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.