by James Schneider

Not Knowing
in memory of Cheryl

In fifth grade, I sat next to
a sixth grader in music class,
a pretty girl with brown hair
and brown eyes, like my own.
After class she’d whisper dirty
jokes in my ear.  I laughed or I didn’t.
Either way, she could tell and grinned
as she leaned close to explain it all.
I marveled then, and worry now, where
her vast knowing came from, where
it took her.  She moved that summer,
0and I never heard of her again.

by James Schneider

At Hot Water Beach
North Island, New Zealand

If you dig in the right spot scorching water
bubbles up as waves crash in.  A dozen
Goldilockses we are, shoveling out sand
for small pools to sit and burn in and digging

trenches for cold sea to enter, to get it
just right.  An old woman calling figlia
to a girl dipping her doll’s feet, a father
barking the German of World War II movies.

It’s fun and then it isn’t, but we keep at it.
Two guys with tattoos on their arms swivel
their heads to look for girls — and here, in
a pink bikini, comes Goldie herself!  But her

man’s plodding along behind with their gear,
a big bear of a fellow, hair matting his chest
and forearms.  She watches for a moment
with her hip cocked, waves her man over —

and there they go.  Goldie looks like
a divorced friend of ours and I wonder
if she also thinks that though this guy
needs work, she’ll marry him anyway.

But, after a while, will he start to growl
when she runs too hot or cold ? The old
tales, novels, psychology try to teach us,
and we get it, when the lesson applies

to others.  So here foolish folks sit
scalding and freezing, and, oh no,
a giant wave!  I’d better grab my shovel
and run back to where I can make it better.

by Bill Griffin

When she was sixteen it meant a ring,
silver turning her finger dark,
and all the long drive home from South Carolina

she turned it round and around and imagined
days and nights with him, 21, the life
0they would make together and haven’t they ?

Clearly, clear as that June morning stepping out
of the courthouse door, clearly now he has just stepped out
and in a minute he’ll come right back.

Today she searches for him, she waits inside the door
that for some reason won’t open to her push,
waits and knows he’ll take her from this place

she recognizes is not her home, line of doors opening
into strangers’ bedrooms, woman in a uniform
pushing a cart and telling her she must take pills

clearly not meant for her.  This is why she hovers,
peers through the glass to trees and open sky beyond
the sidewalk, watching for a face she knows

will emerge from the next car that pulls up,
and when someone opens the door to enter
she will slip out, once more elope to find him.

by Eric Forsbergh

To The Next Cold Case Killer
“The unlikely crime–fighter cracking decades–old murders ?
    A genealogist.”  Washington Post, July 22, 2018

When the milk eye of the moon is blind
to everyone but you,

when the raccoon in your garbage can
is Sergeant Lou collecting the cup
he saw you drinking from,

when you’re caged inside the story of
the California Killer on a chain,

when your brother, and your cousin, reveal
themselves online, pre-occupied, not noticing
you match their height, hair and ethnic mix,

when your curtains breathe open on their own,

when you won’t look up at night, because
the Pleiades sear pinholes in your retinas,

and when you’re startled by the shape of
a shark, a darkened cruiser easing down your street,

when sweat drips like tracer bullets
to illuminate your every bruise, under
a scaffold sky of black and blue,

just when, after twenty-seven years, you thought
you’re free and clear, the DA’s filed for arrest.
She’s strung up your DNA.