You Opened a Door
~ Marianna Fiore

I don’t know to say why,
my complete friend,
you have opened a door
in the air
of my seclusion,
nor why you make me live
these days
with magnetic joy,
with a fullness
lucid and true.
Perhaps because
you have lips of amaranth
and fingers of hawthorn,
because you have peaches
on your skin and honey
in your blood
or roses for hair.
I only know
that this April
bringes excessive gifts
of vast dawns
and sleepless nights,
heaps up earth, fire and water
and bestows lindens
overflowing with
an intense perfume.
I should like
you to receive
not only flowers
from me,
but have for your own
plants with roots and fruit.
I beg you make me stay
in the needles
of your fantasy,
receive me
in the field of fire,
in the red clamor
of peace and panic
and fill me
with beauty and frenzy:
I am the bee
of your dimension.

Where We Are
~ Gerald Locklin

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris;
hawaii and switzerland.

there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
i am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: i am talking about hope.

Nurse’s Song
From Songs of Innocence
~ William Blake

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And every thing else is still.

‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.’

‘No, no, let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly
And the hills are all cover’d with sheep.’

‘Well, well, go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed.’
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh’d
And all the hills ecchoed.

Note: I’ve kept Blake’s spelling and punctuation, rather than standardizing it as some editions have done. I enjoy the uniqueness of his voice, and part of that results from his personalized grammar.

Dear Death
~ David Hernandez

Cool cloak. So goth. I dig how the pleats
ripple like pond water when you move,
and the hood shadows the absence of your face.
Sweet scythe, too. The craftsmanship
of the wooden handle, how smooth the slow
curve. I had to look it up—it’s called
the snath (rhymes with wrath), or snathe
(rhymes with bathe). I prefer the latter, the long
a. Snathe sounds like an infectious disease
I might’ve caught if my mother wasn’t there
to steer me from the gutter, from large
puddles marbled green, mosquitoes
scribbling above. How many times
do mosquitoes do your dirty work anyway?
Versus fleas? Versus gunpowder?
How bone-tired were you in Tōhoku?
The previous year in Haiti? Have you ever felt
the sepia wind of remorse? I have 77 more
questions for you, give or take, you’re often
in my thoughts. Yesterday, while grinding
coffee beans. While cleaning the lint trap.
Dicing cilantro. Buying ink cartridges.
Clipping my beard. I could go on and on,
you’re that legendary in my head.
It works this way: I’m running the knife
across the cutting board, the cilantro
breaks into confetti, I remember my mother
scattering the herb over a Chilean dish, then
her voice on Monday, “numbness in my leg,”
“congestive heart failure,” and it fails,
my mind fast-forwards to when it fails,
I can’t help it, you grip her IV’d hand, pull her
over, and it is done, her silence begins
blowing through in waves, icing the room—
the thought seized me so completely, the knife
hovered still above the wooden board.
Seriously though, cool cloak. Sick black
fabric. I heard if you turn it inside out,
the whole world’s embroidered on the lining.

Embroidered Silk

Three Mile Island at Night
~ Michelle Brooks
I have not been able to locate a website for the author. If you know of one, please share!

I am waiting for the disaster of my
life to reveal itself. All the elements
are present for an accident of serious
consequence. When it does, I will make
the oldest wish – for things to be as they once
were, the moment before the inevitable.
First pretend this isn’t happening. If you
don’t acknowledge it, it will go away. It’s
a bad dream. When you can no longer hide
it, shift blame. Wash your hands. Rinse,
lather, repeat. The poison has seeped into you.
You are Cassandra. You told everyone, and now
you and your crystal ball can’t be blamed.
You saw this happening. You knew. Or you
didn’t. You had no idea. You can’t be blamed.

At night there is no difference between you
made a mistake and you are a mistake. Make
no mistake now – you are here with no map.
Hell is a self-perpetuating circle. You aren’t
going anywhere. That was before, the moment
you can’t conjure. Make no mistake. You are home.