Sarah

Sarah

Sarah sinks into

a shallow and grave disposition.

This is life!, she thinks

and fails under it.

To her the digging is four days past due,

but for her mother

only two.

There is a sound that resounds

like a screaming page familiar.

It is her Romeo

yet he is bidding adeu.

For four days hence

she will sink again

but for her mother only two.

Matthew Argalas

Albeit in the manner
in which all was contrived
we see that all was built
before our time

And when the towers
are higher than our memories
I think we shall see the true
span of our faculties

For there is a steady rain inside the hour
when time drips
traces
and then falls away
there is a rain inside the hour

-Matthew Argalas

TABLE ONE

You said you’d never leave me by myself
With a kiss and a ring – I thought it was
the truth. So why do I sit here alone?
I ask for a Coke, no ice with lemon
The waitress already knows my order

How did forty years pass by so quickly?
Your smooth skin slipped into wise lines of time
Each doctor visit, glasses got thicker
Nights out turned into nights in by the fire
I swear your pillow still smells like perfume

I look around the diner, my view wide
since there is no one else at my table
A girl in a red dress has your blue eyes
A woman near me, your worn wrinkled hands
A child, your loud squealing laughter

Took me twenty to pick a shirt today
You liked plaid, I liked stripes – so I chose plaid
It’s been two years and I’m still not okay
The kids worry; I assure them I’m fine
Even though I know loneliness does kill

I’m bitter like the vegetables on my
plate – the ones I buy cause you told me to
Wanted to go first; I know I’m selfish
I eat my meal tasting very little
Ask for the check, politely don’t worry

I wonder what they all must think of me
Crotchety, perpetual old bachelor?
Senile senior who mistakes shoestrings for spaghetti?
Incompetent imbecile who can’t cook?
Tired widower who misses you terribly?

By: Elise Renz

View of a Beholder

(this didn't go through a workshop, I'd love your critique!)

VIEW OF A BEHOLDER

as if a pair of chapped lips kissed creases
of steel in the folds of blue your lashes shade.
In the depths of your eyes I see the ocean,
clear, bottomless, pure, fringed with the sun's
dazzling reflection as your smile gently
reshapes the waters within. The power
of your eyes unnerve my shoes they shake me
so much. It's almost as if I've tripped on
my stomach simply because the steady
coolness of your eyes, so confident and
knowing, touched mine, a protected green, a
forest hidden. In that second I see
a future full of friendship and laughter
and love (?) resonate... and yet I look away.

I always look away.

~Jomi

Family

One day I stood outside the orphanage
in doubt, like the day before, and before
that. Twenty-two and unmarried, I saw
a girl, frantic on the phone with her mom;
a child, sobbing and scolded by dad for
losing his little red balloon; and an
older brother who wouldn't wait for his
younger brother. Then, I saw a girl, red-

ribboned, cheery, and lovely, skipping home.
She stopped next to me, like a lady-bug
on my hand, and said, "This was my sister's
home," and galloped off, reinless. I opened
the door and met the manager, Mother
Chelsea, with a child, shy, holding her arm.


- Bob Richardson

All For One

ALL FOR ONE

Leaves dance
in the alley, like marbles
dropped
in a deep glass jar,
both tornadoes of
purposed chaos.

Above, their brothers
twitter appreciatively
applauding from their branch
the dexterity
shown below,
though fettered
and clamped,
the muskateers
judge not.

Surge up,
up until Aeolus
directs his attention to
some other world's
corner,
the leaves
gently rock
back to the earth
as hypnotically as
rested gulls
ride
the wave.

(I'd love to hear your thoughts!)

Happy Birthday

Poet Emily Dickinson was born 175 years ago this month in Amherst, Massachusetts. ''G'' -- for girl -- was the scant description that the town doctor noted in his record book. "Writing in the preface to Dickinson's first edition of poems published four years after her death, Thomas Wentworth Higginson noted the primeval power of the work. ''These verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them.'" miamiherald.com (Tue, Dec. 13, 2005)

Bless Him

Down the dusty, cavernous hallway,
I saw a man, whose youthful visage
contorted in such a way, that my own
face emulated his life-knowing
anguish.

His face melted, as if Salvador Dali had
painted it. An arch below his nose,
whiskers glistened with the gush of
salty, green goo.
Red buttons to the sides
burst forward, like crackling embers,
thicker with the tug of the arch.

What could it be
that has caused this
misery?

His eyes welled up with tears and
one trickled down his cheek,
as if it were the last shattered fragment
from a broken, star-stained sky.
His face rose to the shards
split asunder from the heavens,
flailing and wailing silently,
despondently.

Needing a mother to cradle him in her arms, surely
dejected by and rejected from
society. His sorrow cleaved my heart in two.
I wanted to talk to him, to plead with him,
"Please, sir, what could possibly torture your poor
soul so?" But then, as the paramedic words
mended my heart...

He sneezed.


- Bob

Tomes

They stand in hushed rows at attention,
spines straight, keeping their leaves tucked tight
between covers—some bruised, some wounded
here, an amputated afterword, there, a new recruit
smelling of paper, ink, and binding. Most were drafted
by an author who has long since set aside his quill,
extinguished his candle, and slept without waking.

Many have not seen action for years, for decades.
All around, the library is filled with a quiet warfare
of silent knowledge held fast
against the darkness of an empty carrel,
uncaring world. Each soldier guards the voices
of the dead, and in their purple hearts
beats the ancient rhythm of poets and sages past.

-Elizabeth

Erasing

Coal-black board,
a vast expanse of midnight sky,
once dotted by fragmented constellations
of scholar’s sutras—jeweled teachings marked
in brilliant, powder-white.

Smoke now smudged
in long, arced streaks across the dark.
Chalk fades and moves in embolden borders
from top to bottom in thick eraser tracks.
It’s as if God had taken his hand,
broad and perfectly angled,
and it pressed firmly against the depths of night
to wipe all tiny, diamond suns from view
and leave us with his prints of cloudy grey.
Neither dark nor light would exist:
only the murky moments of pre-dawn
on a sunless, foggy day.

--Alison T. davis