by David Cope

the room is silent, empty but
            for the bier. she lies, sheet
draped over her body —

            she is so small in death —

            the head tilted back, eyelids,
aquiline nose, cupid’s bow lips, skin
            translucent, alabaster

            yet still lovely — we are

in tears. my lips touch her
            forehead goodbye — cold,
heat & struggle all

            gone in the waiting day.

by David Cope

what became of the girl whose dreams dressed up for
Madame Pomponelli’s neighborhood fashion show,

the sixth grader who skipped on sidewalks to French lessons
with Miss Meloche? where the girl whose father sang

“if ya can say it’s a bra brecht moonlicht nicht,
you’re all richt, ya can,” she whose mother slumped

to floor with paralytic stroke yet somehow endured,
the girl chosen from her dorm to speak to reporters

after Pearl Harbor, summoning words to guess the pain
that lay ahead? where the bright–eyed wife & mother

confident in construction site as her children climbed

dirt hills nearby? where the mother finding marvels

in screech owls screaming in the dark night, the woman

sobbing thru the wall, she whose fiction hid why he

didn’t come back, she pleading with a son who howled
& refused his father on monthly visit? where she who

worked beyond limits, drove thru snows men shrank from,
she who stood by children who had no other succor?

where those early years whose endurance was celebration,
before marriages, children, distance, tangled memory

would divide us in ways we couldn’t foresee? where she,
now reduced to labored breaths & sighs, long sleep?

by John Michael Mouskos

She said,
“There was a knock at the door;
The boy had returned,
Walking through the night,
To be with us once more.”

Beyond the padlocked gate,
And seamless trees
Dividing our worlds;
One by one the branches fell,
I never saw them bleed,
It was never meant to hurt.
“God help me through this,” “Mama, I love you,”
Scribbled on wardrobe doors,
In rooms of differing colours,
In rooms with no mirrors,
Where the sounds have been turned off,
And emptiness fills every corner,
Is sucking something out of me every day,
Learning to lie while smiling,
Imagining being on the phone to mummy;
Where is she? Where can she be?

I climbed you and scratched myself,
I learned to bleed at night, where I can’t be seen;
I learned to sleepwalk with open eyes,
So no one can hurt me.

by John Michael Mouskos

“I hear Gordon’s been painting;
He must be feeling better in himself.”
“No, Gordon’s busy dying;
The cancer’s spread.
He’s at home in Ireland,
Somewhere by the sea.”

High clouds ever more distant;
The low horizon glares
With promises it cannot keep.
A wave collapses into itself,
Another follows,
Memories torn off,
Again and again,
In the dying sea.

Grief hangs in the air,
Kisses flesh it craves;
The mind hurts and horrifies;
So close to oblivion,
Condemned by fate.