by Gabor G. Gyukics

a cigarette smoulders with you together
the wind comes in to fetch the smoke
looks around
what else there is to take
but rather it sniffs
shows a grimace
tears a piece off a paper bag
tips over a plastic cup
hits you in the face
pushes the curtain to the side
and
slams the window
after leaving you behind

by Manoli Kouremetis

I take your hand, say “soon”  —
how many times have I
said “soon” trapped in traffic and
doctors’ waiting rooms?

If only I could press into you, push
against your skin and shove
inside to become one great thing
with you and the baby.

We’ll fight the tremors outside:
heat rising from the sidewalk,
neon signs glitching,
a pool cover’s flutter

TV picture wobbling,
Fred Mertz’s right hand
trembling when he laughs,
the moon shaking on the mirror,

pacing as if expecting his own child.
He doesn’t wait on day tonight,
but for his son, flesh and bone, nectar
and seeds to start another forest

on ground strewn with fruit.
These replications dizzy me.
The moon cast on the wall,
you in your own full eclipse.

That moon is a piece of blue fruit,
and in its sea where man landed
is where my voice goes when words fail.
I point to the mirror, but you don’t

see the moon — you see our feet,
each toe shaped to fit its neighbors,
pointing out from the bed
as if diving into the room.

by Manoli Kouremetis

Like a ransomer’s note —
my memories of you
and I squish against
one another.

Mismatched letters of
sentences ill-fitting — the serifs
and shading
and hasty cutting

leaves the look of
our life together — fragmented
taunts in bold
font and

blasts of color — a mock
malice as dangerous as
our pranks that frightened
neighbors and

made sleep unnecessary.
But it is you and
I who have been
taken — and the ransomer’s

plea ignored falls to the
floor, kicked under
the sofa —
rendered void

like the expired
coupons used to
put together this last shriek
of you and I —

magazine glossy,
newsprint smudged —
interlocking
out of sight.

by Nancy A. Henry

Piety,
New moon, stingy-petaled single rose,
full blown, you’ve gone straight
from maid to crone.
Let us moisten the moss for this woman of snails.
Let us make a glass tank for her tendril and ooze.
We might identify a weak, damp pulse
though surely not lust.
The winds blow all the day and the dust is us.