Cash Cow
By Victor Howes
Cash cow, I raised you from a spindly calf.
I nourished you with nickels, dimes, and quarters.
Now that you’re grown, don’t let’s do things by half,
Bring living dividends, bring lowing daughters,
Bring milky mothers ambling down the pike.
Butter me wealthy, whip me cream a-plenty,
Lead in those heavy heifers that I like,
Let each wear in her horns a crisp new twenty.
I hear those bells. I see those swaying beeves.
Why keep me waiting till the cows come home?
Where have they wandered, to some den of thieves?
Cash cow, cash cow, O wither do you roam?
Are all my dreams but fading hopes of last year,
And all my yesterdays still out to pasture?
Copyright © 2010 by Victor Howes
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Eve’s Boast
By Victor Howes
Adam was lonely in his garden, slept
Mateless, alone on an unpeopled planet,
Watered his lettuce, pulled the weeds, and wept
Among his plants, his animals, his granite.
So he complained. The Maker sent him ease
For pain, and from his ribcage drew one rib
To form a mate. He knew what shape would please
A lonely man. This is not any fib:
Adam was moulded out of clay, damp earth,
But I arose from bone and living tissue.
No heaping up of dust brought me to birth—
Women, we women are of finer issue.
You might say Adam’s made of sterner stuff—
But, well, you get my drift. I’ve said enough.
Copyright © 2010 by Victor Howes
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Three-headed Dog
By Victor Howes
A stranger tricked me. I learned to my cost
It was Aeneas threw me opiates.
Drugs. When I woke he had sneaked past Hell’s gates
Where I stood guard. Fired! Finished. I was lost.
Where can a lost three-headed dog find home?
Who in the upper world wants such a freak?
Could poet Virgil keep me, back in Rome?
I eat a case of dog food in a week.
Think hard. I’m thinking. Using all three heads.
Could I perhaps sing opera? Howl Otello?
Or maybe Tosca? Bawl three roles instead
Of merely one? Am I that clever fellow?
Call me a lucky dog. Would that be classy?
I might find fame. I might. Then watch out Lassie!
Copyright © 2010 by Victor Howes
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Organismic Compensation
By C. B. Anderson
Resilience and fragility go hand
in hand. An organism is a whole
dependent on its smallest part. The role
each cell, each separate organ plays—a gland
secreting crucial hormones, or a strand
of muscle tissue tailored to control
the focus of the eye—subserves the goal
of making sure the body works as planned.
The failure of a single system spells
calamity, and yet one often hears
of compensations: cortical brain cells
performing tasks for damaged ones; deaf ears
assisted by an eye which somehow tells
what lips say; hearts thus broken shedding tears.
Copyright © 2010 by C. B. Anderson
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A Dim View from Above
By C. B. Anderson
The rocking chair inside the screened gazebo
Is worn and rickety, but it must do
As staging for the ritual placebo
Of gazing out across the pond. A screw
Has loosened where a rafter joins the wall,
Unnoticed till long after labor for
The day is done—no man can do it all.
A spider weaves a web above the door.
The single man is lost, and that is why
So many marry. Structures boasting screens
Forfend the creatures swarming in the sky
That make a killing field of village greens.
The work, the rest, the worry, und so weiter
Are unimagined whimsy for the spider.
Copyright © 2010 by C. B. Anderson
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Beg?
By Tony Peek
Don’t send that email to your mum just yet
She might not understand what we’ve been through
Or care about the true cause of our debt
When she herself has many problems too
Perhaps it’s better for us to pretend
That all is fine and that we can afford
To live without the money she might lend
If our electronic begging strikes a chord?
For must we not each face life on our own
And try to make ends meet when fortune shrugs?
Perhaps I should take back my mobile phone
Or maybe we can give up drink and drugs?
But lets not ask your mum, who’s such a snob
She’ll probably just suggest I find a job.
Copyright © 2010 by Tony Peek
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For Gluttony
By Tony Peek
For Gluttony keeps me busy, just like greed
I love to shop for things that I adore
Though buy one get one free’s not all I need
But more and more and more and more and more
Six cars and sixteen brand new shiny suits
Three houses and a twenty-five foot yacht
Ten pairs of sixteen hundred dollar boots
Another golden bling-ring like I’ve got
So tell me why you think that I should share
When everything’s still not enough for me
You cannot win, but why should winners care
If you can’t feed your children. Can’t you see
That Capitalism doesn’t make mistakes?
The rich man should be proud of what he takes
Copyright © 2010 by Tony Peek
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Aspirations
By Paul Fraleigh
He’s not sure why he has this urge to write—
Perhaps it’s just compulsion. Maybe still
It’s all a futile wish to match the skill
Of those old masters of poetic flight
That keeps him weighing, night by sleepless night,
Each word, each syllable, each stress, until,
Dawn’s chiding beams into his ponderings spill.
And though he never may attain that height
Of fame those bards acquired, taking his wing
In ever-upward flight as flawlessly
Above the Helicon mountain’s sacred spring,
He still can know that rare delight to see
His own creations take on form and hue—
That very same delight those masters knew.
Copyright © 2010 by Paul Fraleigh
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Monet Paints the Cathedral
By Ann E. Michael
You stood before the cathedral: looked up
at the rose window, at the peak of roof,
at sky; you stood for hours as daylight made
your shadow long beside you and rebuffed
you for your goal: to memorize all light,
the way it flexes, bends, and climbs hand over
foot on balustrades and arches high
above crowned saints. You watched each season cover
stone with hue: Lent, purple as bruised fog,
late Easter blooming with the callery pear,
gold-red autumn’s dusky parapets.
So many days entranced in visual prayer,
you understood the light. Began to trace,
with your brush, the changed cathedral’s face.
Copyright © 2010 by Ann E. Michael
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Jurors
By Ann E. Michael
The witnesses are called to tell us what
they heard or saw, no more; the judge decreed
speculation’s for the court of gossip,
it isn’t where the questioning should lead.
“Reasonable” men—or women—are,
in juries, made from those who otherwise
are not so wise and let emotion sear
their lives—branding them with love and lies—
but in the jury box, as listeners
and peers, a ruling’s less uncomfortable,
seems less their own. The heat of yearning’s gone,
even the weight of law seems manageable
within their minds. They find they can decide.
Once dismissed, though, love and anger wrangle outside.
Copyright © 2010 by Ann E. Michael
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Seeing
By Lee Evans
“You can’t read that? It’s up there plain as day;
No wonder you’re not doing well in school,
If you can’t see the blackboard! Time, my boy,
For you to have your eyes checked.”
That’s the arc
My learning curve described; and even now,
Myopic in more ways than one, and sure
I see clear truth in what is just a blur,
I am too apt to over-generalize.
A trip to the optometrist soon proved
That what I needed was to feast my eyes
Through the corrective lenses he prescribed.
“Voila!” he said, as he drew back the shades.
I stared across the parking lot, surprised
At seeing autumn leaves for the first time!
Copyright © 2010 by Lee Evans
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Bee Balm
By Donna Johnson
You arrive in June in bergamot frock,
and for two weeks a shocking pink bejewels
your head—coronation of homely stalk,
the fluffed top knot of a starlet’s poodle.
Next to foxglove’s smooth and dappled orchid,
your tinted Mohawk looks disheveled, punk.
If rose is pure scarlet ego; you’re id,
minty leaves seeking unabated sun.
You were an afterthought—easy grower—
not adored like my black-hearted poppies.
The hummingbird stops darting to hover
slowly, mesmerized by your nectaries,
as if it knows its beak’s narrow lumen
can admit such pleasure only in drams.
Copyright © 2010 by Donna Johnson
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SUMMER MORNING
By Thomas Gothers
The heat came in overnight
and pulled back our sheets
I woke up so early
you were lying there
with your hip uncovered
a silhouette in the early light
of summer
I went to the balcony
and watched the sun rise
so early it was low
on the horizon, slow to move
through the trees
not wanting to wake
up either
Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Gothers
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