Poetry
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“That Sweet, Sweet Evolution Thing” by Catie Rosemurgy
Sex: mist-shrouded,
rhythmic
island.
Science:
bold canoe.
There are reasons for our strange positions . . .
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“Wade” by Shirley Stephenson
We enter Pacuare by river. A swarm of eyeballs rises to the surface. Crocodiles lunge at the boats. We look to the canopy. Grant us a cotinga, or a toucan. Anything above this waterline. We know the story of the Israeli who died last week. When they pulled him up, only his hand was missing. Like everything here, the croc was defending its territory—attacking with gusto and bright, deadly colors.
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“Beyond the Crepe Myrtles, Blue Yodel” by R. T. Smith
The snake in his new outfit coiled and shivered.
The mockingbird from high in the live oak mocked.
Mama on the porch rocker cleaned her two barrel
and sang how looping a skin over the rail top
might make a stubborn sky shake down a spurt of rain.
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“The First Husband Buried” by Tana Jean Welch
After eight years of empty threats,
all I can do is watch him study the high
lamp over our bed, his mind knitting
a noose from ties he never wore.
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“The Voynich Manuscript” by Deborah Flanagan
The FBI cracks the codes of Ezra Pound;
listening to his radio broadcasts during the war,
they hear “Confucius” as
“confusion,” “Céline” as
“Stalin,” “suburban garden” as
“Sir Bourbon Garden.”
Pound appreciates their play with language.
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“Any Enduring Answer Defeats the Purpose” by Steve Orlen
If you watch them from the far side of the bar, you might think,
By the quick slashes of expostulation and the table-banging of reply,
That they’re arguing. The waitress guesses it’s football, or their wives.
The old gods hear the words good and evil, and pause in their roaming,
The way a retired plumber will stop at a construction site. This is
The Shanty Bar on Tuesday night.
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“The Luxury of a Few Caved-In Moments” by Philip Schultz
None of your characters
was especially well-educated,
brave, hopeful, or beautiful
enough to feel loved by fate.
Some were molested by priests
and then terrified of what
in themselves remained unmolested.
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“The Hunger Diaries” by Lance Larsen
We hear the wheezing at the same time.
And look up, I from my bench in Hyde Park,
my fourteen-year-old son from his spot
of dirt, feeding pigeons. A woman in training
strides toward us. Correction, glides between
wheezes. She has aluminum ski poles, but no skis.
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“To an Iris” by Carol Was
Teach me your necessity, the labor of that need,
thriving beside spiked lobelia, cactus, ocotillo.
Teach me your tenacity with thick shafts of stem,
your stalwart climb, love’s urgent path,
your intimate appetite of papery tongues . . .
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“One Bird Feeder Feeds at Least Four Dozen Birds” by Gerry LaFemina
Just before dawn they arise—
each with its own music.
On the morning news an almost well-dressed anchor
gives the gruesome details of a local homicide—
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