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A LIVING ANGEL AWAKENS ME
by Milton P. Ehrlich A Tanzanian health aid, who sings when she talks and dances when she walks, diapers my friend who can no longer swallow food without a feeding tube. My paralyzed 86-year-old pal responds with a twisted smile. Walking home, wondered if there was a hole in my soul. I threw away my hat and tie, humming a song I hadn't heard since I blew my horn years ago playing My Funny Valentine. My body reached for naked air filled with flocks of singing birds I had never seen. |
VERTEBRAE by Jennifer Lothrigel |
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THE FAILED POEM
by Taylor Graham I meant it to be a love poem. Not for you, I've never been able to write you a love poem. It was for a girl they were looking for, thirty years ago. She disappeared off Main Street of this little town. It was front-page for weeks. They searched all over the forest. A camper found her behind a fallen log. Dead. But really my poem wasn't just for her, but also for the other two found miles apart, behind logs in the forest. Mostly it was for the girl loggers discovered on a ridge just above where I walked our dogs, thirty years ago, a pleasant forest road in June, dogwoods blooming. Wildflowers on the creek. I felt a shiver. My dogs ran far ahead of me as if something in the wind — it was the girl, scent and spirit. I turned around, called my dogs, drove as quick as I could away. Back to town. Something in me didn't want to know what it knew. I meant to write a love poem for everything we've lost, all of us. There's foxglove and columbine in it. |
LIGHT THROUGH SACRUM (Silhouette Photogram) by Christian DeLaO |
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BENCHMARK
by Timothy Pilgrim Gone, without wings she flies, no backward glance, no time for the massacred behind, disemboweled — stark ending witnessed by a murder of crows who caw loudly before they go. Hope could be the benchmark — those with too little, soaring north in dark night — with too much, south, searching for rotted sky. All not finding god becoming — nor becoming god, proclaim who dies, permit just anyone to scavenge black coffins, no entrails left inside. |
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