Stewart Woodson

 

Seldom in thrift stores,

Cindy took me

for a ride to one

real close to a diner

we first ate at

with an unsatisfying menu.

 

How can you wreck eggs?

 

Then I found

a part of me gone

too long to remember back to.

 

From 1956

in these faux bas relief

greys and yellows and blacks

clapboard-thin morocco leather covers---

reference texts

about people

and their lands

as they were then.

 

A piece long dormant

numb

snapped awake

peacefully

tranquil and content

slid home easily

and opulence overcame

runny eggs

for that

and some following days.

 

Nine dollars

is a good price

for yesterdays.

 

 

 

                      Sam Drury

                

               Even when promotions,

               publications, patrimony,

               the perfect vanilla latte

               comes to me

                

               I suffer severely, slicingly since

               it

               or they

               are not better or the best

               richer or richest or the,

               not a,

               definitive object

               goal

               dream.

                

               I go sloppy

               if the tie is not

               exactly touching the belt's tip

               in the expert approved way

               or the silk fabric's dimple is not deep enough.

                

               And a minute scuff on the dress shoe

               or wrinkle in the pleated cuff-----

                

               doom, despair and desolation

               devil thoughts dominate my mind.

                

               Yet today,

               I did improve

               until----

                

               I broke the yolk

               of a Rock Island hen's egg

                

               all its regenerative juice

               slid off the cornflower blue plate

               onto my impeccably pressed

               left

               long-sleeved pearl-white

               dress shirt.

 

 

 

           Olivia Cunningham

            

     Left a fortune at fifty-four,

     she was never or either contented

     using it all.

      

      

     Receiving wealth from shadowy dealings

     her conscience always overrode

     her conscious impulses to do amends

     for the acts of others

     she was unaware of

     unknown by

     except by fiat

     and bonds

      

      

     of deeds, paper and blood.

      

      

     Near today,

     she is on the same porch

     she has rented since

     her birthday

     and watches the bills

     in onyx-tinted steams

     slide

     down the sloped dichondra lawn

     into a wading pool

      

      

     slowly

      

      

     overflowing into the oily

     rainbow

     parched and dessicated

     cement canal

     that always and forever ends up in

     the ossified ocean.

 

 

 

 

© Mike Cluff