by Peter Grandbois

“Howl, howl, howl, howl.” — King Lear

A coyote’s howl announces, “I am here,”
or “stay away” depending on

our memory of the folding night
and the capricious way weather names us  —

enemy or friend.  The deafness of trees
in winter reminds us that words fall away

the moment we find them.  What silence wants
is to carry what we cannot across

the crack between earth and sky that threatens
to swallow each cry of our wounded lives.

We wonder how to get through most days,
searching for something we lack the language

to name, barely knowing how much of ourselves
we can take, afraid to ask how much will remain.

by Joseph Bottone

Chagall projected on towering white limestone walls,
lovers are waving at death from their window
you can see fantastic horses pass, red and blue.

A bloodied heart pounds on the table,
shyly naked, in broken moon light

and so much soul spilling out could not be said
to an angel falling,
falling while the clock’s golden pendulum
swings
glass stained red on the walls and floors                                                          with summertime
doves and fishes.

Images of Dada Paris the temple ceiling
an infinite opera of a Bacchanal.
Faces of the crowd, plush red chairs, in another room blue hands reach
for the colour of its soul

— he loves kisses
red and blue horses
and white goats,

Aphrodite
children starstruck
by the women trapeze artist
who sways like the man whose violin is tragedy broken.        People
tumble down from the sky,
newborn, happy and dancing

and women on their beds floating by
brightening the faces
in sweetest song’s
summer nights.

by Joseph Bottone

These idle days the hills steadily rise
range higher to snow-capped Rocky Mountains.
Spring flowers shut by night chills
open on slender stems
as they feel the touch of sunlight.
Wild field grass blows, dappled ponies graze.
My days, idling away.

I was born to burn in the gaze of
what my eyes and ears learned
to embrace.

The ever-changing melodic voice:
the river down the hill glistens rushing by.
Migrating birds simulating stars
sun their breasts on the topmost branches.
Heavenly beings clothed in familiar forms
transfer thoughts to me that become my own.

by Brandon Lewis

It’s come to this, listening out the window
all night as a drunk sweeps
the rain

waiting for something to bloom our bumbling limbs
that cross

a world in which there is no more    ‘ aways ’.

Even our rapture cannot be tossed out.    Waiting and building, slow and unlikely, it corresponds

over the sound-machine’s ocean waves
playing low at night for my mother, untouched by my father
since I was four

and through the bare hallway I don’t step down
as my buddy whispers for me from another dark room.

Between the charcoal
it was too late to wash through my poisoned teenage veins

and the glass of calvados I drink alone before home
to slip star pajamas on the baby.

Tonight my love calls me, bed-warm

ours voices unghosted
our wounds ungauzed

and even here among our nakedness, the question circles

whether to accept the unmusical world descending on us

as rows of horrible metallic green beetles arranged by number and genus, unpinned
or whether to fix a scrim with a smidgen of drunkenness — enough to       briefly feed
a bonfire,

enough to not search endlessly for answers

why my knees ache when it rains.    Why I hold my love
this way.

I only stare.