by Mark Terrill

Between these meridians
where pastoral alchemy
is loosened
on tough afternoons

these attributes
of tension and release
relinquished as a favor
for drinks with cheap gin

where a river
becomes a border
and divides countries
although the land remains one

where without cufflinks
and electricity
the hardest work
was always done by hand.

by Mark Terrill

In the postbellum antechamber
of an old boatyard in Dithmarschen
I brush the dust off a book
and read how the ancient Chinese
associated magpies with good luck
and crows with bad luck and I
look out the window and see
four magpies harassing Billy the cat
in the long green driveway
wondering what became of the crows
that used to live in the big poplars
while I muster the necessary resolve
for another wordless conversation
with the weak and the strong
while the peaches from Spain
that smell like sun are languishing
in the darkness of my German pantry
just down the hall from where I’m
weighing these truths and consequences
and coming to such conclusions as
the needs devise the ways and
you go someplace to get something
and return to from where you came
and it’s a very stubborn bird
that rises up from the ashes.

by Sara Toruño-Conley

Another trip along the penny’s edge
dropped into the pool:
swallowed water,
we, bags of water.

Try this.

When they take you away bit by nip
lip, tongue, and
opening
think of that long, open lake
at the edge of town we walked.

Think of lovely little openings fatal as they are,
this time will be a new time
full of hope
and bargaining.

by J. B. Sisson

The day my wife’s due back from a long trip,
I’ve stumbled on the soft corpse of a thrush
beside the morning paper at the door.
An ant was walking on an open eye.

This portal death was quite an awkward shock.
“That’s what you say to people after death?
‘Goodness, that’s awkward’?” Holly Martins quips.
This I won’t mention when my wife comes home.

From majoring in the classics years ago
she notices ornithomantic signs
though she’s not superstitious, nor am I,
and yet I’ve dug the thrush a secret grave.