art by Cynthia Yachtman

by Cassandra Whitaker

             bride—the moon— moonlit    calls for the wolf—-unhinged
                            swinging on a door    made of borrowed light
                             Do I go through or    do I remain closed?

                                  Do I say yes yes    or do I know myself?
                             to sunlight— I turn    regrow my power
                    borrowed joy to change    the surface of ache

                             into a wish catcher    a deep pool of want
                      the bride understands    the wolf appears as she
                      unlearns her old name    offers to be filled
 
                                 the wolf appears   it matters little                                                  
                  where she places danger   I am returning                 
                                 to fill emptiness    to be full of love            

         the bride—the moon— bereft    of ocean’s ocean—time
               the wolf’s teeth—age worn    forgotten  almost
                            by the wanting wolf   inside the bride’s heart

                        waiting for the moon    recovering from want
                            I was once nothing    echoing night sounds
                                 in an emptiness    I understood to be night

                                    I understood it   I went into myself
                         love changes a name   into a new sound
                         once I was the moon   now—the wolf’s question

                  tuned to light’s frequency   am I alone?

photo by Kieth Dodson

by Patricia Aya Williams

December 1970

Dad at a desk turning to face
the camera, left hand on the keys
of a typewriter, right hand resting
on an open drawer, white pencil
lifted lightly, ready to erase
the mistake he’s just made—
one that I can’t see—on the paper
poised in the platen, the clatter
of type his quick fingers command
momentarily stalled.
The carrier’s walls—color of dirty
dishwater, hospital grunge,

by Jan Clausen

Arrow and bow
You get my drift
No bucket list
I’ll just kick it

Purple pansies next to Frick
Bloom in geometric beds
Perky periodontist
Scrapes expensively my teeth
Rather than hamper defeat
People peer at screens, mirrors
Snooze as losses mount, bleed out

A rat’s ass, he thinks, chicks don’t give
Regarding the pleasure of men
Dogwoods appear to console us
For magnolias’ departure
Art is not a matter of will
I’m a cunning emergency
Take the Q train,

art by Helen Hofling

by Samuel Piccone

Someone I love tells me the world is a house
            I’m always running into by running from,
                        that flowers begin staling the moment

they flower, so enough already with the flowers.
            A flower is a body, and a body is also a container
                        for every atom it will never hold—

imagine filling a room with so many remainders.
            Dear God, enough already. With running. With oblivion
                        and flowers. Someone I love tells me

no one will if I don’t start closing my mouth
           

art by Richard Hanus

by Carolyn Oliver

Forsaking every landscape
but this placid plain, their bodies wed

skill to physics. Her skull floats
down, risks the ice as if

she means to kiss his blades.
What kind of love imagines

he could let go of her wrist
he could let go of her
he could let go
he could
he—

This is the easiest death spiral.

That year of brief landscapes
my friends’ pity towed me

to a little house plunked down
by the bay.

art by JJ Cromer

by Stephen Smith

 For Emily

Now it seems further than the past itself,
even outside of time: Barthes and his dictionary,
though we debated if it was his own encyclopedia,
knowing we knew not the answer, the white board
always covered with what seemed the algebra of a life.
We considered it quantum, at best. I failed to get past
Marlon Riggs and his essential question, my legs
each evening folded in a chair on some cold library floor,