Lisa
Cowley |
ST. PHILLIP STREET |
A mother and son
sit on the stoop
seeking out the moon
eclipsing the foggy slum
buried shadows
where this young
white girl glows
wishing she held
the iris dreaming through
that small black telescope
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night light
soft shadows help me find my way
green light
on the kitchen phone
kitchen lamp
cup of tea slice of bread
clock ticks a heart beat
refrigerator hum of comfort
circles of light and sound
I am momentarily safe
in the great Stygian darkness
and the world whirling by
and my breathing
and the long road waiting
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idling downward
wide as eyelashes
snowfloats drift in grace
to land light
at just the right place
everywhere
their presence
redeeming the unlikely
reclaiming possibility and
settling so deep in the eye
they say some
never recover from it
lay so lovely and fed any
who would look
snowflake manna
we were still dancing in it
we children
late that afternoon
the grey day fading and
ready to be tucked in
drowsy with wonder
at its own white smile
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A bony finger, a broken tooth.
A dull razor dragged across the sky.
A bruised eye, a mangy dog.
A locked door, a dead fish.
The whole of summer hidden
in the milkweed's empty husk.
Or a field of stars caught
like blue stones in the ice.
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Tina
Duque Corbett |
AT THE CORE |
Glad to share this apple.
Kings had their tasters,
I have you --
Magellan of a worm
your sepia cursive
like dribbled caramel
running around this globe.
You say: it is safe,
the world is not flat,
the rain's yet benign
and an apple still
stems from paradise.
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Barbara
Reiher-Meyers |
4500 MAIL ORDER
LADYBUGS IN A LINEN BAG |
Tiny hand-picked helpers
gussied up for Halloween
scramble for freedom
from their linen prison.
Some scatter into the air
in search of aphids
while hundreds march
onto my fingers and arms
squirming and scattered
like the speckles of poems
that tickle my intellect
only to
fly
away.
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Ray
Freed |
RIVERSIDE DRIVE |
8am walking East
to a downtown avenue
from a penthouse crap game
up 3 days running
full of sour mash and speed
pockets fat with folded hundreds
the jagged summer sun beats down.
I stand on a corner surrounded by suits
limping to the prison of their jobs,
lift fingers to a dry mouth
and cut the timid air
with a roaring whistle for a cab.
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Still yesterday's tickets
gum and ashes.
Tatters of blue smoke.
Men were bigmouthed and strange
and every face
showed stalemate.
I sat limp
solitaire solitaire solitaire
in the dust
in the hard light
of places
my father took me.
That was years before.
Up late
my hands crease this page
its simple nowhere song.
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A seemingly innocuous gearshift
shards of guilt and pointed metal,
pierced my spine,
splintered my being.
A certain rage halted
by the imposing telephone pole
that stood smiling
in front of Whiting's Funeral Parlor,
just four blocks from my home.
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Saul
Bennett |
JUST ANOTHER
CUT OF MEAT |
In the War you got sent to the German when your mother
ran out
of milk or needed an egg or two to cook hard for your little lunchbox
after the American went dark; lining up underneath their bombsight
Ja? Vot? glare, head butting the bottom of their counter glass eyeing
alien meats in a sullen rank on the other side: one with pus sores
a gentile friend nudged you head cheese!; gummy, crimson
bloodwursts in huge rounds; weary, Marlene Dietrich-pale hams
worthy of sighs sufficient to cloud the glass; adjacent, bobbing
in brine
in a sizable chromium craft, pickles, camouflage green; standing
sentry watch behind, a squad each; junkets, custards, puddings,
brown, yellow, rose, each precisely the height of its bruder in
cups
the color of paste you could keep forfeiting the five-cent deposit.
The liver-color hair of the pair of Wehrmacht- age brothers who
ran it
in smart starched whites stood fixed-bayonet straight and watching
them
dart, lunge, strangle requested items with pincers off high shelves,
wipe hands on starched cloths mounted at apron belts after each
fleshy slicing mission, you felt they showered every day and twice
in August, and when your order ended, backing off their glass,
as almost nice as their dead-aim smile appeared to make them want
to
appear, you feared you were being measured, for what you weren't
sure.
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