most recent first                                                                    Barnwood Home

Hunt and Gather Farming in Brooklyn on an Autumn morning. Leaning across traffic to notice a wrinkle of herb. Fresh strands and strains my eyes. Beauty coalescing in drops around the sewer. Savoring miles of torment in microns of tension. I looked at a needle lying next to the hair barrette. Seeing the pick ax of a long life of 30 something years. Piling on papers with bold text of nonsense. Agri-light, municipal stagnation. A border between the work and the wealth. A comma, between the then and new. A coffee to invigorate and relax A bullet for a point, or a chance. A missile to defend and detect. A child to scream and silence our fears. copyright 2008 Matthew Putman bio printable WORDS
 There’s still meat to these bones
Squeezed like pulp from a ripe orange
Steroid injection metaphors
Grow like a malignant tumor
Deep inside the gut where
No cancer can reach them
These words that scream out for
A necklace of poems
Like a street hawker transcending
A cold winter 
No longer a hungry beggar
No longer a lost sailor In a leaking life raft
Floating aimlessly at sea
Wed to these words
Like a nurse holding on to the hand
Of a dying man copyright 2008 A. D. Winans bio printable Original Sin The T’ai-chi represents the world we see, Curved split in Gaia’s personality; Sentience emerged into the primate brain Already formed half ruthless, half humane. In quantum fields these opposites smooth out, But here where vision works and Newton sang And Jung knew best, existence may not flout The universal law of yin and yang. Innocence died when self-awareness woke And realized what it was. The cruel deeds All predators commit to meet their needs It sometimes did for vengeance, or a joke. The actor cruel, not the act alone-- A new thing Gaia’s world had never known. But unknown too were its antitheses, Compassion, sacrifice, forbearance. These, Emerging with their opposites, had come To keep the law of equilibrium. We ate the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree And learned what? Not a thing we hadn’t known In every atom since we left the sea, The plus and minus bred in every bone. But speak of atoms, we’re in Einstein’s world. In Newton’s, when we speak of Adam’s Fall, Electromagnetism says it all. We didn’t harken when the Serpent curled Around the Tree, we didn’t disobey, We just woke up. And “knew” a brand new way. Who was the first to think of driving game By burning down a forest? Do we blame That sentient soul for what he started then, The rape of Gaia’s world, and name it sin? He had a bright idea and it played. How we exulted! Such a feast that day! The goods and evils in the thing he did Obscured each other. We were on our way. The end of Innocence was not a Fall But a sea-change by evolution wrought Upon some hapless hominid unsought-- Erectus, habilis? (Neanderthal?) It woke in one or some, we can’t say who, But sapience was. Then sapiens was too. That was a garden, not a wilderness; No hunter-gatherers roam through Genesis. In the great myth, how natural it seemed That Nature should appear already tamed, That God should make the orchard then the man To keep and eat of it, and afterwards To grub out thistles in the sweaty sun-- That Cain should delve, and Abel tend his herds-- That crops and livestock made a human norm. Alas. It’s not sin’s punishment we found But sin itself, where God had cursed the ground And sentience throve on Adam’s hard-luck farm. It struck like every bright idea does, It didn’t feel like falling. But it was. copyright 2008 Judith Moffett bio printable The Rime of Poor William and The Recluse 1. When William dwelt with Dorothy And Coleridge lived nearby, Dear love and creativity Through all the three ran high As each on each the poets call And in between, compose, And Dorothy records it all In fresh descriptive prose. At Nether Stowey, Coleridge(s) Meet Wordsworth(s) every day. Alfoxden House near Holford is But three short miles away. Between Helvellyn white with flakes And Derwent’s ice-blue bowl The Keswick road to Grasmere makes A nice fourteen-mile stroll. What C. endures from wife, ill-health, And want of meeting ends Weighs lighter in this commonwealth Of sympathetic friends Whose talk so fevers William’s brain, He cannot chuse but fuse His Sister and that power train Into one potent muse. 2. About the steep and grassy hills Like Herdwick lambs they bound, As poems crowd like daffodils From Nature’s pleasure ground. Through hollies, hawthorns, elms and oaks The beck of Grisedale glides. A hundred silver pencil strokes Plunge down Helvellyn’s sides. Beclouded moon in blackest night, Then all at once a glim— “A vivid sparkling streak of light” Afloat on Rydal’s brim. From Somerset and Grasmere vale The tale comes down to us (For Fate, as in a fairy-tale, Contrived to frame it thus) Of brother sister friend, all three Bound fast as to a stake, Who burned white-hot for poetry And one another’s sake And who, as one composite ghost, Still haunt Helvellyn’s brow, Knowing those few years’ work is most Of what we value now. 3. For heat so fierce consumes its source, Time marches, Fate contrives, A rupture never called divorce Yet alters hearts and lives. 1803 sees Coleridge go From bad to worse to worst. His parting deals their bond a blow, But Wordsworth breaks it first: 1802 sees Dorothy Flung senseless on her bed While at the little church nearby Her darling love is wed. In Grasmere’s dovecote now reside A queerly different three, The poet-Brother and his bride And hapless Dorothy. She does not say, she may not think, Oh why must William marry? Her quill records in firm black ink Its deep regard for Mary, Yet now she keeps inconstantly The journal kept for him In times when joy was full for D. But not quite full for Wm. 4. Two women whisk about the house To scratch his smallest itch; A stranger, watching sib and spouse, Might question which was which. Soon Time will make the cottage ring With childish merriment . . . Perhaps, for some, there’s such a thing As being too content. Like Coleridge/William/Dorothy I thought outside the box. I knew how zestful life could be And not be orthodox, And friendship/Nature/poetry Were my obsessions too. But Time and Fate caught up with me And then I married you. The house of We! I’d hardly guessed How life could be, lived there— How joy, burst out in sparkles, blessed The ordinary air, But when my well of verse went dry That was a body blow. Dismayed, we’d quiz each other why, And now I guess we know. 5. How young they seem and confident, Their golden years how few, Three stars aligned—three orbits sent Careering out of true. Poor Coleridge rides the pitching deck Toward Malta and the sun, A heartsick opium-eating wreck And all of 31. For fifty years poor William strives; His great Wordsworthiad, Conceived with Coleridge, never thrives. Poor Dorothy goes mad. One Fate, that broke me on the wheel Then let the well refill, A harsh, unlooked-for devil’s deal But not refusable. It’s April. Through Kentucky’s trees A frill of green expands, As buckeyes first, then hickories, Unclench their little hands. On Part-Time Creek, right now’s the Part, Its apothéosis! . . . If you were still alive, dear heart, Would I be writing this? copyright 2008 Judith Moffett printable Childhood without programming They have all been lost, ancient chants of my childhood allee allee oxinfree – all ye, all ye, out’s in free. Ring around a rosy. all fall down, and we did. London bridge too was falling and the fair lady imprisoned. O Mary Mack Mack Mack all dressed in black, gone the way of the elephant show. Red rover has finally gone over for good. My childhood was wild. I wandered in overgrown fields under factories’ yellow skies stirring up rabbits, quail and rats by the Detroit Terminal railroad tracks. Allies were full of plunder in trash. I bicycled miles exploring. I grew claws and teeth and my mind expanded like a sponge full of blood and water, the sweet liquor of freedom. I unmapped my destiny. copyright 2008 Marge Piercy bio printable Early spring in the garden shed The small skulls of mice like dice rolled by the wind spill from the dusty counter in the shed where tools hang, a whole fleet of skulls: ghostly kayaks, ivory dinghies. What small rodent catastrophe struck here? These are nothing like pellets I find at the base of pines where owls perched, bones smashed together like cars gone through a junkyard compressor. Each moon of skull is full, complete. I show my orange tabby but she yawns. No life here to chase, she says. These bones will never rise. Nor will my own. I see my skull lolling on too naked shoulders sized somewhere between mammoth and mouse. Copyright 2008 Marge Piercy printable SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI They are polishing up the new sidewalks at the corner of Wangfujin.* They crouch above their machines, pressing them hard to the stone. The granite dust muffles them. Their faces are swathed in towels. They are invisible to passing shoppers. They have been told the sidewalks will last as long as the Wall. On a curb, a beggar strokes his bow across his single-stringed instrument.** They are writing old poems on the sidewalks at the Temple of Heaven. They dip long brushes into water. Gracefully, silently, they spell out their characters, large and flowing onto these concrete scrolls. They pause to consider whose calligraphy appears most praiseworthy, most enduring, and as they deliberate, the sun rises, erasing their poems, stroke by stroke. *Beijing’s best known shopping street. **The traditional, two-stringed erhu. copyright 2008 Elizabeth Schultz bio printable The Editor Loses his Temper Some poems are meant to be seen. This is not one of them His pen slips at the end of the last word The work had been too busy Too frenetic Too desperately witty Miles is having a bad day The taco sauce, red as blood all over his white shirt should have told you that His wife is leaving him because he doesn't believe writing romance for money is respectable He takes her money but won't take her seriously Now she has fallen for some guy who looks as if he has walked out of one of her novels like Galatea, but done with a keyboard, long Grecian locks, olive skin and sea-green eyes, that seem like large fish circling in a too-small tank Miles is having a very bad day A dog bit him on the ankle this morning the neighbor's chihuahua, only two small red crescents, but here he was soft on the old woman with marshmallow curls piled high on shrunken head as if to compensate for size, an architectural attempt at immortality Now Miles is mad as his bite itches and his office is too damn hot The painter last week sealed the right window and the AC is broken Finally he unleashes his ire on an anonymous poet who resides in a dry Western State with six cats, two children and seven ailing houseplants that she tells him about in the cover letter as if he were an old chum copyright 2008 Lucy Simpson bio printable The Indoctrination of Pastures         Light erupts, calling forth the multitudes for the great grazing. The soft hills sigh as they come; A trickle first, then a great flood, their feet making new soil ancient with the lessons not learned. There is a great jubilation, as above, the stars become boundless fountains of wonder. Their light rains down, and the grass grows endless with that which is everlasting. The hills are enveloped by a great cacophony of life, its voice enriching the sweet soil beneath. "But, see!"  A voice says. The words scream metallic, hollow and hungry, awaiting the offers it will demand, "I must show you how to live." Rusted hands of piety tear the ground, twisting with narrow fingers that ooze fear and contempt. A great mourning is heard, as the stars fade away, darkness, the only witness to the death of wonder. As the last star fades, the soil becomes a dry and hungry thing, swallowing whole that which once blessed it with knowledge. Barren, barren, the eternal hills now stand, as all life is buried under the indoctrination of pastures. In that veil of black, of that which does not sing, a single blade of grass, green, looks up through the darkness in defiance, straining to see the stars once more. copyright 2008 Giovanni Diaz bio printable To my little sister, dying When it all started to slip,
you crumbled on the overstuffed sofa and cried,
My hands look so old. Saliva stretched across
the quiet chasm of your mouth. Sobs stormed through.
I reached for you, crumbling too, trying to shake the feeling
you believed your life was not what it was supposed to be,
that your husbands and your church didn’t deliver
what you were promised if you were good
(which you were not, you wearily presumed).
And so you took what you got,
and it was not enough to heal you. I desperately willed my muscled love Enough
to shine on all your night secrets and patriarchal shame
with such brilliant unflinching beams
that tumors would turn
from your flesh into my light and evaporate
like water in a stagnant desert puddle. I, too, am naïve,
to think I could reach into such rock sheltered shadow, undo
or improve the gorgeous geology of your being. How could I move the craggy Utah bulges,
shift the polished slots of sky above
your callused years of fear of not
attaining celestial glory, salve
the endless pinpricks of husbandly, venereal betrayals,
ease the guilty infidelities of your throbbing,
wanting more than disease or dependency from
the ones for whom you saved your lust and mud. Can any sister do this for her sister?  I wanted to.
My blood cried for it, but I am not light or even wind!
Our curving walls are too bent to bend light around,
and the wind just carves us deeper. So I am lost
in endless slot canyons, crouching here,
in the shade, in your hand.  I won’t budge. 
When you leave these rocks behind
and your dull eyes soften suddenly into shine,
may the innocence of your stubborn love finally
rise from the pores of your hands like vapor,
prismatic through the sky, casting paths of wet light. copyright 2008 Rachel Kellum bio printable Chico Creek I should have written this while standing on the footbridge beneath the giant black oaks. Trees grow huge by rivers though I never knew oaks could tolerate so much water. Water is what I remember. Peering down, my eyes were forced to choose between the rounded bottom stones trailing bright green algae and the surface twisting like Saran wrap. One can’t see both— a metaphor, I suppose. How can anyone commit self-pity without laughing? copyright 2008 C. E. Chaffin bio printable keep the moon hangs in the sky like a piece of clanging metal I could be with you except thrown away nights lost pale moths in trees tunes you hum slat sided barns the cold cold birds inside you may notice the smell of the mown fields there’s lacquered back beetles I may feel your fingers on my temples being sand sand copyright 2008 Peter Layton bio printable Things to Do Again I’ll hear the katydids hum at the bottom of the high tension tower steel mechanical men. And we’ll watch them walk their stamped metal struts to the over volumed cities. All of the ants with the lights on. You could pass these song tune hours here with me. Blinding the air whatever you have to say. copyright 2008 Peter Layton printable Robin Hood Comes to Bihar, India     The landlord keeps his valuables inside a mahogany chest. Within the chest, there is a steel safe. We, the young slaves,   have planned out everything. We got the idea from a Penguin Classic. Within landlord's trash, the book was smeared with pigeon-droppings   and pages were eaten by worms but a picture remained intact. The King of the Thieves and his followers, wearing leaf crowns,   ride horses and give away gold coins imprinted with king's head, jewels sparkling like raindrops. And the landlord's daughter,   who is our age, said she would come along. Tonight, we will break into her father's coffer, if required,   will put his dogs to sleep using the extract from the poison tree. We have no horses but we can walk into the deep woods   where we will build a new kingdom of thieves. I will marry the landlord's daughter and dole out our stolen treasures   to our starving parents. At midnight, before we begin our quest, I watch landlord's soldiers marching toward our mud cabins,   and ahead of everyone, the landlord's daughter showing them way. copyright 2008 Sankar Roy bio printable   First Day of April                                                 for T S Eliot     How do I sing a happy song, a throaty song rasping through the reeds, a field full of lilacs dense in their desire when a beast still rests in the shade of the ancient rock covered in blood-red moss? I wish you were here   and we could go over this script of the lizards' movements, trace their slide into season's ripeness. Together we could discover like good students the anguish marks,   disentangle the cobweb strewn— a huge shawl. I wish I could show you the shirt, torn from the flogging, shards of broken lantern beside the dark pond where I took refuge,   the thicket behind which I used to hide, a dark night burning in its florescence of the bug light. I wish I could show you the shemul tree still discarding dead flowers like stars, like dead fetuses,   I am trembling under the log bridge, from the fear of being discovered by the flashlights, a wolf still hounding somewhere: Don't tell your mother what we did together, a good boy never disobeys his master. How am I again rattling, a canister,   puppeteering, a skilled puppeteer, opening another theater. The stage is set, the light is on, the sound is drumming and dark-glassed priests in the front row,   ladies shine wearing necklaces made of human teeth, hands rise to break into claps: good job little master, good job,   keep pulling the thread, let the dolls dance in the yard of a happy home, windows lighted, we are two, we have two,   a dog snoozing in the porch. Come; let us now glide toward the ancient pasture where in the middle of a pond there is a discarded temple, centuries old where once a god lived, snakes used to take refuge during storm seasons.   A god is never again a god, a curtain is never simply a curtain, it is the cover of a story book full of grisly fairy tales: beasts feasting in the fern shade, a hood rising above the prairie grass, she is coming, she is coming,   let us get her, put her into a timber box, let her sleep in the coolness of the wet ground, soon it will be summer again and she won't be able take all this heat, poor baby, sleep, sleep some more.   Don't remind me the empty ha-ha of the madness ward, shelters shimmering across the paddy field, brick lights of school house marked   for the condemned kids, their dumbness, their desire to jump for a bowl of rice soup, their wish to meditate like vultures over their dead parents' bodies. The one,   the only one who could save us, could take us out of the rat hole; the one who knew how to blow his horn pipe and raise us, the skirmished mice, from the cupboards under the kitchen sink,   from the drawers full of ancient scents, get us to skirt through the drainpipes, shoo off the window of the loony house, shrieking we're  spring birds, being famished for mud water,     head down the hillside following his dark cloak. Is he now lying in a cornfield, counting stars like a dead mouse?   Why do babies always wake up in the milk hour with their colic pain, with their feeding frenzy from a dead mother's breast? And never again ask me to chant that old song which I sang before sitting in an open field, looking upward,   staring at a cloud alighted in its cedar light, expecting a disk squirming through the rain bang. A head was hiding behind the headgear, a skull marked flag   in his mechanical hand. What happened then? His head fell off, his face was visible then. Not anymore.   The grass came first, then came the swarming flies, crawled over his swelled torso, a fat plum. A lone tree grew on the edge of the field, it waved arms. Nothing more,   end of the story. People of the world love their lies, they compose happy songs, lullabies, woman tell folk tales to the grown up men, they drink from a public pitcher, slaughter   bison, again drink its blood and then fall asleep like babies on their divans. The dust begins to settle over the old books, the thesaurus. The ant calligraphers make their marks;   water drips from a skin sack. The sky warms again expecting another start, the rain comes, we held umbrellas up and remember a few missing words   benediction, sanctification, love.   Homes are alive again in our mothers' droll songs, our fathers return after conquering antelopes' domains, again walls watch the dances of beds and I arrive— an unwanted germ. copyright 2008 Sankar Roy bio printable Where are you Living? Where are you living? under the stars in my fathers heart in my mothers dreams On the strings of my fiddle in the glow of the candle in the soul of my dog in the breast of my lover Do you make a living? being a gypsy with dark eyes piercing startling minds and soothing misery On the strings of my fiddle in the glow of the dancer in the soul of my father in the breast of my mother copyright 2008 Jon Parry bio printable Another of the Capitals of Europe That Isn’t Perfect Either     Mark, rustling idly the sugar pack, abruptly rose beet-red and they all looked away. He excused himself to the WC, but when he returned his face glowed even more brightly red than it had done before, and they saw that he had got a friend.   The port below lay hazed in smog, the city behind them a glaring maze of mostly ordinary, if not downright ugly buildings. Mention the sunset to me one more time, Loris said to Chris, formerly his good mate, and I’ll punch your guts out.   Meanwhile Trish, arched brow implying haughtily to Lawrence, who drawing himself up to his full 4 foot 9 inches imperiously paid his tab and made as if to tie his sweater around his waist but fiddling with a silken cuff sheepishly demurred, demurred.   Would they catch the bullfight at last, Farik mused, ironing the sheets of a sports paper with ink-stained hands, or despondently affect ennui over another round of fake absinthe, gypsy palm-readings and unlit Galoises?   Do they actually make love in this town, Kim guessed, or do they only make movies depicting an abstract courtship leading inevitably to a bestial and regrettable act? What if children could be grown in yeast after all?   Quitting the café, they attended the Language Institute seminar on the stelae of Tiahuanaco, took siesta with a pillow fight, reeked of strong cheeses, mouthwash and red wine, and fumbled the simplest phrases later in the street.   But back home in the fall even their close family members could see there was something different about them now. Even the way they ordered their coffee. Even the way they pronounced the words “salad” and “croissant.” copyright 2008 Randy Gentry bio printable Two Suitors     The boy was slight and poor, and it’s true the gaslight ran like oil down his black curls. His knees scraped the paving stones while he went in search of the missing pin.   Every time she smelled cigarettes she wanted to go inside with him for a drink. She needed a new blouse because of the smell. If he were only half as beautiful in the light of day, she thought.   This other one was only feeding almond leaves into a candle, grinning with his one gold tooth flashing, all his vest buttons ready to pop and a snow of dandruff settling on the tabletop.   A lacquered wagon drawn by an ass in blinders, with harness bells jingling (item one). That wasn’t going to cut it, her uncles said, no matter how many cups were poured.   My father the café-owner’s cat lashed out and made a thin line of blood on his nose. If you had seen him roar! Or that eruption of coins drizzling onto the flagstones.   Later she surprised us all with her decision. Fancy or no fancy, declared she, feathers are one thing and straw another: the life he offers is better than roast pigeon every night. copyright 2008 Randy Gentry printable guff     Forty-six, he was diagnosed one week and gone the next—leaving everything to her.   She’d thought their life ridiculous— she in Boston, he in St. Paul,   marriage a thought never mentioned, the possibility of conception   put off until put off again, the every-weekend stay   become the monthly flights, vacations lost to too ambitious deadlines,   to family crises, to deaths. And now their life lost to his death.   But their arrangement had endured. For him—well, he’d joke he simply   liked her mind and needed her body. She’d smiled at that.  And she’d liked   the responsibility of doing his repairs first in his apartment and then   in his house—the trickling toilet, the torn screen door, the loose doorknob . . . .   She’d liked—actually loved— that day she couldn’t coax him   to ride along to the hardware store. How she had enjoyed his excuse   that he was a man who couldn’t go anywhere near to buying   a hammer and chisel for fear he’d be drawn        into museums with statues by the compulsion—vestigial   in all but the rare few— to chip off all those stony noses.   Implausible, ludicrous to have lived with such guff   now that she has everything to sell, now that she no longer has their life,   now that he can no longer hold the ladder and make her laugh to its wobble   while she cleans the eaves. copyright 2008 William Aarnes bio printable Not One Iota oh the deep night that already extends over the world its thick blackness piling up everywhere in the sky light being killed by the death of the sun frightens me especially if it’s autumn, when the wounded year collapses oh how grim it will be to come home at evening and see sinister shadows swell and make an impassable wall oh how hard it will be for us to endure the immensity of the universe that crushes us and yet how sweet it is to hear around us people in the arms of their dreams some falling some going to sleep the dreams of humanity are grander than the universe the human dream embraces a world that never dreams but the sum total of dreams dreamed sine we first dreamed will never change the universe by one iota William Cliff, trans. copyright 2008 Alfred Corn bios printable Ballade of the Mouse after Charles d’Orléans there are some who say that I’m dead well what with all these illnesses we hear so much of now lives blink out in a heartbeat and the instant I stopped appearing in the spots where one I used to perch my puny frame, they made a grave pronouncement I hereby trounce as tactless jive this little mouse is still alive at my age, granted, quite a few have traveled to the other side and I who trawled so many ports should long ago have snapped my neck though I climb trees and haul myself up rotten or worm-eaten ladders and though I hike down slippery slopes slathered with sodden clay and goo however recklessly I strive this little mouse is still alive I have no child I have no wife my home’s a creaky tenement with ceiling plaster so crazed and cracked a falling chunk could split my skull the other tenants here belong to the “Lumpenproletariat” but those who hang out in the hood have mugs you’d take a stroll to look at even in this disgusting hive the little mouse is still alive ten I see fall down on my right roughly as many on my left so come fair weather or come rain I go out in the streets to scratch myself just where things tend to itch or stretch out in bed like a sleeve in order to watch vicious shadows parade across the wall beside me where on earth do I get the drive? can the little mouse still be alive? and if the telephone should ring despite the rumor of my death it must be people would prefer to think I haven’t yet stopped breathing though the sun won’t give the sky the time of day though cars blare and our city heaves a death rattle worthy of rat nation still there are kind souls one of whose honorable feats is believing that my heart still beats oh my friends you who’ll laugh to hear I’m not yet six feet under may surprises please us when they arrive good god the mouse is still alive William Cliff, trans. copyright 2008 Alfred Corn printable Le Gourmand d’Amour   I lard the beef as one should, but still shudder at the tête de veau — it's the teeth, honey. I know it was merely my American squeamishness that made me balk when presented with the finest of treats: that shiny jewel of the fish eyeball that I declined. The embarrassment I caused with the mere mention of la vache folle when presented a plate of sweetbreads. And let's not talk about the prudence of simply washing one's hands, as I don't want to go there ever again.   We hunted for mushrooms in your pretend forest, and, yes, in the end, I was terrified for my liver when presented the steaming platter of our day's gathering, despite the daily alcohol that flowed like one of the thick Breton Canals. After a lunch with six bottles of wine between the four of us (and do not forget the pousse-café) your mother wondered why Americans were so lazy, sleeping the afternoon away. But give me credit, as you know the first thing I ordered in any bistro in Paris was always   Andouilette à la Moutarde — a sausage of smoked tripe, Pretty damn good, I say. Second on my list, you also know, was a steaming bowl of fresh and fragrant moule, so much like a dull orange labia, each salty wet mouthful reminded me of you. And it was good, as God said it was good (especially with the pomme frites and a liter of wine). Alone now, in my exquisite kitchen, an expanse of granite, clean lines and ample   space to wield my sharp knives, I cook elaborate dinners for myself and speak pigeon French to my Yellow Lab, washing my hands like a Fou d'Amérique: Côte Rôtie with my lamb; Rock Salted Sea Bass; Guinea fowl with Sausage and Cabbage; Coquille St. Jacques. I put this kitchen through the paces, my love, I really do. I eat standing up. Watching CNN, letting loose recipes as I let you go. Eating well. copyright 2008 Rod Peckman bio printable Attic Lit   Floorboards and wainscoting are torn up for firewood (tiptoe over ribs).  Below: the sound of every scratch and sweet nothing (scramble and save).  Below that: crawl space.    Instead of a doorbell: an axe.  Instead of a door:   In the corner: a few flecks of flour and a slice of bread.  Call it tea.       The walls are peeling.  On the flakes—flesh tones molting to gray—sometimes closed letters implode.   Light returns to an open hand. copyright 2008 R. L. Swihart bio printable Rogue Ear   I was between planes and had few options.  I’m supposed to watch the sugar, but after three passes I decided a sweet roll would go great with the coffee.   “Just a Cinnabon Classic, please—extra icing.”  Against my usual: unraveling it from the outside in, I went straight for the center.  The plastic fork lost a tooth and the gooey eye finally popped out.     That’s when the fleshy pinna dropped on my plate.   To be quite honest, I hadn’t noticed she was missing.  When I asked where she’d been, she scraped off the goo, climbed on my shoulders and teased, “Tree planting with a sonnet.  La Scala, taking lessons.”   Hard to say (hard to hear), but I guess she’s back for good.  She—along with her middling band—hasn’t stopped singing since. copyright 2008 R. L. Swihart printable Last Room, Fourth Floor   Waiting to meet you, I’m afraid of what you won’t say, and of how your hands can move too quickly, undoing the buttons that hold my in place my privacy.   Clouds with no instructions in them pass overhead. I know how to be a thimble that holds the secret self, or live as empty as a closet in an abandoned house.   But because you stroke your tongue along my throat, everything hard and fixed within me clatters down. And pointing to the heart, that unsteady double spout,   I feel the vine swarm with swollen red petals, the caves I hunkered in destroyed, the fences broken. A hummingbird sways over me, loosening the mind from thought.   All this waited. Now I know the day pulses in its own electric skin. I live in the cult I’ve invented for myself, and lie beside you compact, a box inside a box.    Our margins glow against the blanket and erase each other. My only room is here, and I open it for you. What used to break now bends. Nothing knows my name.  copyright 2008 Janet Smith bio printable   The Spring Beside the Underpass   Where Fairview Avenue dropped down its hill to the freeway underpass, a spring broke forth among the paper cups and amber glass of broken bottles. Lone mallard drakes flapped down in awkward loops and stalls to strut their solitude away in the soft mud of April. Frogs sang with the traffic's moan. Ghosts of steam tapered up from the vague waters.   A crew from city maintenance parked an orange truck along the curb, cleared the trash, then poured concrete down the spring’s open throat. That didn't work. The man with the desk job downtown must have forgotten about it. A pair of mallards clapped down to nest in the warm shoots. A homeless man finished his pint, pitched the bottle. Then fell asleep dreaming of water. copyright 2008 Janet Smith printable Breakfast   Shadows of plush stretch under the fir and pine. The nails on the porch boards are shining eyes. Below the house, stiff-necked mallow and cow parsnips down to the river. Silk of deep spots, dreaming with trout. A scallop-winged moth bumps along the doorjamb. It is sad and pleasurable to eat toast while observing her trouble.   There are twelve shapes of leaves and they are named. The nicest are delta, ovate, kidney, lanceloate. Such information keeps the mind from drowning in its own lists of grievances. The smallest pine squirrels look bored with themselves, reduced to chasing each other. The absence of people is itself a presence.   Before I knew the word ennui, what did I call it? Not boredom, but a failure of faith. My life with its low lintel I must duck under. And a terrible hunger is swallowing me. Clouds make their entrances and exits. A few finches twitch and squeak around the leaky spigot. copyright 2008 Janet Smith printable Rejection Cherry Some good moments, and the sonic level of your vision peaked for me somewhere around line 6. Regretted and hoped and thanked, now tow away that nostalgia boomerang of penmanship. Hum along the kind of SASE song that sailors sing, bottles traveling between here and alee, encrypted grocery lists for the gods of the sea. You can echo distance between red herring ring tones and trawl for your baby all night long. Voicemail missives like flotsam nod their heads hello. Does it feel cheap, the first time, not quite the historic hotel sex you dreamed of, faded wallpaper and everything? The vague frisson, Cecily, that there might have been better ways to learn a similar lesson? One thing is for certain: the desk clerk of your heart seems to be sleeping it off somewhere. He mumbles about cardamom sweaters and disposable thumbs, my dear. Yours are not exactly dog-eared, but creased like dry-cleaner hemlines, catch you sniffing traces of and tamperings with the pleated question marks hanging about the words. It does indeed seem a dying language ago. The scythe cuts of smaller slips of paper, leaves of graphs. The thresher of letterhead typescript disinviting her best friend to the party. Personal mailers rub the subatomic particles and participles from last month’s newspapers. The new regimen now offers exclamation points for everyone! The full-on universe extremely awaits you with her firecracker hands. And did you fully render your Milky Way to a scene? Did you set it beside itself, find its hard core? Its punk rock, its total Kerblang?! Can I tell you, Rupert, about the field of asterisks lining the shoplifter-deep pockets of the sky! For that is how I once received encouragement from the singular result of a handheld pen. The things that can only happen once are single filing outside you, in the cold. They have been milling about and since a longish time ago. No time to revise and resubmit for them, and now you with no time to consider the surefire consequences of letting some come in. copyright 2008 Kevin Carollo bio printable Arrival at Mountain of Saint Michel From Rennes The Vilaine Par Carnac? Every syllable perfect through her lips And skin bronze The way she talks is like the Italians tanning in Axum nipples dark as moths She tells me Ille-et-Vilaine Named for the little girl it took away The river—it took—very slowly A little girl, long ago: Vilaine. Villain. Swallowed her. The sand breaks green and dark or a solitary white And it leaps from peaked dunes Like ghost fugitives of that great forgetting I wait to watch her The fortress creeping up the blue-white Of the sky like a man's hand, scarred and pocked, Up a wedding dress She gives me such a funny look that the words crumble from under me: Jean, she calls. copyright 2008 JP Gritton bio printable Ragged Poem the bouncer is a feeling: sheets that didn't dry   his baseball cap gives him no eyeballs and i'm drunk   plus i owe julio a drink--julio what do you want to drink   i'm hollering to the atmosphere: what will all these humans have to drink   julio is nodding to the atmosphere: what are the specials?   there are no specials. not tonight not ever   the bartender assumes too much: she assumes i'm the one that drinks the drinks and she the one that serves the drinks   julio nods: all right, pal   go back to your seat, that's your first and last warning   this man in the leather jacket is a feeling like a damp, smelly towel a feeling like a condom on my windowsill plasticizing, months past expiry   julio, don't look at me like that without your eyeballs   you need to get ahold of yourself.   i'd e-mail a million fetuses a million digital photos of my wrists bleeding if for nothing else than to keep them out of danger   i would call them internationally using a sam's club phone card decorated with stalin or hitler   what do you mean?   to illustrate my point i throw my drink at the ground--it bounces on the carpet julio, think about how it crunches under everybody's feet. the ice, man. the ice crunching underfoot   as night turns to midnight and day flees across the lonely bastard sound copyright 2008 JP Gritton bio printable Talking Crow Winter speaks crow, a black tongue, a hoarse voice more like a cough, barbwired, words bitten short. Winter holds little puffs of breath caught in the air. Crow is the language of drowning, a voice for calling black dogs in from the snow. copyright 2008 Craig Paulenich bio printable Circles There’s still ice in the pasture, in the muddy chalices of hoofprints, and bluebirds push their heads into fencepost houses gray as bone. I empty the roosts in the coop, but can’t tell the difference between chicken and egg. Coyote assembles and disassembles. Call it hello or goodbye, thank you or you’re welcome. When the first salmon pushes upstream, rounds the circle, walking Escher’s stairwell, we will dress his bones in ochre. By the pond, the broken willow stretches, fingers the earth, pale green shoots rising from the bank. copyright 2008 Craig Paulenich printable Penis Perspiration word is it's a terrorist plot
keeping today's FEMA experts all tied up in knots! 
it skates across the dengis, 
splashes on the shoe
spreading even faster than an avionic flu.
penis perspiration!

see the pink-faced macho man
who's wiener stings but will not say…
it's not hard to see right through him
feeling small, he slinks away.
penis perspiration!

big fat general, cavalier
bodyguards and escorts near
joke about the estuary 
gushing from his tool.
privates laugh 
this gasbag leaves behind a rippling pool…
penis perspiration!

swimming in polluted lakes 
a big fish CEO,
his private parts are 
dripping with unwanted H20!
penis perspiration!

propaganda fashioners 
bark at newsmen and conceal! 
fudging facts on habitats
killing bears and arctic seals
(the ozone hole's much larger now), 
the whole world's losing its sun shields…

bullying and obfuscation 
from the bush administration
propagating climate change and 
penis perspiration! copyright 2008 KC Wilder bio printable Patrick At Dusk   You listen to the first Monosyllables of rain Ears stoic Elongated for tedium.   A map Spreads like an empire In the lines of your forehead Flattening under This well-travelled fingerprint.   A nose Steady as a bridge Arches to airbrush eyebrows.   In the borderlands between us Winds rustle, An invisible whispering Beneath the skin.   Then you remember YOU LOVE ME.   Through lustrous black eyes A spark ignites Like a fly from an upturned glass And you hear the ocean’s bark.   copyright 2008 Christopher Barnes bio printable Bateau Bleu The boat, the waves and the timepiece can take you anywhere you want to go - Dorothea Tanning, on her surrealist lithograph Here is a watch. A woman watched. Double-iris eyes, cradled with birds' eggs and crystals of crumpled waves. False starts. A girl stepped into pink with grotto at her back, crawled from pits of black-- draped in the cast-off and built of scrap, she is hatched she is holding the clock face high: a journey spreads on stone. copyright 2008 Jennifer Gomoll Popolis bio printable Jezebel's FM Radio I am breaking under the weight of torch songs sung so low that dogs have to hold their breath just to hear the flames whistling, the tune of desperation simmering, a quiet heat that crawls into bed at inappropriate hours like a cheating husband just before his sets his marriage on fire. Some rhythms are played to distract us from others, he will say as he scoops his wife's breasts into his hands, holding them like two piles of ashes as he tries to kiss away his lover's scent. I am in the business of collecting rare and used frequencies. The beat of Saturday nights spent rocking back and forth beside a nearly blown out speaker with my ears tuned to the hum of bizarre stations, the few strings remaining of former lifetimes, memories waiting for me to push their buttons. Two clicks to the left and the moon is chewed up and swallowed by your greedy eyes. We're driving toward a field where dogs are howling as I feed you a helping of fingers. Your kisses land upon my free hand like seven veils, then a plague of locusts. Your mouth wants too much of me. I wince, returning my hand to the wheel as I pump the gas propelling the car toward a field full of barking. Two more clicks, a shadow stares at pictures of you before crushing them in a fist of blackness. Your many mangled faces fall to the carpet. Even here, the music keeps a steady moan going just under the skin. There's a genocide of you happening on my bedroom floor and all I can think about is locusts, the incredible buzz they must make when they descend upon a green field. I can almost hear the roar as I reach for my matches. Two more clicks, just static, the sound of snow falling on a burning city. Now, we hear the peculiar hum of the present moment: when your wife turns over in bed, and in spite of your furious kisses, smells me on you. copyright 2008 Saeed Jones bio printable In This Sea   I would swim In the cup of this moon. An ambient sea Imaging around me.   Toll sighs clinging To my darkling skin. The white-wind neighing Above this sea.   Returning to haunt me, Again and again. The luminous flames Of my distant past.   “No!” They would never Leave me alone. I listened to the soothing Voice within them.   The bell of a wandering Cow in winter, Like the moaning toll Of a furrowing plough.   And it told me only This long story, I am the sound and only Soul in this sea. copyright 2008 Tendai Mwanaka bio printable Barnwood Home../Site_4/Putman.html../Site_4/Winans.html../Site_4/Moffett_Sin.html../Site_4/Moffett_Rime.html../Site_4/Piercy_Childhood.html../Site_4/Piercy_Early.html../Site_4/Schultz.html../Site_4/Simpson.html../Site_4/Diaz.html../Site_4/Kellum.html../Site_4/Chaffin.html../Site_4/Layton_keep.html../Site_4/Layton_Things.html../Site_4/Roy_Robin.html../Site_4/Roy_First.html../Site_4/Parry.html../Site_4/Gentry_Another.html../Site_4/Gentry_Two.html../Site_4/Aarnes.html../Site_4/Corn_Not.html../Site_4/Corn_Mouse.html../Site_4/Peckman.html../Site_4/Swihart_Attic.html../Site_4/Swihart_Rogue.html../Site_4/Smith_Last.html../Site_4/Smith_Spring.html../Site_4/Smith_Breakfast.html../Site_4/Carollo.html../Site_4/Gritton_Arrival.html../Site_4/Gritton_Ragged.html../Site_4/Paulenich_Talking.html../Site_4/Paulenich_Circles.html../Site_4/Wilder.html../Site_4/Barnes_Patrick.html../Site_4/Popolis.html../Site_4/Jones.html../Site_4/Mwanaka.html../Site/Welcome.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4shapeimage_1_link_5shapeimage_1_link_6shapeimage_1_link_7shapeimage_1_link_8shapeimage_1_link_9shapeimage_1_link_10shapeimage_1_link_11shapeimage_1_link_12shapeimage_1_link_13shapeimage_1_link_14shapeimage_1_link_15shapeimage_1_link_16shapeimage_1_link_17shapeimage_1_link_18shapeimage_1_link_19shapeimage_1_link_20shapeimage_1_link_21shapeimage_1_link_22shapeimage_1_link_23shapeimage_1_link_24shapeimage_1_link_25shapeimage_1_link_26shapeimage_1_link_27shapeimage_1_link_28shapeimage_1_link_29shapeimage_1_link_30shapeimage_1_link_31shapeimage_1_link_32shapeimage_1_link_33shapeimage_1_link_34shapeimage_1_link_35shapeimage_1_link_36shapeimage_1_link_37