by Jon Wilkins

Just like you, she came here for the fountains
of youth and chocolate.  She found them occupado.

Occupational hazards and other children follow
her through the streets, but the alleys disobey,

dissolving like salt behind her.  You can find her now
tucked in behind the baking soda with her umbrella,

unbearable to her parents, who claw at the old country,
backs to a black hole of immodesty and television,

transvestites and flavored mayonnaise, of mountains,
moonless nights that almost resemble, almost reassemble

by Christopher Merrill

I am the mare night forgot — blessed
Brooding, brilliant.  Remembered.

I am the colt women corral, leaving
Paradise, believing everything.

I am the last steed Athena mounted
— Galloper, ascending, enraptured.

by Christopher Merrill

How much mush is too much mush
If you love mush too much?
How much slush is too much slush
If you love slush and such?
Hush, my child, don’t rush to brush
Your mush into the slush.  That’s too much!

__________

Now I will take my ease,
Out in the garden, please,
Among the birds and bees,
Set for my morning sneeze,
Making up rhymes like these:
Tall as the Pyrenees,
Small as a Pekingese,
Wide as antipodes,
Thin as a zebra’s knees,
Bright as a set of keys,
And with such rhymes as these,
Why I . . . Why I . . .  I sneeze!

__________

It’s dark in the park,
And the cat is fat —
Bees in the trees
And a rat in the vat.
The cow will meow
At the horse on the course.
But the pig with the fig
And the bat in the hat
Will roll through the hole
Deep into sleep.

by Christopher Merrill

And if there is no change in our condition?

Seven hang – gliders set their sights on a lodge
Boarded up since the war, twisting and floating
On an updraft that swirls them past a cliff
From which a forest ranger monitors
Lightning strikes, smoke, and wind: the stealthy progress
Of a fire spreading from a mountaintop
To a ravine and then along the dry
Fork of a river over which the gliders
May soon sail in formation, casting shadows
Dark as the clouds building on the horizon.

And if we cannot find an antidote?

The private amphitheater was full,
Although nobody knew who would perform,
Or why they had received an invitation,
In an elaborate script, to donate their time,
Not money, to a cause they had not heard of —
The restoration of a style of thought
Discovered in the War Between the States,
Secreted in a hand– sewn packet of letters
Addressed to God, and then bequeathed to those
Willing to forge, at the White Heat, a soul.

And if our final words are not recorded?

The traveler had stowed his overcoat,
Cane, and valise behind a wooden cage
(In which two sparrows, fluttering their wings
Whenever the train whistle sounded, sang
Until the other passenger in the compartment
Draped over them a curtain of black crepe),

And drifted into sleep, dreaming of silos,
And icebergs calving in Antarctica,
And pages burning in the Book of the Dead,
Including the page on which his name was entered.