Sleepless

Ten-thirty is early to some. Lunch’s door to
others’ hours of concentration, distraction.
Minutes grasped, divided – are spent
searching the blessed mundane.

Nasal texts in hoarse, seductive depths
send waves, shudders. Sleepless,
restless – she presumes. Hail,
Dracula’s midnight feast to find
relief. Hide the beast beneath a towel.
Seek Adam’s apple-y, buckeye vowels.

Low, dark tones hasten the beats until
a private quake registers. Furtively, the
expert measures, looks away. It’s not the
lock she wants. Merely an hour reaching for it.


– Renee Geel

“Why do you still wear yours?”
“Why do you?”
“Well… John died.”
“Bill left. What’s the difference?”
I drank.
She pointed to her belly. “I don’t like walking around with one of these,” she showed her hand and tapped her ring, “without one of these.”
I nodded.
“Its hard. I took it off for a while, but everyone would stare. Grocery stores were horrible and the whole family doesn’t know everything just yet.”
“Wow.”
“How could I tell them?” She sighed, “It’s December.”


– R. Larson

The Friend of a Donkey Company Must Expect Many Kicks

A Tale Of Two Zebras

Zulu and Zeus sit on plastic chairs that were left outside last summer. Their shiny hooves swing backwards and forwards. Zulu’s haunches form unnatural angles with the floor. He struggles with the rhythm.

“Sit further back,” says Zeus.

Although not a fat beast, like Zeus, Zulu’s wriggling splits the sun-brittle plastic beneath. The chair’s legs splay. Zulu spins across the floor on his back, kicking Zeus’s shin.


– Liesl Jobson

Liquid precipitation knows its cue—April. My cat Sunshine, who arranges herself diva-like on the sofa’s spine, dreams of chasing a bird across her feline-envisioned Discovery Channel screen—the south-facing window. The yard is still snowbound, but its lumpy white thermal blanket melts as I write. No crocuses yet, but mounds of grass, like hammered bronze, peek through the soot-encrusted snow. Oh, dare I hope this lovely rain washes out the damned spot of winter from our driveways, our front stairs, our hearts?


– Nina Schneider

I ended up with mozzarella in my purse,
and then these black stockings,
which have caused me no end of pain,
(the kind of stockings that make men,
like the one at the party,
graze fingers down your leg unbidden--
this from the same man who stood me up at the meeting we had planned)
snagged on my laptop case,
and required assistance from the man on my left,
who left out the finger grazing thing,

and it was Monday,

all over again.


– Katherine O'Meara

Tango 83

Robert was devoted to tango: the sensual embrace, the figure eights on the floor, leading the woman to the cross.

“The whole world is in tango,” he insisted as he held me. It revealed every emotion from joy to fear, he claimed; he danced every memory, each love he’d ever had. For me, though, there were other worlds to dance: salsa, rumba and swing.

“I’m going to Argentina,” he said, dipping me low, my hair sweeping the floor.

“Go,” I said.


– Maura Greene

My mailman is at war with the Postal Service. He wears ripped pants, stained shirt, because the uniform allowance is, he says, too small, and the regulation cloth stains easily. He looks like a homeless postman. In the mornings he parks his car with its Semper Fi bumper sticker near my house, but he delivers my mail last, late in the day. He examines my mail, makes nosy comments: “Your check came in.” I tip him well at Christmas. I need my mail.


– Denise Falbo

[Devil Trio]

Dirt Devil

Chasing dust bunnies, I find her underneath his bed,
folded into as neat a plastic square as he could
manage. Three holes and blond hair, deflated, his
pubic hair stuck between her lips. There’s a crease
between her eyebrows. In the bathroom, I
scrub her down with hot water and Zest, pat us both
dry. I dress her pointy breasts in my best bra, lacey
panties, white. When he comes home, he’ll find
us – together – on the sheets I just washed.


Wasn’t a Fall, Misogyny

Humans. The Man syllable screwed me. I’m your
classic misrepresentation! C’mon. If anybody gave
God such a pain in his omnipotence that he cast them
down into the fires of hell, you think they’d’ve been
a guy? Wanna fuck with a chick for all
eternity – easy – make her deal forever with this
humidity and naturally curly hair. Leave the rest to
the clerics. An apple? There’s a euphemism. Devil
in a blue dress? Please. Not with this coloring!
Bastards.


In My Bed

Midnight is when he comes, a resplendent image of a
childhood spent in revival tents – red skinned, horned,
bearing a pitchfork – he comes to bounce my soul around,
mix things up, remind me who I am, whisper sin into my
ear until it starts pulsing through my veins, heating
me up near to scalding and like a peony in the blaze
of hot sunshine I lay open my petals, kissed barely
purple, the faintest tattle-tale color of a bruise
fading.


– Tomi Shaw

I woke up that morning knowing I didn’t love him anymore. He was sleeping peacefully. His back was cold, pressed against me. Cold enough to make a distance. I could feel each knob of his spine, sticking into me, reminding me he still thought I was his.

Between the drapes, the sunlight cut a line across the bed. It fell between us. I reached across it and gingerly and kissed the back of his neck, once, and called his name, to wake him.


– Sue Miller

Kitty

A “Shirley MacLaine as Aurora in Terms of Endearment” moment at the Emergency Veterinary Medical Center. Who do I have to blow to get my cat back on her subcutaneous fluids? Diabetic ketoacidotic nightmare never lets up. Between the force feedings, constant catheritizations, and piss-poor glucometer readings I wonder who will break first in this Munchausen-by-kitty odyssey. Meanwhile the line of credit I opened with the hospital is usury at its finest, but still, my green-eyed girl purrs whenever she can.

Sigh.


– Deanne Hart

Schnozz

The word cracks me up.
Shut up.
Seriously. Its febrile honk.
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
The militancy of schnozz, its mucosal might. Five hundred stampeding mules. Bostoners say Schnaaahz, don’t they?
I can’t take—
Schnozzolama. Herr Schnozzenenstein. Schnozzorific. How are you today? Oh, perfectly Schnozztastic.
That’s it. I’m done.
…
Hearts of darkness.
Door slammed, gone forever, and all I can think of is schnozz, schnozz, schnozz.
Tender torments of the terminally wacked.
Come back, meine leibe schnozzchen.
Please, come back.


– Seth Schulman

Casting Spells to St. Jude

She says it’s hopeless; she will never find love. She brings hosts to the elderly and bedridden, cares for abandoned pets. Love ekes out of her, a constant, universal prayer. We five, knotted at the hip since 12, cannot escape her despair. It will take us with it. The still-standing four must begin it, prayers for visible and speedy help. Intercession. Candles and earnest words: four Sunday nights, four zip codes. Let our hope soften her heart. Amen.


– Sara Whittleton

This Communion

On such short notice, I could only find an apartment behind a large granite church. It interferes with my cell phone reception, which seems odd, since I’d expect both the phone and the church to transmit straight up. Every time you call, explaining why we’re better off this way, I only hear a woman speaking in tongues. Every time I try to reply, you don’t seem to hear me, as if my words being deflected upwards to God, like a prayer.


– Eric Darby

Men that live hard lives jump in front of trains, stop
cars, live on the edge. They eat tension, drink conflict,
attach themselves to saviors like leeches. Women hate these
men or sometimes, they love them too much.

Phillip, the jumper, caught his connection at the Davis
Square T Station. The afternoon riders, bore witness, and
then needed to switch to the bus.

He survived for two days allowing his grieving family to
visit from Ireland, to love him and hate him again.


– Timothy Gager

Journal Entry

Trash cans rolling around in the street mean the
garbage men came early while I was dreaming that true
writing is chisel-to-stone where the chisel slips,
gouging finger; blood filling the tracks – voids left
in the rock. This is not a poem about heroin or
crack, despite “tracks” and “rock.” I just want to
fill up this journal so I can start the new leather
one with the neat lines and golden edges. It is the
solution to EVERYTHING.


– Cheryl Schoonmaker

A Dinner Out in 83 Words

Did you call the restaurant? Yes I said
Did you warm up the car? Yes I said
Did you lock the house? Yes I said
Did you remember to bring your glasses? Yes I said
Did you remember the directions to the restaurant? Yes I said
Did you remember that this is Valentines Day? Yes I said
Do you still love me?

We’ve been married for 27 years, and it’s been a good relationship, all things considered.


– Bill Clarke

I won a spelling bee once on February, I don’t know if it was in February, though.

February tricks us in other ways, too, with its sudden infusion of extra warmth, followed by icy cold.

I saw the most amazing thing, a vase, with a beautiful plum branch design. On the Japanese floral calendar the plum tree gets their vote, because it believes enough in February to go ahead and bloom through the snow. It is the symbol for perseverance, of February hopes.


– Katherine O'Meara

“There’s something called fatal insomnia where you just can’t fall asleep and then you die. Maybe I have that.” She smiled at him and took a sip of her Island Blend Coffee. It was a swirling, sailing spring. The perfect setting for her to drop dead. That would be just like her, he thought, turning his attention to the parade of pear-shaped beauties heading for the shore. She was right. This was really good coffee! He reached for her hand, not cold yet!

– Anna Goldsmith

The McGuire boys had reached God’s Country just as the late October clouds spread like grape jelly across the sky. Hunter sleeps, his face pasted against the passenger window of the family’s rusty Ford Fairlane. His younger brother Joey daydreams out the window in the way-way back seat. Their father rages, his foot heavy on the gas, fingering the radio trying to find “anything but these goddamn holy rollers.” The first few flakes of the season bring on the last hour of daylight.


– Mark Hall

A tiny girl ran down the sidewalk, three steps for every one of the man’s cantering behind her. Her arms in her coat’s warm pink sleeves swung like pendulums. Cars passed, pulled into driveways in front and behind. The pair ran in their three quarter time, blind to the big machines moving about them. Passing a filling station the man heard the attendant yell “hey, careful! the cars!” and the man replied, “Her mother just died, I thought letting her run might help.”

– Heather Classen

We sat on the couch and watched it rain. It had been cold and overcast and blustery all day in ways that remind me (as if I need reminding) why autumn is my favorite season. A fire in the fireplace, cat curled at our feet. A glass of red wine, and Ruthie made that thing I like so much--the one with the chicken and onions and mushrooms over angel hair with olive oil.

And the Yankees crushed the Red Sox.


– Ben Gregory

Define Chemistry:

It’s when your floor, all of a sudden, becomes water,
your footing instantly uncertain, but urgent,
your sight focuses, magnifies and is keen for nuance,
when seeing becomes kaleidoscopic, all highlight,
and foreign scent penetrates, excites and calms.

It’s a mystery of collision and attention.

It’s how hair becomes voluptuous, needing caress,
how an accidental touch inspires prayers for more,
how any movement away defines longing,
how physical presence alerts by the smallest cue
and transforms any place into almost perfect.


– Susan Irene Master

Red Convertible

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

“I have no taste for either poverty or honest labour, so writing is the only recourse left for me.”
“Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”

“Have an objective to give your bender a theme. For instance, stalking and killing a wild pig with a bowie knife.”

“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”

Afternoon breakfast.
Grand Marnier.
Gonzo has checked out.


– Dan Hopkins

Ambition: Revisited

Kilgore Trout became unstuck in time, implying he once was. Eddies catch me so often, I don’t remember feeling the flow. Called flawed by the upper crust. An escalator rail tugged from somewhere deep, never fully engaging the cogs, misses inches, is inevitably lapped by the treads. Motivation’s definition is so subjective – even subversive. Inhaled by these industrialists. Simultaneously ingested and nourished. They drive their days so ferociously, eliminating slippage, destroying the chance of experiencing the rhythms of the day undriven.


– P.F. Mutolo

Side by side we eat mangoes in the narrow kitchen over the white enameled sink. He peels the thick skin with a knife, slow and precise, so as not to waste a drop of precious flesh. Juice runs down his arm as he slices through the rainbow shroud, the skinned fruit ripe in his fist. He cuts quick thick slices into a bowl, hands me the large pit, instructing me to suck on it, to tear off the yellow pulp with my teeth.


– Kerrie Kemperman

Why Does the Boy Kill?

Why does the boy kill the toad? bluegill? butterfly?

Youngest of four. Separated by eight years from siblings. And by bickering parents.

After school, friends run to their neighborhood to play ball, watch Gilligan’s Island, read Mad Magazine—whatever. He rides the bus, last stop at day’s end, first in the morning, 45 minutes each way.

He shoots a sparrow with his pellet gun. Warm in his hand. It cools slowly in his jacket pocket, goes stiff gradually.


– John Young

I am driving down Route 2, and I spot it in rainy brown leaves, a can of spray paint and some graffiti. It takes only a moment before I stop the car and step outside, and another before the blue lights are behind me and there I am: blue can, blue graffiti, blue lights. I’m screwed. They say, “Stop” and I look down and I’m holding the can. As I wake up I think, “What is the term for finishing someone else’s graffiti?”


– Katherine O'Meara

In an endless parade of waiting

the baroness loosens her dress, the cabbie checks his mirrors,
the baker looks to the supply cupboard, the heart looks to the green.

the afterwards of waiting so much sweeter then the hours wiling away
our fingers numb with tension, our breath shallow and just audible.

and all a constant timing to believe in just what is to come the event
startling in a new way or bolstering an old idea or making fresh

a tarnished thing.

– Sally Rhoades

You Are Late

For everything.

It’s because your brain doesn’t process anything instantly. It takes a little bit to interpret what you are seeing or hearing or feeling or tasting or smelling.

And while the world is going on around you, outside your body and outside your head, it’s going on about a half of a second before you find out about it. The world has a half second head start. All the time. Forever.

And you’re never going to catch up.

Ever.


– Thom Stylinski

While cleaning the attic I find this photograph, faded, edges bent, something written on the back that I can't read. I shake it and it makes that funny wobbling noise that only Polaroids make. When I put it to a magnifying glass and lean in, I swear I see myself in there, in that image, but only in some figurative way that won't earn me agreement: long-ago young, standing up straight, smiling on cue, and looking at something no one else can see.


– Seth Maislin

True Hope

The line between hope and naiveté
seems perforated,
whole sections washed away
by floods of disappointment.

Hope, and her step-sister Anxiety,
leave us wishing --
emotions with self-esteem issues.

Foolhardy trust:
A convertible, top down, parked at the curb.
The sanctity of a mailbox remaining inviolate --
we hope.

True hope does not worry.
The spreading maple stretches its arms across the grassy field
through the scrim of late summer haze,
as it has done for generations, unafraid,
giving us reason to believe.


– Becky Hemperly

Shell

I don’t believe in god, but I do believe in Sue and Steve, the neighbors who took us in after Hurricane Charley took most of the roof, molds and fungi already laying claim to that shell of my mother’s house. It stands now like the discarded exoskeleton of some giant sea creature, peeling in the Florida sun. We see it from Sue and Steve’s driveway, curiously detached; in our minds, Mom has already moved. If only she could take along the neighbors.


– Lisa Borders

The Plunge

Three things conspired to make me fall in love. First, my daughter found a good man, and she was happy. Second, the president declared war. Third, I watched a documentary about a circus couple, an eight-foot-tall man and his two-foot-tall wife who had no arms or legs. Their adult daughter said: “People think it must be strange growing up in this household, but my family is completely normal.” I thought, why not, I’ll give it a try.


– Varsha Kukafka

The Tools of Writing: Of Fountain Pens, Et Cetera

Nibs:
My nib’s a stub, except when it’s oblique.
Sometimes it’s a left oblique, sometimes a right.
When it’s neither, it’s just a stub.

Nubs:
My nub’s a stab, except when it’s obloquy.
Sometimes it’s a left obloquy, sometimes it’s a right.
When it’s neither, it’s just a stab.

Nobs:
My nob’s a snub, except when it’s oblique.
Sometimes it’s left oblique, sometimes it’s all righted.
When it’s neither, it’s just a snub.


– Vance R. Koven

come in from the fields, abuela,
your lush kiss on my sad head
rough, ropy touch of your hand across my forehead
smell of your bosom, earth and corn flour
buried now in red clay dirt
your children don’t know you,
sleeping on a lustrous pillow soft as a cloud
walking, a young flirt, fine hair adorned with stunning fans,
whistlings surround your sweet ears

dance with the matador in the silken hush of ruffles…
welcome me in the crush of my death.



– Kathryn Handley

December 1971, 5:45 am

The air bites cold and tightens in my coat.

Trains whistle far off; the boulevard
is stark and gray with quiet. Six thirty am
and I’m leaning against the crisp frequent
breeze. It’s dark. No life flickers

in the houses. No cars cut through the streets.
Snow sleeps under my feet while I wait
for the bus.There’s nothing in front of me
nor behind me. I don’t move an inch
until the yellow bus squeaks through the snow.


– Michael Catherwood

Explore

Fountain pen, compass, telescope. Orbs
with blue irises and ocean waves burn,
churn, confuse. Shame and blame,
be damned. Write…
to understand.

Write to stop running so fast. Taste the snow.
Smile at the crooked woman. Admit you’re
wrong. Drop a dollar in the hat. Send that
check. Learn the art of
‘What the heck.’

Time traveler, seafarer, cosmonaut.
Discover secrets, tidal waves,
moonlight in one sky. Concede: the
old days weren’t so bad. Know: we’re
not so different, you and I.


– Renee Geel

83 Resolute Words

This year I will:

spend less pocket money
give more to charity
save money for retirement
do more with less
write something every week
make a new friend
reduce, reuse, and recycle
do things for others
not watch the sensationalized news
let anger dissipate before speaking
clean out clutter
make someone's day
listen more and talk less
do all the good things
comfort myself that it’s not about me
At least think through my illusions, including all of the above


– Don Vieweg

Exchange does not mean defect
No obligation to be fair
A vagueness of likeness and pink is suspect
A breeze in a jar of sweetest air
A season of more thus approves
The explanation, a curious trick with time
A signal does love
Symmetry the uneven sign and yellow prime
You have meant able rhubarb days
Stockings, or a signal charg’d
Be art, so art you praise
A pigeon is suspicion enlarg’d
Reduced a date does not show
All this time should owe


–Michael Costello

I Have Opened the Front Door to Let in the Bird Songs

Weather unseasonably warm.
Of course, I get car sounds too,
but am determined

to accept those voices
like anything else in nature.
Seems this morning Rusty Out-of-tune

Pickup Trucks are in especially fine throat.
Means Spring chores are not far behind.
A generation of crocuses,

or is it crocii? ready to burst
into color. And the Toyotas, with their angry reddish purple
drivers! The freeway must be in bloom by now!


–Greg Kosmicki

Sugar Cane

What is this sweetness?
Honey golden viscosity
Or
Artificial lab experiment
Granules powdery and slipping
Across a kitchen counter

Raw sugar cane cut fresh, bleeding onto the tongue
Peacock fanning azure glory,
Empty bottle on the beach,
Without message, label peeling.
Puzzle missing pieces, incomplete completion
A dreaming spinning into stars

It lingers in unasked questions, seed of hope, splinter of bliss
Beating heart of sugar cane
Meeting machete happily, knowing it will live on
Sweetening the forever days that beckon


–Courtney Walsh

Standing at a bus stop in the pouring rain a little girl in a pink raincoat holding a pink umbrella looks up at me eyes beaming and a little half smile. She is alone. “Waiting for the bus?” I ask. She shrugs and says in a tiny voice like a whisper, “I have to cross the street.” I take her across and then she starts to run. I keep following her. She does a little skip and looks back. Then she is gone.


–Elizabeth K. Doran

I step onto the crackling grass and skip from paver to
paver. Warm bugs run over my toes searching for shade.
The sun blisters my freckled shoulders and saturates
its gold into my hair. My plants sizzle and scorch.
Even the clothesline is about to snap. A twist of the
rusty handle pricks my skin and the garden hose
explodes into life. Buds raise their drunken heads,
leaves flap in thanks, blades stand at attention, and
we breathe with a sigh once more.


–Dianne Wheeler

Misplaced Trust

I used to admire the Catholics. Christ, I was one myself for a while. I bought the mystery ever since my best friend Brian came home from Mass and pulled out a communion wafer, moist, stuck between folds of a dinner napkin. “This is God,” he told me and I believed him.

I have heard of priests who abuse children, a governor forced to live a lie, and me, condemned for marrying the man I love. There is no mystery here.


–David Sullivan

Time passes slowly as
day becomes night in an
endless parade of waiting
for everything and nothing that
happens to someone that has no one
to talk to and laugh with about
everything and nothing that
happened today while you think about
all that you have and all that you want which is
everything with someone who has no one
in an endless and tiresome circle of
emotions as you wait for
night to become day and for
time to pass slowly away.


–Frances Kolenik

I may not ever wear a diamond
Harry Winston wreathe around my neck
but I cut them by the thousands with my feet
swimming as I cut swish swish cut cut.

The water arcs a sparkling strand with every flutter
kick a fleeting composite congeals in mid air
suspends and disintegrates.

The masterful creations my toes make with mere water
Would make Mr. Winston weep.

If I were Harry I’d get the black velvet lined boxes ready
to catch his tears in pairs.


–Leslie Erganian



On November 6th let’s all wear black.
Take a moment to mourn for our country,
and learn a new tune.

“O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!

From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.”


–Kerri Hopkins

Drinking in the park
I and we have little else to do.
While the busy and important people come and go to their jobs
Or water their roses and walk their dog
Me with my friends – vodka, malt liquor or brandy.
In the shade and slightly shady.
Just smelly and unkempt
Exposed to scorn when having to go behind a tree to pee.
Shunned just because of being less busy and important
Too many busy and important people
Imperfect in an imperfect world.


–Chris Arroll

Harrow: A Story I Married

nineteen and nearly blind, she runs
across acres to her young husband.
he and mule are at the plow. no.
the harrow. no. the rake. yes. he’s
trying to get planting cycles right.
she is still running towards him
dead baby in her arms -- their first.

when she reaches him, they become
one-winged birds destined to fly
as a pair -- broken nest in their beaks

the ground below always in need
of breaking, of poking. pecking.


-- Lori Anderson Moseman

Ancestry: Wonderment

My cousin Luke assiduously researches family ancestors. I ask him if he is bored. “I’m sorry you don’t share my passion,” he says. I sense I have asked the wrong question, and harshly. Later I question myself: why does this concern me? Two reasons come to mind, one implanted by my skeptical father, Thad: Luke’s carpentry business is not doing business. Luke’s carpentry impresses me, so my mind settles on the second reason: why not research closer ancestors like our broken grandfather?


-- Thomas Gagnon

No. 2

In the studio with the wilting potted palm, scratch, scratch, scratch. I can hear you even from the kitchen, even from the back hall. Tined graphite, cheap lined paper. Last year I bought you a charming lather and shave kit. Too old fashioned. Your grandmother left us an antique typewriter. Useless. But the pencils- oh! In the dusty studio light the leaded words shine. I turn up the morning news and wash each blackberry by hand. To live with a writer.


-- Heather Upton

Nonsense a Plaything

Instead of a sunrise this morning,
great clouds soon punctured
by steeple points. The day
is bright nonetheless, factotum
notwithstanding, in his red
apple underwear, a cigarette
for company, lit and relit
because the window’s busted
and the wind at last
keeps nothing from dying. It’s
simple to go b