by Mark Cox

What I’d pay to see, the man says,
is a bull elephant fighting a rhinoceros,
and reaching for the smothered nachos, adds,
now that would be something.
No, his wife (I guess), says,
A momma grizzly and a rhinoceros, ooh.
Yeah, (now their friends are warming up), only
they should be on a cliff to make it really good.
And throw in a pit bull, a bald guy offers,
herding them back to where this dinner small talk started,
and everyone squeals except the waitress, who,
taking orders for another round of drinks,
looks very pensive and explains
that grizzlies and rhinos are both wimps
and what about a great white and a killer whale?
A momma killer whale and a grizzly, wife says,
removing the umbrella from her drink with two fingers,
bears can swim, can’t they?
A tiger and ten wolves, the bald man says,
a knifeful of butter halfway to his bread,
but everyone howls that’s beyond civilized
decorum, seems cruel, unfair . . . .
A wolf and ten pitbulls?  He mutters
(bordering on sheepishly),
but everyone’s got their mouths full
and no one’s even looking at him.

by Mark Cox

Last night, like a match tossed off
onto the lawn, it bloomed and disappeared.
I kept smoking.  And my dog kept

nosing the damp summer grass, one eye
on a door he knew was sure to open.
I thought:

Another friend is dead,
another body I would recognize anywhere
has slipped into the clothing

of a busy street.
Still,
It’s difficult to miss some things.

Tonight, I hesitate again at the porch,
cup my hand around the dog’s ear,
and looking up, fail

to specify exactly what is gone.
I lift his head and make him look
at how the one cloud is so strangely

and unevenly lit —
as if the moon were just a big city —
but everything that amazes me

cuts no shit with him.
What an odd coincidence, him and me,
and that star that fell,

and all the ones that didn’t,
each of us looking past the other
at nothing in particular.

by B.Z. Niditch

Into your creaking office
with ivy toned wisdom
carrying Catullus
but fearing thirst and hell
you were defenseless
in a wizened gray sweater
crazy and cold
muttering about
the withered evergreen
the nut job Hitler
sullen Berryman
and an ambulance
to McLean’s hospital
on the way.

Outside your window
snowflakes quiver
you recite in Japanese
asking for Tate and sake
in your changing face
and I’m trembling
to share a few lines
from my wrinkled notebook
and wounded sensibility
a circle of deep affection
yields a beauteous shadow
across the room.

by B.Z. Niditch

Night travels the field
among a hundred days,
your bed enters darkness
on a bridge of departure
from a poor man
working dreams
against tomorrow,
the heated sky opens
beneath an indifferent sun,
unlocking a map of clouds
from a Peruvian cosmogony.

Your nightmares enlighten
the shadows of corpses
along vast mountainsides
no doubt, the earth
photographs your long face
among the pine leaves
trampling over your grave,
petals fall on meadows
pressed by your doorway
granting hours of eternity
from those who wont forget.