Passenger
By Wendy Howe
"That will lead us out to the wide world. I know the way."
Hans Christian Anderson
You wonder about this girl
who sits on the old bus
blocking your view, her blonde hair
an isthmus bordering
a low ceiling and the metal rim
of a seat that can easily hold
two people, the combined weight
of hope and fear.
You think of Copenhagen
and earth still combing out
sunlit rays at midnight.
She is positioned here
between space rounding off
day-long thoughts
and steel bolted
to discretion like a tin
soldier to his steadfast silence.
This place will not reveal
her past, or her dream
about a porcelain shepherdess
who could only reach the real world
by climbing through a chimney.
When confronting the raw air,
the pale figurine turned back --
petrified she might break
on arrival, the dawn still dark
and her nerves littering the roof
in glazed fragments of clay.
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Life Nine
by Janie Hubbell
Zen bitch
wrapped up
traffic-stop red
without the intermittence
of self-made word toys
one way trip
pay now
die later
come back
as a skinny
black and white cat
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