by Adam Scheffler

I have lots of hearts, it’s grisly.
I leave them bloody, soaking the pillow.
I keep them in a drawer where they turn gray.

It’s a bother having so many.
Some are stretched as waterskins, snakeskins.
Some glitter like precious stones and are cold.

But my hearts are non–biodegradable:
They are made of kevlar and teflon.
They glow in the dark, but don’t light my way.
They whisper bad advice to me like bridesmaids,

telling me to gift each one away.
‘Take this, it’s all of me,’ I lie, already a new heart
growing inside me like a dark pearl
or shadow of a disease on an ultrasound.

by Tom Saya

How is it
all those worlds out there
don’t collide, obliterating each other? or
given the great distances, how is it
without colliding, they get close
enough to feel an attraction, which,
then, influences the very skies
they witness, the very liquids

of their eyes? And how is it
this attraction, this gravity, as
old as anything, sometimes alters,
is no longer reliable (how?),
and the orbit one fell into
becomes a speeding into darkness?

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.