During a Time of War
by Neeli Cherkovski
Were you malicious or sweet?
It is difficult to remember
I suppose you might have been both
over time you are neither
I imagine we are in a difficult place
Unsure of ourselves, we name the birds
Right when night falls, shopkeepers
Close their shops, laborers go home
Friends drop in despite the war, or
Maybe because of it, some chain smoke
While others talk of themselves
Into the late hours, body bags pile up
On the tarmac, only foolish men
Rush to war, a thunderstorm rises,
One couple argues, no shame,
Come on and drink a cold one
The troops are snapdragons, earthen
Pots line the walkway, one day
Melodious clouds pass overhead,
Open your eyes, the war never happened
Pass peace around, look outside, an
Old librarian beats on a car hood, will
Someone call the cops? tell them
To get moving, try to relax, be somber
Soon midnight, we need another case,
Helicopters fly upside–down, I built
An elegy of geraniums and gardenias
In order to keep free from your care
Work
by Paul Vangelisti
Panoply of leaves, shadow of scant melody.
Rime of a certain kind in uncertain light.
Lost, of course, how else might such a house breathe.
With a little luck to beggar the question.
Scanter, notwithstanding this graceless time.
O memory of garbage trucks rolling downhill.
High in a tender sky some years ago.
See the eye continue to rhyme regardless.
And what’s left but an alibi for dreaming.
Half the hours you keep snowing in sleep.
Rhyming the dark this far and no further.
The the at the most sudden heart of things.
Those tears and tears in the savage firmament.
As long as your willful green’s in the picture.
Do Nothing
by Paul Vangelisti
Do Nothing
for Richard Milazzo
Do nothing till you hear from me,
be it a common case of romance
or the jitters of nostalgia.
Don’t try considering our chances
to embrace a string of token hearts
after all the dizzy times undone.
Forget the words you’ve heard of others
displacing years of shuffle and neglect
with more extravagant pleasures.
Do nothing till you hear from me
replacing any traces in advance
of a passion for poverty.
Someplace a perfect stranger might mischance
impressing with entrancing harmonies
and anything else unsung.
Do nothing especially confessing
to an age too old for facing
the taking of toast and tea.
In the Still of the Night
by Paul Vangelisti
Comforting at this end of a world
so perfectly what it seems.
A hush of tires north and west
along the dry river bed ever
discreet in its improbability,
where night remains unnoticeably
another day. Silences abed
with dark wheeling in pursuit of
lost and found and lost again.
A world disguised as white space
reliably incomplete, discomforting
in the promise of completion.
A dancer impersonating the dance,
song a river soon asleep.