by Gerald George

After old Archibald put in an espresso
machine, all the poets in town sat in Archibald’s
Grocery and Gas drinking espresso and
reading each other poems that pissed and
moaned because of the state of the
world and how damned man is by
his own nature when, one day, old
Missus Archibald forgot again which
was the gas and which was the brake and
drove her three thousand pounds of steel and
chrome through the plate–glass window at
Archibald’s and maimed most of
the poets, and the others scrambled
around and wondered how they got to
be so lucky considering how
bad the world was, but soon they started
drinking espresso again and writing
poems that went on pissing and
moaning, and oh, yes, Missus Archibald, too,
they say, has taken to writing poems,
mostly about geraniums, hummingbirds, and
the shiny–bright light of heaven.

by Marcia F. Brown

     On the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, historians call them “Witness
     Trees” . . . Last week, Park officials found a new one . . . with two bullets still
     embedded in its trunk 148 years later.   — The Washington Post, August 9, 2011

It is not required that you carry casings under ancient scars
For centuries, in order to bear witness. Or stand forever
On Culps Hill, tap roots drinking from blood–soaked earth,
Arms spread wide to shade the small stone markers of the fallen.

                                            You do not have to recall the names,
The dates, or the too–young ages. You do not have to know your history. You are too old for that anyway. They will believe you
Because you are still standing in the same place.

                                            Or even if they don’t,
You have only to remember the boy crouched behind you,
His heartbeat reverberating in the wood, heat of his terror, sweat, Squeezed–back tears and the barrel of his rifle chattering,

                                            Only to replay again and again,
The volley of lead, the two you took, so sharp and stunning,
The smoke then settling and the boy exhaling,
Pressing salty lips to your splintered skin.

by Marcia F. Brown

Too brown for winter
and brittle as a wishbone, she marches
through the store in ostrich boots,
stilettos spiked enough
to drill out a bad tooth. Hair
the color of mink or brandied cherries
flies from a studied topknot like sparks.
You could open a beer bottle
on her clavicles.

It has not been given to me
to know how anyone walks
on legs stuffed into drinking straws, or breathes
beneath a corset of spandex and glimmer.
I have my willful ignorance. She, her belts —
four or five of them — or maybe just one
of many twisted links and lengths, wrapped
round and round her, lest she lift off
like paper up a chimney.

It is bright in this unearthly marketplace.
Enormous jewel–studded shades
glow opaquely from her hairline — black
eyes of ravens. Painted claws
thrash racks in what is either
a kind of hunger or despair — I would be
hard pressed to say.

Other shoppers steer clear — I think
we are beginning to feel something
like fear. But not as much
as the man fears her, the one who now
comes rushing to her side like a good big dog
who never meant to get lost.

The man carries her fur and leather
coat, protection a Viking would envy,
and an oversized bag, so heavy
with chains and grommets,
it might pass as weaponry.

Our fashionista whirls on him, hoists
the clanking satchel from his hand
to the wingtip of her shoulder which —
astonishingly — holds. The shades
slam down, heels hammer across the floor.

The little beige man follows. Freed
from his burden, he looks smaller, drab
as she is spectral — worn tweeds, brown trousers.
Some days he must wish to live
in one of those ancient, faraway civilizations
whose tribal adulation is lavished on its men — robes
of splendor, paint and plumage — ancient cultures
and most species of bird.

by Dan Alter

and this one is for Michigan, for her latticed rivers, for her fireflies tickering the dark which is made of muslin, which cloaks the lush of her long grasses. and this one is for an M., at campfire, steel strings and voices leaning into Saturday evening, for her jacket which has fluttered down denim onto so skinnyshoulders, and for the canoeable rivers which scud down from Canada to fill the mother lake, and also for the temerity of the fireflies, which are blinking orange mini–blimps,

and this is for her fingers, hummed into the damp of my palm, and this one is for patrolling nightwatch in Michigan, the evening melted, pointillistic, separating into a fizz, and her mouth, spilling words quick as minnows, on a walk stolen from the back shelves like chocolate from baby–sitting pantries.

and how, unused cabin with cloudy moonlight slivering, your mouth floated to my mouth, and this is for kissing you on the squeak of cot springs, with the whisk of screen door, and this for that door, for its sad belly, humidity–aching hinges, on it the yearning mosquitoes arrayed, for your tongue which was kind and placed me in a room full of sugar bursting at the nerve–root, firing the body’s dark with match–head flashes, that was the sweep of your friendliness, spitting out sour salty in the corner and my fingers sent away from elastic of panties, and this is for the panties on your untouched crotch then M., maybe blue as a Kalamazoo sky, or pink as baby bottom under diaper, but were no color for me, just a last door, and their worn cotton thread count kept within jeans on  goose–bump legs, and this is for the jeans jacket, which was for seeming older than we were, for the faithfulness of its stitching, and M., in the cavernous kitchen where the mops hang crusting, under the blue light of bug zappers, among the suspended pots I will always gaze at you through my hazel eyes with the filters off, only two nights for us and I still watch you tapping on the bruised aluminum bellies of saucepans, talking us off to a market stall in Mexico, how we would know the flushed taste of tomatoes at summer’s first bursting.

and this is finally for M., stepping through a creak screen door swinging back on where she had spit, for the pinecones of kindness on cabin shading branches, for five      fingers slightly sweaty, for voices braided with guitar strum, swallowed by night, and then the morning coming with all the opened doors swung back shut, but the shut ones

smiling as they take their places back in the single–file procession of time, with the firefly maple–tops and the dark–swaddled Junegrasses, washed in the webbing of rivers running from ice ages endlessly down to their lake.