Blue
© Hari Bhajan Khalsa

Navy, midnight, baby.
Denim.
Three doors in this motel,
more turquoise
than true. My eyes
not yours, not my mother’s.
The way storms
never doubt themselves.
Common birds.
Moorish tiles.
Le mer.
Smoothing over to save
the moment.
Memory.
Music strung out on men,
more likely
women, gone wrong.
And what about foggy mountains,
mountain dogs,
swamps?
Companion of
black— the two of them
proudly marking
the mutable.
My only complaint—
the refusal to be mastered,
be anything very small,
not snowflakes or mint—
preferring the more
magnificent—like robin’s eggs
or diamonds,
how atoms split,
the searing midday sky.



Blue
© Jennifer Lester

Painting is art's
More wordless space.
 
Color overtaking
Language's forthrightness,
Punctuation's finalities.
 
One takes, momentarily,
Voluntarily, a silence;
Lets a world unravel on its own.
Quietly saying: not speaking at all.



Calypso Awake
© Elizabeth Iannaci

First she raged, tore
bedclothes, battered
the silence with keening,
beat the servants and the surf
with rubied hands, ate
sand. She slaughtered the goats
and burned them, unskinned,
on the shore.  She rubbed ashes into
her hair, lay rigid in the shallows
and waited for release.

Now, she switches on the lamp,
recalls the blinding white sails,
the slight shift of the boom,
the dark carcass of the wooden hull
moving toward the horizon.



How to Vanish
© Tobi Cogswell

First, stop looking in mirrors.
Make love to men only if they close their eyes.
Do not speak with words but analyze between the spaces,
articulate with thoughts.

Watch the looks on other people’s faces
without glasses, leave no fingerprints on textured walls.
Remember sign language, speak only to yourself,
your hands under the table at busy restaurants.

Do not wear perfume.
Alternatively wear your mother’s scent.
Or your eighth grade French teacher’s.

Keep very still.
Read the graffiti in the grout of tiled walls.
Listen to the arguments outside your window.
“I don’t need anything” the man shouts,
and you don’t.

Go to the Coast,
have one last adventure.
Take his scarf out of your pocket and
smell that he loved you.
Change your name.



Fidelity
© Jeffrey Alfier

A man married four decades
to the same woman has broken
all biblical records for forgiveness –
even makes Jesus yank his hair out.
Guys like him hoodwink bondsmen,
forge checks to mercy, can only reply
to home queries with half-opened lips,
meeting her gaze gone as cold
as sentries on a sealed border.

Coming and going, he meets
his own wanted posters, each one
aged 6 months beyond what he spies
in any mirror. You see, a man
beholden that long always takes
the long roads home, but jaywalks
fast when the ambient voices
say jack him up, lock him down,
frisk him hard for loneliness.



Candle
© Suzanne Allen

clean cell—

a lead ladle, a

needle, ale—and

della danced all

lace laden—an

eden ended.
 


my fair and faith
© Christopher Mulrooney

it includes
right out of the chute
a fat pig ridin' the rails
lookin' out for love
in these Western states

or back East
on the town steps
preaching in a vair gown
against the bougainvillea

or maybe once and for all
in the Midwest
a sanctified lot
or dirt area

overseas it's a fine guillotine
or macerated vine
of hemlock
in the arena
of love



Manual Roses
© Jonathan Rapp

Chamber meat
Rare music
Heart, heart’s ribs happy to be invited

Always to pick up where one left off.
            Expensive blobs of
Paint fusing

To one’s palette bring dishonor.
Transfer them without hesitation

To the piece you are
Always working on trenchant lapses
Transgressions wasted otherwise. 

Dried blood and toothpaste 
On the bathroom mirror are telling don’t
 
Let them tell on you. Wipe it with
A still-wet new piece.



Accomplice
© Matthew Karver

I watch him wipe down the counter
and I remember doing this as a child.
Waking up early I could follow his hands
around a scuffed pair of shoes.
He slapped on shoe polish like aftershave
Working it into the skin of the shoe,
“When I was a boy, I did this for money.”
Black polish scatters on the newspaper
beneath him and the shoe’s new again. 
A Magic Trick.

Now, I watch him wipe down the counter, and how
he loves hearing the kettle whistle through the house,
stirring tea-bags and clanging----the cup to death.
Before handing me my cup,
he hobbles over like a bullfighter who has
lost more fights than he has won.
He grabs some half-used napkins and soaks up the
Little bits of sugar and half darkened tea on the counter.
Turning towards the cupboard door, that never seems to
close.

He is looking for cookies
As if they are hundred dollar bills.
He calls out, “Joan have you seen the cookies?”
“I hid them, you know you are not suppose to have sugar.”
I hear shuffling, breathing, and detective work in the pantry.
He knows where he would hide them.
“AHA!”
My father discovers Gold, Oil, and Electricity.
He brings me two cookies and winks,
“I hope you like your tea son.”



Precursor
© Curtis Last

I hold the bowl

                               up
for one more thin portion,

                  finger
down the gruel of life
           
                     learning
this is how it will be,

                remember
how my mother fed me,

                        forcefully
scooping the dull gray goop

                                 out
and the thwack of the spoon

                  that followed;
sometimes and often cold oats

                                stuck
to a burning cheek, soothed

                               burning
cheek; it is the only thing

                             I know
when alone in a room.



Over The Rainbow
© Steve De France
 
I'm looking out my window
at a huge black crow.
He's standing in the exact
center of the cement driveway,
pecking at a dried turd.
Shakes it around
to make sure its dead.
Tilts a glance at me,
breaks off a bite-sized piece,
tips his head back,
& it rolls
down his feathered
ebony throat.
 
Life would be so simple,
if we could all do the same.
My neighbor, a blue-haired crone,
rolls up in a new silver Lincoln.
Her matching silver-blue poodle
spurts from the car,
like toothpaste from a tube,
& in a neurotic attack of energy
lunges at the crow.
"Felix, No!"
The Crone snatches up her pooch,
& kicks the turd
into the sewer opening.
She trots into her house.
And the crow is left
skulking
in the rose bushes.
Even if you're willing
to eat shit
it may not be enough
for some people.



Tyrannical youth mutter godhead
© David E. Howerton

Unperturbed watching
storm clouds speed by
tyrannical youth mutter
their godhead
challenging all
to dispute their ownership
fated ultimately
to see illusion stripped
as their children
rise up
demanding acknowledgement
of their godhead
while grandparents
smile knowledgeable
encouraging them to stand
while parents
still wonder how they (themselves)
lost godhead