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DISENGAGED
by Michael J. Vaughn Red tumbles over yellow till the coupling turns orange. Yellow and blue in a corner, making a perfect green of themselves. He has met the compound colors and seen the tire tracks on their faces. The two-two tango is natural, as is poison oak, lyme disease, an unfortunate strike of lightning to the temple. He has taken the trip and yeah, it's a thrill ride, a levitation, a Valentine's Day fuckfest. But one develops immunities, a need to up the dosage, operational expenses, wear and tear. Alternative medicines: a rainy night in San Francisco, the diminuendo of a soprano, a dozen daffodils in a coffee cup. A friend who thinks you're brilliant. A stylist who massages your scalp. A dog who thinks you're God. This poem. This line. This ending. |
STILL LIFE WITH PACKAGE by Fabio Sassi |
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A DEFINITION
by Elijah Enos We used to call the sun Father, Ra, Aten, Helios. Now we are told it's just a ball of gas and yet it still glistens, almost touchable in the water. So maybe what we think a thing is matters less than that it is. What is is? Does any one object embody the verb? Poets are full of I ams, my friend said as she turned her eye to her camera. I am I am I am. Give me no name, let me be any thing just let me be. |
HUMAN FROG by Allyson Seconds |
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ON THE GENEROSITY OF EVOLUTION
by Bill Freedman Flies stroll, window shop or doze on ceilings, enabled by the sticky tips of setae in their pulvilli. I'm pleased for their sake evolution thought of this, sensed its service to survival, though I'm not sure why. Who's after them in here? Frogs with their foot long party favor tongues feed in swamps and ponds, where a ceiling's rare as size 12 triple E width fly feet or a feathered moon. Likewise birds in gardens, branches, fields where the only overhead is sky. Perhaps they used it first for gluing needles head to point that camels and the rich, turned back bloody at the eye, might climb and discovered this by chance. You've seen children hanging upside down from playground bars, head thrown back, hair like mountain cataracts in air, and laughing. Giddy Adams waking to a world they've never seen and won't let go. And you, though fearful, calling, shutting eyes, love them so for holding on, for loving earth, as you do, turned this way. you forget the sticky feet of flies. Grateful evolution thought you'd need this, plucked you out for just this gift, this moment, though nothing in this life will tell you why. |
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