By Lynda V. E. Crawford
Posted on
this man
who surfaces
at rush hour
to homeward
bound cars
tucked in a
once-tan jacket
grey beard
(the kind Caribbean
economists wear)
walking in a side waddle
bad feet, wrong shoes
propelling into the street
when lights change
to stop cars
knock on windows…
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By Andrew Gibson
Posted on
At a sandwich shop in San Francisco
I asked to be called Travis.
I walked by the Natural History Museum
where a cave of Neolithic men
were learning to play the spoons
for all the hairy babes preening fistfuls of knotted hair.
A bear of smoke crawls over their backs,
shaped like the Rottweiler outside my window in the morning.
Police sirens float over, and he harmonizes.
ah-roo-roo-roo
but low
as if he wants me
to
hear
them
too
– Andrew Gibson…
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By Eric Weil
Posted on
Old calico with gummy kidneys and knotted joints,
fur no longer smoothable, like a carpet that someone
spilled paint on, never the same. The vet tech inserted
the port in one leg, and she meowed her last protest.
I thought of my mother, who as she aged closer
and closer to her final, feeble 93, said, “We treat
our old dogs and cats better than we treat ourselves
at the end.” I held Madeline, named wittily, I thought,
given a cat’s propensity for sleep, for Keats’s young woman
who dreams of her lover. When the tech started the pink drip,
Miss M looked in my eyes, knowing; I like to think
it was a look of thanks. The tech asked if I wanted time
alone with her, but I didn’t want to feel her warmth
ebb away; instead, I imagined her waking somewhere,
running off with her young and supple tom.…
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By MK PUNKY
Posted on
When we discovered oil in our backyard
bubbling beneath a suspicious strawberry that produced
fruits redolent of racetracks and truck stops
the nice man from ExxonMobil who showed up unannounced
assured us our financial worries had ended
and the fun could begin
Handing us a handsome business card
he promised to retire our mortgage
provide a substantial monthly stipend
and gift us an immodest bonus check
in exchange for the exclusive right to install a bobbing derrick in the garden
where the tomato vines normally flourished
Agreeing to this felicitous arrangement would not only benefit our banking
he assured us
but additionally
and this was the really neat aspect of the deal
we’d be doing our small part to guarantee America’s energy independence
from foreigners who hate our freedom
Explaining your great good luck to someone who doesn’t have it
can be tricky
so we told him
it sounded wonderful and very generous and we’d really like to help
win whichever of our nation’s ongoing wars was most important
but unbelievably
providentially we like to think
just last week
the wife and I discovered a vein of gold while digging in the potato patch
and after praying on it and paying off some bills
we’d made a pact with our Lord and Savior
to convert the excavation site into
a community swimming pool
– MK PUNKY
Note: This poem is excerpted from MK’s collection The Year of When: 365 Poems Beginning with the Same Word.…
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By Jeffrey G. Wang
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I know nothing but the spray
of buckwheat, highway
perfume which permeates tar
oases we cross each day.
Our tired shoes trace contrails
of an F-150 that has already
blitzed through eternal savannah.
I know nothing but adobe homes
and SNAP. Bricks
laid in a pattern I can’t quite discern,
etched into mountains
like long-forgotten cuneiform,
waiting for some denim-clad
explorer to bring its Rosetta Stone.
Until then, we settle, ephemeral
& unpronounceable,
waiting upon this assembly
of fissure and dust for a voice
evicted—its stolen breath now
only a road apparition:
Tilework Americana.
A blink of neon lights the path
from Mississippi deltas
to concrete jungles, from checkered
walls of late-night diners
to the daytime glow of Sunday papers,
headlines flickering into
a lithographic coma as we turn
to our pharmaceutical dreams.…
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By John Van Dreal
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These are the words he used to describe his discomfort: “I’m better when I sit there.” He pointed to a set of chairs, backed up to the pub’s exterior wall.
His attentive companion tipped her head to the side, narrowing her eyes and nodding, stepped forward.
They sat, her expression suggesting uncertainty.
But I knew.
I knew the moment I noticed him approach the sidewalk seating and sensed that he had noticed me first, and everyone else in the immediate location, assessing us within the casual, situational elements of walls, windows, furniture, dress, drunkenness, gesture, and relaxation.
I knew when I noted the ink, resting on skin pulled tight over well-defined muscle, peering out from under his left short sleeve . . . the lower third of the gray-green letters composing the words Leave No Man Behind.…
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By Lorna Wood
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The swooping arabesque of a roof,
a giant circle around nothing—
rippling, receding, dancing
in the building across the Spree
“The grandstanding of late capitalism,
covering its failures,” cynics interject,
but I will hear no evil.
Grand illusion, maybe, but not
the grandeur of Prussian kings.
More like a child, opening
a door in the air
for imaginary friends.
From totalitarian rubble
come play, transparency,
reflection, connection,
and hope, which I cannot grasp,
yet cling to beyond reason.
– Lorna Wood
Author’s Note: In 2018, I went to Berlin for the first time. I was struck by the government buildings built since World War II. They are beautiful, with whimsical shapes and clear walls that seem to literalize the humanity, transparency, and reflection that should characterize democratic government.…
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