 
### Sixfold Poetry Winter 2019

by Sixfold

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2019 Sixfold and The Authors

www.sixfold.org

Sixfold is a completely writer-voted journal. The writers who upload their manuscripts vote to select the prize-winning manuscripts and the short stories and poetry published in each issue. All participating writers' equally weighted votes act as the editor, instead of the usual editorial decision-making organization of one or a few judges, editors, or select editorial board.

Each issue is free to read online and downloadable as PDF and e-book. Paperback book available at production cost including shipping.

Cover Art: Florian Klauer

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License Notes

Copyright 2019 Sixfold and The Authors. This issue may be reproduced, copied, and distributed for noncommercial purposes, provided both Sixfold and the Author of any excerpt of this issue are acknowledged. Thank you for your support.

Sixfold

sixfold@sixfold.org

www.sixfold.org

### Sixfold Poetry Winter 2019

Meli Broderick Eaton | Three Mississippi & other poems

Andrea Reisenauer | What quiet ache do you wear? & other poems

Alex Wasalinko | Two Dreams of Vegas & other poems

AJ Powell | The Grammar Between Us & other poems

Emma Flattery | Our Shared Jungle, Mr. Conrad & other poems

Nathaniel Cairney | The Desert Cometh & other poems

Sarah W. Bartlett | Unexpected & other poems

Abigail F. Taylor | Jaybird by the Fence & other poems

Brandon Hansen | Bradley & other poems

Andy Kerstetter | The Inferno Lessons & other poems

Michael Fleming | Space Walk & other poems

Richard Cole | Perfect Corporations & other poems

Susan Bouchard | Circus Performers & other poems

Edward Garvey | Nine Songs of Love & other poems

Mehrnaz Sokhansanj | Sea of Detachment & other poems

Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius | Aftershock & other poems

Claudia Skutar | Homage II & other poems

Donna French McArdle | Knitting Sample & other poems

Megan Skelly | Puzzle Box Ghazal & other poems

Tess Cooper | Charged & other poems

Greg Tuleja | Auschwitz & other poems

Catherine R. Cryan | Raven & other poems

Contributor Notes

Meli Broderick Eaton

### Two Miracles

the first, when you arrive

fallen from stars

into the bare mountains

of your story untold.

wet and slow to awaken,

your wings unfold in deep

and wanderous valleys as you learn

to pick up your shadow, carry it

in the shifting shape of yourself

and roll dust from between your toes

after everlong days of walking,

trailing the sun across the sky

falling and rising, falling and rising

gathering seeds in your skin

and bees in your hair as you speed

flower to limb to peak and finally, there

you pause

long enough to quiet the bees, to feel

the earth's iron pull against your bones,

hear the wind calling your name

in a language you have forgotten.

when you step down from the top

into the known unknown afternoon

amber glow of failing day etches

a view more precious in descent

as footprint following footprint you diminish,

teaspoon by teaspoon digging your grave.

in mudding light, the sun lands one last time

and you follow lightning bug lanterns

into the darkness, to the other miracle

when you lay yourself down

next to your shadow untethered.

free of your rusted frame you answer

the wind in its language remembered

fly back to your constellation,

to your waiting cocoon in the stars.

### Shatter

Proof

because love always ends

that's just the way it works

I was already broken before

my hand ran down her side

pressing river water from her fur

when the cradle between my thumb

and index finger stopped

against a fleshy mass hidden

under the soft double coat of her hip.

smaller than a golf ball, maybe

like one of those little limes at the store,

at first, I thought it was her bone

popped out of place from jumping

after a rabbit on yesterday's walk

but I knew it wasn't so simple.

the fracture that wasn't captured

when I stood back up last time

sent tendrils skating through my chest

pausing my heart

pulling apart what was left

of my smooth surfaces.

I remember my father's doctor, his metallic words

each falling like an anvil through my gut

tunneling through the DNA that bound us

terminal

as if he were a bus

aggressive

as though he were a dog

lung

which isn't where it started

as if it could be trained, would stay in place

once identified.

then the vet, holding my gaze like a warm hand

this isn't the kind we do anything about

so we waited, not really waiting

but what do you call it

when you see the end that hasn't happened yet

she will eventually encounter pain

which she didn't, or

it will outgrow her body's ability to accommodate

which it did, so

we traced the intricate vascular system

it created for itself through paper skin

we watched as it grew and we knew

she would soon chase the same shadow

that swallowed my father

the soft bodies of my grandmothers

and cat after cat after cat

that thought it was faster than cars

### Old Crow

oldcrow settles wingfold glossed

brushdeath suddensit by my side

bitrust voice airscratches harsh

unsettles my quietmind to answer

the don'tdare question

I don't dare ask

but oldcrow knows

old soulfetch knows mytime and folkworry

not yet, you, muddletalk crowspeaks

steadies my flutterheart clutchbeats

but who, then whotime now

thoughtscatter I carefulwatch

the regal shinebeak slowturn

greenglint black feathershimmer

peering eyespy one side

to the other, patientknowing,

patientknowing he waits

beadblack buttoneye lands

where swiftbrown birdswoop

neatly quickends spidercrawl

ohsoclose my startlefeet

crowtoes bent watches brownbird fly

legsprawled spider to waitbabies nested

their needcries treed nearby

beakspread he laughcaws

see? evermore you live until you don't

unfurls paperdash wings and jumplifts

airstroke into the evelight

see you soonlong

he whisperscrapes

soonlong

into the nextwind of thisnight

### Three Mississippi

One Mississippi

when I first became lightning

I was driving to pick up my son

the world went impossibly bright

no time to count the seconds

to wonder who would bring my child home

before the heavens came crashing

in that nanosecond of life inside light

deafened and blinded, when I guessed

I was dead, a thousand thoughts crowded

of all the things left undone—

the syrup bottle on the counter

the dog waiting next to his leash

all the words not laid inside

the soft shells of my children's ears

for hours, the smell and taste of ozone

my trembling hands

reminded me that I had been placed

back into myself by powers far beyond

my own and I was grateful

to put away the syrup

to clip leash to collar

to whisper over the sleeping cocoons of my boys

Two Mississippi

the second time I became lightning

my dog led me beyond the trees

the clouds had grown necrotic and eerie

dropping low as they spiraled upward

I called to Atlas and we hurried

down from the balded ridge

away from what brewed

we hadn't yet reached the low ground

when everything popped into light

its intensity too much to comprehend

there still wasn't time to count

before the heavens cracked open

sending Atlas crying to my feet

but this time, in front of x-rayed tree trunks

I saw a miracle

an orb where lightning stabbed

down from the sky and snaked

up from the earth, meeting mid-air

as though summoned by the branches

conjured by the wizarding elements

the electric scent of ozone made me think

the idea of dying this way

not by storm but in a magical flash

a sudden bolt that outruns pain

and outlasts time in its fractional existence

might be the best way to leave

the waning cavern of my body

Three Mississippi

the last time I become lightning

I want it to be like this:

when my sons are strong and weathered

like the stones that form the ridge

when maybe most of all those undone things

have been crossed off and Atlas and all the dogs

that will come after him have gone

to hold up the heavens as they wait

for us to return to them, then

in a brilliant burst, my soul takes flight

out of time, I am released

into a billion particles of light

Andrea Reisenauer

### The bridge

"I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality." —Max Beckmann

Look for me in the ripples, the dripping eaves, the leaves

and honey-foaming butter. Rummage through the split-

pea soup, feverfew, the sink, the flutter of dew-soaked

youth. Check the streetlamp shadow, the puddle

that hovers between light and dark

because I am the bridge

over the invisible. Search the charcoal sparks, the flames

in the cave, the untamable page with its palpitating space.

Seek me in the fog that tip-toes across the sea, the moss

on the trees, feet. Forage through the wrinkled maps, ashes,

grass. Enter the trance of the milkweed breeze,

that pause in-between

but please

find me.

### What quiet ache do you wear?

Do you place it on your dresser

or under the bathroom sink?

Do you spray it behind your ears,

rub it on your wrists,

or wait until late at night

to graffiti-streak it along sleeping streets?

Does it softly sink into your skin,

or is it a distant memory ready

for whoever can tug away

your cotton-edged layers

and brush it with their lips?

What soft scent of sorrow lingers

when you walk past;

what lemon melancholy

hovers in your wake?

### Komorebi

There's a heaviness

that smells like the inside

of a breathalyzer

but I haven't had a drop to drink.

It tugs at my tourmaline

bones and sinks me

into the sleeping peat

where the earth percolates

in leaden surrender

and my womb of roots

begins to reach upwards

like nesting birds.

Let me lay here as I wait

for whatever gentle shape

I'm becoming

and watch the light

filter past the branches

like a promise.

### In that brief passing with a stranger

I don't know you.

I don't know where you bought your jeans

or the color of your toothbrush.

I don't know the number of mornings

you've woken up in this world,

what makes you sigh,

or how many times you've cried.

I don't know where the skin creases

on your forehead when you think,

how fast you can run,

how old you were

when you first made love.

But for that fleeting pause,

that split in time when our eyes meet,

we love.

Alex Wasalinko

### To the Past

I.

The snow aged the town, each flurry adding ten years.

As we drove down roads muffled with white,

your tires spun out: stuck in the past.

I watched from the passenger window as the quiet grew deeper.

Snowdrifts captured the street's ghosts running between houses;

they howled and smashed their fists against my door.

II.

I outline your memory in neon lights,

turn the contours of your face into the Vegas strip—

dreams of warmer days with your skin glowing red in the sun.

I cradle your face in my hands, pull you closer,

heatwaves radiate off your body.

Ultraviolet filling the space between us.

III.

We relearned to walk along the empty streets,

deep slush and ice filling the space between cobblestone,

cold permeated the soles and canvas panels of our trainers.

You shared stories of your childhood in the mountains,

the mornings when you stepped outside to be enveloped by fog:

a world of mystery occupied by abstract shapes.

IV.

Outside of our halogen haze, my face feels older.

I pluck a silver hair from its root, hear your voice

tell me I am a queen with precious metals growing from her scalp.

I leave it on the shower wall, nearly invisible,

its curves catch the light. A forgotten language,

a sign with faded letters.

V.

Knuckles and hands brushed together before you reached out:

_It's too cold._ White with blue veins laced into faint pink.

On my palm, your thumb traced lines of poetry

I never read until we met. You recited them,

words formed in nebulae of warm air—

each exhale enclosing our path in its cloud.

### Re-Routing. Navigating.

It tapped both of us on the shoulder

but told him first.

He did not tell me—

I had to wait for it to make an appointment,

leave a message,

pencil me in for a talk.

The kind that happens behind closed doors.

The kind that is prefaced with

_you should probably sit down for this_.

I didn't tell him I knew. Not for a few days.

But it was there. Watching me from the doorway.

Raising its eyebrows every moment he turned his back.

_Well, what are either of you waiting for_.

Each moment's silence plunging its blade into my lungs.

You will leave me for it,

It will hold your hand, help you with your bags when you finally walk out the door.

The flashbulb scenes from our life before are stained with its presence

haphazardly obscured—

A blurred profile

The edge of a shirtsleeve

One smirk, knowing I will later see it seeing me, seeing you, seeing us.

I am the first to smash through the silence,

Throw the photographic evidence at your

feet in a fit of fury

I see it laughing—

it wants you for itself and this is how it will

keep you

trap you

overtake you

replace me

### In the morning

I uncover the spare key, unlock the backdoor

stop and watch him cut into a mango at our counter.

He cradles the half in his palm,

scores the exposed flesh vertically—

I want to tell him it's risky,

ask him if he's afraid the blade will break

through the fruit's skin and puncture his own.

His eyes stay on the new perpendicular lines he carves.

My eyes go to the counter, my mug full and waiting.

We sit in silence broken apart by the

muffled squish of his thumb gouging cubes of yellow.

To the mango he mumbles

I'm glad you're back.

I take honey from the cabinet and stir it into my tea,

summon an amber whirlpool.

To its darkness I nod,

the past singing behind my clenched teeth.

There's nothing new I can say.

Nothing sacred in the mundane

pulling of meat from cheeks

sticky with juice.

### Homonym

Morning.

1. ( _noun_ )

the light that breaks through the spaces where curtains do not close

stretching hands that find his, a sleepy high-five

gentle pushing out of the bed into the day

2. ( _adverb,_ informal)

mostly we sleep in, shielded by the softest dark fleece

he sometimes pulls over both of our heads, our glowing cave

close my eyes and pretend I am falling backwards into his promise of forever

3. ( _exclamation_ , informal)

_Goodnight_ , I yawn into his ear

_Good morning,_ he yawns from miles away

I count the minutes of remaining rituals

Mourning.

1. ( _noun_ )

if I stretch my fingers wide, place my palm on the globe

I imagine I can build a bridge, patch up the space

loose grip to close the wound, seal the cracks

2. ( _noun_ )

we have not opened the curtains in weeks

my eyes mirror his while we try to preserve our cave drawings

let little light and oxygen in

3. ( _verb_ )

glass shattered in the next room over

shards glittering across the hardwood, capturing the few beams of light

projecting a broken constellation across his face

### Two Dreams from Vegas

How foolish to fall in love with the idea of forever;

but as I watched the roulette wheel spin into infinity,

numbers and colors blurring together into nothingness,

I considered the warmth of maybe

of possibility

of her hand in mine. To have and to hold tight

'til we part.

Outside he says to me

Let's run through the fountain

but I can barely hear him over the rush of

bodies and conversations, layers of music

that surround us.

His imperative sings through cacophony,

I harmonize with my laughter.

The street turns our faces

technicolored and bejeweled.

Her laughter bounces off the lights over our heads,

rains down, the only melody I hear.

I ask her again,

take her hand

before we could change our minds.

Water hits his face first

and I am slipping, tumbling forward.

My hands find his and tug him with me:

we go down together

fast and slow, all at once

our clumsy grace

caught by marble, slick and cool.

AJ Powell

### Fall

Autumn is a guillotine this year.

Friends drove down from the mountains:

aspen leaves were gold for a day, they said,

then dropped, fell like the dead,

blanketing the ground before

the snow comes to bury them.

Temperatures dropped like a lopped head,

had no legs to get up again.

Geese fled, cutting the air with chevron swords.

Tomorrow, a blizzard may threaten,

erasing landscape under a white shroud,

or we may live with skeleton trees for months.

Autumn is a guillotine this year,

when we need her to slow her blade.

### Seven Times

I fall in love seven times a day.

I see You pay for your street parking then glance

at the meter in the spot next to yours,

and it's clear you are spying for a chance

for random kindness in the world,

to good-samaritan the extra change in your pocket,

if the meter is begging for a ticket without your intervention.

I notice another You in the coffee shop window

sitting down with a book instead of rushing

through the line and out the door,

because you're friends with early mornings and don't mind,

in fact really enjoy, seeing the sunrise with a book in hand.

An actual paperback book, bent along the binding to the page

you're reading, pressed upon the wooden table top,

so I can't see the title or the author but I imagine

it's a good book and you're smart and pensive,

a kindred soul looking for humanity

everywhere like me.

There's a You I work with but don't really know

who always says hello to the security guy in the lobby,

greets him by name and asks after his kids—

which makes all the strangers, the hundreds and

thousands without names passing on the street,

less anonymous, because you cared enough to learn

that guy's name and chat with him every day,

and I bet you give him a Christmas card with a twenty in it

so I love you.

I see another You jogging during your lunch hour

without music playing in your ears,

because you like to see new parts of the city and

listen to each block's self-made music,

and I would jog with you to the city zoo and laugh

at the monkeys who are so much like us when

we were young and still monkey-bar climbers,

and why not just go climb a tree together in City Park

because we are in love and kept young by it.

When You—another you—cuts me off on the drive home,

speeding and in a hurry only to be stuck

at the same red light as me one block up,

I forgive you willingly,

because maybe you got swept away by

the song on the radio rocking a mean guitar riff, or

your boss just yelled at you for a mistake he made, or

your mother is sick in the hospital and visiting hours

are running short for the day, or

you really are kind of an asshole but

you weren't always and won't be forever,

but today you're twenty-nine and self-important

and aren't we all?

So when You roll into bed next to me

after dinner's dishes and kids' bedtimes

have been wrapped up for the night

and you've finished that last email you had to send today,

even though we're tired and barely found

a few sentences to spare for each other

in the midst of the busy and distracting all,

my heart is practiced in opening.

I roll my head on the pillow toward you,

say, "Good night," and rest my hand on your immobile chest.

### Spinning

Hope is the thing with

is the thing

is

tattered and torn and battered and

born upon winds and bad weather

feathered into cloud shapes

cirrus and cumulus and cumulating

like a stockpile of

dynamite or despair—black hole opening

in a heart or is it a blossom

opening like

hope like

a flower in a garden gone to seed

growing on its own in a place

given to weeds and reckonings.

"I feel more like"

you were saying when I interrupted

"more and more like

I'm spinning"

Me too! my damned interjection

"spinning out of"

aren't we all spiraling,

centrifugal force throwing off

everything

"control."

You finish and I fail to ask:

why? Or are you

okay? Or

take your hand just

take it in mine just

take a chance

to be kinder, quieter,

falter in silence

knowing silence has

its own horizons,

but time is too short

and I'm assuming I must be

unassuming, must not assume to

be helpful be good be welcome be

glory be;

now all we have are

bygones—

unmoored moments,

the detritus of memory.

### The Grammar Between Us

I can't parse you,

fail every time to translate

the tenses of your gestures:

past continuous,

present perfect,

future conditional.

I try to diagram

the sentences of our symbiosis

stretched over years.

Could I compose,

would you mind,

a poem to articulate us?

Forgive me; I am not fluent.

I falter with pauses,

find impossible any clauses

to capture

the grammar

between us.

If I draft a new language,

will you edit it to shreds,

these threads stitching me together?

Might we author together

a better sentence,

punctuated with possibility?

Or: a different effort.

Let me parse you without words,

conjugate your body,

press your spine

down in the dark

into past and instinct.

May my hands meander,

write forgiveness on your skin,

compose a moment with you—

intention and touch, shiver and bind—

find velvet heat,

and find it again?

Reach beyond words;

replace resignation

with sighs.

### Lesson of the Old Rock

The cracks are passages:

is the lesson of the Old Rock.

She is veined and pocketed by quartz and mica,

divided by ages into two halves of a whole.

Moss and lichen lace her underbelly and shadowed sides

like green garlands of time dressing her for dinner.

She split eons ago, by the slow encroachment

of water, ice, and earth-shifts.

Now I can pass through her heart

and come out the other side.

Her fissure delivers me each time, again, into the world,

making every day I visit her a birth day.

Traveling through granite chasm, I am made new;

she strips from me the old clothes of my sins,

like confession. Or like the atonement of Jonah,

complicated and born of storms and necessity,

leading to small shade in a desert, worm-consumed—

and I am sun-burnt prophet-skin, thin and peeling and peeled,

tender with bared nerve-endings,

while my heart remains storm-tossed and fish-nibbled.

Breaking and broken, my heart is slashed-at and cracked—

for disappointments run deep as earth's core;

the deepest is me, knowing too well

what ruminations and regrets I've mined.

But this is where the passages open and

the path is laid, step by slow step,

solitary stones of heart-crumble marking the way.

Tread deftly and lift your gaze to see wonders

on struggle's road—enchantment deeper than dim magic—

which is to say, love.

In time, my heart will echo the silhouette of that

breach-boulder, sublime earthen mother;

I will be divided—a chasm will rend deep through my heart's core

until you and everyone can pass between.

I will pull _myself_ through the path, walk a passage

that kills me dead, paves the way for resurrection.

O fool short life and troubled living! You

will slip like water through fingers, like air through

split rock, and my calamitous heart

will beat on although in two, its pieces

calling out to one another a contrapuntal chorus,

a freedom song.

Emma Flattery

### To Return

In the South,

no, I mean the _deep_ South,

where the air is so thick with sugar water

you can taste it on your skin.

Where all the women comment

on how the humid kiss of spring frizzes up their hair

but secretly love the soft freedom

of wild tresses under backyard skies and palm leaves.

Yes, in the deepest South,

I used to live for the ribbons of ruddy clay

which caked the sidewalks after early morning showers' mist

and the sunbaked cracks that crisscrossed and stitched through barefoot cement.

The scream of cicadas and

the scream of little voices

when the glisten-eyed beetles splayed their shiny wings

and alighted on shoulders unawares.

Yes, in palm trees and hot grass still green,

where the water godlike is

infinite and basking gold, hinting silver, breathing blue

under the glory of sky's halo.

No surf, just smooth swell after swell after swell,

like an outstretched hand

that warmly whispers, "Come and see."

I have waited so long to return

to sweat-slick foreheads,

lounging with something to fan with in one hand,

sleepy, half-lidded eyes in the other,

toes buried in cooling layers of powdered sand,

quick-legged sandpipers darting their way through banks of foam,

and the sun dousing its last fire in the curve of the horizon.

Like this, I am suspended:

my conscience beaded with sugar water

drops leave candied trails across my mind,

my skin all mossed-over with green fur in patches,

the prickles of velveteen fly tongues softly sipping in my nectar.

The water glows with inner flame

as I float over leagues and leagues of that Deep and Southern.

So long I have been away from you,

no more.

### Our Shared Jungle, Mr. Conrad

Mr. Conrad

your words have long since

been beaten drums to coax

the palm fronds, vine furls, dark and green

from the murky jungle of my mind.

Believe me when I say

your Horrors whisper wonder

from your pages thick entwined

with roots in soils dark as skin,

these roots embed in me;

but you stand in separation, sir,

in costume suits as white

as all the devils that herein

dance your beat semantic.

Drumming, as you are,

on the door of time gone by

with that lovely mistress, Fiction,

who is kind to lay her lips,

and in this moment, you are righteous,

and on this woman, at your side

you imagine naked breasts;

feathers flayed and splayed

with a heart as wild as your sea,

but Mr. Conrad,

you are a head floating above white lapels

steam-pressed pants, a belt of leather,

and shoes of cannibal skin.

The natives said it better

to your disciple Marlow,

but now it begs repeating:

No borders, leaves, or darkness

breed the savage side of man,

Mr. Conrad,

the jungle lies within.

### The Witness

This ratchety ceiling fan,

when on, is jerking in its motion

as once-sleek blades now with corners rusted

spin in dulled-silver's blurred whirl winds.

A tarnished ball chain with dangled tassel

sharply tugged, now careening to this and that

like tethered hound in open field.

And though its screws threaten

to loose their load on wary passers-by,

it churns the air with the full passion

of its year of manufacture.

Long ago, it was clutched to the plaster

above a well-used motel bed.

Under its feverous flurry happened many an affair

between humans bare and humans dressed

who all slithered sleepy 'neath the sheets

for some odd business immaterial.

Then some many years thereafter,

a diner held its rattling screws

over patrons hungering to be cooled,

to rest-up easy and to quench

their avid itches for fryer fat

and milkshakes labeled "chocolate."

Then in midst of summer

its clanking rhythm doused the embers

of some back-end alley pawn shop

with barred windows and blue-crossed flags

and guns and powder and from far-off sirens

came broken glass and a long night flashing red to blue.

Now somewhere, the sharply tugged ball chain

swings in new surroundings,

wings of roughened rust and scrap-metal

fly above well-smoothed concrete,

and what display of appetite

will this humble witness

have the privilege

of providing its services to

next?

### The Valley

The sun was determined to make this summer afternoon

Sweat

like a glass of iced tea

Droop

like a runny ice cream cone

Just sweet enough to savor

Just cold enough to relish

But the sun was no threat to Ms. Washington

No siree

No ma'am

The sun was no match for Ms. Washington and her hand fan

With one stroke of that fan

Lord

She could freeze the humidity right out of the air and make it snow in Alabama

With one sway of her porch rocking chair

Lord

She could spin the Earth and make Sunday come early

She had done powerful things in her time

Yes siree

Yes ma'am

Why, she had won Best Pecan Pie in Macon County at only fifteen

Not only that

She had handcrafted and given life

to the three most well-behaved boys in Macon County too

She had worked a job in Montgomery

a nickel to his dime

and provided what she could

She never missed a shift

Bought her boys one of them spiffy polaroids

Not only that

She sat at the front of the bus

Went through the front door

Watched movies in the front row

She didn't have a car

Or any good walking shoes

So she walked from Selma to Montgomery

Three times in the only shoes she had

Her Sunday shoes

And on March seventh, nineteen-sixty-five

She stood her ground in Sunday shoes

Cried hard for forgotten lives in Sunday shoes

But still those shoes

Were all shine and polish

No siree

No ma'am

The determined sun did not put a damper on Ms. Washington's summer afternoon

But he did

He sat beside her

All squared angles and sharp features

He was the shadow in her summer valley

She could not

With all her power

Think him away

He sat at the back of the bus

Slithered through the back door

Watched her from the back row

He walked with her from Selma to Montgomery three times

Hidden behind clasped hands

She could not shake him

He pierced her with every downturned glance

Bled from every pair of smiling lips

Watched her little boys

Grasped at her hands with his bony fingers

Laughed at her undone hair

He had blue eyes like two suns

Sweltering

But he was here now

Beside her

Close

He asked her,

"Are you ready?"

She stopped her waving

Let the hand fan sit like an old cat on her lap

She swayed in that porch rocking chair

Swayed back and forth squinting up at that determined sun

Hanging low

"Always."

Nathaniel Cairney

### Flight Ghosts

They emerged as I knelt

to weed the driveway's edge,

wounded

from a decade-ago war,

waiting to be flown across an ocean

to a myth called home,

clean-shaven,

unblinking

as if they were in a lobby

instead of the belly of a metal war beast.

All were broken

and some burned,

like three boys who swallowed bomb fire,

pink skinless faces,

backs on tables,

motionless,

masks over eyes,

tubes in throats,

oxygen bleeding into them,

chests lifting, then falling,

then lifting again.

Others huddled in shadows,

could-have-been college sophomores

in leg casts,

arm slings,

white gauze eye patches,

carrying crutches,

which could be forgotten,

and other things

which could not.

### Confession, Aisle 37

Forgive me for failing

to realize how much safer it is

to be a barely grown boy

in khakis and a white shirt,

your bandages hidden,

just one more second-class passenger.

Forgive me for forgetting

you are a mother's son

who was ordered

to hunt other mothers' sons

in a Fallujah foyer

when a boy in pajamas,

about ten years old—

an age you remember well—

sprang from shadow,

carving knife in his small fist,

and plunged pain into you,

a man with a rifle.

Forgive me for being nowhere

near qualified to console

as you whisper confession,

your deep voice razored

by a broken heart's edge,

your reality

shattered

by the cold uncertainty

of which blame

is yours to bear

and which blame

is mine.

### The Desert Cometh

His desert

had more mountains

than mine

but the day's

last light

was the same—

wavering orange

and bleeding red,

as if the sky knew

who was dying

and what to do

with the dead.

### Outside the Parliament Building

Red spires spike a white sky.

Flecks of gray swirl between them,

a thousand birds.

Ten thousand more hunch

near the river's edge.

The building takes your breath away,

magnificence conjured

to contain hollow spaces

like ornate halls and rib cages

where hearts beat

inside angry men who play at mirrors—

reflecting, so they say,

the people's wish

for protection

from shattered countryless women

and men who look nothing like them.

So far, they have drawn lines with words.

It is important to appear civilized.

But exclusion and fear

are volatile ingredients.

There has never not been a time

when that particular mixture

hasn't exploded.

This time, everyone tells themselves,

it will be different.

Sarah W. Bartlett

### Last Rhumba

On the day he stopped eating, she

arrived. To say goodbye, yes. But also

to share a song she would have liked

them to dance to at her wedding—with

no date, place or partner in mind—but the wish

to have had that final rite of passage

with her dad. He crawled from his bed

grabbing hold of the moment, her hand.

Her song was one he and I had danced to

under star-studded Westport nights on the deck,

recalling ballroom floors from VT to PR, a dusty

college stage for _rueda salsa_ , local studios

sliding with Argentine tango. Weddings,

bar mitzvahs, reunions—even hotel lobbies—

where Latin beat or swing drew out our dancing feet,

our swaying bodies always drawing looks, asides

_those two are so in love,_ year after year after year.

Barefoot, in high heels, whatever I wore, he

chose his soft black leather Italian shoes.

As now. He rummaged in the closet to pull them out,

dust them off, and slip them slowly onto his waiting feet

his final steps shuffled across the carpet as he leaned

into the strong arms of our youngest. Cheek

to cheek they lurched side to side, the steps slowly

returning to his memory, leading hers to reflect

as she held tight to her father, her dream

made manifest.

### Remember These Words

he mouthed, barely

audible through lips

that hardly moved

yet the intensity

of his intent

was clear, hand

clutching mine, eyes

pleading against time

running out. Calm

but insistent, he

wanted to help

everyone he met

even now, late

as it was.

His final words

of advice, promise

and gentle urging

hung in silence

while I strained

to grasp them.

Although I don't

really know what

he said, I'll

remember those words

meant for me

at the end.

### Alight

he walks toward darkness

as surrounding sky deepens

into night, his path unclear without

the familiar to guide him; yet within

his spirit blazes alight with trust

in what lies ahead.

### Shrinking World

The day came when he said, _my world has become very small_ —

_my bedroom, bathroom, the toilet._ But that was spacious

compared with the day, not so long after that

he struggled for the last time onto the bed.

This is where I'm going to spend

the rest of my life, isn't it?

Less question than fact.

And it was. The rest

of his life lasting

but three

days.

### Unexpected

Cooler than expected, the air

gives in to the sun. Distant

traffic muffles in breeze rising

above the silence of dogs.

A lone seagull pierces inland twitter.

A neighbor speaks, red car passes by.

Ordinary moments of a weekend

in a quiet city enclave.

But I feel what is missing, the lurch

of your uneven gait beside me.

Smile instead at you striding up Sunset Ridge

as I scramble to catch up, perch side by side

to share water, gorp, laughter as the dog

drink-swims the icy stream . . .

Looking around, I see your absence

and my not-yet-coming-to-terms

that our plans are no longer; yet

I go on. I return from my walk

deadhead the _Nova Zemla_ by the door,

snip a newly-bloomed peony for the house,

enter the silence I have just left to find it

alive with sun, comfort of the familiar

and your gentle presence still

warm in my heart.

Abigail F. Taylor

### Seagulls

They come from sound and flotsam

forgotten the way a first kiss is forgot

and found again in a sudden flash of delight,

bright against a breastbone that has been wrought

into a hard, old thing.

They come down from storm clouds,

bow into the wind, magnificent and pale

like women who wait along the shore

for men to return, dragging fin whale

behind them.

They come in twos and fours of pointed wing,

sing to these lonesome ocean wives,

and soar past the salt drenched wharf.

They go beyond the sickle moon to live the lives

of sailors who died too soon.

### She Was Lilac

and bold barefooted by the muddy bank

of thin ice, came to drink in that splendid

isolation. Her bone-pale youth transcended,

so he came, cloven hoof & quivering flank.

The cud of his mouth burned as it sank

to her honeysuckle skin, scented

heavy as the altar candles gifted

by her mother. But she left him manque

as she darted like gossamer through the glen.

Oh the game! The game! That uncertain squeeze

in his lungs by the quake and disease

of loneliness. She waited, as golden Helen,

calling for him from the blooms. And again.

Calling, as naked as the stretch towards heaven.

### South of the Reservation

This house.

This house of mud daubers

and fried bread. Chicory burning

on the stove. Cigarettes blooming

out of a flat tray, like stakes

in the Llano Estacado,

where you were from.

This mean old dog tied to the yard

a yard covered in burs, yellow weeds,

and the gently swaying laundry.

He doesn't wish to be touched

unless there is caution

unless you know of his bite.

Then maybe.

Maybe you can touch him

a little.

The rain came in bursts of heat.

Then the sky opened and breathed.

And it burned these shoulders

of ours, as we sucked sugar water

from cheep plastic tubes,

fluttered in the yard like hummingbirds

grass clinging to our bare ankles.

### Slugs

They appeared that morning fat, gray,

and so blissfully unaware

they were unwanted and, elsewhere,

in the garden, strawberries swelled

with open wounds and there

were silver trails that dwelled

among leaves, like railways.

You appeared and expelled

the slugs with violent salt. The stray

one she tried to save hissed a prayer

from its long body and she stared

at you, quiet, but her eyes yelled:

They appeared that morning fat, gray,

and so blissfully unaware!

### Jaybird by the Fence

She had seen it through the dawn mist

folded in adolescent wing

next to the begonias. Flies swarmed.

A sorry little thing, too beautiful

to be wrapped in a plastic sack

but it moved its head.

She could not touch it while

it lived.

By noon, it shuffled into the twist

of shade. Ants slipped like a shoestring

around it. It bobbed its head in the warm

swell of air fixed inside the unusable

body. What could she do but go back

to the house, pretend there was nothing dead

in the garden? Eventually, the heat took it. Mild wind

kept the stink away.

She hadn't meant for it to suffer.

She wished she had a brother,

someone who knew the language of rocks.

Brandon Hansen

### A Bolt in Friday

When I palmed the spider on your mirror

we looked at the crossed legs and single tear

of all its fluids dripping

down the track of the biggest

line in my palm, and you said,

Jesus, use a paper towel next time.

But that was years ago. On Friday

we took turns dangling a dead mouse,

squeezed from its airlocked bag

and thawed in a bowl of warm water,

in front of your ex-girlfriend's pet snake,

Waffle, who struck twice before plucking

its little body from the tweezers,

and hugging it tight.

On Friday I learned my old friend

Bradley killed himself—Bradley,

with whom I drew stick figure

death scenes in sixth grade study hall

every day, with whom I had not talked

since he moved away

when we were sophomores, maybe juniors.

You drove us to Echo Lake to wash

the dust of lonesome away—the whole bumpy ride,

I saw in my mind's eye the fates

of stick figures arrowed through, napalmed,

thrown from mountains, eaten by snakes. But

I could hardly see Bradley. I could hardly see

Bradley even when I closed my eyes

as we dove into the lake,

I could hardly see Bradley even

as we smacked the drunk mosquitoes

from our dewy skin, even when, near dusk,

we watched a largemouth bass like a football inhale a bluegill

no bigger than our palms—which, in that moment,

I almost asked if you'd want to clasp together,

like we had once, years ago, before our life un-happened,

and we were so quiet to each other. I wanted

to clasp our palms, red with stolen blood,

so as not to lose you.

### Tandem

When you sleep just feet from the river,

the sound, like a rambling confession,

is all you hear. And tonight,

all you see is weak moonlight, triple-filtered

through the clouds, the moth-littered window,

and the curtain of hair she lets down before bed.

Stargazers all your lives, this camper,

built by her grandfather, is a canopy you're

unused to. You often joke

about getting a hotel room at the Hampton

down the street just to see what it'd be like,

but, pragmatists all your lives, you never do it.

And—something seems especially real about sleeping

in the same bed—even a big one. When you two rode tandem

on a bike she found, leaning against a stop sign somewhere,

with the necklace of a note reading "Free if you fix me!"

draped from its frame, you peddled like a mouse and watched

the muscles of her upper-back work the whole way

as she steered you. You hardly noticed an entire, winking lake unfurl to your left.

When you sat, hips tandem, jammed into each other

on a wooden swing at some trendy bar that your mutual friend's friends,

who you love, but do not understand at all,

wanted to go to, you said strange things for hours

like—Oh, I heard we were supposed to be able to see

Mercury tonight, but these string lights on the balcony will have to do—

and, then, unlike now,

as you lay miles from each other on the mattress,

warm from the same heat beneath her grandfather's quilt,

you weren't shy about being strange at all.

Silence rounds the corner to silence,

in the night sky's spare counterglow you barely see

her hands, clasped before her face,

and the residual soot of your campfire

in the cracks of her strong fingers,

and you love them.

You open your mouth wide just then

to say something—but you realize

you look like a fish.

### Soul Call

Is that you? Is that you,

bounced image through the slatted windows

off the wide-cracked mirror and cast

upon the white, white wall, dotted

by the thumbtacked holes which I will

need to fill soon, where pictures

of friends and of you

used to hang, tiny holes in the landscapes

behind us, and yet over our heads?

Old televisions shut down the way

I imagine the universe collapsing, a sharp,

electric crack, a wink of light, a folding unto itself.

When sleep paralysis grabs me, it feels

the same way. My inner light clicked off,

a paradigm shift—I am an unshut eye

watching you.

I have this problem when I'm so tired

I fall asleep straight on my back—the nightmare

is in my spine, always. The first time,

I was 14. We talked about different kinds

of first times once, beneath a little tree doing its best

against the sun in a park. Like you might say

of all firsts— _honestly, that shit_

can fuck you up forever.

I hate to lie on my back, but I did

that day with you in the mottled shade.

I hate that I pulled the pictures down,

pinched and pulled the tacks. The groove

of their tiny handles haunted my thumb all day.

I hate that I can't move; I hate the electric, phantom

tingling, I hate these bending ribs, I hate

that someone's standing on my chest—I hate

that I can't tell if it's you.

### Baby Blue Flashing Spoon

pinching the thin arch of its treble hook,

she lays the lure flat in your outstretched hand

like an heirloom.

All night you fish the Au Train

with the borrowed lure, which flashes back

even the particle glow of the streetlight on the old overpass,

where wooden bridges creak quietly beneath the concrete

ceiling of a highway constructed above them, meant

to hold more than an occasional horse and wagon, or

a load of split maple, or the sap that oozes down the bark,

and sometimes nosedives into the tumbling river below.

Night stretches—what is time, again? Somewhere

in the casting of your spoons you two went quiet,

are comfortable that way—when did you learn that trick?

When did you two learn to live in a city, by the way—

even a small one? A mist-carrying breeze off the river

wraps around you both. You shift sand

under your toes and stand just a little closer together.

With her borrowed baby blue flashing spoon

you pull old summers from the river. You pull dinosaur toys

like fossils from your old sandbox, you pull your dad's rusty

socket wrenches and even his old impact drill,

which whirs a bit before going to sleep.

You pull a football helmet in by the facemask,

and throw it back. You pull in your old dog's

chain collar, and another, and another. You pull in numerous

little plastic bottles of your mother's vodka, hidden

amidst the cobwebbed baby clothes in her bedroom closet,

which you unhook and drop in the sand beside you,

but you don't mind. You pull in handfuls of spent, wet cigarettes

from the bathroom sink, from the toilet; you pull in stolen

twenty-dollar bills that smell like grass you cut, leaves you raked.

You pull in orange pill bottles, from which

you dump the layered sediment of dust, mold, ashes, and dog hair

of your home. But, standing there, the whistle

of spinning line and the cold waves on both

your ankles, you don't mind. Where did you

learn that? Standing next to her, you spend the night

dragging in the oldest things beside her casting form,

and you don't know how—but you don't mind at all.

### Bradley

what a strange and fitful dream it's been.

Once, I half-stepped on a toad, realized

it wasn't a pinecone or tired leaf

too late. Half eviscerated in the grabbing dirt,

it flailed its arms weakly. It did not feel good.

I was with our friend, who you may remember,

and she yelled at me to put it out of its misery.

I grabbed a rock bigger than my hand

and crushed its prone body. When I lifted

it up, our friend, eyes through splayed fingers,

said, _do it again!_

but there was only thin liquid on the rock's belly—

no toad in sight. Our friend said—

Oh. I think we're good.

God—what else has happened?

I nearly lost a finger in shop class—

bandsaw.

But, you were there for that, weren't you?

Yes—you helped clean up the blood I dripped

through the sawdust, the hallway carpet,

and the fresh-waxed floors, all the way

to the nurse's office. That's one of the last things

I remember of you, actually. As friends do

in those days, you vanished over the summer.

Years now, and I meant to write you.

And in our hometown newspaper it says

it's too late. This is what happens

when you aren't careful—you lose things.

Toad in the forest, sensation in the tip

of my pointer finger. And, well—

you and I would draw senseless, violent things

in sixth grade study hall—all the way

into high school. We'd trade stick-figure slasher

comics in the hallway, we'd laugh

about what happened in last night's _South Park._

Here it is: since you've killed yourself,

I've learned that the world is not, by default, good,

and violence is not a streak in the dark—it is not rare enough to be funny.

Andy Kerstetter

### If God Made Adam from Snow

The children, those chilly Michelangelos

shaping their fresh take

on _imago dei_ with winter's

whitewash would be validated

most of all—they always knew

they nailed the first man's sleek physique

with fine material, more supple than the dust

He might have used—some impurities

like splinters of ice inevitable.

Besides, what use is there for dust except

whirling through prairie tornadoes, choking

coal-miners' throats, obscuring the name

on our ancestor's bust or slipping through

these fingers, stiff with grief?

Dust offers no life, only shrouds.

Snow can cleanse, insulate, bury,

beautify—boreal rouge on the face of flame-

frayed shells of domesticity—

what is it but life suspended

in matrices of captive light, awaiting

the proper time to unravel

their frozen coils,

so when spring returns our bodies

dive into the elemental

sludge from which we're free

to freeze and form ourselves anew.

### Resting by a Stream on a Summer Hike

In the shade of cottonwoods, I return

to my old coolness on a log while this

Monarch flutters from one tuft

to another in search of the source

of a sweetness neither of us can see.

On the other side

of this frothing mountain stream,

I see a stony shore burdened with weeping

willows where a pair of magpies roost,

vanishing beyond the boughs, wings

flashing blue. I take off my shoes,

hitch up my pants and step in, intent

to find out what the magpies know.

But the water's bite is cold and sharp

rocks knife my heels. I stagger, fall, catch

myself on a branch and bungle back

to safety. Recalling younger crossings,

I wonder how my feet have weakened,

skin flinching from the kiss

of ice, freezing my efforts

of exploration.

Perhaps I lost my nerve

along the path, stashed beneath

a toadstool or mistaken for a nut,

taken for a squirrel's winter cache.

Maybe the lightness of my child

body let me float over stones, this current

heaviness pressing harder from higher,

ossified strata driving the spikes deeper.

I guess it's just my flesh has learned

all it needs, bearing knowledge

of enough crossings to know

the path on the other side

leads to a stand of aspens,

hiding a fawn waiting

for his mother to return

with a mouthful of foxgloves.

### Liminal Spaces

1.

The hiss of the closing door

on this bus from here to who knows

where is the decompression

from this state of strangulation, inter-

personal manipulations: sunrays

dredging my riverbed, startling

dark-dwelling troglodytes

into foreign luminescence.

2.

Standing on the bank

of our leaving, your voice is

a river where I walk

on an old wooden dock, breaking

under my feet as I climb

into a driftwood raft, baling floodwaters

as I'm swept into your currents.

All I can do is keep my head

above the mire.

3.

Some pagan saint once told us heaven lies

a foot above the head of every man.

I should have known that angels lived

in my father's liquor cabinet, the edge

of the cliff I couldn't reach and this still

life hanging over our hotel bed, watching

from bowls of oranges swollen with sacred

juices, forever waiting for the one

who will split their flesh and release

a sugared baptism on our failed sacrament.

4.

They say, inside cocoons, that larvae must dissolve

themselves to fuel their necessary transformations,

soup soaking into _imaginal_ _discs_ , concretizing

adulthood around the bits of childhood that kept.

I guess it's no surprise then, that, stepping off this bus

into haloes of stinging sand, this straightjacket

skin rips open and from my fingertips, forehead

and chest fly forth clouds of crimson

moths, spiraling straight into the sun.

### Grounding

When I tell her about my blood-

-and-shadow dreams, my mystic friend

tells me that I am

too open to the other

world, that I am

too comfortable being

lost in astral fog, Neptune

presiding over my neuroses

like a drunk lifeguard falling

asleep while his charges

flounder in the mire.

She prescribes a ritual

of grounding: first, I need to seek

some earth on which to stand—

I think I'd like a patch of unworked

turf, maybe deep moss by a stream

beneath a gnarled beech—then plant

my bare feet firmly in the dust

and think about light:

a white ball of it piercing

my skull, slipping behind

my eyes, down my throat, between

my ribs, gathering negative

energy like roses sprouting

from dry bones till it bursts

from the soles of my feet, bearing its bouquet

through humus and clay

to some blind rift to wither

in its own darkness.

Then, imagine: new brightness rising

from Earth's bones into mine, spreading

through marrow and vein till I'm flush

with primeval simplicity

of spirit, able to withstand

assault from legions

of the soul.

It all seems too good

to be true—I am loath

to believe, till I see the roots

of spirits speaking themselves

through the stones from my bones

to the center, my swaying body

tethered to truth like a tree

near running water, stooping gladly

in the muck.

### The Inferno Lessons

Search teams are combing through

the ashes in your mouth

trying to find bathtubs or beds

where people might have taken

the tongue, also a fire, which left

no way to escape a world

of evil among the parts

of the body. _All lost_

_some and some lost all_.

The whole body sets the course

of one's life on fire—wine glasses clinking

in a different bedroom, burning up

and down at once—take off your shoes

on holy ground: I lost you

long before the light of day

revealed your work for the fire

that it is—the strands

of your hair curling like spiders

baptized in the Holy Spirit, testing

the quality of your work, losing

yourself in your tongue-

flame, tongues of flame

lapping up your tears before

they fell—your ruined fingers fused

with blackened bedposts, kindred vines

reduced to elemental similarities.

I can't pry you apart.

Michael Fleming

### Space Walk

A vacuum, they assured me, pushing me

into the airlock, buckling on my

bubble head. Just that one idea—

nothing, the void, the great by and by.

But nothing turns out to be everything,

and everything is music, swelling chords

of darkness-piercing light, every star singing

the song of fire! But those are just words—

what else to say when they reeled me in?

The words felt like stones revolving around

the dead suns of what I would never tell

them. All I could do was point at the spinning

cosmos, that vacuum filled with the sound

they already knew—their heaven, their hell.

### He'll Be Remembered

He'll be remembered for the hair, I guess,

and preposterous neckties, and his name

will be a synonym for something less

than promised, a punchline for drinking games,

the name they'll invoke at spelling bees

when the winning word is _braggadocio_

and some skinny, owl-eyed kid asks, "Please

use it in a sentence?" and there they'll go

again with that Dickensian name . . . and I'll

always think of poker, his final sneer

of malevolent, stolen triumph while

slapping down the ace of spades, till he hears

the howls of laughter at the man who loses

everything to a lousy pair of deuces.

### Foxholes

When the time was right he told us about

the war—boredom, fear, and loneliness most

of the time, then terror and noise, and shouting,

screaming, the pop and heave of guns, ghost

moments that never go away and things

that cannot be unseen. _That's where I found_

_God_ , he said— _where I found love, and the sting_

of knowing what love means, how we're all wounded

and scared, doomed but still alive—alive!

He told us about foxholes and bargains

with fate, grasping for anything to drive

away the onrush of death, make the pain

stop, hush the noise. _And I'm still in that war,_

_still in that foxhole_ , he said _—we all are_.

—for W.W.

### Edges

Let people bicker over who made what—

isn't everybody making? Aren't we

made for making—building, devising? But

more than that—looking for some kind of freedom

for later, some kind of heaven? I

look for it in this forest, at the edge

between summer and winter, day and night.

I look for it in tidepools, at the edge

between the sea and the land, between strange

and stranger. I look for it where the flats

meet the mountains. The edges are the welfare

of the world, the crucibles of change

and chance, the portals between this and that—

the places where the world creates itself.

### The Birth of Language

### (Reflections on Recycling Night)

Back in the caves, when we were showing off

our shiny new opposable thumbs

and tottering on our hind legs, enough

of us must have had the insight that some

stuff was worth holding onto, and some not—

decisions would have to be made. This stone,

that stick—keepers. But shattered sticks and rotten

meat and broken blades and blackened bones,

things whose very presence was burdensome—

into the midden. What need for words when

we stared into the embers, felt that odd

wonderment at the stars and where we come

from? No. The first useful word must have been

_trash_ —before _tool_ , before _fire_ , before _God_.

Richard Cole

### Triage

Yes, there are days when the ER doors explode

and Code Blue comes in on a gurney, rapid

crosstalk over the patients, one right after

another. More often though,

we triage our lives with quiet, glancing

deferments of care, attention, faith, for whatever

needs us and cannot be ignored and left

to die. We have no choice but to choose

among these three—money, the people we love

and our inner life, such as it is. We can save

the one, maybe two out of three, but nobody

I've seen has it all. The math doesn't work that way,

though one might serve another, the church

of parenthood, perhaps, or creativity

that pays the bills. But marriages can fail

in the face of sudden money.

We can fall in love as our business

fades, or drive down avenues

of achievement, proud and blind.

We can die before we die.

We can hold our breath for years

and do, our dreams growing beautiful

as autumn leaves, golden and forgotten.

We can find what feeds us in triage, an ascending

crisis of opportunities, thinking like nurses

and ER doctors, fast and wise

as much as possible, trying to live one life

as we save others.

### Perfect Corporations

Corporations are people, too,

numbers with skin.

Like people, they have dreams.

Like people, they can ache and grow

and have that growth cut short,

wounded, and then survive

to consume or be consumed by others.

Like people at times, they have

no choice, and the better ones have come to believe

that people, natural people, are frictions,

that the best corporations are heaven on earth

as the earth drops away, trailing numbers,

human capital liquefied

and refined, the corporate body

reorganized by cold explosions leaving

a cloudy taste

and empty cubicles filled with light.

The perfect corporations are the ones

with nobody left. Breathless and calm. The ones

that have no soul.

### Too Big to Fail

The sky is filled with brokers jumping from windows,

some holding hands as they step off together,

showers of suits and ties that flutter

through crashing markets, debt bombs

going off in the bundled securities wrapped

and bleeding through layers of gauze,

20 years of financial assumptions collapsing

like circus tents on fire, the elephants screaming, old lions

roaring in outrage as the furious band plays on,

and the bodies keep falling faster,

racing to the final moment, the slap

and explosion of meat

pounding the sidewalks and then

they touch down

gently, as if

on a well of bubbling energy.

"You're safe," the dancing master says.

"You'll always be safe. It's like a love affair

with gravity. Look at what you've already become

and what that means. You've made a killing.

Banks are immortal, in their way,

and so, in a way, are you."

### Becoming Air

Slow pounding on the door

downstairs, a low, steady sound

more felt than heard, month

after month for a year,

then almost two, now growing,

filling the massive house

where my sister waits

in her flying bed, exhausted,

with a painted battle scene above her head,

historic men on horseback, swords waving, charging

always toward victory.

Then a faint click.

Greatness enters the room,

pauses, as if questioning,

and offers a white flower. At last,

after years of framed achievement,

anger and controlling love,

she sighs, a burning fragment

cradled in the arms of pure death,

and together they descend with dignity,

intimate all the way down

the amazing stairs.

Susan Bouchard

### An Apology To My Best Friend

I didn't mean to take your dress

But you know you are too much for me

All that confidence that you wear

It's so theatrical.

You command attention and

I wanted a chance at that

_Let me show you—teach you_ , you said

But I knew you didn't mean that

You really like your power over me

And I succumb to your strength

(And my jealousy)

So while you were working and I was waiting

At your apartment

I tried on your wispy light blue dress

The one that follows you in folds so unnaturally perfect

I can never tell if you move the dress or the dress moves you.

I thought the dress would transform me into you

It zipped up so smoothly and I was hopeful

Even my stomach fluttered for a moment

Your skin on me might make all the difference

But my insecurities leaked right through your dress

And changed it.

It was not like a new skin on me

My skin is too thin, too translucent, to be yours

I knew I would end up infecting your precious dress

(But I hoped I wouldn't)

And I didn't mean to crunch your dress into a ball

And stuff it in my purse

I planned to have it cleaned and return it on another day

When you were working.

But the stains didn't come out and

I couldn't tell you about the damage

(You know how you love your clothes)

So I brought your blue dress home

And I promise I only wear it occasionally

Just on days when I'm trying to be hopeful

But now it looks more like me and less like you.

It doesn't smell like you anymore

Your scent of pure, fresh wash

Is completely gone

(I loved that scent) but

I sat on my couch in your dress and

Tucked my knees to my stomach and wrapped myself in your skin

And hugged you, along with my knees, and

Covered my legs in all that blue

Taking deep sniffs and for a while, I held you inside.

I should have paced myself

But you know how impulsive I am

So I wasn't able to preserve you in your dress

And I can't talk to you anymore

Because I stole your dress

And its seams are fraying and the hem is uneven

And it smells like burnt toast and buttered popcorn

My scent overpowered yours (I didn't know I could do that)

So I can't even return it to you.

I thought I could be _you_ in your dress

And maybe you would be me, just for a bit

While I learned how to be you

So I could someday be _me_.

( _Sorry_ )

### The Space Between

You live in the spaces between my words

Where I often hover,

Tiptoeing in the inky shadows

To take a quick breath and

Whisper my fears.

I know I will find you in those spaces

You are not the words in my poem

but the hand that guides me,

No, pushes me,

Onto my next word.

### Why I Don't Like Meeting Famous People

I once rode in an elevator in Bloomingdale's with

A famous actor that I've seen (and lusted after) in many films

Suddenly, it's just the two of us in a small, moveable metal box and

No one's escaping until the third floor.

I wish I hadn't run to catch the elevator, but

Just as the doors were closing

I saw an arm reach for the button panel

The doors slid open and I slid in.

I knew immediately who he was.

He smiled because he knew I knew

And this was his lot in life

People knew him.

I am disappointed immediately.

_Why didn't I just ride the escalator_ , I think

But all that silver closes me in

And up we go.

I try not to make eye contact

But do my fair share of peeking to the left.

I note that his skin isn't flawless in person

He looks much younger on film.

I'm also disappointed by his choice of clothes

He's slighter than I imagined and his hair sparse.

So this is he in ordinary life

He's so . . . ordinary.

I stare at the button display and hope for someone else to join us.

But no, we are alone and

He smiles and says _hello._

I don't answer.

Does he want me to request an autograph?

I can't do that; I don't want one

Does he expect a reply, a simple _hello_

Or does he recognize my disappointment.

I want to tell him that

I've met other famous people

Right here in Bloomingdale's and I am not

Star-struck by that fact or by him.

I am simply embarrassed for him

And his inability to translate from big screen to real life

And I am reminded of how people, in your life and out of it,

Don't always live up to expectations.

And just as I've given up reading biographies

Where I learn more than I want to know,

I promise myself I will never ride the elevator in Bloomingdale's again.

I don't always like the truth.

### Circus Performers

She says we have become circus performers, but I wonder,

Have we always been circus performers

Just waiting for our moment,

Perfecting our talents in secret while

Living our ordinary lives in open spaces?

Is this really who we are now or

Has the inside merely wiggled its way out,

Is it too late to join an act and

Perfect our dreams in open spaces while

Living our ordinary lives in private?

She says we have taken our show on the road

As we tentatively walk tightropes,

You balancing song sheets and guitars

Me twisting tales into shape

You sing your words; I write mine.

We load our car with microphones and music stands

Books and binders filled with words and sounds

Juggling through performances with

Ice cold hands (you) and sweaty palms (me)

A double trapeze act concealing our fears and

Embracing the risks.

### Word Shredder

I rip words.

Cut them with precision

Every tentative one with the

Audacity to find its way onto paper

Ends up shredded like alphabet pieces

Original Gutenberg metal blocks

Out of order in an old tin container.

I store the shredding in file boxes.

Plan to arrange them someday

Put my ( _your_ ) life in order

Alpha to omega

Vowels and consonants

Press the alphabet into compliance and

Bundle words into thoughts.

And you, you write in a font different than mine,

So even shredded, I know you from me and

Can rearrange you into my version of you

I write your story

Force you to say what I want you to say

Manipulate you like wooden

Scrabble pieces.

I am printer, designer, storyteller.

Use my power to reform words

Art crafting life

Cast you into my story

Assemble our fonts

Free you from my patchwork puzzle and

Give you life on a page.

But for now, I am satisfied collecting you.

Incising your dialogue into tiny pieces and

Printing your words in a size smaller than mine

So when I reach into the file and pull out segments

Of _Helvetica_ (me) and _Comic Sans_ (you)

I hold within me all the possibilities to

Reprint (our) history as I intend it.

Edward Garvey

### Nine Songs of Love

I

As if in sync

with a step within

a mirror,

or in time

with a heartbeat

from another time,

I remember you

when I see you.

You are almost

the same.

You your step

your heartbeat each

the same.

You step from

a standing mirror,

this time

wearing a dark

green shirt.

II

As if you pulled

your kept hair back

or changed its color

from dark to black,

your eyes, your

skin you forget

to change.

Or is it

my eyes

my heart

have stayed

the same?

Recurrent love

is a rhythm

that shapes

a lifetime.

I watch you

walk, the rhythm

of your walk,

and the shape

of your legs

in your black

pants.

III

It's not that your

black hair

or thin smile

or narrow waist

disappear,

or even fade.

It's that your eyes

are a truth deeper

than color.

The layers of time

collapse when you

look at me.

Everything disappears,

everything fades.

When you turn

away, the rigidity

of time returns,

and I cannot

see your

eyes.

IV

When I see

your eyes,

I do not see

their color.

They are

as colorless

as eternity.

With each glance

I lose balance

and fall into

your eyes.

When I

cannot see

your eyes,

I imagine

their color.

They are the color

of a sunlit

olive tree,

or the crow

that feeds

on the ground.

V

Could you be

anyone, any

woman?

Your cheekbones

do not remind me

of anyone,

but your eyes

remind me

of all women.

Memory is

superimposable—

the shape

of her lips

on yours.

Your body is

fragmented

by my memory.

Parts of you

I have

always known.

All your earrings

though

are new.

VI

The image

of you

not the curve

of your neck

runs through

dreams and

into my past.

The further I fall

into previous lives,

the sharper

the image,

the less

it is you.

This image

is colored

not by clothes, skin,

even your eyes.

This image is naked

continual

transparent.

It is love

itself.

VII

You are name-

less, faceless

almost.

You belong

to any time

any space.

You are with me

when I wake

sleep, breathe.

Usually

with a name,

a face, but not

always.

I know you

as I know

the beginnings

of my childhood

dreams,

stepping off

a cliff—

nothing more.

VIII

An image

remains—it is

but a shadow

in a mirror.

Your back turned

toward me

your face turned

away. The curve

of your back

is an image

in the mirror,

not a reflection.

I have lost you.

As if all

women

were the same

woman and

all men were

the same man,

I have lost you

to love.

IX

As a feather

in a vacuum

my breath

falls when

I see you.

Your smile

is the sun

that dawns against

my night sky.

My heart

is a sea pulled

by the gravity

within your eyes.

You are real,

separate

with a face,

figure,

name.

I say your name

and you turn.

Here and

now.

Mehrnaz Sokhansanj

### The Mourning Song

the birds are too rowdy

too early, they peck

at me through the window—

how I never water the garden

how I welcome weeds

how I let the sun beat

the alarm again,

snoozing to waste

the last of it

before I unload

the morning—

strawberry jam, whole milk,

and raisin bread

all store-bought and ready—

I thought I could handle the heat,

grow my groceries from the ground

maybe the jam would taste sweeter,

the milk would last longer than two weeks

I count what's left of it

to keep up with the hyperbole of the morning—

no one believes a flood

after a ten-year drought

no one believes me

when I say there's no more

sweetness left in the breakfast cream

I spread the layers of my tears way too thick,

no more time to cry over stale bread

### Sea of Detachment

Yield your soul,

surrender your heart,

or else they will divert you,

waylay you far from the Valley of Detachment

—Attar, The Conference of the Birds

we ironed our prayers

out on the bed, with argan—

sweating palms

compressing steam

before a release

to blur the stars

God granted us custody

for one night, gifting

us shearwater wings,

and we flew to

the Sea of Detachment,

in search of our king

whom we can call father

but all that stood

was a marauder, drifting

from daughter

to daughter forgetting

their last names,

he lights his cigar,

our only star

not enough warmth

in our hands for a prayer

back to our wrinkled bed

we wade on the water

afraid of the ripples

that reflect his embers

back to our palms

### I Don't Know Your Hurt

You built a border with recycled grocery bags,

compacted the fridge with frozen foods,

filled the pantry with pistachios, barberries, and dates

but left nothing for my indulgences to feed on,

so that I will always need you at dinnertime.

Dinnertime is no time for questions—no space

at the table for grace—you fight with the TV,

hating the stillness—my cousin said Dad

always threw the remote at you after dinner,

you clench the controls, scolding my taste in men.

Men will suck you for your youth and children will suck

you for your milk until they're all full and you're dry—

you loved me the most when I bought you a new fridge,

now you're lactose intolerant and hate the way my boyfriend laughs,

say he's like my dad, and my cousin's dad.

Dad's cigarette ashes left a trail, you never stepped on

or swept away—you keep the stove on overnight,

burn incense every Friday and overlook strangers

from the balcony, tucking your prayer beads in,

when it's too quiet, you leave to pray.

Pray for a two-story house with a backyard and a pool

you pray for pearls and peace—when asked about you

all I can say is I don't know your birth year or your dress size

or if you ever flirted with demons, I pray that I do but

I don't—I don't know—I don't know you.

Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius

### Unknowingness

Shovelfuls

of cicada carcasses

from the base of a

great, wide oak:

I try not to vomit

from the stench. The distant

roar of lawn mowers

at dusk. I start to

collect razor blades

like coins

when the other boys notice

I'm—

"different." History class

bores me anyway.

I try like hell

to make new

friends, but

my ribs are made

of cellophane.

Tooth marks on

ghost white gossamer,

piles of starch

in porcelain. The clack

of high heels

down the

high school's hallway,

like the duty-bound

pediatrician

tapping his foot

against the linoleum, as he

tells my weeping mother

about the Tylenol.

### Aftershock

Like moonshine bites

the hook of the tongue,

rubs the throat cherry red

raw, the aftershock is the

catastrophe: it unfurls from

your teeth like a moth

from its quiet coma,

bursts into apple blossom

smithereens. Somehow—

somehow: you tame

the seizing locusts; seismologists

will study your painted tip—

toes, balancing, and write papers

on your unbridled poise.

Claudia Skutar

### The Lords of Ocqueoc

are diving in water clear as rootbeer

as it foams over the rocks;

again and again the cannonballs,

three boys on the move to outdo and knowing—

knowing all the while the girls, tourists, babies are watching—

or not knowing or not caring,

the way they didn't care about the filtered sun in the leaves

or about how the water poured and poured over the rocks,

grinding them, wearing them away, carrying them into the lake

two miles beyond, or about the faces of the tourists, droves of them,

thick as mosquitoes, and pasty in summer flesh,

the water a treat, a respite from factory or office or sewing machine or babies

and the dirty diapers someone was washing a little way downstream

where the water stilled its roiling;

the boys not caring in skin tanned, for now,

absorbed in the play of the water through the nose, mats of wet too-long hair in the eyes; this

was their river, their falls, their place, their lives,

lives born of the landscape where boys commanded the pool at the bottom of the falls,

all the visiting children circling around them in the water,

all of them eddies in the flow

and eddies are always carried away.

No moss, no fright, just the debris carried with them.

### Homage II

A train of children, weeping, sent out of the devoured city.

At Eberbach, a farmer takes on the one with red hair because she will not cry.

•

They hide low in the wheat when bombers swoop.

It is some years before American soldiers will bring their chocolate and cigarettes.

•

Her favorite color is blue.

He courts her out of uniform and returns to the base each night.

•

Water is her liquid heart, a center spilling out to horizon.

She is gnarled, a red oak in the lee of shore.

### Homage III

The beer is amber,

the Pilsner glass raised,

the moment a quarter lime of smile.

•

Oil in his white hair stains the chair back.

The daughter touches an arm, kisses a stark cheek, hides the spot with a towel.

It smears lightly across memory.

•

Weeks before her parents arrive, she scrubs grout in the tub with a toothbrush.

All will be clean, children will be clean, the wrong husband she cannot scrub away.

•

Photo of the now-old woman with the Grosstochter, their cheeks together above fresh Apfelkuchen; the girl is learning German. Another quarter lime of smile.

•

The next floor up she sleeps; her slow breaths still draw in air,

exhale what has been forgotten, or maybe left behind.

### Energy Equals Mass Times the Speed of Light Squared

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest . . . a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. —Albert Einstein

Somewhere, the universe holds you;

your spirit perhaps has slipped into a black hole,

drawn you out like a piece of fine silver wire

into infinite singularity.

In this place that lets out no light

are many, like you, waiting.

•

They've swaddled your body in blankets,

me in gown, mask, gloves.

I am not afraid; I've known clostridium difficile

as I've watched your torn lungs smother in it.

Your eyes have been closed for weeks.

Only today they told me you are probably brain-dead.

I long suspected that you've already given your body the slip.

•

So much energy released as atoms come apart.

Yet Einstein told us nothing of the energy

released as spirit departs the body.

•

We circle your bed and pray.

The doctor opens one eyelid, and I see no light.

Later, after your last breath, alone

in the private waiting room, I ask you for a sign.

The restroom dispenser several feet away releases a towel.

Its motion detector has been activated.

I have said I am several feet away. It is 3 a.m.,

and they are preparing your body in ICU

for the hospital morgue.

I have said I was alone. I am startled,

but I don't leave the room until called

by the nurse so I may wait with your body.

•

Something in time and space has changed.

I study the night sky outside,

the soft lamp light above the zipped bag

reflected in the window.

### The Language Hidden in Skin

Unexpected glimpse, oedipal,

of maleness carefully kept from

view, seen at an age of bodies

fast growing into sexes.

A medical reference with drawings

in his library did show that.

A mother's blush at questions

left me to puzzle out meaning,

to think long, long on the crux of it,

a preview of shapes and purpose.

Fast forward years, now, to his dying,

old man swaddled, and the gown

loose always as he shifted in his last pain;

studied, monitored, probed,

needles forced in, pulled out;

he, to them, a rotting bag of parts.

I remember touching his arm,

though he was gone already, by then,

and the pungent unwashed hair

not the least of that body's growing offences.

There, again, accidental view;

nurses hovered, removed, replaced,

removed integument of sheets.

Primal, this view, but different;

parent as mammal, sleek, clean,

having sloughed his useless rind;

no longer hobbled by flesh,

new in shape and purpose.

Donna French McArdle

### Because the Serpent

1.

Because the serpent chose which tree,

all knowledge is tainted,

just as ignorance is bliss,

and seeking an answer is lust,

and finding the answer (or thinking so) is pride;

our best and worst the same.

And because Eve chose to hear the serpent,

and not her husband, all marriage

is tainted; even those of us

who vowed can't obey after

that first delectable, intellectual bite.

Tossed out, we built a wild, ungodly garden

from brambles and mud

and filled it with meadows, motorcycles,

down comforters and silks,

with the sorrow that is love,

with the love that begets our children,

with loss and disease: one of forgetfulness

that empties the mind, another that enters

the bones, and another of the soul;

we imagined these and they were here.

There was death, too. Because Adam

warned us surely we would die,

there were drownings, floods, mountains exploding,

war and suffering. Then we created a nowhere.

Because the serpent, we had to create this

emptiness, this place we could form anew,

for we knew we could be tossed again

as tender green sprouts in an icy wind.

We made it up as we went, not sure

if it would be sweet heaven or sweet hell.

2.

We walked the track of dirt road through a field

overgrown with tall grasses, overflowing with rising heat.

At the pond, we slipped off our sticky clothes, hung them

on a branch and, glancing away, stepped in.

Up to my shoulders, I felt less shy, dressed in reflection

of the trees and sky, and feeling, as I slowly moved

my hands to swim, that kindness of the water

on the muscles and joints. I ducked below. My hair floated up.

Past me, the reeds flowed, following a movement

that forms the bodies of fish and teaches the hind feet of frogs

how to rest as they glide. Fusiform. My hand and its reflection

reached toward each other at the surface.

He and I swam everywhere that summer: in ponds, the river, the ocean.

The water quenched and woke me as the first notes plucked

on a Spanish guitar open the piece and vibrate against each other,

against the moment, against the humidity in the air.

I expected it. I had been waiting for it, but I could not imagine

the fullness of it, the intimacy of sound and splashes of water

and the changes of light that happened daily, constantly.

As I swam away from him, his white shirt and my pale blue dress

rose together in the breeze.

The swallows had come out, dashing just above the pond

where the bugs felt the rise of our warm human expiration and lingered.

They had come to bite us, and the birds to eat them—resequencing

the order of predation. Two birds, one chasing and squawking,

the instigator in front, flew upward toward the treetops,

and the wind shifted the branches, so the sun flashed between,

and the fire of that light swallowed the bird. Its follower

clung to a branch, the wind calmed, and the chattering silenced.

Cast out, above the canopy of maple and oak, that swallow

vanished into the sky of nowhere. I looked upward for him,

but looking stung the eyes, for he was in, and I was near, a haze

of emptiness, which is a daydream where longing is uninhibited.

He remembered the taste of mayfly and mosquito, beyond

body or bite, where they become outlines filled with the pale light

he swam though while I swam through cool pond water.

His tiny heart pounded with his drop or two of blood,

and he drifted low and remembered the shade beneath those branches.

Every story and every whisper between the two of us

anticipated a reply. We wanted paradise complete; I wanted

that swallow to return. But the motion of my hands undid

the perfect reflection on this hidden pond; the world

looked at upside down was brief and vulnerable.

I turned and reached to him, and when he pulled me in

that swallow blasted out from nowhere, and swooped low,

so the feathers on its belly skimmed the water's surface.

3.

"All paths lead nowhere," the Yaqui Don Juan taught Carlos Castaneda.

Then Birkin invited Ursula, "away from the world's somewheres,"

and though DH Lawrence said she was afraid, they drove off

to Sherwood Forest to sleep on a rug under the hood of his car.

But it is Ovid who in his great Metamorphosis reminded us

that Jove can transform you so thoroughly you are lost.

You are a white cow; you cannot recognize the lowing

in your own voice; and your father, whose heart is broken,

weeps that he cannot find you because you are not anywhere.

### I Stumble

Because the going is hard—one mile up

Neahkahnie rises nine hundred feet till it levels,

steep enough for switchbacks after the first steps,

heartless enough that after fifteen minutes

into this workout, I doubt I can finish the climb—

I'm breathing hard. Because they call the view religious—

and already I'm doubting—uncertainty unsteadies

my gait, but feet pounding, heart pounding, I walk.

Gerry, our host, says we're tramping pirate country.

Over northwest are Devil's Cauldron and Smuggler's Cove,

but close by, legend has treasure buried.

The kids want it. They want to roll it down this

old, good path. They want to be rich, to buy cars

(though they're too young to drive), to be so rich

they would drive anyway, to be completely

outside the rules, free, floating, the longing

in their voices both wistful and whining.

I long simply for the trail to end, so when Gerry says,

"This is it," and pushes into the brush, I follow—

obedient, befuddled, then lost. There is no trail.

We gather ourselves in a field grown nearly

as high as my shoulders (and the kids heads),

surrounded by foxgloves so hot pink

they erase the heat of the afternoon and dry

the sweat on the small of my back.

This is where I am: lulled by the distant

surf, breathing deeply of the soil, the Pacific.

But Gerry turns back, as do the others,

brushing by me. I follow how the pink

spires reconvene after the rush of our party.

This is how I live: gasping, stumbling,

stopping only when I can no longer resist

the shift of light, the tall stalks stilled.

The others call to me from the trail. I follow.

The peak, the real one, a rocky clearing that

faces south, stands 1680 feet above the Pacific,

and on such a beautiful day as this day,

you can peer over Neahkahnie-Manzanita

Park—a swath of green and blue—

and, in the distance, Nehalem Bay empties

into the Pacific, the outlet no bigger than my thumb,

and a crow drifting between here and there

no bigger than a spot on my eyeglasses, and the surf

that churns and grinds, breathing as lightly as if asleep,

quieter than my own breath.

We drink the last of our water and see smoke

halfway down the beach, then flames overcome

the August-dried beach grasses between the sand

and civilization. Helpless this far away, we hear sirens,

see the red pumper truck, and as the flames die, the smoke

blooms, then thins out over the waves. We follow its path,

trying to sight the horizon. "Is it the dark or the white line,"

the kids ask, "where the water ends and the sky begins?

Can our eyes see it?" We adults adjust our eyeglasses.

### The Fields

One step in and they came alive

with frantic hopping,

tossed out from my legs

like a swirling skirt,

for the fields of my childhood

were full of grasshoppers.

They called pfft, pfft and launched

into the wind-driven wave

of tall stems. Heavy seed heads

arched over and down in unison,

and the crazy grasshoppers struck

a zigzag against the uniformity

of summer afternoons.

My brothers and I caught them.

I held one between cupped hands

trying to be still enough

to let it rest on my palm,

peeking into the gap between

thumb and fingers. I studied

the red and green markings

on its bigger legs, fed it

a single blade of sweet fescue,

watched its mandibles tear and chew;

and if I could be still inevitably

the grasshopper shat on my hand,

and I wiped it on my shirt.

My mother was always asking,

"How did your shirt get so dirty?"

for the T-shirts of my childhood

were streaked with this muck.

The fields: the unmown lot behind the Breen's,

the steep-sloped sides and the hollowed center of Fort Lee,

the unused railroad tracks that led from the cove

under Bridge Street toward the river.

### Knitting Sample

Her fingers on the yarn, the needles, my fingers,

she adjusted with small movements

the stitches we cast on. My grandmother wanted me

to know the rites, to reveal the patterns of our lives

in the way you wrap yarn into a scarf

worn against a cold morning, against

a season of cold mornings.

She needed to show me how you twist and pull

warmth into your life once you understand

the raveling and weaving,

once you trust the yarn, the story emerges-

a day, then a month, then a life emerges.

She left me alone to it, and I sat there—yarn

in my hand, fantasy in my head, cautiously

forming loops, tapping needles, watching out the window

as a wild bird landed on the picnic table, and a boy

next house over pumped hard on his swing.

When my grandmother came to check on me,

the knitting was a mess, a tornado of holes

from stitches dropped and extra loops knotted

over each other. She counted in disbelief;

given ten stitches I ended with seventeen.

While she saw only flaws, I loved that

wild tangle of my first creation. Then,

because there was no yarn to waste,

my grandmother pulled out each stitch.

They slid apart to her tug and popped slightly

before the tension gave and the yarn fell limp.

My creation would not be delivered to the world;

my neck and ears would suffer the chill

of cold mornings, and I began to learn

the workings of the pattern I would follow

for many years: attempt and dismantle, come home

and leave again, find a way and lose it, wake and

fall into a deep sleep and dream

of the squeak of that boy's swing

and the bird flying away.

Megan Skelly

### Cento

For those of us who live at the shoreline

(curve of a water-starved globe)

is it the sea you hear in me,

under sleep, where all the waters meet?

They lie like stones and dare not shift. Even asleep, everyone hears in prison.

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison—

America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world—

what happens to a dream deferred?

Nights were not made for the crowds.

I have come so that, tugging your ear, I may draw you to me.

The moon tugs the seas,

where waterless bones move

from floods that are to come.

You protecting the river You are who I love.

With loving acknowledgment to poets (in order of appearance): Audre Lorde, Anne Waldman, Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot, Jericho Brown, Terrance Hayes, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi, Ntozake Shange, Sonia Sanchez, Adrienne Rich & Aracelis Girmay.

### Puzzle Box Ghazal

Four walls hem in what some call a room,

what does it mean when someone asks for room?

A longing for wingspan within my womb

I beg red rivers to run, make room.

My parents' house holds caverns of silence,

bruised tongues. Mother sleeps in my old room.

I cannot shake the habit of living

feet feathers to flee to a new room.

Mrs. Woolf, it is not true, I can live

on much less—a crescent moon of room.

My call to write, muddy tracks of words coat

wide meadows, blank page an empty room.

Snails have it best, cradle fertile darkness

upon their backs, pockets of hushed room.

Content with air between joints, belly as

balloon. Breath tiny sky dense with room.

Within clasp of shells is how a pearl blooms:

pressure warping space conjures room.

### frayed (a villanelle)

you'll never guess the pain that's kept hidden

the stitching that unravels first—the seam

the piece that comes apart slowly within

purple patches, red lines a map upon her skin

she walks the streets around you, quiet as a dream

you'll never guess the pain that's kept hidden

the bitterest of pills swallowed with a grin

she smiles at you, her eyes betray a gleam

the piece that comes apart slowly within

muted words on paper the only story she'll begin

for if she tried to speak, she'd only scream

you'll never guess the pain that's kept hidden

the lies she shares all day are close to her as kin

yet secrets leak free in the night's moonbeams

the piece that comes apart slowly within

the energy this act demands wanes her soul so thin

her frayed grip on her life part of the scheme:

you'll never guess the pain that's kept hidden

the peace that comes apart slowly within

### Cycles

Time passes as molasses here

sighing, I count my wounds

thumb them like craters

three cuts, a sore neck, a hollow womb . . .

When my eyes & limbs feel heavy

crushed by the weight of empty rooms

I remind myself of the women

& then I know what to do.

Chandra, Soma, Luna, Moon

I'm on my way; I'll see you soon

I creep over to the window

the sky outside a velvet bruise

gleaming from it, the pearl of my sisters

its rainbow aura leaking streaks diffuse

I make a bath to prepare for the journey

humming softly a dreamy tune

water steaming, I add rose petals

for tonight we are luminous full.

Chandra, Soma, Luna, Moon

I'm on my way; I'll see you soon

Cleansed by the Sea of Tranquility

I laugh about all this Earth abuse

the gravity used to be so limiting

before we remembered this way to choose.

Dancing, screaming, crying cackling

silk light continues to pool & infuse

my movements made fluid as shadows

dripping gemstones, the milk of the muse

Chandra, Soma, Luna, Moon

I'm on my way; I'll see you soon

My spaceship consists of:

blanket, candle, journal (the usual tools)

quartz, amethyst, jade

singing bowl, beads worn & grooved

I pack up, take a deep breath

lift off quivering, a gentle balloon

my kindred goddesses await me

returning home to my roots.

Chandra, Soma, Luna, Moon

I'm on my way; I'll see you soon

When I have to come back for Earthwork,

it's time now for the new.

With hurts healed & spirits high

by the gathering of souls who love me true,

I wait for the birth of the sign

from my body, a red flower blooms

I smile & give thanks for all mothers

our cycles forever attuned.

### quanta: a theory of touch

i need my love.

not so i can hoard it up in the

pursed-lip safety of padlocked boxes

pried open only with knobby knuckles

of skeleton keys,

but to pour out soft

share the secret of keeping downy feathers

in a constant cracked-shell world.

i knew something was missing when

i began to fiend for the

faint thumbprint of the moon

early in afternoon skies

& passersby

holding the hands of children

everything became a prayer.

i need love

so I can paint breezes on concrete corners

of gridlock streets become cages

braid it through muscles, smooth sinew

caress hoarse cords into lullabies

til my cupped palms take the shape

of the saltwater of every lake

dreams coursing down from soul's windows

upon each & every face

you see

i thought i lost a piece somehow

but pieces got edges,

they clunk & jumble.

i wanted ripples to stream from

my fingertips

knead my love into the caramel of your skin,

ribbons never to harden with time

but stay pliant, silent to

hear whispers

as cells sigh into

each other.

Tess Cooper

### Thirst

Dry Texas makes me remember that I have been away from water too long,

Spent too long in drought of the earth and love; lack of rain in clear California and lack of touch in sweating Cincinnati

In the valley I discovered my need of drink to quench my head and fill my heart,

and Taurus born, it is back in the cracks of the south where bulls strike the earth with sharp heavy hooves that I remember the long lost echos of the ocean,

Her cool memory engraved in stone, big darkness, living quiet.

Sink to your knees and run your fingers into the earth here and you will feel me,

handfuls of clay without water, stolen and parched, face upturned and thirsty tongue seeking rain

### No Storm

I live in what used to be an old motel, new boards nailed over the same rusted guts

Sometimes I go knocking on her old bones and hear no echos

The cactus in the courtyard is dead, not even spiders seem to dwell in corners

Fake wooden floors where no dust falls, but there's something in the walls

Held here like me, cycled in the same day with the same thunderstorm ever approaching

I'm drunk and awake at midnight when the sirens sound, sourceless

Shoeless and empty, I go out to be filled with what I know comes from a warning sky

I consult with a neighbor; cling to the weak railing but nothing falls and neither do I

Inside bed takes me but sleep does not come, waiting for my storm as the sirens scream for retreat

Into the reaches of the night they wail but my love it does not come.

### Episode

Awake and burning

Burning

I am an arkangel—a god. A thousand terrible eyes and wings of flame, I devour men and from my lips spill black ash

Forever running, a Hart's heavy beating heart

Full of life, bitter life, hammering at the walls of my chest as I lay in bed

Never rest, not even in sleep; wakeful eyes and clawed fingers clenched tight into flesh.

Bruising. I am nothing and at once everything, the echoing emptiness of a dry nautilus and it's chambers filling with vast ocean.

Release me.

### Charged

I am electricity, bright in the night

Sleepless buzzing in the hollow of my chest. There is no heart there

Only the knowledge that there will never be forgiveness on my tongue

I am holy, but only in the way of suffering- only in the Catholic sense they say

I am the crossroads witch, I live in the betweens, the "if"s and the insecurity of the unknown

Tonight I am prometheus shackled,

straining against the chains of another day as a failed god

Another night awake

### Churchwed

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned

Dragged you to bed despite the white on your collar

Licked you with the flames of hell and

showed you what falling feels like

Adam's first wife, we are wed under the eves of redwoods

though in your eyes that will not do and I pray for a white cotton dress

A promise:

I will bring no squalling life to this red earth

Will not raise it in the church

I will remove my prayer veil only for a wedding veil

Shelve my pagan ways only for a ring

A wolf will raise wolves

Pray you domesticate me

Greg Tuleja

### Salmon

So many thousands of miles they have come

in a last great adventure of returning,

a miracle of navigation to find their home

and there to gather, darting and churning

beneath the one white-blue river where

as dainty fingerlings, they had descended

toward the waiting sea, tiny innocents who dared

to face a hostile world, they could not have comprehended

such grand dimensions, such a vast distance,

or this majestic assemblage, the invincible urge

to bring forth Life and Death, the first hesitant advance

upstream, and then a sudden, mindless surge,

a wave of twenty-pounders, packed flank to flank,

filling the river with pink and gold, a solid mass of fish.

And might we tiptoe on their backs from bank to bank

to dream a dream or make a wish?

Prowling along the rushing shore the bears

splash in swirling eddies, an ancient resolve, wild and deep,

they know to watch and wait for this urgent feast, aware

that soon the Arctic night must fall, and they will sleep.

A gravid female is plucked from foam and spray,

ripped apart in a brief, ruinous moment, the egg-sac devoured,

the bloody carcass flicked aside in a casual, careless display,

and three orange specks, shining, splattered on the black, black fur.

What is it that causes such glorious despair

for one unlucky creature that died so close to her destination?

Not that one, but that all had come to die, an infinite purpose shared,

and we are stunned and staggered, and without consolation.

### Flight

I tossed a silver pebble toward the sky,

as if to find an exotic answer

to a plain question, how do eagles fly

with such indifference, never stopping where

we might intercept them with our dialogues,

our breathless insights into pitched updrafts

and orographic vectors, waves of fog

that rise and swirl, the sallow, sneering laugh

that shatters our highest expectations

and confounds this meagre understanding

of flight's blue miracles, these orations,

these vibrant heart-songs that ease the handing

over of the stone, lightly caught with firm

surety, flung back to Earth, safely returned.

### Sassafras

On the high slope that dips down toward the river

they are congregated, a thick stand of oaks,

humming their plangent oak-songs

in the still, mid-morning air of late summer.

Low on a damp swale the _Salix_ twins

are drooping, shedding their willowy tears,

a probable overreaction to some

unintended slight from the others.

Above them, a row of rusty hemlocks,

their thousands, or millions, of tiny needles

precisely, miraculously matched in form

and color, dark green on top, striped blue below.

And in the steep glade, a single sassafras,

her mitten-leaves, and palmate and tri-lobed,

tinged with a faint September yellow,

an extravagant multiplicity of leaf-shapes

that once produced the pride of uniqueness

but now, in this bright season of waning,

a crisis of identity brings forth

the eternal tree-question, "Who am I?"

Distracted by these contemplations

she muses and frets, an oak leaf is an oak leaf

a poplar a poplar, and had three been one,

might I have found relief from such vexing ambivalence?

### Auschwitz

When the trains came in the Jews shuffled down,

sometimes in an orange light from the moon,

sometimes in squalls of snow, wind-swept and blown

across their hollow faces, as they swooned

and faltered, gliding gently toward the showers,

where we dropped in the thin spheres of cyanide,

with no recourse for debate, no power

to oppose, no place to turn or to hide.

I spent Sundays at home in Sienna Street

with Liesl and Katarina, who played

in the park and at the high stalls bought treats

of cherries, chocolate, and lemonade.

I didn't sleep, they never knew, without dreaming

of black smoke rising through the air, and screaming.

### A Stable, Telepathic Genius

One quite wonderful thing we learned today

was that Putin smiled on the telephone

when our exalted leader called, just to say

hello, and do you think we could use drones

in North Korea (or Belgium), or some

other country of your choosing, now that

this collusion thing has been excised from

the news. And by the way, F*** those Democrats!

He _is_ the smartest, he _has_ the best brain,

we know that, but a smile over the phone,

that's extrasensory, like Houdini's claim,

while strolling idly among the gravestones,

to have communicated with the Dead.

It just shows the high sphere where he operates

with such pure genius, taking on the Fed,

the long lines on Everest, NATO, tax rates,

he can solve any problem, great or small,

and with the shrewdest of Cabinet picks,

he'll figure it all out—tariffs, the Wall,

infrastructure, things only he can fix.

I do admit to some mild reservations.

The Access Hollywood tape, for one thing,

the endless torrent of prevarication,

the blatant mendacities, (the lying).

And yes, his crude, childish inclination

toward ridicule, a hateful way of thinking.

But for his vain, boorish ideations

he's earned a pass. After all, he's our King.

Catherine R. Cryan

### Feather Shell Twig

I can't remember if crossing the marsh

came first or crossing the windy spit of sand.

Weakfish bones apearl, dune-grass soldiers, blue in sealight.

Run the phragmites-flattened trail,

ride home darkly on brother's shoulders.

How often I have seen this arrangement: feather, shell, twig.

The things I'd fill my pockets with—

the more I gained, the less my weight.

The feather flung from the sky, shell from sea, twig

leftover from a lightninged family tree.

What more do you want to know?

How no one ever told me how to stand

in a way that fit

what I carried in my body? What I carried

in my body never fit my arms, too hollow, too thin,

too used to sweeping dove-winged messes

under the bed. And even that I had to do better,

do better, not better, do right.

My mother told me to stand up straight. I assume

she meant otherwise the bars inside, the devil's pikes

would pierce the place where my wings should grow.

I did not accept anything of myself except for wrack.

Detritus of my fear or things I had to cast off

to grow bigger than squalls, marauding jaegers, tides, wracking me inside.

The flood lines marked in me, signs of what it would take to drown.

What of me would linger on the surface?

What of my exterior but words I've used

to keep you all at bay?

Have you ever noticed,

all that must be shed is not, and always what should stay.

Shedding feathers proves that I had wings.

### Uncovered

When I was nine I played for days

that were, in memory, weeks

with a scab at the back

of my neck, at the nape,

under hair the shortest

of any girl in my class.

Chicken-pox leftover, sure.

Until high in the arena at Notre Dame,

in _the mezzanine._

And I loved the way

the new word sounded,

loved my sister, so graduated,

meridian in our familial cylinder,

loved my kinship's momentary concurrence

in this place remote from our righthand coast

and so who could blame me

for my absentminded excoriation?

Such pomp. Such circumstance.

I scraped the scab free.

In my hand, it wiggled legs

from a swollen body. I dropped it, afraid

that someone would see not it

but the flinch.

It crawled beneath the seat ahead, fed,

spiderish in a cavernous space.

I never told.

Those the first notes of my _ostinato_ ,

a palilalial life and too close

to exposure of a sort I couldn't afford.

Shroud the startle

as doggedly as the tick that cleaves.

If scars uncovered become parasites,

then scrape off the scab where the hollow beneath

is not quite flesh, not quite blood,

near to liquid, lava-like, neither fire nor stone.

Carry me, then, into the cavern,

the crevices, the interspaces.

Cut me a kerf and let me climb in.

### Cecropia, Polyphemus, Luna

Like the three kings, they came from afar.

Shadow puppets at twilight.

Someone must be dangling them from strings,

they drop and bounce so in the backlit air.

The desert of suburbia requires

provisions

if you're meant to cross

and endure

its incalculable expanse.

The pheromone that summons

goes undetected

by the human sense—

no sight, no smell, no sound we know,

no way of knowing

if you're not a moth.

Through the screen door I watch

their juddering dance above the yew hedge.

I am ten years old this July

and in daylight watch truculent cardinals

bolt the _Taxus_ berries

and I take their cues. It is my job

to sweep the ones they drop,

red outside green like reversed pimento olives

or like me. I burn and mutter and wait

for the night's evanescors. I am bellicose

of late, and abashed.

I am youngest, feel weakest, but only

think I fear darkest.

It has been a year of not

being told.

There is familial action in the night air.

Distances covered, at question

retrievals undertaken and assurances received.

I believe. The silk moths promise to be there

each night and heed the call if the wind is honest.

Easy to tell the females from males

if you know what to look for.

I thought, then, that this was always the way:

the ladies' abdomens extend,

the boys' antennae rise erect and vain.

Always ladies and boys when in truth it was about

girls and gentlemen.

It is not the porch light that draws them:

it's been shut. It's the call

of something pungent and dispersed.

How do I accentuate their consequence,

these incarnate things of nearly nothing weight?

If they were asking of me, I did not hear.

I'd follow their star

of wonder if I knew

the compass point to choose.

I don't know who the gifts they bore were for,

but I secreted some away

and wish all this time on

that I'd stolen

their dromedary wings.

### Raven

I practiced calling from my own unfeathered throat.

My mother remembered how angry

he was, the man who fed the bears

horsemeat outside Onchiota.

The vultures came, the dainty fox.

Too pale to recognize totems

when he read them aloud, I saw only what I wanted.

Crows. A dark difference altogether.

We would have counted one for sorrow, three for a wedding,

had we known. Misplacing the middle joy.

My father, cautious with gifts, bought me a bearclaw,

jasper and turquoise on silver. Around his neck—

Hibernian and Teuton sides

of the same polished, august coin -

a cross, medal miraculous, proof of rank and name.

Quicksilver under his collar, metal his substitute for a river gone to ice.

In the dark, on a ladder, cawing and croaking and ruffling

feathers (all twenty-five hundred and hundreds more), flexing wing, arching claw,

destroying a shadow already invisible in the night.

The ravens picked the bones clean during absences of the bears. My imitations,

eight rungs high, required painted wings.

### Echo, Test

I call myself sixth daughter, fifth sister to each sister,

aunt to five, wary and unknowing

that it all begins and ends with one small heart.

I say eighth of eight as if my heart could beat

for yours, small sister, the always-infant, tiny-hearted,

who ought be older than I. Perhaps I am you grown.

We were all the praying sort then. We were asked

to offer intentions, such little intentions

as eight-year-olds are capable and I wanted us to pray for you,

dead before I was born, and the priest asked if I meant

for your short life or my long one.

In the womb, your heart lay high in your chest, so large

compared with the rest of you, so small in a warm-aired world, beating

as a hummingbird's in summer. It was meant to slow, like all hearts do.

In ten years the doctors learned all they would need to keep

my newborn heart beating had it required it. The defect of your heart

was that it came too soon.

My heart has grown, as all hearts do, to the size of my fist,

clenched still at the thought.

I could make the tedious list of things you will never do.

I am conscious of it at times—capping a pen, stifling a sneeze,

furtively examining

a picture crooked in a mirror frame.

My sisters, all elder, say they remember only red hair

and cries

and I remember nothing,

youngest child stripped of tears.

Three decades more and comes my turn; they call the test an echo, and it is.

The technician tips the screen and I can see the open and close

of the valve, hear the rhythm, unmistakable,

unimagined.

With a catch of breath the pulsing jumps then starts again.

I fill my lungs and empty them.

Contributor Notes

 Sarah W. Bartlett's work appears in Adanna, Ars Medica, The Aurorean, Colére, Minerva Rising, PoemMemoirStory, Mom Egg Review, Wellesley College Women's Review of Books, and several anthologies, including the award-winning Women on Poetry (McFarland & Co. Inc., 2012); and two poetry chapbooks (Finishing Line Press). Her work celebrates nature's healing wisdom and the human spirit's landscapes. In 2010 she founded writinginsideVT for Vermont's incarcerated women to encourage personal/social change within a supportive community.

 Susan Bouchard grew up in Manhattan and the Bronx and currently lives in Westchester County. She is a teacher and a member of the Westchester Poetry Caravan, reading her work to those who might not otherwise have the chance to experience poetry. Susan says that in everyday life she is a rule follower, but, through her narrators, finds her rebellious voice. When not writing, Susan enjoys listening to live music and polishing her nails.

 Nathaniel Cairney lives with his family in Belgium, where he writes, cooks, and hosts a podcast about Belgian beer. Originally from the U.S. Midwest, his poems have been published in Sixfold, California Quarterly, Illya's Honey, and others. He holds an MA in English Literature from Kansas State University.

 Richard Cole has published two books of poetry: The Glass Children (The University of Georgia Press) and Success Stories (Limestone Books). He is also the author of a memoir, Catholic by Choice (Loyola Press). His poems and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Poetry, Hudson Review, Sun Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, The Penn Review, Image Journal and various anthologies. Cole works as a painter and business writer in Austin, Texas. www.richard-cole.net.

 Tess Cooper is a writer, artist, and sometimes bear living in the woods outside Detroit. She creates beauty from pain and, historically, gets into fistfights with everyone.

 Catherine R. Cryan loves old tools, new pencils, owl pellets, and the Oxford comma. Her poems have been published by Broadsided Press, The Outrider Review, The Comstock Review, The Poet's Billow, Evening Street, and others. She lives in Rhode Island, juggling the various roles of writer, science educator, farmer, college sports statistician, and parent of young twin sons.

 Meli Broderick Eaton studied with poet Mary Oliver and author John Gregory Brown at Sweet Briar College. Her poems have received recognition in two The Source Weekly/OSU-Cascades MFA poetry contests, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, and the Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition, and she won first place in the Oregon Poetry Association New Poets spring 2019 contest. Her work has also appeared in Flying South magazine. She lives with her family on a suburban microfarm in Oregon.

 Emma Flattery is a freshman majoring in marine biology at the University of California, San Diego, who dedicates her free time to poetry, fiction, bodybuilding, and learning languages. As a child of active-duty members of the US Air Force, she has lived across the country and traveled throughout the world. She fell in love with the ocean when she was three (after actually falling into it) and has used its beauty for inspiration ever since.

 Michael Fleming was born in San Francisco, raised in Wyoming, and has lived and learned and worked all around the world, from Thailand, England, and Swaziland to Berkeley, New York City, and now Brattleboro, Vermont. He's been a teacher, a grad student, a carpenter, and always a writer; for the past fifteen years he has edited literary anthologies for W. W. Norton. (You can see some of Fleming's own writing at: www.dutchgirl.com/foxpaws.)

 Edward Garvey I wrote my first short story and poem in the late 1960s and began my college education as a creative writing major at San Francisco State University. The beauty and power of writing lead me to the beauty and power of the natural world, and I temporarily changed careers paths. After a short diversion of 40 years as a scientist, I'm back to writing full time.

 Brandon Hansen is from a village named Long Lake. He can affirm that the lake is, indeed, long. He also writes.

 Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius lives in Southern California with his husband and ethereal, unbelievably perfect dog, Benny, having recently relocated from Chicago. His work has appeared in The Dreaded Biscuits, and he is currently querying agents to represent his first novel. When not writing or being an undeserving Benny dad, he tries to catch up on sleep.

 Andy Kerstetter is a writer living in Idaho's Wood River Valley, birthplace of Ezra Pound and death-place of Ernest Hemingway, where he freelances for magazines. He's worked as a journalist since earning a degree in writing from Geneva College in his home state of Pennsylvania. He has recently begun publishing his poetry, which so far has appeared in the anthology Gravitas. Andy hopes to pursue an MFA in poetry in 2020.

 Donna French McArdle is a writer and elementary school writing coach north of Boston. Her poems have appeared in the anthology, Lost Orchard, and in literary magazines, including Wilderness House Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, and Antioch Review. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. This is her second appearance in Sixfold poetry; she really likes how the review process creates the publication.

 AJ Powell is a once and future teacher who raises her children, served on a school board, and attempts to write in the wee hours of the morning with varied success.

 Andrea Reisenauer is a PhD candidate in translation studies who was born in the United States and now lives in Spain. You can find some of her older poems here and there, but she likes to think of herself as an emerging poet, which is her way of saying: stay tuned—there's more on the way.

 Megan Skelly is an emerging poet completing her second year of the MFA Creative Writing program at City College of New York, where she teaches freshman composition. Committed to cultivating the arts in education, she also serves as a mentor for the Poetry Outreach program and substitute teaches in the NYC public schools. In her free time, she practices and teaches yoga, seeking the balance between freedom and form that poetry too invites.

 Claudia Skutar is a poet, scholar, and English professor at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash, where she teaches creative writing, literature, and composition and co-edits The Blue Ash Review Online. She's also been a guest poet at Michigan State University, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, and Wright State University.

 Mehrnaz Sokhansanj is a poet and spoken word artist based in Los Angeles, CA. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from UCLA and her poems have appeared in the Underground Literary Journal, the Los Angeles Poets Society, and Papeachu Review. She is currently working on her debut poetry chapbook, which is set to be published early 2020. More of her work can be viewed on her website, http://mehrnazthepoet.com.

 Abigail F Taylor has been previously published in Illya's Honey, 3Elements Review, and Cattlemen and Cadillacs, among others. Her novella, The Ballad of a Muscogee Trapper, recently debuted with accompanying artwork by @samhears & is available on her website.

 Greg Tuleja was born in New Jersey and received degrees in biology and music from Rutgers University. He has worked as a professional musician, piano technician, and flute teacher. Greg lives in Southampton, Massachusetts with his wife, Frances, and is currently the Academic Dean at the Williston Northampton School in Easthampton, where he has taught English and music, and for 35 years coached the girls' cross country team. His poems and short stories have appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including the Maryland Review, Lonely Planet Press, Romantics Quarterly, Thema, and The Society of Classical Poets.

 Alex B. Wasalinko is a poet based in Pennsylvania. Before returning to her home state, she studied creative writing at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Her poetry appears in the University of Scranton's undergrad journal, Esprit, and The Ekphrastic Review. Currently, Alex lives in Philadelphia where she teaches creative writing to children and teens. In her spare time, she visits museums, dabbles in art, and attends workshops at Drexel University's Writers Room.
