Instructions Mask
by Elena Karina Byrne


dark god you are all you are all I have
swear only swear I am yours I am yours
-Agha Shahid Ali

Tell me
where I should plant the weed
of my next
right word, bloom upside-down, when
I should bite my lip
white and smile, gear-up to be brave.

Let a dead man in uniform
rest his head on your shoulders, then

Tell me
the inland riddle only men know
now that I am
fail-safe for loving stopped on a shiny dime
the only downfall of snow
reserved for oblivion's backbone.

Let loose spices soak for six hours
while you smell the sea untangle here, then

Tell me
the mind's makeshift
pact, vowels’ sexual, pleasing
shapes
climaxing over six days a week,
and the waive-our-right to rage
a little, leave no stone unturned,
gray pebbles of pill bugs murmured in the dirt.

Let the blood islands come to you,
dragging their blue drift and seamless vacancy, then

Tell me
the ink we inherit turns the scroll
forward
a page or two, Rorschach monster
where history runs
out of name tags, relics
its pathological worship mid-sentence, mid-air.

Let a vivid anesthetist nurse
winter us back to spring, its bright needles and tulip oxygen, then

Tell me
in the dirty work mix,
the sentiment-direction, where
to find my spade and glint
water angel, my piece-together-compass
on the mark, lucky horseshoe
crab shape.

Let me not be there when they slip,
from my pants, the shiny pocket watch of your life, then

Tell me
again, in tirades, who will
bear the rest of the world
what you know
about the burned-in remedy
the belt of new light
pulled out across my back to teach me a lesson.

“Cruising Lake City”
by Chris Forhan

Car full of fuckups, unlaureled easy ironists,
’twas witlack we suffered, ’twas sixteen
and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
and inexact timing, fingers drumming the dash
and seat backs, a kind of piety in that,
Scott’s mom’s dilapidated Plymouth,
burger bags, bullhorn for public wisecracks
in Kurt’s Pakistani accent, ’twas certitude
and love, love
like a fox that gnawed at our chests, Al
rolling his window down on Beth’s block
to place in each mailbox
a tiny mustard pack, I
slouched in the back, a mistake with a face,
what fuse in Sue Cardinal’s heart
had blown so it could not want me, so it would not
grieve if I kneeled and died
beneath her window, unhouseled, how about that,
night fog like wool in the trees,
none of us mentioned it, directionless
we rode, conjunctionless, without
although, without because, just
this, this, this
and us, which was almost enough.

None of Them Wanted to be a Cloud
by Tom Hunley

a line from Lorca's “Ode for Walt Whitman”

I wanted to be a cloud. Clouds are going places.
Clouds are never voted most likely to succeed,
but they're always the most likely to surprise,
which is a kind of success, if that is the goal.
Only a fool would write “Don't ever change”
in a cloud's high school yearbook.
A cloud knows what it is like to be white
and what it is like to be black.
A cloud knows what it is like to live as a man,
what it is like to live as a woman,
what it is like to take the form of a dog
with only three legs, the form of a beheaded octopus,
its legs stretched and then pulled apart.

Clouds are not lonely, William Wordsworth.
For I have seen them travel in crowds.
They have reminded me of sheep.
I've seen a sunburned cloud. Its suffering
filled the sky with such beauty!
Clouds are the sky's chameleon poets.
I have seen clouds weep, unashamed.
They cover a multitude of sins, and when
they're full of all they've seen, they burst.
When clouds part, good things happen:
a streak of sunlight dividing the sky
into two delicious pieces of blueberry pie,
a Jacob's Ladder, a holy dove,
a sign from up above that says
We're having a party and everyone's invited .

Clouds have such lovely, comforting names,
cirrus , nimbus , stratus , cumulus ,
bestowed on them by the Quaker chemist Luke Howard (1772-1864).
But you can't count on clouds.
You don't know how they'll vote.
Whether they'll dissipate before election day,
float far away from the polling places,
or what winds they'll let themselves be steered by.
You can't shop for a cloud.
A cloud's trouser size differs from day to day.
You can't bring a cloud in for show-and-tell.
You can't give a cloud a proper burial.
You can't afford to let a cloud enter your door.
It will camp out over your head.
It will eat at your memories.
It will affect your judgment.
It will cruelly enact what is happening
little by little, to each of us.

How the Sky Touches
by Paul Gibbons

Beyond the point where the fenceline disappears
in fall, willows turn and sound like they’re turning,

a burro in a field flattens its ears
against its head and then offers them up again the way
a young daughter, waiting around her father who digs a ditch,
suddenly extends her arms to be picked up,

and that is how the sky comes closer, bringing with it
a cloud that started waning miles ago
but now has thinned out to a line that hovers
in the eye of the burro, and the white line stretches too

above the field until its tail is pointing at a barn in front of which
browning grass waves suddenly
and then the willows startle and whistle like a river moving
from its bank, and the barn shifts as the first

corner rattles and around the red slats
dust throws itself like an element should
when the unseen seems to have descended,

and like wasps clouding their nests in the eave
there is the small awful display of one thing
following another, and though the otherwise cloudless sky
surely has been broken by the surly thread of white,

you know it is no less sky, no less the dust spiking past
itself and nothing else. And you are tempted to believe in it.
You look post by post into the field and you hear

your mother shout to you, a splinter working its way
through the burro and barn and the sky. And this, maybe this,
is a way to say, if you are asked, how you are touched
seven years after her death.

Joy A State You Set
by Pinkroses Smith


If joy is a state of mind; then plant therein
seeds of those; indeed.
Deweed the state of depress.
Press happy seeds in my mind instead.
Deweed the stress within and all the unrest.
Sow the seeds of wholeness nad blessedness.
To others may I show seeds of kindness.
So, indeed Lord in my miind, plant seeds
of joy deep within.


Written by: Sheila Kay Smith
© Jan. 27, 2006

Midnight Pastoral
by Kristy Bowen


Suppose we could describe it: the bird collector
with his binoculars and net gone home to his wife

in her blue-lit kitchen. The black pot boiling over on the stove
and the goats outside rubbing their bodies against the fence.

Who knows what he cages or what survives the night.
A girl in a white dress arcs toward the dark horizon, the world so

small you could climb out of it. So small you could pocket
the moon with a cupped palm. Suppose we could describe

her movement through bluestem and aster, or describe dress,
or girl, or even sky. That beautiful black climbing.

According to the birds. According to the goats.

The Robot
by Michael Mack

Upon the stairway of despair,
Complete with broken love affairs
And promises that never came,
But faded with a touch of shame,
A pretty girl with golden hair
And innocence so sadly rare,
Strove to keep her head above
A way of life devoid of love.

Feeling pinned against Life's wall,
She chanced upon a robot tall
And said, "Please come and share with me
Whatever Fate has deemed to be.
I'm through with love, done with chances
Spirit crushed by past romances,
Just be a friend in word and deed.
That's all that I shall ever need."

"There's not too much from me to learn,"
Remarked the robot, in return.
"Emotions do not form a part
of my cold, solid-steel heart.
Whatever maker fashioned me
Did not permit my circuitry
Responsiveness to love or pain -
You're thoughts for me would be in vain."

"No matter", spoke the maid. "No more
Do I wish passion to explore.
Be someone I can come home to
When my exhausting day is through.
Count yourself a well-worn shoe -
A friend that I can slip into . . .
Protection from a stone cold floor . . .
For this I ask and nothing more."

Agreement made, he took her hand
And lived the life that she had planned,
Always willing, not demanding,
Aiding her with understanding
He made her smile with humorous wit
(As his restrictions would permit)
And, bit by bit, she came to feel
That he was more than iron and steel.

"I love you, robot", she at last
Replied when several months had passed.
"You're strength and quiet dignity
Have brought a wondrous change in me.
No more do I feel all alone,
And pray you must be flesh and bone.
Deep-set emotions you MUST feel
Within that outer coat of steel!"

"If I were able, I would say
I'm sorry I was made this way
But my design and programmation
Does not provide for that creation
Of feelings normal men may feel
That were not born of iron and steel.
I told you all this once before.
You have no right expecting more."

"Go, then!" cried she. "I will not live
Beside a fiend who cannot give!
Though I be battered by misuse,
Misguided trust and strong abuse,
At least the men I chose were real
And had the power to love and feel.
Of all the lovers I recall,
You are the cruelest one of all!"

The robot, indestructible,
Continues freely and at will.
Emotionless, apparently,
But, bearing closer scrutiny,
One can see a small tear streak
Down that cold, metallic cheek
As I reflect upon my life . . .
That lovely lady was my wife.

The robot, of course, was me.