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Undefended
by Elyce Petker
Cupids don't use telephones.
The pillows are too comfortable.
Movement is condensed
To nearly nothing.
A single shot is aimed
And it strikes
One sunbathing
Under a film of skin
Little Cherub dangles his soft feet over a cloud
A sling of tiny arrows hangs on his back
"I don't call ahead," he squeaks. "I don't even open
my eyes."
Trust This
by Elyce Petker
I want to be as empty as a dead river
Like a drought
Never bear me anything
I do not want fruit
Children will only grow
And soon they will know
How little we can offer
Some dry fields
A couple of windmills
You die alone
God exists in your mind
I won't bring you here
Your heart would break
And every purpose you'd pursue would be so you could grow into someone's
mother
Leave me stale
To spare them the riddle with small reward
"2 cups broth"
by Carly Pribyl
today the morning’s dew
has slipped ‘neath my skirt
and I’m crying at the birds
left wet-feathered and dismembered
inside the white-pickets and among the petunias
i've been slow-cooking beef stew
with all the fervor and perseverance
of a silenced domestic goddess
though i've cut my left thumb
and it's bled into the onions
please come home darling
i've drowned
in a vat of tired intellectualism
and since, i've been on hands and knees
filling crevices in settled wood floors
with blood and olive oil
Clouds Descending
by Olaf Alexander
swelling in and rolling out
swallowing fenceposts of algae
the dogs, the leaves, the mailboxes
now swim, fish hidden from the sun
cars push against a current
wading through paint-striped undertows
ocean swimmers and sea divers
trolling the walkways and driveways
through fogged windows, waves hide the view
the shells of houses placed in rows
a world settled by strange creatures
not gifted with natural flight
and forced to swim
Elephant Instinct
by Nick Rodriguez
Elephants. Their trunks like arms and those sad eyes.
Even while chewing deep green branches
there are those sad eyes.
Eyes like the velvety depths of a blackened something.
Eyes like unconsciousness, like horrific nights,
like admitting guilt.
Elephants. She thought she saw one crying,
she said the little one was crying.
I told her,
"No, it's glandular or something; a cooling process."
But she said she knew tears.
She said she used to make them for a long time.
I told her.
"There's no money in tears these days."
She laughed then I moved in to kiss her
to take her mind off tears.
We pretended to be elephants.
We moved slowly and leaned into the furniture;
leaned into each other.
I huffed and groaned into her ear
and she wailed and lowed.
It was instinct to make love to her,
elephant instinct. An endangered species,
lost and grazing.
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Fear
by Ashok Niyogi
Every Delhi Saturday
beggars invoke Saturn Monarch
at traffic stops.
Passersby throw coins into tin buckets
in which the Monarch lurks
but the undercurrent is vicious.
Charity is propelled by mute fear
the malevolent beauty of the rings.
But in this Cosmos
I have seen anger
in the eyes of monkeys
hungry on a temple top.
The Bee's Dance
by Julie Merrill
The bee stumbles
and dances like crazy
in his life mission
to return to the light
which
instead of rewarding
his struggles
bounces him
between the burning bulb
and the glass cover
like a pinball machine
until he is so scorched
he becomes weak
and falls.
But he must return...
He
must always return.
in his suicidal, bio
illogical mission.
He buzzes in the pinball machine
until he falls again
and drags himself along
as if searching
amidst miles and miles of desert
for poisonous water.
As I ponder the irony
of the primitive bee's illogical need
to act against self-interest
I feel a burning in my retinas
because of my own
illogical need
to keep watching him.
Our minds are married, but we are too young
by George Orwell
Our minds are married, but we are too young
For wedlock by the customs of this age
When parent homes pen each in separate cage
And only supper-earning songs are sung.
times past, when medieval woods were green,
Babes were betrothed, and that betrothal brief.
Remember Romeo in love and grief -
Those star-crossed lovers - Juliet was fourteen.
Times past, the caveman by his new-found fire
Rested beside his mate in woodsmoke's scent.
By our own fireside we shall rest content
Fifty years hence keep troth with hearts desire.
We shall remember, when our hair is white,
These clouded days revealed in radiant light
A Little Poem
by George Orwell
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But girl’s bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn’t born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
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