by Richard Taylor

I want to see the wounds I’ve dealt
and show the scars I wear.  I would point out
the faintest outline of a footprint
on the left side of my chest, a misshapen
right ear, the cuts where new body parts
went in for those worn down
by heat and mileage — an eye for the one
that blurred the truth, a gland playing host
to uninvited guests, a hip from the swift, relentless chase
of exquisite phantoms, mesh for a stomach
lost to battle.  I’d have you notice
my gait occasionally reticent with its sum
of trivial retributions, my nose
gone west like a weather vane
put out of joint by a furious storm.

Look at me, I’m not exactly
the furry prize you get for knocking over
a pyramid of wooden bottles at the fair,
nor the sinewy giant in the mind of the damsel
planning her distress.  But I do not
hide nor blush, and I will heal
each stroke you have endured until you too
no longer blush.

by Padma Thornlyre

     I lie alone.
     Sappho

And thus,
under a fat moon
in February, the wheel
turns, our failures
at last not wrong-
turns, but simply
the road home.

Can the snow be whiter
than it is tonight?
The stars or crows
more quiet?

I lie alone.

by Padma Thornlyre

I am not so full of wine and elk medallions grilled rare
that I forsake utterance.  Lichens, too, have filled me up, near

cactus -flowers and the ashes of old friends.

I prefer the dirt and muddy
road over the paved,

bandura over techno,
for the sky’s gifts
I am grateful.

God, I am so much less than you!
In your doe – eyes I am nothing.

In your warmth I remain self–conscious — such prayers

of mine are stuttered!  You are, in this March snow,
my woodstove, my radiance of aspen log and pine.

by David Budbill

     Thoughts never twisty.
     Confucius, The Analects

Grace Paley said once,
in a hand written note to me,

We write big, David, because
we want to be understood.

With me, what you see is what
you get.  There’s no mystery here.

These lines mean what they say.
They don’t mean something else.

This is not great poetry because
it’s easy to understand: no hidden

meanings here, no obtuse allusions,
difficult syntax, nothing to decipher

or explain.  As one critic said, Budbill
is plain as a pair of Levis, accessible

as a parking lot.