Robert Cording: Power Lines
Their shaggy crowns and bright blue
And white plumage jolt the dull background
Of road-dusty greens. Sometimes I pull over
To watch their unhesitating headfirst dive
James Crews: Meditation Class
I wiped the fog from the glass and saw
a statue of the Buddha on a shelf, laughing
at himself, laughing at me standing there
in a puddle, under a pine tree that kept
dripping on my head
Fleur Adcock: Happy Ending
After they had not made love
she pulled the sheet up over her eyes
until he was buttoning his shirt:
not shyness for their bodies – those
they had willingly displayed – but a frail
endeavor to apologise.
Laurence Musgrove: America Windows
A dreamer awakens, holds up
her pen like Liberty, writes
in moonlight page after page,
sails on a ship, bird in a tree,
songs to a yellow sun shining.
Christine Rhein: Uncharted Waters
Heavy and high buckles the sea.
We complain / we blame.
This is no time for poetry.
Rick Campbell: Two Poems
the first bird sings that it’s time
to walk the beach, where gulls don’t sing
and herons stand silent, waiting
for a pilchard to offer itself to God.
Jan Beatty: My Father’s Houses
My father stands lean and young
in the formica kitchen, drinking a shot of Imperial.
He shoots his head back/swallows it all/
slams down the shot glass/turns around and says:
That’s good stuff.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Nostalgia
Nostalgias we share with friends
around a good table, nodding yes, yes, to our
glad sadnesses as we bring back a taste, a kiss,
that one song we will never forget.
Jianqing Zheng: Site Visit
The Valley Store in Avalon, Mississippi, long abandoned, still holds its worn-out sign above the locked double doors. Many years ago, John Hurt lived nearby.
Mary B. Moore: Ab Ovum
could say anything’s inside me, Gloria, Dad, Mom,
the old Royal typewriter, Xs, Ys, a blue ’58 Hudson . . .
but I Wiki-checked the car and learn they quit making them
in ’57 so then I wonder if I mean the Hudson River
José A. Alcántara: Two Extras
We prefer our violence subtle
managed, predictable.
Not for us the hunter and his rifle
but the factory farm, the feedlot, the killing floor.
Donna Hilbert: Three Poems
It’s the walkers I wonder about:
sad faces, our caps pulled down, moving fast,
no place special to go, so fierce to get there.
Sean Sexton: Semen Testing the Herd Bulls
We push them in trios
and quartets—bellowing down the lane
—a rider betwixt to stage them
strategically in the pens. Once
arrived, the usual upstart gets thrown
through a fence.
Barbara Hamby: Hatred
Abracadabra, says Mephisto, the fire fly
buddha of Rue Morgue, and the whole wide world
changes from a stumbling rick-rack machine
doing the rag time, the bag time, the I’m-on-the
edge-of-a-drag time to a tornado of unmitigated
fury.
