qarrtsiluni

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by Michael Aanji Crowley

I am not worthy

I breathe in
Approximately one eighth
Of the required amount
Of air to fill my lungs
I tell myself
Make do with that
You greedy
Useless
Stupid
Wasteful
Creature
Spread it thinly
It’ll last

I breathe out
Tense
Scared
And hurt

I am
Perhaps
A little hard on myself

by Rachel Fox

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                swimming hole or should I say
        concrete hexahedron of chlorine
        water & washed-off sunblock
                                                   was never carefree

        someone didn’t have a lunch
        & deep-end pennies weren’t enough
                                   for candy bars from QFC

girls layered shredding suits
swam a few laps & announced
              you could lose more weight that way

             fatter girls stayed wrapped in towels
             until they plunged in hiding blue

    & when diving board contests of daring
went too far, lifeguards stopped telling
us to walk & strapped the wounded to backboards
for transport we didn’t know
                                          their parents couldn’t afford

by Elizabeth Kate Switaj

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A pip, a tip, once a minute
of parking, its worth snipped,
a coin less in diameter or value
than a nickel yet brighter, warm sun
to a five-cent moon — so how did it roll
down to ground level, flat
disc lying unretrieved on streets,
forlorn beside the parking meters
it can no longer feed?

I’m penny-wise and foolish
about artifacts, keep penny bowls
on bookshelves, as if the penny and I, now middle-
aged, had grown up in the same town,
walked the same streets, rolled to the beach
on Saturdays. The cent has diminished
though not dimmed, while I’ve dimmed
and enlarged my diameter.
It’s natural between old friends, the change
of places. We might be change
made from the same register,
sad breakdowns of a haughty dime
taxed to the minutest, rendered
and reckoned as beyond Caesar’s interest, left
to the heart’s differently hued
apportion and shine.

by Rachel Dacus

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Got In laws? Get Indigestion Give Indiscriminately God! Incense Give Imaginatively? Grab It Get I It

Frozen Thoughts? Finding Trinkets? Festive Trap? Frank’s Turn Forget That! From This For Tuppence

3 for2

That’ll Do!

by Irene Brown

When she thought of economy, she thought of social exchange theory — the idea that relationships are based on give and take; our feelings about relationships rest on perceptions of the balance between what we get out of them and what we put in. Usually, she wouldn’t have put her thoughts on paper, but this time she did — as concisely as possible, using the medium of the postcard which embodies economy of words (few) and form (small).

(Click on postcard to see larger version)

The small print, barely legible, made her think of the papers she’d signed that morning — typical legalistic transaction papers that detailed who gave how much for what: 23 Euro for temporary ownership of a compact car, fully insured.

Now for a tobacco shop, to get some stamps. Driving down the bay road, she scanned for the yellow sign, partly wishing she wouldn’t find one. Yet, there it was. Exactly four minutes later it was done — the stamp bought, glued to the card, the card on the way, like her again, and her thoughts. Small print, she concluded, is invisible with family and friends, even though it’s always part of the subtext; unstated and implicit yet ever-present, like a PS suggesting an afterthought of little importance — which, in social exchange, really isn’t.

by Karyn Eisler and Dorothee Lang

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The goal now, as you see it, is to get home. The front has come in early. Wind jars the car on the asphalt. The rain comes hard and cold, makes flashlight beams of streetlights. It’s hard to drive, but it’s also hard to steer. Maybe one too many boilermakers with buddies at Nightlite. But who can blame you, even if you had been good about staying on the wagon for three months, since Liza left.

She hasn’t sent as much as a postcard. You watch her credit card charges on your bill, then throw it away. You tell yourself you won’t check the mail again until it’s time for the unemployment checks to come. Four years in the sausage room at Don’s Deluxe Meats didn’t mean a thing in the end. No gratitude, no severance pay. Let go without any ceremony at all.

If you can just get home, you’ll be okay. The streets are filling with water. You imagine you are the captain of a boat in strong currents. But you do find a way to stop at Discount Package Store for two fifths of cheap bourbon. That will get you through tonight, and maybe more.

At last you reach your street, hit the curb twice, coming to a stop in front of your dark house. You stagger up the walk, and you can hear them bark. They watch you through the window. The welcome wagon. They have waited, the faithful boys, Lewis and Clark.

You feed them and let them run outside in the rain. They come in, shake off the wet night, and lie down at your feet. You gulp the bourbon and watch them. First one, then the other, falls asleep. Let go. Begin dog dreams.

You think that dreaming is best in a warm, dry room. Better still if outside the darkness howls. What do they dream about? Old hunts, saliva, instinct. In a lurching pack under a grey dawn sky, waiting for a waterfowl kill.

Or do they dream of being human, inside a warm house on a wild night. Sitting back, plastered, watching the dogs dream.

by Christopher Woods

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1

I know the road
hangs by a thread

swiftly moss, sudden trees

pieces of sound
come like fish when called

say rain, say spiral
eyes murmur
so it is

breath can’t be simple, can it
everydayness of afternoon

breath can’t find
can’t be simple, can it

roots on a slant
get used to loneliness

salt, hemispheres, glass
break into sky

taste extends
as avalanche
quiet network of hieroglyphs

2

Night seasons
I speak a streaming wind

thrash, throw myself at corners
far off, hidden, lurking

under this lid of cloth, this flap of lawn

how hard to say
only what’s inside

every step sinks
myriad bees

widen my mouth
do you hear me

awake at the bottom of the glass

3

Why do I
speak hard things

days consume
let the sea

why do I
almost dwell in silence
speak hard things

alone—eyes
easy isn’t simple

without the sea
noise melts into hills

4

Any minute
is there then a world
night speck
what distracts me
is there then
a world
are these grains or dust
a world
how far can I fling
myself from sleep
how far
any minute
myself from sleep
effort coils
without face
without road
neither grain nor dust
any minute
a world

5

Underwater thickens sky

let me lie here
alphabetize myself

whatever you do, please, don’t come and go
whatever you do, please

thoughts ridge
unending

what if part of me all of me
into matchbooks

underwater thickens
part of me all of me

can’t stay like this

here the absence
here the drums

by Jane Rice

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Tell me this poem doesn’t exist on paper and needs
the red movement of a mouth.
Tell me you are in the poem.
Your lips wrap every word,
brown packaging, mailed first-class,
for the trip across the country between us.
Tell me we’ll never say this poem.
Tell me we can ride through
today in a winter of quiet.

The only papers in my wallet are lists —
groceries and wishes. Tell me these things
fill the blank flat space in its folds.
Don’t speak of emptiness or silence.

Emptiness hitched across the country,
silence filled the country.

by Gregory Stapp

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We talk fifty miles over wire, a mile
for each year since our eyes touched.
Legends still vibrate in your voice, fables,
story of a stray star, Atlantis provoked,
burst meadow beyond the hill, bedding down,
a tree counting the darkness, flower in a field
of rye. I remember a winter clean as salt,
memorialized snow banks, foreign country

of a couch thickly green and awkward
as landed amphibian, a blue wool skirt
of accordion pleats I blew smoke into,
my ear on its blue sky listening to stars
inside, eyes closed, mouth opened,
stretching, reaching, turning corners.

by Tom Sheehan

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