Wisteria

by Mark Allinson

Late spring when we first saw the house,
with its back door a cave obscured
behind the breaking waves of blue
and white surge froth of sweet blossom.

Bees, pollen, and petals made it
difficult to weave a way in;
and in a drench of gentle rain
the water-fall of flowers purled.

Summer slowed the fall to trickles,
and since you've missed most of autumn,
let me say the wisteria
now is mostly air and grey cloud.

The few curved spatulas of pods
rattle like the wood slat clackers
of a ghost-dispersing wind chime,
high against Himalayan grey.

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Copyright 2004 Mark Allinson (lit4life@ozemail.com.au).
Reproduction is prohibited without express permission of the author.

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Overpass

by Christine Klocek-Lim

The overpass holds the sky above me,
frames the last bit of sunset
where the sphere of stars
begins to circle the world.
My insignificant car
zooms miniaturized beneath.

In the distance the tips of trees
cradle the mist of a late-day rain.
Red leaves hide the city beyond
the damp freeway,
briefly hide electric lights
and the contained eclecticism
that shines stoically bright in the distance
until I drive past.

I weave among heavy traffic
into more quiet dark trees.
The cars around me are silent also;
these faceless thousands that drive beside me
blink headlights on at random
within the purpling dusk.
The lights remind me of stunned deer
but I'm surrounded by a circle
of startled human eyes instead.
Sometimes the dark is broken by solitary exit signs
that flash reflective letters like hallucinations:
brief phenomenologies lost
behind me as soon as they're sighted.

I can't remember anything now but driving
this everlasting highway.
All yesterday and tomorrow lies wedged
between the cement cracks of roadway-
I pass over them
and I'm thrown aside ever slightly
and I grasp the steering wheel tightly,
search the horizon for the next city
that soon enough creeps up and past me.
I ease again (and again) into serene dark
until every light floats disconnected
along the freeway. Signs flash briefly;
the other cars are zooming small impressions only.

I have always been here.

And now the world
is falling down onto me
while I sit steering on automatic void.
Nothing holds the concrete still
and fixed, so
I open my hands wide and suck in cosmos
and expand like the universe:
all starry light and black holes and nebulae,
until the road shoulder's grooves
shock me frighteningly awake and I see
a surprise overpass ahead beckoning
like a bridge in the world.

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Copyright 2004 by Christine Klocek-Lim (chrissiemkl@yahoo.com).
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Live On

D. Thurmond

There is someone's sad song
In the lonely dull heartache,
There is some kind of beauty
In a face stained with tears.
There is someone for each one
And each holds the meaning,
There is someone, for each one,
To last through the years.
There are tears that fill nights
And lies that won't fade,
There are moments of sorrow
That love slowly weighed.
There are dreams that stay hidden,
And the wishes are gone
But the love that is true love
Will grow and live on.

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Copyright 2004 by D. Thurmond (Medt@prodigy.net).
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Infidel Traveller

by Andrew Grossman

Qa'en
Shindland of the plains
Lashkar Gah by the river
Nok Kundi
Kalat
Panjgur in the mountains
Coastal Ormara
Nushki dwarfed by the clouds
Qal'el-ye Now
Feyzabad
Sar-e Pol
Khash among the grasses
Chahar Borjak looking over Hamun-i-Lora
Sarbaz with mammoth rock shoulders
Nebbandan across the meaningless border
Ras Koh
Zahedan barely with breath in the lungs
Crossing the Helmand and looking back
To the osprey resettling
Sandykaci the hint of water over the hills
Asgabat to the air
Mazar-e Sharif
Mukry
Serabad in shadow, in sand
Across the Central Makran Range
Across Pakistan
Bela and then Karachi

One offers a bare chest
Without savvy
Without plan
Without regret of birthplace
Regret of origin

Regret of hatred,
Nothing stands between
The gun and the flesh,
The hate and the result
Of the thrust,
One watches long enough
To discern that the telecast
Does not speak for humanity,
One feels
That the love for
a living being,
Whether mother,
Wife, animal, child,
Can be spread to a love
For other beings,
Perhaps to all,
More easily than
The determination
To love only a few,
a few of a color,
of a country,
a few of a religion

Standing in the sun
Standing in the 'enemy' stronghold
Standing in the blue rays of nakedness
To receive at last this relief

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Copyright 2003 by Andrew Grossman (andrew@poeticcopy.com).
Reproduction is prohibited without express permission of the author.
Visit Andrew at his website: www.poeticcopy.com

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Where I'm From: My Grandparents' Farm

by Cynthia Reynolds

I'm from hands that pieced quilts
        and pulled tobacco plants
I'm from attics with spinning wheels,
        a treadle sewing machine,
        its drawers filled with wooden spools,
I'm from woodsheds where cats
        peer between dark spaces,
        from barns filled with tobacco's
        rich smell and leaves browning
I'm from an out-of-tune piano
        with hymnals
        and letters from sons at war
        in the bench
I'm from searching for fossil rocks
        at the creek,
        from sitting on the stairs
        sifting through a jar of buttons
I'm from a family who lives
        where the fields rise and fall
        like the sun and the moon

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Copyright 2003 by Cynthia Reynolds (ellablue@letterboxes.org
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Taking the Wounds

by Luke Buckham

I hear subways in my body when I'm half-asleep.
Their big lights rattle in a soft-skinned dream.
You probably haven't ever seen
the real version of anybody.
But in my dream every citizen of my city
steps off the train without a mask.
I'm standing naked to the waist on the platform,
eager to greet these originals, mute
as an empty sea-shell
lying on an otherwise bare shore.
Shallow waters tremble in me and my body rocks.
The air has no temperature.
With apologetic, weak smiles,
like shy, blushing girls taking off their clothes
to skinny-dip for the first time,
the crowd splits into two rivers on my presence
as it passes me. Each takes a knife from their overcoat
and gently cuts a mark on my shoulders as they pass,
the cut getting lower with each passing passenger
until the backs of my hands are bleeding
and the crowd evaporated. I weep without sound
and don't allow a muscle to twitch.
I can hear their quiet footsteps
going up brick stairwells somewhere behind me
as the train moves off with a liquid, muffled roar.
Now the tracks are greased with my blood.
Another train is coming. I feel its arrival without hearing.
And I wake up scarred, walk out from my bed
into a world of masks, where the trains are all stalled
on the tracks that wind throughout my city.

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Copyright 2003 by Luke Buckham (aworminmywall@hotmail.com).
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Commitment To Memory

by Laurel Sparks

If I could turn back time
I would make every car on the road
A chrome classic.
I would bring back sodas in bottles,
Cloth diapers, 45 rpm vinyl records,
People sitting on their porches.

If I could turn back time
I would make sure there were
Candy counters, transistor radios,
Party lines, movie theater balconies,
Lunch boxes with thermoses again.
Women in headscarves
And The Mickey Mouse Show after school.

What. . .you say I'm showing my age?
Damn right!
I'd rather have grown up when I did
And remember the good times
Than want to forget this period we live in
Thirty, forty years down the road.

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Copyright 2003 by Laurel Sparks (lsparks37@msn.com).
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