Untitled
© Manuel Cautle, Trans. Toshiya Kamei


The full moon of September
announces
the snail's lethargy

lacking water
and desire
there's only the red corridor
    illuminated
    by the harsh cold
where only the copula of silence and loneliness
is seen and heard

there's no flesh
    or liquid
or navigation antennas
    in the diaspora of time

____________________



waiting
© Carl Palmer
   

in the entry hall
after her hurried breakfast
she looks up expectant
each time the door slides open
searches the face of each visitor
for a smile of recognition
a familiar hug of reassurance

as her focus drifts to
an earlier time
her first summer job
junior assistant
at the animal shelter
her ward, a border collie
gray around its snout
always there waiting
as the young girl enters
hugs away fears
whispers in her ears
temporarily gives hope
that she’ll be whisked away
taken back home
from this place where
old abandoned dogs seldom leave

revived from her thoughts
as the familiar woman
from behind the front desk
comes around,  leans down
wipes her cheeks, speaks softly
it’s past midnight, dear 
time for your bed,  as she
rolls her to her room

lying awake in the dark
her door swings open
the border collie walks in
 
_____________________




Brief Notices for the Agony Column
© Nathan E. White


Epigram Advising the Young Couple

At bottom, one line
each for signatures—
How much a part
the buried figure.

               .    .    .    .   

Epigram Deposing the Long Marriage
          for K.

Which cell is saying no
to love? What atoms are
not touched by your goodness?


_________________________
 


Not an Elegy
© Rodney Nelson


an hour to reach the sanatorium town
another decade the high old age of him that
had wooed in one like this but when the warm midday
stilled at the library and got epiphanic
I might have been der Geheimrat
                                       was soll ich nun
                                       von Wiedersehen hoffen
                                       von dieses Tages
                                       noch geschlossner Blüte
                     in eighteen twenty-three
the hurt and terror he could not hide or hide from
in losing more than Ulrike von Levetzow
awaited me too in the flowerage that had
kept on to sunstead and I might have wanted to
jump in my coach
                     blame die Götter
                                       sie drängten mich
                                       zum gabeseligen Munde
                                       sie trennen mich
                                       und richten mich zugrunde
                     forge back to Wymer
Lake Minnesota and the court I would have been
paid had I held title or anything in two
thousand seven
                     a last year in Marienbad
Otter Tail County to think on
                     my Ulrike
                     was thirty not nineteen
did not want me or words
yet walking out of that library into a
quiet even lime-tree noon I thought of what an-
other grand coot Henrik Ibsen in the same fix
had written to another Ulrike
                                       people
                                       do not meet until
                                       they have to say goodbye
                     wished
I had had the Danonorwegian but felt
no ending hurt in that or me
                     no elegy
time at all and knew goodbye had been part of
hello
                                       wiedersehen
                                       Wiedersehen
                     contained
the next hello too that linden flowering would
nod again next year in Mariánské Láznĕ

__________________________

der Geheimrat                              the privy councilor (Goethe,   1749-1832)                                 
was soll, etc.                                should I look to the as yet folded
                                                    blossoms of the day for hope of reunion
Ulrike von Levetzow (1804-99)      never did marry
die Götter                                     the gods
sie drängten, etc.                          they drove me into the fold of
                                                    these fleshpouts, now they
                                                    abandon and ruin me
wiedersehen                                 goodbye
Wiedersehen                                reunion
Mariánské Láznĕ (Czech)             Marienbad



__________________________________________________________




Humidity
© Tobi Cogswell


She buys him cufflinks
for important dates—
silver, then gold, then
platinum initials
mark their own private
calendar, a chart
plotting increments
toward a vertigo
that climbs unfettered.
It hangs off the vines,
reeks like a cat house
in red-light districts.

Sunset over the
Home Depot and you’re
in a dream.  A nest
of wicked vibrates,
takes you over the
fields of rocky sand
and shell.  A seagull
picks at the carcass
of failed intention,
a foghorn warns all
not to get too close.

They don’t travel light.
Rather they carry
a trunk, a costume
change for every day.
“Ordinary” is
not in their teal or
twilight.  They are a
porn shop next to a
pawn shop – “We buy gold”
and quick-stop liquor.
You never know what
day it is, but sure
as lust in the trunk
of a stolen car,
sure as one plus one,
they defy…

__________




The Fall of Paris
© Eileen Aronson Ireland


Witness
        on the boulevard
        this champagne  morning
        the woman   the man
        without flag     without pride
        without  touch     of a hand
        with       rivers of eyes
        seeing     boots beyond tanks

No chisel of Notre Dame or Reims
        ever gargoyled an ugliness purer
        than high stepping boots
        on the Champs Elysee

        Proud  Roland’s ivory horn
                    cannot   blare
                    in Vichy Land

Who is Pierre
                    Who is not Pierrot

Does the driver of the tank
     under the stone eyebrow
     of Napoleon   have
     any face

Would you know him
                   gorging bran flakes
                   in a trailer park

Would you know him
                   conjugating futures
                   in a caucus room

Would you know   the woman   the man
       separate as poplars  in
       wrought iron cages where we
       hung red paper poppies
       while the Legionnaires  of
       the war to end all wars
       paraded on Memorial Days

The woman   the man   the marchers
       the faceless driver
       staining dishonored cities  on
       champagne mornings

Would you know them  at your
       voting booth
       under your  comforters
    


________________________



Anniversary Party, November 9, 2010, at a Luxurious Downtown Hotel *
© J. J. Steinfeld


We first fell in love in early 1939,
before the War, the elderly man said
music from another era playing
in celebration and enchantment
a roomful of well-wishers.
No, we first fell in love in late 1945,
after the War, the elderly woman
at his side contradicted abruptly
their three grown children
and nine grown grandchildren
and one teenage great-grandchild
gathered around the table
for an anniversary toast.
And the great-grandchild
who was a scholarly student
majoring in world history
asked, Did you really meet Hitler
during World War Two?


The anniversary couple
did not answer, not he nor she
yet both started to cry
but no one nearby
neither the children
nor the grandchildren
nor the one studious great-grandchild
knew for whom the tears were being shed
on their festive anniversary party
and not a single person in the room
realized it was also the anniversary
of Kristallnacht.   


______                       
                                                                

* first appeared in Drash: Northwest Mosaic



____________________________________




Playlist Directives
© John G. Rodwan. Jr.


kiss the bangles
bump the spinners
discharge sex pistols
fly black flag
cash blue notes
count the kinks
king the exploited
fear the temptations



_________________




Erected by James MacDonald, Loving Husband
© Tobi Cogswell


Come sit here beside me


skin lit, a candle


on alabaster, small gold rings


draw my eyes to your neck


your pulse beating, hands still.




It has always been like


the first time. The first kiss,


first lovemaking, first


child. The children.




Your smile never died,


even as we both grew older,


less able to sway with the wind


of disappointments and sadnesses.




I still see you in your


wedding veil, the one


our daughters also wore, being

both poor in material riches

and also superstitious.




I drink to you in the glass


you loved so well - the sun

piercing reddened shadows

on the wall above your empty chair.




My heart. It will not be long

until we dance again,


eyes bright,

fingers straight and sure.



'Til we marvel at the golden


blossoms along emerald hills

and what takes the place of sky.


Save a place for me.


I will not find another.


__________________



Excursion Mountain
© Jonathan Rapp


Sky’s spent mineral pressed to the Berg
No one in this wood Spitz in the lake.

Banging away with field glasses July
Twisting itself off the empyrean. A basket

Of crickets in the saved setting of its one 
Tooth. Shade feels like a bar everyone

Just ran out of emptied by a sudden total
Beaked by an elevator bad business to

Employ or ape. Nothing diverges from
Yüan Hung-tao.


________________________________



Grandma
© Eileen Aronson Ireland


waiting   at the station   no
               knots in your   shroud
               zaftig   Grandma Becky
               worn   to bones
                                       I never asked you   questions
                                       you never told me   anything

do you   dream in   Yiddish   Polish  English  Russian
                   the marked village   shtetl
                   you grew breasts in
                   before   the crossing
                   age sixteen   with one brother

                   who was left   swaying
                   in the doomed synagogue
                   father  mother  sister
                   did the walls   wail
                   that  last night   or
                   chant   your  escape
                   from bloodland

or did you hear only   Machine Ahmerika
                          you would stitch your life  on
                          husband   a landsman
                          3  children
                          4  grandchildren
                          7  great grandchildren

                          husband   only son
                          one  daughter
                          already  under
                          stone

what do you read   between their numbers
what do you hear   the morning after
               a child dies   or
               10  yahrzeit  candles  later

               how many lips kiss you
               with my son’s lips

               what must  I  bear
               when  I  no longer can

waiting   at the station   no
               knots in your   shroud
               zaftig   Grandma Becky
               worn   to bones
                                      I never asked you   questions
                                      you never told me   anything


______________________________________________



Untitled
© Manuel Cautle, Trans. Toshiya Kamei


I watch your eyes

    the wind
tattoos your name
on the seas
as it travels

fish
savor the tenderness
of each one
    of your letters

you're a relief
and a symphony
    riding
in the prairies
        of the horizon


_________________




Corso Vittorio Emanuele
© Jonathan Rapp


I was so intrigued watching you tap
Together a jointed maggot puppet from tin
Cans of graded sizes I made a point
To catch your show later at Palazzo Asmundo.
After we were seated you humped your maggot
Around the perimeter of the audience so we

Could view its working parts. You made it move, we
Saw, with rods, not strings. You allowed us to tap
Its shining metal crescent. Someone asked about the maggot.
What role did it play? Please, what is the tin
Son of a fly’s business in Palazzo Asmundo?
Our ‘tin envoy’, you pinched the point
           
Of your nose, is a stage manager of sorts. The point,
You added, was to avoid run-on corpses. We
Were fascinated. It was a rare point. It hovered in Asmundo
While you waved the hammer you used to tap
Copper and nickel and brass into knights’ armor. Tin
Wasn’t used, you said. You walked your maggot

Behind the curtain and returned. Only the maggot
Was tin. The others were wood. You turned to point
To a knight on a nail with hand-painted eyes the color of tin.
Its black moustache and red lips were like a doll’s. We
Coughed. You motioned to your son to tap
Off the house lights. The show at Palazzo Asmundo

Began with a story of Charlemagne. Your Asmundo
Troupe was so skilled I forgot the maggot
Behind the curtain. The armies of Christians and Saracens did tap
Each other ferociously with their swords. No point
In the Carolingian cycle was far from a sword-point. We
Were floored by the rate at which bodies piled up. Your tin

Worm we remembered only when dead covered the stage. The tin
Logistician would remove the gore from Asmundo.
It seemed the mess should soon produce the worm. We
Had been thrilled by heads and limbs flying, but if the maggot
Missed its cue, if it failed to appear at its proper point
In the tale we would have to tap

A hole in the tin ceiling to breathe. The maggot,
Solemn as a temple, entered then. We raised the roof at Asmundo,
And had to point, when the first dead knight it began gently to tap.

________________________________________________________





Website Artwork:  "Caught in Gravity" © Denny Marshall