The 30/30 Project: August 2022

Welcome to the 30/30 Project, an extraordinary challenge and fundraiser for Tupelo Press, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary press. Each month, volunteer poets run the equivalent of a “poetry marathon,” writing 30 poems in 30 days, while the rest of us “sponsor” and encourage them every step of the way.

The volunteer poets for August 2022 are Rusty Barnes, Donna Dallas, Angelo D’Amato, Jennifer Dracos-Tice, David Estringel, R.W. Haynes, Erin Marsh, h.l. Rijo, and Elizabeth S. Wolf. Their poems are listed each day, below, in alphabetical order by poet’s name. We hope you enjoy discovering new poets, forms, and poems as you scroll through each day’s drafts!

If you’d like to volunteer for a 30/30 Project month, please fill out our application here and warm up your pen!

Day 30 / Poem 30

Untitled / Donna Dallas

These ruined eyes
torn up hip
seeking solace in my big toe
it’s an ache
a climb
as if I’ve split myself 
into part water
part oil
slam dunked into a fog
that’s lasted two decades
some detour
I decided would be an epic adventure
turned into a survivor search
sun down
stars twinkle
I give it another day
another breath into a long
goodbye

On the High Watchtower / Angelo D’Amato

Do I dare disturb the universe?¹, murmurs
the High Guardian of the Vizirof.
Does the universe dare disturb you, retorts
the Kulzphazur of the Nharilhaks.

Taste buds enlivened by fermented fruit juice
as nocturnal winds soothe their skins
and the star systems spin beyond the great cleansing dome.

Do I have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?²
Do you have the strength to be the crisis
of the moment?

Mists of camphor, steam of the rosewood,
essence of jasper, fragrance of the lily fields;
swaying of the Protectorate’s trees, chirruping of the midnight frogs,
lowing of the sluggish freight trains, hum of the commercial highways;
galactic mists, exposed for all; gleams of the rising planets; intakes of breath
as children press their eyes against telescopes and behold the bands of gas
around distant giants; and the hot chocolate, steaming in styrofoam; 
and midnight sandwiches, pressed in aluminum wrap; 
matchboxes, teeming with bulbous sulphur heads;
campfires, nibbling at whitening twigs.

We lost the Great Libraries in the Revolution’s fires,
The flames took their time chewing on all that knowledge.
The windows popped, popped, popped– we used the shards 
when our swords would no longer do. Now, they stand as husks, 
screaming to revived city blocks about the inequities of war.

Dulce et decorum est³
pro patria mori.

I saw a man cannibalized by his friends
in the remains of his vegetable garden,
hands pulling at withered tomato vines

¹From T.S. Eliot’s “Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”
²ibid
³from Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”

Twentieth-First Century Women’s Healthcare / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

Fall /  David Estringel 

Summer clouds 

pull—  

cotton candy stretches—  

‘cross the sky 

passing time

(and my front porch), 

playing Cat’s Cradle, 

o’er lazy fields, 

spying from Jacob’s Ladder. 

With the twitch 

of a whisker, 

Autumn comes. 

Play and frolics  

in the sun  

come to an end

with pecks 

from Winter’s lips

and the falling of leaves. 

Last Lines for Friends / R. W. Haynes

As our month of conversation ends,
And daily deadlines at last go away,
We hope our Muses all shake hands and say
Some inspiration came to us, their friends.
So many rough drafts online by today…
Don’t poems need seven years in the drawer?
What did we take on this marathon for?
Are we better for the struggle as time runs away?
Some of us were drawn from the exchange
By life’s normal distractions: to all, our best.
Schedules, obligations, distractions congest
Our lives and override the plans we arrange.
But from our dialogue may all of us take
Wisdom and strength for inspiration’s sake.

Wholehearted / h. l. Rijo

We live in a beautifully vulnerable world.
One step away from apocalyptic despair,
chaotic pandemics,
and the climate disasters.
I once tried to find the other side 
in lily pads, 
elephant wrinkles, 
and maple tree sap.

You can’t selectively numb your world,
although that’s all I ever strived to do.
As the earth turns her dial,
years, decades, and centuries on,
I wonder if I’ll ever learn from the maple tree
and open like the lily 
bound to the water below.
Or care for others like an elephant 
wrapping it’s trunk around an orphan.
We live and die under a harsh yellow sun.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
A savage world is unforgiving to all.

But to live life vulnerable is to be open to hurt
so I’ll try to be anchored in self worth.
We all try and we all fail.
What we do impacts not only ourselves
but also each little circle that we entail.
Your footprint can go on for miles…

Let’s make believe (just for a moment)
in the make believe: 

We allow ourselves to be deeply seen
and share in all possibilities.
We practice vulnerability 
and live wholeheartedly 
without any guarantee

Sighting Down the New Generation Gap / Elizabeth S. Wolf

Philosophy of Ethics: it was a small discussion-based class, a what-would-
ou-do class: the hungry man in a food store, in a pharmacy while his wife
lay sick, manning the switch as the train approached a fork in the tracks.
12 students meeting in a dorm space, in the evening, a visiting prof, new to
teaching, from Russia (or was it Germany? Belgium?). A small night class
on a large staid campus in upstate New York. And then one night
                                                                                 as the students gathered
he crashed the scene: an older man, mildly unkempt, with a bit of a
tremor, and a large black bag. He sat next to my daughter. He said
he was auditing the class, somebody’s uncle; he said she was pretty,
admired her hair, stroked the tree of life tattoo inside her arm. It made
her nervous. He touched her hair, near her face, invited her to a dance,
lobbed comments at the other students. The teacher arrived late.
He repeated his story about auditing, maybe he would participate,
the teacher agreed; the students saw the kid who was supposedly his
nephew approach the door, notice the man, stop, wide-eyed, turn, and
leave. This was information. This was not good. The class began
                                                                                and he did disrupt
from time to time. Making little sense, loudly, with authority. The kids
near the windows tensed. The guy by the trashcan slid closer. The man
had chosen his seat by the only door, obstructing the proper exit. The
teacher soldiered on until he started picking on the Black girl in the
front. Say it, he said, say you’re a big voluptuous {n-word} and proud!
She is, is she not? he asked the class. He ramped up his volume and
slurred his slurs. This is all on tape. The teacher told him to stop: he
refused: the teacher told him to leave: he refused: she threatened to
call security (who the kids had been trying to flag all class) and he
finally, finally, decamped, taking his bag with him. And then the room
                                                                                   erupted. Why the hell
didn’t you kick him out? call the police right away? asked the students. Why
did you not! He was harassing them- touching one and trashing the other.
Why didn’t you speak up? asked the teacher, clearly confused. Why didn’t
you react and ask him to stop and surely if you don’t want to be touched-
                                                                                     and here I confess
when my daughter told me the story, I had the same reaction. Why didn’t
you tell him off, swat away his hands, rise up? And my daughter, who was
relating this story over the phone, got angry. What are you talking about!
she cried. That’s not what you do. You’re supposed to DE-escalate. This guy
fit the profile. White man, out of place, black bag, weird around women,
hot about race- we thought this guy was a shooter. He acted just like
a shooter. And we, we just wanted to live. We were drafting our good-bye
texts out of his sight, under our desks. You. Don’t. Get. It.
This is the event

that we have been training for our entire lives.

Day 29 / Poem 29

Untitled / Donna Dallas

We had a pretty lousy spring
the late winter storm
blew that tree limb
straight into the picture window
we taped and plastic-wrapped
but the cold grew into the house
so big
we wore layers of sweaters
even as the frost outside melted
and disappeared

We could have 
got in the old Volvo
drove to Home Depot
ordered a new window
could have
but the government income
is just enough
to pay the taxes
car insurance
some food

On Wednesdays
we go to the casino
Jean has whiskey sours
laughs incredulously
winks at the bartender
twenty-five years her junior
money spent

Back home at dusk
the cold penetrates
to our marrow
sleep under every
blanket we own
the noises from the outside
echo louder through the thin
plastic wrap 
that’s dry and popped
with holes

Dealing with the Captain / Angelo D’Amato

Have you seen the latest display in the Corridor of Galactic Art? They have a whole set of M______ sculptures in the Scintillating Gallery. Oh, wait, I bankrolled that? I completely forgot about that! Fantastic! Oh, I own those sculptures? Even better! It’s getting so hard to keep track of these things. Surely, you, of all people, can understand, Mr. Baron Sir? I would clap you on the back and laugh heartily, but my hand would go right through you, and I haven’t had a heart in centuries! Don’t go around repeating that–some people might read too much into it, not understand it as a joke.

John Haunter cannot feel.
John Haunter cannot sleep.
John Haunter preens beside his frozen corpse,
sealed inside the ancient family Keep.

I suppose I should take offense at being thought of as a heartless ghoul, but then I would be offended that people would see me for what I am; and that would be like being angry with a sheep for gaining sentience and being annoyed that it has been called a sheep its entire life, you follow? I also suppose there’s more you could read into that if you were desperate for aneurysm–Lord and/or Lords knows and/or know that I’d kill to have one, you have no idea how much I envy you mortals–but do us both a favor and don’t, okay? Overthinking tends to jeopardize commerce. Just bing bang boom, cash flow, and voilà! You’re on top of the heap, or you’re dead. Grim? Why, yes, of course it’s grim! But I’m sure someone in your position doesn’t disagree, Mr. Baron Sir?

He weeps, but no tears flow.
He strokes his frozen nose,
feels up his frozen chest–
O Gods above, just grant him eternal rest!

I’m teasing, I’m teasing. Of course you agree. People aren’t afraid enough to pretend to like you if you’re not on top. Pretending, not pretending…functionally, it’s the same when you can empty a nation’s treasury with a well-timed phone call. Or a small fiefdom’s. Or whatever you’re in charge of. What? I’m just speaking truth, my guy. There’s no sense in pretending we don’t know how this works. Of course,  I’m not going to  do anything, because unlike the other bozos I deal with, I actually like you. You’re all right. Oh, let’s not worry ourselves over the details right now. Really, these things are never good places to sort out these contracts. Why don’t we just pass these onto our respective lawyers, and let’s get you back to the Lounge, all right? I’m pretty sure it’s Bikini Day.

And the Extravaganza throbs above;
and rival Queens and rival Kings make mad, mad love.
He shall pour out the wine, toast to their health–
O, the Joy that bursts from his eternal wealth!

Next week is a Celebration of Contemporary Dance, and I know how much that excites all you lovable bozos! No, that’s what I said earlier, I called you a lovable bozo. Oh, come on, man! I’ve been dead for who-cares-how-many centuries, it’s not a crime if I crack a joke at your expense every now and then. There we go, yeah, it’s all in good fun. All in good fun. Okay, yep, just down the hallway to the…No, you’re right, down the stairs first, then down the second hallway on the left. Yep, you’re right. Good sense of direction, ol’ chap. I trust you won’t forget yourself and wind up a skeleton in one of my closets! Yes, have a good time, now. Okay, goodbye.

John Haunter kisses his frozen lips, brushes his brittle hair.
John Haunter dons a smile–friendly, without a single care.
And John Haunter ascends to the party floor–
He blesses the Kings and Queens, who beg him

for more.

RV Fever Dream, Summer 2021 / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

The day we drove
through the Mojave
in our camper, it was
117 degrees and rising, my shoes
on the dash because the floor
scorched through my soles.
Trucks and cars lined the shoulder, another
lane of traffic, stopped.
Hoods glinted in the sun, engines steamed.

At a KOA on the Green River
north of Moab, it was 104
at 4pm. My wife and I played
Scrabble in the dimness (every
shade pulled down) peeled
off socks, bras, shirts, and shorts,
dropped them on the desert sandy
floor under the dinette. We drank
box wine, took turns standing
bare breasted under the AC,
which never stopped humming.

How many more tanks
of gas will it take to get us home
to Georgia?

How much more can we
consume, can we shrug off
before it is too late?

Unrecorded Soliloquy by Richard III / R. W. Haynes

Battle was my comfort zone, beauty
Showed in victory, the hard-won death
Of opponents, to cut like violent Macbeth
Through wimps and losers forcibly,
And stand sword in hand to look for more.
Peace? Like hell we’ll cease to love to fight,
We’ll fight with lies and stab backs in the night,
Destroying enemies—that’s what strategy’s for,
And dirty tricks cause chaos as I rise,
Crushing those resisting my success.
The more my victims beg and plead, the less
I spare them, staring straight into their eyes.
In war we see these losers’ weapons fail;
At court, my schemes and credible lies prevail.

Happening / h.l. Rico

My active brain at night
Scrolling through my phone 
Seeing what I’m missing out 
Spotted pigs swimming about 
Where turquoise ocean meets clear sand
I wish I could jump through the screen 
Dive back into vacation reality 
Drive off to California 
Feel the sun on my fresh skin 
Wake up in a new morning 
With dewy dreams of mountain inns
Dance in the welcome rain 
Jump into crystal lakes
Those late night swims
Where stars fold into 
Mirrors shining through 
Sail away into the sunset
From Oahu to New Zealand 
Smoke my peace and sigh relief
That I’m alive and still
Can I keep that same feeling?
Soak it into work and pavement
Routine days of futures mistakenly written
Minstrels sing of wide worlds
And endless summer days
Can I have just one more imagining?
A fantasy woven into Monday’s 
Boundless forks keep heading on
All paths gently whispering
You’ll never be as young and free
As you are now happening 

18 and Overseas / Elizabeth S. Wolf

My daughter was taking a gap year at the time of the Parkland shooting. My daughter split her senior year of high school between community college classes and an internship working with the homeless; she spent Fridays and Saturdays serving sandwiches in the park and dinner at a café.  My daughter body surfed at emo/screamo concerts. She sometimes said yes and sometimes said no. My daughter is 5’7” with vibrant dyed hair and a wolf tattooed on her left bicep. Her father is an addict and spent time in jail. Her mother is a protester who writes poetry. On Valentine’s Day 2018 my daughter was an au pair in China, getting a 4-year-old to school on a motorbike through Shanghai morning rush hour. My daughter planned to go from there to volunteer at an orphanage in Accra Ghana. People asked me, do you think that she is safe? and I clapped back, honestly, do you think she is safe here?  

freckle-faced boys
with AR-15s
American as apple pie

Day 28 / Poem 28

Players / Donna Dallas

Pulse / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

When my mother takes my pulse,
her right hand gripping my left wrist,
her thumb cool and firm, when
she whispers, I’m just glad you didn’t
end up in the ER (trauma nurse that she is),

I know I’m not dying. Let’s just count
out loud, my head in her lap, watching the little
black cats on her pajama pants. I clutch
my purse to my chest, dig my shoes
into the throw pillows, where I landed

an hour ago, home from a party
gone bad, smoke laced with god knows what.
She keeps an eye on her watch, jotting
every so often on the back of her hand,

like she will scrawl at the bottom
of the lotto ticket my ex-husband will buy
a decade later, when I go into labor, tracking
the time and duration of my contractions,

indelible beat of my life.

Open Mic / David Estringel

Disturbing white calm, 

lightning strikes  

conjure storms 

in teacups  

and sleepy inkwells, 

baptizing words 

in snaps  

and rolling alliterations— 

obliterations— 

of sweet ether 

and strums 

of lyres’ strings. 

Drops 

of fire 

on the tongue 

Zavala County Waterfall / R. W. Haynes

Who ponders pondering by this waterfall?
Do dark thoughts condense in troubled minds
Where falling water seems to still them, calm
The heart, summon the heart to the sweetnesses
Of peace, the settling ceasing tribulation?
Who are you then, as you find peace before
This quiet force’s voice that’s calling you
To abjure your name, to know silence, to feel
Awareness’s weight relinquished as though
All life were an accumulation of shades
And lovely lights, tranquillity as wisdom,
As wondering becomes a blessed path?
A once-unsubtle inquiry now comes in view
A gentle gift, music from a friend,
With the comfort of a loved one’s gaze,
The quiet force that sustains the mind,
Invites the heart to turn in peace to it.

If Only / h.l. Rico

If today was more than
the harsh wheels grinding 
at the green door 
of my mind’s happy place
If in this moment 
I could stop the longing 
and have more than just an empty space
Then maybe I 
could read the lines 
of your text on the table beside 
Then maybe I 
could allow myself 
to feel your sunshine flowers inside
And then maybe I could see 
that you were 
already in the hallway 
waiting to enter my room, always
If only my own anxiety 
was not in the very heart of me
If only you could hear the calling  
and wrap me in your blanket of care 
And if only you could sit 
ever closely 
crack open my mirage and crooked stare
Then maybe I 
could lay down my weapons
and rest beside the fireplace 
feel the warmth of being known 
deeply, fully, loved and whole

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland Florida 2018 / Elizabeth S. Wolf

<div class=”epigraph”>

 “He looked like a typical high school student, and for a quick moment I thought, ‘Could this be the person who I need to stop?’” —The officer that arrested Cruz, who visited WalMart, Subway, and McDonalds after the shooting

</div>

Does it matter if his mother is dead or in jail? Or
was the damage already done, in the time they shared
the alcohol in her blood and the bits from her own bones
that make up his body? The lawyers argue over images
of his brain, what they do or don’t show, is it admissible
at this stage; the lawyers argue over the doctors who
argue over words and what they mean. No one argues
that Nikolas Cruz walked into the school with an AR-15 and
plenty of bullets, that within nearly 7 minutes there were
4 long minutes when he fired and fired and fired and fired
on the first floor on the second floor on the next floor
in the hallways in the classrooms into closets into corners
bullets bullets bullets bullets blood blood blood blood
so many fragments of bone, so many texts and calls to
mom and dad, to brothers and sisters, so many fragments
of lives. Despite all that we knew before Cruz went in, on that
Valentine’s Day, an ordinary Wednesday afternoon, after
so very many red flag red flag red flag red flag moments
(we know what to look for now, now we know, we know)
and yet here’s another kid with an AR-15 and another
community, another site where families gathered where
the officers entered after agonizing hours to announce:
There are no more survivors left at the scene. If you are still here…
                 (they say you can hear the wails the screaming the tears
                 for several blocks; sound travels, bellowing wails & screams)
We are all still there, held in that anguished moment, we are all
watching Emma Gonzalez stand at the mic in silence for the
4 agonizing minutes of slaughter out of the 6 minutes
and 20 seconds she spent on that stage and he spent
rampaging in the Parkland school. We are all on-site, we
are all marching for our lives, shouting atop of cars,
and yet somewhere out there, blending into the crowd
of careless, laughing, dancing people
of terrorized, bleeding, fleeing people
is the next Nikolas Cruz.

Day 27 / Poem 27

Untitled / Donna Dallas

Not the cured meat
that hangs over the butcher’s counter
nor the pastel mosaic
of fake nails
glued to the storefront window
of the salon
all those candies
I walked by countless times
and ignored

Not the one hundred year old
rosary your mother should 
have given us 
to save us from this – had we known
when we pulled the car out of 
the driveway
we’d drive ourselves
into this gorge – had we known

As I kneel down and smell
these gorgeous lilies
with the atlas heavy
on my back
so heavy
I limp
and hunch over
Had we known

I always wonder this 
if we’d have left
those shiny keys
in the steering wheel
and walked the other way

The Renunciation of Dr. Neptune: Part 1 (Section 3) / Angelo D’Amato

Ode to a Dominican Guinep / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

Here at this coffee shop in Clarkston,
the most diverse square mile in the South¹,
a breeze cuts through the grey heat.

I dig my thumbnail into your skin,
carve out the stem, pop you
from your light-green shell. Slippery

peach pearl, edible, supposedly
sweet. I suck the threads
that encase the pit, my jaw
and tongue contract as if
a magnet pulls them from the sour.

Didn’t I lie to the lady in the market
next door, just an hour ago,
who called from the other side
of a heap of hairy rambutan,
are they yet sweet? Didn’t I respond

oh yes, like I knew anything
about how you —
skinip, mamon, lychee-lime —
feel when ripe?

As if I looked
like any woman
who knows how
to read the fruit.

¹Butler, Kiera. “Can Georgia’s ‘Hipster Mayor’ Help America Embrace Refugees Again?” Mother Jones. October 23, 2018.

At the State Hospital / R.W. Haynes

A farmer drove his rattling pickup Ford,
The back piled high with partly fresh manure,
Through Milledgeville, his attitude secure
That fertilizer makes production sure,
When rain enough is granted by the Lord.
Since cow manure is nothing like perfume,
And his old truck was rusty, ugly, and loud,
All other vehicles in his path were cowed
And gave the rattletrap sufficient room.
At a traffic light he stopped, and an inmate cried
Out from his cell, locked up like a rat,
“Hey, farmer, where are you going with that?”
“To put it on my strawberries,” he replied,
“But wait,” cried the inmate, “what’s wrong here?
I used to put sweet cream and sugar on mine,
And now you see I’m in this place confined.
My friend, you have to be careful out there, I fear.”

Wish Upon a Love / h.l Rico

When did the Stars begin to fall?
Maybe when they thought that they felt love?
When did the Night make a wish upon itself and wonder what it was?
Maybe it was in the same moment that a 
sunflower opened it’s rays to smile.
Or maybe it was when I sat still and savored your words—tender, sweet, and sour.
In the window of a twinkle,
in the space of a dance,
you and I exist
a puff of smoke held in hand.
Let’s cherish this moment as best we can
and marinate our songs into the dust.
Somewhere between Agape and Lust
I love you 
and trust that the universe gave this time to us.

11^th Grade English Objectives / Elizabeth S. Wolf

Billy Bibbit stammered but spoke straight from my heart
and I read page after page right through One Flew Over
The Cuckoo’s Nest, never mind the chapters assigned for
this night, which I was supposed to be focused on during
study hall, the two hours each weeknight we were confined
to our dorm rooms, single mattresses over wooden storage
boxes like coffins, one desk and one straight-backed chair
per student, random checks for posture while studying;
I lay on that hard rack and read Kesey all night, mainlined
the way Kesey should be, and having spent the summer
before junior year on 3E, the psych ward of the community
hospital I was on the inside track, and I was on Thorazine,
and I had my stash of dope and occasional tabs of acid
to feel and see the glory again, despite the straitjacket
of the man’s world; the rhythm of Chief Broom sweeping
scored my step in the morning, when I went to class to
talk about the book and the teacher had never seen me
so animated so he sent me to the infirmary, as if
waking up was the sickness, not sleeping through the
gray and why did they choose that book if they didn’t
want us to break the chain, why introduce us to McMurphy
and then skip ahead to the fix, we already had the
music cued up and we were all so pumped and ready
to come and join the dance.

Day 26 / Poem 26

Watch Out / Donna Dallas

When the world seems at bay
while I run back and forth
to the well
for your water
and you attempt 
pity on what’s left
of me
when beauty fails – watch 

I will split
down the middle
and out of me 
a perfect bud will form
and wrap itself around my spine

I will spread out 
into the valley
vine past you with velvet fingers
grasp every little
piece of life
spill over you
leave you
muddled in
dry dirt
scraping your 
bony knees in desperation

The Renunciation of Dr. Neptune: Part 1 (Section 2) / Angelo D’Amato

Getting Rid of the Books / Jennifer Draco-Tice

The guy at GoodWill wheels
out a blue canvas bin
after we tell him the banker
boxes my wife packed up
last night, slotted into the back
of our Ford in a Tetris mosaic,
are full of books.

She’d wrapped the sets in Saran—
A Wrinkle in Time, Eragon,
Anne of Green Gables—to keep
each book with its family, bunched
paper in the crevices so odd-
sized texts wouldn’t slide, pulp
paper wouldn’t fold under
hardback weight. I stay

in the passenger seat, look ahead
at matching brown loveseats,
two hotel bedside lamps
awaiting processing. Wait
my wife calls—and I see her
in the side mirror scramble
to help him as he opens each
box, lifts above his head and lets
the contents tumble and strike
at broken angles in a deep
bin meant for laundry.

When my wife slides into
the driver’s seat, receipt
clutched in hand,
she is weeping.

I want to write
about book banning, but
I’m an English teacher
still drawing a salary.

Coward, I will write a last will
and testament for my books.
Not a designation of who
gets what, but of how
to gently pack them, put
them into the hands of
kids who need to
see themselves in print,

their back against a heat
vent, book propped open,
spine protected on their lap.

Sour Grapes / David Estringel

Crumb’ling truths 

and destinies, entwined, 

fray 

and crumble  

to dust 

at the speed of 

rushes o’ blood 

to cuckolded cheeks, 

boiling tears 

and setting fire to the rain, 

melting  

souring  

this love— 

a wounded grape—like  

ice cream 

left 

in the sun 

too  

long. 

Prayer in the Woods / R.W. Haynes

I follow a forest path, a tempest in mind,
Checking half-distractedly small pathways
Rabbits and raccoons created in the maze,
Tiny flowers hiding for busy bees to find;
Silent lightning, black thunderheads race
Wildly, fear and confusion bearing upon
A battered outpost, blocking out the sun,
Though here, in this quiet, leaf-shaded place,
No storm rages, except in imagination,
Where fear grapples with philosophy
With such force, paralyzing me
As I try to stabilize the situation.
Let this external, blessed peace sink in,
Letting me become myself again.

Gaze Back / h.l. Rico

Please look me in the eye 
and know 
that in the discomfort of being seen 
is the doorway of my hidden soul.
Please say my name (all of them at once)
so I can see those different selves of mine  
that I thought were only lost.
Please know our humanity 
the suffering and the splendid joy 
so I can awaken inside 
faint feelings that were a foreign entity.
Please come and touch your hand on mine
so I can remember that I am in this body, 
not a robot or amorphous nothing.
Please share in my smiles and my cries 
so I can share back with you 
the beauty of what it means to be fully alive. 
Please be there with me 
as I welcome me back home into myself.
A blackbird waiting to leave its branch
can free itself to fly.

Nonfiction Never Dies / Elizabeth S. Wolf

The room was small, a double bed smack below the windows
that fronted Center St, the windows my high school boyfriend
would slip in at night, sometimes after he had been with his
other girlfriends, to keep me company and guard against the
odd foster father, prone to throwing open my bedroom door
at 1, 2, or 3 in the morning and tossing out questions, either
deeply philosophical, probingly personal, or outright inane.
Smack in the middle of that bed I read about the gang of
teenage surfers from La Jolla and the Outsiders, those clammy
white middle-aged invaders in dreaded black socks and sandals,
pranked by the Pump House Gang in the rolling prose of Tom Wolfe,
who also (at the same time) wrote the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,
which introduced me to Ken Kesey and the Pranksters, but not
to acid, with which I was already familiar, thank you very much;
which I celebrated for freeing my mind from the more mundane
ordinary life— although, with my sporadic attendance at an
alternative school and rotating foster care with trips to the farm
or the ward or walking all night, singing Sweet Baby James, until
the town truant officer would spot me mid-morning and pop for
a bottomless cup of coffee from the Pewter Pot Muffin House,
my life already was pretty trippy and just what was that foster father
after all those late night, early morning off-book depositions and
why do I remember that bed as slowly rotating in time and space?

Day 25 / Poem 25

I Walked the Edge Today / Donna Dallas

And the day before
I feel sick like dirt
I’m bleeding out
on purpose
scurried around our dump
in search of mother’s bones
used them to carve hieroglyphics
on my body
some cuts so deep I can see into myself
veins wrap and weave
cells move through me
like stars on a clear night in paradise

But the bleed is endless
drips a thick IV
pools at my feet
even the dead 
do not want me
I’m hungry
and ragged
this bleed has grown into my tempest

I hate to be the killjoy
whilst the world seems happy
I go on raging
stumble over my bandages
those who knew me when I was functional
turn a blind eye
as I hobble past
with my oozy hollows
and all these tubes connect me
to the tip of infinity

I walked the edge today
sucked at its rim
in search of Hades
mother came calling
in the midst of my own calamities
she searched the ruins of my body
cried psalms into
the oceans of my sores

The Renunciation of Dr. Neptune: Part 1 / Angelo D’Amato

Two years of in-person teaching, and four shots later, / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

it still hasn’t gotten me, though
I sat between four people just
out of quarantine at a meeting
this morning, their masks the only
signal this mess is still around.

This afternoon, I joined the surge
of kids separated by massive
Bean backpacks, tromping
up the stairs for their final class, some
laughing, some bad-mouthing
recent quizzes, one up ahead
holding the door for the flood
of all of us, a few coming down
the other side, sneezing—and I

no longer turn my head and
scowl, hold my breath, wonder how
could they be so rude? So
thoughtless? I only look
up, say bless you and

hope I still won’t get it, dreading
the planning for class coverage
that I’d need, not the insufficient
pull of breath my asthma warns
—and I hearken to, late,
             like tonight—
I still might get.

Amas Veritas / David Estringel

Blue blush 

of midnight skin— 

cold flame 

beneath fingertips 

and wanting lips— 

stokes fire 

and love spells 

under Moon’s  

icy ring. 

Burn with me 

an hour 

a minute 

a second more 

and fade  

away 

into the oblivion 

of Starry Night, 

casting circles, 

casting away 

sinew and bone— 

the meat  

that keeps us here— 

and revel 

in the air 

of boundless expanses 

and a wine-stained kiss. 

Daffy Duck Boycotts the Alabama Secession Convention / R. W. Haynes

Quack, no, I’m not prejudiced against
Glib goobers, maleducated, blind,
Unthinkingly cruel bosses who find
Satisfaction in how many slaves they’ve fenced.
Nah, I stand for the duck, the excellent fowl
Whose heart flies with the bird of liberty,
The eagle, at least theoretically:
My nightingale heart has the wisdom of the owl.
But, “Duck,” you say, “you have a dangerous friend,
Whose beak and talons you should seriously fear.
He and his friends are at the convention here;
Take care lest they your cheerful cartoons end.”
But might does not make right, as I have quacked,
So free as the eagle we all must be in fact.

Shoreside / h.l. rijo

The sun’s going down and the heat subsides into long shadows playing on the sand.
The sound of waves licking rocks, 
is splashing in the background,
all around and all at once.
The sea salt in the air drinks into my tongue.
Your laugh crashes the ocean’s daydream waking me up back into us.
We’re playing games of catch on the back of fervent winds. 
Have you ever noticed how 
ripples of sand mimic ripples on the ocean? 
Wrinkles of past tides, 
the leftovers of something I do (and don’t) understand.
Mesmerized by a closing day and the dying light of a pink and long blue sky.
We rest our heads on yellow quilt blankets with views on hovering dragonflies. 
I wish we could always be this way.
Can life ever just stay a prolonged vacation?
I’m lost in the salty taste of you.
The sky has no limits.
The waves are an endless glisten.
With sun behind and ocean before us—
I know the essence of this lives on inside us. 

Can’t Start A Fire Without a Spark: Worcester, 1984 / Elizabeth S. Wolf

When I hear the song Dancing in the Dark
I’m driving in Worcester, route 9, going slightly
downhill towards South Main, where I see a man
stumble towards the road. I stomp my brakes.
I hear a thud. I don’t hit the car in front and
somehow the car behind doesn’t hit me.

I pull over. A man in a gray suit, from the car
ahead of mine, stands angrily over a guy in
tattered clothes, squatting dazed in the gutter.
Maybe he’s drunk. The cops arrive on scene.  
Mr. Gray Suit is cooperative. I didn’t have
time to stop, he says. This guy, maybe he’s
impaired, he came out of nowhere.

I had time, I say. I was right behind you.
I saw him and I stopped.

The cop looks up from his pad.
Mr. Gray Suit looks down at me.
What are you saying? slips out
of his tight lips and clenched teeth.

Just that, I answer evenly. I saw him step
into the road, and I had time to stop.

Dancing in the Dark for me isn’t a
slinky Courtney Cox, swaying with Bruce;
it’s a thud and a threatening scowl.

Day 24 / Poem 24

SEAFOOD DELIGHT AT THE HOOK ‘N’ REEL / Rusty Barnes

Fresh seafood just a phone call away
makes for a discerning dinner party,

where the hungry guests don plastic 
bibs and gather to suck the ocean off

an oyster or even non-native crawfish
fit only to be cracked with a hammer.

It’s too hard, so get a potato
from the plastic garbage bag holding

seafood tight as the garlic and butter
sauce that surrounds us and Lord bless

us every one we come out the other side
looking like we’ve fought a battle with

couth and horribly lost. I am the clean
one, so I supervise my other dirty 

heathens and we raise our glasses
at nearly the same moment in one of those

awkward you-had-to-be-there moves
and kiss our garlicky fingers to the sky.

Hydrangea Heart / Donna Dallas

So many hydrangeas
along the mountain roadside 
stunning baby blue and pale pink puffs
jet out in the cold rain
some with a bit of violet veining its way in

My eye finds the brown faded hydrangeas
that poke out in between the pastel palette
faded from age
sun
time
still a perfectly formed batch of flower
huddled together in that bunch
refusing to wither

Those are my hydrangeas
old busted up and dried out 
yet the petal formation intact
like a preserved corpse
a vintage Madonna among the masses
struggling to be seen
so the miracle of survival is made clear

through its dead mini petals
Its pulp alive
holding the brittle petals 
so close to one another like an ancient web 
covering a vortex within those deep clusters

Afraid of the Dark / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

I’ve always been afraid
of the dark. So many ways
to forget a fear. Headline
News cycling, Schitt’s Creek
re-running, bedside lamp glowing,
a bottle and a half of wine. I thought
I’d killed it

after my divorce, the fear, when I lived
alone, a single parent, turning
out the light in my room with the lace
sheer curtains, creaking in my brass
double bed. But that’s a lie
I must have extrapolated from a 
happy exception. Instead—
sweaty child asleep on my chest,
bedtime checklistposter
with gold stars, most squares
empty, two cats and laundry
unfolded on my half-made bed. I was afraid

to close my eyes in the months after
my son was born. I kept seeing myself
throwing him against the wall.

And now, wife out of town, I do anything
to make myself knockout
sleepy—but a part of my brain says
stay awake until the light outside can keep
every demon from gripping
your ankles under the bed, your arm
stretched back in the closet,
your neck as you peer
behind the curtain. Sit
next to me while I sleep, kill
all the horrors that
come out of me.

Joshua Run / R.W. Haynes

(hands clapping in rhythm)

 Joshua run, Joshua flew,
Joshua stole my Sunday shoe,
Run Joshua run,
Or the patteroller get you.
Run Joshua run,
Or the patteroller get you.
Run Joshua run,
Or the patteroller get you…
                –Song from the Slave Days

(Fiddle and pedal steel guitar)

Pulled up at a light down in Thomasville,
Bundles of collards in a croker sack,
A little bit high, too much to be still,
Case of Budweiser stashed in the back.

They pulled up beside me, loud and rowdy,
Carload of rednecks ready to fight,
I smiled a fake smile, waved and said howdy,
Punched in an eight-track of redneck delight.

That sufficed for the situation,
Instant brotherhood, their faces declared,
The light changed, no confrontation:
We all drove away as fast as we dared.

Later, pulled up beside the same car,
Greeting the same guys who’d driven away,
No doubt having closed down some raunchy bar,
All singing raucously “Dock of the Bay.”

(hands clapping in rhythm)

Run Joshua run, Joshua run away,
The rednecks are singing “Dock of the Bay.”

Monologue of Your Bloody Moonlit Friend… / h.l. Rico

Hello.
Oh you thought you were sleeping?
How about waking up to aching cramps in a pool of your own blood?
You shouldn’t have bought those white sheets.
Had plans? 
Too bad I came two days early and now you want to cancel all of them. 
Hungry?
I’m craving CHOCOLATE. 
Never mind—I want salty fries. 
Hmm actually wait let’s get some sour gummies—so what that it’s raining—I neeeed it.
You thought you could relax? 
But I have a lot more pain—I’ve got it in spades!
I’ll put some in your lower back and make you remember that you also forgot to buy Advil. 
And was that your last tampon, because you weren’t prepared? 
Let’s now run to the store (again) and buy overpriced cotton vagina plugs or you’ll bleed all over your pants. 
Let’s get bloated together—so much so that you don’t feel comfortable in your clothes. 
Oh you thought you could just chill for the rest of the day? 
Nope let’s cry together for no reason and watch sad movies while we contemplate all the mistakes we’ve ever made. 
Let’s go to the bathroom maybe 15 times and spend so long in there that people wonder if you’re ok.
Let’s do it all again tomorrow. 
And after that— I’ll lighten up. 
I appreciate the company—it was so much fun. 
Let’s schedule this again in 28(ish) days!
(Or maybe I’ll pull a prank and come so late that you’ll think you’re pregnant).
Whatever I do, whenever I decide to come
I’ll be here for decades of good bloody fun.

Belmont House, Summer 1976 / Elizabeth S. Wolf

When I hear the song Bohemian Rhapsody
I am on the fire escape, sitting out the window
while a skinny boy with longish hair named Steve
lifts his shirt to show off the scar on his stomach
from when he was stabbed. He was hanging out
with his friend, Brenda, and her boyfriend
didn’t like that. Brenda thought that was strong
love but Steve thinks that’s bullshit. His mother
was drunk, didn’t know where he was, so there
was a big fight with his uncle, since Steve’s dad
split a long time ago. So once he was discharged,
Steve ended up at the home for adolescents, run
by contractors for the state, where we hung out
swinging our bare feet off the fire escape & listening
to the radical Queen album Steve stole from his
cousin when he packed up to leave.

Day 23 / Poem 23

The Family Visits The Veterinarian / Rusty Barnes

it is time for three of the family
   to visit the vet one subway stop away
        lugging the big carriers and

hearing the cats  wretched mews of protest
    because they are only outside
        by accident. First comes

the old man Rhett. We are afraid
    that he suffers kidney disease
        and so we wait for blood tests

to confirm or no and I think
    of the many cats of ours who have
        passed in this office or one like it.

Rhett protests only a little at the blood
    they’ve taken and we wait uneasily
        for Cassady and Kenyon, who are much younger,

to get their clean bills of health and another
    year of caretaking. Dogs stir in the waiting room
        but Rhett’s kidneys are A-OK, we find.

There are crystals in his urine which we
    need to check on but I breathe a sigh of relief.
        One cat death per year is all we can handle.

The summer air has turned bracing late in the after-
    noon and the cats are silent on the way back
        as the train sidle up like fallapart mice,

no doubt our beasts are already dreaming of treats,
    as I am thinking ahead to their eventual deaths,
        and I sigh at the treaty we’ve signed with

the powers that be, God or somewhere the Heavenly
    Beast-King of Cats has waved an imperious paw
        and let us live, lo, another year or more.

War, Again and Again / Donna Dallas

In the wake of our destruction 
brought on by our own sicknesses
I’d bring the sun down
singe this earth
to charcoaled bones
disintegrate
every living organism 
to a rich ashen mulch
for a rebirth
on some other virgin and pristine
undiscovered planet

I’d rather harness the sun
and burn us au natural
then be nuked 
to putrefying flesh 
rotting
off the body – or bitten by a rage of bullets
piercing holes into skin
worse
survive to be enslaved 
in some modernized death camp
mind-fucked to grow potatoes
or make plastic doilies

These horrors
we repeat over and over
from mars to earth
to the next shiny coin of a planet
I’d pull that sun down
like the quick drop of a show curtain
after its wonderful finale

Let the curtain burn
give us our honor

The Moon Don’t Care / David Estringel

This old house— 

a rattle of bones— 

settles in  

for the night— 

the lights 

of its eyes 

dimmed. 

Graying roof tiles 

kiss, tentatively, 

twilight’s gloved hand 

in silent communion. 

Her pale eye  

peeks  

past kaleidoscopes 

of scattered sun 

and the brown rustling  

of Autumn leaves, 

indifferent 

to subtle advances 

of worn rooftops 

and old men. 

No Man’s Omens / R.W. Haynes

When we think what the horoscope defines
Our choices as, and see such riddling clues
As argue charmingly how we should choose
This or that, are these deceptive signs?
One gazes into the moving clouds to see
The magic number of the pleasure lottery
To which the roving appetite inclines,
Or sees a dream come true upon the plate
Of some preceding car, a revelation
From smiling spirits whose cordial vocation
Generates happy options designed by fate.
Will you be a blind buffoon at this buffet?
Be careful lest your Muses turn away.

Papier-mâché Heart / h.l. Rico

A papier-mâché heart
and popsicle stick lungs 
course glue through the veins
of a reconstructed person.
Do you accept yourself? 
All the parts that you don’t tell? 
The secrets that you hide 
behind strained lips.
The truth that you deny 
to yourself and others.
The Frankenstein inside is 
a human—not a monster.
Erase the chalkboard of your mind
and stop all thought 
of who you were told to be.
Stay in the moment, a new creature
alive to the world as it’s happening.
What does it feel like to fall in love with yourself?
A chewed up heart and leftover bones 
become the magical source
for the life form that awaits.

Day 22 / Poem 22

The Sun Sets Over Revere MA, Sunday 8/22 / Rusty Barnes

and I am missing my father, who was born today and died in 2016 of leukemia. I have written many poems about him, booksful in fact, and the hurt of it has never gone away nor do I expect it to. Late in his life he became a man of God with whom he had wrestled like Jacob wrestled the angel, except for his entire life. I come to God myself with my fighting shoes on trying to master myself in His realm and feeling largely unsuccessful. Oh Lord of all sizes and shapes, I pray you to let me continue as my father did for thirty years after Your light accumulated sufficiently in his psyche, let his lesson have been not as difficult as mine, no, as difficult as You see fit, and let the evening dim one day when I feel as satisfied as the sun blouses itself in the night sky. Make me aware of Your light even when hard to see, and thank you for taking on my father in all his complexity, as I hope to be complex enough to be saved like him.

Negative Velocity / Donna Dallas

I stopped thinking
about my breath
pouring out of my body
bleeding into
empty
creating nothing
from some chasm
to some nothing

I – the nothing
give of my breath
give so much of it
until my lungs flap
like a deflated balloon
give a last heave
before they
dry
to sand
while I collapse
like dropped clothing
in a heap

An evening gown
empty of its body
empty of its master

Make of Thyself a Nebula / Angelo D’Amato

The sand here is shattered volcanic glass,
and orange moonbeams fall in brittle filaments.

The stars glow a noxious green—
their light…it mutates the air.

Great galactic columns consume
the horizon—that vaunted line

between the planet and outer desolation
is uncertain. It vacillates unto eternity.

I walk the beach alone in a suit
of ruby chainmail. Crystallized plasma

from our sun burns in my palms. A howl
beseeches the infernal twilight to end,

and the fluttering of lugubrious wings
dispels the onrushing solitude.

I drop the sun-pieces into my mouth,
and roll back the ruby sleeves. If life

can survive here, so can I, so can I.
Blood, as the moonbeams break my skin.

I am one, I am whole—
melted plasma drips down my melting chin.

Out of Reach / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

One low-ball, Irish Waterford
whiskey glass remains from the four
my great uncle Charlie bought me
for my first wedding. $50 each in 1996,
Charlie, retired janitor living in a double-wide,
must have shot his load, to quote his sister,
my grandmother, who’d taught me the way
a knife faces in a place setting, how to polish
the silver she would leave to me, who had
her hair set every year of her life. Under it all

a boy escaping an orphanage for the navy, fists and red hair sparking,

his sister hiding under beds when foster fathers came home drunk,

the need, at any cost, for respectability, heft, even
an Ireland that’s never existed,
that their father left
and certainly never bestowed
before he left them, too.

This single, dishwasher-stained glass sits
in a cabinet above the fridge, where my kids
who live to host a good cocktail party, and
my wife, who loved yet broke the other three,
juggling them slippery in the sink with rheumatic hands,
can never reach.

Academic Lamentation #365 / Rusty Barnes

“He shows the Goddess coming in her majesty to destroy Order and Science, and to substitute the Kingdom of the Dull upon earth: how she leads captive the Sciences…”

“Now flamed the Dogstar’s unpropitious ray…”

                           Alexander Pope, The Dunciad

“Así es, Doña Inés…”

                          Don Manuel Becerra

Back when I was at a conservative school
Rationality seemed always to prevail
Or to attempt to and sometimes nobly fail
For no one wanted to seem at all a fool.
There were jerks, of course, but some morality
Was endorsed by all, and no gross sedition
Was allowed to terrorize the Western tradition
In that strait-laced, Spartan aristocracy.
One could, I thought, give honorable respect
To scholars whose thought manifested vigor
In classes controlled by formidable rigor,
With clear standards no student could neglect.
Where now are these ghosts of yesteryear?
All their curriculum is shot to hell, I fear.

Ellipsis Moon / h.l. Rijo

Nocturnal animal 
in a crescent smiling echo—
come home through my open window.
Let me pass through your moon beams 
and rest on your dark side.
Whisper imaginations between warm bed sheets 
dreams of chocolate silk and endless caressing.
Will you still be there when I wake?
Or were you just a phantom 
in a room my mind made to escape?
Hold me closely while I lie naked in your sweet soft lullaby.
Sing your moon dance and journey on,
arching back against the night. 
Howl at skyscrapers and flirt with stars, 
but please come back home to me when you’re done.
Voyage on into your phasing moon moods
and promise to love me the whole time through…

The Reverend’s Wife / Elizabeth S. Wolf

She weeded and pruned the kitchen garden
that provided much of our food, even if we
protested- no zucchini in scrambled eggs, please-
but the fresh snipped herbs were delicious.

When she got a new book of music she sat
at the piano and ran it straight through, pausing
at the more difficult timing, rising with a nod
of satisfaction when she was done. The mice

in the parlor piano were deaf, or so we joked,
and they knew not to nibble the threads or patterns
of the dresses she was sewing, or altering for her
daughter, who wore them gratefully. Every summer

she managed the household, no tv, no phone, we kids
reading books and doing barn chores or fishing
in the pond a mile away. It was like the olden days
while the world around imploded. She had no

patience for the 60’s, no desire for free love or
sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll talk. The Lord will provide
and we will give thanks, was her mantra. Her husband
preached Sunday morning and Wednesday evenings

but she lived the word every blessed day, until her last
breath stopped as she was sitting in her parlor, looking
out the window, while the deaf mice napped through the
heat of a summer afternoon.

Day 21 / Poem 21

You Know What the Need to Be Saved Feels Like? / Donna Dallas

A dog
patiently waiting to be stroked
or given a treat
your hand
that I search desperately for in some nightly sweat
when I pour myself over you
seep into your calloused skin
beg to stay there
attempt to pool into drops of ornate pearls
decorative ornaments to adorn you with

While I was ferociously attempting
to save you
only then did I realize the need was reversed
a trick I believe gets played
on cravers like me
I was longing for a savior
instead
I became one
I’m not gonna tell you I’ve lost count

of the attempts
I’ll light myself on fire and burn my wick
down to my core
for anyone who will barely blow

Arrested by Thorazine / Angelo D’Amato

Lights on the sensory dial
of the subway fare gate
flash green. Charlie Card exposed
in my hand until I can either
wedge it back in my wallet or
drop it into my pocket (ideally,
in the miniature pocket I can close
with a zipper—I’ve lost count
of the bank cards and phones I’ve lost
thanks to unsecured pockets).
Twinned plastic panels drop down, glide open,
(sometimes I wave my hands, like
I’m a sorcerer standing before a cave,
shouting “Open Sesame!” I’m sure
other commuters are baffled by this (perhaps)
drug-induced display; or, more likely,
they don’t notice at all, because
they’re running late, or the station is too humid.
Still, I must insist on this moment of freedom.
Everyone relax, okay?) and I hurry through.

My backpack straps dig into my shoulders.
(In this moment, I worry about a few things.
First: that the plastic panels will shut too quickly
and bonk me on the sides.
Second: that I am carrying an unnecessary
number of books in my backpack, and will develop
spinal deformities more severe than the scoliosis
I used to brag about in the middle school locker room—
it made me feel special.
Third: that I will look desperate and confused
to the commuter assistants, dressed in affable red;
and they will approach me and ask if I need any help,
both disturbing my privacy and necessitating
a polite rejection that feels harsher than it ought to be.
Fourth: that someone will snatch my Charlie Card—
or wallet, if I’m holding it— from my
idiotically unguarded hand)
I hear the plastic panels glide shut.

Commuters stand about, scrolling on their phones,
listening to music or podcasts. Some talk, a few read.
The tracks, strips of metal that would be rough
on the fingers and tongue, stretch into obscurant tunnels,
where wheels screech and screech and screech…

A strip of yellow panels separates us from the tracks.
The yellow panels cannot arrest the movement
of a resolute man’s legs. They cannot mitigate
the momentum of a braking green line train.
The parenthetical asides above are modeled after
those of Bob Slocum, the self-pitying, self-involved,
hollow-and-depressed-by-it, and overwrought narrator
of Joseph Heller’s novel “Something Happened.”
Bob Slocum has no outlet for the pervasive dissatisfaction
he feels—by any objective standard, his life is good.
Bob Slocum is subjugated by corporate America.
Bob Slocum murders his special-needs son…and is relieved.
The train approaches. We step forward
only when the doors rattle open.

On Meeting My Twins / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

I’d brought my son, she’d brought
her twins. A second date,
this one with kids. Of course
we chose Chuck E. Cheese,
we could drink, the kids could play,
in sticky tubes. But they didn’t.

Her boy, just seven, sat by mine,
still three, in the long red booth,
two heads bent, blonde crew cut
for hers, brown-black waves on mine.

Her daughter climbed atop
the ledge behind her seat,
sat with legs crossed, one shoe
untied. She watched her twin
meet my son, watched me
talk to her mom in a separate
booth behind her. She chattered—
leaning back to fill me in—
Barbie Swan Lake, her karate 
green belt, friends in second grade.

Her brother pulled paper
from his satchel, folded with fine
fingers like his mother’s, an origami
frog, pressed one end. It hopped,
my child jumped. Make another one!

and he did. This older boy
had no patience with Legos,
puzzles, turtlenecks, I’d learn,
but sat an hour transforming
blank pages into creatures in motion
for the dark-headed child
leaning into his shoulder, for
his sister perched above them both.

Writer’s Block #2 / David Estringel

How tedious 

the journey 

through liminal spaces. 

Of black and white. 

Of void. 

Colors  

of words 

slip through fingers 

off tongues  

like quicksilver. 

Dreams fade 

like light  

from mayflies’ eyes 

at dusk’s rosy stroll 

‘cross the sky. 

Pen and paper 

are dry 

of humours. 

Nothing 

left in the well. 

How tedious the journey 

through liminal spaces. 

The Roughest Draft in the West / R.W. Haynes

When old vaqueros die, they fly away
To Heaven with definite dignity, gripping
Their riatas firmly as the earth is slipping
Away behind them, and surely they stay
Alert for caracaras and eagles to rope
Even as they first hear drawing nigh
The sounds of those mariachis in the sky,
Where saints prepare to justify their hope.
Yep, that’s the way that all things go,
Mas o menos, most days, anyhow.
They say it used to rain sometimes, not now,
Down here in my hot and dusty Laredo;
We’re used to it.  We do our dusty best and must
Keep on until we rise to God like dust.

Spiral / h.l. Rijos

I have seen and been inside 
the spiral going up, then down 
both directions of my mind 

I have loved and I have lost myself
in the deepest of thoughts 
dipping toes into madness 

I have walked to the train and ridden
far past the city to beacon trails
and coiled up hidden mountains

I have climbed gazebo heights  
seen my tornado convulse the sky and
marveled at anything close enough to try

I have tumbled down jagged rocks below
where streams and valleys join the
dust and blood that tear my clothes

I have stood in the center of the woods
breather in nature’s harmony
desperately trying in the practicing

I have meditated in the river’s eye
felt the ripples floating on
endlessly tired against the swirling sun 

I have known the longing for a home
and the ache of wordless goodbyes
stuck inside a hungry vortex, paralyzed 

I have now become one
an all encompassing storm 
both the eye and the destruction

…At the edge of nothing left
(and everything else, beautiful)
                                                       I have myself 
(the ups and downs)
a renewal of where heart is bound 

Footsteps in the Hallway / Elizabeth S. Wolf

The staccato tip-tap of heels echoing in the halls
brings back the inky sweet smell of mimeograph
and too many children in the classroom, set in
single desks, row on row. The clickety-clack of heels
makes me sit up straight- eyes on your own paper-

This is where I learned less-than points to the left,
where less of the building is, and more-than points
to the right, where another set of rows fills up
a different classroom, sitting up straight, eyes on
their own papers, as the teacher circulates with
spiky heels, shaped painted nails, and a waning scent
of early morning Jean Naté.

Day 20 / Poem 20

Berryman vs God vs Us / Rusty Barnes

Many are the awe-filled names for God.
multifarious are their earthly wisdoms.

Shall we make for the Lord at top speed, then?
Or rather meander our way through life

and what indeed, of the yards we leave
untended and the animals we feed freely

and how we shelter in place in fear of Lord-
liness? I can ring hammer and tongues in

poems and no one notices. Dead? About
the same. Berryman jumped off a bridge

in Minnesota rather than keep going aware.
Near the end of his life he addressed the cosmos

direct and apparently found God and maybe
the only way we can recover him too,  

in Berryman’s acute vision and his manic 
entreaties. Because of the astonishments,

because of the fear, because of Berryman,
may he exist in a frieze of glory forever

no matter how you and I actually feel about
it as the poems take on fire and destroy

everything I have ever believed about God.

Rites of Passage / Donna Dallas

Every day at noon
I prepare the coffee
grind the beans
set the coffee maker
bold
extra hot
Peruvian
Columbian grinds too flaky
Louisiana grinds overloaded with chicory

Peruvian is for thinkers
not for ponderers
nor slackers
chicory takes us
back to poverty ridden times
when any blend of coffee would suffice
any temperature of “hot”
when coffee was a special gift
to look forward to
a ritual of the gods
and after an inspection of the grinds

we’d determine our future
if we would marry
live a long life
or die thar very day
it was all in the shaping of the illustrious grinds
The ghosts would rise with the steam
we’d inhale them through our nostrils
with that chicory undertone
and when we exhaled……
when we let the spirits twirl around us
with the faintest hint of cashew and caramel
we believed our paths had divine trajectory

Beware coffee wanna be’s
we were in that grind
since the beginning
with tin cups
under the moon
where the devil spoke
and we heeded his warnings
every step of the way
while phantoms sang through the smoke
of our fires 

The Production of Revolutionary Poetry in an Enclave of Middle-Class Contentment: Part 2 / Anngelo D’Amato

The Voiceless:

An elderly woman staggers to the stage.
She smells of urine and wine;
and her left eye stares forever to the left.
The room settles into an unsettled hush.
You can hear the melodramatic rattling
of the pipes, the delicious burning 
of the filaments in the nostalgic lightbulbs.
She unfolds a feathery piece of paper, struggles
with fingers frozen by arthritis. The Stagemaster 
leers lasciviously at the Crowd of gulping throats.
The woman looks down at her paper, covered
with spiraling scrawl. She speaks—
her voice is brutal, commanding, tender…
And all the desolation of Europe tumbles
into the Enclave, bricks upon bricks of humble homes
rising between the dress shoes of the immaculate
and resentful Crowd.

During the War
My son
lit 
a white 
candle
on his windowsill
every night
because
he wanted
his father
to return

In the Open-Air Cathedral

The Monsignor
in shining green robes
told us
with God’s Love,
we would endure

The Cross
leaned
on a pile
of smoldering wood,

Jesus’ face
lost
to the bombs

Post-Doc Trauma

America
is the land
of opportunity.
My son
studied hard
to become a surgeon,
to stitch
broken bellies
back together,
and save
a child
from despair.

America
gave my son
the pistol
he used
to save
himself
from his despair

The Crowd:

Babies explode in virginal wombs.
You smell bad, wench!
And your eye makes us squirm!
Poetry is supposed to beatify
leaden-eyed despairs—
your words will ruin the world.

The Stagemaster:

He cackles.
Be gone, be gone,
you naïve human waste!
The people, my dearest friends,
do not want to hear your story.
You embarrass my friends
with your odor, your whacked-out eye,
your words of unfashionable woe!
Leave us! My friends want words
that make them feel safe.

And the Crowd cheers,
and the woman hobbles away,
and the Stagemaster sneers
as he doffs his charlatan’s hat
to the fuming mass of Poet Regents.

Transferring the Weight / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

My wife says she’s been working traffic
all night—pushing tin in her dreams,
no one answering her calls for a flight hand-off
to a new airspace, the weight
of 450 souls on her shoulders, against her
neck, already strained.

A student leans
forward in a sage-green chair, sinks
back, eyes on the floor, wants to
tell me, but wants
me not to tell. I can’t
not tell. I’ll be fine—

I can always tell
when a confession’s coming,
the pause in conversation, a child’s knees
pulled under chin, arms hugging shins,
another so, how are you? from me,
then

a secret, a transgression, a suffering

falls
pins me
fast.

His eyes watch me for a moment.
He grabs his bag to him, looks to
the door. He rises, shoulders the new
heavier worry that
I cannot bear the load.

House of Spirits / David Estringel

There’s a 

rap, rap, rapping 

on my bedroom door. 

The rocking chair 

creaks. 

The ceiling fan light, 

overhead, winks 

in flirtatious rhythm. 

Who else 

but me 

disturbs the dust and 

haunts 

the cold of walls 

and hungry keyholes? 

Shadows 

enter at the exit 

(I hear) 

and outstay their welcome. 

I yawn 

and stretch 

and rub my eyes,  

as if to say, 

“Time to go home. Party’s over,” 

but they don’t listen.

Can’t say when it started. 

Don’t know when it will end. 

Just hoping 

 they’re not waiting 

for me 

to join  

the fun. 

The Queen of the Classroom / R. W. Haynes

Louise Cowan would occasionally say
The critic’s work is higher than the artist’s, so
That, to me, was too strange a place to go,
Even for a moment, and sure no place to stay.
And in my admiration my sense that theory
Does more harm than good within the world of letters
(Though it provides options for callow go-getters),
Hovered out of sight of the Muse of poetry,
Whose faithful loving slave a bard must be,
And whose might might not bring to ultimate joy
The effusions of a desperate theory boy,
Whose flash across the sky bodes ominously.
No one lectured like her, her inspiration
Opened doors, rang bells, sang holy salvation.  

When where you live isn’t home / Erin Marsh

it is almost certain you will lose
your sense of direction. A friend
will tell you she lives north of town
and you panic. The map etched
on your heart does not indicate
north, south, east, or west—
it can only lead you home.
When you settle in four hours
from your beloved city, you discover
a pulse beneath your heartbeat—an alert
you are off course. In order to remain
this far from home, you must make noise,
sing loudly in the front yard—the only way
to throw off your chest-deep ache

Elements of You /. h.l. Rijo

If I were to choose
From four elements of you 
I know which is me 

Not fire that would burn
You in ash, our love cremating
A strong life/death flame 

Sometimes I do think 
To be your earthly grounding
To anchor your feet

Or water that heals
Your deep pain and suffering 
A refresh of soul 

No, I know the one
Only one I want to be
Is the air you breathe 

Tire Iron Guy vs. Rainbow Shades / Elizabeth S. Wolf

My office closed for a bonus day
so we decided to visit the beach.
Just for an hour or two, before my
daughter’s work. We drove her car
down the old shore road, past rundown
rentals and small inns. She said we need
to bang a U-turn, park on the other side.
I disagreed. I park on the ocean side.
I spy a spot with no driveway, no sign,
and no hydrant, right by an access path.
I don’t think we can park here, she said.
I do, I say. It will be fine. Since we
don’t have much time we pull over,
grab our bag of towels and snacks,
and head to the beach. We settle
close by and spread our towels. Bliss.

The sound of the waves.
The smell of the salt.
The cries of the gulls.
The warmth of the sun.

Then we hear a guy yelling, a string of
letters and numbers. I sit up. That’s
your license plate, I say. An old man
holding a tire iron is yelling, loudly:
Move the effing car! Or it’s gonna
get towed! I say, I’m sorry, there was
no sign. Move the car, you effing
idiot! he yells back, brandishing
the tire iron like a bat. My daughter
is already pulling on her shorts and
shades. I ask if she wants company
but she says, no, she’s got this.

She’s back in mere minutes.
After a spell in the sun, we go
down to the water. It’s cold.
It’s lovely. I hold her sunglasses
while she dunks. Her lenses are
the colors of the rainbow.

We swim and then stand,
jumping into the swell of each
incoming wave. So, she tells me,
tire iron guy was waiting
at the sidewalk.
            (jump)
Still holding the tire iron.
Like, what’s he gonna do
           (jump)
club me like a seal? In front of his
neighbors?
          (jump)

I breathe. The rhythm of the waves.
The smell. The sun. She continues:

How the hell can he live, right here,
at the edge of the ocean
          (jump)
and stay so angry? Like, dude,
why you gotta be so mad?

Day 19 / Poem 19

This Is Not a Ghazal / Rusty Barnes

Given a tooth to pull, I have a mouthful
of old ghazals to chew. They wrap tightly

my fey tongue, burnishing my teeth,
awaiting the dentist’s next move, 

preparation for the incursion, sharps
proffered, tiny knifepricks, painful

even through the numbing agents
swabbed between my cheek and gum.

My wife holds my ankle to calm me,
the only part of my body she can reach

while staying out of the surgeon’s way.
Right now it’s aces for the tongue-

lashing the bored attendant is taking
from a strange-named woman ahead 

of me all silken-voiced and righteous. 
Poems reveal themselves in due time.

Here I am, freshly numbed and cracked,
tooth pulled, waiting for my bank

to approve my purchase of healthy
mouth and, for the first ghazal to come,

Night Thrills / Donna Dallas

As the night unglues
itself from all the lonely souls
wandering aimlessly
within their desires
I lay tethered to the ground
sulk in dismay

As the night moves away
pulls with it that blanket of coziness
I so desire

I live with these nights
the flirting dark smiles as it breezes by
then sneers behind my back
while it carves my core out
from under my trusting gut

That long shadow scrapes
across my face
longingly
I turn my cheek in rebellion
Night pulls its dark tail away
leaves me with approaching dawn
alone in the bed
alone in my head

The Production of Revolutionary Poetry in an Enclave of Middle-Class Contentment: Part 1 / Angelo D’Amato

Dramatis Personae:
The Stagemaster
Poet Regents No. 1, 2, & 3
The Crowd
The Voiceless

The Stagemaster:

Fortune favors the bold.
Come, step up to the microphone,
and sing of the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune
you have endured.

He extends an arm draped
in glittering purple cloth;
with his other hand, he tips
his tattered stove-pipe hat–
that hand is missing a thumb.

Poet Regent No. 1:

Tall, suave, with newly-purchased
glasses from the most professional
optometrists in the land.
He holds a cigarette in his teeth,
and when he speaks,
his voice is a satisfied rumble.

I have endured 
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
I have been oppressed.
I stand before you,
crowned in thorns,
with shackles on my feet.
The blood of my ancestors ran hot
at the suffering of slaves; somewhere
in my family line, we were beaten
into European serfdom.
I carry that shame,
the shame of being too weak
to resist oppression; and too weak
to resist being the oppressor.
I just hope that one day,
I will be liberated 
by farcical gods.

The Crowd:

We applaud you for your courage,
most unique of poets, you.
We weep for the songs you sing.
Your words will change thee world.

Handkerchiefs dab at eyes 
with perfected corneas.
The solution to world hunger
is within reach.
And babies are successfully conceived
in virginal wombs.

The Stagemaster:

Applause, applause,
for you, most lyrical king!
Now, make way, make way,
for the next contender
for the literary throne.
Bare your soul, you princely thing!
We await your glorious words.

Poet Regent No. 2:

I have endured
the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune.
I have been
oppressed…

The Crowd:

We applaud you for your courage,
most unique of poets, you…

The Stagemaster:

Applause, applause,
for you, most lyrical king…

Poet Regent No.3:

I have
endured the slings and
arrows of outrageous
fortune…

The Crowd:

We applaud you…

The Stagemaster:

Applause, applause…

Anti-Ode to the Cartons of Virginia Slims Found in a Garment Bag after My Grandmother’s Death / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

She must have smoked you in the back of her walk-in closet,
aerosol in hand (how could the aids not smell it?), my grandfather
in his plaid wing chair in the next room, oxygen tank,
flammable, planted next to him, tube attached to his cannula. I tried

smoking in college, loved the smell of my roommate’s cigarette
as she perched in our open window, one leg crossed, skirt tucked under,
patting her mouth with parted fingers before each inhale,
stubbing into a glazed pinch pot, waving an arm, spraying
Liz Claiborne perfume. My former sister-in-law once filled

a commode bowl with butts smoked in such rapid succession
it became a veritable ashtray of barely touched sticks piling
above the waterline, testament to small relief from chronic pain. 
Years later, my wife, sitting in my car’s driver’s seat, left 

a tiny burn in the ceiling as she leaned to 
vacuum the footwell, left arm reaching blind for
the outside to ash. My grandfather also sought a window, looking
for the Smoky Mountains, as COPD took his last breath.

How can I live without him? my grandmother whispered,
her hand in mine at his funeral, and she couldn’t,
dying two weeks later, her bowels,
like her triple-by-passed-
heart, perforated.

FDR in Norway / R.W. Haynes

I felt somewhat as Cicero must have felt
Upon identifying the forgotten monument
Marking the grave of Archimedes
When I explored the hillside
Near the Akershus, Oslo’s old castle.
And came upon a statue of
Franklin Roosevelt, looking over
The harbor, the cold-water fjord,
A man at peace, much as
He must have been after therapy
At Warm Springs, back in Georgia.
Here he once was hailed for his support
Against the vicious Nazi war machine,
But back in Warm Springs, Social Security
Is his monument, his gift of liberty.

A Note to the Northern Lights / Erin Marsh

I’ve only seen you three or four times in my whole life—
once as I rode back to Minneapolis in my uncle’s pickup truck.
It was five o’clock in the morning—your concerted effort
resulted in a wash of green watercolor paint smudged above me.
I don’t want you to try harder next time. It is well documented
you are capable of brilliance, of more complex displays.
What I want is the promise of an opaque smear as my uncle drives
us toward the city, a dab of color to mark our presence.
We were here and you noticed. No need to dazzle for us—
just something to talk about all the way home.

For the Lonely Nightlife Friends / h.l. Rijo

Crowded streets and lonely rooms. 
Small apartments with little closets
and poetic colors on sublime roofs.
Look down at the people 
tiny ants—going wherever they need to go.
Let me rest until I’m ready 
for the world’s elbows and knees,
it’s rocking, rolling, and screaming.
Let me rest enough to join 
the never ending party 
of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Let me rest—just a little cocoon 
for me to lick and nurture my oozing wounds.
Let me forget for a short amount of time the feelings I’m trying to avoid.
The loneliest creatures seem to thrive in the congestion—it’s easier to hide.
Let me express in meaningless dance 
everything meaningful I’ve ever wanted to say and more.
Let me move in such a way 
feeling bodies up, down, and side to side—
all encompassing, and alive.
Then let me rest for a little while
so I can get up and do it all again.
The feelings of a lonely world sometimes becomes a comforting friend.

What You Missed When You Skipped Church / Elizabeth S. Wolf

First we made sure we had everything we needed,
all the things we got ready before, the programs
and the music for the choir. Then the reverend’s wife
noticed we weren’t dressed right, even though we did
wash and change, but we didn’t pick the right clothes, so
we were going to be late, which the reverend’s wife
can never be. So we had to hurry. We went upstairs
lickety-split and swapped shirts between us and
that was good enough. Once we got to the church
from the rectory we dropped off a box, of I don’t know
what, and went upstairs to the choir loft, which is just
like a balcony but you better not throw things in the
house of the Lord. So we didn’t but another kid did
and I held my breath but nothing like lightening
happened. We learned the hymns for that day but
since I was a guest I stood quietly beside my friend,
who sang very nicely. Also, we stood and sat on command.
So did all the people downstairs, later, on the benches
which are called pews. They kneeled too on mini benches
which had grandma designs sewn on, but I didn’t
because what if Christ saw a Jew kneeling in church?
The reverend talked, a lot, and gave a long speech
called a lesson but I missed the point because we were
passing around cough drops, the good kind, cherry, and
the yucky kind, lemon, which some kid threw on the
floor. I wasn’t as scared after because if God didn’t care
who littered in church maybe a Jew was safe. Then
we all filed downstairs and got in a line but my friend
told me to sit in a pew, by myself, so I did but it felt bad,
like maybe I had done something wrong. Turns out
the line was for wine juice and a cracker and they signed
like a cross over each person so really, she saved me,
because I don’t know what would have happened.
I stayed in the pew. I got separated from my friend and
the reverend’s wife at snack and I didn’t know what to do.
When they found me everyone was really mad. The
reverend’s wife cursed, in the church, and no one
caught on fire but they all looked surprised so I knew
I had broken the spell. I asked if I could go home now
please and she said yes thank God that would be the
answer to my prayers and frankly after that lovely
service with candles and singing and calling
back and forth about Our Father and His Son,
I didn’t think that was very nice. 

Day 18 / Poem 18

Blue Line Home / Rusty Barnes

We taught our childen
at a young age to learn

a rhyme which would get
them home should gods

forbid the subway ever lose them..
We’ve forgotten it by now

but  wish in their new adult
lives that they would remember

something of their child-
hood and mutter sotto voce

to themselves whenever
the doors open and thrust them

into the world that is open
to them in every way now.

Untitled / Donna Dallas

I should sleep
yet I keep staring at the dead man
his toothless grin
black and empty
when I reach to open the blinds
my hand bursts through his windpipe

What’s done is done
yet there he lingers
sprays of color speckle
through his skin
in the drawn sunlight
fingernails curled under
as he taps in annoyance
when I pay no attention
or I am sidetracked
with the business of things
that need to be done

The dead man stands
awkwardly straight
a spindle spine of sorts
such an unfortunate sadness
swells in his marbled eyes
I pray
let the dead bury their dead

When I awake
he is seated trans-like
crossed legs
in his meditative state
at bedtime I take sleeping pills
as I swallow them
I see the dead man
from the corner of my eye
shake his head

I wish I had a better set up
to offer
when I see him cry
I can almost hear his howling woes
bend the air like a heat stroke
I’m not giving them up – the pills

All I have
pills and a dead guy
in a rickety house
waiting for the dead
to bury their dead

Anaphylaxis / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

The paramedic’s phone barks, ringtone
to signal his boss, top dog, is calling. Yeah 
Chief? We’ve got a kid here, 
throat closing—

Medics and hospitals and nurses—
my family, my home. I slept in nurses’
lounges, did homework in the waiting
room, wiped down black vinyl stretchers
waiting for my mother to finish
her shift. Today, the school’s nurse

rushes to my room, red duffle swinging, 
Epipen clutched, sure hand on a student’s shoulder
and thigh, all is okay, as long as she is there, student
still smiling, apologizing for the trouble, squinting
his eyes at my bad jokes. But

when fire rescue, security, the admin team, another nurse, three EMTs 
push into the room, the last ones wearing masks,
hauling oxygen canisters, I know

another machinery has slid into place
and I am afraid. This child’s smile fades
to resignation, defeat, even surrender—
some power has shifted, I’m no longer needed,
slip out the door, glimpse only the top
of his dark hair shining between this phalanx
of rescue ranged tight, well-oiled and efficient.

Memory Box / David Estringel

Fingers, 

gingerly sifting 

through lavender echoes, 

praise spirits 

of modest treasures 

in silent prayer. 

Ribbon-tied letters. 

A lock of hair tied with blue ribbon. 

Old silver dollars. 

Prayer cards to the saints (two for St. Jude). 

Pressed flowers in wax paper. 

A faded scapular. 

Old report cards (Never was any good at Math). 

Broken reading glasses. 

A waxed camellia 

and  

the smell of her. 

Amen. 

Festina Lente: Old Man Remembers Chess Tournaments / R. W. Haynes

Long ago, when I played chess, the clock
Would like to disapprove of me and show
How fast all my opponents were, how slow
My mind, operating like a granite rock.
The occasional flash of deadly strategy,
Much hoped for, always was delayed,
But the clock ticked on, whatever move I made,
And drew me toward a final emergency.
But that slow pace, which seemed so harmful then,
Would often drive opponents nearly mad,
And then what advantages they had
Would often be much endangered when
Their furious impatience made them blind,
And they got careless, so they had to try
Some random move at once, or possibly die.
The fog of war does affect the mind.
Slow speed is challenging to all concerned:
The patient prosper, the rash get burned.

Hover / Erin Marsh

Hover over me like the hummingbird Minneapolis, 
at the swollen lips of a Fuschsia,
Your long, thin beak and bifurcated tongue
make it possible to feed upon nectar
deep within flowers. Iridescent plumage
patterns your chest, you appear as suspended
jeweled orb as you prepare to part four slender
sepals and four broad petals,
to consume nutrients from pendulous
flowers. Your rapidly flapping
wings beat eighty times per second, maintain your
lissome position amongst stamen, piston.
You cannot crush what feeds you –
crash-bang into muted females of your own species
in a chaotic frenzy to produce children;
you were also made to weightlessly ravish
my red, to siphon my sugary sweetness.
I cannot feed you forever –
But tonight hover over me,
be sated

How to make dosa / h.l. Rijo

(Visiting my mother-in-law 
while she’s in the hospital…)

Quietly, she sleeps in her bed
with nothing else to do instead 
(since she might be losing her sight).
IV liquids soak into blood
heart monitors and wrapping tubes fill the air and sounds of her room.
A small curtain of separation,
from grown men yelling for their medication. 
Her hands, so small, with wrinkles etched in kindness.
Her hair, so grey, with the thinness of many stressful days.
Her body, so frail, the white blanket could swallow her up whole.
I kiss her forehead gently to wake…
Hi molle,
she says to me in such a way that anyone would understand as my daughter.
Her eyes seem filled with strained misery
but she never asks for any pain relief.
Her words are alive with thoughts shifting
into and out of past memories;
she repeats her dementia soliloquy:

I can teach you how to make dosa
It’s very easy
Take the lentil
The green one
And rice 
The white one 
Wash it 
And soak it
Overnight
Mix it all together 
Into a paste
Little bit of water 
Let it rise 
Put it on a pan
Little bit of oil
Spread it in a dosa shape
That’s how you make dosa
If you’re ever pregnant you’ll want to eat it 
It’s good for you and the baby
I can show you how to make it
Together 

The Tired Woman Napped on the Table / Elizabeth S. Wolf

I thought she was dead. I’d spent the past week
getting my mother discharged from the hospital,

staying with her at her condo, trying to line up
services and home visits and aides, all of which

had wait lists; which the social services lady
must have known about, but I did not. Still

I tried to keep a brave face, stiff upper lip, so when
I got a tad overwhelmed, I went for a short walk.

No big deal. I let myself back in and my mother
had pulled her mobility scooter up to the antique

maple dining room table, rested her head on her
swollen hands and passed out. Her face was gray in sleep—

                           or was it always like that now?—

and I felt a spasm of guilt that I hadn’t been there
to make her more comfortable. Then a slice of fear,

that she was gone, had passed away while I stepped out.
Ma? I asked quietly, and then a little more urgently,

                            Ma, you ok?

She startled awake. In her younger days
she would have been mortified by her drool.

What’s the matter? she asked.
You look like you’ve seen a ghost.

I didn’t answer right away.
I still wasn’t sure that I hadn’t.

She started to laugh but tears were trickling
down her cheeks, and she couldn’t reach the tissues.

Day 17 / Poem 17

Homage to Jim Harrison / Rusty Barnes

The grackle with its blue head
dunks violently his beak
in the bird bath while chickadees
and starlings battle the squirrel
for sustenance. Cars power by here
in the city and squirrels rush the street
for lack of places to run. On the porch
with my one-eyed dog,
I run my weathered hand on his
head and search fruitlessly for
the Zen moment like Jim Harrison’s
dogs betray their owner’s point of view.
I keep his grizzled nose pointed at
the source and breathe in his  wisdom.

One Glass a Tease / Donna Dallas

Her tits would plunge over
as she shimmied herself
into a house dress
two glasses a must

Y’all know she kept going
with a number and a level

Grandma
used to let her morning
Seagram’s and juice
settle
after breakfast
I’d watch it all unfold

Grandma’s hair
Grandma’s slur
I knew what number
she was up to by her boldness
I knew when to hightail
it out of there
when the demons blazed
full fire and fury

When Grandma was giddy – five glasses
she strummed her guitar
she’d laugh and mimic Elvis
as she layered in those refills
throughout the day
Later she would lay half nude
on the back porch steps
her face chiseled
wrinkles so minimal
I would look at her face
and see why the men
fought over her
all that grazing beauty
so neatly held
as if time had such good manners
not to spill a day of age on her
even on her death bed
whisps of auburn hair
still braided through her greys

Day after day
all her lovers waited patiently
in each bottle
for her return

Intrigue in the Cider-Mill / Angelo D. Amato

There is a crisis in the cider-mill.
All the apples have gone sour.
“We are selling the people fermented poison,”
the handy-man says. The owner snorts.
“No, we are selling them exotic flavors.”

Fresh apples in the orchard.
Inviting, among the leaves.
Adam wanders down the rows
and idly plucks them–
he is not interested in Angel fruit–
while Eve slurps out the burrowing worms.

Serpent husks litter the ground.
As they grow, one can see
the beginnings of human feet,
human hands…a human head.
The owner bites down on a rotten
red delicious. Pulp litters his lips.
He spies Adam and Eve,
toiling in the orchard…as freshly-filled
cider bottles clink on the conveyor belt, he thinks:
“On the whole, this is a much more pleasant arrangement.” 

Late Summer Ring Alarm Feed / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

7/17/22
4 rapid fire gunshots
.6 mi away
Neighbor 74: Does anyone know whose house it was?

8/01/22
Gunshots—shotgun?
.5 mi away
Exact location protected for privacy

Hashtag safety, hashtag explosions. I check 
this thread like I browse Facebook or Insta,
hazard the trolls. It’s just fireworks.
What do you want us to do? That was just a party
down the street.

12 days ago, .1 mi away
What is happening in westfield trace Smyrna? I just saw 10 cop cars there.

7 days ago, .6 mi away
3 gunshots heard around 9:35. They were spaced out over a couple minutes.

4 days ago, 1 mi away
3 shots fired near Hurt/Harris, I called 911

Americans are far more likely to avoid
the news than any other country’s
citizens. Last week, I squeezed
between a file cabinet, stacks
of Things Fall Apart and Like Water
for Chocolate in my closet during a lockdown
drill. Today, a sophomore student worries
that she’s relieved when a mass shooting
kills only three people.

Sitting Shiva / David Estringel

Love 

(this love) 

has left the room 

feet first— 

a procession 

of embers and ash. 

Illusions 

Delusions 

Damnable oxygen thief! 

So goes the stuff 

of paper hearts 

and fiery tongues, 

of promises—hollow—  

past oily lips 

sworn  

born 

to outlive names 

on gravestones.  

Won’t you kill me, 

softly, 

with one last kiss? 

Blitheful consciousness 

Walking sleep 

Ignorant bliss 

then call the shomer down the street. 

He really knows his Job. 

Rip the collar 

Drape the mirror 

Pawn the ring 

Take your soul home, 

rockin’ its funerary black, 

and I’ll give you a pebble 

to rub  

between cold fingertips  

on High Holy Days. 

Mariana and Isabella Discuss Their Husbands / R.W. Haynes

For years my husband avoided public life,
But when our son, with love of pageantry,
Awoke his once-false officiality,
He went to court, encouraged by his wife.
Your husband somehow hid his smiles, conferred
His generous friendship upon Angelo,
A kind reception to the man we know,
Assured he could rely upon his word.

We must not think that men are true
Always to artificial niceties
Of abstract ethics: they do as they please,
Often rationalizing what they do.
They are not mothers who can understand
Love’s blind force of mystic mastery,
But let them talk, and let us both be free
To seem obedient as we still command.
The man who blocked me from a virgin’s life
Now knows the devotion of an effective wife.

Isabella, dark is the spirit’s worst delusion
But faith grips truth with a steady hand,
And though temptation comes with command
A faithful mind withstands alluring confusion
And knows, as in chess, what sacrifice can do.
My husband, born again, has in my care
Learned what angelic faith a man can bear
Despite temptation’s making him untrue.

O, Mariana, what an angelic mind
You show me; your sweet faith so free
Might well live in a chaste nunnery,
Leaving all domestic life behind.
Yes, faith empowers all good things we see,
As it does, it seems, this serious comedy.

I Decide to Take A Lover / Erin Marsh

I

I don’t need a husband – a life
partner, a hubby, a spouse – someone
to latch onto, to lose myself in. I don’t need
a formalized relationship:
me + him + a small, yet cozy, house = a life
where he is automatically the beneficiary
on my life insurance policy

II

I don’t need a boyfriend – a darling,
a beau. I don’t want a casual relationship
where:
me + him + other men and women we are both seeing
= a clusterfuck of emotions.
I don’t want to discuss “commitment” or “moving-in”.

III

What I need is a lover – a boy toy,
a paramour – someone to focus on when feeling
amorous:
me + him + lingerie = intimacy.
I want him to leave when the afternoon is up.
I want him to see the trash overflowing.
Not feel the need to take it out.

Galaxy Well / h.l.. Rijo

I went down the bottom of the hill
in the middle of the night 
to the old stone crumbling well.
I gazed into the reflecting light
of a clear sky filled with buckets of countless stars.
Milky Way sheets in sliding reams are
a gliding anchor of our home keep.
Glacier peaks of far off galaxies shine inside celestial well walls 
as speckled starry polka dots.

Sink down into the mirror of a well whirlpool 
and wormhole beyond this earthly terrain.
Journey through dark plasma majesty, supernova glory, and black hole mystery. 
Transcend the duality of the thought 
that life is just some cosmic accident or not.
See into the beauty of strings aligning 
random chance of heavenly planning.
We are the endless song of a dark matter flow.
The beginning and the ending 
living inside 
an old stone well wormhole.

How to Trap and Release / Elizabeth S. Wolf

The lure’s the thing. With the
right bait, you can catch anything.

So watch what you set out,
my friend. Because anything

may not be what you had in mind.
You tossed back the one that

didn’t seem cool enough. But what
does that leave you? Cool can be

old, if you get closer. Cool doesn’t
care enough to take those extra steps

you see in the movies, read about
in the magazines, don’t feel you deserve.

What if you asked for more? What if?
You’ll never know if you don’t

survey, sample, put it up for sale
as if you could get all you wanted

without losing a thing. As if. Try
to imagine what that would feel like,

count broken promises like leaping sheep
until you fall fitfully asleep.

Day 16 / Poem 16

Like Luis Tiant / Rusty Barnes

The way my father pitched to me was dated,
nothing like I’d seen in the little league
ballgames. I was used to striking out and hate
the walk back to the bench in a blitzkrieg
of emotion but Dad put my first baseman’s glove
on his right hand (we couldn’t afford a lefty mitt),
his back turned to me like Luis Tiant and fired slow
curveballs and tight scroogies for me to hit,
where I missed swing after hard swing but tried
my best. Here it comes, he’d say with a grin
and after a round of pitches we’d drink from a shared
bottle of Pepsi, glass neck filled with the skins
of Spanish nuts he’d pilfered from his own personal
stash, talking baseball, his hands cracked full.

Summer Carnival / Donna Dallas

Billy Joel bellows
through the speakers
sausage and peppers
spilled beer
vomit
the world is back
as if war and disease never happened
pigeons swoop in 
to feast
while the homeless still beg 
crackheads still lurk
undercut by all the laughter 
the short heavyset man kisses his baby girl a bit too much
the blonde stringy haired girl
strung out in the last stall
gets hauled out
in an ambulance
after the EMS blasted her nostrils 
with Narcan

Still the Ferris wheel keeps moving
within this matrix
Billy Joel still reverberates 
among cackling passers by 
not one stops
nor looks 
a milk white hand dangled over the stretcher 
whirlwinds of people breathing
smiling
living 
as the girl hovers
suspended over her dead self 
aching  

The Diatribe of Jacob Marley / Angelo D’ Amato

Fortuitous Scrooge,
forever grumbling behind a feeble pocketbook!
Tearing out yellowed pages and stuffing them
in the shaking hands of outcast widows!
Hang them all, the rabble disgracing our streets!
Fill all the graveyards with paupers’ coffins!
Resurrect Jesus, and show him,
‘neath the glassy sheen of Hancock Tower,
what his Good Works have wrought!

But he won’t see, through blood-matted eyes.
Shattered wrists justified his generous delirium.
O pray for us, Martyr of the Woebegone.
Spare a thought for us, who dabble in glittering gems.
The lapidary Bartholomew informed me that this diamond watch-chain
is not diamond at all, but a string of glorified crystal shards! The horror!
I beseech thee, make the old biddies pay,
so I can invest in diamond stock,
and purchase a legitimate chain.

…it takes the hellbound to send up the warning flares.
Contented sinners will not listen to the pious.
Show me a smoker who likes to smoke,
and I will show you a man in love with pain.
Hypocrites, all— a lifetime fearing the bile of shame
that rises from the fevered fits of repentance,
this is not worth the mighty debt of sin.

Gun Life / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

Heat rises in the dark from the aluminum                              runway stretched temporary
across Egyptian sand. Stop-over on                           the way to Burma, 1943.
His turn to guard the C-130                            pilot and crew in town.
Holding a rifle is one thing                 a revolver, another.
Tinkle and clank                                 scrap collector on a camel
fuselage glints in the moonlight                     the interloper eyes the wings,
the runway. If he comes too close                              my grandfather must
kill him.                                                          My preschool son

cradles an AK-47                    his father hands him–
visit to his stepmother’s                     Parris Island family.

My father lifts my son                        to his shoulders
gives him a sign                                              to pump up and down—

five-year-old’s first protest—                                     support the gun
ban in Chicago,                                               hundreds of children dead.

Where did my uncle keep                   the gun in our house
he used to shoot a cop?                                   What’s the combo
to my wife’s                                        safe? How

can I fault the Black man                    in front of me, pistol
on his belt, in this Georgia                              grocery checkout line?

Master and the Hounds / David Estringel

Quizzical looks 
at the foot of the bed, 
search for a spot. 

A crown of white, 
seeking a sleepy head, 
waits for rest of its own. 

Icy blue eyes 
pierce the black air, 
guarding its corner of mattress, 

as a pretty girl 
poses and preens to the hum 
of the digital clock. 

My sweet angel— 
a heart (and hair) of gold— 
begs for a belly rub, 

snubbing barks from 
a brown imp under the sheets. 
A blessed nocturne. 

Corrido of the Nature Writer Dragged Away by Rabid Armadillos / R. W Haynes

Come gather round me, cowboys,
And a story I will tell,
Of how down in Laredo,
A writer went to Hell.

No one knows what he was writing,
We only found his hat,\
And a bloody trail of armadillo tracks
From the office where he sat.

The rumor was he sold his soul
To know why in an eclipse
The moon precisely blocks the sun
And then away it slips.

He used to gripe about the way
Odd numbers don’t divide;
Since apples do, he thought he knew
A truth was there inside.

And how did dragons cross the seas
And fly to various places,
And breathe fire almost everywhere,
In documented cases?

And when the armadillos came
And ordered him to silence,
He must have tried before he died
To defend himself by violence.

There was no one to justify
His passion for his science,
No witness of his bloody death
Or his words of defiance.

Remember my corrido, boys,
And keep an eye behind you;
You never know, those armadillos
With bloody minds might find you.

She Doesn’t Mean Anything by It / Erin Marsh

A friend in college used to pretend to limp
across campus and have me rate her
on how realistic it seemed. I laughed
because I thought I should find it hilarious.
If anyone had pulled me aside and asked
if it hurt my feelings, I would have said,
No. she doesn’t mean anything by it.

My mother, when all the handicapped parking
spots are taken at WalMart or Target, always
says Damned handicaps, think they got the world
by the tail. I assure my horrified friend
that she doesn’t mean anything by it.                                                                                
I told my therapist this story and she asked
if I was bothered by it and I told her,
No, she doesn’t mean anything by it.

And it’s true—they don’t mean anything by it.
But what I’m really saying is that my shame
and embarrassment of being the one who stands
out—the one rotini pasta in a box of elbow
macaroni—doesn’t mean anything to them.

And I can’t fault them for that. But sometimes
I like to watch videos on YouTube where one animal
is injured and another will follow it around and lie
beside it in solidarity. Or the commercial for flea collars
where there is a tiny dog with wheels, dragging his
paralyzed back feet behind him and a larger, stronger
dog is running and playing beside it., meaning something by it.

Gone / h.l. Rijo

I carry your pieces around my heart 
Inside a ring, always
I carry your name 
in an unopened app
on my broken phone
I haven’t dared look
for fear of forever erasing 
your last words

I carry your image 
inside my mind
When I wake, I sometimes forget
thinking that you’ll call
before the reality of what happened 
continues to weighs on
Wish I could go back 
give one last hug, one last I love you
before the nightmare of your cough

I carry your memories, surrounding 
when I’m back home
your heaviness, your smell
lingers, everywhere 
I feel it on the couch where you once sat
I hear your laugh
echoing in the walls
Your presence remains, though you are not

You’re gone
You didn’t die 
You drifted away 
into the salty Acapulco air 
I carry you with me 
Your love 
Your gravity 
I carry it with me
in your golden ring
next to my heart
A bit of your soul lives on
I wear it, always
never, never gone 

Dropping off at the Cinema: The Dark Knight Rises / Elizabeth S. Wolf

It was a July night, not too steamy, but humid enough
that the popcorn smell from the theater hunkered down
in the scruffy parking lot, by the discarded soda cups and
candy wrappers. We both pulled up, under a light,
not close enough to embarrass our teens (too young
to drive but old enough to not want to be seen
getting dropped off by mom). The girls popped out,
checked their outfits (did they not plan these by phone,
and also coordinate hair and make-up?). We run the
checklist: phones, money for tickets. We put K’s bag
in my car, since I would be bringing both girls home later.

Off they went, and we chatted for a few. Watching the
girls enter the cinema, I stopped, trying to focus my eyes
at a distance, in the dark. Wait, I asked.
Is that a car dropping off, or a cab, or a cop?
We stared. It was definitely a cop. Just sitting there.

Huh. It slowly dawns on us a dozen people were killed
in Colorado, and 70 more hurt, watching this same movie,
two days ago. So, I say, out loud but unsure, what do you think?
Are they responding to a threat, or just showing that they care?
I’m sure it’s nothing, my friend says. A precaution, is all.
You’re probably right, I say. Neither of us moves.

We stare some more. We’re on unstable ground here.
I turn back to my friend, who has another kid and a husband
and a glass of wine awaiting her at home. Tell you what,
I say. I don’t have to leave right away. I’ll just hang here
and make sure it’s nothing. When I feel silly and get bored,
I’ll go home. If anything happens, I’ll grab both kids
and hightail it to your house.

You sure? she asks. Want me to stay?

I kind of feel stupid staying myself, I say. No need for
both of us to stand here. You go ahead. I’ll head out soon.

We hugged, which we didn’t normally do, but felt right.
She left. I kept staring at the cop car parked by the entrance
for maybe 20 minutes. Maybe a little more. Until I was sure
the ads were over and the movie had begun and still
nothing had happened. No copycats here.

Later I went back to get the girls, who happily babbled
about the movie, and who else was there, and who
wasn’t there with them, and all the other things
kids talk about, when they’re not thinking
about tear gas grenades and gunmen
and getting massacred in the dark.

Day 15 / Poem 15

I Asked for Water/ She Gave Me Gasoline / Rusty Barnes

Hot like a welder do, I powered the machine
     down and took off my mask and gloves.
         The soft drink dispenser gave out only Pabst
               when you pushed the Pepsi button.

Before the days of OSHA prevented
    possible accident I drank martinis
          by the thermos and by quitting time
               was filled with windy bluster. I couldn’t

quit the drink though; I would drive home
     with one eye closed to chase the yellow line.
          At home my wife made pork chops with onion
               and I passed out in the night-drunk air.

Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall / Donna Dallas

You
broken to the point of leakage
I
in love with filling your cracks
anoint the ooze 
stop the bleed

I should have realized my affliction
when I took in my first stray 
he was recovering 
stone grey eyes 
in the sunlight they had a yellow tinge 
fascinating speckled color 
dark hair and thick brows 
I have a pension for the less fortunate 
can go as far as even saying 
I feel worthy when helping someone
so maimed it’s beyond comprehension 

Back to your bleed
my endless gauzing and soaking
the bleed disguised
as a constant swill

You know 
only in my darkest times will I admit 
that I have longed for your gorge
to be a pour so immense
it’s an uncontrollable spigot

Why? 

When the first stray “borrowed” my sterling silver belt
along with my gold diamond pendant 
I knew I was making this sacrifice
for his happiness and accepted this fate
knowing full well these precious items
would never return to me

What returned was stone cold eyes
looking for more valuables to pawn
vicious fists to prove that the road to sobriety
was non-existent 

The battered path to hell is glorious
when hell is disguised as a sweet two room apartment
with a petite backyard 
while stray number two lingered in the dark corridor
waiting to be saved 
by yours truly 

We were homeless by the following spring 
I was prostituting for money to support 
our habits
I lovingly accepted this affliction
because A. I was never taught how to say no
and/or B. Not enough belief
I have the right of refusal 
either way fast forward
to my arrest
central booking 
plead of insanity 
I was escorted to B-block at the institution
and happily underwent rehab
I say happily as a complete lie 
it was death 
over and over 
I would have preferred to have been hit by an eighteen-wheeler 
over and over

And yet the lessons lay like a field of daises I refuse to enter into

Anytime I felt hurt I would fuck someone 

Later when wandering the streets
I ventured upon the next stray 
who became my loving pimp 
and here we go on the merry-go-round of bandaging 
plugging and fixing 

Shit…I fixed no one  

I am so broken I’m a cracked piece
of some bigger thing that is shattered 

I know you know 

So I’m trying to fix this last one 
when I ain’t even found my missing pieces 

no glue or magical cement gonna put Humpty Dumpty back together again
I’ve accepted this…..
I go to the bathroom 
pull the band-aids out 
of the cracked and peeling medicine cabinet 
salve your ooze
tell you it’s going to be ok
you will kick this 
again

One Must Risk an Unpleasant Squawk / Angelo D’Amato

“Oh, sir, we can’t play without our music,”
the band leader says. The substitute conductor
coughs into a frilled handkerchief and drops it
onto the head of the first-chair flautist.
“Make do, make do,” he murmurs.
He is a lion, with a mane of cobalt grey
He expects magnificence—at least,
he would have filled the auditorium
with music, without the conductor’s
guidance. But, he gestures at the timpani,
and—

The timpanist stares with empty eyes.
“Confound it,” the substitute conductor roars.
“Make music, damnit! You are musicians,
yes?” The band leader speaks— “we need to see
what we’re playing.” The substitute conductor growls
and storms off the stage. The band holds their instruments
in silence, for forty minutes. They leave at the chiming
of the two o’clock bell.
Know this—there is a music that can only be felt.

The substitute conductors with manes of cobalt grey
forgot it, long ago. That is the music
that belongs in silent auditoriums,
played to empty seats from
empty pages.

Play it.

Midnight Sun / David Estringel

It’s the mornings  

when I miss him 

most of all. 

Freefalling 

into whispers 

of patchouli 

and indentations  

of cold sheets, 

I devour  

ghosts of ache 

and breath  

that haunted spaces  

in between  

heated nostrils, lips, 

and tongues. 

Memory sustains me 

(the angles of his face), 

the current that drives these limbs,

‘til night 

when all is gone  

but hunger  

for the rising 

of my midnight sun 

and kisses of opiate fire  

on my skin.  

The Park on the Border / R. W. Haynes

Some will no doubt tell you this riverbank
Is No Man’s Land, a strip of confusion,
A battleground of predators
Who hate the Jeffersonian theme.
My wife and I have walked here nearly thirty years,
And it’s true, we’ve faced a major attack
By someone’s yellow Lab, when a gate was left open,
And he just didn’t like small dogs,
And we had three, so he galloped up,
And when I tried to kick him, he bit me twice
On the arm, just breaking the skin a little,
And a young fellow dashed up and ran him off
With a piece of rebar, no one really hurt.
I don’t really like being bit by big dogs,
But he was arrested, confined for thirty days,
And he didn’t have rabies, I’m not afraid of water,
And his owner was fined.  Can somebody play
The Three Stooges theme song?

And we did once see five or six guys
Racing across, carrying bundles.  It looked like a game
With swift-footed Achilles, arms full of dope,
And his Myrmidon amigos, epic on their faces,
Doing an end-run on Hector’s home team.
That was once, though no one can doubt
That on the stretch way upstream, up past
The Santa Fe riverbed where long ago
I dug wild asparagus for a St. John’s tutor,
On that stretch, no doubt, terrible things
Have happened.  And there is more to the story,
But my own main caution to the unwary
Is watch out for yellow Labs, if you have small dogs,
Especially if one of them is a Schnauzer. 

A Letter to My Therapist / Erin Marsh

I see you every other week for 5 years.

We talk about my past—fold pieces of dark blue
construction paper into little frogs that leap
when you press and released their backs.
We talk about my future—fold white printer paper
into triangles and cut holes. When unfolded,
we have snowflakes we hang from your office ceiling.

Then, your husband cheated on you
and every session became me writing notes
in blue and white folders labeled with your name
I need to talk about my present—the notebooks
on my desk plump with poems and letters
to a sometimes beloved. 

Small Moments / h.l. Rijo

Smell of sweet summer 
in season ending blossoms
floats quietly through the morning air
as feather clouds paint the sky.
An August crest of freshly cut grass
encompasses my senses whole. 
In a moment of peace,
a second of tranquility—
before the LoUD, cra
                                     sh,
 hOnk,       B  O  O  M,
of reality.
I snap back—
back to the concrete city.
A sea of congestion
in which I search through
every single day
for that moment of bliss
that inevitably whispers
(always a whisper) 
my way.

Cento 2 / Elizabeth S. Wolf

Her body, she thought, needed to come with a warning label.
Holy shit this magnificent creature is real.
How he’d ridicule her romance novels and rouge— 
Why pretend to befriend everyone you meet?

As you lay dying, I can’t bring myself to visit.
I beg the moon to forgive me.

(Marsh, Dallas, D’Amato)

Day 14 / Poem 14

Stranger in a Strange Land / Rusty Barnes

Stranger in a strange land is how I feel
in the realms of childhood and marriage,

though maybe I could claim some wan-
faced expertise after thirty-one blessed years

(you can tell my wife is my first reader)
and three children raised till more or less

grown. I slouch toward my own Bethlehem,
brazen as a Roman centurion in his mettle.

Lord, I can offer you years of being almost
there for the loves I love and matter. I can say

I tried my damndest to overwhelm
the voices by dint of good deed and hapless

prayer, a question I still pray about but
never count on an answer except in backward

ways. Into the land of the meek I stride boldly;
in the land of the proud I vouchsafe weakness,

everything I have I give in support to kids
and wife and to myself I yield to the artist

who hides the world beneath his drop cloth,
hides the world of hiss and mutter, the end

of all things imminent, turgid with the waste
of people and the barest possibility of salvation.

As Berryman once said to you, Hast Thou
prepared astonishments for man? I claw at 

the caul’s rip and hope for a human prophecy,
the wherefore of logic, the sunny dream of Lucifer.

Come-on Girl / Donna Dallas

Heiress of my golden arm
I live
for your perfect heart-shaped face
smallest of a nose
such a porcelain doll
you’re seventeen going on a galaxy
your life an infinite line
never starting
never stopping
I believe that’s how it is

You’ve just jumped into this
like Double Dutch
then you’ll jump out
keep moving
soaring – a traveler of sorts
from some deep vortex
buried in the vat of Mother
of Glorious
your little finder bleats to me

I look at Magnus our backyard falcon
with his immeasurable wingspan
Magnus hovers above a field mouse
and I think
holy shit this magnificent creature is real
and alive
and so damn awesome
that is exactly what I feel when I
look at you – magnificent little beast
spinning in such a screwed-up world

We try desperately to give it
a little sense for you
pass some virtue
fuck if we know
world was always
a disconnected craze
but your line – your glowing stick of life
that effervescent ascent
we watch from the side
It’s incredibly alive
with moonglow
it was alive
before we awoke

Those mysteries
we can feel
the bark on the tree
is alive
this velvet leaf
your laughter
such a ball of wonder
call it birth
call it an agony
of a wonder so alive
it was never not

Self-Portrait / Angelo D’Amato

He’s a gentle soul, with a tepid tongue…
and maybe a well of anger, to boot;
and, at times, a little deaf when others
need him to hear the things they’ve left unsaid.
He’s leery of ostentatious kindness,
and resents overly casual speech.
Why fill the air with trite and vapid talk?
Why pretend to befriend everyone you meet?

He knows he burns up, in romantic pursuits;
he knows he withdraws more than he’d like
(and sharpens the knives he plans to use
when he boldly steps back into the light);
But, he searches for words that can’t be said
so you can know the heart inside his head.

I Wanted the 50’s Childhood I Glimpsed at My Grandparents’ House— / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

eggs hidden at Easter, bacon bits on chopped salad, Southern
Living magazine in the pink guest room. School shopping for
new clothes, carpeted bathroom with a furry seat cover.
Lawrence Welk playing on the stereo, a piece of furniture
that gleamed with polish, the big room on Saturday nights, sipping red
Shirley Temples, maraschino cherries glowing, on the bar’s dark oak
twisting seats. Not

a mother on the current in the basement at Bronner’s
Institute down the street, suicide attempts when my father
moved with us to LA, his father’s bedroom
separate from his mother’s, soma to sleep
and cope, affairs and love exhausted by her
neediness, and his. The 50s childhood
my father lived.

Dusk / David Estringel 

The band of pink ‘bove the horizon 

creeps 

toward my bedroom window— 

Astraeus’ fingertips, 

anointed with silvery sleep— 

to hush  

the stir of echoes 

that sets these lips achatter 

and draw, open, the velvety curtains 

to dreams. 

I Try To Imagine Eva Braun / Erin Marsh

biting into the capsule, recalling
how he’d ridicule her romance novels and rouge, 
leave her without saying goodbye, 
how she’d rack her brain for a reason, hours
mouthing his professions of love, attempting
to interpret the tilt of his brow.
Two suicide attempts and he only drew her further 
into himself. Now alone in her room at the Berghof,
no visitors allowed and the officers’ wives despising her, 
after sixteen years as his mistress she writes: 
From our first meeting 
I swore to follow you 
anywhere even unto 
death. I live only for 
your love.
She swallows only after he shoots himself in the right temple.

Déjà vu Fights / h.l. Rijo

Have we been here before? 
What is this feeling? 
I think I’ve felt this before
Caught in the same argument
over and over and over

Have we been here before?
A spider web of entrapped minds
Just trying to understand 
How to live life as best we can

Have we been here before?
The arguing flow
The back 
The forth
It feels so familiar 
Like a comforting pillow 
Soaked in distress

Have we been here before? 
The ride of our emotions 
Is an overwhelming pull 
We’re drowning in the currents of our cyclical moods

Have we been here before? 
Where we’ve died and been resurrected
From anger to crying to rage to pain to despair to loathing and self-blame
To sadness to shame to a notice to a halt  and to semi-awareness of it all
To hearing to feeling to seeing to knowing and having empathy 
To caring to forgiveness to sharing in love to hugs and kisses and peace
Ready, set, rinse, repeat 

Have we been here before?
Once upon many a time 
Round and round the clock we go
Hear the chime of arguing arise
I’ve seen that look of a bulls red eye 
Step back and find the truth inside the feuding patterned lines
Promises of I’ll never do this again
I said, 
          I said, 
                     I said 
Déjà vu…

Moms Don’t Have a Magic Bullet / Elizabeth Wolf

When she smashed the screen of my daughter’s iPod
my ex-husband called his girlfriend “passionate”.

When she yelled and threw things as my daughter hid
crouched in the bathroom, the therapist suggested

we all come in for a big group therapy session.
I said no. His girlfriend didn’t play any part

in my parenting plan. They broke up, a few times;
got arrested for assaulting each other, a few times;

failed to attend meetings or follow the program.
So instead, I got an order barring the girlfriend

from being in the presence of my girl. I slid into court
during one of the months they lived apart, when he

(briefly) had his own place. I’m good with logistics.
Harder to handle was when my 10 or 11-year-old-

who had recorded a ringtone saying “this is your
awesome daughter calling”- sat huddled in the corner

of our brown comfy couch, sobbing, barely able to breathe.
“Why don’t they like me?” she asked. “What is wrong with me,

and why did my dad choose her instead?” Toddlers toss
questions rapid-fire, relentlessly, for years. Tweens can

stop you cold with only two or three,
targeted straight to the heart.

Day 13 / Poem 13

Cross-Country / Rusty Barnes

We drove cross-country when we
were spry enough to make

the trek work: young and convinced
of the right path we drove from

Mansfield PA to Houston TX,
our geriatric cats as smooth

to the touch as plastic. They peed
in a shoebox filled with litter

and rode the dashboard for miles
without complaint. The Mississippi

River the only place we took pictures:
it was time to go go go, our purpose

heavy in mind. We made it in good
time only to be greeted with palmetto

bugs sized palm of the hand and heavy
like no bug I had ever seen before.

We slept on the floor because we had
no bed because those were too dear,

our wallets slim as my legs and heart,
our will meant to overcome. We

felt like pioneers jutting the nose
of our Pontiac 6000 toward the Gulf

and hoping that we had prayed enough,
an unlikely pairing that would surely thrive.   

This Skin / Donna Dallas

So bony
I break like branches
veins withered
buried so deep under my skin
in fear of a poke
they cocooned deep into muscle

I beg the moon to forgive me
I beg the sun to bathe me
that float along
swabbing up my aftermath

I’ve yet to whistle
last whistle was 1996
last kiss on the mouth was around there
maybe that was when the world stopped
and my hell – is thinking
I’m still alive – the joke
of this…..
my everlasting eternity

In Love with the Absence of Empty Prattle / Angelo D’Amato

At night, when the Societally-Inclined have slinked away
to their terribly lonely beds and drugged themselves
with Benadryl and tea leaves and Nyquil,
and maybe even healing crystals and incense,
to calm those frenetic nerves that forced
anything and everything from their lips
just so they would seem well-informed
or whatever, and thus be sheltered from the things
gnawing, delightedly, on their insides–
I can hear the leaves tap-tapping each other
on the wind that trundle through,
with a genial-seeming old man bouncing
on the squeaky driver’s seat, his gloved hands
gripping the letter wheel even as he says
“All is well, good sirs, all is well,” and black smoke
puff-puffs from the rattling tail-pipe. A family
at the General Store shakes their heads and chuckles–
“Oh, Mr. Norris”–as his jalopy sputters and sags
into a spot of mud, likely filled with horse dung. “Oh bother,”
he shouts, and his cheeks–that is, the skin
which is visible beneath his patchy white beard–
flush red and the engine gives a great rheumatic Crack!–
grey smoke billows from the engine hood and obscures
Mr. Norris’s seething indignation. “Mrs. Norris
never would have tolerated such a sorry display,”
Mrs. Kipp says to Mrs. Knopp. “Oh, heavens, no,”
Mrs. Knopp agrees. She daubs her cheeks
with a rose-colored handkerchief, for it is unseasonably hot
even in the shade of the Anderson’s Bed & Breakfast,
where the Edwards children have lined up at the windows
to gawk at the commotion caused by the silly old man;
and the maids in the kitchen are preparing
well over a dozen omelets for the starving guests
(Such is the custom, at the Anderson’s Bed & Breakfast–
nothing is ever served in a reasonable time,
and everyone grumbles, and when it finally is served,
everyone is all the more delighted,
because the quality of the food cannot be surpassed
and by gosh, they will be coming here again!)
Mark, the cabinet-maker, and Dr. Dupont, the somewhat senile druggist,
approach the portly Mr. Norris, with the gentlemanly intention
of helping him to “unstuck” his car from the muddy ditch,
likely filled with horse dung. Mr. Norris huffs,
Mark gestures at the offending tire, Dr. Dupont
holds his chin like a scholar–somehow or another,
they manage to liberate Mr. Norris’s aging vehicle,
I don’t really know the mechanics of how that would work
in early twentieth-century America, but I do know
that mud splattered the bundle of white roses
Mr. Norris had picked from his garden that morning, after adjusting
his blue waistcoat, the one with the brass buttons;
and while humming that annoying ditty Mrs. Norris
had wanted at their wedding ceremony, just ten years prior–
she had sung it day after day, as her memory collapsed and her eyes lost their focus. You’ve taken a spin in my auto…*
And I do know Mr. Norris eventually managed,
after repelling the guffaws of the children and the sympathetic
tut-tuts of the onlookers with many-a gruff mutterings,
to replace the dried-up bundle he’d placed at her headstone
the week prior, even though the current bundle
was splattered in mud and the petals a little
worse-for-wear. He knew she wouldn’t mind,
would think his stubbornness was endearing, really. He touched her headstone, and–
I leave Mr. Norris there. The old man’s privacy
has already been violated by the jeering crowd.
But the leaves keep moving, and I keep thinking,
(Do tree roots have taste buds?)
content to be without healing crystals and Nyquil and what-have-you,
in love with the absence of empty prattle.

Bubble Up / Jennifer Dracos – Tice

Bubbles, little larva eggs, jostle,
glisten on the bottom,
strings begin to lace to the surface
good enough for boiling
dump the pasta in

What bubbles up for you?
I wanted to hit
my therapist
every time she asked
this obscene question

Bubbles bond to other
bubbles, malformed
molecules

I blew one inside another inside
another, hubba Hubba
Bubba gum

Bubbles on a mouth corner

Chug of bubbles clearing a
just tapped
waterline

Something signals
beneath this
flat green southern lake
Push the spirometer balls, float them with the last bit of your air—

holding your breath isn’t what hurts,
it’s the moment after 
you’ve blown it all
and there’s nothing to pull in

Mirror Mirror / David Estringel

Watering the pink oleander, outside my front door, I spy the neighbor’s dog—small, scrappy, and brown—scrying the iridescent skin of a water puddle at the foot of my drive for answers. Lost in murky swirls of pinks, blues, and greens that stretch and pull like morning yawns, it cocks its head, shoots me a stare, then crawls under my car—tail curled under its furless belly–for an afternoon nap. The sun beating down, angrily, my head swimming in the chemical smell of the garden hose, I hear the call of cold bedsheets and lightbulbs inside. “Good boy,” I think to myself, watching its eyes grow heavier with drowsy sleep. “Maybe tomorrow.” 

Cicero Locates the Lost Grave of Archimedes / R. W. Haynes

Thales fell in a well, looking at the sky,
Which proves the importance of political vocation,
Which brought me to Sicily, where my calculation
Has restored a great thinker’s reputation,
So now in honored glory he may lie.
The forces of nature should be understood,
But in my own mind I do perceive
A skill for politics, so reverently I leave
Quantitative wisdom and seek what good
An honest Roman patriot can best achieve.
Glory comes and goes; let us contrive
To keep deserving men’s glory alive.

Aunt / Erin Marsh

We have nothing in common.
Your obituary states a love of the outdoors, wreath-
making during the Christmas season. I can’t imagine
me without the crafting of poems at my desk, safely
ensconced in my third-floor apartment.
As you lay dying, I can’t bring myself to visit.
We’ve been dodging each other since my parents’
divorce. A deathbed visit seems disingenuous. 
When you finally die, I cannot hear your voice as you pass over.
Yet, the silt of your eyes grounds the wild river of mine. 
At night, I feel your wing covering mine, encouraging
a flight away from the familial nest. 
You do not shout commands. 
Yet, I know you approve of my leaving.
My wings are just a bit stronger than yours.
Take me just a bit further

Past Tense / h.l. Rijo

I think of you when it rains.
Your face and mine.
But we chose to stay hidden away in plain sight.
I know that you wanted me on that rainy night. 
I thought I could feel your Heart, Body, and Soul.
(Or was it just my desired projection
seeing things I thought were there?)
My dreams in the dark 
a thought I’ve now played
of you saying my name 
rolling it on your tongue 
like dice up and down through the park.
Sometimes I wish we let out our private faces public for all to see
what’s beneath sweet simmering smiles and flirting eye mysteries.
But some things are never spoken
like locks kept secret on wet lips.
Quiet, 
I stay up on rainy nights
think of you and smile.
I know you’re far away
but I can feel you for miles…

R.I.P Jeremy Richman / Elizabeth S. Wolf

Jeremy Richman looked for answers
deep inside the structures of the brain.
In the prefrontal cortex, site of planning
and decisions, weighing of consequences.
In the limbic system, the triad of structures
concerned with triaging emotions:
           fear             hunger                anger
guilt            shame               anxiety
learning mediating biological responses
shaping learning, in a cycle which iterates
& iterates & iterates.

How does it diverge
                                                  into violence?

In the long-range, humans survived
by building bonds. What must go wrong
for a grown man to aim a weapon of war
into the face of a child?

Jeremy Richman believed
we would find this answer
lurking in the blob of a brain.
He needed to honor his daughter,
Avielle, who died at Sandy Hook.
Jeremy knew infinite heartache.
He used every tool that he had
until he found that he couldn’t
endure another day.

Before he died, he loved.
Before he died, he lost.
Before he died, he tried.

Day 12 / Poem 12

After Reading Coleridge’s Christabel / Rusty Barnes

 remain wholly convinced Christabel
is a vampire who Leoline the baron rich seeks
to overcome lest the daughter go to hell
with only the promise of a kiss on cheeks
already flamed with love’s awful curiousness.
It is nearly eight now in my home and I can
put this book to slow yet eventful rest,
close it neatly at its worn binding and hand
the whole thing over to my imagination’s
keeping and shut my tired eyes with sure
knowledge that tomorrow’s frustration
will be that there is now no poem purer
than the master’s here of word and wit
three hundred years past his writing of it.

Dark Horses in Dark Places / Donna Dallas

The stench is everywhere
I’ve never seen bodies in different
stages of decay
someone’s parent – someone’s son
lies in the middle of a dirt trodden road
legs askew
tongue black
eyes empty

Murdered
for love of country
love of freedom
hide in basements
sit in silent terror
of being discovered
and carted off like prisoners
to a new Auschwitz

How much land
and how many countries
are enough before
Satan is fat
full and happy

Snuggled safely in our homes
with food and running water
we watch the videos of the dead
we think
oh it’s them
not us
it’s not here
we are good

We sit
in our dark places
listen to the hooves
of dark horses
stamp over
our shallow-minded graves

Pep Rally / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

Students scrunch
in bleachers across the gym
from us, the faculty.
             My thirtieth first day
             the real first
             for each high school kid.

Musical chairs—pep rally fun—sounds
mellifluous but is so
nasty. Wikipedia notes its origin:
“Trip to Jerusalem,” a German game—
not enough room on the boats
to Israel.

Parents call teachers
Communist these days, and today
it’s hard not to be
when 800 of us watch
the competition on the gym floor build as
chairs disappear, kids fight to fit
two sets of hips between
seat arms, flurry,
fight, and backward tip—
struggle, arm jam,
kid caught under
the scrum, all of us
standing and screaming,
school photographer twisting, training
his long lens on the triumph of the last one

alone in his chair.
We pound the bleachers,
he pumps his fist,
we laugh and shout his name.

Lady Macbeth / David Estringel

How black 
like night 
is your call for counsel 
to spirits, rancorous 
and thirsting,  
darkly, 
for the fruitless bounty 
of cold teats 
and tongue  
that bring the unmanned to sway 
in this 
Hell’s business. 
Curious 
the shadows 
that escape through hot teeth 
and curled lip, 
that fall  
like judgments— 
bloody—  
upon noble heads and  
gaping maws of graves. 
Do hearts of pitch  
feel the ambitious stings 
of Conscience’s stabs? 
Or are they as elusive 
as Hypnos’ kiss 
or the sweet wet  
of warm suckle? 
How go, you, 
weird sister, true— 
Thirst 
of Evil’s Sword— 
obscured 
by the sun 
and gold’s warm glimmer 
‘round weary brow 
and crimson finger? 
Watch how you go, 
fateful bride, 
for baneful cries 
ride the breeze 
like hoary devils 
or dark spells, 
looking 
to collect  
their due. 

One Riot, One Ornithophile / R.W. Haynes

A raucous parliament of excited green jays
Convenes here around the pomegranate tree,
Flapping around and squawking deafeningly
To amaze the world with the hell they raise.
Is it a family reunion? A pep rally? A war?
Why are they agitated? Never before
Have so many green birds made such a roar.
Flying tree to tree, jays from near and far,
Frantic with passion that cries for explanation.
I circle the garden with stealth and in silence
Alert for the cause of this green-feathered violence,
Peering low and high at the flock’s perturbation.
And what is disconcerting these jays’ souls?
Ah, the unwelcome trespass of two orioles.

Untitled / Erin Marsh

Her body, she thought, needed to come with a warning label,
so she embroidered her diagnoses onto a white square of cloth
using red thread, spent her lunch hour sewing this cotton declaration
to the inside corner of her left breast. Her beloved touched the tag 
through her pink dress and wouldn’t believe it. When her he went 
to unbutton it, he gasped at her unexpected opacity—there was a bright 
red paper heart in the glassine envelope of her chest, its outer edges 
visible with just a little pressure. 

Roads / h.l. Rijo

I try to change my view of 

sunrises and sunsets
with pink and purple skies kissing mountains in a cloud
below,
to red and orange dreams of a waking world in soft dewy greens.
But,
I keep staring at the road
letting it unfold
into the vast horizon beyond where
my eyes can’t see.
The only thing I know
is to gaze at the unknown
time and time and time 
again.
Keep waiting to see if one day the sun’s direction would ever change…

The luring comfort of just sitting
and never changing direction 
(always a sunrise always a sunset)
doesn’t allow for journeys of 
new hidden wonderment
into the clouds, 
past the moons, 
through the nebula spools, 
and what lies beyond the constant sun.

The Cost of Lies, with Footnotes¹ / Elizabeth S. Wolf

ALEX JONES, the day of the Sandy Hook shooting, Infowars:

“It’s more than these dead poor children —                      you’ve gotta go with your gut,

      and my gut tells me    

                  I’ve never felt this freaked out…            I really think

                              they’re going to come after our guns

                                             and start a civil war…

Don’t ever think

     the globalists who hijacked this country

                     wouldn’t stage something like this.

                              They kill little kids all day, every day.” ²

SCARLETT LEWIS, mother of Jesse Lewis, 6 years old, murdered in his first grade classroom:

“Jesse was real. I’m a real mom.” ³

ALEX JONES, Infowars, March 2014

“Folks, we’ve got video of Anderson Cooper with clear blue-screen out there…

      He’s not there in the town square.

                 We got people clearly coming up and laughing and then

                           doing the fake crying. We’ve clearly got people where

                                       it’s actors playing different parts for different people,

                                                      the building bulldozed, covering up everything…

SCARLETT LEWIS, mother of Jesse, who bravely told other kids to run when the gun jammed:

“The fear and anxiety and unsafeness … keeps me from healing,”

Sept 2014: InfoWars publishes “FBI SAYS NO ONE KILLED AT SANDY HOOK.” ⁴

ALEX JONES, Infowars, Dec 2014:

“The whole thing is a giant hoax…

              The general public doesn’t know

                            the school was actually closed the year before.

                                             They don’t know they’ve sealed it all, demolished the building.

They don’t know that they had the kids going in circles

                  in and out of the building as a photo-op….

                                  But it took me about a year with Sandy Hook

                                                    to come to grips with the fact

                                                                   that the whole thing was fake.”

NEIL HESLIN, father of Jessie Lewis, who described holding his son’s bullet-ridden body in his arms, on national television, on Father’s Day, regarding Alex Jones’ absence from court:

“My life has been threatened. I fear for my life.

I fear for my safety and my family’s safety and their life…

Mr. Alex Jones does not have the courage to face me.” ⁵

ALEX JONES, Infowars, Dec 2014:

I mean, I couldn’t believe it….

                     But then I did deep research—

                                     and my gosh, it just pretty much didn’t happen.”

SCARLETT LEWIS, testifying with Alex Jones sitting in the courtroom:

“Truth is so vital in our world… Sandy Hook is a hard truth. Hard truth. Nobody would want to ever believe that 26 kids could be murdered.” ⁷

ALEX JONES, April 2019:

                           “And I, myself, have almost had like

           a form of psychosis                          back in the past

                                 where I basically thought

                          everything was staged, even though

              I’m now learning                           a lot of times things aren’t staged.”⁶

1. From the closing argument by attorney Kyle Farrar: “Speech is free, but you have to pay for your lies.” Proceedings to consider damages against Alex Jones 8/2022
2. On December 14, 2012, 26 students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School and 2 members of the Lanza family were shot and killed by Adam Lanza. For real.
3. Scarlett Lewis excerpts from testimony at the proceedings to consider damages against Alex Jones 8/2022
4. This article has been removed
5. Neil Heslin excerpt from testimony at the proceedings to consider damages against Alex Jones 8/2022
6. WTAF

Day 11 / Poem 11

Quatorzain on Divorce / Rusty Barnes

When one finds a marriage at a young age
the story one tells of it is deliberately
two-fold: a short but nearly pungent rage,
marked in drear stages like the lee
of a river in which water refuses to yield
to stone and cuts its own path through mud,
boulder and riverside grass in the near field,
only to lose itself in that story like a flood
in which the marriage like other falsity seems
to reveal only the best of itself to others.
It’s no vice to admit fault and repair midstreams
surely better that than of failed lovers,
coming at each other like wrecking balls,
night after night even as the day falls.

Burn at Both Ends Baby Please / Donna Dallas

There’s little hope
on a bender
to believe another man
is my messiah
the give-all
I ain’t got a clue

I know that blue eyes are ice
brown can mean my death
I know when sweat forms
on the brow
there’s a torment
to follow like a tsunami
the waves suck me under
I’ve seen that anger in so many faces
like a connect-the-dot puzzle

Not my first rodeo
I wanted this to be a warning to y’all
But it came out like a crying

I can’t shake it in the night
when it hits hard
the moon cringes behind a cloud
when it hits – ravenous
a hunger crying
at the same time
begging
to be part of some damn thing
even if it’s the most unholy
of all#########################

Laissez-Faire / Angelo D’Amato

Wolves in gas masks patrol the streets.
All the better to breathe, my dear.
Wolves with guns barricade the parks.
All the better to kill you with, my dear.

Somehow, the animals have taken D.C.
The President Fox snarled an order at a press conference:
“Let the human sanctuaries burn.”
So now all of Oklahoma is dancing in flames.

Is this an allegory? A metaphor?
Who knows. A man was shot sixty times
by police. Terrorists overran the Capitol.
And (more) blood will pool on classroom floors.

Coma Wall / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

Coma Wall itches. It’s the
scale of things, the sleeping
mass, contained energy and
voids, edge of the observable, the
jump scare sleeping
monstrosity, the snapping, unravelling
taut filament thread

            Squeeze you down to size

                       teacher steps into the hallway
                                    instead of exploding

                        Fuck Obama!
                                    launched into the window
                                                intersection outside work

                        My wife’s knuckles, walnut thick
                                    pink and white
                                                mid flare

                        Edamame tooth-raked and popped from the pod

                        Six surrounded reactors in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine

                        Last flea on a ginger cat’s rump, full and out of reach

                        The night before the
                                    first day of school, red digits staring,
                                                unresponsive, no
                                                            sleep in sight.

Winter Comes / David Estringel

White-green, lichen-kissed 
boughs peek through soft whispers 
of cloud tow’rd grey heaven. 

Dark-eyed juncos 
scour icy patches from treetops 
for remnants of Fall, 

as Winter’s breath 
flatters breasts of snowy down 
with blushing kisses, 

while frost creeps ‘pon  
silv’ry skins of bare branches. 
Winter’s ardent advances. 

Walking Back to the Shuttle Boat from the Viking Ship Museum /. R. W. Haynes

Norway’s expensive, but delightful:
Though I haven’t seen it cold,
The autumn sun shines kindly there
On tourists young and old.

Liv Ullman sat in dignity
A couple of rows away,
Not far from Ibsen’s great-grandson,
As we waited for the play.

Then, on a huge inflated pig,
Ibsen’s Brand took shape,
And the ghosts of Vikings seemed to howl
That there was no escape.

At the reception, we all snacked
On reindeer and on wine,
And I sailed out down Oslo Fjord,
An axe gripped in my mind.

This, I Decide, is A Love Poem / Erin Marsh

I want this to be a love poem, so I say your name
three times while writing it backwards in the self-

imposed margins of this unlined paper. I use a purple
pen and make the “T” of your name bigger

than the rest of the letters—an effort to ground
your name in the open, unclaimed spaces

of my heart. I wear perfume, although I spend
the day in old, worn, see through shorts and a tank

top with no bra underneath to prove to myself
I would be smelled if we were in the same room.

When you video call me from Minneapolis, I see
your made bed and feel the care with which you

tucked in the top sheet and smoothed the comforter
over it. You tell me you love me before hanging up,

your accent lifting my name from its ordinary shape
on the page. This, I decide, is a love poem. 

freely / h.i. Rijo

when i said i love you
what i said was
all i meant was
that my soul knows
and loves you 
freely
without attachment
without expectations
but with song

Walking With Your Heart Outside Your Chest / Elizabeth S. Wolf

The day of the Sandy Hook shooting
Barack Obama said to hug your children.
He later said that it was the worst day
of his presidency.

In middle school my daughter hung out briefly
with one of the more troubled teens, D. Until the girl,
angry at a friend’s comment, choked her
briefly in the bathroom. That was the end of that.

On the afternoon of the Sandy Hook shooting,
my office desk phone rang. I never gave that number
so I almost let it go. It was D’s mother, frantic.
“Do you know where the girls are?” she asked. “D said
she was going to hang out with your daughter at the
playground. But D’s not answering her phone, and I
drove by the park, and they’re not there. Do you know
where your daughter is?”

“Yes,” I said. “My daughter is at work, at the
After School program. Maybe there’s a mix-up?”

“No, they had plans,” D’s mom insisted. “D told me.
Are you sure your daughter is at work?”
“Well, I was until you asked,” I said.
“Let me check and call you back.”

I called After School and spoke to the director.
“Yes, your daughter is here,” she said. “We are on
lock-down. We cried and prayed before the kids came.
But now we are trying to have a normal day,
in lock-down. We need your daughter here-
unless you need her more.”

“That’s OK,” I answered. “I just wanted to be sure
I knew where she was.”
“We hugged all the interns,” said the director. “Just like
the President reminded us to do.”

I called D’s mom back. “I’m sorry,” I said,
“My daughter is at work. I don’t know
where D might be.”
“Do you have any ideas?” asked her mom.
“Is there anyone else I can call?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Our kids don’t really hang out anymore.
They haven’t for several weeks.”
“Oh yes, they have,” D’s mom insisted.
“They went to a movie with a
bunch of friends, this past Friday.”
“Last Friday?” I asked. “I’m sorry, but no,
they didn’t. Last Friday was another kid’s
birthday. We had the party at our house.
My daughter was home all night.”
“Are you sure?” asked D’s mom.
“I am,” I said softly.
“I was home. I cut the cake.”
I started to say I was sorry again but
D’s mom hung up.

Day 10 / Poem 10

The Real End: MMA / Rusty Barnes

Chuck Liddell took a shot on the temple
from Randy Couture sometime in the early

2000s when my body began to betray me,
and the only exercise I got was walking

the three blocks to the Dunkin’:
a trip I made every other day or so,

when my children were young sprouts
that I could satisfy with whimsy

and sweets. It is twenty years on now,
Chuck Liddell is picking up cash

from winning barfights and I imagine
big bald Randy Couture thumping Chuck

again their bodies singing in the cage
the tune old men know and revere,

the spirit of combat, of acting your way
through stark butcherous times and in

sudden small queernesses only their
wives will get to know: the real end.

The Last judgment / Donna Dallas

I watched from the sides
tucked under countless souls
every shade of flesh
dimpled and sinewy
beauty in these tortured limbs
begging to be forgiven
pushing to the front line
as not to be overlooked

My lover and I tight knot
step over torn and broken wings
masses of angels swarm like hornets
and hummingbirds
try to decode dark and light
try to recall what Jesus said
what did he say?
something like darkness
is in the foolish heart?
no no – as we are pulled apart in divine separation

Jesus said
To the thirsty I will give
from the spring of the water of life
without payment
as I stood on the side
parched and burning
and watched you flutter away

####################

I Crown Myself in a Clandestine Mausoleum / Angelo D’Amato

Dust on the crown jewels.*
I leave fingerprints
on the inset diamonds.

The tapestries of kings
hang limp in their niches
as they fray.

And the silver chainmail
of a fallen prince regent
glows in the cold.

What is glory,
when your people 
have forgotten your voice?

What is honor,
when Divine Right yields
to state-sanctioned heresy?

May we remember the Rosebud**
as we wander toward death
and nonexistent tombs.

*Refers to the Crown of Charlemagne, used for the coronations of French Kings from 870 AD -1775 AD. Lost in 1793, during the French Revolution.

**The last word of Charles Foster Kane. From the Orson Welles 1941 film Citizen Kane.

Trigger / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

Click in the hall
pin strikes primer
pipe cleaners scatter green and red
classroom closet

                                    Steel comma, an
                                    it-could-happen-
                                    next-kind-of-pause—                              

            Suggestions: what to throw at a school shooter (staff training, ’99-present):

• Sheaf of printer paper, exploding white petal fan
• Your ficus plant, fistfuls of dirt
• Coca-cola coffee mug
• Scoops of Hanukkah gelt left from last year’s party
• White-grey grubby charging cords
• Norton’s Brit lit, I & II
• 1-inch, 2-inch, 6-in binders
• Barrette, anorak, one Dansko clog
• Every single plastic chair

                                                single hair
                                                finger squeeze
                                                phone call to my
                                                father, I’m

okay, don’t
switch on

the news

Mnemosyne / R. W. Haynes

It’s when your memory falters, and your mind
Is seized by silence in a gentle warning,
That you can appreciate Mnemosyne,
The Mother of the Muses, as you should.

You’re an epic bard, and in a room
Filled with veteran swordsmen drinking wine,
And now you must stand and roar out with eloquence,
Thirty minutes worth of dactylic hexameter,
Battle descriptions for a roomful of experts,
Your voice dominating the smoke-filled hall.

Or recall that story, of how Sophocles’ children
Took him to court to get his estate
Claiming the old man’s mind was collapsing,
And Sophocles stood and blasted the courtroom
With a tremendous chorus from his current play,
And the case was dismissed, with much rejoicing
By all the Athenian jurymen that day.

Untitled / Erin Marsh

Her therapist suggests tracing his silhouette
onto the bathroom mirror with a black Sharpie,
so when is gone at work each day, she can memorize
the slope of his shoulders and measure
exactly how much taller he is than her.
She will see this man-shape as she washes
her hands and practice showing him the map
of her disfigurement—asking him to always stroke
her scarred hips when he says that he loves her.

Wildflower Bloom / h.l. Rijo

A purple wildflower grows,
behind watching eyes,
in the middle of a park path 
overgrown with tall grass.
If change is a direction and not a destination,
then grow ever upwards 
towards the sun and sky.
Root ever downwards to find 
healing waters underneath.
A wildflower blooms 
from the chaos within 
needing both a home and its freedom.

I heard about Sandy Hook / Elizabeth S. Wolf

while I was at work. I couldn’t really take it in.
I didn’t want to. I walked into a colleague’s cubby
and found her shaking and rocking. E, I said, hey,
are you ok? No, she said, no no no. I have a
6-year-old in 1^st grade. I need to see him. Now.
OK, I said. You do that. Take a breath and go.
Go hug your boy. I’ll cover for you.
I can’t, she said. I have a meeting in 10 minutes
and a design spec due by end of day.
She was still shaking. She was still rocking.
Give me your notes, I said. Give me your spec.
We got this. Go hug your boy. Listen:
There are a lot of projects.
There are a lot of meetings.
You have one son
and he has one mom
and you need to be together
today of all days. So go get him.
But- she started to say- but-
then she looked at me, took a deep
breath, and got up to leave.

I can’t tell you what the meeting was about
or what product was being designed
but she and her boy were together
all that afternoon, when it mattered.

Day 9 / Poem 9

Wing Stop Border Street / Rusty Barnes

In the heat of midsummer we decide
to eat at a local place with a good review,
and driving on our way the sky opens too
with driving rain so Heather steps outside.

The gutter spout fills with rain so thick
it’s almost a roux, paper and soda cans
run down the street like a river which spans
the front door and even when a stick

stops the runoff for a moment, builds up
a backdraft of tension and the street junk
rears its whitecapped head, flows past a punk
smoking his cigarette in mid-rain drop;

he takes his nicotine fix in the midst
and wipes his hair back: doesn’t even look pissed.

It’s So Damn Long / Donna Dallas

When night shrieks in
skirting the very edge
of my nervous system
six degrees below zero
truck stop baren
a penny for any lonely man’s thoughts
who venture in
to Sally’s Gas Station

I pine for the dawn
watch for skeletons lurking
in the doorways
of hollowed out buildings
surrounding Sally’s
a great horned owl
screeches past me
attempting feebly to solve hunger problems
or die quietly in some slovenly hovel

Bones littered about
beer bottles
needles
some old stuffed teddy bear
so worn and dirt trodden
it became its own disease
Ima die out here…….eventually
after a certain number of shooting stars
die in their blaze of glory
straight over the mountain tops
its scrawled somewhere
under my rib cage
like a bar code

Jesus sends an angel
every so often
to give a scan check
when I feel that heat
a smile cracks my frozen face
I’ll stare up at those billions of stars
every one of em named by Jesus
every one of em a fiber of this long-ass night

Look north
the mountains glare threatening
ain’t no home in those hills
but I watched a few takers
locked and loaded
with knapsacks and water bottles
take the trek with stubborn glory
not one sorry sap made it back

Some stars are born to glory
some are deadass blazers
until they fade
to black dust
stars can be born dead
their fury bursting and burnt
before they squeeze through the milky way

Ima stay right here
watch the stars drip down
dead and alive
into this gorge of Edom
bursting with agony

Set myself up
with my teddy
wait for my star to turn

Lips of the Messiah / Angelo D’Amato

From these, words of healing trickled forth,
on the hill, in the street, by the woman
at the well;
From them, breadcrumbs tumbled
to the feet of prostitutes, newly washed
by his calloused carpenter hands;
From them, as the desert
burned his skin, refusals blasted forth
to pummel the Devil’s scheming mind;
From out the parched mouth,
a lamentation, a plea, a cry,
for mercy, for water, for Mother;
From out the wine-stained ridges,
jokes to ease the hearts of overworked friends;
Blessings, prayers, vows, predictions,
rejections, bargainings, philosophies–
And, they kissed the foreheads of children
as they died.

One must dare to be unheard, or misunderstood,
to know how the mouth must mold itself
around uncertain words. Triumphal trumpet sounds become unbearably dull
when they blast and blast
into imagined mirrors.
One must dare to savor
the sensation of a kiss; one must
cherish the intimacy of unbrushed teeth; one must
refuse to consume a lover’s soul.
One need not be the Messiah
to show the kindness of masculine lips.

(But, those lips did bring the dying children
back to life; and this, we cannot do.)

The Day I Ditched Work to Snag the Woman I’d Marry / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

The best way to get out
of work is to dress the part.
Wear a blue business suit, short
skirt, heels, even a tiny
pocket square, nearly sheer
cream shell. Of course, I did
need to visit the bank, beg
for a sub-prime mortgage post-
divorce, but that only took
an hour. The whole morning off?
Now that’s the way to get a girl
who works night shift, who will
be mid-REM, black out shades
down, spa music low, when I crack
her front door, tip-toe up stairs, slide
my palm along her arm on the covers.
Her eyes open with her
smile, she lifts the quilt, I
kick off my heels, hoist my skirt
around my waist, straddle her
boxer shorts, it’s now or never, she
is visiting her ex tomorrow with
her two young kids, on a trip to Disney
planned before we’d met just
weeks before. I had to be fearless—
and I was, and
she stayed.

Just Another Day #2 / David Estringel

It’s Mother’s Day
no cake
on the table
no roses
in the vase
just a picture
framed
in polished silver
of the dragon slayer
who could draw down
the moon
and
crush milk
from pearls.
How I miss her
gravity.

Short Play from a Rolling Pinto / R.W. Haynes

“Sometimes people who laugh like maniacs
Really are crazy as hell,” he opined.
“If you mean me,” she said, “I don’t mind,
But if my sanity went down the tracks,
It had help from my alcoholic friends.
I name no names here, but who brought the booze?”
“Well, anyway” he muttered, “betrayal’s bad news,
Right? And what if back-stabbed friendship ends?
What then becomes of manic laughter lost
For careless disrespect, all thrown away,
As someone we know just did yesterday,
Oblivious of what not caring cost?”
“Don’t let such things disturb you,” she replied.
“Othello got suspicious, and Desdemona died.”

I hurt you and liked it / Erin Marsh

I dug your blood from beneath my fingernails
and placed the slivers in a heart-shaped crystal box

I keep on my bathroom counter. Now I want
to tell you I am sorry, but we no longer speak.

In a dream you break away from my embrace,
terrified—your red hair trailing behind you like a fox.

I google your new name and see crisp photos of
of the family I wanted for myself: three ginger-

haired boys against a cloudless, cerulean sky.
I type your old phone number into my smartphone

but the person on the other end has no idea who
you are. I write I am sorry on pieces of white

paper, fold each one into an origami crane,
hang them from my bedroom ceiling.

When I breathe your name, my apologies stir.

musings / h. l. Rijo

when your muses speak to you
a plant whispering towards the light
come and rest your weary head
let me drive the train instead
and I’ll guide you on through to
the other side of enlightenment

when your words are lyrics
echoing on inside your tired mind
write them down
and capture each passing sound
like picking daisies from the ground of
a sunny green endless hill

when your thoughts are empty
and you have nothing left
you hear the void of nothing
just your inhaling breath
then follow me down
a stream of consciousness
your ego a sponge made to soak in
the muse’s soft effervescent whims

December 14, 2012 / Elizabeth S. Wolf

The first person he killed that morning
was his mother. In her home, in her bed,
shot 4 times in the head.

Adam Lanza continued on to Sandy Hook
Elementary School, where he shot and killed
20 first-grade students plus 6 adults, including
the principal and school psychologist. Then
Adam shot himself in the head.

There was controversy over how many
crosses to erect. Someone put out 28
but 2 crosses were torn down.

It’s easy, it’s common, it’s practically protocol
to blame the mother. Nancy Lanza, after all,
bought the guns. Nancy Lanza took her son
to shooting ranges. It was something they did
together.

Some say Nancy Lanza was increasingly
a prisoner in her own home. Adam was
“a normal weird little kid”, said his father;
later, he was diagnosed with sensory-
integration disorder, Asperger’s, OCD,
anorexia. Adam’s rules included how his mother
should move about the house. Mother and son
communicated via email. Adam broke down
repeatedly and fiercely. He refused to see his father
for the last 2 years of his life. Nancy Lanza

was planning to move out of state
so Adam could get services. Adam wrote
that all women are selfish. He withdrew,
stopped speaking, averted eye contact,
playing games online in the basement
where he compiled a massive spreadsheet
of mass murders. Before the shooting,
Adam destroyed one of his hard drives.
But he left behind the spreadsheet,
videos of the Columbine massacre,
and selfies posed holding a gun
to his own head.

Adam Lanza’s father, interviewed two years after,
said not an hour went by when he didn’t think
about that day. About the children killed.

Adam Lanza’s father wishes his son
had never been born.

How many crosses will it take?

Day 8 / Poem 8

Near Death Experience / Rusty Barnes

My grandfather used a coffee can
as a spittoon even in his garden,

the chaw-spit red and pungent on
his lips. He would always want

a kiss from me or my siblings and we
always gave it to him. I remember

at the end of his life uprooting spearmint
and tomatoes from his tiny kitchen

to take to him in his residential home.
My grandmother would stand next

to him and prompt him as to which
child blossomed to him as we all made

trips to see him dutifully at the end
of his life, how he would put his teeth

in and eat the tomato like an apple,
clear pink juice running down his jaw.

He ate like a man possessed by life.

Remember When We Had No Money /Donna Dallas

We cashed in all our change
for diapers and formula
scoured the car for loose coins
every cent a fiber of survival
every hand me down a gift
nothing purchased
items always given to us
to use with kid gloves
and carefully pass on to the next poor soul

Those valleys
we thought we’d never climb out of
with babies on our backs
bills snapping at our Achilles
money dripped in
like an IV

We were on pins and needles
for that IRS check
laughed all the way to the bank
cuz it was pre-spent

Those moments of grit
tested every muscle reflex
certificate awarded to us
for our rogue-ass survival tactic
called juggling

You and I
we were the circus clowns back then
on the brink of a fire so intense
we didn’t realize we would have burned
the entire lot of us
to smoldering cinders
had we slipped

We look back
cuz we on the peak now
laugh greedily
say it was nothing
never that bad

We just shimmied
out of that freak show
half nude
half crocked
yet still the clowns

Bullets of the Marching Soldiers / Angelo D’Amato

A boy and a girl sat on a rusted bench on an abandoned beach and soldiers marched in ones and twos and threes across the parapets of the seaside citadel as golden banners flapped in the salty breeze and the full moon deceived the night-flies, looking for light.

The boy and the girl held hands and looked at the stars and the boy said “Sometimes, if you close your eyes, you can hear the stars playing the symphony of the spheres,” or maybe it was the girl who said that, their voices were murmurs and the night sky was pure when the soldiers stopped their marching and turned their carbines to the horizon and fired a stream of rat-a-tat-tats above the sea (the bullets sank past the wrecks of enemy ships and settled on the backs of sleeping crabs) before resuming their aimless endless marching marching marching.

The girl said to the boy, or maybe the boy said to the girl, “Do we all hear the same symphony?” and the boy sighed, or maybe the girl did, it doesn’t really matter, they felt they were in love as the line of marching soldiers jumped off the parapets and broke their backs on the lichen-smeared rocks and watched before their eyes lost sight as a new line of soldiers began to march beneath the banners in ones and twos and threes.

The girl moved in to kiss the boy, or maybe the boy moved in to kiss the girl, and then—

But decades passed, and now the boy, or maybe the girl, chastises themselves for believing in something as silly as the symphony of the spheres, and the girl, or maybe the boy, wishes they had learned to hear the same song, instead of the discordant screeches that beset their days and nights, the discordant screeches that were (mercifully) broken by the bullets of the marching soldiers.

Men and the River / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

The Etowah flows over granite ridges
like submerged whale backs. Rapids
blather and burp upstream. Do they
run any faster? Or is it just we perceive
the speed because rocks roll and water
humps and sparkles? I could live
in a place like this forever. I wish I could buy it
from my cousin who controls the trust that owns
the house where his mother lives alone, ten
years clean, with her cats and racoons she
feeds nightly from her palms. Sun moves
up a gradient of green from river bed
to mountain top. Go that way—someone
is navigating. I wear a faded blue Patagonia
t-shirt washed up from one of these
oar clunking, music blaring caravans of plastic
kayaks—today, add a canoe—three men,
two reclined, one upright, two shining heads,
one shadowed under baseball cap. I lean
to shout hello from the porch, but they
paddle hard, the blue kayak edges
the bank, pushes off with paddle tip,
careens back into the current collecting
mid-river with his buddies. A carpenter
bee rises between the railings, two
hummingbirds circle and buffet each
other mid-air. A shot echoes, so
single, slow, I can almost see the
smoke far off under cicada late
morning hum.

A Scene Outside the Window of a Country Church  / David Estringel

Shocks of green
flutter
and shimmer
like dewy butterfly wings
against the mourning sky,
dotting a gray horizon
like birds on a wire
in a reckless abandon
of smears and splatters—
emerald and jade—
as boys and girls
in white
laugh (and love)
in the wood
just beyond the gates,
weaving in and out
from between wild berry bushes
and circumferences of sturdy strokes of brown,
along timeless stretches
of their highways
to the sun.

The Shortest Expert in Educational Improvisation / R. W. Haynes

You can’t be a maverick about everything.
The sun comes up, doesn’t fiddle around,
Cooks lunch, burns rubber for the barn.
So if I don’t exactly train my dogs
But sort of let them slowly train me,
I can live with that, as long as I can still
Wear one black shoe and one brown one,
As my daughter likes to point out.
So I’ve been trained by the best,
Not only my daughter but a whole wolf-pack
Of damn good dogs, up to now, anyway,
Because little Betsy has her own theory
Of owner education: her personal conviction
Is that the best way to get what she wants
Is to sit and stare at me and at intervals emit
An outraged yelp, volume increasing over time.
She’s doing it now. Go on, Betsy, I’m learning.

A Doe and Her Fawns / Erin Marsh

There were three deer, a doe and her two fawns,
near the edge of the woods behind my apartment
building. I was being dropped off, so watched
the threesome from the passenger side of a friend’s
car. The doe ate while the fawns played, their long,
impossibly delicate-looking legs carrying them
as they chased one another. Having things to do,
I exited the car and, without thinking, slammed
the door shut. I was expecting the deer to run
back into the forest, their white tipped tails flashing
like emphatic explanation points. But the deer
and her fawns turned their heads, then went back
to eating and playing. Today I sent thirty texts
in quick succession to my beloved, appearing
like the rolling credits at the end of a film
on my phone screen—all of them asking, in various ways,
do you love me? Another man would have fled,
blocking my number and warning his friends.
But this man answered yes, in various ways,
and quietly resumed his work as a nurse—
not concerned with the anxious noise in my head.

Metta Thoughts on a City Street / h.l. Rijo

Running late leaving my apartment,
to wherever it is I’m supposed to be.
Headphones on (as always)
reminding you not to talk to me.
Don’t forget the sunglasses
they reflect the sun, so you don’t see me. Feeling my best blasé self.
Suddenly I stop.
Startled.
I slowdown and see you—
you with your shit stained pants—screaming.
I pause and I wonder and take off my armor and…

I think about your mother
(whoever she was) who gave you birth.
How once you were a baby
and how you’re now here, alone and filthy.
And then there’s me
watching as you rage against the world,
on the corner of the street.
Inside a small glimmer of an epiphany
I realize I too scream at the world…

Isn’t it just marvelously strange
how we’re all inherently same.
Every single human
at one time or another
goes about and shits themselves.

Reader, stranger, friend…
I wish you these words—I wish them well:

May you be at ease.
May you live out your days in harmony.
May you find a stillness in your mind.
May you be happy, healthy, and wise.
May you find sweet relief.
May you have safety and peace.
May you give and receive
love and beauty.

Cento Week 1 / Elizabeth S. Wolf

Listen, Chiquita, I’m too old to be nice about this.

Death is good for you – remember you said that?

Jesus came to me tonight as ant, all padfoot and denial.

What does it feel like, asking for a life raft?

(Haynes, Dallas, Barnes, Rijo)

Day 7 / Poem 7

I’ve Realized I’m Hurting / Donna Dallas

It’s guttural
feels like a deep deep ravine
has opened within me
I pour into its oblivion
lucid and broken
with no end in sight

I’ve realized I’m hurting
as I flow into an open and sucking sea
a menace adrift
this ain’t no yacht party
this is the thing
I have feared since childhood
no life vests
no floating devices
scared shitless
be damned
if I drown

The Advent of Frostbound Song / Angelo D’Amato

Already, I can hear the Christmas bells,
and the choir, from behind delicate windowpanes,
warbling over the snowbound streets.

It is in the icicles, this music.
In each constituent droplet hums
a note, as sung by millions of voices,
from the time the first hominid cried.

And they fall, they fall,
on the shutters and streetlamps,
the roof tiles and garden walls,
and everything is overtaken
by humming; and everything
goes quiet for the humming.

And the voices, they cry
in exultation when I break
the snowflakes as I walk
beside a freshly fallen snowbank;
and they murmur, in a diner’s neon glow
that has paused in the icebound branches
of a mighty sycamore tree;
and, when the world is calm, and the first snow falls,
my grandfather’s voice—an echo, now— drifts
through the quiet, on the remembered smoke
of remembered cigars.

And yes, not the whole world
is in jubilation—gunshots will crack,
somewhere, and brains will drip
from the walls. But, for now,
the Christmas bells, they ring;
and the church choirs, they’ve begun to sing;
and mistletoe, it grows above the door;
and I can hear the humming,
in the mist that will one day be snow.

So, you shall hear my voice, for a moment or two,
and forgive me, if I’m a little out-of-tune—
it will be hard to properly sing a song,
when I have ignored the humming for so long.

Oleanna, 1992 / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

Red was everywhere—the Kennedy
Center seats, the carpeted aisles,
the faces of the couple who stomped
out before intermission (we paid
to see this?), the girl’s cheek turned
from her professor’s slap
on stage, the crowd’s roar
in affirmation, the roses in
my lap you’d bought me after
the Romare Bearden exhibit, dinner
in DuPont Circle, a gentle man, father
she never had.

Prayer Flags / David Estringel

Silken kisses on the wind
rain blessings from above
d
o
w
n

upon weary heads—
baptisms
of thread and flutters,
scribbles and color—

whispering fiery pleas
to birds and cloud,
telephone wire and rooftops—
everything
between us and Him

wishing…
hoping…
wondering…

if
someone’s
listening.

Faculty Witch Regrets Magical Powers / R. W. Haynes

Here in Tasmania, things are as usual,
And, aside from missing various deadlines,
Which means I’m still alive, I have to say
I regret the lapse of patience that occurred
During last month’s faculty retreat,
When I turned the Dean into a frog.

At least, he made a nice-looking frog,
Who’d look just right in the Okefenokee,
A touch of luminous gold in each eye,
And a skin that gleamed impressively.

I probably would have reversed the spell,
But everyone seemed so very happy that
I forgot the reverse Greek alphabet,
And, when I remembered, he had hopped away.

I hope he’s happy, singing in the rain,
Diving like a champion, dining on flies,
Swimming under water, courting lady frogs.

I am my mother’s oldest daughter and only child / Erin Marsh

that still needs her physical help. When she gets down
onto the bathroom floor to scrub behind my toilet,
I am embarrassed I can’t do it myself. I have been
disabled since birth, my abnormal hips making some
chores impossible. She often complains that her knees hurt
and her hands ache. I stand in the doorway watching her push up
onto her knees and into the standing position as if
my presence could help in some small way.

Into the Now / h.l. Rijo

If now is all there ever is
then I found my sun
hiding within.
If there is no future,
just anxious projections
then I found my North Star.
It was always floating above my head
guiding me home past my thoughts to where I truly am.
If there is no past,
just endless rumination about
muddy regrets and what-could’ve-beens.
Then, I found a new world
within child eyes
seeing wonderment in
tree trunks and butterflies
as if for the first time.
Mindful, I go
into the now.
I practice to return
and begin, again.

Parenting in the Dark / Elizabeth S. Wolf

Barks like a seal and whistling stridor:
the signature of croup. When my 2-year-old
called out in a raspy voice, I recognized the signs

overheard on a phone call with a colleague.
So I knew what to do. “Wow,” I said.
“It’s the middle of the night and you know what

we need? A steam bath!” And into the bathroom
we went. I turned the hot water on high
and we sat snuggled on the toilet lid, singing

itsy bitsy spider. Over and over and over. Because
a child with croup must be kept calm, in order
to breathe. A parent must project calm certainty.

We drew shapes on the steamed-up bathroom mirror.
When the hot water ran out, we put on jackets
and went out into the cold crisp air. The yellow dog

padding alongside me, I carried my toddler
around the block of townhouse condos, looking up
at the stars, wondering if the trees were friends

and did they play together in the dark? Back home,
I crawled into her bed, propping her tired body up
against mine, so she slept at an incline, and mommy

was there to hear her breathe. In the morning
we saw the doctor, who confirmed the diagnosis
and prescribed the same home remedies. He patted

my shoulder, looked me in the eye and said:
“Good luck, mom.” And so it went: fine by day,
barking at night. On the 3rd or 4th night comes a

croup crisis; the symptoms get worse. As we
sang the song again, that damn itsy bitsy spider
still sliding down the spout, wondered as we walked

if the trees and bushes played together or if
they had separate games, like big kids and little kids,
I cursed the doctor. Was there nothing in the

21st-century toolkit more powerful than this?
Maybe steroids, or a nebulizer; my child fighting
for breath, trusting me to take care of her.

What if I failed? And then the next morning
it was gone. She was healed. And I wondered
if I had imagined the whole thing, overreacted.

Until the next bout: twice a year,
winter or fall, from 2 to 5 years old.
And each time, just like the first.

Day 6 / Poem 6

Hey Hey Mama / Rusty Barnes

is the vocal intro to the trippingest
rock and roll signature riff I know,

how the blues rock pentatonics
roll off the guitar like wet thunder,

and Robert Plant’s keening call
makes me wanna slap something

myself. If you know what I mean
and I think you do. I can only

imagine 1970 in driblets from
other people’s memories

and Lord I know if my woman
presented herself to me in those

terms I’d know she’s teasing me
but I would answer that call

with one of my own and try to
tease her back by slinging

a Les Paul down past my crotch
and letting loose with my repertoire

of licks which alas are not like
Jimmy Page’s but heartfelt just

the same and in heaven or hell
whoever’s in charge will wink.

Allow me to do what I want:
shake em on down. Please.

Shake for me girl.

Hunger / Donna Dallas

She strokes the snake plant’s stalks
with such a fervor
Is this real???
she asks as she stares through the plant
into the crowd
not interested in the snake plant at all
It’s as real as you’ll ever get baby
though nothing’s ever wanted her
in the way she envisioned
yet she still pushes men
forces them to want her
bullies them into the bed
thrusting herself onto them in hot desperation
almost breaks their frame with her full force
body a leech
sucks at them
they cower in fear
like they know
Pandora’s box
ain’t worth their energy
they can smell it

We watch as she strokes
and stares
through the plant
over the horizon of the bar
scanning the misfits
falcon eyes spot one that could fit her
the men at our table have all had her
and she them
with splintering lust

They sit quietly
cradle a Hendrickson on ice
with thin cucumber slices
anticipate her moves
as she segues to the bar
webs around a forlorn wrapping of bar men
all of them beaten
burly
red faced
a ‘who’d have you’ brigade
jaws drop as she
unleashes her dragon
yanks out some poor sap
constricts her legs around his body

After he will quietly worm along her bedroom floor
pick his clothes up and cower away
later that week
same table
same snake plant camouflage

Los Angeles Passage / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

The LAPD has closed the alley behind the mall where
Nipsey Hustle was killed. A mural of the rapper’s profile
graces the alley’s wall in memorial. An alley also ran behind
the Santa Monica apartment where I learned
to ride a bike, tipping side to side on training wheels. I
skittered from dogs in that alley, knowing don’t run, better
to crouch into a ball, wrap my hands behind my neck. And
in an alley, my father drove his ambulance and tried and
failed to stop the murder that drove us back
across the continent to a Southern state where maybe
he could forget trying to wedge a
first responder’s van between a black man
and a white, one wielding an axe,
and the way it turned out.

Still Alive / R. W. Haynes

The soldier from Chickasawhatchee lay
Covered with snow, where the Germans had pulled back.
One man said, “Hey, this one’s still alive.”

Off the battlefield, they patched his skull
With metal, took off most of his toes, and he
Lay comatose, dreaming of explosions.

Back home, he was a college boy, good
At history and baseball, so glad to leave
The red-clay farm: he’d had enough peanuts.

He woke up shoving handfuls of food from a tray
Into his mouth, and then he had to learn to talk.
They warned him he might never walk again

And that his life would not be long, and he
Would always need extensive medical care,
And they loaded him on a bus, with a note

So someone could help him get back home.
He told his sons that while he was in the snow
Some Germans found him and tried to help

But the battle was in progress. He thought the snow
Kept his brain from expanding and killing him,
But he never cared for snow again anyway.

Family Vacation / Erin Marsh

The beach at our rented lake cabin
was not handicapped accessible— steep stairs built into the ground,
concrete crumbling like stale chocolate
cake in my hands. Our mother billed
this as a “family vacation”, so I dutifully
packed a black and white skirted swimsuit
and put all my pills into a colorful
plastic seven-day organizer, helpfully
split into am and pm. My niece
and nephews ran back and forth between
the house and the lake all day. They swam
and fished off the end of the sturdy wooden
dock—excited, but also shrieking in fear
when they actually caught something.
My mother said that she and my brother
could help me get down to the beach,
which was full of weeds. But I was worried
I would be a burden—all three of us struggling
with my bulky, awkward body. I sat
on the wrap around porch that overlooked
the water and read, the twenty-mile-per-hour
winds threatening to overturn the other four
empty deck chairs. I could hear birds
chirping in the surrounding forest, their
high pitched peeps like staccatoed questions—
what are you doing here? and do you always
feel this left out?

Lucid / h. l. Rijo

It feels like I’ve just woken up
into or out of a long lucid dream.
Am I the dreamer or the dream?
The sunlight begins to fade as I awake
resurfacing in the ocean of my mind.
Gulping for air—I forgot how to swim,
already drowning in the deepest of ends.
Eyes fixate on the horizon drifting
     over sunset static clouds,
          with painted white sails lifting,
               calming currents rippling,
                    as waves are slowly breaking.
What does it feel like, asking for a life raft?
Giving space to breathe and float,
     on the backside of being,
          down the tides of lucid dreams
               onto the other side of reality.

Rachel Joy Scott: A Chain of Kindness / Elizabeth S. Wolf

Rachel left behind a trove of notes & messages, drawings,
a handprint behind a bureau, sparkly hearts. Rachel wrote
in her journal that she would die young. And she did.

Rachel, having lunch outside with a friend,
was the first person shot at Columbine.
Her body remained outside the school overnight

alone with the stars, cool dew, and the abiding love
of her Lord and Savior. Rachel was a
devoted believer, not only in the Trinity

of divine spirits and God, but also in our own
manifestation of love on earth. In an essay on ethics,
Rachel wrote: Compassion is the greatest form of love

humans have to offer. That is the message
that Rachel’s family strives to spread, reaching
millions- her words even more evocative

than the things she left behind: a white ivory casket
decorated with gratitude and grief; a red car,
parked at the school, transformed to a shrine;

a young man, her brother, who slammed a car door
at her that morning, before he saw his two best friends
dragged out from either side of him, crouched and hiding,

who heard God’s voice in his head, urging him to get up
and leave the library, while the gunmen
roamed the school, in the few moments it was possible

to lead an escape. And now Craig Scott has consecrated
his long life; decades after Rachel died that April morning,
he champions the web of compassion she described:

You never know how far
a little kindness can spread.

Day 5 / Poem 5

Ballers / Rusty Barnes

Outside some confused crows
serenade the nightfall with

their distinctive birdsong. When
the first streetlight turns on

the sound ceases: no train, no car
no birdsong but the slap

of a basketball on the uneven
pavement. These boys come home

for dinner after hooping all day
their voices high and teasing.

I remember my days at the house
next door pretending I was Kareem,

the ways these boys wanna be Steph,
sinking threes from thirty feet deep

with not even a backward glance.
The crows quiet as the boys approach,

and I realize on sight they are not boys,
instead they are adolescent women

talking trash and telling lies like ballers
do while I myself sit here a sexist drag.

I pledge to be better tomorrow
and listen closely to their noise,

free and happy and female,
skittering like bugs against the fading light.

Morning Ghosts / Donna Dallas

Pass through me
with the chill of dawn
as they wander the grounds
never feel the cool blades of grass
against any skin that was theirs
— no more —
long for the warm glints
the sun shares as it breaks
through the trees in rising glory

They skitter about
try desperately to latch on to something
lay claim to a cardinal
or coast aboard the massive wings
of a hawk

They ride along on some living organism
attempt to recreate that wonderful sensation
of living
over and over

The Transubstantiation of Caffeine / Angelo D’Amato

The monks on Boylston Street pull tottering silver tables
from the back of a white van, ready large plastic jugs,
and dispense coffee in plain styrofoam cups
to the passersby—

an elderly man whose walk is more of a shuffle,
he must spend half his day picking up a single bag of groceries
from the corner bodega—

and the intransigent city-folks
gathered, more or less permanently,
outside the library at Copley.

(They disturb the grandeur of the edifice
and the luxury of the European cafés
with their grudges and feuds for this bench over that bench—
They sound like schoolchildren, at times.
the whole street can hear them
and don’t give a fuck because there’s not a damned thing
anyone who’s not “of them” can do about it.
What, are you going to lecture me on the “right way to treat my girl”
while you sip your foaming latté and finger your faggoty tie?
Yeah, that’ll change me, I’m so sorry sir, your tie gives you such an air of authority,
I’ll be better from now on.)

No doubt, on some level, the work the monks do is Good.
The Eucharist is Eucharist, no matter the form.
And maybe the monks talk to the city-folk.
Maybe they know them. This would be Good.
The men and women whose skin is flayed by scars,
of one sort or another, need comforting voices
and attendant ears. Yes, change is possible,
with patience. Blessèd are the poor in spirit,
for the kingdom of Heaven shall be theirs.

Yet the white van of the monks
is marked by the name of their ministry,
in prominent and intricate lettering;
and the monks wear robes,
styled after those of St. Francis of Assisi,
handwoven, too, no doubt;
and as they hand out coffee
to “the least of these,”
I have to wonder if the man who turned down grand armies,
marching in his name, would approve
of these humble friars advertising their humility.

Forgive the sweeping indictment,
but this is why I have little patience for self-conscious churchgoers,
and minimal, if any, Grace to extend—
“Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage,”
the good Doctor says. “Virtue is only virtue
in extremis.” Ah, yes, very funny, very funny,
now tell me, how are the children? Oh, yes?
That’s good, so good to hear. Well, I’d best
be going, handing out food to the homeless,
hunger doesn’t wait for me, you know how it is.
We’ll talk again next week, gathered around this standing table,
in the parish hall of this lovely Byzantine church,
where we can see all the people we know and love
and go about our merry lives, undisturbed
by things such as poverty and hunger;
but if we are, best to say so, for we will surely receive
sympathetic sounds that will put our hearts at ease.
We are such a close community, much love to all.
Good day, now. Good day.

“Florida Man Swallowed by Sinkhole Under Bedroom Feared Dead” / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

Did he wake at the crack of the karst?
Did he feel the box frame drop
faster than the mattress? Did he wonder for
one minute if the hole had a bottom?

Before they found her, authorities surmised
Naya Rivera might have been dragged
down by the vortex of an open
dam valve in California’s Lake Piru.

And you, my father, driving to Kennestone
to see your father in the ICU,
eyes picking out the Windy Hill exit sign
through rain that fell in slopping ropes,
did you not know a tornado
not shifting right to left
appearing still,
is moving—
debris wall—
right at
you?

Delphic Oracle Sends Recommendations for Writers / R. W. Haynes

Look, you need to get serious about this job,
So the best thing is to emulate a saint.
Get yourself a household fool, a good
Source of excuses. Thomas More did that.
Or learn to levitate, Thomas Aquinas style,
To elevate diction, raise your standards.
But no one did better than Saint Jerome,
Who kept a lion by his writing desk,
Though you can’t be sure from the ancient texts
Whether the lion was happy or not. In some
Illustrations he looks a little peeved.

Or put a bunch of stuff on your desk,
Which works sometimes for emerging bards.
I know a guy who has a crocodile of wood,
A framed page of a Chaucerian text,
Two drying sword-bean pods, a bag
Of luffa seeds, four harmonicas, an ashtray
Shaped like a fish, a green cup from Greece,
With Hercules beating someone—a critic, perhaps—
With a big club, as Nike flits her wings.
I omit the rest, this not being a garage sale.
Maybe that will work for you (wink, wink).

Or you can write on levels, as Dante did.
Give the reader a good puzzle to solve,
And if the mystery remains at last,
The reader can die content, semper fi
To the quest. Never, never surrender,
As Winston Churchill used to like to say.

And one more option, as my boss reminds me,
Is to put on some music for inspiration.
Loreena McKennitt’s good, or Billy Joe Shaver,
Agustín Lara, or Fats Domino,
The Barking Dogs, the Chipmunks, or MC-5,
Tish Hinojosa, Sir Doug and Augie,
The Four Tops, Mariachi Vargas, hey,
Here in Delphi, we dance to them all.

Keeping The Light On / Erin Marsh

I keep the lamp behind my oat-colored chair on 24 hours a day.
When my mother visits, she always turns it off on her way out.
“Aren’t you going to turn this light off?” I tell her I leave it on
for the cat—so she doesn’t feel lonely or scared, so she can see
familiar objects and know everything is as it should be. But,
that’s not the whole truth. The real reason I leave the 80’s style
floor lamp on is because it gets so dark in this apartment that I can’t
see the edges of you. I hear the floorboards creak and rush
into the living room.I can see the vague shape of my imagined you,
but can’t make out the details that belong to the you of now. I want to pin
you down and sew you onto the pink, stained armchair so I can keep you
still and memorize the slope of your shoulders or the whorl of your
short-cut black hair. The light reflects off your dark eyes and blinds you.

Hello, Shadow / h. l. Rijo

Hello shadow, welcome home.
It’s been a while since we last spoke.
And now I’m here to talk again, this time though—I’ve brought some friends.

A floating memory of you came
in dark Dutch alleyways left alone without you to hold my empty hand.
I found you, also, always stuck in that wood paneled room—
a lingering vortex I made forgot.
Even further in the past I remembered you on rocking chairs
a small innocent child reprimanded without a care.
(Echoes of a shadow growing…)

I can feel it all around me
all the voices at once screaming
rioting, raging, crying out, and hating.
Playing reels over and over leaving breadcrumbs out for nobody.
Writing thousands of words that I don’t share,
having hurt and pain that I don’t tell
(but you my shadow have always known.)

Glimpses of a future now seem to stay
in a well mixed with horror and a lonely alleyway.
Hopeful thoughts that you might need to eat and nourish with sweet chocolate treats.
Hugs so warm and loving in my body,
releasing pain,
an icicle slowing breathing, melting away.

Now I’ve become one
with the shadow which I was so afraid.
A union of two halves, joined and wholly made.

Ben, We Hardly Knew Ye: My Daughter’s Homecoming Date / Elizabeth S. Wolf

Ben was a friend, a good friend,
who brought candy to sad girls.
He visited our house with his buds,
a crew we called “the awkward boys”.
The kids played Manhunt, which is like Tag
meets Capture the Flag but with more
stolen opportunities for kissing.

Ben made a Facebook page as Eric Harris.
He sent out friend requests to all the kids.
I told my daughter who Eric Harris was but
she didn’t tell me that the boy behind the page
was Ben.

The probation department in Littleton Colorado
said Eric Harris had the potential to do well in life
and was very intelligent.

The guidance department at our local high school
said the same about Ben.

Ben was a wizard with video editing and computers.
He made collages and dubbed over the Columbine
security footage. No one told the adults about that
either.

We were on our way home from my in-laws
when my daughter got a call in the car
from a boy who was crying. It was about Ben.

My daughter had missed a call from Ben
the day before, when she was at the movies.
Sometimes even kids miss calls. And who
checks voicemail?

But there was a voicemail.
From a very drunk Ben.
Saying he loved her. He called

not long before he went to the ER
for alcohol poisoning

not long before he was discharged
against medical advice

and went home with his father
and shot himself.

The high school principal let us all know
that Ben was dead, the next day.

We went to the wake and the funeral.
Pictures of Ben from the Homecoming Dance,
with my daughter, were on display.

The police came to my house.
The police listened to the voicemail.

A few hours later, the police came back with a
state trooper, asking about a Columbine connection.
I had no information on that.

Ben was a sweet sassy awkward boy
fascinated by guns
and Eric Harris
and Dylan Klebold

he died at 15

he broke a girl’s heart

and we were all changed.

Day 4 / Poem 4

Journal 8/1/22 / Rusty Barnes

The evening weather is mild, 80 degrees. No need to
bust open the AC unit.

I’m remembering warm summer nights
     shooting ants from my front porch with
          my Red Ryder BB gun. All those ants I shot
               gathered their souls from the sun and I

gather my soul unto you, Lord of all fathers,
does life prickle your eternal conscience?

The ants are in the house now despite all
     efforts, an orderly line carrying crumbs
          from our kitchen, as best they can avoid
               our bundle of tense felines. The birds

in the front yard: grackle and thrush, martin
and sparrow. Lift their thoughts on high!

Jesus came to me tonight as ant, all padfoot and denial.
     “Now is not the time to question, toss your logic
          aside and believe in me” he says as a runnel of piss
               flows down my leg. If I can’t contain myself in

your presence Lord, the afterlife you promise,
fluffy cloud and golden gates, I despair of it all.

Storm Residue / Donna Dallas

I don’t know why the dog’s paw
stuck out of the sand that day
after that terrible storm left the sky
dark purple and menacing
I remember it was so windy
the sand sharp against our faces
the beach littered thick with shells

Simultaneously our eyes
went straight to the large paw
that bulged from the sand
dirty white and wet
bent at its flex point
we both immediately reached to grab it
as if we could pull this helpless animal
out of its submerged wreckage

I wish I could remember
if it was a cold paw
if its pads were pink
if the body attached to this one visible paw
died in the storm
or some other strange and menacing measure…no idea
only remember its lifeless form
cupped in my warm hand

From Among the Ash Heaps /Angelo D’Amato

I.
As a child,
I planted trees beside the driveway,
dropped the seeds (with the beginnings
of a trademarked flourish, you can see it
on video) into a hole my father had dug.
He likely patted down the dirt—
Back then, I didn’t like having impure fingers.

II.
I visit that home
in my dreams. Walking down
the hallway, organizing
my nutcrackers for display,
taking my friends on tours
through a cavernous basement
filled with rooms and rooms of Lego bins
and Lego models…
panicking
that they will be broken in the moving bins.
The other morning,
half-awake,
I reached over to pull the lamp-cord
from the lamp that had been beside my bed.
Of course, it wasn’t there,
and of course,
I mourned.

III.
It is not the Thing Itself that hurts,
but the memories,
pulled in, ground up and regurgitated,
in perpetuity,
by this Thing that cannot be
stifled, throttled, or soothed.

IV.
Hellfire, dark fire,
this fire in my skin,
this burning desire
is turning me to sin.

V.
My earliest memory
is of chasing after
a boy
in the Village Pre-School,
caught between
the wall and the wooden play-structure,
arm outstretched, hand-grasping—

VI.
Gatsby believed in the green light,
in that orgiastic future
which year by year recedes before us.
It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—
Tomorrow, we will run faster, stretch our arms farther,
and then, one fine morning…

VII.
To every concert,
On every train ride,
on every special occasion,
I insisted on wearing a special outfit:
maroon dress shirt, black tuxedo,
black vest, gold pocketwatch,
wide-brimmed fedora,
and later, a cloak,
given to me by the girl I’d hoped to impress.
But she saw what I couldn’t—

Fine clothes and fine appearances
cannot make for a fine young man.
Yet Gatsby insisted on standing on the dock,
pined himself to madness,
for Daisy.

VIII.
I told my first girlfriend
I’d only been interested
in “physical stuff,”
and she said “I hate you,”
as one rightfully should.
I wasn’t sure then I meant it, but
I did feel the Fire—
I cannot begin to tell how many I’ve burnt
while trying to douse the flames.

IX.
So we beat on,
boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly
into the past.

X.
Last June,
I walked by the house
I visit in my dreams.
The shutters had been painted black,
the gravel pathway paved,
a scarlet fence, with imposing wooden beams,
built around the backyard.
(The turtle shell we’d used to play in
had been removed from under the deck—
it had languished there, for years).
But the trees…
how they swayed.
In spite of the years,
they swayed.

**Italicized lines are from “The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and “Hellfire,” from Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame

***The title references one of Fitzgerald’s alternate titles for Gatsby, “Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires.”

Ode to My Father, Who Walks Me Through the Math / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

I can’t do math, never
took physics, nothing worse,
my therapist watches me try,
divide her fee in my head, win
time writing a long slow cursive scrawl
line one, my World Wildlife check, her leaning,
head tilted, hands clasped, pumps crossed, and shit
she whispers the total. The number line

climbs like Babel Tower
in my head, each multiple of 10 waving
from a window, thank you God, now
I can tip 20%, calculated as the
cab swerves to a stop.
My first job, my blonde boss asks
the slope of some line, easy
a male colleague, also blonde,
laughs, my toe taps bathroom tiles
for 30 minutes, they
move on. Oh, my father,

greater than
them:

don’t set a
timer to practice, phrase
break word problems

your check,
my underwater
mortgage

he doesn’t
get more
custody just
because you added
wrong. Fight.

The eraser scrubs.
I try again.

When They Ring the Golden Bells / David Estringel

Days fall away
like apples
from October tress
cheeks, full and ablush,
kissing silver
from delicate wrists
and fingertips,
escaping trappings
of gnarl
and crook
and the gripping sway of
Autumnal breezes.
Such thievery—
the snatching of seconds
from sun and flesh—
to pave the way
for the procession
to Winter’s rest.
Over rock and bramble,
past crimson peeks
of velvet
through the briar,
an orchard of yews
awaits,
boughs laden
with evergreen
and the opiate red
of merciful Sleep.
Wait for me,
my friend–
sweet oblivion–
where the river bends,
as they ring the golden bells
to call me home,
again.

Retrospection as Archaeology / R. W. Haynes

Old Doctor B. would fire up his pipe in class,
Which was not only legal but essential back then,
And he’d blow more blue smoke rolling forth
Than His Majesty the Nizam of the Dragons,
And as all that nicotine and partial asphyxiation
Worked on his mind, he would pause a bit,
Verify sufficiency of smoldering ignition,
Cast a cold eye on all, take another draw,
Paw carelessly at his book, as though already
He had it memorized and felt bothered to see
It awaiting acknowledgement that it was there,
And then he’d launch the Confederate battleship
Of prescriptive iconoclasm, and sail it straight
Into the teeth of the Modern Language Association,
Broadsides blazing, no quarter for the liberals,
For that hillbilly Abraham Lincoln, or Carter,
Or the man from Monticello, or that confused
Declaration, or the Proclamation.
Those were the days of myth, back when
Tobacco ruled those half-demented halls,
And I still hear that old scholar growl,
“I don’t want you telling me how you feel.”

[Untitled]/ Erin Marsh

My therapist tells me that when she was dating
her husband, there were no cellphones
and messages could only be left on bulky answering
machines. I think of all the ways I can contact
my beloved: phone, text, WhatsApp, Facebook,
Facetime, email. And yet, there are times
I can’t reach him, and it makes me anxious.
A caged dog missing its master, I whine, pace,
and get excited when I think a ding! on my phone
is from him. I sleep with my phone on the pillow
next to me. He now tells me that he needs time—
two months to be exact. I turn up the volume e
on my TV so I can’t hear the bright blue silence
of my pink-cased iPhone. When he doesn’t make
his nightly 10:30 call after work, I hide the phone
in my night table drawer so I won’t be awakened
by the blaring black screen. After only one week,
I call the man I love over and over I miss his deep,
certain voice and the way it enters my ears at a
particular angle, causing a pleasant, full-body shuddering.
He doesn’t answer.
His voicemail is full

Waiting / h. l. Rijo

I was always waiting for us to be in sync.
For you to want me when I wanted you.
For you to see me in a crowded room
with wonder in your eyes,
curious to my thoughts and mood.

I was always waiting for you to hear the melody:

of my voice on your chest,
of your throat on my lips.
An intimate chorus,
composed just for us.

We were once close enough to kiss,
but now we live as two strangers
who vaguely remember tenderness.

I was always waiting for my feelings to be heard.
To have your love when I felt yours
and to know that it was already at home
in your soothing arms.

I was always waiting for us, don’t you see?
Waiting for us to live
as we always wanted to be.

Dylan’s Mother Susan Klebold Gives a TED Talk / Elizabeth S. Wolf

Sue Klebold says she did not know.
She asks herself if she was a terrible mother.
Sue Klebold loved her son.

Sue Klebold apologizes
if her son hurt you or anyone else
in your family. Sincerely apologizes.

Two years before the Columbine shooting
Dylan wrote in a diary about cutting himself
and that he wanted to die.

His mother did not know then
but now she sees that there was time
to get him help.

She did not know.
He did not ask.

There were no guns in the Klebold household.
Sue Klebold asks, how was it so easy
for her troubled son to obtain so many guns

and why this has not changed
given what we all know now
but did not know, back then.

Sue Klebold views Columbine
through the lens of her son’s suicide.
She does not know when

Dylan’s thoughts of suicide morphed
into plans for spectacular murder.
Sue Klebold studies suicide. She says

if love were enough,
there wouldn’t be so many suicides.
Ergo, love is not enough.

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris
are icons for spectacular murder.
Their parents loved them.

But it was not enough.

Day 3 / Poem 3

God Always Opens a Door / Rusty Barnes

when one closes and the wall
of unopened entrances sits hard

against the conscience of the holy man
waiting for that opening to envelop

his soul. But that’s too ethereal a word:
say rather than the mote in God’s eye

that those closed doors are not part
of a resurrection but instead a piling

on of thoughts better left unsaid.
The fly that enters the doorway

only to be caught by the spider;
the human who opens the door;

only to be caught on the cross,
made manifest in deadly wounds.

I am the way and the truth
and the light of the Lord. Your

panic is my pleasure. It’s always
there: the submission, the torture,

the death oh God the resurrection
of life, the healing of wounds, great

gulping sky of salvation accessible
only through me: caught on iron

spikes which eliminate the Roman
soldier; only Barabbas left this world

humble, knowing what he’d be given at
the whistle and knock of the world’s end.

All My Months of Forever / Donna Dallas

Every cigarette I swore was my last
that dang cat
you swung it by its tail so hard
rendered it vertigo-ridden
for the rest of its measly lives
back then all you did wrong was twist up that cat
would have been so easy to declare you a good soul

Winded now
from just a flight of steps – just one damn flight
you said I was a monster
yet you endlessly wanted to be with me
hence we birthed the monster together
slipped into its asylum
a toke here and there
on some good marijuana
we spiraled into the Cadillac of drugs

We died some nights
straddled together in an agony so great
it gives me chills dare I think about it
death is good for you – remember you said that?
it’s good to come back alive and on fire
I came back with one eye and dimwitted
I came back with a limp
I came back with a burned neck
I saw the stars spray
over an archipelago
in a swoon
during one of my deaths
I’m sure it was Jesus

That battered black cat long since dead
you – now homeless and a smell
caked so deep
you cannot be cleansed

I waited for Jesus under that moon
naked and battered
it took all those months of forever
it took all nine lives of that wretched cat

he came for me
barely recognizable
me – not Jesus
I’d know Jesus if I was deaf
blind or headless
when you were high as fuck
pouring lighter fluid on his beautiful white loincloth
I scrambled behind with a pot of water

Jesus remembered

On the Eve of Rapture /Angelo D’Amato

Chariots pulled by wingèd horses
to the frontiers of the moon
lost the sun in the Sea
of Tranquility. That which stains the sky
with radiant dawn is a memory; the moon
glows pure with forgotten light. The stars
fear the vast lunar tranches—this is why
they stay far away, beyond the lifespan
of the aimless wingèd horses.
They will be skeletons before they reach
Alpha Centauri, consumed by a maddened
Apollo, desperate for magnificence. But
the moon glows still, and Hephaestus
shivers beside the train tracks.
“The thunderbolts must fall,” he moans,
stroking his matted beard. In Paris,
a waiter with olived skin clears the last
of the little coffee tables. He stacks
the porcelain espresso mugs in the washer,
flips the switch, hears the magnificent rumble.
Two women died near l’Église Saint-Geneviève,
and Macron has tired of Putin’s war machine.
There will be a reckoning, he is sure.
For now, time to turn off the neon sign—
moonlight laments his heavy watch, and
drifts over depopulated tables.

Pantoum for My Father After Los Angeles / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

You sat at the far end of the plaid couch,
Bandaid holding your glasses together.
You looked out the turn-crank window
of the house you built with your father.

Bandaid holding the bridge of your glasses,
you crossed one sandaled foot over your knee.
Football echoed on the TV in the front room
against pine panels, grass-cloth papered walls.

You crossed your sock foot in sandals at your knee.
Your mother whipped pink aspic at the kitchen island,
backdrop of pine panels, pale green paper.
My cousins banged through the front door.

Your mother poured aspic into a mold at the counter,
you watched the mallard skim the pond out back.
My cousins slammed in, shouting Mamaw,
my aunt and uncle at their heels, cake box in hand.

You followed the green of the duck’s head to the dam,
I set the table with polished silver.
My aunt, pineapple cake in hand, entered
the kitchen. Your father brought the meat from the smoker.

Your daughter set down winter-scene plates,
you closed your eyes, folded your arms. Someone shouted
in the kitchen. Your father carved apple-smoked ham.
Your wife lowered a plate to your lap.

At the far end of the couch in the room off the kitchen,
you ate alone while we crowded the dining room table.
You looked out the turn-crank window,
your blue back to us all.

Henrik Ibsen Wades Waller Creek for Fossils / R. W. Haynes

The water is almost too clear, and the catfish
As swift as trout. You have to love cold,
Transparent water here in Texas.

The bucket is almost full, heavy enough,
Almost, to mean it’s time to wade downstream
In this creek which was once a crack
Far beneath the surface of an ancient sea.

Buffalo waded here, he thought, and smiled,
And wolves would lap cold water here,
And shaggy bears would bathe and play.

Back in his garret, the whiskered bard
Has a special acid, bitter and fierce,
He’ll pour in the bucket, and, faster than
You say “Rumpelstiltskin,” these ancient lumps
Will melt away to shining gem-like stone,
The monuments of ages, old shells of the sea.

Calling / Erin Marsh

Love, tonight the sky is pinking
and full of birds. I imagine
they are crows, but I can’t be sure.
I think about the loon I heard
on Howard Lake a few weeks ago
and how it was all alone, calling
out to a mate or yodeling in hopes
of attracting one. The tremulous wail hung
over the lake like the lingering smell of
of your cologne when you leave
my bed. I want to call you on the phone
to hear you enunciate the clipped “r”
of my name, making me and my existence
feel real—the most powerful spell you know.
The sky is brightening into a lurid peach
and the birds are telling our secrets
to the stolid black pine trees. I will sleep
with my iPhone on the pillow next to me,
in case you call.

One Star of a Billion / h. l. Rijo

Day becomes night
and night into day.
Light always seems
to be one step away from
black-hole whirlpools that
spill out into sun rays.
If this endless dance is how we measure time
who will know when the sunshine passes
and the earth is lifeless, and alone?
Who will ever remember
this small ephemeral life that I have lived?
One star of a many billion.
Who will know of this love we share?
Maybe it will linger
in the cracks that bind
the eternal and the forgotten.

Sammy Island / Elizabeth Wolf

After the fire, we lived for a spell
in a brown house in town, furnished
with other people’s things. Later

we moved to an old converted schoolhouse
set on 4 acres which used to be the
town poor farm. It was haunted

but lovely, an open green front lawn
bordered by a stream feeding into the
Manhan River. My 4- year- old daughter

loved our yard. She and the yellow dog
would go exploring, toting a blue plastic bucket
and a hand-drawn treasure map. They collected

pinecones, luxurious swatches of moss, bits of
bird eggs, speckled stones, skin shed from snakes.
In shorts or bathing suits we would go

wading in the knee-deep stream. Just below
the backyard was a mud beach with a
fallen-branch bench and a clump of brush

around which the water diverged. It made
interesting currents for playing Pooh sticks.
One day my daughter and I were out wandering

and she got ahead of me, claiming the patch
we called Sammy Island. I loitered on the beach
thinking how fine it was to raise an independent girl

brave and curious, my own Rachel Carson, when she
called out “help mommy!”. And in that instant,
as I dropped my phone and plunged ahead in terror

cursing my parenting, scourging myself for
ever taking my eyes off my one precious prize-
I found her, and the yellow dog,

tangled in a blackberry thicket, stained
in dark juice. “My shorts got stuckted,”
she said. “I think I tore them. Sorry, mommy.”

As I laughed and gave thanks and hugged her
too tight she looked up at me, confused,
unsure if she should laugh or cry.

Day 2 / Poem 2

Summer Evening with Beer / Rusty Barnes

I watch the snake speak with a forked tongue
as it tests the air for danger and prey
while I sit here with a beer that’s young,
and crash reckless though the loss of day.
Down the street’s pure right hand fork
the prostitute and her john slip out
into the driven dark their job as work
now done with a voluntary pout.
Say it ain’t so, said the kid of old when
DiMaggio was about to retire from ball,
and take up house with charming Marilyn,
all bombshell and glitter, blonde and fall.
I watch the snake slide under the deck
as my warmish beer goes down my neck.

Love Me Hideously / Donna Dallas

I hold your trembling hand
as we leap
into this blackened trench

You say this is bad
I say we are fools
eat the bread today
for tomorrow it could be moldy
or stolen
tomorrow may not arrive

The trench deepens
as we sift through bones
of the dead
pick a button or two
from some corpse’s
matted and shredded garments
a souvenir
to remind us
of this journey
we will never return from

American Rustic /Angelo D’Amato

Patchworks and patchworks
of green, of hay, of budding corn,
rustling beneath a starry field–

Somewhere, a housewife’s drowning in her phlegm.
Can you hear her, as her lungs constrict,
as her throat contracts,
as the human slop drawn forth by the mildew spores
is peeled from her throat,
is flung over her tongue…

Some globules catch on benumbed taste buds,
and she must admit, she likes the taste
of her decay.

Mildew spores, drifting from shadows.
This is how life is leeched from the living.

On Imagining How It Will End for My Father: A Cento / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

He will break. If I move—
a clean rasping sound.
Wave his arms and cry out,
That was the end of it.
Oh quickly disappearing photograph
thin, and clean, in his clean hospital gown
to be touched so closely
cool hardness in our hands
saber’s basket-hilt.
Both hands stay
my father’s face
twisted, ornamental braid. The dignity
of a foreign leader. Quiet to bear things,
I sat beside him, something far off,
I held some ice against
the cold smell of potato mould
the North Alabama sun.

Making a Memory  / David Estringel

Yellow wallpaper
peels
behind faded pictures
in dusty frames,
falling to the floor
in ashen drifts—ephemeral—
of births and wakes,
stabbing
to the heart
like first kisses
or cold sips
of Orange Crush
but dulled
from memory
(and time)
like presentless Christmases
and old calico,
drying on the line
in the summer sun.
What ghosts roam these halls,
haunting crystal doorknobs
and bowls of wax fruit,
lingering ‘round chicken coops,
dust bunnies,
and jelly jar glasses
like palls
or the bitter of burnt almonds.
As a pale pink echo
of rose
peeks through the air’s must,
a voice whispers, “Remember this. Now,”
leaving me to chuckle and smile.

How silly it is to mourn life as we live it.

Old Man Begging in Parking Lot Puts Curse on Girl in Nice Car Who Can’t be Bothered / R.W. Haynes

Listen, Chiquita, I’m too old to be nice about this.
You don’t want to roll down the window
And let the hot air in your car, and time
Is on your side and not on mine, you think,
And looking at my old wrinkled face
Scares you a little, and my old staring eyes
Peer out from old glasses with one green lens.
Keep your cold air, and keep your money,
I confiscate sweetness from the smile
You kept contained, saved from the blessed heat
Sanctifying us, poor saints of the street.

Text Message / Erin Marsh

You told me that I, as a woman, deserve
to be wanted—to be craved. I said that I hoped
that would happen someday, and you said it already has.
I drive past Lake Bemidji and notice how many boats
are out for the opening of the fishing season—little black
smudges on an otherwise flawless body of gray-blue water.
I don’t tell you how I cried when I read those words. How it
felt to be something other than a shapeless blob covered
in bundles of scars. How, that night, I brushed my red hair
and put on the pink silken nightgown I hide at the back
of the closet. How I laid myself out, using the whole bed—
practiced letting you see me.

Morning After Rains / h.l. Rijo

As I walk, the sky sleeps
in soft cloudy grays.
All that remains
are raindrops on leaves and spider webs woven intermittently through their designated patch of grass.
The air leaves a humid residue,
you inhale like a morning summer rain dew
voyaging through a misty cloud fallen down to earth.
Mother-nature’s breath feels sticky on my neck, as I wade through her mood.
Her tears a giving life force,
her reverie a faint dream found in
the small space between
the quiet of a waking morning
and a dawned soul, breathing.

Wayne Harris / Elizabeth Wolf

called 911 on April 20th
and said the Columbine shooter
might be his son, Eric.

He said his son
was probably a part
of the Trench Coat Mafia.

Wayne Harris kept a journal
about his younger son, begun after
Eric had made a few bombs.

Maybe the garage smelled like
propane. Maybe it was just a parent’s
intuition. The spidey sense tingling.

Eric had a beef with a boy at school
but his dad thought the other boy, Brooks,
was being dramatic. No big deal. Even though

Brooks reported death threats. On April 20th
Eric saw Brooks outside the school and said,
I like you now- stuff’s about to go down-

you should leave. And Brooks booked it.
When he heard shots firing, Brooks
was the first person to call the police.

Maybe Wayne knew, as he filled his steno pad
with denial, maybe he knew something
was wrong- but before Columbine happened

it was hard to imagine Columbine. Maybe when
the police searched the Harris home that day
and found more bombs, evacuating the house

before the gunmen’s bodies were identified-
maybe that’s when Wayne Harris knew
he made the right call.

Day 1 / Poem 1

The Wind Tears at You / Rusty Barnes

It’s not the night that undresses you
but instead the wind in which your
garments tear and fold aimlessly off
your body but maybe it is darkness’s

cloak itself which is a burst of bright
light in the morning, because as sure
as that sunny break returns, you will pass
it as well and love what your sunny

body allows you to love, the forward
momentum of time, the clock of your body
which chimes in rhythm can answer
with the wind and the night both in

synchrony, as you stand before me nude
and echo my words: yes, I love you.

We Come So Close to It / Donna Dallas

The yellow hummingbird outside
our kitchen window
the red bellied woodpecker
the emerald-green coat you bought for me
in Venice five years ago
that still looks like a movie star garment
the texture of your hands
across my skin
kind of bristly
yet how I long for it

I’m closer to it now…..I think
those necessary things
along the journey
how we fold into the ocean
up to our necks
at sunset
that time is ethereal
a moving stick of dynamite
in our hands

I’ve walked by that caterpillar
on the side of the garage for days
cocooning into its holding tomb
never quite noticed the intensity
of the black carvings along its
plump white furry body

Nothing left
but to get as close as possible
to the splatter of stars
that cover us at night
the long walks to the bay
with the tugging of our dogs
pulling time with us
the reeling of some sad song
on the radio
waiting to be discovered

Eight reasons why we cannot let each other down
I say eight and you say ten
but it’s really one
just as close as we can get
to a thing
we can barely name
or label
as love
wind
water
as I don’t know but something
is so close to us
and we it

Later when we see the hickory tussock moth
we realize continuity
and this
is as close as we will ever get
to a silvery glint off the rocks at the bay
the way your eyes gleam like forever
with yellow dots amidst turquoise blue
a DNA throwback
that simply cannot
be labeled

The light scurries off
before we can even realize
we were on
the raging horizon

Playdates / Angelo D’Amato

I.
Daisy, Daisy
Give me your answer do
I’m half crazy
All for the love of you

So sings the heart that craves a home.
So sings the heart that has molded itself
to Daisy’s imagined hands.

II.
Come, let us build a mighty village
out of plastic bricks and plastic people;
Come, let us pretend we are housewives,
negotiating the strains of a silly marriage
to a silly, silly man;
Come, let us venture into the woods
in your backyard and be bitten
by tumescent fire ants—

Now, your pinky twitches against my hand
as you hold the railing above the buffalo enclosure. You say
“What a shame, how we drove them from the prairies.”
And your lips, they shine. And your eyelashes, they curve,
and curve, and curve…

On Reaching Standing Pitch-Tree, Two Blocks from Our School / Jennifer Dracos-Tice

My sneaker hits mud, no, clay,
slices through the puddle
and I catch myself in a near split.
Have I brought these kids
too far? Peachtree Creek flows
to our left to its confluence
with the Chattahoochee River
up ahead. We pick our way
clutching notebooks, pens,
phones, cross wheel-gouged tracks,
orange water pooled from last night’s rain.

This location is unmarked, except
for one internet reference
to Standing Pitch-Tree,
Creek village, trading hub
for Cherokee from the North,
Muscogee from the South. Atlanta’s
major roads were once trails that led
to this place at the convergence
of the creek and the river.
Google Earth shows a fuzz
of tree-tops, no trail. There is no sign
to mark the village,

not one. Rock ledges hulk
to our right, weed-eaters buzz
over the ridge, at the grounds
for Atlanta Water Works.
Trees drip, high grasses scratch
bare legs. A Sprite bottle glows green
on the mud-slick bank. My students

complain of bugs and the smell
behind every welcome breeze—
sewage. I hear the Chattahoochee shoals
before I see them, the creek water sliding
to meet whitecaps sparking
as they roll from the treatment plant.

I want to feel what’s under
my feet. I wish I could feel it.
Two metal trashcans glint
on the spit of land where we stop
to write and remember. A white sign
warns, no loud music, no littering.
Where is their marker? Where
were the homes? Where
are their dead?

Mimosas sway against
the darker green of pines
at the trail mouth gaping
behind us. Pink and white
mimosa flowers shake—
sweetness, smoke. The chatter
and rustle of hungry kids,
the nearby rush of water.

Black Flies / David Estringel

Black flies
skim the surface of the screen door—
deathly spirits in timeless dance—
among rusty catches
and long-forgotten captures
of smears and smiles,
looking for a tear
to let the world rush in
(in whispers and screams)
like credos
of newborns’ philosophies.

No, they don’t bother me much
those errant twings and twangs
that pull eyes away
from the magnetic hum
of hard plastic fruit,
ripening on Frigidaire doors,
and the bloody meat
of strawberry slices,
souring in a bowl of milk,
under the frosted glow
of 60-watt suns

Is it the creak
of floorboards under wooden legs
(or bones)
that heralds their come to call,
circling like a wreath,
at my kitchen door?
Or is this but a stop
on the way to the widow’s down the road,
where anonymous casseroles
and bunt cakes
still linger ‘round the doorstep?

A faint buzz haunts my ears
and the windowsill above the sink,
cutting sunbeams
with timely slices of unseen wings.
What is that crawling upon me
at the back of my neck?
Something has found its way in.
Is this a curious stroll
or a first taste of flesh?
Shoo, fly!
Don’t bother me!

We Need a Storm / R.W. Haynes

If the dust swirls entrancingly as we gaze
At the remolinos’ demented dance,
Do we hear, somehow, a spirit mourn?
“This is not the rain. This dance reveals
Our needs; its foolish wind exhausts itself,
Circulation desiccation’s crazy whirl.”

And the mind reaches toward the blessed vapor
Of the Caribbean’s vast, capricious realm
And gropes for promise, a fantasy of storm,
A whisper of coolness, a distant, deadly flash.

The Lake of You / Erin Marsh

Love, I can see so cleanly to the bottom
of you. Pearl scaled fish swim by and I imagine
a feast in my bed—you pick up a bite
with your thumb and forefinger, offer it to me.

I can see the pennies I threw in, hoping
you would be patient and kind about my anxiety,
lining the soft silt bottom of you.

As a child, I dug my tender feet
into the lake bottom to feel the supple
sediment between my toes. Then, a sharp
prick of pain and I looked down to see blood
feathering out into the glassy, sun infused water.

This evening I will go fishing on Howard Lake.
I will catch one, pull the hook from
its translucent mouth, and throw it back—
watch it swim away from the boat.

I think about how you have released me too
into the shallowness of you—how I am scared
and in pain, but swim toward deeper waters.

Make Believe/13 / h.l. Rijo

Let’s play a game of make believes.
Where I am king and you are queen
and we’re both back at age 13.
Upside down on monkey bars,
hold knees tight as we reverse,
making sky our new earth.
You’ll go next and I’ll go first:

I had a dream I came
and took your breath away.
This time was different than the last.
You saw me as I wish to see myself.
Remind me as we make believe—
why did I cry when you saw the real me?
When was it that I first had that thought,
I am not enough?

Maybe it was my 13 year old’s memory
of my mother when she said I couldn’t dance well at a wedding.
Or maybe it was my friend’s mother instead when we said I wasn’t pretty because of my acne.
Or maybe it was my father saying he wanted me to stay the same,
instead of a grown lady’s body in a 13 year old girl’s brain.
Maybe it was my first best friend who said she’d always be there,
but I was left with a dangling question without a text to care.
Or maybe it was my first boyfriend bittersweet puppy love,
but our parents intervened—
“you’ll just break up in the end,”
they said, “in time you’ll see.”

Maybe it was just one,
or many, or none at all.
A compounding mental snowball
reaffirming, rolling on
growing bigger as I run.

So let’s make believe in make believe
and pretend that those first little hurts
don’t solidify our grown up skies.
Now, next is your turn.

April 1999 / Elizabeth Wolf

My daughter was born the week after Columbine.

My daughter was born new
coated in vernix, raw, startling:
a gift, a challenge, a chance
for a major do-over.

Trust yourself.
You know more than you think you do.
(Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, 7 th Edition, 1998, p1)

High schoolers. The trench coats. Grainy
security films and 911 calls, voicemails to
parents, kids dripping out of windows.
The taunts and the screams and
all that blood.

Blue blue eyes, tiny toes,
wrinkly fingers splayed like starfish,
patting my breast. Downy hair.
Inked footprint on the birth announcement
proclaiming our expanded family, to our
extended social clan.

Every time you pick a baby up… every time you
change her, bathe her, feed her, smile at her,
she’s getting the feeling that she belongs to you
and you belong to her. Nobody else in the world,
no matter how skillful, can give that to her.
(Dr. Spock, p1-2)

They were bullied.
They were monsters.
Where were the parents.
It’s the music, it’s the price
of free love, it’s the guns, it’s
permissiveness, mental illness;
children with changed voices,
who three days prior danced at prom,
slaughtered, maimed,
traumatized.

My friend I didn’t marry
gave me an archival box
as a baby gift. A repository
for the Sunday front page,
weekly news magazines, grocery circulars,
artifacts of contemporary history,
our family in context, for the baby
to appreciate as an adult. If she
survived to be an adult. I burned
the printed pages, spread the gray ash
over bulbs planted the past fall.

Raising children is more and more puzzling
for many parents because we’ve lost a lot
of our old-fashioned convictions about
what kind of morals, ambitions, and character
we want them to have. We are uncertain
and worried about what kind of world
awaits them as adults.
(Dr. Spock p.5)

We were all changed,
that week. We all wore
our cloak of perspective
just a little differently.

Mothers are forever changed
after giving birth. Deep down
in their marrow, their bloodstream,
the complex pinging patterns
of their brains. My goal was to raise
a worthy child, someone both
strong and kind, who could outshine
the bursts from the muzzle of a gun.

In many ways we have lost our faith in the meaning of life
and our confidence to understand our world
and our society.
(Dr. Spock, p.8)