Matthew Buxton

knocks the lamp off of
my desk. This is how

I know the ghost is a cat.
I consider purchasing

a Ouija board or
perhaps some nice string.

Sarah Swiderski

It is true that dinosaurs are melted into

Legos and Tupperware

and somewhere an old man  

plants a peach tree

and stars are born

    named by some website

         and die in spectacular

 implosions 

Nevertheless, 

I tether myself to you

in whirling, shy-smile orbit 

around your gravity

You gather all my particles

my forehead hairs and dirty soles

and dangle them

from strands in space

Thank you for being my

    blanket nest 

        Chinese food

           snow day friend

as poets die in droves

and the ice caps melt

and thousands of mice are born 

in half a breath

Amanda Wolf

To accommodate the size of our heads,

we all are born prematurely: the price

of our intelligence with a long childhood

and an even longer old age. Can’t wait

to grow up but also can’t stop to get old.

Only in the middle, for long as in years

or short as in a blink of an eye, when

infancy has condensed into memory, and

the decay lies still in the future, will we

rest from this sprint forward, will we float

above the water looking up to the stars in

heavens, then we will sink to the bottom,

get blinded and hardened by the depth.  

One flesh we once were in the wombs

of our mothers. Inch by inch we grew

apart until that distance eventually got

beyond measure. Separation in our blood.   

We want so many things in the world. We want

to keep on living, want to go out and walk on 

the face of this earth, and let our voices echo 

down in the valleys. Yet, we want to shrink, to

go home and get back to the beginning, all the

way returning to the first cell that split into us.

John Cai

The first thing the babe will see is herself.

The babe had been determined, 

as all babes were.

 

Her spit, liquid achromat.

Asphyxiated genomes under pillow.

Her cough, violet trauma.

Fungus had snowed on her purity at conception. 

These days,

molded genes have made her sick.

Mother’s fingers meet the forehead of her first child. Then cheeks. Then neck. 

Her touch altering the plump and plush skin of the pink body. 

The hardening creeps. Mirrorizes. Reflects.

 

Mother’s fingers return to the newly hardened alloy of her baby’s neck. Brittle. 

It shivers into cracks. 

The shavings, glass snow. Weather in the hospital.

Mother grabs the shards and pushes them into the baby’s mouth, watching herself on the tongue.

The last thing Mother will see is herself.

Residual crumbs seek passage back into her silvern limbs. They merge.

Mother loves her baby, 

but she cannot love her baby,

and the babe didn’t have the language to ask, what did your mother do to me?

 

Baby clutches Mother’s finger.

Glass on glass, wet mirrors. 

Corporeal funhouse, epigenetic crime.

Objects inside Baby are closer than they appear.

Mother is made of Baby, and Baby of her. 

When they look at each other, who do they blame?

The last thing Mother will ever see is herself.

Mother had been determined, 

as all mothers were.

Trinity Saxon

Dana Kahn

A wood door marks a wall of stone and plant,

Standing highest at my ribs, and its wood,

Crimson, fierce yet lonely amongst the ant.

Longing to discover where hearts once stood

Stark against the wall, in the Sun’s embrace,

My hand grips the hot knob and I crouch like

A goblin, sneaking into this dark place.

And my chest pounds. Lamplight, low and ghostlike,

Shines on masked dancers dressing debonair.

They look through me. Move elegant but cold,

Seeming to forget what it’s like to care,

To see the eyes of the partner they hold.

Perhaps they once did, but what do I know?

Love’s masked to me, and does not wish to show.

Harrison Bloom

Eye contact becomes obsolete 

behind cameras where I see the

homemade mask resting around

her neck quiet as a silk scarf, 

pulling her voice closer. We might

have met in reality, during the old

outdoor sunsets and other ordinary

miracles. My smile shone on her

sunglasses, while the breeze from 

her nostrils itched my stubble. Yet,

the press conferences and the sign 

interpreters dispatched us to glaring

and estranged horizons. We waited.

The truth is that

we are not real.

When did our

honesty slip off?

If only she could 

reach out and slap 

me, the spice of

burning would wake

me from the endless

dreaming of touch.   

John Cai

After James Wright

Outside room window  

I scope my friendly oak 

staunch in the dirt 

mound arm-wrestling wind 

in sunshine. Near the fence 

corner behind the greenhouse 

sparrows chuckle & make 

lovelies out of logpiles. Critters 

brave shoving themselves 

through a plot of muted mealy 

grass. Bedside glass makes light 

sectioned on piles of pants  

pants & other things  

that don’t amuse me until  

washing machines feel them go  

limp. Loose-leaf. Like 

October’s fallings. Unruly unruly  

those shriveled-up small witch  

hands the shadows of branches 

growing very long wishing  

they were something denser  

like shadows of tree trunks.  

I embrace tempur 

pedic as the evening darkens  

& comes on. My head-hawk 

dream-floating over looking  

for home. I have wasted the day.

Henry Koskoff

Escaping from the new sun, the river

is over-flowed, moisturizing pebbles.

The reign of blue and shadows is 

descending. Hymns heard from the

coolness of the wind, complying.

Like clouds cringe on the post-rain sky,

the solution to a problem is a problem;

the truth behind a lie is another lie. 

The show is an excuse for a party;

the party is an excuse for talking;

talking is an excuse for neglect and 

loneliness.

They would be back.

What went away is sweat.

What is left are dry and weary eyes.

John Cai