by William Heyen

Iwo Jima, 1945 — a small boat intercepted
a transport evacuating a wounded Marine,
asked for the casualty, was granted permission:
Captain Charles C. Anderson
carried his only son,

Sergeant Charles C. Anderson, Jr., to his own vessel.
The boy had lost both legs & one arm
from a land mine.  “I’m feeling pretty good,”
he told his father.  “I wonder how Mother
will take this.”  Then he died.

In Washington, a Navy chaplain visited Mrs. Anderson.
The moment she saw him she asked,
“Is it my husband, or my son?”  The chaplain told her.
“A force stronger than ours
has taken charge,” she said,

“and our beloved son resides with us on earth
no more.”  She dressed & went to work
as a hospital volunteer.

by Emily Carmen

Manholes allow access to underground structures.
I fell into one today and hit my head on
cement.  Now, my DNA twists about behind}
my eyes and turns from red to gold, and
back into the python that bore me.

I admit, I was walking backwards and
had my eyes closed.  After climbing out, I found
myself at the local butcher’s; each pig carcass
was a year old, their angry eyes accused me of not
paying attention.  The trees turned black
against the sky, and half a porker waddled by
to check my pulse.

If you would wrap yourself around the pain
behind my eyes, I’d stop reading Flaubert and
the Christian mystics.  I’ll wear myself out
remaining accessible; or are you pleased that
nothing can be done, and that I’ll continue to
fall, over and over again, a broken branch
past the crater’s edge?

by Emily Carmen

At night, I gather up oblivion, breathing in shadows
through fertile earth and the scent of moments
gone.  I do it for you, and the bones of our
branches, the soil above us smelling of
wet onions and the moisture of photographs, long
boxed up in attics, molding and forgotten.
Remember when we used to die; we would tear
our dresses off, crackling through the melodies of
Wagner’s operas with his rich chromatics
filling the air as he leaned in the alley, crutches at his side.

We’d lose the reins that held us in and
gallop aimlessly, like wild palominos through
fields of sunsets, where the sky became sky, truly.
Stories you told me would waver between us and
hang suspended like ancient stalactites in the
recesses of the earth’s lament.

Now, our house in the clouds rises.
Five or six times you have wandered out
the side door, laughing into blueness.
You mean to dream, I know, and swim in seas of
pink and purple vanishings; to stray into places
beyond the reach of everyone but ourselves,
where all that happens remains forever, and
midnight ships pass a swan crested in gold.

You mean to dream, I know, and swim in the sea
forever.

by normal

“Sing love and life and love
          All that lives is Holy.
          The unholiest, most holy all.”
                    — Bob Kaufman, Night Sung Sailor’s  Prayer

an old man stands against
a rock
considering his truth
eaten up by flies;

a monotony of his days
claimed by the bacteria
of his circumstance,
a bronzed statue of his worth
dispersed into an insomnia
of remembrance.

consider a man in autumn
afraid of his bed,
assessing his sweetness
on the organic bodies
of his heart.

consider a man
killed not by combat
but by the emptiness
of his rest.

alone in the world,
the mighty crow shrieks

& the mice charge
like idiot kangaroos

against the tiny cossacks.