Nikki Blak

For Black Girs (Double Sestina)

For black girls
Faces neon
And variations of indigo
Tongues slick w/ slang and blood
You are tha most blessed
But, often times, this is not enough

Tha World does not trust you
Its machines cannot document you beyond
Legs splayed, on back
Cannot calculate tha latitude of your continent,
Lost in vortex
Of White Supremacy's frenetic dance

Your emerald mines and elephant's tusks are not enough,
Slave girls
But tha milk of your breast is blessed
Enough to wet nurse a serpent's child, until he is neon
Your womb, used against you to taint your own blood
And stain white skin indigo

You dance
But tempo and symphony don't move you
You school molecules on how to transform themselves into vortex
Perplex scholars to tha point of psychosis and beyond.
Confound atmosphere and continent.
Sprout magnolia trees from tha small of your back.

You tend a garden of aloe and indigo
Their feathered leaves and spiny stalks, sharp enough
To conjure blood
Mud pie girls
With neon
In their teeth and hands that are blessed

Petition caresses back
to your skin and lead sweat beads in vertical dance
Like precipitation from sky back to continent
It's soil and sea constructed you
Birth pains pushed you beyond
Mother's womb only to be consumed by this vortex

Often you are tha most blessed
Tha most injured, bleeding indigo
From wounds so profound, they blush neon
Severe enough
To be felt by other girls
Who share your blood

Their eyes, a violent vortex
Their mouths, talking back
Legs propelling them beyond
Tha Earth on which they dance
Girls who look like you
All ripped from a shared continent

Landscape where your blood
Has rivered tha deserts and fields and blessed
tha crops, cared for by girls
With locs tha color of indigo
And skin dark enough
To make the white of their eyes glow neon

Face as broad as a continent
Spirals corkscrew from your scalp like ebony vortex
Tha Earth has never known a beauty like you
You can turn your back
And eyes will still dance
Across your surface and beyond

Sky razors itself open and hemorrhages neon
every morning for you, soldiers spill blood
In hopes that it will be enough
to be blessed
with a glimpse of you, clothed in indigo
Afro girls

Lay your body across tha Atlantic's open grave, beyond
This cage of continent
Dance
Careen stubborn knees and heavy hands into blur of vortex
Carry yourself back
To tha place that saved a space for you

Sister with memory enough to neon tha Sphinx pink with graffiti
Black girls with curses and crusted blood under crescent of nail
You hav blessed your babies with nappy hair and indigo skin

Dance your pen beyond margin
To write whut you hav left for them. To recall your continent
Feed yourself to tha ancestral vortex that won't stop calling you back

Ruth Foley

Prayer for the Abandoned

I tell myself there are no accidents,
that every moment there is something driving
us towards another moment we are blind
to at the time. But I don't really know.
And whether that's a comfort or a test
I can't decide. I have learned to hold
onto uncertainties like fragile birds,
their wings rustling in my palms, their voices
muffled almost to nothing. What I want
is simple: take it back. Roll back the road
until it is no longer slick. Un-smash
the car she crumbled in. Return my sister.

Forgive me, God. I didn't know I held
so much resentment. As for my sister,
I guess at what I think of her. She tests
my memory. What I've kept is so mashed
up I can't tell what is what. I don't know
anything, not which part of the road
took her, not if the snow had made her blind,
not if she knew or prayed to you or wanted
to and couldn't. One moment she was driving
then she wasn't. If you gave her voice,
reclaimed her an instant past the accident,
I should be grateful. I am not. A bird,

she lifted, now unbroken, from the road.
That's what I should believe? She was a bird?
And that's redemption? All I've ever known
from that day on is chance, an accident
of timing. I want the timers smashed.
And if you could at least have left her voice,
an echo of her face, I could attest
to something like redemption, a driving
reckoning. Instead, I have no sister,
and no reason. No matter how I want
to, Lord, I cannot find a way to hold
her now. I was too young. I am too blind.

And I cannot take wing like all the voiceless
earth-bound creatures that came before me, blind
and dumb, about as agile as a smashed
college kid who drank more than she could hold.
I wait to happen, like an accident.
I've never learned to ask for what I want,
or think that I deserved it. That she knew,
that much she might have taught me, my sister.
Desire was as natural as birds
or breath, a fundamental, innate drive.
Did you have them sing to her, God, on that road?
Did you release them as some sort of test?

As if contentment comes in lack of want,
I lie, pretend there aren't any tests,
pretend I don't wait for an accident
to find me when I'm on that stretch of road,
pretend I've gotten over it. I hold
that part the closest, my injuries driven
against my body, even though it's smashed
and useless, beyond help—it is my bird.
And I lose everything, risk going blind—
And I—I call other women sister.
Decided, I allow myself a voice.
This skim of ice I walk pretends to know.

I'm cold this Sunday, Lord. Beside the drive,
a phoebe looked for water, not knowing
the ground's been dry for years. It won't hold
water anymore, even frozen. My voice
frightened her away. She flew down the road,
found a tree, huddled. Perhaps like sisters,
water comes and goes by accident
in winter—sudden thaw. I cracked the blinds
to watch her search. Each patch of lawn tested
solid, frozen. She pecked and pecked, my bird.
A comfort to have such a simple want,
such ignorance of what is easily smashed.

By afternoon, her tracks were filled. The cistern
was covered, the grayed dirty drifts, the smashed-
up snow bank chunks along the unplowed road.
Everything is new and cold. No one wants
to shovel in this wind. Even my voice
has frozen. Maybe I'll find it in a bird
tomorrow. Tell me what the future holds,
Lord, if not more of this. Another test?
Another thing to lose? The things I know
shrinking into nothing? I might be blind
for all the good it does. I might be driven.
I might be the result of accident.

I have no control. Instead, I'm a bird
drawn to inevitable accident,
towards an almost undetected voice,
a specter. The promise of April drives
me through winter. No matter how I want
to steer, I can't. I careen around blind
corners, hug the precipice, hog the road.
I think I can hear her, whispering no.
I think I'll hear her up until I smash
the barrier and fall. I'm a crash test
dummy, bent from the force of a sister.
My body folds; something inside me holds

the consequences of each hit—the blindness,
the scars, the indecisions. I can hold
it all, convince myself it's what I want
or everything I need. Except a sister.
Tell me more about the flight, the drive,
of how the fledglings feel it's time to test
themselves against the air. Speak up—your voice
is fading still. What happens if they smash?
What omnipotent grace feeds accident?
What purpose do I serve? What do I know?
You take the wheel, then. Flip the world the bird.
You chose the destination. Choose the road.

Adjust the rear-view mirror, the seat. Test
the brakes again before we hit the road.
I never do the things I should. The drive
is covered with droppings, the windshield, birds
and berries littering the snow. Oh, sister.
It's getting worse, it's getting dark. I know
the moon will be speaking soon, and what she wants
is terrifying, God—an accident,
a life. I hope you have the power to hold
the fragments you've created once we smash.
I've closed my eyes. Or else I'm going blind.
If you would only speak I'd track your voice,

I'd learn how to believe again. I'd know—
a shadow and a long-lost wisp of voice
might find me then. Hallelujiah, sister!
If I could make myself become a blind
disciple, if being darkened by birds
brings her near, take my eyes. Or let me smash
myself against the rocks. Give me the drive
to take my body to her. Make me whole
by rending. Leave me broken on the road.
The world will chalk it up to accident.
Devise a wretched unbeliever's test.
I'll pass it if you'll tell me what you want.

But this is what I think, Lord: I smash
myself so I can learn the fullness of want,
the limits of my faith. Empty as a bird,
I mark off narrow boundaries to test
my demons out or take them in, go blind
amidst the awe of heaven's accident.
And even then, I have no hope, no sister.
Senseless, I steer myself into the road's
horizon. Sometimes I think we hear a voice,
a calling. Faith, once slipped, could not take hold
again. You gave up on me, Lord. I know.
You are beyond my reach. Yet I'm still driving.

A hymn, an accident, and unnamed drive,
a chosen blindness the abandoned know—
it is a test. It's all I have to hold,
this flighless, foundling bird, this frozen voice.
The things I love lie broken on the road.
What's left? Some ash. A fragment of a sister.

Laura Hope-Gill

Canada


They call the land of the silver birch.
I call the land of the northern lake
That braces me. I paddle my canoe,
calling out, heart to throat, to loon
with the pearline neck. I don’t deserve
its reply today. I’ve come but not returned.

The land knows when I return.
My body peels itself off like birch
Bark, white paper marked, I deserve
To lose only if my touch the lake
Stills and my call resounds the loon
Into an answer back to my canoe

Which moves only as I deserve.
A girl learns how to work a canoe
Sooner than she learns the loon
Call. She learns the texture of birch.
She learns the surfaces of the lake
And of her body, and how to return

To both of them like she deserves
It, like it’s a good thing not to canoe
Too deeply into oneself, that darker lake
The darker stars shine in, a moon’s return
Back and forth like talk, white as birch
Upon the black, like spots along the loon’s

Back, if I dare to speak of the loon,
Its 250 million years of life. If I deserve
To approach it with words frail as birch
In a language tongued by too many canoes
Lapped against its shore. I can’t voice return

To something that immense afloat on a lake
Vast enough the moon tides it, its own loon
Call silent in its depth. Some summers I return
Hesitantly. I receive from it only what I deserve.
They teach us all to kneel in the canoe,
It's the posture of setting fire to the naked birch.

I never return to Canada without the lake
Within me turning birch white or the loon’s
Silence. I try to deserve the hold of my canoe.

But the red cedar canoe, the life I deserve
Has no loon. It is not frost-bitten by birch
Along the lake-shore. It has no return.

I fear I have left too many places. Birch,
Elm, oak, maple don’t become canoes.
Only what is practiced in the craft deserves
Its greatest use, to elevate and at last return
To its source in silence which the loon’s
Call breaks open like the moon shatters the lake

My paddle strikes. Alone I unloon the lake.
Give me time. I’ll even argue with the return
Of ice that caught under it the dog like a canoe.
Speak about a capsized world, see the birch
Winter keeps leaving. What I don’t deserve
I destroy. It’s simple like acid rain kills loons.

Precambrian Shield does not remember loon.
Or me. It is changeless in a lifetime, unlike the birch,
Gone from a photograph by summer’s return.
The ice that made it has weakened back to lake.
It is disdainful. I feel it scrape my body, my canoe.
Under northern lights, it breathes, deserve, deserve.

Deserve cross bow cut, draw, feather. Deserve
White-tailed deer, deserve marsh, cold lake,
Deserve the light green and silver leaves of birch,
Deserve that call into those bones, that loon
Which cannot bear its own weight on land. Return
What doesn’t deserve to yourself, stay in your canoe.

Some people say it welcomes them. They canoe
Sitting up. On the seat! They switch sides. Loons
Dive deep under them and hide, holding all lake
And breath within them. Only who deserves
To see them, does. Loon birth is only seen by birch,
Hatching, hatching from its own bark. People return

Every year here. They build and they return
To land the land knows they don’t deserve.
I return and my skin breathes in the oil of loon
Feathers. In my dreams I paddle my red canoe
And lie low within, watch a bear lick up a lake.
Canada teaches its girls how to sit silent as birch.

Janet Holmes

Double Sestina on My Education

What I’ve learned: that people who have children
prefer I not compare them to my dog;
that aging means it’s futile to be vain
(so best to meet your lover in the dark);
that all I need to write is lots of paper;
that all I need is time if I’m to write;
the dog is at his happiest in the snow
(provided he can warm up by the fire);
that, more and more, I wear my mother’s face
and hate the mirror; that I was wise to marry
a better cook than I; that I should leave
well enough alone. One turning left

is three successive turnings to the right
(“turn, turn, turn”); if the dog is left
alone at home, he’s trained to use the paper
(so line the bathroom floor before you leave).
The white bread is less good for you than dark
and weirdly . . . fluffy. “Better far to marry
than to burn,” writes Paul, which made a vein
pop out (endearingly) on Mother’s face
before my wedding, as the pastor dogged
us—we’re too secular—about hell-fire
and what religion we might raise our children
(yikes!) in. How could we, still kids, know?

That was my first marriage. I learned: marry
for companionship and don’t get snowed
by prose style—that’s going to the dark
side. I’ve learned: that my not having children
caused me to lose friends; that autumn leaves
are best appreciated through a bonfire;
you can’t always believe what’s in the paper;
your best friend really is your little dog;
if you must pass, at least pass on the left;
the virtues claimed for products for your face
are optimistic, if not lies downright;
since one must die, one should not live in vain.

I keep on learning there’s no true, sure-fire
way to get paid what you’re worth (in vain
I update my c.v.). I learned: don’t leave
the job you’re fed-up with unless the right
position comes along; that one’s grandchildren
(even step-) are fun to know; I’ve faced
the fact that I can’t sing; that after dark
I really shouldn’t drive; I paint my left
hand’s nails fine but wreck the right’s. In snow
storms, make a path and potty for the dog
but leave the sidewalks ‘til it’s over; “merry
gentlemen” are mostly drunks; paper

covers rock and rock breaks (let’s face
it) scissors; scissors slice a swath through paper:
these methods ought not just be used by children,
I’ve learned, because they work. The real Mary
Poppins (in the books) was scary. (“Write
it! Like disaster.”) And love is a dog
from hell, sometimes. And you shouldn’t leave
your chewed gum on the bedpost. Making snow
angels makes the snowstorm worth it. “Vain
gaiety, vain battle” . . . something’s left
from all that memorizing . . . “because a fire
was in my head” . . . “and raging in the dark.”

I’ve learned that you can teach an old dog
to comfort cancer patients in their darkened
rooms; that you must go through every rite
of passage; that your irons in the fire
keep you solvent if you didn’t marry
your wealthy suitor; that being the oldest left
of your bloodline makes you wish for children
(for a moment), though you think it’s vain
to think of pedigrees of humans. Paper
snowflakes made by children surpass snow,
because they carry something. In a phase
of rough creative ferment, take a leave.

You’ll know you’re getting somewhere when they’re left
speechless when they’ve read it. Don’t believe
the negative, but question it, and marry
your emotions to your intellect. Face
the music; hold your own feet to the fire;
learn what all the other poets know,
and more; write what no one else can write.
What I’ve learned: some poets want to paper
rejections on their walls—such a dark
view of this whole enterprise! Be vain:
reject rejection; don’t let those vibes dog
your next . . . Oh, God, enough. You guys aren’t children,

you’ve been around the block and won’t be snowed
by commonplaces. Now the mood has chilled! Wring
out my old clichés, and I’ll go fire
the muse who has me sniffing like a dog
around the same old subjects. Let me face
my education in another vein.
I had no mentors, but went on my merry
way through school alone and in the dark
(too shy to ask for help); I had to leave
because the funds ran out. I joined the paper
as a typesetter. When the editor left
I got the job: the time & place were right.



In grad school I was told that I was vain
to think my work was publishable, and right
before I finished, had to clamber—face
to face with a professor who had left
me no choice but running—like a dog
out a ground floor window. (In the paper
some years later, I learned he had been fired
for raping students elsewhere. He would leave
most girls alone but seek out “damaged children”
he thought would not resist.) In the dark
I took off my high heels, jumped in the snow,
then asked him for my shoes back. He’d marry

yet another student. Next: the paper
I wrote for up and folded. Asked to marry
(twice) I stayed divorced and got two dogs.
Moved to Minnesota, where the snow
on moving day fell ‘til the car I’d left
at U-Haul when I took their truck that dark
morning disappeared in drifts. To face
a life alone, I bought a house. Children,
family, seemed something I’d no right
to dream about. My education: leave
it be. I worked a corporate job in vain.
Made plans in vain. No way to light a fire

under something meant to curse the dark!
Guess what: I didn’t have to light the fire.
It gets lit. Every bit of wisdom left
to me says learning teaches you the vane
is pointing forward. So-called genius knows
it’s what you do with what you got that leaves
them thinking Yes!, instead of “That old dog
needs newer tricks.” One day I found the right
lover, partner, best friend, man to marry.
It didn’t matter that there’d be no children;
there’d be grandkids. There’d be love. (And paper-
training puppies!) We married in the face

of those who wished us ill, who gave us leave
to make “a late mistake,” and could not face
our happiness. My education’s no
transcript printed on official paper.
It’s no advanced degree; I’m not that vain.
It never did encompass having children
or making lots of money. It was left
to me to do what I do well; to marry
my dear man; to be a small defier
of conformity; to find the right
poets to bring out an anti-dark
literary moment. Here’s a dog

we raised. No children, just a dog.
In vain we fought to keep the night sky dark.
I now recycle paper and I write
on snow-white screens in pixels. I see fire
in the eyes and face of him I married.
I’m not about to leave. I haven’t left.

Wendy Webb

NARCISSUS OF GRASMERE (twin sestina)

I cannot think of anything to write
and soon I will be getting in a state
of such undress that I won't dare go out,
until I've done my knitting - made it all -
to this fine pattern's balance and design.
A straitjacket at this time of night? Oh, no!

And now I've got a headache, for I know
that now I cannot sleep until I write
an absolute phantasmical design,
to Goth me to the graveyard in a state.
So when I go to bed, the creaking hall
will keep me tossing, turning all albout

my bed, a couch potato, or a lout,
as duvet drifts - to fall - like freezing snow.
This is my Scrooge in chains: I will see all
before brain cells can rest and know all's right
with the whole world and with my mental state.
As if a poet brain's a flawed design,

to aim for full perfection of design,
while partners flick the switch and turn lights out
before the need to rage into this state.
They simply need to rest and so say, No.
What is that demon, or that deadly sprite?
I think he will creak later in the hall.

No modern poet needs to write it all,
for every wit or poem or design
has been recorded in its nacred rite
beneath a sun or moon to open out;
until the scallop shell's revealed. We know
the purest Botticelli's virgin state.

I fear to palindrome this pure estate;
to tart The Birth of Venus for them all.
Perhaps, after a sleep, I will then know
the life she lived? What painter could design
his blissful Venus: middle-aged and stout.
She should die young, to paint perfection's rite.

I know that I will sleep in blissful state,
so right will dream the ending of it all.
For this design will fold - like sheep - about...


My brain's resigned to counting them all out,
though morning's bright, befuddled, held in thrall
to snowed up sleep and headache's mean estate.

Fair Venus dreamed me large through ageing's right,
until a Botticelli laughed it out:
how his sweet darling wandered, by design,
to search the wide earth; find her Eros, know
her Psyche loved by man - not one, but all -
until her lovely body's pregnant state

fled, like her infant Joy, to heaven's estate.
Then all her nacred shell, spread wide. We know
that teenage brides will live to scream and shout,
face credit crunch, inflation, spreading right
to loss of Paradise (by male design);
for Milton saw the core of Eve's fast fall

when she gazed in the stream and saw it all:
the beauty of the female form, so right.
And then she gazed on Adam. Now we know
just Michelangelo could contemplate
such beauty in the male (not yet grown stout).
So Venus saw her feminine design

and wandered all of earth to redesign
the jar or potion: keeping her estate
forever fair and worth true love by right;
until she came to England's garden. All
the clouds and mountains moved, like falling snow
in her reflected beauty; all about.

Then Wordsworth stamped her image, wore her out
with tourist sites she hoped would never spoil.
She sat beside that pool (its breezeless state):
and gazed upon the scallop shell's design.
The splashing seagull barely paused her rite
to gaze and gaze forever and we know

her breasts and curves and hills and dells; yet no
Narcissus will look far for male design,
when she can play with flowers, birds and all
that ageless female beauty all around.
So Venus aged into the sweetest state
and lived forever in men's eyes - by right.

Dominque Lowell

He was an asshole.
With the angry thrashing fists of all my years
I threw myself in his wake and offered
him anything, all of it, whatever he might desire.
I dangled myself there like a scarf waiting
to adorn him

and his train wreck. Him
telling me "you're either an asshole
or a prick", me trying to pick one while waiting,
straining for footsteps as the stairs groaned the years
of quiet servitude they humbly gave. He fed on desire.
His brilliant audacity the communion he offered.

The sublime he called it. Offered
in the curve of a spoon. Him
first. Always. The perfect mix for you my hearts desire.
Tapping the needle, tap tap tap. Fuck you asshole
I'm buying my own damn needle. My own years
of breathless seamless waiting.

It wasn't news I was or wasn't waiting
for, that without a how or why offered
he had been dead now for years.
Dead in jail, no mourning of him,
coroners report said "undetermined causes", just another asshole
in L.A. County. Was it sublime? Your hearts desire?

Was it sublime? The desire
innate in the rage that lay waiting
for just such an over-privileged asshole.
A Hollywood boy who bit every hand ever offered
to him. Hands that were tired of bailing him
out year after year.

His audacity was brilliant. But after a few years
it stopped being cute. He knew that. He knew desire
must always leave you dangling. No one needed to tell him
that. He lived deep in the waiting.
This was what he settled for and all he offered.
Prick or asshole.

too many and too few the years of waiting
the raging desire offered
him just another asshole

Scott Beal

Happy Birthday, Who Died?


Problems you don't want solved
but pose anyway: why make the bed
trim and smooth as a boiled egg
each morning to shell and crumple it that night?
Deep down are we decent? Wanna bet?
Who died and made you the dad?

One prefers to think one's a dad
without a death, that though we've solved
few riddles it's a fair bet
you can fall unarmed into bed,
do your best to make someone's night
and voila! an egg

becomes more than an egg.
Though you're certain your dad
never gave your mom a night
so sullied, that they alone solved
the no-muss no-fuss miracle of life with clean bed
and hands—and though you can bet

your ass that no punk's penis will abet
your daughter someday to whip her egg
into a grandwhelp – the mangling of a bed
is violence enough for every other dad-
to-be. You're absolved.
Conscience, call it a night

but just don't call it that night
when your squeeze was on leave and you bet
you could get away with what'd hurt her most—you solved
the odds and broke the eggs
and fixed an omelet not much like what your dad
would carry at times to your mother's bed,

then you cleaned the mess and freshened the bed
where you'd meet your returned love with a chaste g'night.
Who died and made me the dad
is that bad-lunged lummox I was, who'd bet
his life on one spin, and the next would cradle those stakes like eggs.
That man was a problem I solved

and buried far from our conjugal bed. (Wanna bet?)
He had a bad night. He was a bad egg.
And when the missus said I was a dad, he dissolved—

on this point my conscience and I stand resolved
despite recurrent boil and slither that breed
doubt. I'll find the sort of plot he'd hatch
unfolding over the course of my morning,
some fib compounding into a knot I dread
to see unraveled. I'm an amnesiac Green Beret

of familial subterfuge—where'd I learn this cabaret
of feints? I'm a compound that can't be resolved
into Jekyll and Hyde, Westley and the Dread
Pirate Roberts. A new breed
of binary star, one gravity eating another. Ha! Good morning,
kids! Happy New Year! Time for us to hatch

into those better selves we promised. To pry the hatch
and extract the old ghouls from our domes. A fat raspberry
to Mr. Outgoing President. Bring on the pulse of morning
to drum out this pulse of maneuvering. Resolved:
if you want sea monkeys I will breed
sea monkeys. If you have dared

to cross my orders you won't have to dread
a word-whip cracked to hatch
the back of your mind with welts. I'll breed
all the sea monkeys you could want, let you bury
me in sea monkeys. Resolved:
I'll pack fruit and cookies in your lunch each morning,

keep my slate and hangover to myself each morning,
throw you love more open than dads have often dared.
Is this me talking, or that liar I resolved
out of the picture? Is he my escape hatch?
Do resolutions give us something to betray
besides each other? If this year rolls out a new breed

of lie detectors we'll be ready with a new breed
of lies. The sleepless, bloody morning
I heard the first bray
of my daughter, what seized me was more than dread
or joy. I'd hatch
to find my yolk had resolved

into no recognizable breed, and if I dared
to jump out of that morning (down the hatch!)
there'd be no choice who to save or bury, whatever I resolved.

Meg Harris

Freaking Love and Other Oddities
(a double sestina)

Summer barely gave way to fall the year
snows filled up the Truckee mountain pass
and was the sun’s first day in Sagittarius,
in San Carlos Mexico, one thousand miles away,
That the stars bode well the birth of tiny Lucia Zarate
No bigger than a mouse was she, yet live she might.

Elephant ballerinas and ripped men of great might
The Big Top swept her up in her twelfth year,
the greatest star of small dimensions, dona Lucia Zarate
The little girl missed her home less as time did pass
She dined with carnies and wiled her nights away
with freaks born under the sign of Sagittarius.

But JoJo the dog faced boy was not a Sagittarius,
In this he differed from the tiny General Mite
This and he stole the fair puppet girl’s heart away
still Barnum planned a miniature wedding in a year
yet imaginary engagements could never pass
for the likes of love between JoJo and Lucia Zarate

So step up for the nuptials of the Pygmy Lucia Zarate
general admission to bans of these Sagittarians.
The wedding invitation is your circus pass
Have some cake, catch bouquet or garter, any guest might
For Barnum’s take in smalls is big this year
Until the night Lucia and Jojo run away

And on the night Lucia and Jojo ran away
The dog faced boy pledges his heart to Lucia Zarate
They make a pact. They’ll marry in a year.
Back at the big top the freaks and Sagittarians
keep company with the jilted General Mite
And promised him his heartbreak soon would Pass

Touring alone, dona Lucia traveled the Truckee Mountain pass
Locals and miners dug for days to clear the avalanche away
Many souls saved by merciful God in his wisdom and in his might
The engine steamed to life, it left without the lifeless Lucia Zarate
and whistled away under the Harvest Moon in Sagittarius
Afterward Jojo the dog face boy left the side show for a year.

For freaks and oddities through this world will pass
Exhibited but still unseen, as one such as Lucia Zarate might,
Born in the year of the Cock or in the sign of Sagittarius.

Jojo (the-dog-faced-boy) was born on the cusp of Aquarius,
he lived his life in places where it was cool to be a freak:
the circus, San Francisco, and shimmering New York City.
Jojo played the fiddle and raised homing birds,
he spoke Russian and several other languages.
and made his living as an oddity but knew better than most

That the oddest ones he knew were more ordinary than most
Which made sense to him in this strange age of Aquarius
And in a world where difference sometimes transcended language
Jojo thought of his grandfather’s love for the puppet-girl freak
And so after Grandpa Jojo and Lucia, he named two of his birds
And launched them with his secret desire into the dawn of the city.

The two birds carried Jojo’s intention to the city
As if wings bore magic and imparted enchantment most
Upon the slanted eaves of loving possibilities lit the birds
Above the statue of the water bearing granite Aquarius,
In time Jojo and his intended would recall this day as a freak
that love could be spoken in such unspoken languages.

For who and how we love is the private language
of country birds or those from New York City,
Jojo knows that who he’s with does not make him a freak
And to know such love makes him more fortunate than most
Yet even in the modern age of open-minded Aquarius
There will be those who fear the difference of such birds.

The hearts of those in love tremble like the hearts of birds
As they desperately search for an expressive language,
For love can hide the truth or bear it like an Aquarius
O especially when the Scorpion Moon hangs over the city,
And the one you cannot have is the one you want the most,
Such insanity could make an ordinary man freak.

Jojo (the-dog-faced-boy) to some he was a freak,
He built his nest with extraordinary and colorful birds,
His blood was red and heart was as true as most
And he pledged both in several languages,
Gave up his home and fled the bustling city
to be with his one true love in this age of Aquarius.

Some wonder at the freaky happenstance of love spoken in different languages./Or how it is that homing birds find their way back to the city, when clear returns are lost to most,/perhaps their wings recall a roost upon the granite statue of the water-bearer Aquarius.

Steve Williams

A Hunger

Mahatma Mohandas Ghandi
I am the mother flute, this bamboo tube
of a body, these music holes. But crowds swallow
the melody and I am cold. Dear girl, ah, your face,
Come to sleep with your mother, still your cough
in our naked heat. I shuck my lust, untie
my day, crawl up to the skin of God, unbroken.

Bobby Sands I
We are the undead ghosts, the martyred ice of Belfast.
We are a mattress of maggots under a body of guards.
We are bloated flies pierced by the bayonets of swallows.
We are snow soft through iron bars onto shit-smeared feet.
We are British thumbs peering up our own anus.
We are ragged blankets made of bruised blood.

Thomas Ashe
It is the fifth day. My leg is broken
as guards walk me to the doctor. Tubes
are crammed through my nose. I am tied
on a gurney, stare up. The choice is swallow
in order to breathe or die. I inhale liquid, cough
and spit British bile on plump eyes and faces.

Bobby Sands II
We are British thumbs made of bruised blood.
We are soft snow, the martyred ice of Belfast.
We are ragged blankets peering up our own anus.
We are a mattress of maggots under a body of guards.
We are undead ghosts through iron bars onto shit-smeared feet.
We are bloated flies skewered by the bayonets of swallows.

Lucy Burns
Occoquan guards rage against my anorexic face.
Dora appears dead. Her head is broken
against an iron bed. Alice shakes through gasping coughs,
dies of a heart attack. My hands chained high to iron tubes,
I ask where is mother? I hack and swallow
each choke, twist, and kick ‘till dawn when we’re untied.

B. Sands III
Are we a mattress of maggots skewered by the starvation of swallows?
Are we soft snow through iron bars of bruised blood?
Are we ragged blankets over shit-smeared feet?
Are we the British thumbs, the martyred ice of Belfast?
Are we bloated flies under a body of guards?
Are we undead ghosts peering up our own anus?

Terrence MacSwiney
Young Ho Chi Minh packs scraps for the poor, unties
his apron, reads the London Times. His face
tightens as he shudders, sips his tea, swallows
revolution, “nations of these men will stay unbroken.”
He crushes the rolled paper like frosting tubes,
like consumption chokes the next hungry mother’s cough.

Sands IV
We are British thumbs skewering our own anus.
We are undead ghosts, the starvation of swallows.
We are a mattress of maggots eating a body of guards.
We are ragged blankets woven of bruised blood.
We are bloated flies, the martyred ice of Belfast.
We are snow soft through iron bars onto shit-smeared feet.

Akbar Ganji
Fatwas are locusts in my mouth. I can’t cough
them out fast enough. They swarm, tie
my tongue to my teeth. Crude seeps from tubes
of their severed legs. Saw-tooth tracks on my face
scratch my eyelids shut, but I still see, pluck them, break
them, bleed them, yet I cannot find a swallow.

B.S. V
We are snow soft through iron bones into shit feet.
Are we British thumbs fucking our own anus?
We are a mattress of maggots, the martyred ice of Belfast.
We are bloated flies caught by the barbed hooks of swallows.
Are we blankets of Gaelic speaking of bruised blood?
We are the undead wives eating a body of guards.

Mrs. Burns
Lucy your flitting about like a scarlet swallow
has ended. You must submit to your father, cough
up your outrage and spit into the broken
weeds of childhood. Here are your eggs, here your uterus, tied
to their vanity. You must eat, be pregnant, don’t face
your husband. Here are your glittering tubes.

VI
We are body guards.
We are iron feet.
We are Gaelic blood.
We are up our anus.
We are barbed swallows.
We are undead Belfast.


Dr. D.
The counselor breaks through her patter, “no, it’s easy to swallow
your own death. No I.V. tubes, food, drink or salt.” She coughs.
“Wait seven days, tie up your life – Ketones will eat at your face.”

Hunger in Belfast is two feet
of charcoal snow. Six guards, one anus,
a lit cigarette swallowed. Peace blood.

Melissa Guillet

Book of Life

The street player sounds sweet notes,
Wisdom in the saxophone’s spine
While he is passed by fools
Who toss coins in the instrument’s cover.

They do not see his face;
His uncut hair is sacred.
He leans resolutely over the cliff
Of the sidewalk, venturing

Into DeChirico’ empty
Streets, shadows looming off-page
As a reminder of all that is binding:
Bills, Jobs, Family, Career. Red

Handed, they steal glimpses of the sacred,
Guiltily paying the pauper paper notes
For what they need but dare not face:
Freedom from the crook in their spines,

Daydreaming of an undercover
Life like Walter Mitty fools.
The street player is misread,
Pitied by lemmings racing the cliff,

Diving into 9 to 5 binding,
Numb and longing for adventure,
Filling page after page after page
In their planner and feeling empty.

Some think the musician the fool
For staying in the rain, living sacredly,
Each day unexpected discoveries
Guided by chance like notes

Caught in the wind’s spine,
In a thousand raindrop faces.
His pockets are empty,
Unprepared but unafraid of unread

Passages flipping by like pages,
Too much ahead to mind the cliff,
The line in the sand daring to venture
Past all doubt and caution that binds.

He laughs in the face
Of dangerous fools
Who will split his spine
Looking for relics or sacred

Souvenirs, Cliff notes
In which to take cover.
He will risk being bound,
Being hungry, being empty.

Distant hooves sound new ventures,
Warning waiting to be read.
His ear to the edge of the cliff,
He listens for the Page

While they run for cover,
Make masks of their faces,
Waiting for ransom notes.
He is his own fool,

Heeding the counsel of sacred
Clouds and crosswalk spines,
And the message of the Page
of Cups, getting out of binds

Through intuition, cliff
Hanging, skydiving in empty
Air on winged shoes, reading
Mercury’s sun-crossed venture.

The picket fence spines
Are merely a wall to cover
All that they massacred
To mask their true faces,

To not seem the fool
While they check cheat notes.
They miss the butterfly adventure:
No set course, just one winged page

After another, lived and read
In a simultaneous bind
Until the book is empty,
And buried is the cliff.

Don’t be fooled by the cover; bend back the binding,
Note the open spine, read the pages, discover
The surface of words. Sacred and empty, venture off the cliff.

Zachary Kluckman

For a Cup Full of Color

The palms of his hands are negatives,
a rough cut circle of pale flesh fingering color.
His hands are used to a rough wash,
scrubbed clean with oatmeal and rain,
long fingers dried individually on stained towel.
Old razor soaking in a chipped cup.

His reflection broods darkly in a cup,
despite his electric smile, now positive then negative.
He leaves his shadow on the towel
when he dries his face, a smudge of color
that soaks into the cloth like rain.
The tent is dark and smells of wash.

Outside, the elephants, in need of wash
are handled with leather gloves by a man whose cup,
before he’s done, will fill with rain.
The sky is dark, lit with lightning, negative.
Exposed clouds gamble with color,
risk blue hints like static on dry towel.

Alone in thought, one hand on towel,
his thoughts breed storms, the way streets will wash
with dirt and clay, scarlet muddy color.
Ozone, crisp and bitter as coffee in his cup.
C’mon old man, no use being negative,
after all, we can really use the rain.

He listens to dry canvas trapping rain.
Head back on thick, restful arm and pillow towel.
A photo burns in his wallet, negative
exposure of a woman and baby in the wash,
a brand new bar of soap in a chipped cup.
He remembers her eyes, can’t recall the color.

He wonders if thunder has any color.
Outside, elephants and handler curse the rain.
His thumbs don’t fit the handle of the cup.
The stubble drying on his towel
a reminder of how mama’s tears would wash
her eyes colorless and negative.

For the promise of a cup full of color
to destroy the negative, paint between the rain,
he wears greasepaint, and sometimes forgets to wash.

Peter Richards

Pictures at an Exhibition of the Apocalypse

#1 The Cover to the Guidebook

Love loses credit in the time of war.
No one jokes about the heart’s disease.
Victims of violence, isolated, starved
of love, need recompense, or so they say
and all the discontented horses ride
out together, getting in at the death.

A minute’s silence is the song of death.
There’s never any prize for winning war.
Antagonists, are taken for a ride
by their own credulousness, the disease
of buying what the rumourmongers say
until emaciated consciences are starved

like the lands they left behind are starved
in the infertile country that is death.
The voice of aftermath has nothing to say.
The weak and stateless cannot go to war.
Movers and shakers fear, like a disease,
angry hikers hoping for a ride.

It’s irritating, begging for a ride
and being shunned, made angry, starved
of affection, avoided as though disease
grew out of your life and lonesome death.
Another drafted bum sent off to war,
beats paying you welfare, wouldn’t you say?

Whoever soldiers kill, they have no say.
They’re there to do it, not just for the ride.
History may later call it war
or not. They’re ignorant and wise; starved
of society but close to death,
protected practically from disease

because a healthy army makes disease
work for it. When you hear the order, say
Yes Sir! then go out and deliver death.
Be right behind them when the horsemen ride,
heed no bleatings from the huddled, starved
poor. Obey your orders, be a dog of war.

Clouds of diseased illusion ride
where people say they are not starved
in choice of death, or spoils of war.


#2 The Cubist Impression

A triangular vision, the angel of death
all lit up by the sepia searchlights that ride
on the lines of remembering what neurons say
when the mystical objects all fade from our starved
recollection, looks on as the doors of disease
open wide on the pestilent corpses of war.

In the green sylvan valley a theatre of war
has grown over and over as life springs from death
and as sympathy’s symphonic choir of disease
brings cadavers to mulch where the scavengers ride
their grim luck on the rails running over the starved
fields of plenty to come but with nothing to say

because now empty pockets hear loosened tongues say
‘I can move’ with the same voice that took them to war.
The cathedrals are empty, the sad spirits starved
of belief in the purpose of life before death.
In the fairground of evening the carouselles ride
by default, making life a surviving disease.

In the palour of morning a wave of disease
by the cold light of evidence no one will say
they have witnessed, envelopes the ones who would ride
the unrideable storm of denial of war.
It is not for the living to know so much death.
A bare plate of porcelain howls out, empty and starved.

Flat lines scream on the bare fields of yesterday, starved
of their husbandry – chalices poisoning even disease
until nothing’s more quiet, no shadow is darker than death.
When the songs that they sing and the things that they say
turn to action, the sands and the seas are at war
and the mythical horsemen don’t choose, they just ride.

A descending staircase in the nude fall of pride.
Deux personnes et un chien devant crackling skin carved
out of driftwood. Sunbeams inaugurate more.
On a seascape of sail shapes a kite flies at ease.
The white horses are spindrifters not making hay
after war, after pestilence, famine and death.

Broken images ride, health is prey to disease.
If we can’t feed the starved, we can hear what they say
when there’s love after war, when there’s life before death.

David Cheezem

An Essay on Time

1
Having done nothing, I have done nothing wrong,
but how is it that I carry judgment
inside, that I define my life as moments
staring at lichen, in summer, on a rock
imagining the silent rhythm of wet
and dry-- fungus holds moisture, algae holds place?

Taste is a unit of time. This poem will fail
unless I find the right word for lichen time.
Coconut chai swirls easily across my tongue,
a quiet spike of flavor, then the lingering
glow. Coconut and cinnamon balanced
until the moment dies, becomes aftertaste.

2
Adding sugar to corn flakes wasn’t wrong
in a moral sense, but was it sound judgment?
And the accumulation of those moments,
that slow, sugary sedimentary rock
of choices made, settled in the milk’s wet
wave over the tongue – settled as if a place?

I tell you that stone is fleeting, just as taste
is fleeting. There is no time for failure;
there is only time. There is only balance,
one moment that springs into the present time,
and the aftertaste of sipped beer lingering,
or tea, or chocolate: time defined on the tongue.

3
If you speak slowly, hold your tongue for moments
on the roof of your mouth, shape the ‘L’ of “place”
the word loses meaning. How does this simple stone-
like feeling compare to taste? Would it be wrong
to say time dissolves from meaning? From judgment?
The way lichen time is dry time, then wet?

Lichen can taste the sky, licking as with tongue,
nutrients in the atmosphere. This slow taste,
this patient satisfied hunger, lingering
years, through dry sleep, wet awake, cannot fail.
Failure is of a moment. With slow time
choices, if you have them, fall into balance.

4
Have I lost my balance, suspended in wet
time, like nutrients dissolved, watery moments-
a-numerical time? Is this where judgment
hides? Does judgment need drought to find place?
Where in solution is there right and wrong?
Is dry time moral time, numbered in sand and rock?

One moment dry, one wet, lichen time balanced:
Without dry: no time; without wet: no time. Tongue,
like lichen, waits. Taste is a unit of time.
Without one the sliver just before taste –
Sliver of what? Here is where the poem fails.
And yet I feel some confidence lingering.

5
What waits? What holds? What stands stable? The rock
only lingers. The rock dissolves in the slow wet
withering of rain, snow, wind. Nothing is wrong
in lichen time. “Wrong” is too fast for moments
lasting uncountable years, held in place.
No. Not “held.” Nothing holds in time sans judgment.

Radiation in the atmosphere lingers,
accumulates in lichen, tears the balance,
kills one cycle. What lingers is failure.
There: Do you sense it? Lingering on the tongue?
In the air? On the rock? History, a taste
of what is numbered, of what is dry, of time.

6
And of what is wet? How could taste measure time
without both? First, dry. Then, taste. Then the lingering
moisture, the memory dissolving in taste,
cinnamon, sugar, cardamom, in balance –
waves washing over an eager, speechless tongue,
then falling away. Alleviation fails.

The word is “resignation” – for lichen time.
This is what we learn. This is what lingers.
This is the time that exists the moment taste
dries from the tongue, the time of long, slow balance.
The lichen, dry, dormant, waits, just as the tongue
turns from taste to speech. But speech, not time, can fail.

7
This place, rock. This judgment
where words like “wrong” fail, linger
like taste balanced in time,

wet, dry on the tongue
between moments, stalled: resignation tongue.

Joan Mazza

Double Sestina for Disputes

1.
I keep catching myself in mental arguments.
I replay old conversations, and speak
the truths I must have been afraid to say
back then. Why was it so hard to say no
when my parents often said no to me? Boundaries
were not so foreign. My sister stood up

to show me the line she drew across our bedroom, right up
until she married and moved out. Our fights
were over whose turn it was to dust. Boundaries
marked our closet space. Only later did she speak
sharply to me. When I objected, she checked out. No
doubt, she meant to keep me from having my say.

In my head, I shout, Don’t tell me what I can say
or to whom to say it. Long ago, I was fed up
with being the little sister. Now I can say no
to her or anyone. My imaginary arguments
shift. Some days, I argue with my dead husband, speak
to anyone who mocked me, and set my boundaries:

“I won’t take care of your dogs. Ever hear of boundaries,
Dr. Bob? I was your patient. What you say
to me is out of line.” How easy now to speak
these words. Twenty years too late. He shut me up
inside his rules and made the argument
that my therapy was private. I was to talk to no

one about its content or his directives. No
reputable therapist would say that or violate boundaries
as he did, like borrowing money. I had no argument
to counter his. Every time I protested, he said
I was neurotic, confused, out of touch. “Up
yours!” is what I’d like to say. “I’m speaking

to your other patients! I’m speaking
the whole truth. You can’t stop me. I know
how far you— no we— drifted. You can’t shut me up,
or tell me secrets as a way to keep me bound
to you. That’s mind control!” I want to say,
“Hear me now, I’m done with this argument.”

These arguments go on inside my head.
Speak up! Say NO! But that means I might
have to be alone with my boundaries.

2.
And now I wonder why I haven’t fought
back when in relationships with men who speak
to me with scorn. It’s not as if I had no way
out. Like my father, one man said, “No
talking. You’re breathing too loud,”— boundaries
absurd! He sat on my couch. I looked up,

astonished, felt six-years-old. He stood up
and yelled, “I have contempt for you!” That fight
was nearly over. I asked for my house keys, a boundary
to feel safe. Why did I allow him to speak
to me for months with such disapproval? I knew
he was angry, but never expected him to say,

“You’re an old lady!” What I really want to say
is, I’m angry with myself. I feel like I’m up
against my whole history, a family legacy. No
amount of therapy or insight stops the fights
inside my head. I replay the times I didn’t speak
my truth, or early on, set the proper boundaries.

Tell me, what words did I have to set boundaries
with my husband? I was twenty. When I heard him say
he was joining the Ku Klux Klan, I couldn’t speak.
This is the man I married? I kept my sunny side up,
laughed it off, was afraid to get into a fight
about race. He’d never see me as an equal. I had no

words to object. How could I have not known
him after our long engagement? I felt bound
once we’d been intimate and bought the argument
that men want virgins. It was 1968. Who can say
what choices were open to me? I was up
against brainwashing, starting with, “Do not speak

unless you’re spoken to.” I didn’t have words to speak
until I read The Feminine Mystique. I didn’t even know
I was oppressed when my husband wanted me dressed up
for him alone and then he wouldn’t shower. His boundaries
circumscribed mine and I could say
nothing. No one ever heard our arguments.

After all these mental arguments, I’m grown up.
I speak for myself, and I can say,
NO. I set my boundaries here.

Sally Evans

The Feast in the Barn

a) Past and Future

The farm welcomes us with sheepdogs.
We tumble out on the driveway
into the stable where candles
wait to be lit. Our host reaches
into his reservoir of legend
but his mind is on his woodland,

his newly laid-out woodland
over the hills where sheepdogs
follow, new oaks for a legend
of druids' groves, on the driveway
Scots pines for the reaches.
He'll plant them like small green candles.

Under the awaiting candles
his eyes see future woodland
wave on the hill. He reaches
out for his glass. The sheepdogs
mill outside in the driveway
as though they could scent the legend.

On his barn walls, in the legend
pictured under the candles,
the traveller reaches the driveway
from his trail in the ancient woodlands,
sure at his heels his sheepdogs,
safe in the farm he reaches,

and the feasting company reaches
its way into lasting legend
in the secret language of sheepdogs,
the light shed by the candles,
the past and future woodland.
Our host stands in the driveway.

He turns at the point in the driveway
where it runs uphill and reaches
the fence dividing the woodland
and all that it knows of legend
from the homestead of fires and candles
and ubiquitous sheepdogs.

Woodland surrounds the driveway.
Sheepdogs sleep in the reaches
of legend as he lights the candles.

b) Present

Inside the barn before supper
there was a gathering of ladies
of whom I was one. The kitchen
was the next room. Counting glasses
and plates, someone was singing.
We'll need half a bag of turnips,

potatoes, parsley, and for the turnips
butter and pepper. Then the supper
will run itself, almost. Singing
'Don't forget the haggis, ladies,'
our host brings in a box of glasses.
Many people throng the kitchen,

not all cooks. In the kitchen
pans of vegetables and turnips
boil. We spread cutlery and glasses
and cloths across the trestles. Supper
will be on time. Trust these ladies!
On the stove the kettle's singing.

Now the music, speech and singing
starts, and emptied from the kitchen,
partners, wives, dressed-up ladies
enjoy. Soon the only turnips
are the jokes told after supper.
Ha! The speaker's lost his glasses.

Water or whisky splashed in glasses
under the candles, the true singing
and music complements the supper.
Quick hands clear the kitchen.
Sheepdogs are fed, remaining turnips
left for the sheep. Well done, ladies!

Gents smoke in the driveway, ladies
peek into their looking glasses.
Trifle now replaces turnips.
Coffee. Songs and legend, singing
loud in stable, barn and kitchen.
In the woodlands, after supper

tired of turnips, feisty ladies,
slaves of supper, raise their glasses,
singing - this is not the kitchen!

Rickey Laurentiis

Prayers

We are forced to consider this tension between God and nature and are thus confronted with the nature of God because He is man’s most intense creation and it is not in the sight of nature that the homosexual is condemned, but in the sight of God.

– James Baldwin, Preservation of Innocence.

I. dear Lord (in a dream)

Could it have gone another way? I could
have kept the jumping tick inside myself
or else I could have called Your name. Oh lord,
the parish would have said had they the breath.
Misuses of the powers of sex—and love:
a verdict, quick and as steadfast as death.

Is this a dream? Heavy and black as death,
tar black like the boy that caught me and could
not leave. I told myself that it was love
kicking like a hungry babe. And I was self-
less. Yes, I fed it. Though I had no breath,
no Adam’s kiss from the lips of you, Lord.

Why me? Why can’t your grace kiss me? Lord,
I walk here at the edge of life and death,
my bones the color of my dripping breath,
and think you’re not a god at all. I could
have made you up—out of fear—for myself.
I could have made you just to make me love.

And yet it’s love—or it’s this breed of love
to kill, that kills. It kills even you, Lord.
Can’t you see it sweeping like a self-
ish cancer, a love invasive as death?
A saint would have stopped it, huh? Could
have clipped the tick and sipped your breath.

But I kept it. Tick. His and my boy breath,
his and my boy tongue, his and my boy love.
Rolling in, out, stiff as poplar, wet: we could
have been two storms meeting. Oh lord,
we could’ve been a body nearing death.
Who would’ve stopped? Who would’ve told himself

to starve that second mouth inside? What self
would fight against such moving calm of breath
but that damn saint—who welcomes death
of any use he cannot claim: of any love?
Even your name: King of Kings, Lord of Lords.
Should he use it to murder if he could?

Still, the parish and myself rejoice in love.
They, your breath of life. Mine, against you, Lord.
So where’s death? Let him kiss me cold.

II. dear Sir (in a breeze)

I do not know why you pick death
when first there’s love.
Why flex your teeth, your breath
for Them. I am lord
and you—yourself.
I would not change that, even if I could.

I could
accept your choice of death
and keep you like a shadow to yourself.
I could believe, like Them, like Them, your Love
is queer—is not mine, your lord’s
but can’t: I know you want my breath.

You are breath.
Who could
deny it? Not a fine lord,
not yet my brother Death,
who belly-crawled so long ago for want of love—
something like yourself.

Told him: Aren’t you the complete lover, self-
less like your brothers, big-breathed
and flirting like love?
Or could
you trust this if your brothers’ death
followed your Lord’s?

And I tell you: I’m still your Lord
and you—yourself.
We share, against the hands of death,
a sort of kissing breath—
Lke Judas and Jesus, if I could
I’d rewrite that drama out of love

I would. Love
outside the chilly gates, outside a “Lord”
(for names are useless clothes anyway). Could
you pick love despite Them: the self-
realization of breath.
Then, pray death.

Before it’s love: yawning like a mouth, self-
contained, lording like only a breath
of life could. Then, pray death.