by Norbert Hirschhorn

work the streets of Leicester Square.  One
peddles ribbons for
your sweetie’s hair, the next
hawks roses filched
from front gardens, while
the eldest sells something too
cheap, too dear.  The younger ones don’t
hate this sister — Brecht said, First feed the face.  Then
talk right and wrong — Back
at the bedsit they wet their merchandise with tears.

Based on the Yiddish folksong by Morris Winchevsky (1856 –1932).

by Russell Rowland

When the wind is right, I hear the strike
of the downtown steeple clock.

Though annually uncertain of the date
His own Son rose from death,
God knows what time it is.

While sub – Saharan babies starve,
the Congregationalists, according to
their polity, are arguing the cost
of an automated winder for the clock.

Christ be their judge: he was hungry,
and they did not feed him — nor recall
to set that clock ahead in spring,

back in fall — disciples forever either
early or late to church, and some
even singing his praise off – key.

I vote we let the clock run down,
like time itself.  When all stands still,
expansive galaxies will have reached
their apogee; begin the long collapse

down to a dot of matter infinitely,
inescapably dense.  No giving
in marriage then, or taking in eulogy,
no orthodoxy and thus no heresy;

no past or future or present tense.

by Alan Elyshevitz

I am solvent, well – ventilated.  No one
has spurned me.
The trees in my window efface
the wind.
Yet my murmurings catch
on furniture
in the dark.
This brutal companionship
of words
is a talkative salesman
when one’s bladder
is full.

And ramify is a word
more expensive
than others,
colluding with backlit
memory:
my father
a typographical
error
in a hospice
bed,

my mother
as bent as an editor’s
comma.
Think of quantities
instead.
In need of dispersal
I calculate
my age as an animal
does:
in muscle loss, in tooth
decay.

To speculate the end
of self
is to grow
small,
to pulverize
memory
and sift it for
a long – forgotten
infant
sleep.

by Leah Twitchell

As the baby rolled and tumbled
Down a full flight of stairs,
Slow motion kicked in
And what took seconds seemed like years.

I went deaf until she stopped
On the concrete below —
Then I skidded in socks
Down the wooden staircase.

The baby was crying and fine,
I handed her to the father.

I thought, this wouldn’t have happened
If my mom had been there, protector of babies.
But it was our first Christmas without her.

I despised the little ones that year.

No one knew it had been me who left the gate unlatched,
Buzzed and careless.

I was sick in my stomach,
having stood there as a witness
Without the foresight or power to stop it.