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Poetry
Leaving the concert hall
Walt Whitman at the game
Sean Lause
She is eleven, maybe twelve /
but numbers no longer matter /
for she has heard Bach and Mozart /
for the first time /
has mastered the mathematics of the wind /
the heart's algebra
Winter
Ann Minoff
the morning tide captures drifting ice /
piles of meaningless resolve /
dragging back to the sea /
a parade of frozen white /
have I turned away from love
again
The Cello
Andy Roberts
Fingertips over wire and wood /
I leaned into my cello for meaning
Genetically Isolated Since the Ice Age
Jessica Tyner
a flailing Kodiak bear dragging a rusted /
trap in my wake so you can all see where Iíve been /
until the starvation caught me /
tackled me to the earth and I breathed in the musk /
of where weíre all going
The Lost Teacher
David Chorlton
Where the wind cut low across the treeless /
hills with their edges of stone /
Mister Shaw took his paints /
to mix with earth he scooped bare-handed /
so heíd have more than the colour /
on the canvas
The Only Orange, Otherwise
K. Edward Dunn
Orange was the color of her dress, then blue silk; and /
she was a poet at her podium, thumbing through her /
pages like an upright bass solo, the rest of the quartet
quieting down
Man and Beast
Lee Marc Stein
In Asia, users call their tablet /
iPad Thai as it delivers /
the Ten Commandments of /
steaming curry and /
currying satori
Pleasures of the Day
Charles Cessna
The pleasures of the day include /
your predictable distance from me /
at the breakfast table, the simple /
movement of your hands leafing /
back to the preface of a book, and /
even the shoes that are not in the /
closet.
Libertine / The Draw of the West
Suzannah Gilman
I passed neighbors
chatting on cool lawns /
a man stooping to gather oranges /
under a solitary tree, and came upon my own /
street and scene: my children trampolining /
through falling shadows of oak leaves
Oil on Canvas
Nettie Farris
Hourglass
was
arrested / at the Hite
Gallery /
for
experiencing /
the
textured
prints /
of
Mexican
dresses
Immanuel, Arkansas
Kathleen Radigan
If we could ask the birds / in an on-camera expose they might say /
What causes two thousand humans to fall out of love? Spill from front doors /
in the morning, untangled from sheets and lovers
Cat People #4
Kyle Hemmings
if you want to bebop with me,
tabby-O, you'll have to get up /
on the downbeat / raise the hump /
on the catwalk / angora pouty /
singapura smirk
On Top, On Bottom, and Those in the Middle
James Valvis
the floor envies /
the ceilingís /
majestic station /
the ceiling envies /
the floorís /
firm foundation /
exhausted /
the walls.....
The Art of Reading
Learning Colors in Russian
Karen Douglass
Because the teacher smiles, I want to please her / someday say the words
for steppes and snow / to know more
than Lenin, Putin, vodka, Zhivago
Murder
Seasons
Stephanie Kaplan Cohen
I must murder, erase,
the solitaire game / from my computer. It amuses /
tantalizes, demands, commands
Poetry Cops
Revelation
David M. Harris
The good cop says, "Not too bad." /
The tough one talks of faulty /
rhymes, dysfunctional meter, inept /
lineation, enjambement and caesura
A Joyful Noise (with parasols)
Richard T. Rauch
And Iím thinking mauve parasols bobbing along the Seine /
impressionistically, of course, spring strolls in tasteful 1890s lace
The Workweek Never Ends
Martin Willitts Jr.
Deliver us from this heat / make us lie down on cool sheets of shade /
pour us a spigot of lemonade showers
Two Days Prior to the Burial / How to Oil an Indian Manís Hair
Jessica Tyner
memory forgive me / I miss your accent /
when I hear it in my voice say eugene / guitar / fuchsia /
i miss the days when i didnít notice the difference in our skin /
Immanuel, Arkansas
Kathleen Radigan
If we could ask the birds / in an on-camera expose they might say /
What causes two thousand humans to fall out of love? Spill from front doors /
in the morning, untangled from sheets and lovers
The Art of Reading
Learning Colors in Russian
Karen Douglass
Because the teacher smiles, I want to please her / someday say the words
for steppes and snow / to know more
than Lenin, Putin, vodka, Zhivago
Murder
Seasons
Stephanie Kaplan Cohen
I must murder, erase,
the solitaire game / from my computer. It amuses /
tantalizes, demands, commands
Poetry Cops
Revelation
David M. Harris
The good cop says, "Not too bad." /
The tough one talks of faulty /
rhymes, dysfunctional meter, inept /
lineation, enjambement and caesura
A Joyful Noise (with parasols)
Richard T. Rauch
And I’m thinking mauve parasols bobbing along the Seine /
impressionistically, of course, spring strolls in tasteful 1890s lace
The Workweek Never Ends
Martin Willitts Jr.
Deliver us from this heat / make us lie down on cool sheets of shade /
pour us a spigot of lemonade showers
Crows in Long Black Raincoats
Alan Britt
Hiding behind a tree /
Lucifer, in all his red and black bravado /
can’t find me
Spoonful
Midnight Movie
Shenan Hahn
It starts to grow /
in you: beneath those skirts and ribbons hides /
a wolf, all deep and dangerous and fine
Gallery Talk
Margaret B. Ingraham
Doesn’t it seem strange that I would hesitate at all / when at last I
have been asked to curate an O’Keeffe exhibit?
M and Ns
First Woman, the Stars, and Coyote
Nettie Farris
I am standing in this desert /
alone /
quietly working /
a blanket of jewels about my ankles
River Leavings
Taylor Graham
I never said goodbye to the Seine, the Rhone / the Danube at Donaueschingen or Ulm
Summer 2010
Côte d'Azur
James Anderson
i mouth the words to your favorite song / wait for my thoughts to be discarded /
each one a leaf that brushes your arm
On the Back Porch After an Argument
Rebecca Schumejda
We listen to stars /
jazz trumpets, reverberating in night air /
like fog horns /
warning a boat’s approaching
Fishing Season Begins
Helen R. Peterson
The fish they mutter under the shadow /
wondering to each other who gets up /
at 4 am leaving his wife snoring softly /
in the dark
Toward Dark
Cathy A. Kodra
hugging her now /
the embrace of a delicate bird /
all hollow bones and feathery hair /
my hands hardly know where /
to put themselves
My War on Terror
Lee Marc Stein
Look away from this portrait /
ashen face a scream, hands in fists /
I duck behind my wife /
The pigeons are coming for me
Poems
Steve Dossey
her left breast tumbled / from her unbuttoned blouse / Ah, the Deep South
High Drifting Alarm
Steve De France
Watching his dot of color /
fade & disappear, I think of /
the many people staring /
right now at someone else /
wishing it were possible /
to become them
Kissing
Susan Alkaitis
My kiss is too hard /
you told me once /
Now, when I watch /
you close your eyes
Beyond Sirius
Michael Schein
Dust off the impressionist half-smile /
the magical realism, the nudes /
If you look closely you might see /
the pentimento of my heart /
like a stone under water
Why Are Things So Hard?
Jim Morrison at Père Lachaise
Bob Bradshaw
I sit at a piano, running /
my fingers along its keys /
You suck, Bradshaw. The critic /
in me is unforgiving
Spring 2010
an unwritten love poem
Alex Stolis
i mouth the words to your favorite song / wait for my thoughts to be discarded /
each one a leaf that brushes your arm
Dialogue of Window and Clothesline
Card Table Dinner
Taylor Graham
Hanging laundry’s against the Covenants / Wind Power! Solar! That’s the covenant /
It looks like a tenement / Breeze smells of orchards, feels like home
Looking at a Photo,
Remembering Saying Goodbye to my Neighbor
Clint Buffington
Something in the summer twilight
begs to be remembered:
the scent and sound of white clothing / fluttering on the line, or your black cat /
stepping daintily toward the camera
At a Red Light
Map of a Girl
Susan Milchman
maybe you found it on your own that day /
You envision making her pancakes / on a cold, winter morning; whisking /
devotion and years of serenity into the batter
A Dog and His Boy
Gale Acuff
And on evenings when the moon comes floating / to the top of the night, we sing harmony
Fall/Winter 2009-2010
Brilliance in Bed
Henry Rasof
Quick, quick / A blood-red sunset greets me /
In the mirrors of the night / I am looking for a particular /
Kind of voice
Sleeping on Amtrak
The Sofa on Mt. Everest
Paul Fisher
Towns recede like memories of kisses /
broken toys, first snow, seventh grade
Water Lilies
Martin Willitts Jr.
I know I must return, but the light too / is a lover needing my attention /
Light curves like a woman kneading bread
River Lesson
Unlisted California Artist
Beth Paulson
maybe you found it on your own that day /
driving a road's deep-shadowed curves /
high above sleepy 1930s Santa Barbara
Fool’s Errand
The work of each, the work of other
Felicia Zamora
I wrote you
A letter today /
I wrote
Line over line /
I built
Ceiling and floor /
Without walls
Deaf
(and without a word)
Jeff Dutko
All those tiny hairs
the only words / my ears / have ever needed / to hear
Obituary
Second-rate lives
Ian C Smith
I wake at the suicide hour / thinking of Anne Carson’s poem /
about punctuation / that free-for-all of vague rules
Appetizer For Two
Salvatore Marici
Extra virgin olive oil drizzled / over home-grown garlic heads /
with severed tops / roasting until the skin / acquires light brown
Seasons of Love
Joan McNerney
Green I wore green / that night when we / danced how we danced /
at the picnic during / spring / lustrous and green
Sugartown
Heart land
Kevin Zepper
boom-chakra-laka / midwest, middle midriff /
absolute middle /
middle west / mid-chakra /
mid-chest / heart, heartland /
heart chakra
Chapbook
Divertimento
Dennis Mahagin
Tricky tip-of-tongue memories / seed a cloud-poem Mr. Hughes /
will write tomorrow about Rage / and Revenge
Summer 2009
Love Speeding Through
Michael Estabrook
What is there to know about love / or not to know? /
It is there, runs over you like a freight train / leaving you tattered,
breathless, confused / out of place and time /
for as long as it wishes
Reality Check: At the Writer's Confererence
Bruce Taylor
There's a slim, bikined / prose-poet Tai Chi-ing while /
the tractor circles around him / cutting lawn for volleyball
Reading Mayakovsky
Caroline M. Davies
This line of trees with black winter branches / against the clean white field /
The Spaniel running to fetch a stick / an animal from a Breughel painting
Autistic
Futures
Taylor Graham
I wish the itch of shocking yellow /
across purple, how you used to /
swash the paintbrush with fingers /
wild to invent a world
Almost a Star
Bill Roberts
Heck, I was on my way, could have been a star /
made a name for myself, up there in lights /
Holy Mother, I could have been Judy Garland
Flower in the Sun
James Anderson
I would pluck her / if she would have me / I would bury /
my nose in her / if she would lean my way
City Loop
Thomas Kent
Come / Take my hand / We’ll fly up and / Plunge into the ground /
The tracks the train slipping / Through the tunnels like a silver eel
She-Warrior and Tuxes
John Glass
Thirty years would bring two-hundred more / issues, but I would happen upon grad school, aw shucks /
where did Stacie put that flashlight?
Watching the Trains
George Moore
The Doppler is only an effect / In the real world the train /
burns a time all its own, not only / the sound of something /
shifting, wavering, growing / impossibly until it peaks /
in the hollow of your naked ear
Saving Lives in Chinatown
Bob Bradshaw
Everywhere
frogs had appeared / at our feet. They were staring / at the traffic, watching /
the light turn green
Spring 2009
Wheat
The Seven Deadly Sins of Marriage
Sherman Alexie
We are word-whores / With libidos and egos of balsa wood /
We'd have sex with our books, if only we could
Ruby Spotted Swallowtail
Nettie Farris
frequents groves and gardens / lives for citrus / lemon lime key-lime / pie and /
an occasional Margarita
Dear Love
Robert Jacoby
You are lush
like the Caribbean island jungle that June morning. Remember?
remember that summer night in agra
Stephen Roxborough
my greedy lips swimming in light years / slowly curving round your heavens /
tongue tripping across the zodiac / tasting each sign / of this perfect universe
For Adam
Lisa Cole
I heard a poem once / where the poet set two lovers on train tracks /
making love. And they could not hear / the train coming straight for them
Postcard, Second Issue
Christina Manweller
Grapes on sale this week / one ninety-nine a pound /
I bought two. Pounds, that is / What are you selling? / My grapes / they're rotting on the vine
A Matter of Preference
Howie Good
Wouldn’t you rather / we walk down / the avenues of rain / trading verses from Poe / like black roses
Orpheus and Eurydice:
2 letters
Deirdre Feehan
Red rumors rushed into my path with sharp grappling hooks:
She found gold in Alta. She pitched to Barry Bonds. She rafted the
Susquehanna, half way to China.
What's All This Stuff?
John Calvin Hughes
What do you want from me? / I was sure I locked the door / and now there you are /
back in the closet, behind / the coats, rummaging / in the pockets, worrying /
my new shoes
Fall - Winter 2008
In a Pemex in Hermosillo
Rose Hunter
The stores with the placards and the people / shouting “Mochilas!” /
are packing up as I watch / the road flood into the parking lot /alongside the gas
pumps
Sensazione
Susan M. Williams
Somewhere, a painting looks back at you / with a blank expression. Did you hear that? /
It whispers, peering around the room
Carl Solomon’s Shirt
John Dale Bright
Safe from what!? It’s from Ginsy I should be safe! /
Look, I meet this guy, okay? The nuthouse—we’re both there
On Listening
to Louis Prima and Keely Smith after an
Evening with Michelle
Michael J. Vaughn
The rough
and the
smooth
butterfly on
sandpaper
they razz
each other
the wheedling
piano the ride
cymbal the
black magic
is under
my skin
London by Night
Paul Walker
I'd been off coffee for two years / Then I sank some Turkish in Soho /
It hit me like a depth-charge / I couldn't sit still
Lengua
Elise Levitt
I stop at every centimeter / of your skin /
white as a blizzard / Or a blank space on a page
The Beginning of Worry
Walter James Preston
These days I only think about sleep / the euro, and how low the dollar is /
At present it's impossible / for me to think of things like: "The fabled romance between
the ocean and the breeze"
The Most Romantic City
James Anderson
Minneapolis is the most romantic / city in the world where /
steam rises from gutters and / snow falls in May
Postcard
Transcendental Child
Doug Ramspeck
And because I wanted you to join me /
in the sleeping bag, and because our bodies /
were damp with sweat when we awoke /
in the mornings, we waded naked into the shallows /
and bathed amid the yellow lotus and arrowheads
Summer 2008
Ringo, What Am I Living For?
Mary Ann Mayer
I light up in bars. / Get ideas. / Like Ringo. /
Who knew he’d composed more songs than Lennon-McCartney?
From a Roman Villa
Marciano Malvar Guzman
Turn around / Beneath your window / the things we love / are bursting /
into a world of daylight
Cashmink Smile
Carl Leggo
how would my life be different if / when Jesus said /
Take my yoke upon you / I had heard Take my joke upon you
Van Gogh
Laura Sobbott Ross
Was it the lead paint, / the absinthe, the canvas walls /
he hovelled and howled behind?
The Fish Dream
Yun Wang
A six pound carp leaped into my lap, its round mouth reached for
my breasts. I jumped and saw a black pond in which galaxies swim.
In the Neighborhood of Chocolate
Jeff Dutko
I love its neatly sectioned off rows /
and imagine driving through them / in a tiny confectionary Porsche convertible
Long Division
Patrick Carrington
All the geometry she tried / the bending before Mary / the slanted walks in the rain /
couldn't stop the reversal to what / I told her was not quite true
osprey
devin wayne davis
dawn, come upon the rail / as morning trains / continue to pull in & out
My Mother’s Doves
Julie Eger
Fifteen years later she told me about the doves / how she pictured them every day, pecking away /
the little pieces of cancer and carrying them / to a place where they couldn’t hurt her anymore
Spring 2008
Another Fantasy
Penguin Football
Robert Wynne
Karl Marx would be so disappointed / in what the free market / has done to intimacy. /
I miss you like the future misses the past.
Letter to Trey Anastasio
Rick Marlatt
immaculate color sting tips of ocean / sky blue orange berry pond water teal / green, evergreen with its /
dark hints of wind-crazed memory
Sitting Crowded on a Velvet Cushion
Christopher Thomas
I've heard that Muslim soldiers are taught that if they
die an honorable death they / will be given 72 virgins when they get to heaven /
Let my crowded cushion be my heaven, let all 72 / be thin in the waist,
cute in the face, firm from stem to stern
Homage
James Anderson
no lesbian ever loved women / as I have /
no man ever gazed / into more faces / or floated down Hennepin / Avenue to wait in cafes / as I have waited
Poems
Brent Calderwood
On August 4, 1975, thinking I looked Chinese / you immediately told the attending nurse / "Excuse me,
but this is the wrong baby. Please / take this one back and bring me my son."
Buddha Woman Speaks and Surrenders, Again
Rachel Kellum
We never agree. You say throw the plates! / I say make them gleam / I am tired of our existential arguing /
Of cutting myself in pieces for your uses: Mother, writer, sister, teacher, lover, painter, blue.
Eagle Lake
Ten Things About a Piano
Beth Paulson
In a packed Chevrolet station wagon / we rode there in one day / through Michigan small towns / to
cabins clustered by a lake
Spirit House, 2
Martin Willitts Jr.
This house assembled itself / using wood not native to the land / This house has rooms leading nowhere /
When you get there, you are lost
Man Standing in Louisiana
A Little Background Music
Steve De France
turning the blues
my mind working back through time until / you are an African Runner / standing alone in sun baked Kraal /
& in your eyes the sky reflects / a terrible primal red
bullroarer (choka)
word problems
PJ Nights
mathematics parades the way the world vanishes / after love letters are delivered wet via /
song of salt on rain
Cypress Forest Circling Hornsby Springs
The Trouble With This Poem
Eric Diamond
The cypress knees genuflect upward like a chipmunk choir / chanting the Adoramus Dei
Meagan's Motorcycle
Efficient as a Clipboard
William Doreski
Your T-shirt clings like a debt / and your blue jeans assume a life / of their own. We slog through rubble /
and laugh away the cant and orgies / of lives we shouldn’t have tried to lead
I'm Not a Spiritual Person
John Eivaz
i'm not spiritual, not even myself, this i know / so many whorls of crumbling dust, and i'm my own
Rome
There's an Elephant in the Room
Bob Bradshaw
Nearby the Piazza Venezia / lures Vinny. The Palace, once prime / real estate in 1455, is still / about location, location, location
Chapbook
Melancholy's Architecture
David Chorlton
The trains that are burdened with memories / make up lost time on the run / with the
ease of a dream / repeating itself
Winter 2007-2008
Woman with Parasol - 3 poems on Monet
Martin Willitts Jr.
She holds that parasol as light plays on her face / as I hold the light in my hand like fireflies
Record Store Clerk
Mackey Q. Williams
I was spinning singles for a while / Like a disc jockey before satellites / Donovan, The Miracles, a 12 inch from King Tubby
From a Bangkok Hostel
Brianna Lee
So I cannot understand how this happens/ how we walk out of our homes / how we kiss the walls and run our palms / against smooth doorknobs / desperately making
last minute mental pictures
The Lion Pauses
Jonathan Rutigliano
Visiting New Hampshire / With a good friend; Michael / Between deep inhales / We saw Jesus on a canoe / Fishing Lake Winnipesaukee
Memory
Heather A. McMacken
Apple grabs Eve / She doesn't like skin, though, so / A thin red strip / Drops to the dirt
Dusk
Racing Trains
Carrie Friedman
We stood in the field off / The deserted highway and / You told me / This is Where Murders Happen
At the Old Poets Convention
My Love Affair With Pepper
Bill Roberts
It was close, Edgar Allan Poe / Edging out Allen Ginsberg / Whose rants most of us thought / To be tiresome, predictable
The Middle-Aged Mother Goes Up, Up, Up
In Iambic Pentameter With Champagne After
Mary Harwell Sayler
turning the blues
No doubt, hot air had talked me into this / adventure, first depicted by cold terror / and cold wind, drifting from the Arizona desert
General Meditation Camp, Dagshai
Anne Cammon
In the kitchen the women are singing / as they wash dishes upon the floor / They don't bother /
with the mountains outside the spattered windows
Hope in the Himalayas
Satis Shroff
My Nepal, what has become of you? / Your features have changed with time
Rain on the outside dry skies within
Marc Swan
yes / she wears Spanx to keep the expanding flesh / in the right direction / and there are creases where smooth skin once lived / but her eyes are like quicksilver / high cheeks lively and pink
After buying the first house
Kristin Stoner
taking back roads, (the only way / a farm kid knows how to travel) / 30 miles over the limit to bluegrass /
and the anticipation of a fresh fridge
Corinne runs away with Aaron
Kristine Ong Muslim
If we could only live the secret lives of dolls / All their dresses have not gone dirty yet, not /
yet ruined by refinement and good taste
Fall 2007
See Her Hands How They Plait
Ellen Pober Rittberg
do not give her a life / of vague longings / watching the world /
from room corners / her body, bowed / but let her not run too fast
Paris
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
Bernadette McBride
laying lusty picnics on Montmartre / its soft twilight yielding / shadow enough to stir fervor for a life of art / and quirk
Highway of Diamonds
Robert Warrington
When his head became heavy / he started to walk / down a highway of diamonds / through a country of immigrants /
resentful of immigrants / and saw in each star / a faulty utopia
The Kind of Coversation You Never Had
Babies Should
Jessy Randall
Babies should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Babies should not sell out.
Remember Paris?
James Anderson
They're different now I / except for this table / and Lyndale Avenue and your / hair and the way you smiled /
at me and the way he always calls
The Roses
Linden
Leonore Wilson
they see us in the early morning / devoted to union, as if the rain and / mist of our song could hover /
in mid-air like the eight-string / burgeoning of the thrush’s voice
Robert Johnson’s Cigarette
John Bright
turning the blues
into something else / a pact with the devil / a hell hound on his trail / the lights on a locomotive
1954
Night Moves
Ian C. Smith
The boy rehearses his life / as if he senses the road ahead / conjures a blanket of rain /
to cushion sound / and sweeten the atmosphere / turns another page
Painted Desert
Kimberly D. Robinson
Grains of sand tell a story / multi-colored memories / seraphs busy / making our hourglass
CHAPBOOK
News From the Front
Martin Willitts
George W. Bush love the indelible ink / as he signs death warrants for insurgents /
There is something about the shape / reminds him of a cigar or zeppelin or bullet / it feels like victory
Summer 2007
Riau Archipelago
Thai Roadhouse
Patrick Pfister
Boondock eyes bigger than bulb roots / gaze down jungle jetty / past caged orangutan and jailed peacock /
at longboat ferry Batam-bound.
Cream Puff Woman
Kyle Hemmings
She leads a double life in the city, visiting her gingerbread man / Wearing skirts well above her nicked calves and fat thighs, pale / and
creamy, a promise of peachy smells, tart delights
Lost in Costco
Trembling Aspens
Carl Leggo
lost in the cavernous warehouse without a thread but still no fear / because I can always buy a GPS system and find my way out
Philip Roth Bats Me In:
An Iowa Writers Workshop Memoir
Arthur Plotnik
Keenly I recall the baseball-loving Roth / at bat, his five-o’clock shadow from Friday / dark as Iowa loam, a classic stance, dug in / a scowl for the pitcher
Precipice
Julie Bolt
I remember those first years of making love / in Chicago, Saigon, Santa Fe, Tucson / Los Angeles, and a cliff in Mexico
Metronome
Jennifer VanBuren
The moment your unfinished prescription / fell and scattered across the bathroom tiles / they came to me / "Largo! Adagio! Allegro!"
Raising a Boy
Emmanuel Sigauke
I delivered the lesson / of why let a plate of dead creatures / conquer you when elsewhere (I always mean Zimbabwe) / children sleep
with hunger
The Spirit House
Martin Willitts, Jr.
Lost in a stadium of suits and ties and ol' derby hats / I hear no sounds of
chants or cheers / only Joe's precise, crisp crack of the bat
On the Death of Chef Louise;
Suicided by Culinary Critics.
Alex Galper
between you and me --
who really gives a damn about Chechnya , Iraq or North Korea ? /
we don’t even know where these countries are.
On June 16th thinking of Leopold Bloom
Marc Swan
so maybe it isn’t God you are looking for / after all / after all is said and done / it is about you / standing naked in the sun
Ode to a Sweater
Ruth Latta
The beads around the neckline / in artful pattern / were like the lyrics of "The Snowy Breasted Pearl" / like a child's first teeth / beneath
a pillow of wishes come true / like a little girl's first necklace
Spring 2007
Pluto Becomes an Un-Planet
Nina Bennett
What must it feel like to no longer be a planet / when
all you’ve ever known is the awe / of schoolchildren as they memorize your name
A haiku made from broken glass
No Direction Home
Alex Stolis
She doesn’t know how she got lost, it’s hard to navigate / by the stars in
the rain and she really doesn’t remember / if it was the current that
swept her away or the distraction / of the waves
Language Requirement
Michael Keshigian
In college, he elected jazz as a language, dropped French so he could learn
that chops meant playing the sax like Paul Desmond
Flaunting
Belief
Arun Gaur
Kamlovik, at 72, has made a fine decision— / to have just one white butterfly flower /
pinned at the top
Little House Dogs Prefer
Leslie LaChance
Your terrier does not need your guitars and whistles and maracas / your Tevas
and Doc Martens and two sets of Nikes
Thirty-four Dollars
Rob Plath
Once when I was nine-years old / I found $34 in the street / I ran home and
told my parents / my father's eyes widened
Dear Joe, Love You More Than Ever, Marilyn
Antoinette Rainone
Lost in a stadium of suits and ties and ol' derby hats / I hear no sounds of
chants or cheers / only Joe's precise, crisp crack of the bat
on the mall in the center of town
PJ Nights
I had my train card for the month / I talked to men from Mars in the courtyard
of Au Bon Pain / I slept with a boy who made violins
Breakfast Troubles
Bob Bradshaw
So I try on some new Spirit Names: "He Who Hardly Ever Saw Animals in New York" / "He Who Saw Two Deer, Finally"
Strong and Sudden
Gloria J. Bennett
My host calls to me from the living room to make certain I don’t miss the
running of the bulls
this morning, so I quickly step into my red and black skirt,
the long flowing one that he says makes me look like a
native
remainder of thursday afternoon
John Eivaz
you are sad / sleepy paper / parasols / relevant hair / sad stone / pretty window
Joy of the Blues
Bryan Murphy
that other Americana beyond the dream / bitter with authenticity, on the periphery /
of our consciousness, offering / the human experience in twelve bars
Winter 2006-2007
Electronic Musicians
A Few More Lines for the Moon
Fredrick Zydek
These intonations are born in the same shadows as the little lights that sometimes
become our prayers.
Boplicity
Hank Kalet
Ornette’s dyspeptic chaos / a competing contrary contravention of the / coolest of sounds
On Occasion
Susan M. Williams
I climb the balloon string when no one's looking / crawl inside and float in helium ecstasy
Meek
Emergency Room
Eric Obame
Everything is black / There is nothing / No light / Nothing solid / Just black / I am trapped in a fucking color
Lives of Modern Saints #5
Michael Fontana
Once she's given birth, the moon floats over / her house like a blue ghost and conceals / her red-green hair, sixteen years old
Rainbow Stains
Brooke Strauss
Little girl stayed behind / Sitting and dangling her long legs atop a rainbow
The Logic for Improving a Neighborhood
Patrick Carrington
He has fair reason to seek comfort
face down in geraniums. There’s something sensible in flowers he can’t find at home.
Silver River Trail
Eric Diamond
So I try on some new Spirit Names: "He Who Hardly Ever Saw Animals in New York" / "He Who Saw Two Deer, Finally"
Homespun Melancholy
Indian Couple
Sankar Roy
The world can feel when a house is sad / The mailman delivers less junk mail / kids make less noise / fewer telemarketers call
Hurricane Plan
For Janis
Diane Elayne Dees
To this day, when I hear Bobby McGee / I wish that you were here to comfort me
Waking, Going On
Christopher Woods, with visual art by Jeff Crouch
Morning light stirs, presses in / Leaves some things still snagged in dreams
Fall 2006
Life in an All-Night Diner
Mark Jackley
where they serve amazements / like the stillness / of a leaning rake
Narrow Gauge to Silverton
Patricia Wellingham-Jones
Western false fronts, saloons / easy women long gone / the mountain is scarred / with old gold mines, lost dreams
First time
Greg Frohring
Between the white unturned
sheets slides / startled panting / first-time readers / With inked fingers
brushing lightly
each line and timid / playing eyes following brightly every /
touching tracing
Play Klee
Janice J. Heiss
She's abstract, yet searchable in her precise ambiguities /
Unreal yet sure as pure symbol.
sky fell
in a minor key
Janet Butler
fragments of blues and whites / slip the curve of blinds / and fall / shadows of themselves / on burnished parquet
The Six-Thirty for St Pancras
Jon Stocks
London lays waiting at the end of the line / Seething with metropolitan passion
Mesozoic Menu
Viola Ransel
The electroencephalograph / detects three / distinct patterns of electrical activity -- waking...sleeping...dreaming
Holter Lake, Fishing with My Brother
Brent McCafferty
On the beach, in the dumb night, the soft, almost indelible crackle
of coiling, fish-tongued fire.
Learning to be Drown Proof
Amy Nawrocki
Snatching a breath / filling lungs and veins / with salt and memories / holding it / I submerge the whole of me under
An Entirely Different Universe
J.D. Herniak
Early morning sunshine / On East Colfax / Where I used to walk / In an entirely different universe
Summer 2006
to myself, at 52
John Eivaz
there are times you look in the mirror and, except for the wrinkles
and sag and missing hair, you can still see the guy
ready to rock downtown, surprise a girl, drink all night
Chantey
Experimental Music
Howard Good
I board you, a veritable pirate / leaping into flame-stabbed blackness
If Walt Whitman Was a Woman in the 21st Century
Julie Bolt
Whitman, put down your bugle, blow saxophone jazz / Play a crazy piano! Nurse the sick, nurse the country / Grow a blog of grass, appear on FOX and laugh at them all!
What about the Vultures?
Ryan Scott
Not knowing how, I found myself hanging from the end of the earth. Taking it for a dream, I tried to let go and wait
for the impact to wake me.
Apologia to a Vine
Eric Diamond
Maybe you are wild Islamic vines, ready to sacrifice the tree, and
even yourselves, to reach Allah and
the seventy-two virgins?
photo by Jason Black
What Grey Smells Like
Gabe Long
Inhale. It's in the way raindrops rip canyons / through a windshield / after trickling out of heaven / twenty-six hours straight.
Devilled Crabs
Bill Roberts
These crabs remind me of the Devilled Crab Man / the glistening black man who'd show up / erratically during our summers with a tray /
of still-warm toasted crabs in each massive hand
The Old Cars of Cuba
Margarita Engle
The salvaged cars of Havana / sound like old-fashioned percolators / brewing coffee over rickety gas stoves
you, anchored
PJ Nights
to a river flow, to a sea / where land is put to the warmth / here you will be the petal of a flower first / tiny lily bells
Who Will Save Him
Janet Thorning
I found him huddled in a corner / talking to himself/ something about how the farmer had / neglected to feed his cows and now / they are all dead
No Escape
Bob Bradshaw
He said he wanted to leave his past behind / It was always waiting for him, though / at the next corner, smoking /
a cigarette, blowing smoke rings
Hiking Boots
Pete Lee
Tongues out in begging mode / leashes of laces loosely in mouths
Spring 2006
the blue dress poems
Kristy Bowen
Somewhere a dress slips / from a woman's shoulder / and sets off a war
Mambo Urbano
Phillip Henry Christopher
the ghost of a poet / outside City Lights / a Salvadoran revolucionista / whose song is conviction
Backyard Sinfonietta
Jill L. Ferguson
One Wilson's warbler, the cantor of the group / emits bel canto / to a packed-house audience / that only she can see
Distant Fire
Paul D. McGlynn
On this tranquil Tuesday afternoon / I stare into your seablue eyes / Make plans to enter, stay there, live there
this poem can swim
Richard Lighthouse
pulling thru papered immersion / no more fear / no disbelief / nothing held back / this poem can swim
betwixt and between
James Lineberger
boy does he have a surprise coming / when they up and do away with knees altogether / and push us out in the water /
with tails look like they come off a fifty nine caddy
Fear of Diving
Jean Wiggins
Somewhere there are red roses and perfume / sparkling wine, someone / breathing your breath / living the life / you won't claim
Do Not Expect To Like This Poem
K.L. Monahan
The Cheshire cat -- her front / her back; a mirror / of very unbirthdays
And on Election Night
Rachel Cathleen Stewart
You believe in a better world / That we all have wings / That on occasion we can fly / If the sun is out / If the wind is right
Hiphop
Michael Edward Tolle
I wake up and rinse before / I get in my cage and / I drive to my 6 x 4 cubit second home. On the way / I see Bob, who is better than me
Winter 2005 - 2006
Thief
Harvest Moon
Music Appreciation
Michael Keshigian
Two days ago the sun caught me stealing light / to illuminate a poem / demanded restitution / then reported me to Mother Nature / who posted my likeness about the land
chile-eating days
Bill Mehlman
You used to sing that to me in your sillygirl voice / holding my head against your breasts / as the rain fell outside the hut
Lozenges of Light
Susan Constable
Through panes of coloured glass / sunlight throws soft hues of blue / and yellow on long, dark pews
In the Doorbell Store
Mary Paulson
Tonight I am very large. I grow as though someone is pumping air into me / I am getting bigger every day / I shine like a freshly cleaned window.
Ode to a Banana Slug
Brent McCafferty
I admire the silent bell of your proboscis and the wide openings in your searching antennae, which assert that there's no time to speak and far too much to see.
Feisty Little Red Devils
Philip W. Perna
I came upon a man / On the ledge of a bridge / Looking down at Death / And a steely vessel passing by
Biography of a Library
Jessy Randall
Once you start you'll / never stop. Thank you / mom for putting away / the leftover lasagna...
Insomnia XXI
Brady Rhoades
Say everything you want to say that's sentimental, cruel / Start simply. What happened? Quote Ivan Illych. What if your whole life's been wrong?
The Real Galper
(Russian translation)
Alex Galper
Withdraw your armies from Chechnya, or I will finish this apple strudel / Allow gays to get married, or I am ordering a cappuchino with cream
returning her home disheveled
Patrick Carrington
she will seem fruit again tomorrow / rebloomed ruby, sundress hiding / blue hips. lace laundered / clean of me
For This Life, We'll Be Serving Meat Loaf and Mashed Potatoes
Terry Godbey
Look out the window. It’s the same old scrubbed-skillet sky / raining on lovers and lonely alike
Things My Mother Never Told Me
Fredrick Zydek
That words spoken could be reproduced, put on paper / to be read again and again, didn't seem like / a mystery to me until after I passed fifty years of age
Dream of Extraordinary Ease
Jane Olmsted
Somewhere in the world our grown children are living / On weekends they call / or when they need something / like reassurance or money or our voice
Fall 2005
Dvorak and the Crows
Lee Passarella
As always, he thinks of black bread, ripe soil, deep woods. That will become the jumpy first theme of his Opus 96 Quartet.
Jennifer Paints
Gary Charles Wilkens
She wants a lemon with wings—yellow, amber, gold / flying rounded clouds / of girlish hips and parted lips she loves.
After the War
Howard Good
The dead will chat with me about their wounds / smiling and nodding frequently / and the wounds will grow / into tulips, necklaces, Burger Kings
alice's wonderland
Mary Bast
if i could eat this sound / i would be drugged / into the fancyland / of new tunes
Map Lover
Paul Perry
you will gaze at a map on a wall / a map of intersecting streets / to a city you have or have not / before visited that may or may not
exist
Cross-Word Puzzle
Does Wayne Gretzky Deliver Pizza?
Carl Leggo
I’m writing this poem / because I hope he’ll read it / (do hockey players read poetry?) / and sue me for slander
The Bohemian in Winter
Christopher Barnes
So this life is never-ending / he squanders only Art / makes secret studies of survival / flings abracadabras up to evening stars
blues
the rain writes black
P.J. Nights
the blues in our lives are both the deepest and most transparent / I once got an F in art for trying to watercolor the three-dimensional blue of twilight
Unclaimed Epiphany
A. Michael McRandall
It’s not the heat or even the lack of prayer from the congregation—you wouldn’t expect salvation to follow you anyway
Summertime
Mark Gaudet
my first summer with a girlfriend / I quit my job / she never went to college orientation
The Murder of a Beautiful Theory by a Gang of Brutal Facts
Jack Conway
It is all there before us like any number of pins dancing on the head of an angel. And yes, wasn't it you, Mr. Boo Boo Plinker, who bought a Braille copy of Lolita and spent hours alone licking the dirty parts? How on earth can you say we were cut out for this life?
Selfless
Jim Ellis
You let yourself entertain the thought: wouldn't it be nice this opening day / if the macho neighbor who pumps out his sump pump / into your yard, not his / was mistaken for a turkey
Arteries The Hard Way
Greg Braquet
I could tell you about my family...I could, just not today / Déjà Vu is everywhere / As I unlearn my way to puzzles
Zubeida
Amitabh Mitra
days and nights in old delhi / have always been streets that have weathered misfortunes
In Love, Wearing Heavy Coats
Bob Bradshaw
Sometimes we linger in front of a restaurant / looking through the glass as if staring into an exotic aquarium / What must it be like to eat whenever you want?
Washington Post March: Twenty-First Century Edition
Michael Ceraolo
The statues know when it's time to haul ass out of town / Such knowledge has always escaped me / The statues will meet at the White House / Rumor has it they'll be picketing
Summer 2005
Reaching 80 Together
Tim Bellows
no holding back—this day’s become a universe, clear-sky, some
glassy mineral crystallized. in this we’re agile as piano masters,
playing the impromptus. the music breathing in pauses and
leaping-out miracles.
Love as a Spatial Presumption
S.E. Rindell
Wrapped in the dim dust
of faraway stars we take
our flesh for intangible;
we are absent in the manner
of a black hole
Joe
Home
Vanessa Kittle
I saw your little footprints in the snow -- size five -- / laid down on your way to work that morning / I walked over them, tracing their path backwards / with my big ugly feet, so I wouldn't get my socks wet
Marching With Saints
Patrick Carrington
Like my brothers, I take a jar of both of your sauces for the road. And when
I find that special whore who makes me hungry, high-stepping in parade
with feathers redder than your best Jerseys...
Back
Kelley White
The sun laughs with a baby’s face / and breathes back the fire from Nagasaki / look, so fast, the buildings restore
Hibiscus
Amber Clark
Love, you left a tidal ache / In this still-young body / a spate of sorrow fisting / my solitary heart, in a paradise / meant for two
To K.R.
Lisabet Sarai
radio jazz / through summer windows / and faraway laughter / through plywood partitions
the lone prairie countdown
John Eivaz
i'm asleep when awake and awake when / her skirt rides up sober when drunk / or the likelihood of straight on two
Inside the Mushroom
Jonathan Hayes
Either the sounds of angels / or the echoes of my own insanity
Spring 2005
I Paint My House
Erin Noteboom
I paint my house Iowa: black floor, green corn. I paint it America, fireworks and smog, I paint it
industry. I paint it Whitman, paint it slavery. I paint it blood.
Wetlands. Melody and Meditation.
Tim Bellows
Our high notes in rapid sputters exhort the land / to bring on the orchestral reveries of spring and the universe
Dear God
Michael Estabrook
If I could choose my last moment / it would be dusk / on the screened-in porch / of the old house
Woman (translation)
Phoebe Kitanidis
Painted to be bathed in the red lantern’s glow / bursting seaweed and roses, amphibious fate
Heart and Soul, Mind and Body:
Attempts at the Language of Love
Andrea L. Boyd
You are a perfect port / strong bread, salt-buttered and honeyed / dancing roughly in my mouth / imploring another taste
driving in a blizzard, listening to npr
P.J. Nights
the road ahead looks narrow / looks small, looks as if Paul Bunyon / has taken up soap carving / and is piling his leavings on I-95
Cadaques, Spain, photo by Jason Black
Ambivalence
Peter Montfort
Mother before she was Mother could / drink the Berkeley boys under the table or / slam that tennis ball to the forehead / bull's-eye and later primly take her seat / in the cello section
Hardbed Blues
Kelley White
I’m trying to learn to sleep by myself / I’ve been trying to learn this for years / I work hard all day then I turn out the light / but the nights in the city fall hard, so hard
Gray Dog
Rebecca Kiernan
The razor gray Thursday we got the news / Of your deployment / The verdict came out of a hat / Just like the movies / they pick the pilot / About to retire and cartoonishly in love
There's Music
John Eivaz
i'm a sack of water you're a waterfall / Arlo's sweet, a nip on a hot lobe nape nuzzle
Desperate, I'm Learning To Skate
Bob Bradshaw
It's as if gravity keeps throwing / chairs in front of me / Down I go, skidding / like a nickel across a frozen lake
Tai Chi Master
Papa Osmubal
A while back he was a rainbow / Then a current of a river: he knows the language of water.
Ken Harrelson's Nehru Jacket
Steve Brightman
A faux pas larger than fashion --
larger than the game --
almost slid by unnoticed,
save the laughter of
a few Kansas City beat reporters.
Chapbook
Roomful of Navels
Craig R. Kirchner
A contemplation of mondo Zen, irresistible women, and that whimsical fellow Work Ethic,
in a pink haze of holiness, surrounded by hundreds of drawings of navels, no two quite alike.
Winter 2004-2005
Interrogation and Other Acts of Love and Patriotism
Christine Allen-Yazzie
Torture, that language of love, sends fine rivulets / of blood-sweat to steal through night and heat from dog bite / to concrete floor
Amtrak
eight cups a day
Craig Kirchner
Work Ethic and I are at a crowded Penn Station / standing in front of the Big Board / waiting for our track to flash
Sea Lesson
Carmen Lupton
I've been sucking / sea waste from the floor / like a catfish on her rounds / I've been chewing / on scraps of dialogue
Thank-You Note to the Supposed Lesbian
Who Stole My Boyfriend
Jessy Randall
You and your over-and-over broken heart, knowledge of diners and flea markets,
vegetarian recipes
Time To Go
Susan Snowden
One day the scale tilts / at a stop light. The pervert pulls up beside you / hangs out his window clutching two dolls / It's Barbie and Ken, naked.
Flowers on Clarendon Street
Alan Jude Moore
Falling through headlamps / horns howl from the corner / to the bridge where love has jumped.
train roll
Chris Kornacki
i love the flowing steel rivers
of
trains; i love to move & be pulled slowly or quickly into my humanity;
i
love everything that takes me away & drives me deeper into the
Heart-Heart-Heart
The Suicide Social Club
Jack Conway
This infectious experiment will ultimately be cured / so let the night place one of her celestial fingers to her lips / as we join the joiners trying to pick the lock at death's door
Flying Bamboo
Uma Asopa
It grew beyond the house in leaps and bounds / feeding on my mother’s singing every morning -- catching up with sounds / and the poignant words
Striptease
Matthew Gleckman
The birch tree is the boldest, sliding / off her white elbow-length gloves / and shaking another yellow / tassel into the crowd
Fall 2004
On Watching The
Bachelor
Cathleen Daly
Sha la la! A room full of glittering ladies / Ominous odds stacking the decks / Decks stacked, Chests stacked /
Sardines packed in please love me mister
The Bodies We Press Tightly
Christopher Cokinos
This is holy / how strangers everyday are everywhere / gone to the air, the air / the bodies we press tightly, unafraid.
Available Light
Advice for Little Girls
Amanda Auchter
Show me a door slammed & I will walk the edges / sink into a thin black line, tunnel out beyond its cracks /
track down your footsteps, wear the night on my back.
The Morning Sun Streams Into the Understory
Harold Janzen
you cross my shadow and the moment burns a verb / speechlessly my eyes become heard
Blankets of Snow on a Plate of Beef Wellington
Michael Internicola
it's enough to make the three used rubbers on the floor have feelings / enough to make those twenty butts in the ashtray get up and dance
landfills & musical interludes
spring's more than butterflies
P.J. Nights
moss beds, our beds / quail eggs for breakfast, acorn pancakes / I’m a child of the woods
It was on a Tuesday
Chris Spradley
Since then I have smiled and laughed / Some have not
train
embrace the forest
John Eivaz
what to do with the maple tree in the yard: attach clotheslines from kitchen windows / carefully carve out some bark give the tree an ass
Misdirection
L.E. Fitzpatrick
She waits for her Cary Grant / to return from the dining car / faintly redolent of an after-dinner brandy and a fine cigar
Pygmalion Deconstructing
Broccoli, Alzheimer's
Taylor Graham
She never got into philosophy, but only government pamphlets / illustrating the basic food groups / the pyramid guide to daily choices / under which she buried Hershey’s kisses
The Importance of Ties
How Mr. Smith Spent Autumn
Lori Williams
It was quite outdated as far as width / like my hips since I turned forty. Too wide / but not laughable, would not turn a head. Living
hips, alive tie.
Fog
Bob Bradshaw
When exhausted and ready to believe / all is as common and as predictable as summer heat in the Delta / there is fog
Summer 2004
The Talking Heads and Sylvia Plath
Jessy Randall
Both just groan out whatever it is. Just what if the baby is born with a huge body and skinny arms and legs and head?
Fanlights
Itinerary
Rebellion
Margarita Engle
Maybe it's time to start re-designing that saddle for dolphins, the one I rode a few years ago, when so many of my travel dreams required an uncanny ability to breathe underwater.
55 Ginsberg
They are the Eggmen, I am the Buddha
John Eivaz
i share with the nothing world / rocking me in the nothing cradle / lowered to the nothing grave / the nothing prayers i was taught / left to echo nowhere
Twenty Minutes
Dun Aengus
Liam Day
I feel I owe her, at the very least, a poem, a really good poem, one that connects her life to the space program, and even to the ancient Celts, who got this whole train of thought moving, after all
Curt Flood
impenetrable godwit bloodbath
Tony Gruenewald
What could this be, sent by
the mythical LaDonna Ott,
obviously an alias for a
counter terrorism super agent?
Leaving Indiana
Absence
Rescuing a Memory
Jason Fraley
Since you refuse my hand, I will keep these stones in my mouth, watch quietly from the bank as you swim. If I went into the water for you, I would drown.
An Arsenal for All Ages
Richard Fein
Two weeks later, my wild arena of small boy fantasies / was shaped into to a perfect diamond design / The departing workmen said I was old enough / and rightly should be the first to join
Go
Martin Burke
A three-part contemplation on the beauty found
in the cities of the heart, Go travels through Venice and Greece,
always starting out for the islands, looking for the boatman, questioning the burdens and blessings
in the turbulence and calm of the world.
Spring 2004
Landscaping a Year in Paradise
Michael Zbigley
Yesterday the weeds went to seed / and when I pulled them they burrowed small tears / into my palms. God waits as water / sheathed in the fingers of succulents. / Music quivers as sun.
In the World of Hip Hop and Rap
Obedience School Drop Out
Susan M. Williams
If I close my eyes while the dog / licks melted chocolate chips from / between my fingers, it feels like / water, pushing my hand back and / forth while it laps
tom waits
she seemed unpredictable in the impossible traffic
Harold Janzen
blazing down a snow hill in a green skinned / wooden ribbed canoe / tom barrelhousing the blues /
and gabriel steering a line thru the white mecca powder / >with a paddle for a spoon
Letter-Writing Tips for When You're Sailing
Off the End of the Earth
DeAnne Lyn Smith
Anchor the essentials first:/ date, time, approximate location / Use ink / Say it's genuine octopus / especially if it's not
When Good Things Happen
to Patient People
Jamie Moyer Has Perfect Pitch
Dennis Mahagin
Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker shrieking endearments? / Handcuffs and suspended chords! / The cacophony! I'm thinkin'... / A-sharp minor?
Blur
Trio
John Eivaz
But I love to touch: / your shoulder, a poem / saunter in strong / disappear shaking
10 word for red
collating notes on index cards
P.J. Nights
your bougainvillea kisses / can stay there in the crook / of my arm all night / like a mahogany branch / tapping my windowpane / ‘til i throw the sash wide
Sunday Morning at the Outdoor Market
Rae Weaver
her hand over ecru lacings of cantaloupe / over the cool curve of honeydew / hovers
Tree/Arbol
With Time
Christy Wegener
I am scraping moments out of this city / sending them to you / screaming color
Frog Watching
Window Walker
Joel Young
Frogs sit on their pads / rib each other about their warts / sing poetically to their darlins / like philosophers in a coffeehouse
San Francisco
Bob Bradshaw
Maybe it was the adrenalin of flag waving / But when he walked into that room / the dance floor as crowded as martinis / on a tray / I saw him
Cadiz
Jack Kerouac's House
Kelle Groom
First night in town, a seaport in southwest Spain / the chaplain's daughter said / if they find hash on you, no matter who your father is / they throw you in jail / where Americans have accidents / especially on stairs
Throwing It Back
Backing Up Adventure
Taylor Graham
I wish life were like that / I’d click [LOAD SAVED GAME] / and you’d walk in the door / just like you did yesterday
4-6-3 Poetry
Michael Schein
the kiss of the ball / in the outstretched mitt / as the runner’s arched foot / slaps first
slicing the moment / like shaved ice / alternate universes / branching before the eyes of thousands
Ticket to Desire
Ed Markowski
back then, ours / was a league / where a short foul ball / bought you a one way ticket / to desire
Winter 2003-2004
Postcard to Samantha
Italian Trains
Gitanes
Maurice Oliver
In a northern sky of late winter / between sunset and night with snow / like tea dust falling a train / pretends to be a single lamp riding / the lip of a river that streams / like oil pressed from warm olives
Spitting Quasars
George Sparling
The man's dark
energy made cosmic because of his openhearted, though passive intimacies shared with
me in hypothetical dreamtime after I’ve pulled out all his pockets’ paraphernalia onto the
inevitable concrete surrounding him like 200,000,000,000 stars.
Ramla
Family Album
Ashok Gupta
Tan plays a game with a tank / a step to the left a skip to the right / till it is a game no more / Tiananmen Square
Eraser
The Cold Sleep
Rebecca Lu Kiernan
Your raspberry pharaoh hound / Licks the chessboard kitchen floor / Tasting the difference between / Hunter green and sea foam.
A Small Red Star for Me and My Father
Tom Sheehan
This appointment came when light tired, this arrangement, this syzygy / of him and me and the still threat of a small red star standing / some time away at my back, deeper than a grain of memory.
sea of tranquility
P.J. Nights
pristine and clean / a gold coin face in relief / or a balloon filled / with ee cummings' pretty people / flying from a city Oz-like and green
My Sister's Bones
Eve in Homer, Alaska
Cinthia Ritchie
You be Eve, / he said, handing me / a peach because they were on sale /
at the Safeway, and he was / a man of thrift and common sense / with a pension plan and health /
insurance and nylon socks rolled / color to color in his third drawer
Mykonos 1940
Stella Apostolidis
Groups of landmasses not big enough / For a civilization / But sweet enough for dreams / And lazy afternoons / With a frappe in one hand / And a French cigarette in the other
BloodWork
Ann Regentin
You have done the things I wanted most with all my heart to do / and when you come to me, I live it out / My wasted voice, my crippled body brought to life again
Three Theses
Josh Hanson
toward language / what language but this: / the words speak only / of the music they speak / or else silence / or failing that, too / poetry.
On Buying our Daughter a Camera
August 6, 1945
Jalina Mhyana
There’s a grave for my mother at Hiroshima / where you can still see victims’ shadows printed on the ground where they burned / human-shaped photograms blackening the sidewalks that would have caught their falls
About Destruction
Kristy Bowen
In this, you tell me I am like / my mother, the sad oval / of her face, disappointment / lingering at the corners / of her mouth, anger in her bones / And I remember how I must / kill her again and again /
to love you.
section 408 tiger stadium
Ed Markowski
the sudden movement / of ten thousand necks turning / at once to watch a small / white ball kiss a distant / autumn cloud
Dirt Therapy
Arlene Ang
Sparkling to the last drop, the poems in Dirt Therapy travel through the chameleon-like moments of our ordinary days, shifting with the currents of love and loss, digging through the debris left by iced lies and revelations from lonely-heart lost socks. But somewhere between the hot peppers and the laundry, not far from the bickering tomatoes and menage-a-trois cheeses, the true colors of nature begin to shine through...
Fall 2003
New Jersey's Poet Problem
Tony Gruenewald
What to do about those / faulty footed free-versers / and rough rhyming rappers / waxing universal /overrunning our neatly / enjambed, self-referential / stanzas?
Prose Poems from The Blind City
Charles Lowe
We would go to the fancy restaurants with the fish tanks jumbled in the front window. I would browse each lit box until I found my favorites: the fresh bluefish from the Hai River, their lips pressing the glass, the lobsters clustering together in the brine, their claws snapping at my fingers, the waiter dipping a net into the fresh water and with prongs, grabbing at the claws.
Don't Make Mistakes
Ashok Gupta
When you alight from the train / look for Ramdhun, the rickshaw-wala / Tell him you want to go to chowk and / pay him two rupees no more
Afterglow
Rebecca Lu Kiernan
Your solitary skill / Is catching shards of glass / In sparse beach grass
Wonderland
Harold Janzen
this time i'm playing the guitar / and it's not that i'm famous / but that she's watching me / for the first time
hardback awakening
Mustansir Dalvi
The air is thick, and has revived / my books, anticipating the first spell / of Bombay monsoon
smoking bravado, burning opposition
P.J. Nights
She gathers stories from flowers / nodding in riotous crowds / learns the cartography of bees
Break
Robert Pesich and Michael J. Vaughn
In a game of blind draw, everyone has a number / stripe or solid, win or lose / the crack of a kiss echoing in the heart’s pocket
Summer 2003
Crazy-Ass Grackles
Dennis Mahagin
It swaggers around the pine cone trunk of a big palm -- super model stalking /a hall of mirrors, little onyx head nodding to a headphone / backbeat and bassline bubbling up / from the irrigated root system / just for her
You Talk to Me About Italy
Kristy Bowen
You speak to me low and fondly / like a cat from the Coliseum / that followed you back / to your hotel in the rain
The Salvador Dali Blues
William Sovern
Picasso sat in the crimson lipped back seat /with a nude and a musician playing / Dylan on a mandolin
ideas are things
some of us like water sports
J.B. Mulligan
Everything touches: one skin binding / the tiger lilies’ orange flame / behind the roadside bush / the red car disappearing over tracks
Northern Night
And a thousand questions
Bill Trudo
This is a fucked-up town the New York band / sneers on every stage, meaning every town / even here -- a single drop trails down the windshields
I Wonder, When I am Dead
K.R. Copeland
Will he ultimately dig me up, dust me off / and dance about with my cadaver / underneath an understanding moon?
The Outskirts of New Haven
Robert Gibbons
But Mao’s original idea of switching peasants / from the fields & factories / into classrooms, sending / students out for real experience just might work here / sold as revisionist history
In Defense of Chaos Theory
When Woolworth's Sold Lives
Theresa Boyar
Colorado, 1965. An ant dies on a sidewalk / causing a pregnant woman to skid on his thorax / and go into early labor
My Picnic with Lolita
The Curator
Jack Conway
She tells me her parents died / at a picnic, just like this / Lightning, she says, and I think / Billy Collins beat me to it already
in the wee hours
the mock turtle’s tears for lobster quadrilles
P.J. Nights
you blow jive lingo, rattle paper shades / between us ‘til they snap! let in the light / and curtains shimmy lace in a Lindy hop
What You Want
Rebecca Cook
Let's pretend I'm a virgin / and you're the world’s greatest lover and / you reach into me with your elegant / spoon and scoop out pearl after pearl / perfect against your teeth
Gilroy for Garlic
John Eivaz
soaked sand and / mirthful noodles / here's a plate / dig in
another roadside attraction
Stephen Roxborough
wandering aimlessly in the desert...forty days and four thousand nevada nights of roadrunners and bathing suit sunners and dust devils & wide blue skies and power ties and car exhaust and caesar's tossed and neon neverending and petroglyphs and throw-away gifts and miles and miles and miles of aisles of slots promising the ultimate jackpot for the illusion of delusion
Spring 2003
It Snows a Bit Differently in New York City
Robert Gibbons
It snows a bit differently in New York City / a kind of reluctance, a little lost /
not knowing where it’ll end up
Ritalin
Hitting on Buddha
Melanie Burke Zetzer
You are a ship / trapped in a medicine bottle / Your sails will never catch the wind under glass
Hiding From Salesmen
Scott Poole
The way the woman on the phone slowly says Multiple Sclerosis Society with a gorgeous southern whiskey drawl of long porches drenched in bougainvillea and lemonade slow blues and torpid birds
lazy in long notes, I feel I must have
some sort of sclerosis myself.
Life as a Raindrop
Memory of Love Making
Matthew Gleckman
At last they came to the old man’s / final wish of ashes scattered over a local pond
Of Cuckolds and Crucifixions
Pump Your Own Gas
Laura McCullough
Cirque Du Soleil can’t conceive of something as everlasting / as a virgin who got laid / but didn’t get any of the fun / setting up 2000 years / of female sexual guilt
Everything Blue
Tracy C. Alston
Like one goes down to the River Nile / To rest and feast awhile / Like when you dance and go down / All the way down 'til you touch the ground
Mimics in the Mist
Richard Denner
Mimics brush by / in white face and tattered tux / I turn, they turn, my turn, their turn / doubles hide in every word
Ice Princess
Joanne Detore-Nakamura
From Third Ave to Palmer Street / It's a blur, a montage of Risky Business meets Blue Lagoon / a fade-out into a tropical island
Snow White and the Seventh Dwarf
se solamente ti ripenso
Arlene Ang
you scrounged dead mines / taking dirt for diamonds / until you wised up / turned Huntsman / decided to set me free
Aubade
In Memoriam
Dorothy Bates
I wake to the sound / of rain / doing a Fred Astaire / on the roof
Slumming
Songs of the City
P.J. Nights
But it’s his voice, that smooth chocolate slide / of trombone asking, do you have the time?
waiting for the change
Window Disturbances
jj goss
I see your breath / like smoke I’m smoldering / in the ashtray lingering / between your fingers / hidden underneath your / ordinary thoughts
Tail Lights
Big Sky
Stacie Barry
There were nights / beneath the moon / when the darkness / lifted her skirt / and danced around the fire
Winter 2002-2003
Born This Way
Emanuel Xavier
I want to swim through Madonna's hair / come out changed and reinvented
Talkin' Freewrite Flammable Blues
Diane E. Dees
Woke up this morning in a Restoril fog / With a synapse lapse in cerebral smog
Elizabeth Was a Bonfire of a Cat Person
Harold Janzen
elizabeth understood cats / their neat paws padding thru the feline underworld
Another Kind Light
Robert Gibbons
The naked light you carry around the house, the cleanliness you cause like rose petals on linen cloth.
Morning After
Arlene Ang
Spread the butter lightly / Take your time -- we couldn't crumble the bread too soon / Have to admit, my fingers are clammy from too much handling of burnt toast
train of lover's thought
Stephen Roxborough
take me right there again, take me right there / where the warning whistle sings a sad siren song / a deep mournful tone of a wistful wanting horn / connecting the past to a future reborn
Escape Artist
Rebecca Lu Kiernan
My kitchen is Gucci Butter Rum Tart / I was fractured that day / And money didn't get in the way
A Glass Poem That Avoids Sentimentality While Teaching You Many Facts
Alfred Bruey
glass is to be thought of as a supercooled liquid rather than as a true solid / although this definition might make you smile if your head has ever gone through a windshield or picture window / but Alice was able to go through a looking glass...
Recipe for Success
Tiffany Lee Brown
red stiletto heels / dahlias falling up from their shadows / on the well-worn coffee table
Poem Ascending
Matthew Gleckman
This poem rides in / elevators to the 37th floor / This poem climbs mountains / with pitons and ropes
Playin' Them Penn Station Rush Hour Musical Chairs Blues
Tony Gruenewald
as if the ensuing announcement / was for videos of J-Lo's sex life /Giuliani bobbleheads / or some other bauble / of
a fallen humanity
May Touch Redeem Us
Bill Noble
A wide-ranging collection of erotic poems, some playful, some profound. Many are meant to be read aloud; some are meant to be whispered. We hope you'll share them with someone you love.
Fall 2002
Crispin and Cricket
Funambulist Seduction
Fourth of July Farewell
by Joseph Carcel
Crispin is bugged, has a cricket living in his ear. It is like any other cricket except its shape
is like a miniature woman.
Godhara
Tempest of Passion
by Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal
O Bosnian Serbs! do not cleanse the Muslim populace / Rather, come to this territory of my heart / And indulge in the act of purgation
Gold December Horizons
Dual Gifts of Strength & Patience
by Robert Gibbons
Gold December horizons giving in / to tungsten stars piercing blackness / or tonight, the gentle, reflective, maternal glow of the moon / hinting at renewal.
Another Boring Academic Poem
by Michael A. Hoerman
I prefer cruder poems / such as this one, recalling the musky smell of her loins and taste / of her kiss
Level 4 West
Time
by Candy Gourlay
Squashed like an insect / beneath the boots of life / before youth had half a chance / to sprout shoots from the dirt and party / at the club down the street / where these legs once danced in hipsters
Pop Poetry 101
by William Sovern
on the other hand, I got to read poetry in New York three times / the last dancing with the Nuyoricans / hip hop slammers / three days before / 911
When does it happen?
Songs to an unseen film
by Daniel Sumrall
Passion. It can't exist as a singularity. It must be from and to another at once. There must always be another.
lamborghini smiles
infinite sadness walking
by Merlin Greaves
disheveled as though i had fallen off a table somewhere / i struggled to attach onto some kind of expression / one that said no / one that said not this time / one that said i'm not ready / all i got was why
I Gave You My Watch
by Ward Kelley
For me, I asked for your clothes, since it was your / nakedness I desired. Is nakedness better than time?
Discombobulating
Before I Stopped Clubbing
Modern
by J. Marcus Weekley
I fell for a man with holes in his hands and an / all-day-foot-washing-service / and the rest of eternity to serve me unleavened hotcakes
Calcutta Poems
by Prasenjit Maiti
You and me in Paradise while my salad days fornicate in Calcutta, my days and ways being served as funky platters of crab casserole, ecstatic white steam sizzling and blue skies burning in agony.
you read about these things
trinity poem
by john sweet
january in the /
room of empty chairs /
and the poem is written slowly /
on a light blue wall
Street of Flags
by Janet Buck
I don't recall another 4th where seas of U.S. flags / bedecked a solid mile of road. The avenue is lined in cloth,
a carpet to the wasted graves of those we dug and dug to find.
all their characters reflected in my face
by P.J. Nights
ploùra, ploùra, ploùra from the tree frogs / it will rain, it will rain, it will rain / and it does -- cats and dogs and frogs -- over an opaque sugar-cube sky
Still Life With Bullets
Scratching the Surface of the Sun
by Alex Stolis
Davis tells the blonde at the bar how he met Frank Sinatra in Philadelphia / doesn't notice how she turns, winks to the bartender
helpless before her
by John Eivaz
reading the newspaper aloud
we board the rabbit, thousands
of us draped with obituaries, sexy
death notices, but it is a grand hare,
air-conditioned.
Summer 2002
Ode to New York City
by Robert Gibbons
Oh, the pitch still reverberating through the universe such measure of the magnitude of our mourning.
The Invisible Hand
by Michael J. Compton
God’s black billboard asks / "Have you read my best-seller?" / Like a thought balloon / Above the old Bob’s Big Boy
The Very Stuff
by Stephen Beal
Okay, all right, I confess: I would dress as a woman to wear this red. I would put it all on, wig and makeup and padding,
lingerie and nylons and three-inch heels, just to enter a room in this red. And knock them dead.
Jumping Bean
Champagne for One
by James R. Whitley
As I’m heading home one evening / I see a group of children kneeling / on their dirty knobby knees, circling around / playing with a jumping bean
So Much in Five Worlds
and Five Suns
by P.J. Nights
She pounded out piano recitals for one / rants in E minor denying her wish / for prom dresses in iridescent feathers / for birthday gifts of turquoise and gold
Providence, July, 1974
by Lisabet Sarai
some of the streets / will only come out / after supper / in summer / only untwine / as I ride them
In Love With a Married Man
Wedding Cake
by Teresa White
We walk off the top of our wedding cake / into the cool green garden of the world / We are tall in our black and white clothes /
You lick frosting off my fingers until they are new
Turncoat Appliances
The Bike Ride
by c nolan deweese
You have to be careful when talking of three / (controls the world with pyramid schemes) / Third day is always where change comes in fairy tales
All Things Considered
by J.D. Heskin
My life is not perfect / For instance, the chair I am sitting on leans to the left / and the burger I just ate was too spicy.
Remembering
The End
by Darlene Zagata
The sun was shining / a large topaz draped in denim / Then thunder cracked, a horrible sound / like the stars being flogged into submission.
Main Squeeze Blues
by Jennie Orvino
I had a fling with the chief of police / cruising black and white, clinching to the crime radio / But he never stayed 'til morning, left me dialing 911
Spring 2002
triptych, right panel: scenes from the book of wasted days
by john sweet
and christ didn't die for my sins / and i wouldn't do it for his / and neither of us will save any /
starving children in the / third world
For Alcaeus
by Scott Poole
I can't even imagine / trying to swim in a toga / My God / It must have been like / making love to curtains / without the rod.
Streets for Two Dancers
by Robert Gibbons
“It’s obvious,” he complained, “that you are protected by women & books.”
Chaos Theory
by Karen Mandell
"Or," you say, reaching for the butter, your arm from
elbow to fingertip longer than your entire body at birth,
"consider Chaos Theory. Everything has an effect, even that drink,
but it'd take eons to measure."
CitizenX
by Brian Turner
when she slides the clothes from her body like this / clouds unveil the milkwhite skin of the moon, yes, / every neon sign in the world hums into crackling vibrance
to hell in a handbag
by P.J. Nights
for the price of one glass of wine at the bistro / and my new look / i get the rest of my alcoholic haze for free
Grandfather's Chair
by Janet I. Buck
She must have been poised on your lap / Forgotten her work, made you her yarn / skipped a stitch, gone for touch
What They Can and Cannot Fake
by Bruce Taylor
Not luck or the Blues, a fugue, cold sweat / Foul fate, true tragedy or real regret
Soup Sonnets
by John Eivaz & P.J. Nights
Soup Sonnets is the way a gasp of excitement sounds, when you take it
easy. Like a good movie, it has merging molecules. These 28 sonnets cover all the
angles: love, action, comedy, and drama, with flashbacks sometimes only
one word long.
Winter 2001 - 2002
Hangover Sestina
by P.J. Nights
If the stars of Gemini hadn’t been invaded by Jupiter / perhaps that malarkey with the crocodiles / wouldn’t have left me here at the North Pole / crying into my over-the-top tequila shot.
A Kiss in Dreams
by Rebecca Lu Kiernan
I watch you sleep for the last time.You were to be my / stepdaughter, laughing angel, fragile pixie. I have been / planning my getaway for months, feeding and dressing / You, trying to detach myself.
Satori in the Fifth
by Michael K. Gause
The second drink / finds my tears diluted / with whiskey, the glass on the
table
Falling Back
by Lytton Bell
The dark man's bed is already on fire / by the time she runs to it / it has, by all accounts, spontaneously combusted
Selected Poems
by John Eivaz
Jackson Pollock's Lucifer / hung in a girl's bedroom / until she left for college / and then was placed / in a common area of the house
The Best Two Things about Verlaine
by Robert Gibbons
Angels have begun to inhabit the larger bells / which seemed to have been abandoned, / & with that, a chorus of song rang out / orchestrating a regular Christmas / Babes in Toyland atmosphere / or wonderfully cacophonous Bruegel.
Long Distance Love
by Lawrence Schimel
As far as the poem is concerned / this is our sole sustenance / and if we remember brunching / it was only for the pleasure /
of feeding one another
rossellini shooting while the seamstress ceases copying life
by PJ Nights and John Eivaz
the director / speeds through crafty reality and ansia dell'esistenza / in an Alfa Romeo, each change of terminus / requires a change in muse
Who's the Ju-Ju Man?
by Pasquale Capocasa
Two drinks into the new bottle / I glanced up and into the bar / mirror to see a man standing / behind me, leaning heavily / on a slender, wooden pole. / Odd, I thought.
Girls Named After Flowers
by Itir Toksoz
You boys / sleeping next to girls / named after flowers! Wake up!
Unintentional Provinces
by Kathryn Rantala
We are hurtling / pressed and folded in two suitcases / We are hurrying / paying the intercity charge and buying wine
Route 1 Free Association
by Tony Gruenewald
You'd think you were Neal Cassady / if you only knew who he was / but you don't / so you also don't know / you're just settling /
for fancying yourself a / James Dean, who unlike Cassady / couldn't handle the speed.
Those Old Suntanners
by Tom Sheehan
You know, the old summer Class A's they saved from their promised long weekend leaves, those killers, those formidable young warriors,
those hot Omaha Beach swimmers with salt in their noses and in gun barrels and curing half the ills and evils they had ever known...
September 11, 2001
A continuing archive of voices
from around the world
on September 11
Fall 2001
Art, Hope
by Richard Evans
Blue Highways
by William Sovern
someone once said the test of true friendship is a 200 mile trip with the radio off
Prose Poems
by Robert Gibbons
Her lack of modesty, the exact opposite of the Indian girl in the crowded Oaxacan market, almost invisible under the awning just down from one of the chocolate stalls, who turned my head so quickly Manuel Avila Camacho whispered, "Virgin!" which warned, "Do not touch, even with your eyes!"
Selected Poems
by Jessy Randall
The ruby slippers of the Amtrak ticket click and click together in my purse. Wishing is useless.
You have to be left alone
to get home.
Internet Heaven
by Robert R. Cobb
Dear Lord of All above / beyond infernal, etheral space / through Your eternal love /
please prepare me a place / where I may receive and send / e-mails as I rest in peace
Free Books
by Lawrence Schimel
I began to know / the frustration Hercules felt each time he chopped off / one of the Hydra's heads, and two more grew / to take its place.
exile of the sun
by Derek Kittle
i fear i shall never regain my place on the sun / the climb is much too high / and where could i ever find the ladder
How I Became a Single Woman
by Magdalena Alagna
I became single by stomping on / Myself with the unerring grace of / A flamenco dancer
Grapevine Dream Supply
by Harold Janzen
the next night / we made wine in my sleep / i recognized you by / your bare feet / and you by my expertise /
coffee and cream / i told you the dream
Poverty, My Friend
by Jon Blackstock
when we sat in the cafes / with our French-fry meat and our ketchup vegetable --
our existential smugness and Marxist excuses
Summer 2001
The Cover Cascades
and is Purple
by John Eivaz
yeah right / i know jazz i know coltrane / sheets of sound and all that
Selected Poems
by Scott Poole
One night I crept into the house / while it was sleeping /
But it woke up. It walked down the street / and tossed me / onto a neighbor's lawn.
Nature or Civilization
by Robert Gibbons
I'm going to force this poem to start with the image of all colors gathering / in the sky erecting the arc of a black rainbow.
Selected Poems
by Janet I. Buck
We're trading tears for Chardonnay / that could be crystal waterfalls
The Clown Trilogy
by Pasquale Capocasa
She took the jar of mustard / from the table, my neighbor did, / and with a strong fluid motion threw it at the clown in the cook's hat
The Lawn Poems
by Gerald Forshey
Struggles with my father / were measured / in the shape of a lawn
Selected Poems
by Christopher Locke
Spain for a month, and our days became / complicated as pushing the balcony doors open, the white houses packed in like immaculate skulls.
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