by Laura Behr
Maybe I’m waiting for nothing.
Maybe I’m unearthing instructions
to keep the sky from falling.
Maybe I’m just supposed to sleep here.
Maybe someone will wake me with a squirt gun.
Maybe the highest good, is always a parting guest,
just out of reach.
Maybe the edge of the wind diverts logic,
unveiling limitations.
Maybe limitations could be anything,
the best of days gone by, time punching a clock.
Maybe you’ll let me put our stories in a box.
Maybe I’ll let something good be said for you.
Maybe I’ll take you home and kiss your life-lessons.
Maybe you’ll soon forget lost loves and worn out Sappho.
Maybe at the appointed hour, just before dawn, the last night of August,
a race of lonely giants will arrive, like dark energy outlaws
becoming one nation, saving morning, pulling it through a tunnel of light.
Friday, May 10, 2013
bombs go off everywhere. i am tired
by Amy Soricelli
everyone is tired.
sleeping head on their arms on their desk their papers
their papers are a pillow.
they tell me this - they say 'i am so tired'.
we carry hate like bricks in a lunch box the apple from 4th grade move over
there is death now - a little chocolate chip cookie of death -
it is easier to spin this on a sunny day but i am too sleepy to think.
three people in the morning said "i am so tired i could nap - i could nap right here
in this spot".
the arrow "you are here".
i would be there snoring away
soundlessly snoring we are all so tired of sorrow.
exhausts us all.
it is tiring to fall down and not get up.
everyone is tired.
everyone is tired.
sleeping head on their arms on their desk their papers
their papers are a pillow.
they tell me this - they say 'i am so tired'.
we carry hate like bricks in a lunch box the apple from 4th grade move over
there is death now - a little chocolate chip cookie of death -
it is easier to spin this on a sunny day but i am too sleepy to think.
three people in the morning said "i am so tired i could nap - i could nap right here
in this spot".
the arrow "you are here".
i would be there snoring away
soundlessly snoring we are all so tired of sorrow.
exhausts us all.
it is tiring to fall down and not get up.
everyone is tired.
Goethe’s Clock
by Brian Wake
Goethe’s clock is ticking in an empty room.
He sits quite motionless. All art, then peels
a curling strip of wallpaper from a dilapidated
wall, begins, he says, from what we know
and seeks connections everywhere. All poetry
gives probability to our disjointed world.
Goethe winds his clock each afternoon
at twenty five to four. I wind the present on,
he says, the shipwrecked man ashore. I will assert
my part in what, until a moment such as this,
has been concealed. I wind a dawn of flickering
light bulbs into something more meticulous.
Goethe winds his clock against the floodgate
swelling with the pressing weight of all he knows
but fears will forget, the force of instinct, reason
and the privilege of art, the walls of books.
I wind, he says, the unexpected footprints
in the newly fallen snow. I wind the barricades
set up against the odds of never growing old.
I wind the passive consciousness of such
impossibilities. I wind, he says, and pours
a quantity of wine into an empty glass,
the sum of almost everything I ever knew
into a time that, for the life of me, I hope
might never pass.
Goethe’s clock is ticking in an empty room.
He sits quite motionless. All art, then peels
a curling strip of wallpaper from a dilapidated
wall, begins, he says, from what we know
and seeks connections everywhere. All poetry
gives probability to our disjointed world.
Goethe winds his clock each afternoon
at twenty five to four. I wind the present on,
he says, the shipwrecked man ashore. I will assert
my part in what, until a moment such as this,
has been concealed. I wind a dawn of flickering
light bulbs into something more meticulous.
Goethe winds his clock against the floodgate
swelling with the pressing weight of all he knows
but fears will forget, the force of instinct, reason
and the privilege of art, the walls of books.
I wind, he says, the unexpected footprints
in the newly fallen snow. I wind the barricades
set up against the odds of never growing old.
I wind the passive consciousness of such
impossibilities. I wind, he says, and pours
a quantity of wine into an empty glass,
the sum of almost everything I ever knew
into a time that, for the life of me, I hope
might never pass.
Magnolias
by Lauren Tivey
Budding in early April,
the bare-branched trees
are candelabras, their tips
flames of white, purple,
mauve, the rare yellow.
We are allowed to gush
over them, the event
of their opening cups,
their unfolding into
party gowns, as Étienne,
toiling in his arboretum
for the Empress Josephine,
must have wept with joy
over his hybrids, over
each individual angel.
Tonight, the maiden moon,
intoxicating scent; I am
thinking of you, how seductive
and perilous the metaphor.
But it is spring, a time
of indulgence, and we are far
from France, under exotic skies,
flowers trumpeting their magic:
I cannot stop looking at them.
I cannot stop thinking of you.
Budding in early April,
the bare-branched trees
are candelabras, their tips
flames of white, purple,
mauve, the rare yellow.
We are allowed to gush
over them, the event
of their opening cups,
their unfolding into
party gowns, as Étienne,
toiling in his arboretum
for the Empress Josephine,
must have wept with joy
over his hybrids, over
each individual angel.
Tonight, the maiden moon,
intoxicating scent; I am
thinking of you, how seductive
and perilous the metaphor.
But it is spring, a time
of indulgence, and we are far
from France, under exotic skies,
flowers trumpeting their magic:
I cannot stop looking at them.
I cannot stop thinking of you.
Old City
by Stephen Jarrell Williams
Too many walls,
baloney smell
damp.
Our minds infiltrated,
radiated
with bogus facts.
Confusion
slicing us
into stumps.
Fruit
bloodied,
roots dangling...
We're mashed
potatoes
heaped on their golden plates.
They're laughing
at us
spooning us down.
Closing us in
cardboard boxes
against the elements.
But when our babies weep,
we sprout thorns
engorged.
Our old city shaking,
a thousand cities quaking,
dust rising to the sky.
Stones coming their way.
Too many walls,
baloney smell
damp.
Our minds infiltrated,
radiated
with bogus facts.
Confusion
slicing us
into stumps.
Fruit
bloodied,
roots dangling...
We're mashed
potatoes
heaped on their golden plates.
They're laughing
at us
spooning us down.
Closing us in
cardboard boxes
against the elements.
But when our babies weep,
we sprout thorns
engorged.
Our old city shaking,
a thousand cities quaking,
dust rising to the sky.
Stones coming their way.
Stalking Horses
by Jeremy Marks
I send out at night
my stalking horses
They report to me
at dawn
behind the firewood shed.
My children feel that I turn
into a four-legged, centaur-like man
while they are sleeping
That my eyes are seated behind
a pair of large globes
catching the sinuous, roving robe
of equine landscapes
But they do not-
The horses are their own;
they stalk for themselves
through many a darkness
I know not
And they are not mine-
we merely share this patch of Earth
I bought off a man
-as I bought them
And all of us were then turned loose
upon ourselves.
I send out at night
my stalking horses
They report to me
at dawn
behind the firewood shed.
My children feel that I turn
into a four-legged, centaur-like man
while they are sleeping
That my eyes are seated behind
a pair of large globes
catching the sinuous, roving robe
of equine landscapes
But they do not-
The horses are their own;
they stalk for themselves
through many a darkness
I know not
And they are not mine-
we merely share this patch of Earth
I bought off a man
-as I bought them
And all of us were then turned loose
upon ourselves.
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