by James K. Zimmerman

you’ve got a sick crow in your yard
                       the neighbor said
but I know this: crows don’t get sick and
            sit around on the grass
                                     no
they sit around on the grass to die

I looked at it closely
primordial raptor beak an elevator
            caught between the first floor
                       and the basement
nictitating membrane still a candle
            stuttering to say its name
                       in hovering darkness

I agreed to come back later

we don’t come get dead crows
            the USDA hotline said
just shovel it into a bag and
                       throw it in the garbage

I came back later

my crow was belly up
                       wings splayed unthinkably
a ship’s hulk in a dusky harbor
            flies hoping to salvage the eyes

I picked it up gently
            the stiffening black body
with a plastic bag and put it in another
            a pine box for an unmarked grave

tied the bags shut
            threw my crow away
and with a last breath
            whispered goodbye

by James K. Zimmerman

I lie
            between two pillows

the whole bed is mine
                        tonight

you are not here

I dream of sleep
            in a meadow of clouds
                        nimbus
                        and cirrus

stars dare not sow their
pale, demanding light
in the furrows of my forehead

I sleep in dreams
            between two pillows
soft breasts I lie
                        between

but the breathing is
            my breath
the softness my own
the darkness, yours

the silence
                                   ours

you are not here
                        tonight

by Preston Hood

Before the dead crawl out, I stitch it up
with the white line of my thinking
& watch the sunrise.  I enter the mist
though a wall of pain, tingle all over
when I breathe.  A woman’s lovely hips
flash across the day.  I divide

time into quarter moons,
halved apples,
hours of need & love.  I Listen
to the music – trumpeted lilies,
the mathematical beat
squeezed between tit & birdsong:
right now, right now.

by Bill Edmondson

Is not a town
But commemoration
Of blankety –blank
A few two – story houses
Some trailers    a road
Angling up under white oak
To a tidy cemetery    Baileys mainly
Who no longer live there
Tapped corpses tucked intact
And above these bones    composed
Bouquets propped by the pale

Beyond    for miles outside this plot
Under the constant fallen leaves
Under grass flowing down to the Mississippi
Chips    slivers    fragments of skull    whole bones
Reassemble
The river reverses
Blood rushes back