Paul Hostovsky( Boston, Massachusetts )Alan BrittHoly InstantThe way she looked out the window, sitting on the edge of the bed doing those little exercises with her feet, the physical therapist kneeling on the hospital floor in front of her, teaching her how, and praising her – the way she looked out the window then, not at the trees, or the buildings or the sky – not at anything, just out. Just away. The way she looked away when the therapist praised her, saying: “That’s very good, Marguerite.”( Reisterstown, Maryland )Marge PiercyOde to TuesdayShe missed my descent completely, mowing with her back to the western sun. Chewing her rectangle of grass oval by oval. A white breeze disturbs the magnolias this warm summer evening, dragging behind it the smell of finches and fresh laundry.( Wellfleet, Massachusetts )Allan PetersonThe curse of Wonder WomanBatman can suffer angst in his batcave, pester his butler factorum with doubts, question his adoption of Robin, but Wonder Woman can never waver. She must fight, fight, fight without recompense. No 3 a.m. nitpicking of a festering conscience for her. Role models can’t stop to consider. Role models can’t whine or take to their beds with PMS or enjoy a headache with chocolates on the couch. Women are watching, judging, waiting for the cracks in the make-up to show. Role models can’t enjoy a fling in Jamaica. They don’t get vacations or spas. People need and resent role models with equal fervor. She’d like to retire, but who else can bounce back bullets on a quest for justice? She’s stuck in the spotlight impaled by duty. Sometimes she half wishes to fail and be replaced by some other woman without sense to be afraid.( Gulf Breeze, Florida )Naomi Buck PalagiPleaseCruel as buttons and clicking to get in no matter what architecture stands to keep them out the moths hound us insistent as a horror film they quiver at the windows cover the stucco each eye hundreds and dusty as if already old They have something desperate to tell us Their next transformation requires our lights Please not again not the frenzied story of the worm that flies( Indiana )Peter Kenneallylip of the cupa lip the lip of a cup with glaze of brindled burgundy reminded me poetry is not dead december Chicago clark street near foster frost on the grass and the metal grate i greet the air grey and cement fills my chest there is no… there is no… there is no… i grab at … and again but outside is better than anywhere better than inside is my bed is my warm dark room a blanket of red and a thought spiral with no end no end no good end and so i walk hours and hours wandering vagrant pretending to life and watching my feet do not hurt my legs do not hurt my heart i could not say if it suffers i veer into a gallery of beautiful things but they aren’t they are pathetic surface attempts to patch sinkhole hearts sandpit souls of an aching, acrid populace these luxuries this profusion i sicken, swimming in stalls of primping lace and sipid linens which lunge me across the room and face to face with brown …and burgundy funny, i think, such color, such depth in a glaze on a shape made of clay a mug a cup with a lip to kiss, funny, i think Oh! there is beauty at the same time as O! there is pain a lip the lip of a cup with glaze of brindled burgundy reminded me poetry is not dead( Melbourne, Australia )J. B. Mulliganthe decipherment of linear BI'm a hero to some people but to history I'll be a dull rogue island hopping from pub to pub / the check in the lining of my Burberry is blue it flaps in the breeze on the embankment as the abortionist comes to call / I have a house a car a ship a shield a trade a history and a calling but not my peace of mind I could have had any woman I wanted your moon eyes and your treachery your oily hair and your loyalty I sail past island after island where you are not / sirens sit and gibber at me mouths stuffed with fig and green olive paste dripping down red haunches the sweet smell of suntan lotion wafts across the wine dark sea I drink bitter sack she had to come down and drag me out in the end the thread snapped the old tricks don't work any more everything is exactly what it seems to be we sail past another island it has nothing to take it pays no tribute but in its mountains it has you and the sun beats down you are not offered up the oars are feathered or broken and the sail hangs heavy we cannot tack the old man still had a trick or two up his sleeve there is melted wax running in rivers all over me and I die faintly in a sea of activity or crystallised wax rains from me in the thin air and my lungs crack silently in an empty sky or the rocks rush up to greet me and each bone breaks on a different wave the old man came to see me in hospital and ate all the grapes he brought me 'the motor's a write off' he said.( Washingtonville, New York )Joanne Lowerymy thingsAll my things – meine Dinge – my stuff – clustered so tightly around me that I would suffocate if they were not my air. The world plugs into me: craftsmen, writers, assembly-line workers – even the squat grey factories like fat lovers pretending they still mean beauty (and they do) – charge me in their absence with their minimal, important presents to me, bits and shards of lives including (and making up) mine. Like the Emperor of Antarctica, all my subjects are somewhere warm, and don’t miss me – but I’m satisfied with tribute, regal with things they’ll never miss that will never miss me – though I hold them in my hand, my eye, my mind – I read a book, I bite into an apple, I listen to the radio, throned in what I am.( Kalamazoo, Michigan )The Misfit Goes to Bed Anticipating a Poached EggIt will welcome her to morning with gooey pleasure—an unborn chicken, a splat sun. And it will be her fork that releases its tremulous circle, her toast that sweeps the amorphous edge. It will taste like a friend unlike the machete-bearers in her dream; no one likes her even when she sleeps. Or understands her love of yellow even as life goes gray. There will be cracking on the bowl’s lip so she can separate what she wants, no porridge-eaters needed as she broods over the coming day.
II - Roads Create Probability
III - Like Violets on the Wind
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