by Trina Gaynon

          I cannot tell you what a bargain this is. . . .
                                            — “$7,500” Josephine Miles

I cannot lie and tell you what a bargain this is.
The owners paid top dollar, before the Great Housing Crash:
            Six hundred thousand and a bit more,
            in love with mature roses and orange trees.

This listing stands solidly in the middle of its cul–de–sac.
The roof soars over a sun room addition in back.
            The front door, painted an oceanic blue, beckons —                       morning sun turns its leaded glass window into a prism.

From beyond the back patio, you can hear
pilings being driven in the distance:
            a heart beat that comes to abrupt starts and stops,
            a community on its way to a halting recovery.

by Robert Herschbach

It can stink like old shoes,
curl at the edges, be a face
gone ragged and creased.
It’s still tender. A machine
may not take it but somebody will.

Job’s gone, plastic expired
but in a heap of clothes
a pocket yields its folded promise:
you won’t end this night
hungry or sober. Fries oiling the paper,
the haddock snug in its batter,
the too–sweet wine that will have to do
greeting your lips like a sloppy kiss —
cash is the invite to such a feast

It bears your prints, the residues
of touch. No other approval needed,
nothing to swipe or sign.
Though the world’s poker faced
behind aces and queens,
you’ve got a trick up your sleeve —
the moment yours to spend.

by Robert Herschbach

Taller than the men who chased
the crescent moons
that fell from the strobe,

you made the dim club
worth its cover charge, punctured
drunken brains with shards
of jade, turned a port pagan.

Imperial frigates ablaze, death face
of a sunken king — to watch you
was to believe auburn ringlets
could rule a world, spinning
like beaded whips.

No doubt that night’s cabs
took visions of you
to many beds,

and no doubt dancing sailors
chose crass words to forget you with,
failing every time.
                           Do you ever
think of them now, in your new guise
as good citizen,

cutting out shapes of states
for first graders, teaching
the moon’s phases or the life cycle
of moths ? Far from any dark harbor
starred with bordello lights,

does memory surprise you
with strange food,
a combustion of silkworms,

or conjure you again
as a many–armed goddess
among a retinue of eager men ?

by Rich Ives

I shall chase flies across the room
which shall be known as forever

and I shall place forever in a box
and close it and hide the box so that
it shall exist but never be seen

and the flies shall reproduce
there among forever so that the box and
the purpose of the box may continue

and I shall place dead things in the box
so that the flies become sufficient unto
themselves but I shall remain

superior to the box which requires
that I place further inventions into it
which shall include you as my witness

which shall contain me
and you too shall fall away inside it