by Philip Arnold

          An Irish King of Connaught, Sweeney was cursed
          and made to think he was a bird.

How I skimmed the battered air,
grazing Malduin’s magnificent goatee
on the battlefield of the Ui Faolain.

A near miss and again
a swoop for the delicate strand of hair
from my enemy’s chin,
                                      the hoped–for thread
that I would weave through the loom
of my nest, each circle

leveraged against the underneath
of Norwegian fir needle, Ulster–raid of fleece
and Connemara garden scrap.

Unperched, resolute,
I dreamt the spoil of incremental loft.

When the golden hair finally caught in my beak
fear throttled my throat:
                                         no song
could risk the hair unraveling into the mad air.

So I held in my silence the delicate thread
even as joy
                   shook my body
and I swallowed note
after note that would proclaim,

       Dominion.

by Bill Brown

          God made everything out of nothing,
          but the nothingness shows through.  — Paul Valery

My neighbor stirs around the yard
rearranging junk — damaged lawn
chairs, his grandson’s scooter,

an old fishing boat, stacks of insulation
and bricks. He can’t seem to finish
anything before he starts something new.

He did three tours of duty in Vietnam
so two other kids wouldn’t have to fight.
Then thirty years driving the night run

from Nashville to Atlanta to appease
darkness. Now retired, he waves,
smiles, tosses a shock of white hair

from his eyes and goes back to his
special kind of loneliness. I’d complain
about my property value, the mud

from his grassless horse lot covering
my drive, but it wouldn’t change
anything, and besides, I’d hear

my father say you weren’t raised
that way. So I go about weeding
the garden to plant new iris, throw

a windfall persimmon at my cat so she
can check her batting average. At the end
of the day, I’ll wave a smile to my neighbor

as he feeds sweet mix to Dakota and Thunder,
watch the horses rest their chins on his shoulders —
his favorite chore and best effort to stay the night.

by Bill Edmondson

A clash of whirling galaxies
Utter their light through the black of the brain
Of a man standing among bones and dust
In a weedy field    eastern Arkansas

Many of these    the dead in Christ
— he feels were fed meringue of salvation —
Wait here to rise
And the words on the sign on the church
Under the rusting star
Read: “Jesus Coming Soon”

While this man    curious
Dreams of a fabulous craft
To break through space and time
To knock about    see if anything’s home

          After class one day    his student    an old man
          Showed him a photograph
          Of a proud young pilot in the Chinese air force
          But they’d taken his wings    assigned him a wheelbarrow
          For decades he’d pushed it full of stone
          Along the base of the crumbling Wall

All flight is fantasy
And the teacher knows how little he knows,
Can only guess that these who peered through smoke,
Danced with shine
Had only the turmoil they lived
Then the box and dirt shoveled down,
That their name — his name —
Smoothed by wind and rain
Is at last    wind and rain

by Mariela Griffor

A farewell to a dear friend is never enough.
We must bring him flowers, songs with
spinning words and good wishes.
We must bring a shadowy thought
of love that make us both happy.

We must convince the ghost that dances
around his grave to be kind to our friend.
He did so much.
He did plant a tree and had a son.
He did in part save his country.

The worst time, I thought, was to leave
one of the friends behind,
there in the dried mountain
his heart was destroyed, his eyes open.
How can we write poems after that?

The friends I loved and left made signs
with their fingers in the fading skies.
They left me here in a brown earth
so I can weep a red spot that leads
to a hollow moon faced to the sky.