by Terence Winch

I am going to a party on a submarine
where I will dance with a rude chemist.
They will be serving yams in my chamber
and cereal with no raisins whatsoever.
No Australians will be allowed to enter.

The carcasses are on the march again.
Saxophone solos are in the air.
There is a lion at the door with an injured
paw. The signs of love make me cringe.
I wish they hadn’t let me out on parole.

My wife is in the woods reading Molière
and eating croissants. She would not come
on the cruise, claiming without proof that
such voyages are never transcendent enough.
I continue eating éclairs and sticky buns.

This poem is not about love or pain. There
is no message. Except that there will be no
surprises on the patio tonight. Solitude is
trending. History makes me feel faint.
I would sacrifice my pension for your fruit bowl.

by Terence Winch

The sky was gray muck today
as the planes took off for the south.
The west is flooded. Elsewhere, the lakes
are drying up. We are eating bacon and egg
sandwiches, drinking coffee, our backs
aching, our knees torn up and twisted.

In the giant memory we keep entering
then exiting from, love is declared, waltzing
takes place, the music just goes on and on
till the early morning. The fiddle player leaves
with someone else’s fiddle. The box player
leaves, his instrument stuffed into
someone else’s accordion case.

The old lovers dance and joke in the hallway.
We shall eat squirrels and rub marijuana cream
on our sore bodies! In the background, a slide
show plays continuously. There we see our
past as a t.v. commercial, everyone smiling,
teeth sparkling, sorrow nowhere to be seen.

by Terence Winch

The exterminator was here again today.

He says he’s got a bad heart and his knees are shot.

We discuss mice and termites. I show him photos

of the bugs that came through the ceiling molding

one night last month when the temperature

went down to seven degrees. There was also

freezing rain. He says in thirty years of exterminating

creatures, he’s never seen a bug like this before.

He says not to worry about it. They probably won’t

be back. He’s getting a watchman implant next week.

He thinks I should get one too. I’m inclined to agree.

But I don’t know what he’s talking about.

by Bengt O Björklund

there’s a lonely bird
perched on top of the old tree
old age in the wind

streaks of bright yellow
drifts in early September
this birch talks to me

***

it was the first day of September
the sea salt salesman lingered
in the grey afternoon with his pockets
full of gulls and terns screaming
at the surf rolling heralding the storm
who will be the bait today
the sacrificial worm impaled in silence

morning tolls with squid and bells
melted into the resounding ore
there is history in that old rock
where paleontologists still can hear
snails and ammonite singing
in school stairways slowly erased
by clouds of small feet

***

there are thin men brittle to the winds
silently hoisting paper flags that will burn
their broken skulls since long empty
turning in a rotten whirlpool on Sunday mass

hear the old women mumbling
their knees on long driftwood stools
rattling their dead bone dry prayer beans
to the demolition drums of war

the tide will turn and birds will pray
in silence and grave apprehension
a murky shadow blasphemy ignition
will set the whole world on fire

***

time to fetter the phantoms and the dead
to nail their faint pulse to the floor
where no wind will dance in silence
where I will creak and break and sing
to the ghosts of living much too late

I see shadows on the move
setting sail and turning dying
into an art of blasphemy

curb the mad king dead to the sea
rein the froth and all his tales of sorrow
burning like birds or lizards or dust
before his dark pompous thrust
that only empty men can hear and heed

***

there are birds in our memories
making noise as we meet the day
wings that beat against our inner straw
lining the aging and the lack of days
burning like a forest fire

at times we like sparrows chirping
in the bushes outside the church
with our small hearts of longing and loss
chirp chirp
to funerals and chimes

birds will fly and birds will claw
tears will be like beady eyes
and we will cry and we will hear
gentle doves and marble days
coincide with sand and water