The oncoming dark catches breath;
even in the dream the Medicine Man
passes the dark along to another.
No Pow Wow, but a carnival stretched
into a raw theatre with men chased
out and off the midway

But Dark, My oh so frightening Dark
I cannot find the Medicine Woman
for her herbs and rocks and charms
though we know she is waiting.

Shirley, who is not recognized at first,
says to wait for the Holy Woman
as she will appear and replace
my father who neither speaks nor sings
in the dream, in the dark. I wake
in fold of sheets, the radio blowing
a flute; I tip over a plastic bottle
of ginger ale and dawn slides through
the dark. I wake and wait.

MAURICE KENNY
New York

On the first day
of my marriage,
father said, I said,
Let there be harmony.
And there wasn’t.
So on the second day
I said, Let there be
dissension. And
there was. Only God
could get it right the first time.

HAL SIROWITZ
Pennsylvania

As I sit here reflecting on a summer gone by
It was something you said that lingers still.

An orange was never my favorite fruit
or the color something I gave much credence.
It’s true, I’ve enjoyed many delicious tangerines,
but strawberries were forever a fruit of choice.
Never really noticed the orange in a rainbow...
it was the red, purple and yellowish-gold, I saw.
Orange was a fluke in my wardrobe at best.

Sitting at the kitchen table that afternoon in June,
I remember a quiet time of tea and conversation.
Then, you leaned over and whispered coyly...
You look good in orange, orange is your color.
Today, I still blush at the thought, as I blushed then.
Perhaps, someday, I shall coyly whisper to you
just what those nine, esoteric words meant to me.

But, as I sit here reflecting on a summer gone by
it was that something you said that lingers still.

And, orange has now become a favorite of mine.

BEVERLY TAYLOR
West Virginia

Where are Negra y Blanca,
the double dutch girls
who moved to the Bronx in the 50’s,
“the first ‘wave’,” from old San Juan,
with nine brothers and sisters
and someone else’s father?

Cerveza was the smell of their father
and sometimes even Negra y Blanca
and sometimes their brothers and sisters
who played with the girls
from a little town in old San Juan
in the good years, the 50’s.

In the projects in the 50’s
when the war sent home heroes, fathers,
from Asian beachheads, not old San Juan
and none much like the father of Negra y Blanca
arm in arm twins
living with nine brothers and sisters.

No one I knew had nine brothers and sisters!
...Well, maybe the Irish in the Bronx, in the 40’s
And no one could jump rope like these girls
or lived with someone like this father
who sat all day on the park bench waiting for Negra y Blanca
and pining for his “amor” from his pueblo in old San Juan.

Why did they leave old San Juan?
And donde esta la madre of the nine brothers and sisters?
And donde esta hoy Blanca y Negra?
Blanca y Negra from the projects in the Bronx in the 50’s.
They danced too close to someone else’s father.
Did they marry or stay as the girls?

Double Dutch girls?
dancing a Mambo from old San Juan,
dancing close to someone else’s father,
dancing close to nine brothers and sisters
in the projects in the Bronx in the 50’s
Las dos Hispanicas.

Blanca y Negra, the two girls.
The Bronx, 1950’s, from old San Juan
wedded as sisters with someone else’s father.

JUDITH VEDER
New York

Bless the Wall, so straight and tall.
Without the wall there’d be no hall –
No hall at all, without the wall!
Without the wall there’d be no doors;
And you can’t hang pictures on your floors.
Without the wall, I greatly fear,
Every mural would disappear.
And our mall would fall,
Without the wall!
Without the wall, I’d like to know,
Where on earth would windows go?
Without the wall, I’m very certain,
There’d be no place to hang a curtain.
I also have a certain feeling,
Without the wall there’d be no ceiling.
And without the wall the ceiling would fall –
And CRUSH US ALL!

GEORGE DAWSON
New York

When the mother was swept
from the overwhelmed SUV,
her two babies (strapped in
the back for safety’s sake)
swallowed the swollen river,
the brave people on its banks
yelling and waving at
dirty bundles of sky.

EDWARD BUTSCHER
New York

A voice drab, grey, bare, booms from the tannoy; echoes & bounces:
“For the month of march, the weather has been cancelled.”

Along the city’s streets, in the rubbish bins
that litter every corner and cranny,
umbrellas burn: defeated, redundant.
For the month of March, the weather has been cancelled.

Along the city’s streets, men in suits make dashes
over the hurdles of burning ‘brollies and roadworks
making it for the 2:40, and stroll calm and cool
back to work after the “quick fag break”.
Boys from schools roll in to bookmakers’s
to place their bets at lunch time, betting no one can spot
the uniform hidden beneath the big jumper.
Lies that drip from all their mouths like cancelled rain drops.

In pubs young men sit, pint cooling one hand,
docket heating the other, huddled at a table,
listening to the shower radio to get the 4:40 and 5:20 in,
to tell all the world: their faces grave, gave the report loud and clear:
Not a winner by quite some distance
(A good head or two beat them in the end).

The trust held in old men that sit in pubs day in day out,
they beat the young men by a good head or two.

On the lips of men only the tips of the day
and tightly sealed on the money they have made;
“I held my own”, and “broke-even” come their
auditor’s reports, words dripping like cancelled rain drops.
The big winners and petty losers much the same.
On the lips of men the tips, the odds, and,
as always, the women.

By rights they night have cancelled politics,
the markets needed only to cease trading,
Turf Accountants were the men of the moment,
holding their own.

Mad as the announcement that came tumbling over the tannoy,
almost as mad, that mad week in March,
when everything stops and on the lips of men
only the tips of the day, the odds, and,
as always, the women.

DAVID TOMS
Ireland

In the shock of the doctor’s expression
she recognized she had asked
the right question, the one
he was not prepared
to answer.

As he reached for words
to steady the moment--
the promising research underway,
the advantages of early detection--
she knew he was leading her
into the zone of his own safety,
inviting her not to contemplate just yet
the prowling future.

So she repeated the question,
and he fell back
on other evasions--
we will do our very best,
no one can tell with certainty the outcome--
but she fixed him
in her narrowed eyes
until he felt like a specimen
under her microscope,
exposed by her scrutiny,
defenseless at this intrusion.

So when she asked him a third time,
his tongue forgot all science
and the healer’s optimistic watchwords.
His head shook,
he looked away,
and his lips trembled,
wordlessly confessing the answer.

A white coat stammering syllables,
he offered her the shame
of having nothing to offer
except himself as the registry
for their collapsing hopes.

And she thanked him for that.

GEORGE H. NORTHRUP
New York

take me back on the wind
and yellow ocher air to the forest crisp
as the belly of a topaz, thistle, or cone,
place where I was hatched.

Swing me through the earth’s mirror,
its song swaying like the crabapple,
as deep red as the worm’s breath.
Take me to the vanishing point,
the light outside that is as calm
and restless as the light in the toes.

Let my fingers find if they can
under what leaf my spirit has found
the place to begin its cold-face dance
in syncopation with the falling leaves.

Take me to the edge of the backyard
under the petals of the orange crysanthemums
where the fast-strutting junco separates
with sprite feet dashes the seed from chaff.

I’ll be the guest of this seed-forming world.

DUANE NIATUM
Washington (State)

Snowflakes
barely fill up the space.
Some hover on deer
etched on greeting cards
pushed out by junk mail,
some settle on evergreen tongues,
a slow start for the winter.

Just like anything else in life
no one knows what will happen next,
a gray canopy upheld by bare branches
or an anomalous blizzard
swallowing live sidewalks.
A doe’s leap across the black snake of a road
or a lover’s return like trade wind
may predict a happy glide or a disaster.

Last winter
my neighbor broke his leg
trying to save an untimely songbird
In spring the bird returned to his sumac,
maybe out of gratitude,
with a song new as his leg, tender and unbarked.

Soon the snow will crowd the canyon,
the house will slowly sink
into relentless pastime,
the numb knuckles of trees will let go of the moon
to cause a ruckus in this cold neighborhood.

Ah, the great white opulence!
How silently its fingers embroider
each leaf of sleep.

BIMAN ROY
New Jersey

My mother cut them and we knew it was spring
Trembling in their cold yellow cups
and squeaky green stems.
Each year we’d forget the difference
a small amount of yellow makes.

She’d arrange them in a cup on the kitchen table,
we’d bury our faces in them again and again, smelling
powdery like end of school ceremonies
my mother’s black dress she wears to play
summertime operas, in the outdoor theatres.
Sunshine on grass,
the burr of a honeybee.
Damp with dew, they made our faces wet and fresh
excited for the light mornings
the slow honey-coloured evenings.

There was still a crunch of ice in the mud
when we clamoured out to our father’s car,
but snow was starting to stream, like a sheen of perspiration
gleaming in butter-tinted sun.
My father’s voice, crisp, bemoaned the last of winter
the skis, the snowmobiles locked up another year.
But back at the house my mother’s eyes were at the lilac bush
waiting for the buds, the warm purple clusters.

LINDSEY BELLOSA
Ireland

Each morning
before birdsong,
before alarm clock,
I wake to see you
here before me:
in perfect focus,
arms out,
legs spread,
your tie streaming
brightly in the wind.

I can see you...still
floating
flying
falling
down down
past all those silvery
soon-to-fall walls.

floating
flying
falling

I cannot hear the wind
that snaps your tie
or the brittlebroken music
of dying steel
and burning glass.

I cannot hear
your prayers
your cries
the names you call.

floating
flying
falling

I cannot
I cannot

comprehend.

SEAMAS O’FLANNAGAIN
New Jersey

She reaches deep
into the wrinkled pockets
of Russia’s lingering past.
Its stereotypical debris
of ripped lives
still hovering as remnants,
        Cold reminders
that would hamstring change...
With written strength,
she extracts transgressions
from dens of denial.
Unveiled Chechnya’s secrets
murders of collusion
and sanctioned torture
practiced in seclusion,
and confined to freedomers,
...from Putin’s branding iron.

ADELE KEARNS THOMAS
Canada