by Norbert Hirschhorn

They stand on concrete pylons,
pinions of steel, imagining landmarks
they can no longer see: acacias,
date palms, orange groves, millet rows,
wattled homes painted with stories of Haj,
(Haram al – Sharif, the black Kaaba).
And the graves — sancta sanctora —
of parents, saints, children lost early.  Only

the water, the unruffled water, spreads
forever, drowning out laughter beneath
the growl of turbines where
salvos of power turn air into ozone.  From

the hills, from the sands, small
eddies billow: land, oh land.

by Norbert Hirschhorn

work the streets of Leicester Square.  One
peddles ribbons for
your sweetie’s hair, the next
hawks roses filched
from front gardens, while
the eldest sells something too
cheap, too dear.  The younger ones don’t
hate this sister — Brecht said, First feed the face.  Then
talk right and wrong — Back
at the bedsit they wet their merchandise with tears.

Based on the Yiddish folksong by Morris Winchevsky (1856 –1932).

by Russell Rowland

When the wind is right, I hear the strike
of the downtown steeple clock.

Though annually uncertain of the date
His own Son rose from death,
God knows what time it is.

While sub – Saharan babies starve,
the Congregationalists, according to
their polity, are arguing the cost
of an automated winder for the clock.

Christ be their judge: he was hungry,
and they did not feed him — nor recall
to set that clock ahead in spring,

back in fall — disciples forever either
early or late to church, and some
even singing his praise off – key.

I vote we let the clock run down,
like time itself.  When all stands still,
expansive galaxies will have reached
their apogee; begin the long collapse

down to a dot of matter infinitely,
inescapably dense.  No giving
in marriage then, or taking in eulogy,
no orthodoxy and thus no heresy;

no past or future or present tense.

by Alan Elyshevitz

I am solvent, well – ventilated.  No one
has spurned me.
The trees in my window efface
the wind.
Yet my murmurings catch
on furniture
in the dark.
This brutal companionship
of words
is a talkative salesman
when one’s bladder
is full.

And ramify is a word
more expensive
than others,
colluding with backlit
memory:
my father
a typographical
error
in a hospice
bed,

my mother
as bent as an editor’s
comma.
Think of quantities
instead.
In need of dispersal
I calculate
my age as an animal
does:
in muscle loss, in tooth
decay.

To speculate the end
of self
is to grow
small,
to pulverize
memory
and sift it for
a long – forgotten
infant
sleep.