by Dan Alter

wasn’t I the one who put on collars, dry cleaned,
and walked leafy in the commuter crowd trembling
like bible pages, and didn’t you have to dust elusive

fingerprints on your glass top table —
the one in your town with the final phone numbers
hidden in his armpits, a spendthrift

of emotions and weren’t you the section
of the phone book where the longest call
begins, somewhere in the fine print, news–papery,

and wasn’t I, handsome, handing out flyers
for last year’s clearance, that had the tiniest
wings, and hid in your hands

but only in your town and wasn’t I
handsome, falling off my dimestore
horse before the nickel ran out

and got back up to you? You, last seen
dealing spoonfuls of hypoallergenic
pixie–dust from your open trunk

soon to be pulled over and sentenced to too
much solitary, but you were never
entirely alone if I was in your town

and wasn’t I tied up with mauve ribbons,
another hydrangea for you to water or
a coleus with the veined leaves exploding

inward into purple and wasn’t I just
the leaf you were looking for?

by John McKernan

Your coffin is ready    Sir
Packed full of air

It will weigh
As much as ten million needles    Sir
Admit it to the grooves in your skull

You will find    Sir
A shadow
Has invaded your body
Moving up from the boot soles

Don’t you want
To see what you will look like
Hold on    Sir    Just a minute
Here is a sundial
Wait    The cloud will pass    Wait

by John McKernan

The menagerie of sunset erodes the stars
Cans of tuna squid abalone in morphine

Rise before dawn like a god with a machete
Certainly time to go to bed in the forest fire
Time to demolish the false avenues of self

Delay    Evasion    Deceit    Hypocrisy    Malice
Nice shoes    Gilt–edged calling cards    Dry blood
A tinge of ennui & a dusting of remorse
Blood    Hints of history    Lust    Et cetera & wax

Why did I despise myself so completely
All those years?    Did I use special mirrors?
Why was every word I thought dust before
I registered it as feeling?    Was it the word
Cremation that did it?    Or the word knife?

I have always wanted to be a cowboy and a gun runner

by Leigh Donaldson

Her face is contorted with love,
dry, brown, cracked
like coffee grains
left too long in
A red clay cup;
cradling the dregs of youth.

She screams through her day
across heat–infested cotton fields
she once tilled.

Her bosom swells in
a cauldron of impoverished fury.
Tempered by blind faith
she sways between hate and hope.

Stubborn and deep rooted,
the earth moves her, as

She guts her nails into the earth
Pulling up red–blooded fibers,
red clay, Mississippi mud.

Lifting her mother’s remains from hell
she carries the wet bones to
A one–room shack,
stinking of whiskey and men.

They lie down together, while she
marks the school papers
written by the children
she was called upon to teach.