by Luis Garcia

At first there was only back,
a falling behind the others,
a perpetual rushing
that wants to keep alongside,

but then there was —
let them go
let the particulars
of the landscape return,

rocks by deep water,
dark red fish,
the sun burning
as if to separate you from yourself,

shadows within shadows,
and a bend in the road
that leads only

to claws and teeth,
endless, endless
claws and teeth.

by Luis Garcia

He was feeling no pain,
feeling no loss,

feeling no strain
as he sat there

in his old age,
watching the stain

of youthful love
as it went down

the proverbial drain,
but now all he feels

are the wet, wet fists
of pounding rain.

by Luis Garcia

Blue Haze
for Miles Davis

Small songs
fill silence adequately,
he said:

and a blue haze
becomes a path
leading to a forest
filled with the music
of blue ways,

and the music
becomes a path
leading to a place

where a shirt of blue sky
is being worn
by a summer afternoon’s end,

and a shirt of sunshine
is being worn
by the warm feather–gray body
of the wind.

Small songs
fill silence adequately,
he said.

by Richard Taylor

Eugene was indescribable, that
was the trouble with him if you ventured
beyond the ivory crescent of his smile
into the night landscape where shadows
kindled his skin and warmed his eyes.

His shadows are not alone; my white shadows
wake in the same place, anonymous doubles
waiting in habitat safe from the wolves lurking
in day’s plain shade.

But Eugene has seen how morning’s mirror
holds each fellow flesh blue–black or brown
or bronze, blood comfort to its keepers
on the streets at noon,

when shadows gratuitous and well–informed
come face–to–face, heed the pitch of his forehead,
the trim slope of his nose, his cheekbones
polished with night.

Invite him to the off–center of your eye now as you
look aside into night’s neighborhood. Close your eyes
long white –out blind; cleanse them in dark mercy
and see a lithe shape part the night before you —
he steps forth.

Practice the black keys to equatorial airs,
black nativity and the great brown garden
from which we come and go below an African sun’s
indifferent eye.

Dance black upon vast tidal mud that colors
his memories and step ebbing timeless and
returning with the moon and agate tears
for a mother’s kiss.

Tend thus the garden of dark images conversing
among themselves at a dusk picnic, the shy index
of adjectives laughing across the palette of all colors,
endless selves, maps of original desire
beyond our fated oddities.

Word arrives, a revenant bird
from ancient expedition touching down
on a sprung bough. Flex the moment
and look up.