are monsters for those who fear them.
Swimming I arrived where there is no love or hatred,
you simply float over an eternal present
and everything you regard is your contemporary:
nothing else is carried by the tides.
I took this pearl and now offer it to you.
But when I have wanted to return,
I saw no man on the border.
I didn't see the border. All is the sea.
Those who fear the border
do not know they are walking on the sea.Copyright 2006 Luis Benitez
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El Pescador de PerlasLao-Tse Prepares a Verdict
Nothing of what I say
may deviate the fall of a leaf.
A word will not
detain another one.
It's useless for me to dedicate
a truth to these listeners:
they will turn it into pieces.
From its pieces Lao-Tse will be born.Copyright 2006 Luis Benitez
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Lao-Tse Prepara Una Sentencia
Dreamy Dialogue
"I had the strangest dream two nights ago.
I dreamt that I was walking down a street
When I saw someone who I seemed to know.
He wasn't far away--about five feet--
And seemed familiar, but his face was blurry,
I tried to get a second, clearer look,
But evidently he was in a hurry--
He vanished like my stolen pocketbook.""Did you feel disappointed when you woke?"
"I was so angry I let out a scream."
"You should have tried to treat it like a joke
And simply laughed away that silly dream.""You know I can't do that--it's just not me.
And so last night, before I went to sleep,
I put my glasses on, so I could see
More clearly if I got another peep.""You surely didn't have that dream again?"
"I did. But I could not identify
That man. His face was blurrier than when
I saw him first. When I discovered why,
I felt like jumping in the nearest lake.
I'd worn my reading glasses by mistake."Copyright 2006 Wiiliam Walden
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Woman on the Balcony
I see her two
three times a week
sitting on the balcony
when weather permits
here in old Italy town
in what is left of North Beach
her robe slightly parted
thumbing through the pages of a book
taking no notice of the people down belowstanding to stretch, she yawns
legs like sturdy pillars that stretch
to reach the sky into the boundaries
of my mind
my eyes begging to read the pages
she turns with sensual fingers
wanting just one quick look
one intimate journey into the pages
into the space between the
parting of her robe
a journey to forbidden places
a flight back in time
to another place another world
high on a balcony where
I too ignore the
people coming and going
down belowcopyright 2006 A. D. Winans
bio
printfriendlyEaster 2006
the last of winter storms
rides the coattails of spring
dancing with the windGod speaks with thunder
Jesus with lightning the
crackling voice of the
Holy Ghost a harsh lullaby
that moves down all in his patha sea of fallen ladies gnaw
on the flesh of metaphors
Jesus nods off on a replica
of a Roman cross
the night restless as the
"Last Supper"
as Jesus rocks the universe
with a heavy metal song
The thirteen disciples
handing out cookies and milk
as a tortured thief twists
on the cross
a cloud of corpses raining
down from the skycopyright 2006 A. D. Winans
bio
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Cassandra
One day we will whisper our new mythology,
warn one another with stories of the Declinehow our gods forged great ovens with the sun
fought over tricks they'd play on us
sent us - lined up for a good deal - into cities
that had already begun to burn, small ash
congesting the throats of birds."Marked down" was their taunt.
We walked into the rape with our hands out.We had too much, we'll say,
wanting more.copyright 2006 Kenya Hart
bio
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*
It's not a beautiful storm
--it needs more time, centuries
perhaps as sea birdswingtip to wingtip the way water
backs up in the streets
half rain, half from memoryand everyone who died today
holding your hand
and not moving--there's no more room
though the mourners
lash down the deadwho still give up their lips
trying to remember
safe in the gravewhy each kiss now
has no bottom, nothing left
only the gentle breeze to come.copyright 2006 Simon Perchik
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Minor Disturbance in Utopia
a crumpled piece of paper
sits in a garbage tin
by your dresser,its contents lie secret
in crushed white foldsI watch you off-stage,
digging through your
underwear drawer
and wonder about
all the secrets you have
buried in your yard
like bones:by the lilac,
next to the stack
of bricks that have
never been used,between dried up
sunflowers,near the faucet,
and under the garden
growing into corncopyright 2006 August Hess
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Dying in the Womb
obscure were the
tight laughing words
that brought you here
and it was chilly then,
skin crawling when
the big moon smiled in
through thin curtains
hiding palm trees
and warm wind
a fire was lit by that window
again and again
where you always sat,
and you were startled
to see you walk in,
(even the mirrors
blinked
back then)
and you were
nervous,
a destructive dream
nervous,
a feathered bird
with no nest
instinct-lost,
unaware of
where to begin,
forgetting you could fly
before the monsters
closed incopyright 2006 August Hess
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Handful of Rain
In hawkweeds in July rain leaves
such a frangible heart on petals and mud.Your death came so savagely silent.
Under the cherry trees rain scatters its breathon pigeons and bark and the bleeding shape of sidewalk
welcoming this wanderer before it leaves again.When I follow the moonlight through the deaf violet clouds
I listen to what the rain might reveal.I never thought I'd know about never going home again.
How shaky the butterfly, and raindrops
slipping through my hand.copyright 2006 Nanette Rayman Rivera
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Just Outside My Door
Just out the door into
the jungle of joy
squirrels chasing each other to the tree
ducks bathing in the bird bath and pigeons flying under foot
butterflies and bees all buzzing
as I go down the balcony
kids riding bicycles coming toward me
three people carrying large bags walking my way
with children following them
some sounds of balloons bursting and horns blowing like a parade is coming
a newspaper blows over the balcony as I get to the stairs
three men carrying ladders and tools come up the steps
I wait for them to pass and a lady with her dog come
up next and I wait for them too. Then I get to the stairs and go down
I feel like kissing the ground.copyright 2006 Vernice L. Boone
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Tomorrow's Newsreel
It lights up it's already awake
among the appearances of this syrupy stance:
the dry table cup like a wonder still
the crumbs of bread that nobody left for any bird
around the empty dish.
In this drawer there is not a gun that might stop it.
It advances from its abeyance among the sleeping things,
but do not take it amiss
they all have an eye ajar for you
and the day of tomorrow is the only living thing
that crosses like a traveler
momentarily astray
in a jungle of profiles volume and weight:
the final jungle of every afternoon.
If you could catch it
open the solemn vertical of the walls
unroot the boards that sustain your transit through the room
or suddenly draw those waving curtains
you would see that its face, frightened and sarcastic
is the one you know best in the world.copyright 2006 Luis Benitez
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Arte Poetica (One More)
It is no more possible to wake from this insomnia.
The glass its image used from time to time to walk through
the hard ladder whose wooden stairs do not creak
the helpless wall untouched
words there are that spring back
strange nowadays to its life.
Bereft of vileness and of grandeur
it seems secure like all things that fade off, far away.
Rara avis carries it near the windows
today when listening to steps is a new stratagem.
To imagine sorrows is the craft of the poet
so that something like this
when no one is missing when no one has died
may just for one moment emerge out of nothingness.
A grave must be created, uninhabited.copyright 2006 Luis Benitez
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The Old Haunt
A dog with a white face
sleeps away the day.
It is February and cold too early--
the tulips, aware they are dreaming.My neighbor walks to the corner bar daily
and drinks to her lost children.
She tells me in passing of dreams
where she loses her teeth,
tells me she's lost her keys again,
needs me to kick in her door.
It is an old neighborhood
and the door gives way easily.She floats too much when she walks,
like a ghost or someone with eggs
in pockets of an apron.
She leaves her porch light on all night
as if the roots of trees wake from bad dreams
and call to her.Sometimes the old dog growls in his sleep
sometimes runs without moving.
copyright 2006 Brent Fisk
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The Front
In my father's once brave eyes
a fog of sadness rises white,
the lowlands of his mood
have a river running through.
The air around him stills.This illness robs his smile.
He is a playground midwinter,
the wistful children pressed to windows.
In his sleep he moans like a far-off train.The rain shifts slowly to snow
and the parking lot disappears
before my eyes.
People bundled against the cold and dark
slouch homeward in pedestrian ways.
Above them a star loses light,
does not fall but fades.
The snow is restless beneath streetlamps,
whirls like the last stray words of the dying,
the scattered thoughts of a vigil.
On the small tv above his bed,
the bland weatherman promises warmth
and nothing tomorrow but a steady rain.copyright 2006 Brent Fisk
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Still
The climbing rose
scratches at the window
and I am sleepless again,
fatherless as when I went to bed.His death rises
bright as the moon,
but fades.His death pale
as the winter sun,
the ghost image
of a flashbulb.In those last snapshots
his hand is always rising
as if he knew
he was becoming a ghost,
needed to remain
uncaptured,
free from the frame of his body.copyright 2006 Brent Fisk
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high bridge narrows
can't get here from there
and no way in hell can you
get there without crossing here
on a one-lane, wooden item
from army corps of engineers hell
world war two in a hurry style
that towers above the Nelson River in BC
at the end of Liard Highway,
call this one dirt, rock, mud,
slightly before Fort Nelson,
the now paved Alaska Highway,
so if you want a motel room, dish TV
a hot meal, maybe a strong belt or two,
before the drive to the Yukon
and if you've wandered 400 Territory miles
through the aspen and pine trees,
black bears, woodland bison, caribou, black flies
across a bunch of big streams, small rivers
walleye, northerns, grayling,
then you have to do the bridge,
unless you're into retracing steps,
where timing and crazed attitude
mean more than everything
when push comes to shove,
cheating pain, possibly death
beating roaring truckers that won't stop
midway of the planks with no railings
smashup your car like cheap metal junk
looking to the side down lots of airy feet
into the green, brown, spinning water
makes toes tingle, hearts beat a bit faster,
so light a smoke, take a slug of whiskey
look at the boards right in front
of the car's still smooth hood as you
floor the sucker for a quarter mile
that beats any amusement park blast
you soar over the last pine boards clattering
an enormous semi horn blasts by
in the opposite direction hauling
a blinding storm of road dust
with cheated death swirling within,
so this bridge is really a wake up call
for what lies ahead on the road
in the distance that stretches a
thousand miles, maybe a lot more,
that call's up to you, friend,
into midnight sun with surreal light
that slants forever down
above the Artic Circle......but drive the damn bridge first
copyright 2006 John Holt
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Bistro
The women here are all a little nuts
keeping the place jumping making money
and I love them, will always return
to their wild hair mayhem circling
deep fryers that cook the best
damn freshwater fish I've ever tasted
people wander in steadily, old pickups
with polar bear license plates
rattle and hum in the gravel lot,
under a late night summer sun,
waiting for slightly juiced owners
to return with to-go fish and chips
greasy wrapped in old newspapers
the women keep on cooking
I keep on eating and order
another round of fish, a bottle of ale
and the people still pile into the hot room
growing hotter, cooking autographs
crowding the ceiling, my name, too
this is old town Yellowknife
and more than the great fish
wonderful, sizzling women, juke box blues
more than the jammed, happy crowd
the Bistro is the North Country
the new and forever home in my heart
yeah, I'll return to the women, the food, the patrons
this free form back bay taste of
Northwest Territory madnesscopyright 2006 John Holt
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