by G. H. Smith

This is not a poem about the inevitability
Of old age, decrepitude, and death.
You won’t find a single
Reference to lost innocence,
The joys of spring, or unrequited love.

We don’t anticipate discussing at any length
The fashion in which one becomes a poet,
Or the dubious wisdom of that course.

The heartbreak of broken dreams,
And the high cost of remaining
True to one’s art
Will be addressed in other works,
not here.

This one will not employ a stanza
In italicized Middle English
Bearing the sage wisdom
Of an anonymous monk,

Nor will its words be arrayed
On the page to form the images
Of Elvis, or Che Guevara.

Likewise, it promises not to capitalize
The second-to-last-word
Of every other line
To deceive you into thinking
There’s more than meets the eye.

It’s a virtual certainty this poem
Won’t help you patch things up
With your estranged mother,
Or cause you to take up archery,
Or the study of man’s relationship to the cosmos.
When you finish reading it,
You’ll feel no different
Than you did before.
Or, if you do,
There will be some other reason.

It will be someone else’s fault, not ours.

by Didi Jackson

The blade came too close to my own throat.
I walk as far away as I can
from the home of your hands.
Here, in the dark, I open my robe, close it,
open it again to the stars.
It is an empty hour; it always is.

In the garden, the azaleas
wink at the new nights.
Spring has come early again this year,
and I prune the crepe myrtles,
hoping this time for a deeper bloom.
I am the one who has left you behind.

New hands spell a new narration.
It is a big sky, a lake that unfolds each night,
rosemary and basil, a whisper of bark,
and the moan of stacked stones.
Like Mary Magdalene,
the moon washes my feet.

by Doug Anderson

They come across by light of cell phone,
by blood trail, by the gleam of the coyote’s incisor,
by the eye in the dollar’s pyramid.
They come across by dream light,
by firefly, by the phosphorous mariposa
headband of the screen goddess,
by the north star of the Mercedes hood ornament,
by the rustle of money like snakes
moving under leaves, by love light,
by the lizard’s slow eyelid.
They follow the bread crumb dope trail,
leave one witch’s oven for another,
take on the pelt of our fear.
We see them by slant in our gardens,
we un-imagine their burnt black fingers
on our strawberries, our oranges,
we push-pull them — yes to the labor,
no to the kiss.  We want them to bathe}
and they want to ease themselves
down into the sweet cleansing waters
to be shriven of our sins.
We enter the shrine by the front door,
they by the rear.  We fumble
for the candle and the match,
feel in the dark for the saint
and touch their broken hands reaching back.