by Kevin Rabas

That night, I snuck into the practice room, the drums
crumpled up. I had sticks. I played the low tom first, called
on my heart with low notes, kettle drum roll, double–
(now) single–stroke rolls. I had given up drums
for writing in Arkansas. Saw the MFA as the way.
Was wrong. When I took up drums again, I wrote better.
Met girls. Danced and kissed and rose again, like a daffodil
come up through snow, a green tuft, then a trumpet of gold.
I was offered a scholarship to stay and play. But I left, went home,
read at nursing homes, sat in at KC jams, found my way back
into city and jazz. What I saw, what I heard: I wrote.
Music came once more through my hands: I held sticks, held a pen.
I wanted the two: music and word melody. I listened
to Langston, to Baraka. Someone was out there ahead —
with voice, with saxophone, with a drum. I could follow:
the blue neon moon, the brush swish, the trail of spent lemons
     on sidewalk,
the litter of guitar picks and halved drum sticks, the microphone
     stand
turned on its side, swiveled and pulled into two.

by Kevin Rabas

When the loan officer shakes my hand, his hand is a big mitt, ham shank, boxer’s big thick grip, and, though he’s kindly, he’s big, the kindly high school quarterback turned accountant, and he has that talc powder scent, dusted, along with strong cologne and new money, greenbacks fresh from the mint, crisp as new printer paper, with that whiplash snap when you rifle the bills, something never to be felt again: that freedom, that easy going feel, that blank check.

by Greg McBride

A toddler sprawls across his mother’s slim
and lovely lap, his hair a reddish gold,
his face a whim of freckles. His hands softly
trace her sculpted chin. Waiting too, I feel
a wanting well. Does she know that one day

she’ll yearn to hold him as before? Her hand
spotted, perhaps, as mine, still wearing
the ring his sticky, stubby fingers twirled
around her agile finger, her skin glossy milk.
How persistent, those days which drifted by,
slow, easy, one by one, slipping through
our fingers like river water happy
in the rapids, the falls somewhere ahead.

She, less lovely then, and wan, will want
him still. Perhaps she’ll dream of cherubim,
her boy, like mine, too long a man. Now,
about to roll me away, my own boy
leans from behind. I feel his hand, gentle
at my shoulder, his whisper, Dad,
is there anything you need?

by Greg McBride

It was a moving day, the barn–raising
commune of that time. Afterward, we all

milled about her new apartment, mugs and
stemware in hand, and talked of jobs and songs,

Sgt. Pepper’s Band. We were grad students,
some post–war, most pre–children. Her stuff

was boards, bricks, a platform bed, books and beanbags.
A smoking, single mother in motion and crisis.

Her little girl — coiled on hands and knees,
a sky–blue–eyed three–year–old, her hair

feral tangles of silvered–gold — mugged
up at me, tugging hard at some part of me

I didn’t know I had. That part yielded
all of me, which dove to hands and knees,

where we scuttled and growled over the carpet,
she and I, among chair legs, argyles, penny loafers,

the languorous legs of comely young mothers.
Overhead, they smoked sang–froid, they sipped

of cool, they slid on early disco. It was all
easy give and take. I could’ve stood but didn’t.