She swims in Winnipesaukee to capture loons
on film. Their oily feathers are black and white.
A squall disrupts the summer afternoon.
When heavy rain clouds burst like water balloons,
New Hampshire’s favorite fowl disperse in flight.
Why visit Winnipesaukee? To capture loons
on film requires a telescopic lens.
Lightning and thunder explode like dynamite
when squalls disrupt the summer afternoons.
Her hopes for perfect pictures lie in ruins.
She works so hard to photograph the sight
of Winnipesaukee’s elusive flocks of loons.
Their call resembles the sound of contrabassoons
tuning for a symphony at night.
Summer squalls disrupt the afternoons
when eager scouts arrive at camp in June.
Buying postcards is for hypocrites!
She drinks to Winnipesaukee to toast the loons,
but squanders her dreams in cheap saloons.…
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We live out our lives here in Bogota, as people elsewhere. In the mornings when we wake, we look out at the weather; and we go to our offices and our shops and factories; we go to the cinema and we gossip with and about our friends, we have our lunch-breaks, and in the evenings we come home to our families, those of us who have families. On Sundays we watch soccer and swim in the ponds, we go to Mass and we eat in our favourite restaurants. We have our regrets and pleasures and we fill the city cemeteries.
We know about the stuff that the rest of the world knows about, the stuff about Bogota: the drugs and the gangs, the killings. We know about them, but they happen in the south of the city, in the poor areas, and most of us don’t live there.…
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A big man with a small head steps towards the kerb and puts his hand out. A universal hand gesture, or so you’d think.
However, the driver chooses to ignore him and drive on, his face a pinch of shock as we pass, mere metres apart. There’s no way he didn’t see him, the guy was practically wearing the shelter, and the bus isn’t even half full.
I glance out of the back window and see his portly frame slowly shrinking. He’s still looking our way, hands on hips and head cocked in disbelief as though already mentally compiling the complaint.
It happens again a few days later. Same route, same driver. An elderly woman is hurrying to the stop as fast as her frail legs can carry her.…
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I am a collection, fragile, fine,
A glass menagerie, smooth, divine.
Each curve and edge, a story told,
Of strength in fire, of spirit bold.
Some days I stand, unshaken, tall,
A crystal fortress, never to fall.
The world admires my gleaming light,
Unaware I tremble in the night.
For glass can bear the weight of years,
Yet shatter soft in silent fears.
A breath too harsh, a touch unkind,
And fractures creep through soul and mind.
But oh, how beauty lies within
The way the light plays on my skin.
Each crack a map of where I’ve been,
Each flaw a proof: I’m ‘living’ glass.
So see me strong, yet handle rare,
For I am crafted thin as air.
A sculpture spun from joy and pain
Both unbreakable… and breakable, the same.…
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my fingertips comb the hairs on your thigh,
an evergreen flesh; my lips press upon your chest,
but i must ask, is this what you need?
my bare shoulder intercepts your blossoming
kiss, and i fear my nakedness offends your loss,
but you insist this is what you need.
you aim to forget, for a lustful moment,
how you watched his chest wilt and crumple,
but i still think, is this what you need?
your family members rip dozens of peduncles
from the soil to place in your hand, but you say
that something dead is not what you need.
will my hands, my tongue, my red canna expel
the pathogens from a mind you yourself call warped?
you told me, this is what you need.…
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Teddy Barnes let his eye roam over the interior of the trailer to make sure all the gear was where it belonged before shutting the double doors and snapping the padlock in place. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his shirt, shook one of the smokes free and lit up. A half-moon hung in the southwest sky and a light breeze stirred. Teddy relished these mid-June nights, cool and quiet after the noise and sweat of the club, so he relaxed while he smoked bathed in the cold white light of the parking lot’s single floodlamp. He was tired, a deep fatigue that followed long nights on the bandstand. He knew he could use some sleep, but at the moment he wanted a drink more.…
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Robert’s voice at the end of the line, at the end of the world, said “an accident.” Molly heard little else. Her brain stuttered, catching only useless details, like “a car,” “coming home,” “no pain.” The fact was that Paul was dead. She hung up in the middle of a sentence.
She stared into the silent living room. Her cat was swatting threads of noon-time sunlight to the mat. Molly watched the dust puff and swirl. Then she began to laugh, a mad cackle that hurt her throat and sent the cat under the couch. Paul had died at ten at night, a far distant Himalayan night, this same day, long hours from now. It was God’s little joke. Paul wasn’t dead, not yet, not here, not for half a day.…
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