To Their Faces by William Taylor Jr.

This is not a
protest poem;

the world is what it is
and there’s nothing
I dream to change.

And yet a part of me
would savor the chance
to tell them to their faces,

the leaders, the killers,
and the rest of their kind,

to tell them simply
they are dust.

Like me, like you,
like every sad creature upon
this earth,

simply dust.

And when all that exists is dragged
back to fire, back to ice,
back to the void,

oblivion will swallow their
tiny dreams of conquest.

And if some future god
or some unnamable force
remains to bear witness
to what has gone before,

if their kind are considered
worth mentioning

it will be only
as killers,

as dust.

Dual Perspective by Helen Losse

A fading light filters through
an open window, & from where I am,
I can see a pot of dark pink impatiens
under a layer of evening calm.  Inside,
a folded newspaper, an odd sock lay
on the glass coffee table, off to my left.

A balding man sleeps on a green chair,
his stone-cold tea—with a small wedge
of lime—forgotten, in a cup painted with
flowers the same fuchsia-color as those
already described.  A nominal breeze is
present but too slight to alter the picture.

Voicemail by Jacob Johanson

america,

this is the holy spectacle calling
to demand
you stop murdering your angelic
by confusing faith with dogma
and morality
as some sort of absolute.

just where
do you think apostles
would come from
if jesus were around now,
what with his love
of sinners and parables?

he wouldn’t tap billy graham,
i’ll tell you that much.

oh,
and also?

give iris back her purse-
caesar
already got his.

please call back.

you know i’ll answer.

World Widows by Dan Provost

She dreamt of armies,
Men who fought and bled…

Different names
Different guises

All tired from strife
throughout the centuries of victories and defeats

Body counts told to grieving widows
Whose lovers were sold a bill of goods
by entrapped loyalty their men
purged so ravenously into their soul.

The women cried, present and past
Roman widows
English widows
American widows…

World widows.

We were born to suffer, not wander
as the famous song once said…

drifting into slumber…she knows
that one will not come home…

ever.

To a King of Sorts by Joie Cook

All of the women
Who have opened your heart with their wounds
Call to you now
From the last row of the dark cinema

Kelly with her enormous breasts
Chelsea with her thin, swaggering hips
Marlena, the poet, the one you loved best,
Who will suffer the most when you die

All the women of your magnum opus
Some call pornography
You imagine them breathing softly
As you sleep with your wife
Hear their sighs
As you retire into middle age – a sexless marriage
A mortgage and children you never see

They were so beautiful then
Your naked dreamers
Forever preserved
The women, who return again and again
A gift to the aching now of your fevered past:

Celluloid flesh reminders of your lost empire.

Joie Cook
San Francisco

The Queen of Harbor by RD Armstrong

I used to be a go-go girl and
Fuck look at me now
I’m working on my MFA!
That’s the first thing she said
It seemed innocent at the time
But I learned soon enough
That it was a very thin veneer

You should come over
Sometime and let me cook
You dinner

I have rolled that over in my head
Over the subsequent years
Trying to look at it from every angle
Trying to break the code

It’s funny how eleven words
Could say so little about what waited
Beyond that meal

I’m no good with
Women
I only say that because
I’m always single
Even Bukowski was
Married once by my age

I always keep up hope
Unfortunately I’m not a very
Good judge of what’s best
For me

They say you marry your mother
But I haven’t found her yet
You’d think it would be easy
Given how fucked up
Everyone is these days
But so far
My record is perfect

Miller’s High Life by Mathias Nelson

Sometimes
when I’m drinking
people turn into blades
of grass.
My mind becomes the breeze
between their blades,
slender shadows
that I move through and cross
without a smile
because it feels good
not to smile.

In the distance
one of them grows human
and tries to cut the others down.

He isn’t one of nature.
He is death,
the mower
trying to perfect
life.

A cow stoops
to chew the fields
and I pat its head
because that truly is
nature
with four bellies
full.

At night
clouds eat the moon.
I forgive them
when the rain wets my head
and tears drip into my eyes.

The elephants know
the benefit of mud.

I know
the benefit of nothing
at all
simply because
there is something
at all.

Motorcycle Mama by Alan Catlin

She had a heart
tattooed on her
right arm, a baby
in a carriage on
the left, a phoenix
rising between her
breasts, both eyes
focused dead ahead,
forged in fire, riding
the sacred Harley
night leaving tracks
on her skin as
if it were black top
on a moonless night
her friends and relations
shot things down in
for fun, on some Route
66 in her mind;
the way she was hauling
ass she would need a
road crew to do plastic
surgery on her life
unless she let up
on the throttle
but by then it would
be too late.