Steve Dalachinsky (Manhattan, New York): "Invisible Ray #28 (Hurricane Katrina)"

Six spots
then three
and out—
I think he meant five or
ten (imagination (is

summer
scaffolding itself around
the coming fall

it’s the first three-day holiday
that I’m not glad to be having off

Donald is already stacking firewood
in his head
to verify a life
still lived,
his hands,
lungs,
a labor of patience,
his birthday soon to be behind him,
again
barbequed—

later the small reddening puffs
of clouds will slowly make their way
across the sky between buildings,
where the music will drench my hot, tired
soul, as “…pity divides the soul
and man unmans,”
as sorrow for others drowns
deep within my heavily lined pockets—

this weekend
I will collect part of the money
owed me,
buy a set of colored pencils
and a fifty-cent belt
off the street,
its memories
will immediately sift through my nostrils
like all the quinine ever used to cut dope—

tonight I will dream
that I’m being hoisted
away from polluted water,
death,
flowers,
friends,
governments,
rats,
rabbits,
prisons,
and pigs—

no more dirty laundry for a while,
or poisoned glass gloves,
my feet dangling safely above
the filth—

when I wake,
I will paint onions on my garlic,
snapshot the damned picture
for posterity,
kiss Precious Slaughter good morning,
rescue the bacon,
ignore the gallows
and the hearses,
and armchair the good weather
and the birds—

© Steve Dalachinsky, September 20, 2005

Chard deNiord (Putney, Vermont, USA): "Memoir"

I willed the knife to hit the mark and it did,
sometimes at the point, and stuck. Practice
led to skill, until my eyes were handkerchief-
covered, and my beloved straddled a wheel
for all to see as I threw at her. I hit the space
between her legs, beside her head, beneath
her arms. This was it, all or nothing: my life
and hers as a perfect twist where every night
she was reprieved for having lived, and I was
kissed as she was freed. This, as part of the act
that traveled the country, built my fame,
as the man who misses with perfect aim.

© Chard deNiord 2007

Chard deNiord (Putney, Vermont, USA): "Nor Ever Would Be"

Memory is almost enough if you’re in solitary
or intensive care, in which case the past merges
with the present, in such a way that time passes
imperceptibly, as though time itself was calling you to lose
yourself in various versions of what only partly happened,
so that you’re here and not here at the same time,
both real and virtual, adding recall to supposition
and vice versa in the mercy of waiting somewhere.
As if, also, the Higher Power were cognizant from the start
that pre-humans were destined to become human,
that moment they became aware that they were remembering,
and it wasn’t enough, and as an addendum
to this thought, that nothing was enough, nor would ever be,
or would be. A wind blows across the earth like a page:
more, more— whatever it is. See how it passes away—
girders and all— in the flames you can only see on the screen
of your lids, not so towering but persistent, licking.

The single stroke that Lily made comes close—
her simple, ungifted mark that was enough for then,
and now, which is all anyone could hope for at the end
of a war, which it always is, at least so far. So far.

© Chard deNiord 2007

Jeffrey Ethan Lee (Boulder, Colorado, USA): "Night Out With My Sister's Contact Improvisational Dance Girlfriends"

I.
The deal—
I felt in my guts that something was up,
the way Jude led me in,
“you swore
you’d take off your clothes,
do anything we want…”
(pinching my waist)
“and we’ll enlighten you…”
(unbuttoning there)
“if you’ll just slip into this…”
and she handed me
a small black velvet dress.
(loosening lower)
“No, I’m not gonna—”

Carol measured meticulously
up under my shirt
“It’ll fit,” she burst,
(stroking my chest)
“besides, you’re a poet—
think of this as research…”
“Uh-uh”
(my buckle popped)
Carol’s bourbon voice was so hot,
“But I just took it off for you…”
(my ear caught fire)
“Whoa…”
“Strip.”

I should’ve known it was a trap
when my shoulders got stuck
halfway through, with most of the narrows
still overhead, and nothing below—
in the bathroom I gasped,
“Help! I’m trapped in this thing!”
They crowded in behind, and slowly
tugged down the sturdy, strangling tube,
and then the taping and shaping
of the slimy, squishy balloons.
Jude poked one, pushed the other and snapped,
“You see— you see
what we go through for you?”

II.
After he said, “Hey baby…”
“Hey baby yourself.
You’re making a fatal error,” I warned,
shouting over the authentically retro pop,
in a muscle-bound nylon shirt,
half open to fur and cheap gold chains,
he stared straight through,
Carol in my clothes
and Jude in overalls.
Jude challenged him:
“I bet my girlfriend here
could kill you arm wrestling.”
He sneered, “It’s impossible…
I may be a moron, but things like that
just do NOT happen.”
Jude chimed, “Well, you’re at least half-right…”
Then her eyes counted the seconds til he realized
he was being trashed (her sort of IQ test).
Oh no, his eyes were glazed
In soft focus, sticking to me like white glue…
Jude clasped my cheek and cracked,
“Baby, he’s smitten.”
“Don’t kid.”
“I bet his chest size is bigger than his IQ…”
My feelings were mixed—
I didn’t want to laugh,
but when she did the math,
“A forty-six plus four— for that deep manly shag.”
I was shaking so hard I thought
my balloons would pop.
Not seeing what was really shaking,
he stepped close and asked, full of hope,

“So, you wanna dance?”

“Sorry, I don’t dance with men
whose tits are bigger than mine.”

Finally, a frown, hostility,
maybe even violence in the making.
But Jude gently slipped her body up
against Mr. Rug and shrugged,
“Well, she tried to warn you—
she’s not a girl who misses much.”

© Jeffrey Ethan Lee 2005

Adam Fieled (Logan Square, Philadelphia, USA): "What Needs No Myth"

after W.B. Yeats

The actuality of summer leaves wavering—
water gushing from springs— wind redolent
with sap— will never be enough to fill great
chasms of self-consciousness, emptiness of

death-fearing despair. If we could only learn
to watch waves of the sea— what needs no
myth never stops coming. No Sphinx waits in
the desert— nothing slouches towards Bethlehem—

no preternatural reality waits to replace what
never was. Ghosts predominate— slouch, blood-
dimmed tide built into them. Meanwhile, actual
falcons manifest the miracle of flight— harbingers

of the endless— winging the air, persevering.
It is a matter of mathematics, of where the numbers
end. Or space, our real home— inscrutably expansive,
unbelievable. There is no judgment in space.

Asteroids come out of the void— full-bodied, hurtling,
bent on something. Stars live and die, to no
appreciable avail comprehensible to us. There is
enough wonder in the Universe to befuddle

a thousand sages. Jesus on the cross is simple
by comparison. Each reductive model bends
the Collective Unconscious further towards
breakage. Sodden with suffering, the great

unassimilated incorrigibly search beneath
the stratosphere. Who understands that
breaking the circle is a precondition to well-
roundedness? Having achieved existence,

even Buddha sat by the bo tree a little
eternity, rounding myths into pebbles, pebbles
into myths—

© Adam Fieled 2003

What Needs No Myth in Eratio

What Needs No Myth at Personal Mythologies II

Laura Jaramillo (South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania): from Double Trinity

There was a procession in the florid triangle
of my garden. Dawn brought the revolt of equestrian
statues. I lay down beside my uprooted perennials
and showered empty beds with salt, ink, mascara,
while one bronze statesman extended his arms, airplane-
like. His steed ran without reigns, a bride with no veil.

The residents of the city did little to veil
their contempt for the disturbance of the everyday triangle,
but vagrants kissed the empty airplane-
less sky. Traffic ceased its equestrian
stride. Billboards’ eyes, propped open with mascara,
stamped out a flustered morse code, suspecting the chaos perennial.

I cultivated and talked to deaf mutes, but suspected the perennials
wore their blooms as sabotage veil,
perhaps were passing off even war paint as mascara.
I distrusted geometry (petal, a euphemism for triangle),
but liked topography (I’d slash at the ground like an equestrian).

Holes are cut into the earth by horses, runways by airplanes.

© Laura Jaramillo 2005

Diana Magallon (Colima, Mexico): "Elegy to the Terse Golden Spheres"

Let’s break
the best
nuts
with balsams

Rumpelstiltskin persuades the world with ten hellos

Patient,
patient!
The verses
of the baker woman,
the verses of the baker woman,
rhyme sentences
through cuaderna via

Rumpelstiltskin persuades the world with ten hellos

I’m heretical lines,
this, balsams,
and the best
nuts
broken

Rumpelstiltskin persuades the world with ten hellos

Fakir cracks
my Kabbalah,
la cabala,
good
bye

Rumpelstiltskin persuades the world with ten hellos

© Diana Magallon 2005

John Tranter (Balmain, Australia): "Pronto"

I.
No joy in this one, Bob. Would you like to be
summoned for one little blot on the record,
by a marshal? And create the indictment
today, that will be used for a demo
tomorrow? If you do that, my old friend,
the problem seems to be saying, the data
will go on the skids— it could be a fun contest,
held in a field near the Boston area.

Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that
finding a guitar has anything to do with it.
Just dish it up like the boss wants, though,
if you deal with the CIA— Hi, I’m Bob.
Can’t talk now. Down in the park,
listening to guitars, single mothers—

II.
Do they need to show more, to agree to put
the data mining double digits to use?
They blame a hotel trustee, ten to one.
A bang on the gong and he’s off to Brooklyn,
with a call for a song-set from Tony, sliding to CNN,
sun blinding him, trouble in the upper airway,
cost of sales data ballooning— he cannot operate.
It is the “FM in a Domain Name System” hazard.

A haphazard collapse they can share with the boss,
who already believes that we should solve it—
that must be what the publishers want—
two weeks’ extra pay, he would say that to keep me,
but I’m getting used to his lies. Sufficient onto the day
are its many small evils— Betty, comment on that, pronto.

© John Tranter 2005

Chris McCabe (London, UK): from The True History of the Working Class

March 20, 2008

When I was very young, Thatcher was a thing that happened
to my parents’ faces when they watched the television—
it showed itself like gritty food with sounds of She and Her and It.

When I was very young, I could tell when it was windy
by how quickly the clouds moved.

© Chris McCabe 2008

Todd Swift (Maida Vale, London, UK): "Sonnet: Listening In"

Things are what kings hold— and let go of, once,
learning too late that the nothing outside belongs
to the nothingness buzzing in our blood, and will
connect to it, as a burglar will drill through
steel locks and busy tumblers, to our blood.
The tempest of existence thrums and thunders,
rumbling the body like a great beating of a kettle drum,
announcing the hard hollows and stretched surfaces
of ourselves, our groaning testimony to being present
against our wish, to an audience that loves us less.
We sense the vibrancy of loss as a humming of violins,
like a surgery wild with last minute cutting, a tuning
up of instruments and mastery— the universe
has a body like a dancer’s, a mind like a maggot’s.

© Todd Swift 2005