INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Chris Lord
Joseph McNair
Karyn M. Wolven
Geoffrey Philp
Paul B. Roth
Duane Locke
Silvia Scheibli
Shutta Crum
Felino Soriano
Steve Beaulieu
Donald Hewlett
Alan Britt
Joanie Freeman
Mervyn M. Solomon
Jerry Blanton
Marilyn Churchill
Running Cub
Mukul Dahal
Alice Paris
Helen
Losse
Fred Wolven
It's not real lead,
a baby wouldn't die from it.
It's carbon and clay, mixed
to the hardness or softness desired.
The painted wood is good to chew on,
something to do with the molars
when the brain begins to fidget.
When you hold the pencil in the writing hand
the other hand flattens, reaching for the skin
of paper. Slowly, a thin company of letters
becomes the skeleton of a poem.
Eraser sits smug and pink at the top
within a gold crown, moves toward
destroying everything on the line.
But the six-sided wonder
lurches forward like a spider
on its graphite path,
undeterred, spinning together
past, present, future, with one thread.
TRESPASS
An owl woke me with his call.
It was pitch black, it was summer,
my tent too close to his tree.
NAVEL
Why do they call you "button"?
You are round and huddle in the middle.
I cannot snip you off.
And where are your eyes?
Real buttons can be poked with needles,
drawn tight with thread,
but you are more--obscure.
If I have a third eye
it is here, in the center.
If I have a blessing
it is here, below the heart.
Belly rose, you are not sweet.
Still, you are the memory
of a tangled vine,
a sleep within a sleep,
A gift my mother gave me.
Marilyn Churchill, Ann Arbor