by Michelle Lewis

Your lost arm calls to the shoulder as a horse
head cries to its carcass.

But another feels his leg a tumor — one no doctor will exhume
so he tries himself over & over to cut to the truth it is telling.

How do you carry your sex, the mermaid sings,
outside of the body,
how cope you your parted
peninsulas?  To the fish any space is a wound.

New calf in your self-made cradle,
goat hung by your legs.

tell of the body’s wreckage —

steepleless church the dead’s fingers
make, legs that make a gentle spear.  Make you my boy back
who’d take my fingers in his
to shift us his
car into second, third, fourth, to soar us some road to nowhere.

Hands our whole body then, sky open its arms to our arms.

by Michelle Lewis

Todd asks if you
have an interior
door.  You say
maybe, inventory
has long been lost
track of in this
garbage.  Sun causes
a rare scar of light,
pounds it into the
linoleum.  He says it
happened again, he
busted down the
door to Morgan’s
room.  Someone had
said Fuck you (he was
not clear who) so he
busted the door
frame again.  She’s
running amok at the
same time she’s
flunking, now how
can that be?  Now
he’s looking for a
door.

You say then how
much you dread
Christmas at
Stacy’s.  With
Kenny on leave
from the Army,
how he drinks
whiskey like you
or I water, then
sits in the living
room all day.
Todd knows the
joke even: call
Kenny in the AM
and if he answers,
you know he has
been up all night!
Between step-
kids, Kenny, his
son’s two friends,
two dogs, sister,
her toddler and
daughter, it is too
much for a trailer.
Plus Kenny
always gets so
grabby.  Todd
says the Navy
would never
tolerate it, but the
Army, that’s a
different story.

A chance group of
birds are we,
colluding in flight.
Todd rests in a
chair, knows he’s not
much in this massive
world, ocean vast
either side, country a
flatted quilt, and you
can’t help but like
him for that.  How
could he be — how
could a person — full
as it is with what
trestles up his
daughter like a fever.
Empty glass always
just somebody’s
thirst.  Somehow it
fills, and somehow
the world, like
Kenny, drinks.  Its
constancy the fabric
onto which we’ve
sewn ourselves.

Then you say, look,
the sun’s going
down already!  As if
dark is a daily siege.
Todd says god, it’s
incredible.  But when
it comes, it merely
scuffs its way.

by Michael Estabrook

I’ve been showing my age forgetting
the names of celebrities.  It’s frustrating
but I can live with it but after 10 minutes
unable to recall the name Faulkner
one of my favorite novelists I begin to worry.

He hates growing old, aching joints
foggy eyesight and memory but fights it constantly
even though he knows the game is rigged
the gods will have their way but he simply cannot
go gentle into that good night.

Searching through the magazine rack
pushing aside the muscle and motorcycle magazines
karate, mountain climbing, and girlie magazines
trying to find a copy of Arthritis Today
suddenly wondering how the hell did I get here?

He surreptitiously snaps sultry pictures of a long-haired
Latina stretched out on a blanket sipping a Bud Light Lime
from a sweating can.  He emails them to his buddy George
who responded with “what kind of camera do you have?”
and he knew they were now officially old men.

by Helen Reed Lehman

My brother, who is lame,
Counts among the little band of coyotes
Whom he feeds,
A lame one.

The coyote, we assume, ransomed his foot
To trap jaws,
Buying freedom.
The careening jacks must leave him in the dust.
Ground squirrels and lizards
Fall, sometimes, to the sudden pounce
Of wit and patience.
He has a witty grin, this wild dog.

My brother was a tumbler.
He broke his hip
Falling from the top
Of a pyramid of boys.
He kept the osteomyolitis
Into old age.

We told my widowed brother that he worried us,
Out There in the Desert Alone
Couldn’t he be sensible?
The desert was no place
For a lame man.
He didn’t take the bait.

The desert years have dried him, made him
Cactus-tough.
He could live
On coyote melons
And kangaroo rats.

Sudden squealing death and parched agony
Surround his house.
My brother says, “Life is tough.”
He says, “That’s the way things are.”
My brother wants his life to be
An arroyo seco
An empty river,
Not scoured by freshets of compassion.

And yet he feeds the coyotes,
Hopping like a shaman
As he scatters Purina.

What has mercy to do
With the Anza-Borego?
Fellow-feeling is the last
trap we learn to avoid.