by Ron Padgett

Pretty little angel eyes
on a dark background
follow you into the foreground
and then close the moment

you feel they are
about to tell you something.
Do you wish to continue yes
or no, please indicate.

The angel eyes reopen,
this time with tears in them
and welling with even more tears
but this time it’s your eyes

that close and inside
there’s the song you sang
when you weren’t afraid
anymore and a dog is barking

at a dark building in the dark,
parts of a collage without glue
whose pieces can be moved
around inside your head

that has neither ceiling nor floor,
for the house flew away
with the angel that keeps
coming back to look at you and cry.

by Ron Padgett 

on a white tablecloth
with light blue legs below
in a hotel restaurant
in a small town in Poland
in 1936
is being contemplated
by a man
whose homburg
is tilted
at an angle
parallel to that
of the picture
on the wall
behind him,
a mountain scene
with forest below
in which a lone deer
has turned to look at us.

by George Economou

    In memoriam —
Paul Blackburn (1926 –1971), poet and translator of the troubadours;
Federico Garcia Lorca (1898 –1936), and others;
Nicholas Howe (1953 – 2006), medievalist, essayist, teacher;
Traianos Gagos (1960 – 2010), classicist, papyrologist, teacher.

Es imposible
callarla

“Te quitamos la esperanza,”
the Francoists told him, making him
dig his own grave. And as he did, did he
think Don’t we all ?
                        My hope. How can you take
my hope away, when I always knew
I would never
arrive at Córdoba ?
                        Lorca dug his own grave,
and as he did, became buried treasure.
Blackburn went up in smoke, a way of digging
his own grave.
                        “He perdido la esperanza,”
did he think, but for a moment — don’t we all ?
But hope is the guitar
that weeps for distant things, gives the wound —
¡Oh guitarra !  impossible to silence —
that is forever mortal.

Mortmanteau

Speaking of birth and death
we speak as if we own them —
“On the day of my birth . . . ”
“In the event of my death . . . ”
though we can never remember either
nor fully possess the in – between
— the suddenly streaming in – between —
from which we lay claim to them.
So when I speak of my friend
Nick’s death I speak of nothing
other than he is death’s Nick now
as are “Tom, Dick, and Harry” forever
locked up in mortality’s possessive case

Traianos, Adieu

As farewell biddings grow each day
(until my own day to be bid)
in the plain scheme of life lived out,
offenses to this shape of things
still come, bidding farewells be bid
too soon, too soon.
                                     Dear friend,
the ancient poet who binds us,
my well bless us with this bidding,
a due fragment to our fragments:
                    ] twice met [

                                ] what need be [

] good wine and words [

                                          ] a lifetime of [

by Larry Fagin

     Sleep faster, we need the pillows. Yiddish proverb

I went for a shvitz but it didn’t solve my problems (old age, sickness, death). I
hung around with young people but nothing rubbed off. I came to the point but
found only the moot. What are you doing New Year’s Eve ?  Better I outlive you
(pl.) Who would manage the details — design, production, promotion,
distribution — you ?  This mechanical life. Already the work (casein on wood)
looks sure of itself. Get next to it. Cement not what it’s cracked up. They’re on
their way, the judges. Speak responsibly. Do we need a premise ?  Look for one,
anything lying around will do. Simply put a little in your hair.