Meadow
© Jonathan Rapp


The hydrant where drivers hose
Out their limousines is open.
Water is only a trickle.

Lepidopterists a block in every
Direction.  A circle of wings on
The table when I lift my glass.

Sidewalk chairs later.    The
Ratiocination of the avenue
Between buildings that nearly

Touch.  A thin blanket of luck to
Be caught and named.

__________________


Girl Talk
© Shelagh Davis
  

Catfish, you’re slipped out and mustache walking
This sand is thick and sticky

I’m hot!

The water’s clear
get back
in there

Men who like me too fast?

Catfish        Uuuuuuuuun-real

________________________


C.B.’s *
© Curt Last


To anyone,

The Seebees are a mess of escape artists. A simple signature transformed them into general issue humans.
Skinny, tattooed Midwest white trash—so white you can almost see through them, or island veterans—
buffed and tan. Some look straight out of an MTV reality show with their pretty looks and hard stares—lady killers, definitely. Others look like sad dogs that needed a new home and the military was the only guaranteed meal.

Hard-right Christians defending God’s land tend to sip from the bottle at Tahiti Rama’s white plastic tables, never stepping from the wood-planked patio—but these young sons, the ones I hang out with, they have their heads screwed on wrong for all of the right reasons, and that’s why I’m siding with them.

So bring on the drafts, the rounds, the coolers, the Asians dolls, the bionic white strippers of God’s Land America to suck and fuck and get us fucked up enough to make it through the night that dropped us off here, on Guam.

Your friend,

C.L.

P.S. An amalgamation of fuck-offs, fuck-ups, and fucked-overs, we all performed magic acts—poof—we’re here, on Guam—America’s darlings—young, male, seething for other: women, world, and life.



* The Navy’s Construction Battalion.  Responsible for building and/or repairing bridges, railways, airstrips.

______________________________________________________________________________________


Boredom IV
© Lorene V. Garrett


They live in shoeboxes.

Carefully constructed
from should dos,
must dos and cannot bes.

Haphazardly placed.
Pummeled pennies
beside abandoned roads.

_____________________


On Poetry Boulevard
© Brooks Roddan


I hope to make a little house here someday,
walk up and down the street
anonymously, and only have good things
to say about my neighbors. I hope
there’s a place to have coffee and a girl who smiles
and knows I like it black, but knows
nothing else about me.  I hope the bookstore
has real books.  I hope silence shrinks me
to the size of listening.  I hope to owe nothing
to those I owe everything and to die on poetry boulevard
hoping no one notices, that it happens in the night
and I know it’s happening.

_____________________


The Life of the Modern Fruit
© Luisa Peña


I left the lemon Zeta gave me on my desk.



I noticed it there everyday

but never took it into the kitchen.

As I covered it with the first 

of what would later completely obscure it from view, I saw it.

It is surely rotting now.



I don't know why I didn't move it.


Maybe I liked a sign of life sitting in my dark room.

The yellow so bright against blue walls,

but I hid it.



Now the lemon has gone without enjoyment,

which defies its very definition,

the origins of its name:

frui - enjoy.



I have denied this lemon self-actualization. 

A poor lemon who grew up on a tree in Zeta's backyard

only to be brought to me

to decay alone in the dark beneath stacks of paper.

_________________________________________


Down
© Lisa Manning


Here we are, down and out.
What say:  are we and how far?
Depends on the day and its view.
From this here and now
we can see only part of the expanse,
the long, large landscape of where we’ve been
where we’ve come from and to.
Here we are and there we were.
How to tell:  down and how far and how do we know?
That was up and this is down
or the other way?
It depends.  And I depend.
I must depend on myself,
and to do so must allow for
my dependence on others.
This, the only way not to trap myself in it.
Everything laid bare, naked.
The truth is relative
and still must be relied on.
The touch if it
the only way to feel my way forward.
There is trust and there is doubt.
There is the how-far
I can throw myself.

______________


Poolside Zen
© Brad Bisio


my gaze far away –
a new job
a new town,
the red sun
setting
behind the pine-
draped hill.
               
i hear
“Marco” 
3 girls giggle
answer “Polo.”
       
i move
my eyes to
the rippling water
against my daughter’s
sun-tanned shoulder,
and marvel at how easily
she makes friends.

________________


Almost Empty
© Luke Salazar


The girl at Petco always flirts with me.
She tells of a guy who's there every Monday,
buys the same-sized one-pound bag of cat food. 
When she asked him, Why not a larger bag?
he replied, The cat is really, really old.   

I visit my mother the next day, and notice
that her refrigerator is almost empty –
contents whittled down to condiments,
baking soda, and a jar of maraschino cherries
there since my first ice cream party.

No food but what will be eaten this week,
and a tub of boiled chicken for the dogs.

Perhaps my mother foresees her estate sale,
cupboards emptied onto newspaper taped to the counter,
dollar boxes of unused cake mix and spaghetti,
and I hear her canny, cynical voice in my head –

Honey, no one wants to buy a dead person's food.

________________________________________


Icarus
© Eric Morago


Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea?  Or just disappointed by the design failure?
                        —Alison Bechdel


I.

My father once told me
he knew how to ride a unicycle.

I can’t imagine him balancing
on one wheel—a clown
riding down the block
again and again, performing
for neighbors and friends
as they watched in awe
of his foolishness, waiting
to see if he’d lose it and fall.

I asked if he still knew how.

It’s not like riding a bicycle.
He said.
You forget.

II.

Uncle Bill died,
my father informs me
via text message.

I hardly remember
my great uncle.

He hated the name William.
Wanted us to call him Bill
or Billy, said William
was his father’s name.
It felt bitter
and metallic on his tongue—
a worn penny mistaken for candy.
I wonder if this is the same reason
my father, named for his father,
went by Dick rather than Richard.
The service is Friday morning
Can you make it?
my father asks.

I’ll try, I say.

III.

There are ghosts
haunting the silence
I’ve grown accustomed to
in our conversations.  They linger
longer than usual before a heavy question.

So what are your plans after you finish school?

Poetry
isn’t the response he wants—
it doesn’t come with a business plan.
He sees it gaining little interest,
unable to cover the cost
of living, let alone dying.

You know,
if you die,
we’ll be left
with your debt.

Words form angry mobs
in the back of my throat.
They want to storm the castle
walls my father’s built between us.

I swallow them instead.
All I can say is don’t worry.

IV.

He does worry.

I don’t know if it’s the money
or my falling which scares him more.

I like to think he’s disappointed
in himself for forgetting, for becoming
the man he swore as a son he wouldn’t—
wanting for me his own flawed designs,
sorry he did not name me after him.


_____________________________