by Jim Rioux

And the horizon’s promise a prop,
this actor whose forgotten his lines—
In this particular scene, his mind
goes cold and twitchy and he turns then
from the sun-ruined hills and faces
the dark theater of his fears, his peers
flanking him like mute artifacts
of his almost-traveled past.  And he speaks
the forms his mouth now finds far too familiar:
“I am not what I have seemed to be.”  Gestures
then, as if parting some curtain.  “This,”
he says, “is what I’ve been given.”  The lights
are coming up now on the audience.  “This
is what I’ve learned to love and what is fading.”

by Jonathan Bracker

Before falling asleep
The old man was surprised
All of a sudden
To remember with delight

The afternoon on which
When he was a boy
His mother
Informed him

That wingless silver-gray
And blue
Insect in the empty bathtub
Was called a “silverfish.”