by Mark DeFoe

I heaved them in the reeking pile, but they
did not break. The vision of that old world
was not so brittle, though warped to be sure.
At home I had new glass, blemish free, that

stayed the cold, that muted the vulgar street.
But I knew my analogy was lame.
Either side of the pane, I found myself
praying when a new god sauntered by.

But now my deities may be holograms,
only digital. I grabbed a broken board,
turned the old glass into shards, blaming the old
windows for not letting in light enough,

never letting me call out Eureka.
What epiphany did I expect? Having shattered
the old, I had no vision that might find
new perception, new eyes. My arrogance

and anger had blurred my focus. I stood
at the dump’s edge, foolish and ashamed.
Around me lay a mockery of nameless junk,
a scribbled Braille I could not decipher.

by Mark DeFoe

          In some jungle, waiting.

What we feared may be amongst us. We sniff
the wind. We hang on each change of intonation.
We note the qualms, the almost unnoticed
shake of the head, the thousand yard stare.

They say to believe demands new eyes, that
few have hearts of steel. That resolve can be
eaten away like the fungus eats our boots.
He stands to one side. She frowns at our plans.

Perhaps these are minute inattentions.
The trails wind, twist, bound by vines that trip.
Below us, cities we must liberate
bask in corruption, rife with citizens

whose poverty of vision we have sworn
to clarify. But up here the sun smudges
the steaming sky. We rust like old machetes.
We stare at the horizon when lectures

turn to sacrifice. We recall the laugh
of a lost comrade. Some see her to this day,
pitched in the dust of that stinking alley.
Someone must stay to feed our camp moochers,

our parrots and dear dogs. What’s glory to them?
What do they know of waste and failure? Some
must stay behind. Too many hands go up.
Too many eyes cannot meet other eyes.

by Karina Borowicz

In a clearing at the edge
of the forested hillside a boulder
is crouched. A mother elephant
and we her children. We find her
even in hip –deep snow, even
in the muck of spring. When the fires
of autumn light the trees, hunters’
gunshots tear through the same distance
as the war. Where I place my hand
her shale skin stays warm.
They aren’t coming for us, I keep repeating,
but there are tremors in these woods.
Hidden lives beating against plain sight.

by Karina Borowicz

When the punishing snows came, mother
would stand with her hands outstretched
and filled with crumbs for the sparrows.
How easily she took on a stone gaze frightened us,
but we were scared by the slightest things.
Boots clanging in our building’s stairwell. A dog’s howl
cut short in the middle of the night. Grownups
with a finger to their lips turning out all the lights.