by Ron Androla

You are Emily, the lovely Emily,
Erie newscaster, soft-light
Emily.  Emily’s nipples taste
Like buttery sandalwood
Smoke woven into flesh.
Edible butterflies pulse
Under naive breasts.
You are Emily, syrupy,
A thousand spices.  Emily moans.
Wet pleasure under black sheets.
Down here I know Emily is
Smiling & flushed.  I love
Emily.  You do, too.  Emily
Cums like splattering water across
Erie’s gray paper smudged pencil sky

by normal

sean o’neill, eugene’s son passed the syringe
over to me
“i come from an old line of fuckups,” he said
“maybe this is the year i follow the rite of
family passage & do myself in”
“me too” i said
“you don’t know shit,” he said “anyone
commits suicide before the age of 40
has murdered a stranger”
i nodded & tapped the needle in

an hour later the cops kicked the door in
we were booked at the charles st station
i was sent to the brooklyn house of detention
it was april 19th 1963, my 20th birthday
i never saw sean again

later that year i heard sean had thrown
himself out a window at the 5th st precinct
for him, it was the end of the line

i was just getting started

by Gerald Locklin

His first time back to
Plant-watering duties
Subbing for his wife
While she spent the days
Babysitting their one-and-two-year-old
Grandchildren, he thought he had caught her
In a major, literal faux pas
When he discovered she had left
The faucet of the front-yard water valve
In the Open Position.

Stepping away from it, however,
With hose in hand,
He heard beneath his sodden Birkenstocks
The crunching of one of the hundred or so
Tiny bulbs of the Christmas Lights
Strung along the bricks enclosing
Their Garden of Succulents.

He hoped she was exaggerating
That every last one of them
Would be rendered dark and smoky,

But his best friend at the donut shop
Assured him that he had
Ruined not only his own,
But very possibly
Every damn source of holiday cheer
For the surrounding twenty or so
Square miles.