INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Shutta Crum
Joseph McNair
Laszlo Slomovits
Joanie Freeman
Chris Lord
Elisavietta Ritchie
Gerald Clark
Karyn M. Wolven
Duane Locke
Mervyn M. Solomon
Paul B. Roth
Sue Budin
Running Cub
Silvia Scheibli
Geoffrey Philp
Marilyn Churchill
Jerry Blanton
Steve Beaulieu
Don Hewlett
Fred Wolven

Every instant of it transforms me;
A child's fingers shaping snow,
Every snowflake of me raked into
A neat pile of autumn leaves.

Breathing out its words uplifts me,
Spinning in November breezes;
Fragments of reflecting prisms
Becoming scores of summer suns.

Down like dreams, distinctive raindrop
Dandelions on warm waves of Spring.
Up like snowflakes, shaped like mud
In the mold of a child's hand.




HOUSE OF STONE

The birds notice
When a tree falls,
And the twigged houses of woodland suburbia
Come crashing, rock-a-bye-baby,
Into the ferns and fox holes.

Stuck to slender beaks
There is a smattering of broken twigs
And dried leaves, like dust
Caked on the lips of infants
Where the milk should be.
Their bodies, swollen with nothing
Like fragile crystal balls that portend no future,
Ache with need.

These chirping children,
Their necks outstretched to Heaven,
Mouths agape,
Coelestem dominum, terrestrem dicit dominum;
Not the cries of skinned knees,
Or ice cream melting on the sidewalk,
But palpable desperation.

Spira, Spera
As the Latin goes;
Breathe, hope.
But they cry in forgotten languages,
In a forest of fallen trees
So often ignored;
There is no one there to listen.



Steve Beaulieu,  Miami