We Gather Together

by Diane Webster

I sit in the same church

Catherine was married in --

Today trying to wrap my mental strength

around Catherine

during this funeral I share

with some of the same people

who witnessed her wedding,

who witness this death.

From across the room

without Catherine knowing

I send my love, my friendship,

my strength to her.

I sit in the same church

asking God to help her

asking God to show me

what I can do to help.

Knowing all these people

came together for Catherine.

Catherine, who has touched us all

as we want to lend a touch back

today in the same church.

Line Drawn in the Lawn

     by Diane Webster

Fertilized lawn

on theleft

mowed every

Saturday morning.

Automatically watered

every other sunrise.

Leaves raked

exactly to edge

almost like

catching snowflakes

mid-air

to prevent unsightly build-up

around

yard-of-the-month

sign.

Sometimes green,

sometimes brown,

rarely a height

to blur the line.

Let them fall

like rice

at a wedding!

Ankle deep in

rustling, tickling,

wind-blown confetti

begging for leaf angels

beneath arms

and legs flying…

flying across yards --

flags of surrender --

prayers for a Christmas leaf blower.

At First Sight

by John Grey

What's lunacy but

where you're seen in town,

which people you are noticed with,

what words are overheard

sprouting from your mouth

or directed at you.

What's madness

hut your life

impinging on others

in random ways,

at odd times,

defying explanation

while at the same time

encouraging it.

What's insanity

but the interpretation

put on all this

accidental contact,

the haphazard

in the guise

of preordained.

What can be rational

when unexpected people

haunt the unsuspected places.

What's love for instance

but stuff that shows up in the heart,

that should be in the head.

Takeoff

by John Grey

She's seventy and it's her first flight.

She's never believed those great

hunks of metal could really

break the bounds of gravity.

Not even her eyes staring up at the sky these years

could tell her different.

Thrust and elevation are meaningless terms to her.

And now she's strapped in.

She can't leave. She can hardly move.

She remembers the heart-attack,

not five years old by this.

She was fastened so tightly lo the hospital bed.

Her arms were a mass of tubes.

A machine at her bedside

pretended to be her heart.

Doctors, nurses kept telling her she'd be okay.

Then she'd see them off in the corner,

looking at her chart,

shaking their heads.

Did pilots, stewards, go through

the very same motions?

"It's perfectly safe," her daughter whispers.

They once said the same about life.

Where Feelings Get Off

by John Grey

Traffic crawled,

head-lamps swam in exhaust cloud

for block after interminable block.

Temperature was sticky as molasses

in late July Rhode Island.

The road idled.

Six hundred cars followed suit.

The driver ahead of me

crawled to a stop.

My foot pressed hard down

on the much reviled brake.

She leaned out of the window.

Featureless back of head

became lovely profile.

Remember when you washed

the mud from your face?

Exactly. Yes.

Clouds banked low.

The moon glowed strawberry red.

I was bored into loving this woman

like those others -

one, and only one, girl in my eighth grade class -

forties' actresses in black dresses and white gloves.

Eventually

we crept by an accident ~

two accordion cars and at least one dead man.

Traffic began to free itself.

Little voices spoke,

"Be thankful it's not you."

The woman drove straight on

as I took a left.

My vehicle could now travel a pace

more commensurate with you.

Poetry on the Internet

By John Grey

It's the twenty first century

and songs are so small

you can plug them in your ear.

Anna could have imagined so much

walking across the car-park

but instead is speaking on a cell-phone

to someone with nothing to say.

Only the crazy read books,

Only the insane parade their mental crises

up and down the halls of art galleries.

And poetry's so dead

they teach it in schools.

From my house in Rhode Island

to the mutilated of Baghdad

is a push of a button away.

I'm broadband, I'm wireless,

the new century's version

of off-hand and feckless.

The widow of the ex-finance minister

of Nigeria needs my help.

Strangers offer to make my penis grow

though I could be a woman

for all they know.

It' s the twenty first century

and all politics is no longer local

but vocal.

And thanks to GPS,

I can't get lost while driving.

Kids just born to the right families

are already campaigning for president.

And computers are writing books

for other computers to read.

And the art galleries have been closed off

so the inmates can't escape.

And poetry's so dead,

it’s buried everywhere.

School, Thirty Years On

by John Grey

Less threatening,

it almost cowers.

A few blocks of tiny classrooms.

Desks all carved up,

chairs a sorry fit -

surely this is where

learning goes to die.

And here's room 14.

No more nuns.

They've been eradicated

like bats in an attic.

Did Sister Mary Clark

really pitch chalk

at chatterers

from behind that desk?

Only crucified Jesus remains,

no birth, no teaching, no ascension,

just the suffering.

Walls peel paint.

A spider creeps across the ceiling.

I open a desk drawer.

No implements of torture,

merely yellowing forms

for official diocese business.

There's nothing to face down here.

The years give all their weight

to irrelevance.

Did I tremble before

the snarling repertoire

of the self-proclaimed Sister in Christ?

Did I scratch my head

when the isosceles triangle

surfaced on that dusty blackboard?

Were my knees really rubbed raw

by chain gang kneeling?

No trauma, no pain, no nightmare.

You just can't teach memory anything.

Soothsayer

Soothsayer

by JD DeHart

an ancient wisdom
or just scribbles from
yesterday

prophecy
or product of a bad
dinner

tiny words to bind
compress and heal
a wounded soul

Start Stop

Start Stop

by JD DeHart

silent men around me
seem to know
there is a time for rutting
and feeding on corn
a time to sit still in cold

start the cleaning
of the firearm and stop

start the squeezing of
target practice trigger
              stop again

a preconfigured notion
of manhood starts
and I stop it at its
bubbling source
thereby redefining.

Fragments of the World

Fragments of the World

by JD DeHart

moments floated past me
as I walked the old courtyard
photos suspended in the air

images of a younger me
a more frightened person

I thought of the crisis time
when I had to decide
between who I was and who
others made me out to be

every poor decision
and choice of wording
navigating to my purpose
and how soon
rain would come and autumn
would be thicker than memory

Fried Mushrooms

Fried Mushrooms

by JD DeHart

mother fried them
in butter
like everything else

they started as brown
and webbed
then were rolled
and carefully breaded

we ate them at the small
metal table
my father made for her

always patently
domestic in his gifts

Gear Up

Gear Up

by JD DeHart

the way he says
get ready, gear up
makes me imagine
an internal clock

cog kicking against cog,
a furry creature
turning a wheel
at the center of him

smell of rubber
and onions

fueled by the gas
station cappuccino
and constant soda
streaming into him

Peace Is

Peace Is

by Kelly Sullivan

Peace Is
When the Navy battleships
Have no place to go
When the Army tanks
Are parked on U.S. land.
When the Air Force planes,
Sit in stillness at the post.
When the U.S. Marines
Unload their guns
And our ocean waters
And American sand
Have no enemies.

When children aren't being hurt
And guns aren't in evil hands
When people sit together
With laughter and love
To give each other.
And the waters and towns
Sit in pleasing silence.

Winning the Toss

Winning the Toss

By Saloni Kaul

The head's up there in all-time honoured milieu

But on the tail's side      loud distinct     as the cry of the curlew

Is the ultimate statement, the coin's value.

Startled as Springboard

Startled as Springboard

By Saloni Kaul

A glass walled chapel so unique in rock and wood,

Deft latticed skeleton leaps into tree-branched sky,

Aspiring in forest-screened tongued darkness high

Like long forgotten promises, forgotten good.

How long have you sighed there, how long there stood?

We stumble tearing on you in transfixed delight --

Delight of lovers longing to be somewhere lost --

Yet signs of former civilization sparked at what cost,

All that dart leaping dancing stained glass light

Stirs deeply us as boisterous wind the night.

Even this Bonaparte Gull's exploratory

Mild acrobatics veering in bring smiles in face of fright,

As lonely your thawed lofty look of might

All miracles converges for all to see laudatory;

E pluribus unum* , one from many's conciliatory.

(*out of plurality, oneness)

These Pennsylvania hills still sing your hymns,

Recorded, saved by every nourished bird and tree

Afloat on blue tract meadowed lea;

We take your leave as slow the red waning light dims,

All o'er the open muskeg by woodland lakes' rims.

Saucy Gavotte on a Saucer

Saucy Gavotte on a Saucer

By Saloni Kaul

You vacillate in bits

Then remember wry

Like steadiness

Of a norm,

The eye that sits

There watching us

Is the eye

Of a storm.

You turn to go,

Then decide to stay

Like supremacy

In great form;

One candidate's echo,

The candidate still in the fray,

Commands contumacy

All in all to conform.

                Like that first hallo

                Stomping the bay

                Invades obstinacy,

                Like night silence in a dorm.

Like picturesque rising dough

Truth's love portrays;

Revival of intimacy,

All elbow room considerate, all warm.

Minuet in a Teacup

Minuet in a Teacup

By Saloni Kaul

A sail out at sea

Repetitively careens,

A face in storm stares

And makes as though about to intervene.

The sail its love of sea declares,

The face of storm      proposes a fee ;

Poses its dares ; offers to share;

Resolute, Sail in the know resists, dare contravenes.

The difference between

The sea and stormy sea

Is light cold or hot air.

Destructive Ramifications

Believing you were

Scattered shrapnel

On the war field of life,

You craved “The One”

Who you thought

Would gather your remains

And stick you back together.

Forgetting that no one

Wants to touch busted bombs.

Much less repair them,

In fear that these might one day

Explode in their face.

Doxa Zannou

Blood Thirsty Savages

We weren’t always

Cannibals. But now we eat

Each others’ hearts in

Hope that we’ll one day recall

The bliss of satiation.

Doxa Zannou

Damning Veneration

I idolized you for so long,

Burdened you with the heavy yoke

Of my hopes, knowing it was wrong.

And when you finally cracked and broke,

I demonized you and burned to smoke

Our ties ‘cause I failed to realize

That your name I could not invoke-

You weren’t God who answers cries.

Doxa Zannou