Monday morning’s a three-minute brew, a click
at every turn in the kitchen to quicken
the oncoming hour. Fix a rushed breakfast
and down it doing slapdash dance steps,
only to be caught unaware by a sudden splash
of sunlight on pink tiles, how it warms and slows
the ankles back to sultry Sunday’s drift.

Still, it’s time to run and get the spreadsheet glowing
between bites and steps, to dive into an analytical grid,
square and tuck in diamonds of fact
while surreptitiously opening a blank page
to gleam behind apparent logic.
This one. No warmth here until I lay it in,
but the prodding intellect can’t divine
what makes skin leap to sun as soul to music.
Sneak a poem between the cells. Sip an image lightly,
quickly, leaning one shoulder back
toward slower rhythms, while facing
forward and typing smart into the glare.

by Rachel Dacus

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(Click to view at larger size.)

by Steve Wing

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In spring,
some sprinkle lamb with a seasoning of sea salt, with garlic, bay and rosemary, and spit-roast the meat, for a festive gathering in Genoa or Crete, but I don’t; for my gathering is of petals of my damask roses, a gathering of thousands in the uplands of Iran.

In summer,
some swim at leisure in the salt Aegean or play on crowded beach. Such opportunities are not within my reach, as I sort out the figures for the tax to be paid, on export orders for attar of roses, superior grade.

In summer too,
I receive the almonds from my bowing trees, buying sea salt from Brittany, to season a proportion of the crop, which is roasted to perfection and tied up prettily, in bags that I have made from patterned cloth. The remainder of the produce of my sheltered orchard, I shell and grind and sell for use in fine confections.

In autumn,
when the crocus corm, salt of the earth and worth the wait, comes into bloom, I take no rest. The precision extraction of splinters of stigma is an endurance test. The task is barely done, before I weigh and pack and label the insubstantial wisps, which have been set to dry, and seal each little box with wax, red for première qualité, pricing them according to the tax that will be levied and the value of the labour that has gone into the production of every gram of saffron.

In winter,
in Stockholm, some bake saffron bread for the welcoming of visitors. In Brussels, others, when dining in company, proffer pastel-tinted macaroons with after-dinner coffee. In Edinburgh, others still, invite invited guests to drink a dram and nibble salted offerings and cake of brandied fruit with, concealed beneath the icing, a layer of marzipan. In Lombardy, my stigma gild saffron risotto, for those who meet and greet in the restaurants of Milan.

Meanwhile, everywhere, glassy cubes of loukoum waft their rosy perfume, redolent of breathless days of May, bewitching children with their alchemy and getting faces sticky.

Thus the yield my harvest brings will take me to Morocco, where they lay lemons down in salt, to make a piquant condiment, added as ingredient, together with some whispered strands of stigma plucked by my own hands, to suffuse a lamb tagine with taste beyond imagining, renewing bonds with kith and kin.

For the very act of sharing a repast in rich conviviality is, itself, a seasoning, without price and tax-free.

by Rachel Woolf

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for Ronald Rowe

He descends
with me

and carries
up

lumps of
cement

and splintery
old boards

and sweeps
the broken glass

the heaps,
the hoards

of half-finished,
never-read, never-sent

abandoned-
but-not

abandoned-
enough

the torn,
worn

frustrated
garments

fraying, moth-eaten—
when

that is done
he goes

for lunch
and writes

a poem
about the sapphire

crystalline sphere,
split

facings of
the star dome

the infinite
at Hi-Fi

Pizza over a
slice

then goes
to McDonald’s

for
coffee.

by Monica Raymond

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oh, sure i’m still running around like a heads-up/off/prophet/profit/fit trying to cut off my very own de/(con)instruction and all other sordid a•void•able & available/a-Babel towers of post &toastmodern doom/daze re(altho)guarding our economy in/ex/&/anterior terror of too sometimes•always all afright with me henish-looking like some diminutive Kali only i’m in a bantam suit looking all-a-fright in a head&heedless moreorless banshee keen/for/keening. shrill before the sky’s death knell noi•some or just can’t write-it-off  darkest noir over•us•all! or to be exact, that is, of man/woman/chicken/child/everyone. really. so youbetcha any/old/witching/way this omen•amen•ahem of mine assures our sky will will will is falling tumbling twisting howling hellish as in all Kansas gone rumbling under black-cloud vengeance of truly veritas-verily.

ok, eerily also or/and get this: just-adjust-for black fright dust thrown/up in our frail•fray•feckless fey faces like dark death//aces-of-ominous. yup, inspades Dorothy’s frightmare of immense downer over/under/all-around. so these scaly-scrambling hen’s feet of mine scratching caw-clawings while carrying/crying/ cravening on in my fumble feeble way past every damned/doomed Mcdonalds, Jack-in-the-BoohooedBox, KFSeeeee those damn chicken killers! well, ok we all are box(ed) up/ended in disheveled feather-ruffled time for our very own apocalyptic downtheriver•plucked•soooofucked.

but as usual i’m running around here/everywhere rear/guarding this dumbstate of doom.

by Ed Higgins

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by Anne Morrison Smyth

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Here in Peru, the Andes change direction
job markets transmute at home
rain-shadowed landscapes form
ubiquitous suspension
in dry forests where the cordillera fragments
as pleasures cloud
deciduous acacia rise in river valleys
nest eggs drain
sedges and scrophs spread at our feet
foreclosures germinate
the río Marañón rushes through narrow gorges
stress tests pressure banks
angel’s trumpet boast toxic flowers
while bonuses startle
the spatuletail and the tapir live endangered
homelessness surges
here in this tectonic barrier
depression of credit
outside the level ranges of mountain
and mood

by Judith Terzi

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Easter has been cancelled,
now a bank holiday weekend.

There’s enough bad news.
No need to nail down the living.

No need to taunt the dead
with resurrection.

Underwood is no banker
but he takes time out

from everyday collapse.
He forks corn from a can.

The mob’s rage, he believes,
raised the crucified

three days later,
the resurrection required

a hammering fury.
The banks follow suit,

market exclusive threats
to likely customers,

who queue round the clock
for negative equity.

The banks’ hate mail
becomes a status symbol.

People offer their mouths
as personalised ATMs.

Underwood kicks a lamppost.
The mob has been cancelled.

His foot hurts.
Still, he must resist.

by Rob A. Mackenzie

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Something blocks my brain: rain
stuck dewdrops: glisten: listen
impossible to hear: time of
inflated deprivation: waves of
credit: soft porn and fetid kisses:
ears clogged: wet floods force family
evictions: no one hears above
the rift: Daily News: ways to save
pennies: homation: linoleum installation:
stayacation: media invention: report:
birds sing on your deck: remodel,
for a home-vacation: television
trepidation

by Julene Tripp Weaver

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‘Pushing paper’ fades
into etymology;
now we push 1s and 0s
from laptops to networks
to internet portals, and
strangers decode our symbols
like Egyptian scribes, creating
stock quotes and photos of hurricanes
and marketing plans for the latest
cell phone.

A security guard glides
through the marble lobby
of a class A office building
in the financial district,
shouting encouragement
to Friday commuters:
“Great job this week,”
he smiles, as if
our tightly packed boulders
of 1s and 0s
would not be waiting for us
at the bottom
of that Monday morning hill.

by Holly Wehmeyer

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