Felino Soriano( California )Lori DesrosiersVagabond’s Vision #49Nests have risen man-made from human-fascinated feathers (if so-on exists, this arm-long day extended by an arched, over curving, so-on finger) lights rest in baby forms capsulated into supreme, superior, superlative, etc., moving wildly within swaying, boat-leaving flashing, as in a new neon display, birds too afraid to nest within these ultra nests, opulence of these August creations, feathers form stippled dust, sprinkling the flying functions of archaic arcade games.( Westfield, Massachusetts )Robert Klein EnglerBee Dancer(inspired by a collage by Karen Randall)Her world is crimson suede curtains laid on walls of white stretched canvas, creases folded, lined with dark ribbon. Carefully placed circle of silk, round as earth, azure as arctic ice. She stamps her long black feet, dark figure cuts a temper dance. Her bee wings thrum a treble song. Nasal noises, thin and reedy, vibrate in my head. There is no honey. This hive is fabric, oil, glue, a nest for apian dancers, tapping on the gallery floor.( Chicago and New Orleans )Jill ChanWandering Under the CloudOh, my mother, I walk the city downtown early Sunday morning. Sunlight skips off glass. I think of you here dreaming your dream of love. A wound from the past pulls us to remember with its flax fingers. The stones grow warm. You are here with your worry, dreaming your dream of life. Even on this street the prairie is never far away. I hear in the chattering of sparrows who search the undergrowth something of the song you heard. Yes, I know you wanted more than a small song on Sunday, dreaming your dream of joy, but listen, the same wonder draws your son well on his way.( New Zealand )Michael Lee JohnsonHanging BridgeYou stand swaying, thinking too much of the sky, the depth of blue and where we lift, a bridge of words capable of unsaying the past like shelfless memory, us floating, our feet sighing along the rim of the earth, gravity gone inside us, slow capture.( Itasca, Illinois )Jan Oskar HansenPlayfulNothing more playful than a gray moth dancing – skeleton wings – and a green-eyed cat prancing – paws swatting – around a lit kerosene lamp – shadow boxing – & we all had fun in the Moonlight( Portugal )Jasmine NeoshFood ParcelsFrom sandy coloured landscape, that has patches of green where rivers run in hidden valleys, women in black burka appear on the dusty road. A little later a military truck comes into view and stops, the women chat eagerly amongst themselves, they have lined faces, have lived in misery so long that they are now insult proof. The men in the truck hand out parcels of sugar, tea, tinned milk and rice, they dislike this work, think it’s beneath them, take pathetic reprisal by rudely shouting at the women, who quickly leave the road, disappear into a mud walled villages, unseen from the gravel road and the world( Chicago, Illinois )Tamiko BeyerOn the Anniversary of a Shaman’s Death"You're nobody till somebody kills you." - the Notorious B.I.G.He died again yesterday. The worshippers gathered around his body moaning slave songs into the dirt earthy enough to keep the worms fed. I watched from a distance. He’s alive! they shouted. He’s alive! But I've always preferred to view rituals at a safe distance. They sang their life songs, and the birds swam atop them for a while before drowning. They sang their death songs, and the mountains chewed them over. He rose on the fourth day and sat, bleary-eyed and confused at the pyre which embraced him, the flames that kissed his body like a wife and a mourning mother. They said he felt no pain. If I ever become that beautiful, don’t raise me again just to tell me you love me. Leave me to whatever Heaven or Hell claims me, and then, move on. I remember telling this to my brother, who sang his own softly, softly, in a voice like the slow-scorching sun. He collapsed at my feet shortly after and the grass around us erupted into a wisp of braided white hair and his voice became foam, colored red, and without rhythm. But no one seemed to notice this except for me.( Brooklyn, New York )John GreyHomeworkLet’s practice Ruby says tilts her head lowers eyelashes to clasp eyelashes the earth spins on a tilted axis North Pole points to Polaris Hana loops like Venus toward her sun hands hot red dwarves Places her lips on Ruby’s at the same angle the winter sun leans into the Northern Hemisphere tastes Peaches ‘n’ Cream lip gloss and sour chocolate milk soft fruit spark sulfur-charcoal-potassium nitrate to combust in throat stomach root the nub between her thighs She tries to pull away but Ruby drags taproot hand against her belly’s curve riverskin rush Hana discovers tributaries warm wet deltas licks teeth into latitudes and longitudes names the oceans the continents the soil composition and elements of air – twinned trees teasing borders mouths interlaced equations cells turning light into food they drink flushed bewildered the room its own hypothesis their bodies proof their bodies in flames proof( Providence, Rhode Island )Micah ToweryHow Not To Write HaikuKeep adding like it’s the punch at the party. More rum, more detail. And a tincture of that stuff in the unlabeled bottle. Who cares if it’s rat poison. Unchain words. Let them go free as phrases. Repeat them if you have to. For every idea that suggests, create three that confess. And if an image begs you for conclusion begin again right there, Brevity is nothing but one chip in a dish of plenty. So expand like a waist-line: three metaphors, a quote from Donne, and what you and Sybil did by the banks of the Ohio. Besides, the whole concept is eastern isn’t it, and you’re as western as repeats of Gunsmoke on TVLand. 5-7-5 may mean syllables in Tokyo but, in your world, it’s the area code for New Mexico. So call it. Speak for an hour.( Binghamton, New York )Brooklyn TenebraeWe left behind some lonely women there and used our mix tapes, backpacks, and Toyota to carve a Delphic triangle in the East: Leesburg—Binghamton—Brooklyn. Smoking shit-on-a-stick cigars from the 7-Eleven at the edge of Virginia. In the station wagon we were hungry, dead, buried alive in blankets, the heater broken. We hammered through the mountains into Binghamton, arrived with the season's second snow, drank rum and quoted Ginsberg to stay warm. There we knew good friends and buckled houses where trim and rusty hinges sang votive songs. We lingered over streets and ate two hot dogs each. I abandoned my journal to the sidewalk sea and we slipped out from the city in the dipping sun. Because in Binghamton, it was John Cage spoke prophetically to us from the silent vibrato of heart and nervous system: Cease your staring, he said. These cicada songs rob your soul. So we left and entered New York City, boroughs labeled on maps like books of the Apocrypha. Fuming Lincoln tunnel, a smoke stack turned sideways and underwater, veined into the city, exhaust pumping blood, as if this island-palm held a vast five fingered civilization. We traveled up the index finger: Brooklyn, brownstoned and Bridged, hoary like the beard of Uncle Walt, whom we saw selling oranges and gold Rolex on the street corner. Poetry will fall on hard times, now and then, he sighed. But would you like some fruit? With Whitman and his late-nite hobo brothers, we slid along the El, sad songs in the air, turned the corners like empty carousels and dove into the center of that beating hand— Ah God, Times Square was the second coming of Christ! Hassidic Jews proclaimed, rejoiced! Vendors vended! Citizens ran! I heard America singing, each to each, a primitive song, harmonized ambiguity, and we ashed like cigarettes into the wind of voices: a great religious crash, burning brush for the fire.Author’s note: Tenebrae is an ancient church service conducted in some churches during Holy Week.
II - Eclipsed by the Whirr and Squeak
III - Raw Silk in the Mouth
IV - The Parenthetical Body
Review - Suzanne Frischkorn
Review - Nicole Cartwright Denison
Essay - C. E. Chaffin
Featured Poet - Sandra Beasley
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Current Issue - Summer 2007
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