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How the Turks must laugh so,
at the tourist boy with a t-shirt tan
sprinting full speed down the docks of Bodrum
at half past noon on a scalding June day,
broken sandals in hand.
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S a r a B i g g s C h a n e y
Ann Coulter’s Sonnet to Orpheus*
Creatures of silence emerged from lairs.
With infernal racial set-asides!
Little pipsqueak nations longing, darkly drear.
O pure ascendance, lionized on TV--
Bears similarity to a psychological disorder.
The Great Satan wearies this reverse hegemony.
Oh better Blacks, Broads,
Griefparrazies! Oh Orpheus Sings!
Everywhere stillness, yet in abeyance—
It’s almost cute, the central element
faith plays in the left’s new religion.
Nor from any hint of fear,
or lack of indoor plumbing.
Towering tree of facts and policies!
Brutal colorblind shriek!
Dwindling Iran-Contra roar!
The temple at listening’s core a mere hut,
impossible to sustain.
*Citations
“The Sonnets to Orpheus” By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Robert Hunter.
“Top 5 Craziest Or Most Racist Ann Coulter Quotes.” By Zerlina Maxwell.
“RWN’s Favorite Ann Coulter Quotes”
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J e r r o l d Y a m
Snow
Leave us. There is no generosity
in unwelcome surprise. Already
the neighbour’s yard clenches its
earthen jaw in anticipation; kids
sprint to windows upon waking.
If you have to cheat in the middle
of the night, vanish by morning.
Tell me how kindness works in
taming an undependable person.
Geyser
Few things sadder
than your inconsistencies.
First, a quandary of rocks
scattered in jest, each smeared
with their own handwriting.
Second, no place to call
a sanctuary, no one there
without taking you
for granted. Third, an occasional
burst of remonstrance to show
you are alive, buried
in melancholic soil. Anything
that is beaten is impressive
while it lasts.
Castle
If the sole purpose of art
is to mimic nature, there
are no success stories to
be found in bricks. Study
the way nothing is built.
Use forts for pictures as
you would a friend, one
errand at a time. Parents
cannot tell the difference,
busy shepherding people
who will outlive the lies.
No one has conceded so
far as home is concerned.
/
R i c h M u r p h y
Body Knowledge
The body has a mind
the way a shopping cart
with a wheel stuck wants
to move right or left
for someone else.
The feet understand
what toes they wish to oppose.
The shoulders know
with which arms to align.
Torsos intuit their match
and whether in a room
to burst into light. However,
two bodies don’t need to meet
if one brain in a head
does not wish them to
where even the finger tips
see the likenesses and love.
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T i m o t h y M c L a f f e r t y
Afternoon with Sun
Resin burned sweet as I cut a branch
from the yew.
My father stood on the soft earth
beneath me.
“Looks like a woodpecker’s been at
this tree,” I said.
It was early fall
and the last cicadas were sounding.
Vernal Equinox
And so she steps across the equator
in all her glory, the fields of winter
asphodel beneath her and Helios
above. The birdsong changes key as
the light softens and warms, and we
look to the earth star, standing in its
long shadows, gladdened and aglow.
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Michele Karas art about here
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R i c h a r d J . F l e m i n g
Don't Look Back
an Orphic Hymn
1
Whenever I left the house, I'd often double back. Did I lock the back door? Forget to turn off dangerous appliances? I could envision the entire block leveled like Dresden. My superstitious friend told me that it was bad luck to backtrack. To ward off the evil eye, I needed to see my reflection in some shiny surface before I could safely quit the premises. I read somewhere that Narcissus had similar problems.
2
I was in the bathroom shaving. I noticed a girl who appeared to be part of a pattern on the wallpaper. She had a black orchid in her hair. She was eating a pomegranate shaped like a wounded heart. I decided to step through the mirror to the other side. It was like walking through a waterfall into a cave that dripped with night. The walls were damp, and swallowed my songs.
3
Back in the real world of game shows and video poker, I was out watering the lawn. Twin Angels from Hell rode up on snarling hogs. They escorted a Midnight Plum Metallic Escalade. In the back, sat Marie Laveau. She wore a Black Mamba coiled around her neck. She gave me the once over, and told her chauffeur to drive on by. I could see the neighbors peeking through their Venetian blinds.
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D a r r e n D e m a r e e
Emily As a Nasturtium Blossom Fallen into the Ravine
The wet narrowing
drove the darkness
into acceptance. It
was gravity, it was
a loosening of arms
from above the creek
& though we used
the rock-sides to cut off
the touch of the wind
& the touch of intimacy
there was no anguish,
no redemptive carry
of such beauty. A mile
down, at the bottleneck,
a shape of Emily emerged.
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C o r e y M e s l e r
My Devil Girlfriend
Takes me to the edge
of my body. It is
night there. She tells
me she is wearing
nothing but the wings
of moths. I tell her I
cannot see, it’s too
simple. She takes my
heart and puts it be-
tween her honeyed
thighs. My devil girl-
friend is the edge of
my body. She is its night.
A Third Stone
This is Mark Strand’s stone.
This is Greg Orr’s.
They sit on the edge of my
lawn in the moonlight,
the incorporating moonlight,
like watchdogs, crooning.
When I dream it is the
stones I hear singing. Their
lines are not for me.
They are chanting prayers
to Theodore Roethke, to
William Blake. One
morning there is a third stone.
It is smaller than the others but
it glows like the world’s mind.
At Home in the 1960s
The kitchen is quiet
except for the
hum of the waffles.
Your brother sits
in a hobbled chair.
Your mother is about
to say something horrible.
The air is still
like it was in Dallas,
as she waved and waved.
/
J o e G r e c o
Moon Shine
We are children with clouded eyes and liver spots and skin hanging from our jawbones like Daisy, the basset hound, whom we’d ride into the tall grass at dusk in the springtime, as if she were a low-slung Shetland pony. Mother would call us and ring the dinner bell as we lay still, hiding and hoping to steal a few more moments with the stars that slowly asserted themselves, glistening, against the blue-violet sky. We’d gaze up, whispering our plans to build a rocket ship that would blast us up through the cool night for a quick visit, but get us back in time for dessert. We yearn to go no less now, the only difference being we know we never will.
I sit on the porch step, my knees aching in the winter chill, warning me that standing will be a battle. I look up to see a yellow orb framing the head of the gray-haired one and I ask her how the moon can shine so brightly when it is so much older than we. She rings the dinner bell and calls for the little ones to come in from behind the snowdrifts where they’ve hidden, pretending to be polar bears. She looks down and says, “You’ve scuttled across this earth for so many years and yet you haven’t learned a damned thing. You see nothing but reflected light. That old moon is as dead as dead can be.” She rings the bell again, calls more loudly, and then without looking at me says, “What are you waiting for? If you had a brain in your head, you’d get inside and eat your supper before the locusts come and take their turn.”
/
I a n M u l l i n s
Face In The Crowd
One day
you will stare
so hard in my face
you will see
your own
stare back;
and like a little boy
with a firework
warm in his pocket
I will leave you
both
to your fate.
Dirty Soul
I could live in a shack
with a rusted car upended on the roof
like a dying fly
praying for sun
and a deep well out back
with a body
simmering in the heat
down below the waterline
and I’d only leave home
on winter nights
when the moon hid its eye
fearing what it might find
wintering down here,
my soul
blazing like car keys
rusted in my pocket.
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J a m e s C r o t e a u
Again
Momma
died again
the first morning
after the long night.
I awoke without the memory,
world unchanged. Suddenly the rifle shot!--
Childhood movie’s haunting sound shreds
boyhood certitude. Scenes end,
eyes open, orphaned,
all become
Bambi.
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M a r k D a n o w s k y
Bonsai
A part of me wonders
could it be shallow
breath that is the root
of my penchant for compressed
cadences in literature?
/
H o w i e G o o d
The Shadow of an Airplane Crosses the Empire State Building
First thing every morning after waking up, I take a pill that may cause drowsiness. The darkness begins to peel away in long, uneven strips, exposing patches of brighter darkness underneath. Later, I’ll feel as I often do, like a candle eavesdropping on sunlight. Going up on the escalator, a vague little man who reminds me of me will hug a bag from Infinity Shoes to his chest. I’ll have the sense that anyone who isn’t a victim is a suspect. In infinity shoes, you could, theoretically, walk forever.
Communism, Hypnotism, and the Beatles
All property is theft – worse even than the breakup of the Beatles. I search YouTube for the movie they never should have made. In it, Prussian police spies trail Lennon across nighttime Paris to secret meetings with a couple of chorus girls and Karl Marx. I watch
in anxious expectation of the end of everything that means anything. Hell comes in so many different sizes. I lean farther and farther out to get a better view of the hypnotic green flames.
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A n g e l e E l l i s
Landscape
I waited so long for you
I forgot why I was waiting.
That first hint of gold in the Tubes
when you come through
at night: then trumpets
of daffodil lights,
lifting Pittsburgh like spring.
Flooding floors of windows,
a sky all rectangular stars.
You behind none of them.
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J e a n H e n d r i c k s o n
Diogenes
Truth wanders the world
looking for a home.
Down the street
the final shutter closes
and the last door snaps shut.
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