My Journey

Three days of hiking with only bottled water
is penance enough for one lifetime,
the path littered with opera and breath-beats,
the sarcasm of the bullfrog, the yelp of red fox.
Every night enough stars shoot across the sky
to grant every wish for a hundred years of wishing,
every aspiration, every melody, every quarter note.
Sweat streams puddle down the corridor of my back,
my ears open into mouths, my tongue catches sound on its tip.
Near the end of the trail, resting, every goodness within me,
within my back, my hands, my blistered feet, my muscles,
everything thyme, sage, peach water, an essence of Aradia.

In the end I did not enter the shiny box of darkness.
I dyed my hair instead, removed my teeth,
fell back in love.

That was what was written on the exit sign
at the beginning of the trail
leading back home.


Michael H. Brownstein (USA)

Both

So let’s say
we’re centaurs

& in front
we keep a face

a place
to land

if someone’s
looking

while behind
we go for what

we can get
& as for love

& death while
we’re ripe

they run

along for the ride


Laurinda Lind (USA)
First published in Afterthoughts (London, ON, Canada, 1997)

What Happened When I Turned Off the Heat

1.
Because I turned off the heat
Because I closed the back room windows
Because the wind is an empty threat
and the bottle is an empty bottle
Because the juice in the bottle was once sweet
Because the cheese in the refrigerator is molding
Because the bread on top of the refrigerator is green
Because there are seeds on your stockings
and you are tracking pollen through the house
Because antiseptic wipes can take only so much
and then they are as useless as the heat
when I went to the basement and turned it off

2.
In the house of too much food
In the playground of too much exercise equipment
In the storeroom of too much of nothing
nothing to eat nowhere to sleep not a single seat
no toys no games no books no clothes
In the apartment of too many people
In the garden of too many weeds
dandelions, clover, crabgrass and so many
leaves for boiling and baking
In the street of too many cars and trucks
In the beach of too many dead fish and seagulls
In the ocean teeming with algae, a lack of oxygen
too much carbon dioxide, too much plastic debris

3.
Then we’re in the castle of the big growth forests
Then we’re surrounded by acorns and pistachio nuts
Then the sunlight filters to the grandiose weeds
Then the path fills with sunlight and sunshine,
large clear shadows and large opaque beings
Then we run to clearings and find empty graves
full of stones, pebbles and grass clippings,
mites, centipedes and bluebird feathers
Then a dragon cloud devours the sky
Then it begins to rain and the roof of the castle leaks
stone and plaster and lead paint in large flakes
until the frescoed floor is dotted with white smudges
and our shoes are the color of lime ash and charcoaled wood
Then everything settles into a silence as great as God
and the nations of the planet do not even notice
Then the thinning begins, great birds, long reptiles,
one flick of the tongue of the Komodo dragon

4.
Afterwards there will be little left of what was left to begin with
Afterwards the language of words will be devoid of vocal sounds
and pronunciation will be in the form of whistles and breathing
no one able to communicate until letters are again announced
fitting the afterwards of the world as we say it is directly now
Afterwards will be exactly after that one scar of a word loosens
itself into the realm of invention and intervention
Afterwards the pirates of Somalia will eat the dry fruit on the plain
Afterwards the pirates of Somalia will sleep in the tall grass
Afterwards the pirates of Somalia will allow us to speak
Afterwards the pirates of Somalia will speak for us and we will know
Afterwards the words will come freely and fill us with longing
Afterwards we will cry with relief and sing the song of words
whistling, breathing, growling, our teeth bright and sharp


Michael H. Brownstein (USA)

Black Dog

By the third day, he is my grinning Familiar,
standing by my side, rubbing at my leg,
my bathroom companion at 3 AM, burbling
reminders that if I've gone insane, at least
I lack the soul of Berryman or Lowell,
neither as gifted, nor as wholly mad.

He gently nibbles on my ankle, but big as he is,
his teeth do not break skin, nor is there any malice.
He is as Churchill named him: my tutelary spirit,
my personal Melancholia, my anatomist of dismay.
If his teeth are like the needle's sting
they are not angry, just persistent.

I am just a common-garden nut-job drunk,
smoking in the bathroom, exhaust fan on,
making the next day's hangover as I make piss,
perfect aim in the dark, imagining a waterfall
glowing down into the Amazon, far away,
far enough away so even I'm not here.


Kenneth Wolman (USA)

You Don't Know When Light Will Come Again, But It Will

It's how you move at night
the late hour biting through
torn photographs strewn across the floor
from a time when memories were tangible
you could rip right through them
but you can't delete the shred
it shows up again in the back yard
from a heavy fall wind
through a hole in the trash bag
as if to say ‘you cannot undo yourself,
no matter the cost’

all love has a danger in it
the love of parents & friends
the profoundest feelings
can tear you apart
in an instant

it's how you handle yourself in the dark
that matters
how you go on living
beyond right now,
& now, & now.


James Diaz (USA)

Alberta Bound

I own a gate to this prairie
that ends facing the Rocky Mountains.
They call it Alberta,
trail of endless blue sky,
asylum of endless winters,
hermitage of indolent retracted sun.
Deep freeze drips haphazardly into spring.
Drumheller, dinosaur badlands, dried bones,
ancient hoodoos sculpt high, prairie toadstools.
Alberta Highway 2 opens the gateway of endless miles.
Travel weary I stop by roadsides, ears open to whispering pines.
In harmony North to South
Gordon Lightfoot pitches out
a tune,
‘Alberta Bound.’
With independence in my veins,
I am long way from home.


Michael Lee Johnson (USA)

Into the Lion's Den

It was not the lion, majestic,
harbouring its life force in the easy
rise and fall of its flanks,

so much as the fear of it
coming with me into the den,
making me quake and tremble,

a fear no slowed breath,
no mental strength could suppress,
knowing as I did the lion would wake

and what would happen next.


David Adès (South Australia / USA)