by David Cope

what became of the girl whose dreams dressed up for
Madame Pomponelli’s neighborhood fashion show,

the sixth grader who skipped on sidewalks to French lessons
with Miss Meloche? where the girl whose father sang

“if ya can say it’s a bra brecht moonlicht nicht,
you’re all richt, ya can,” she whose mother slumped

to floor with paralytic stroke yet somehow endured,
the girl chosen from her dorm to speak to reporters

after Pearl Harbor, summoning words to guess the pain
that lay ahead? where the bright–eyed wife & mother

confident in construction site as her children climbed

dirt hills nearby? where the mother finding marvels

in screech owls screaming in the dark night, the woman

sobbing thru the wall, she whose fiction hid why he

didn’t come back, she pleading with a son who howled
& refused his father on monthly visit? where she who

worked beyond limits, drove thru snows men shrank from,
she who stood by children who had no other succor?

where those early years whose endurance was celebration,
before marriages, children, distance, tangled memory

would divide us in ways we couldn’t foresee? where she,
now reduced to labored breaths & sighs, long sleep?

by John Michael Mouskos

She said,
“There was a knock at the door;
The boy had returned,
Walking through the night,
To be with us once more.”

Beyond the padlocked gate,
And seamless trees
Dividing our worlds;
One by one the branches fell,
I never saw them bleed,
It was never meant to hurt.
“God help me through this,” “Mama, I love you,”
Scribbled on wardrobe doors,
In rooms of differing colours,
In rooms with no mirrors,
Where the sounds have been turned off,
And emptiness fills every corner,
Is sucking something out of me every day,
Learning to lie while smiling,
Imagining being on the phone to mummy;
Where is she? Where can she be?

I climbed you and scratched myself,
I learned to bleed at night, where I can’t be seen;
I learned to sleepwalk with open eyes,
So no one can hurt me.

by John Michael Mouskos

“I hear Gordon’s been painting;
He must be feeling better in himself.”
“No, Gordon’s busy dying;
The cancer’s spread.
He’s at home in Ireland,
Somewhere by the sea.”

High clouds ever more distant;
The low horizon glares
With promises it cannot keep.
A wave collapses into itself,
Another follows,
Memories torn off,
Again and again,
In the dying sea.

Grief hangs in the air,
Kisses flesh it craves;
The mind hurts and horrifies;
So close to oblivion,
Condemned by fate.

by Pamela Twining

I laughed at Death again today
I laughed as only Life can laugh
snatched tomorrow from the jaws
of the bone collector
burning torment music scorching veins
the Dance not done the feet still pound
the red road, swirling cosmic dust
not bound to Earth so much
as leaping flying through
the round of days

Fell sorcerer wielding wand of endless sleep
sends Winter’s Aweful minions riding Hard
down frozen corridors of time unspoken
screaming imprecations
hooves striking blue steel sparks
from her milkless breast
they aim to take us Down
but at last moment we dodge aside
wresting bubbling Springtime
from the mouths of their Dreadful weapons
and chuckling rills guffawing mountains
dancing hillsides clothe themselves again
in vibrant hued defiance

creating the universe again and again
from a wisp of idea to the plunge
over the lip of the abyss
a Thousand tiny deaths!
a Hundred Thousand!

grasping at Life like the ring
on the merry go round
following golden promise and
Completion

I laugh at Death, not hubris
Celebration of the life and love
of this here /now
born again in every instant
Explosions among the planets
giving birth to Stars