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Recurring Dream
by Suzanne K. Lang
Mother stands, her back to me, face reflected
in a mirror. She whispers only one word:
Polygamy. Then, her voice like a finger
pointing, she asks how I could allow father
to marry another woman. I wonder,
startled by her anger, if this is Mother
or her doppelganger. The space between us
swells into waves before I seize the meaning
of her blame. She doesn’t know she’s dead, and so
she thinks he—coterminously—has
two wives.
Though she’s caught in the riptide of illogic,
powerless to switch her point of view, as she
is pulled away I plead, But you had cancer.
She cannot turn to me. She will not answer.
Copyright © 2002 by Suzanne K. Lang
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Cystic Sonnet
by Suzanne K. Lang
—to X
The ultrasound disclosed I house a cyst.
Dermoid, the doctor said, since it consists
of teeth and hair. It’s possible my mind,
shocked by your sudden death, maligned
its neural signals so they read offspring
to substitute for the human we didn’t bring
into this world: a subconscious defense
against your inescapable absence.
You’d think I’d know—though we’ve evolved
a bit
since we first crawled out of the dark sea’s ditch
and snorted salt-less air—I can’t self-impregnate
or, more portentous still, reincarnate
the dead. Sometimes I feel it—biting,
brief—
my bundle of baby. I named her Grief.
Copyright © 2002 by Suzanne K. Lang
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Fortune
by Suzanne K. Lang
As a child, I didn’t wake up screaming
as I fell from a cliff. Instead, I woke
up sweaty, clutching my fist, from watching
one of my front teeth turn black, then fall out.
The hole was huge, gaping, and though I took
my tooth all over town, no one could help.
What could it mean? A dream book said I’d live
a long life. In a different light, my mom
said the same thing: It’s an old Chinese curse
that you’ll outlive all of your relatives.
I brushed her interpretation aside.
Who would think of death as a tooth fairy?
But, once my family started dying,
I never again dreamed of losing teeth.
Copyright © 2002 by Suzanne K. Lang
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On Machines and Human Beings
by Richard Aston
It is a part of my progressive dream
that all of us should turn into machines
and drop those evolutionary bags
that sack us with mortality, which drags
us down into a group of molecules
and separates us into forms so new
that none of us would recognize that we
could be the That that we would want to be.
It is a part of my progressive dream
that if we all would turn into machines,
we could live in inanimate bodies
in freedom from death and biology
and thus become compatible with outer space
where we might find another human race.
Copyright © 2002 by Richard Aston
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In Dream
by Michael Fantina
In dream, beyond serrated hills I soar,
Bank over valleys near a great salt sea.
Is there one, I ask, who could fault me,
Or grudge me such a dream when life is poor?
Again, in dream, I hear that ocean roar,
Its giant combers crashing far and free,
Echoing down my dream, eternally,
To batter high-walled cliffs and sandy shore.
It’s not that I so hate the world at noon,
Or curse it with a will, unceasingly,
Or, dreaming, call down demons from the moon.
Forgive me if I somewhat, teasingly,
Make mockery of bitter ceaseless strife,
And hint that, yes, there is a better life.
Copyright © 2001 by Michael Fantina
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Survivor
by Rhina Espaillat
Remembering those others taken slaves,
skewered by cannibals, or lost, or drowned,
or those he’d left behind in alien ground
to sleep as shallow as their hasty graves,
the captain cursed himself, the gods, the waves,
his kingdom and his queen, the aged hound
whose quick prophetic death was grief that crowned
his first day home disguised among the knaves.
But no, he rallied, struggled to remind
himself that fate is kind to the adept
and punishes the thoughtless and the blind;
he’d matched the gods; he’d watched while others slept.
He steeled himself to live, to be resigned,
as all survivors do. And still, he wept.
Copyright © 2001 by Rhina Espaillat
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Free Fall
by Michael Burch
These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star . . .
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.
Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes: the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as a pearl. You sink, you reel
toward some draining revelation. Air:
too thin to grasp, to breath. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure:
two beings still intent to fall forever
around each other—fumbling at love’s tether
. . .
now separate, now distant, now together.
Copyright © 2002 by Michael Burch
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Imperfect Sonnet
by Michael Burch
A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint—on us.
Go.
We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once . . . but to believe . . .
was of another century . . . and now . . .
I have the faith to love, but not the strength.
Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals “love’s” damaged images: its dreams . . .
and masturbating limply, screams and screams.
Copyright © 2002 by Michael Burch
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Pan
by Michael Burch
. . . Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we lose ourselves . . .
. . . once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles . . .
. . . where we cannot return, because we lost
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss . . .
. . . hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair
who never were enchanted, and the stairs . . .
. . . that led up to the Fortress in the trees
will not support our weight, but on our knees . . .
. . . we still might fit inside those splendid hours
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers . . .
. . . of voices of the wolves’ tormented howls
that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels . . .
Copyright © 2002 by Michael Burch
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The Street Pavers
by B. E. Stock
As other men retire, we commence
Steering our monstrous cranes and gears along
The avenue. The grinding tar’s our song,
Our drums the filling of a truck’s immense
Interior. Amid the darkness dense
We flash our orange vesture, and with strong
Gestures, when a bus is heading wrong,
Wave it beyond the cones’ too fragile fence.
What though the silken ribbons of the tar
We pour and flatten with an iron wheel
In glaring city midnight last an hour
Before the dawn? The motorists who mar
This surface in the morning will not feel
The weary wonder of perfected power.
Copyright © 2002 by B. E. Stock
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The Disguise
by B. E. Stock
If I adorn my hair with butterflies,
Buy a tight sweater, dance away the night,
Make twice the money, publicize my brain,
Away with you! I’m safe in my disguise.
I fool myself, keep mourning out of sight,
And guarantee I will not love again.
I waken dizzy to a moonlit room;
I cry without remembering the cause;
I walk among the crowd with aching jaws,
Smiling with happiness, they all assume.
“Tear up the clothing, manifest the gloom,
Go for a crewcut! crumble in the jaws
Of pain, until the beast no longer gnaws
Your bones. Then, let the orchestra resume.”
Copyright © 2002 by B. E. Stock
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The Undoing
by B. E. Stock
Whom did I love? I scarcely use his name
And scarcely think of him. And yet I miss
Something, and reach for something. To my shame,
After nine years and many an ardent kiss,
Here I remain—no pain, no ice, no flame.
In all that time we surely climbed to bliss
Just once without critique or doubt or blame.
I don’t remember. It has come to this:
The ring upon my finger’s turned to lies,
And I have fled the home I furnished well,
And found this garret, and I find it sweet.
The beauty’s gone that sparkled in your eyes.
I wonder, do you mean the love you tell,
Or does your heart with dread of silence beat?
Copyright © 2002 by B. E. Stock
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From the Other Side
by B. E. Stock
Right to the end I was Francis Bernadone.
I could never be free of that, however I tried.
I have been sent to you because you cried
To God that you were rootless and alone.
What would you rather be—a corporate clone
Perhaps, a video life, a Mafia bride,
Incestuous ethnic slapped by macho pride,
Or a trapped farmer’s wife where reapers drone?
Listen to the wild wind in the pines, and know
It sings for you, whose voices waken the dawn,
And love it back by daring to be free.
On every moment beckoning, bestow
Yourself anew, let other years begone,
Create—you, who belong to Eternity!
Copyright © 2002 by B. E. Stock
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In Defense of Meter
by Michael Burch
The earth is full of rhythms so precise
the octave of the crystal can produce
a trillion oscillations, yet not lose
a second’s beat. The ear needs no device
to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch
drown out the mouth’s; the lips can be debauched
by kisses, should the heart put back its watch
and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.
If moons and tides in interlocking dance
obey their numbers, what is left to chance?
Should poets be more lax—their circumstance
as humble as it is?—or readers wince
to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear
of Nero’s death, and mourn the Cavalier?
Copyright © 2002 by Michael Burch
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