They Hear a Different Dawn / Scott Burnam
They Hear a Different Dawn
still in the satisfying glow of waking
the truth of the day ahead just a bleary threat
i lay in the confluence of
dawn light
coos and calls from a dove on the wall
babbling water
unhurried street traffic
from inside this space i feign that we’re safe
so many dreams stay possible if i just stay here
but our neighbors four doors down
they hear a different dawn through brown ears
a chaos and clamor the opposite of music
and the pretending of silence that exposes
truck doors
jack boots
loaded chambers
ram-battered door
a rising chorus of human inhumanity
that too many ears refuse to hear
fills the morning until it, too,
is stifled and disappeared
the dove is broken now and limps along the wall
one wing waving in manufactured silence
another white flag ignored ( the last three lines may not be necessary, but I put them in anyway. If you decide that they don’t make it from the copy to the paste, I’ll take that edit based on your experiences.Thanks so much!)
Black Cherry / David Estringel
Kill me softly with your lipstick mouth, glistening like honey—haunted by spirits—under the slow burn of this bar light sun. Turning turning turning your sweaty glass, lost in thought, you stop to brush willful, black strands of hair from your eyes—I think they’re blue—and I wonder what your story is. Tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine.
Like tea leaves in a cup, you search the bottom of your glass for answers, through the smoke of a Lucky Strike smoldering in a nearby ashtray. Mystic vision conjured across the great divide between where you were and where you are now. Scrying mine, I see our fate’s the same. Guess we’re good like that.
Glancing back, I see you’re gone. Just smoke and mirrors in the end. A shade in the lamplight and the smears of black cherry you left behind.
siblings / Catherine Forest
Soaking up sunlight
Palms growing up together
Just siblings like us
Everything Deserves a Story / Erika Seshadri
“Mother Nature is the Kingdom of Heaven”
—Thich Nhat Hanh
I found a bodhi leaf pressed between
the pages of White Oleander,
as flat as my memory
of placing it there
sacred architecture, a
coarse heart curvature
riparian drought, veins
crumbling
I filled my mind with un-rememberings
to create a story about the leaf
and how it came to be inside the book,
because everything deserves a story:
monsoon season, i was
drenched, breathing
out the downpour, licking water
off my lips, bare feet anchored
in the flood, in that way
earth touches heaven
the bodhi tree, wind bent,
rain-ripe leaves quivering
on stems, dripping blessings
in my hair, in that way
heaven touches earth
outstretched,
i plucked the biggest leaf,
replacing it with apologies.
i just wanted to hold
heaven and earth
in my hand
The Other Side of Fame / Arthur Turfa
Reflections at the Elliptical Machine While Watching TV
Only recently giving up doing my 2.5
miles to Army standard, I take it easier
with my titanium hips.
Listening to the radio on the world’s last
MP3 player, watching close-captioned
History Channel as I sweat.
They used to have actual history, but
now schlocky documentaries talk about
aliens helping Nazi scientists.
Today Dan Aykroyd narrates some
stuff about deep dark mysteries
that no one figured out.
Beldar Conehead/Elwood Blues and
Miss Daisy’s son reduced to this dreck
on the other side of fame.
