sorrows

sorrows
by Lucille Clifton

who would believe them winged

who would believe they could be

beautiful    who would believe

they could fall so in love with mortals

that they could attach themselves

as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams

rattling their skulls    clicking

their bony fingers

they have heard me beseeching

as I whispered into my own

cupped hands   enough    not me again

but who can distinguish

one human voice

amid such choruses

of desire

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy   by Jack Spicer

What are you thinking about? I am thinking of an early summer. I am thinking of wet hills in the rain Pouring water. Shedding it Down empty acres of oak and manzanita Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun, Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard. Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana Driving the hills crazy, A fast wind with a bit of dust in it Bruising everything and making the seed sweet. Or down in the city where the peach trees Are awkward as young horses, And there are kites caught on the wires Up above the street lamps, And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches. What are you thinking? I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer As slow getting started As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza After a lot of unusual rain California seems long in the summer. I would like to write a poem as long as California And as slow as a summer. Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow As the very tip of summer. As slow as the summer seems On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road Between Bakersfield and Hell Waiting for Santa Claus. What are you thinking now? I’m thinking that she is very much like California. When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways Traveling up and down her skin Long empty highways With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them On hot summer nights. I am thinking that her body could be California And I a rich Eastern tourist Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California That I have never seen. Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady, Send them. One of each breast photographed looking Like curious national monuments, One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging In the world’s oldest hotel. What are you thinking? I am thinking of how many times this poem Will be repeated. How many summers Will torture California Until the damned maps burn Until the mad cartographer Falls to the ground and possesses The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding. What are you thinking now? I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

Small Talk by Eleanor Lerman

Small Talk
by Eleanor Lerman

It is a mild day in the suburbs
Windy, a little gray. If there is
sunlight, it enters through the
kitchen window and spreads
itself, thin as a napkin, beside
the coffee cup, pie on a plate

What am I describing?
I am describing a dream
in which nobody has died

These are our mothers:
your mother and mine
It is an empty day; everyone
else is gone. Our mothers
are sitting in red chairs
that look like metal hearts
and they are smoking
Your mother is wearing
sandals and a skirt. My
mother is thinking about
dinner. The bread, the meat

Later, there will be
no reason to remember
this, so remember it
now: a safe day. Time
passes into dim history.

And we are their babies
sleeping in the folds of
the wind. Whatever our
chances, these are the
women. Such small talk
before life begins

Darious is Sexy, but Derek is Gay

Sing

Sing of all we have
lost. Might there be a dream that remains true?
Listless and hidden the outgoing glare.

We live in an idiot box,
with many shaded idiot lights.
So far gone are the glory days of Timbuktu

There is a time in
this modern day where,
the light holds the sun in a hostile decay,

When

The trees are gripped between lines of searing sway.
A romance defined by skylines,
before the sky.

And sight stretches only as far as our own swollen bellies.

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!)