Take the water. Touch it at the rim. The
Amazon. The Mississippi. Flowing east and
south until they empty into the same ocean,
becoming the same body. Springs and
trickles, tributaries bringing wisdom, life, and
over time maturing into continental
waterways, spilling over banks that cradled
them like the darling sips they were.
Fertilizing floodplains to feed the hungry
masses. Turning forests into lakes, where
mystic dolphins twist through roots and
murk, offering fertility—the birth of your
imagination, the future to behold. And the
water knows itself until it doesn’t: delta
meaning change. Then, El Niño, heavy, pulls.
Sucks up the humpbacks’ sighs, and the rivers
once again are cumulus, raining into tiny
ponds a mountain range away, and you pack
the car with everything you need to make the
drive out west, because that is where you’re
going, and this you know for sure.…
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The cars are meteorites
Streaming forward
They leave streaks in the lane.
I watch, dazed— the colors
They roll slower now—
Through thick silty water
A haze blocking the night above.
Languid, splayed on the riverbed,
Fauna floating round me like
Thin and welcoming hands
Reaching to shield my eyes.
Passersby look onwards,
Fish with their mouths agape.
They inch towards me soundless.
– Cheryl Aguirre…
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from the north/the low clouds float/
single-file/ heading south along
I-75 like a slow army of fluff
it’s late April and snow’s predicted for tonight
i want to be a weatherman in my next life/wrong
or right/you keep your job and there’s no recourse
when i look up/the sky slowly moves over me
and i envision the cloud soldiers in those gray transports
smoking a cigarette/drinking a glass of rainwater/
chewing on hail chips/joking around/saying prayers/pleas
to a silent god to let them live another day
isn’t that what we all want/?/another chance
to get it right or at least not screw it up so much
this time/i won’t turn my back
and walk away without a glance
this time/i’ll tell you exactly how i feel//
i’ll run into your arms and lift
you in the air/swing your legs around/
both of us laughing and kissing and collapsing
in the field
this time/i’ll realize everything///in some strange way///
is a gift
– David James
Author’s Note: The older I get, the more I want a second chance in life—to go back, knowing what I know now, and have a re-do.…
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Perhaps I am not who I think–
the one who would wish
to disappear before your eyes.
What I want is the power
to stretch time,
cheat death,
be always beside you,
throw wide the doors
and walk through.
But then, there is the task of planting lilacs
and I recall my 6 year old self
hidden in the stand of sweetness
perched on the metal lid:
LEVITTOWN – the septic tank.
Oblivious and still.
Nine years flying coast to coast,
five hours in limbo each time,
the calm as I settled in my seat,
cabin door closed.
a portal to no time,
the clock turning back:
a book, a pen, a glass.
Teleportation would have stolen
the time beside my mother
as she drove me to countless dance classes
after working two jobs and cooking dinner–
and what of our penniless honeymoon,
driving ourselves across plains into mountains–
silence, music, our own private humor.…
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My house holds a place
on a hill. To my left,
terraces retain the earth.
Blocks interlock
above the lower alleyways.
To my right, the hill
slopes gently to the chain
links below. Between
these extremes, I wrangle
a push mower. Along
my left half I carve vertical
lines, letting gravity
pull my sputtering green
engine toward the hedgerow
where I swivel and drag
the handle behind me.
Along the right I go
horizontal. Nearest the gnarly
roots of the old maple,
where the chopper wants most
to flip in my arms, I leave
the tall grass to heighten.
– Cameron Morse…
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I guess wherever a man stands becomes the moral high ground, less about altitude, more conviction, boots on ground, the cool rational marble of thought, they hate gossiping too, or at least what we call that way of living in the world when women do it, which of course makes it wrong, you get it, they don’t understand the need for it, emotionally of course, but also biologically, survival skill, instinct, I need to know what’s happening to the fifty or so people in my world, hunt love, gather grief, I want to know and I want the privilege of being told, secrets whispered under low lights, over popcorn and wet nails, shifting alliances, not always mean, no, but sometimes, sure, but we know where our lines are, we’ve been tip-toeing around lines in the sand our whole lives, were trained in it, our lives are lived exclusively on the knife thin line between victimhood and power, Madonna and Whore, all of them, the big ones, the little ones thin as thread, frail as uncooked spaghetti, and we’re towing some lines and smudging others, and you can’t see it yet because you’re not a part of it.…
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Just after noon,
at the intersection of Mission and High streets, I saw her at
the wheel of a tan SUV. The red light held us both, each
vehicle facing the other.
With an Oregon gray-winter-solstice-zombie stare, her eyes
looked ahead at Nothing.
I knew her in the ’90s. She was a Mormon . . .
probably still is. Four kids and a utilitarian marriage—
functional, its passion drained years back
by an exhausting commitment to full immersion in
a religious lifestyle.
I recalled how, this time of year, the church service,
volunteer obligations, family management, and
holiday expectations always left her brittle.
Fifteen years ago, to distract herself, she began
joining multilevel marketing companies that
promised honest products, sales opportunity, wealth,
and vacations in the islands.…
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