The Man in the Window
by Michael Palma
Blocking the light, silhouetted in the window,
I look down on a man in the street below,
Trace his dark coat standing against the snow,
Wrap him in the blanket of his concerns,
Comprehend his progress as he patterns
The kaleidoscoping crowd in its swirls and turns,
Reach deeply down into myself and go
Stumbling and cold and glance up at a window
To see a man watching me, a man I don’t know.
Bachelor
by Michael Palma
There’s dust all over everything.
One morning when I don’t wake up
They’ll come for my clothes,
Five bucks an armful,
Cleaning out all the closets,
Wiping me off everything.
The mice are into everything.
The sacks have little holes
And seed runs out onto the cellar floor.
The mice snicker as they run away,
Knowing I won’t hurt them,
Limp fetishist of life.
There’s death all over everything.
Last winter when the man was shot
Just up the block, I stood and watched
The flashing lights from my doorway,
Knowing I am no redeemer.
It will be rain tonight. Let it come down.
The Sawdust Farmer
by Alexander M. Koch
the sawdust farmer plies the space
between waste
and resurgence
cloistered in his shop
delicately balanced pencil
behind one ear
creating lines
and cuts
forming pertinent piles
by his worn-dark leather boots
steel-toed
the sawdust farmer
curates his crop
intentions be damned
he will continue
to shore up
the cracks in the floorboards
with sawdust
penetrating the spaces
beneath his fingernails
his saw works
in precise back-and-forth
The Merkin Motets or Good to the Last Straw
by Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
Like an old hotel with plywood on the doors
and mothy curtains over black-eyed windows.
Like the difference between wage and wager,
we have a little spat over the cost of time.
Like the last survivor of The Spinners who
died at the age of 95 in North Carolina today.
Like listening to “Lament for Beowulf,”
its long suddenness replenishing its past.
Like having a shadow that itches, like …
a horn of fog on a Sunday without sun.
Like being good to the last straw, you appear
to me, a mix between a lifeboat and a flood.
Silly love. You party with extremity. Drunk
on being here, I keep writing the same poem.