by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

The red wheelbarrow now rust-bitten
won’t make me reverberate

like wind peeling a silver maple
or know what my son means to say

when he play-by-plays a baseball game
or understand Joyce. It won’t stitch

a friend’s atrial hole or keep eyes
from a body carved in marble down the street.

I’ll fill it with all the evidence,
but its chain-link rattle can enter lips, pass

tongue, teeth, back, back, up and down, fall
into dark rivers and all the lit, abandoned boulevards

that lead the way to an old drive-in
closed for all seasons — sky-sized

screen stretched across lodgepole spines — and drop us
in the middle of a movie — the dialogue

low, edges blurred — filmed in a color never
seen: a fantastical, world-weary, bluer than blue.

by Bill Carpenter

Clone
     for Duff

Free man in a free country, family off to New York
for Passover, long winter through, love stabilized
for the time being, nothing to die for, alone;

this might be a good time to make your clone.
A snip from your useless male nipple, a quick trip to
Scotland, a borrowed or rented ewe, and you will be two

an old and a new you, and just in time too.  Death has
been stalking you.  No basset hound face, no cold feet
from standing on the shore of time, no hernia

poking through.  Your sins are forgiven you.  One time
you nearly mated with a ewe, in the Holmgrens’ barn, you
next in line, then you were called for supper, lamb stew.

Everyone got some but you.  Down in New York, they leave a chair
empty for you, horseradish, morror, salt, bread of captivity too,
but you’re not alone, you’re home, you’re grilling a pork chop

with your clone.  On this night like no others.  You pig.  You
should be on your knees.  Instead, you are watching the Simpsons
on TV.  You lose.  You are a Pharisee.  Your only religion is the news.

Consider the lamb of God — King, man and Jew — He was cloned too,
using a pure human female instead of the usual ewe.
Your clone will outdistance you.  He will outlive and outdo.

He will know every fact that you knew.  He will watch
what you smoke and you chew.  He will breathe the same air
as you do.  He’ll have false buried memories of you.  You’ll
need an attorney or two.  When he grows up he could sue.

by Terry Grasse

The wise ones say
Follow your breath.
Let it take you to
The river of energy
That created you.

Breathe in, breathe out . . .

Follow your breath.
Let it take you to
The river of energy
That sustains you.

Breathe in, breathe out . . .

Follow your breath.
Let it take you to
The river of energy
That destroys you.

Breathe in, breathe out . . .

Your breath is the
Trigger of mindfulness
The key to
The here and now

Breathe in, breathe out . . .

Did the Buddha or Jesus
Ever shoot a gun?
Invade a country?
Kill other beings?

Breathe in, breathe out . . .

Siddhartha
I sat by the river
The river flowed
The river flowed
Through me
The river was me

Breathe in, breathe out . . .

by Dennis Camire

The artist who carved it knew of the
former tree’s grand canopy of leaves
being a Carnegie Hall housing, for centuries,

a symphony of blue jays, chickadees,
and crows plucking the string instruments
of their throats while crickets, in the duff ’s

orchestra pit, stroked their sexed legs’
cellos. Indeed — with each inspired riff —
The guitar recalls the Joni Mitchell of whip o wil

Or Lou Rawls of bard owl who first crooned
such blessed tunes when the tree was a sapling
standing in the mosh-pit of maple or mahogany groove

for each dawn’s concert. Composing, then,
consider the past life memories of cardinal mating calls
leading the two of you to discern the chord progression

and words for a love song which sky writes your soul’s horizon —
so, soon, you see how you may be collaborating
with a graduate of the Julliard of the jungle

where birds of paradise songs’ still resonate
in her wood grains’ DNA; and, nights,
you set her beside the window with you

to be inspired by the blues man of loon
echoing from moose pond; and on stage —
falling into that deep flow state — you know
why you equate this wordless-ecstasy with flight
and feathered wings plucking the strings
of moon, star and sunlight.