by Matthew Caley

Supposedly, the
cool silver birch bole barely
two hips width shudders
like a woman on the brink
of believing in her man

They are two rivers
running into each other
clarities fusing
fast — where Coldharbour Lane runs
out into Camberwell Green

As the confluence of The
Elbe and The Upa

So, no matter that
bane-flower proliferate
cinquefoil and cress
or silt build scum upon scum
still they run on — sieve-panned and

as prospectors bent
for what wild seam of beryl
or jasper, jet-streamed,
jade, might yet convert sandstone
pummelled into submission

two rivers, one back
spine-glint as a string of bulbs
two Pilsner Urquelles
kinked, its quartz-strewn gravel beds
groan as the waters withdraw

I, fly, later slipped
The Ritzy and Rialton Road
to smoke the cool lips
off Bastheba, her moon-washed
awry re-aligned tank-top

overlap of leaf
against leaf, veined light, networked
long-legged fly floats
arced, stilt-stance on garlic bulbs
stippling estuarial banks

found a copy of
Roy Fisher’s The Down Low Drop
in the gutter out-
side of Bookmongers, leaf-mulch
sailboat headed elsewhere or

As the confluence of The
Elbe and The Upa

them sank in couch-grass
dew-nipped, swollen, bare-assed, blocked
tributary where
shyness meets shyness and forms
a pane of glass.  Breath.  Swipe.  Swipe.

His sly cigarette
Her furtive stretch for a book
— nipple-smudge night-smock —
Milan Kundera’s Slowness
Modernism gone, with it

The confluence of The Elbe
and of The Upa

by Jim Daniels

I smiled at the gate of Lord Larry, the Boy
with the Swimming Pool.  The small plastic /
rubber / aluminum circle stand-in
for Ye Olde Swimming Hole
that existed in the TVs of our imagination
without gate or necessary invitation.

Thus, the teethy grin, the invasion
of the Aw Shucks, the revelatory invention
of the casual coincidence, of thus, me,
in proximity to thus fence where yonder
I espy Lord Larry aswimming in the pool!
Hark, Lord Larry, may I thus join you, hap that I
be wearing me trunks of the swimming, aye?

Alas, Lord Larry remembereth
onceth or twiceth I doth hath calleth him
weenie dickface (in a fond manner,
I beseechethed on my honour!)
So, I was forewith sent forth
into banishment to the Forest
of Concrete and cheap water balloons
and ye olde waving sprinkler of my youth.

Pools of the above-ground nature lived lifetimes
the opposite of dog years — torn liner, rusted
whatever, slime and clogged filter, dead bugs . . .
And winter!  The season of discontent despite
snowballs and boot hockey in the street.
It was like, hey, what birds
are gonna come back in spring?

Lord Larry got demoted by his beer-barreled papa
who re-found Jesus and planned backyard
baptisms in the winter only to leave
Lady Larry’s Mom in the dust,
the sawdust, climbing the ladder to nowhere
around the now-bare circle of dirt in their yard.
Hmmp, you say, hmmp.

Where’d the time go?  Summer’s
already over.  My shift starts
in twenty-three minutes, and my steel-toed boots
have not de-slicked yesterday’s sweat,
but I throw them and my lunch bucket
into the waiting car honking its evil horne.

Lord Larry went on to — well,
Dickface is working besideth me
on yonder assembly line
and it’s his car I be entering, slamming
the door on any moral
this thing mighta had.
Hot one today, Larry says.
And I run outta smart responses to that
a long time ago.

by Gerald Locklin

When Toad goes for his morning coffee and
Raisin-bran cookies at the Donut Shoppe,
His wife asks, “Off to hang out
With your geezer pals?”

And when the Pre-Medicares
Are leaving for work,
They yell back at Toad and the other
Septuagenarian / Octogenarian retirees,

“See you lazy bastards tomorrow . . .
If you’re still above ground!”

by Gerald Locklin

Toad is bragging
How his thirteenth grandchild
Is due in less than a week, and

His eighty-year-old new buddy
At the donut shoppe says,
“I have sixteen Great-grand-kids,
But they’re kinda spread out geographically,
But I’d stay in closer touch with ’em,
If I could only remember
A few more of their goddamn names.”