When I encounter a word I don’t know I check the books and screens. Even after that, there remain words I cannot find the meaning of. Some are multisyllabic thefts from languages not mine. Some might be mis-spellings or typos that look correct until not. Some congregate in sentences but so many just sit there refusing to surrender meaning. And then there are the words I always thought I knew: tree, rain, stone, island, myself. Michael Penny was born in Australia and now lives on an island near Vancouver, BC. He pursues his interest in … Continue reading Ignorance by Michael Penny→
…………………………for John Kander Music plays in my head, and I listen. Sounds and rhythms, echoes and vibrations. This is how I move through space, how I comprehend my world. Long, long ago, when I was a baby in Kansas City, I caught tuberculosis. In those days, there was no cure. Isolated on a sleeping porch, I learned to match the sounds of approaching footsteps with the ones who made them. But footsteps go both ways. A residue of loneliness lingers after all these years. Music is the antidote. Anne Whitehouse’s poem, “Outside from the Inside,” … Continue reading The Composer by Anne Whitehouse→
I just bought an eight-pack of bony Jesuses, an Amazon special, to be sure Jesus remembers this little lamb if I run a red light or ease through a stop sign as an 18-wheeler rolls through I also bought eight fuzzy rabbits’ feet on fake gold chains in case I need good luck when stopped by a crotchety cop who had a serious spat with her husband this morning when she discovered condoms in his back pocket I will hang a dangling Jesus on my rearview mirror on even numbered days and the rabbit’s foot … Continue reading Equal Opportunity by Claire Scott→
In the empty lot across the street they graze on ground scrape and grind — diesel sculptors of land and sound that rumble words shatter lines I try to write take up residence between my shoulder blades and teeth. Then it’s quitting time and quiet unfurls through air. Into this gap this negativity of sound — an echo, insistent: how the backhoe’s motor idled, revved, and whined how metal screamed when it hit rock how workers’ voices floated like dandelion seeds windblown this stillness opens silence then words asking to be heard. Cindy Buchanan … Continue reading Still Life with Bulldozer and Backhoe by Cindy Buchanan→
The worms are writing a song in my garden, rustling their slick bodies through the leaves in a rising crescendo, inspired by the rain. If one were musically inclined, they could accompany these worms but only softly, because if you’re too loud, you’ll scare them and they’ll stop. They like flutes. They don’t like cellos. The worms hear my footsteps across the yard and grow silent just as I approach pick up their song again with verve and zest in the wake of my passing. If I were musically inclined, I’m sure I could pace … Continue reading The Audience Beneath by Holly Day→
Not thinking about it doesn’t make it go away. Recollection makes sense of it, invents details from the misremembered: as with open carry and its fine print—no one flinches when the guy walks into McDonalds, a large pistol strapped to his waist and orders a Big Mac, hold the pickles, and the young man at the register says it always has pickles. When you’ve got a pistol strapped to your waist you can’t help resting your hand on its polished blue-black handle with faux pearl inlay on the grip, and the young man at the … Continue reading How Pain Matters by Mark Simpson→
If you want a free lunch, All you have to do is smash, bleed, and work for it. Would you like some peanuts for lunch? Free sample, the sign on the wooden box says. Take one. Inside the box with the sign, behind the broken glass holding them in place, the peanuts lie stacked, delicately pressed and balanced against the edge ready to tumble on the first move. To eat them, you must first smash the glass, and hope your hands don’t bleed. Disturb the system, and hope none cascade onto the floor, so that … Continue reading Trick of the Eye: Fresh Roasted by Richard Elliott Martin→
Stealing Japanese poetry requires great skill, almost Ninja-like stealth, especially at night when there are so many poets out viewing the moon and, in Winter, the snow. But it’s best not to do it then because your tracks can easily be traced back to the scene of the crime. In Spring there’s not enough leaves to hide behind. But if you wait until Summer, when trees are fat and thick with green, then it will be hard to see the moon when it first rises. And always be careful in Autumn— the haunting sound of … Continue reading Stealing Japanese Poetry by Robert Harlow→
Teaching, too, is labor. Everyday to be up to the task, everyday the master of a hundred worlds, of casual words, and of causal words, to confront the faces added to or taken from. Do you know when you add a thought there, it shows in the eyes, it shows in the mouth’s subtle creases? Do you know, when you stop a thought, when you turn it aside with a straight line, with the shortest distance from there to here, it shows in the brow’s labor? Exhaustion. Do you know that teaching is exhaustion, everyday … Continue reading Teaching by J.R. Solonche→
SUCHNESS Unable to find a bait station, the termite guy says Call me when you’ve trimmed all this. I say It’s supposed to be this way, a cottage garden of its own making and movement, a profusion that sees beyond any preordained order. He sees only thorns, a cloud of white climbers disappearing the stone path. So much suchness is good for the soul. Lord, I’ve tried to tame it, but let me not try to suppose where or what it should be but its own labial pink, its own gallop across borders and walls. … Continue reading SUCHNESS and DITCH LILIES, 2 poems by Linda Parsons→
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