by Nicholas Spengler

In a town named for sleep, cradled
in high rock, there’s an ancient church
whose bells toss and turn
at hazy intervals; a few cows in the yard,
their own bells clucking
except when they bend to drink,
bell submerged with muzzle
in that element no toll can escape.

Half the houses here are shuttered
against the mountain gales,
the other half hollowed like shells
whose clenched denizens
loosened their grip,
lost themselves to sand and tide.

We’ve made a habit of touring
other people’s dreams.
The view of the valley
an inspiration, or a warning;
this crescent of stone a fortress
from frost and evil.

We’ve come for those terrible
angels of the nave,
dozens of eyes staring wide awake
from the dark down of their wings,
in each hand an ember
they’re pushing past the lips
of prophets: whose vigil,
whose restive dream ?

If this is a ghost town
we’re the ones doing the haunting.
Whoever set stone on stone,

cut slate shingles now
bedded with orange lichen,
we are the filaments
of their cold imaginings.

by Nicholas Spengler

At the interior window
you can hear two kinds of birds:
those within cages
and those without.
The former sing all day
over the broken ballads of the street
(if you close your eyes
you’re at the edge of a field)
and the others alight
three or four at a time,
lend their improvisations
to the steady chorus of the caged.

Their song is loudest at dusk
when the uncaged come in dozens,
some urgent message to impart
in the failing light.
Or maybe they’ve built their nests
in the hedges behind the cages,
the way things tend
to gather at boundaries.

I do not live in your city of birds;
you tell me about them
when we speak across blind distance,
night’s eyelid shuttering your home
before mine. For me
it’s the frozen lake at day’s end
when the sun slants behind mountains
and the ice chirps and moans
in the cooling air —
some drowned voice
on the other side trying
to be heard.

by Lee Sharkey

What I know is that there is a mural. Was a mural.

What I heard was that there was a fax. Or a letter.
What I read was that the ruler said the letter said the mural was

     offensive.

“Take it down” the ruler said, I read.
What I saw was a shoemaker, his apprentice, children with lunch

     buckets, one with bandaged fingers.

What I saw were flames.

What I heard was “removed over the weekend.”

What I saw were walls with spackled patches.
What I heard was the ruler’s mouthpiece saying “safe in an

     undisclosed location.”

What I heard the ruler say was “idiots,” “employees.”

What I said was “workers,” what I said was “stitchers.”
What I saw was slope–shouldered women holding handkerchiefs

     to their faces.

What I heard was, “My mother worked . . . my father worked . . . .”

What I read was “has the right even to destroy it.”

What I saw was hands over faces, on children’s shoulders.

What I wrote was “cooperation” — two letters from “corporation.”

What I wrote was “eats its children.”

What I thought was, “In a closet, a mural does not sleep.”

What I thought was, “The only wealth that does not impoverish.”

by Lee Sharkey

Who can explain this ? We know who the agent is, but who is his

     agent ?

What path did he walk to the vanishing point ?

What is this seasonless corpus fat and elastic ?

We have become wind and muscle

What he stole was a reminder, but its absence also is a reminder
Was it the slope–shouldered women holding handkerchiefs to
     their faces ?
Come April, frogs chuckle again how many years nested
     in memory ?
Where are the bright fibers that drifted down in the light through

     the mill’s tall windows ?

Last year’s grasses fold as if with a sigh over each other

Ghost gray and platinum

What is a safe and undisclosed location ?

Whose is the deity that eats his children ?

Palestine is at his doorstep

Soldering a tree out of spent teargas canisters
Smuggling workers across the border soaked to the shins inside a

     water tank
Who is sitting in the stripped orchard breathing in what they

     once tended ?

Was it the hand on the child’s shoulder ?

We have only the wealth that does not impoverish