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THE FORCED ENCORE
by Scott Laudati you were a kid once and named songs like epitaphs because the gun was always against your head and the hourglass drained faster then. but the gods are unkind and the streets crack from wheels dragging under old steel. the crowds count down now but the fat lady never sings. there was a poem you put into every song about an early death because like a warmer winter or the gideon's bible life rarely seems like a gift. and even when the lights come on the crowd still has some beer in their cups. they paid the cover your sweat wasn't enough. get back out there. pull the ghosts from the 8-track. you can sleep tomorrow as the van pulls headfirst into a sunrise and somewhere long ago you might remember a kid whose only dream was this life |
SECRET GARDEN by Brent Wiggans |
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RENEWAL
by Ann Wehrman Through the windows of the bus, driving to classes, driving home leafless branches— bones of winter trees interminable. Then comes spring, and a pair of mockingbirds in crisp black tie leap from branch to stark branch against a gray pearl sky; white birch leaves are grains of green, wild rice, drops of rain, grassy pattering of willow. Magnolias bloom like coy southern belles, the dwarf trees in the corner lot rich bouquets of baby's breath, bunches of snowy broccoli, more delicate than snowflakes |
READY FOR BEES by Timothy Pilgrim |
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WHERE BEELINES END ~a Cento by Jeanine Stevens I saw once, in what had been the pleasure-garden of the popes at Avignon, blond bell-pulls of bloom. The mid-air resort of honeybees' hirsute cotillion. Let gardens grow where beelines end, sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia; where bees pray on their knees. Some, even now, are dying at the end of their few weeks, some being born in the dark. Bees have gathered somewhere like petals closing for the coming of the cold. The silhouette of a sphinx moth swerves to drink at the flowerhead From: Amy Clampett, "Lindenbloom." Carol Ann Duffy, "Virgil's Bees." David Waggoner, "Falling Asleep in the Garden." |
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