by John Sibley Williams

It happens often.  Buckshot
and occasional glimpses
between plummeting black birds
of the city and early morning sun
continuing without us.
A whisper of the yet-to-be-
killed in the foreground fields.
A long corridor of water
captured in reeds the birds
flee before the echo
of the first shot fades.
We have come to accept this
as prayer, as longing for prayer
to continue beyond our bodies,
ceasing.  It’s good the trees
don’t take confession anymore
or we’d be out here all day
saying sorry with our hands.
It’s good there’s no name for it.
That the blood and stillness
beneath our nails has no name
is good.  That prayer ends.
This world with all
its worldliness plucked,
feather by feather.  This shivering
bird naked but for everything
it’s made of.

by John Sibley Williams

Still there’s milk.  In our eyes.  Dampening your shirt.
The moon’s mouth is not wide enough to consume it all
and the sun is mostly teeth.  Spillage.  Always a few drops
leak through.  Most mornings, that is enough
to remind us the smaller gods of bone and blood
are the briefest.  What we named it persists long after
the object.  It’s like talking underwater.  How our lips oval
around a word everyone knows but no one can hear.
I’m exactly this broken.

Your shirts are washed and stiffen on the line.
A moment of wind transforms them to ghosts.
All thrashing together and apart.  Bodies losing track
of limb.  He is not here to see the distance between us
waver from horizon to taste.  When I can taste you,
when you taste of milk, I say we are dancing.  Sometimes
this has all been like trying to dance underwater.

by Jefferey Cyphers Wright

Irk was one of dad’s favorite words.
Mom liked to pick up on teen lingo.
She said “stuff ” was “neat.”
She was a real people person.
She was chiffon and dad was concrete.
I walk in the valley where they met.
I walk in a “marijuana haze” (how
dad put it) in New York City.  He was
a quarter leprechaun.  She was half elf.
I caused them both a lot of grief.
I walk in ghost shoes, my words
a threnody belonging to the throng.
Had I shown more love I’d be less bereft.
My folks stay closer now they’re “gone.”

by Robert Tremmel

near the sea
where the water flows
underground, stops
at a break in the stone
where he holds
his ear close and hears
his mother singing
as she stands at the window.

Her knuckles
are already swollen
in knots
and her fingers
beginning to twist.

Outside, long shadows
sing along, pines moan
in pious harmony
flawless to the bone

afternoon rain drains drop
by drop and disappears
into a cistern

cool and moss-grown

back beneath the ground
and gone.