by Maeve McKenna

A while back, if I remember right, my life was a need
I punctuated. Then I read about poetic truth
and failed as a human. I was a writer. Every hour of ink
scrawled on my skin I scratched into scab,

flicked from the mattress pus–tired flakes —
an image I could never settle in, yet wallowed
in words without effort. You came close
to understanding yearning, once clutching

my graphite fist as it scribbled tongues between my groin.
It was lust, I wrote, mostly for effect. I believed
in the writing of nasty love,
and our role in it, mainly to get noticed.

I lied then, and also when I wrote of the moon settling
within your eyes as we made love against the stump
of a tree. I said you howled. You did make sounds,
but it was more whimpers. An owl hooting somewhere

in the distance grew silent in the last verse
and I missed the chance to say it was laughing at us.
Yes, it’s true we did have sex, but
who would believe it now; longing as dead

as our first pet, un–mourned as rhyme on paper.
So, I am forging words; it seems more truthful
than composing, inhaling to snatch a whiff
of the first draft of another learned sigh, crouched on knees

frantically scanning guidelines, the serrated blade
of refusal lurking close to my heart, my pinched
mouth circling a sweaty crotch where it might find submission,
or muster a smile as a thank you for the fuck.

by Kenneth Lynn Anderson

Nothing lasts. The glass
tabletop will crack. The chrome
legs will peel. The man
on the sofa will crumble to
the bone and blow away.

A mushroom sifts white
from shadows — a mushroom cloud,
the ash and white smoke
from incinerated haiku
in port Nagasaki.

As I walked the dog,
the night was calm: the elm black,
the sky gray, the moon
pieces of a broken cup
picked up piece by piece by leaves

by John Yau

They cannot say that they invented the atom bomb
They keep crickets in cages and listen to frogs
They don’t like to use a knife and fork
They don’t drink milk and prefer to eat pigs
They use a different horoscope than the one in the Sunday newspaper
They cry when no one is looking and they don’t count their tears
They don’t write words that can be translated into English
They brush in their suns with dusty black ink
They know how to stop juices from flowing to the brain
They claim to have invented spaghetti but they don’t eat waffles
They like to keep their old people alive as long as possible
They venerate the dead as if they were still sitting beside you
They spit on the sidewalk while talking with their friends
Their hair is great for wigs and they are good at manicuring

by John Yau

He believed his eyes shone with the pure fire of a great purpose
He always waited until his scorn expired before attempting to
speak
He introduced the coaxing inflections of a child into his weekly
lecture
He was mistrustful of what any sign of zeal might to do to his
argument
He pretended he needed to shamble away in order to encourage
further sympathy
He advertised his passions with sneers and pretended to hide
behind an exultant smile
He enjoyed what enticements came his way with astonishing
unscrupulousness
He airily lampooned his colleagues’ most cherished
accomplishments
He needed to makes sure he did not release unguarded adjectives
into the air
He was the author of books no longer pertinent to the discussion