A Tidings of Magpies

by Wesley McNair Why, when we say goodbye at the end of an evening, do we deny we are saying it at all, as in We'll be seeing you, or I'll call, or Stop in, somebody's always at home? Meanwhile, our friends, telling us the same things, go on disappearing beyond the porch light into the space which except for a moment here or there is always between us, no matter what we do. Waving goodbye, of course, is what happens when the space gets too large for words – a gesture so innocent and lonely, it could make a person weep for days. Think of the hundreds of unknown voyagers in the old, fluttering newsreel patting and stroking the growing distance between their nameless ship and the port they are leaving, as if to promise I'll always remember, and just as urgently, Always remember me. It is loneliness, too, that makes the neighbor down the road lift two fingers up from his steering wheel as he passes day after day on his way to work in the hello that turns into goodbye? What ...

by George Bilgere Someone's taken a bite from my laptop's glowing apple, the damaged fruit of our disobedience, of which we must constantly be reminded. There's the fatal crescent, the dark smile of Eve, who never dreamed of a laptop, who, in fact, didn't even have clothes, or anything else for that matter, which was probably the nicest thing about the Garden, I'm thinking, as I sit here in the café with my expensive computer, afraid to get up even for a minute in order to go to the bathroom because someone might steal it in this fallen world she invented with a single bite of an apple nobody, and I mean nobody, was going to tell her not to eat. please note: painting by Gustav Klimt, Apple Tree

Rain, sun, rain, sun, rain, sun here in the beautiful city of the seven hills. Lots to be done today and plenty of space to do it with Hubby at work and HoneyHaired camping amongst allergy-inducing pollen. Have Zyrtec/Will Travel. CollegeGrrrl is still recovering after an evening involving multiple baths, Miralax, and geriatric psych patients. We won't go there. I learned yesterday after diligently checking my emails twice or twenty times a day for the past six weeks that I'm accepted to grad school. Public Health Nursing. I'm very, very excited and not only because of the new notebooks and pens yet to be bought, although they obviously are a huge factor and I do love pens. There's also a new killer fungal spore out in Oregon which is an interesting read. School doesn't start till September so I won't be boring you with any public health gossip till much later in the year. Right now I'm relishing the quiet with the animals snoozing and the house empty and ...

After a Noisy Night by Laure-Anne Bosselaar The man I love enters the kitchen with a groan, he just woke up, his hair a Rorschach test. A minty kiss, a hand on my neck, coffee, two percent milk, microwave. He collapses on a chair, stunned with sleep, yawns, groans again, complains about his dry sinuses and crusted nose. I want to tell him how much he slept, how well, the cacophony of his snoring pumping in long wheezes and throttles—the debacle of rhythm—hours erratic with staccato of pants and puffs, crescendi of gulps, chokes, pectoral sputters and spits. But the microwave goes ding! A short little ding! – sharp as a guillotine—loud enough to stop my words from killing the moment. And during the few seconds it takes the man I love to open the microwave, stir, sip and sit there staring at his mug, I remember the vows I made to my pillows, to fate and God: I'll stop eating licorice, become a blonde, a lumberjack, a Catholic, anything,...

by Beverly Rollwagen Remember: This is a test you cannot pass. The thirteen year old asks, "Where are your kids?" When you say you don't have any, she tells you, "His last girlfriend did, and we are best friends." Feel yourself slip through the blue of her eyes. The sixteen-year-old watches you from all five corners of the room. When her father is there she is pleasant, smiles, asks about your cat. When he leaves a happy man, she tries to kill you seven different ways. She sets herself on fire and says you did it. She watches your chest rise and fall and hates your breath. If you try to touch her, her arm falls off. She is a sensitive creature. Be patient. Soon, you marry the father. The girls come late to the wedding and pull wrinkled dresses from paper bags to stand in the living room. crying for their mother. They throw all their arms around their father and hold him tight within their skirts for the last time. Stand outside yourself in your silly white suit ...

by Jane Kenyon I divested myself of despair and fear when I came here. Now there is no more catching one's own eye in the mirror, there are no bad books, no plastic, no insurance premiums, and of course no illness. Contrition does not exist, nor gnashing of teeth. No one howls as the first clod of earth hits the casket. The poor we no longer have with us. Our calm hearts strike only the hour, and God, as promised, proves to be mercy clothed in light. please note: photo of dust motes

His Wife by Andrew Hudgins My wife is not afraid of dirt. She spends each morning gardening, stooped over, watering, pulling weeds, removing insects from her plants and pinching them until they burst. She won't grow marigolds or hollyhocks, just onions, eggplants, peppers, peas – things we can eat. And while she sweats I'm working on my poetry and flute. Then growing tired of all that art, I've strolled out to the garden plot and seen her pull a tomato from the vine and bite into the unwashed fruit like a soft, hot apple in her hand. The juice streams down her dirty chin and tiny seeds stick to her lips. Her eye is clear, her body full of light, and when, at night, I hold her close, she smells of mint and lemon balm.

Dogs by Lawrence Raab I never liked the idea. Didn’t animals belong outside? Wasn’t it wrong to make them feel like people, talking to them as if they understood? Of course they understood some of the time, I said, but anything small enough gets scared when you raise your voice. A well-trained dog, we read when we got the dog, is a happy dog. Your dog, I told my wife. And yours, I told my daughter. But all the better arguments were on their side: loyalty. companionship, and every time we came home the dog welcomed us, so of course se started talking to her. Then sometimes I said I’d take her out. I said I wanted to smoke a cigarette and I did, even though I liked the way she waited by the door when I called her name, the way it was so easy to make her happy.

the lost women by Lucille Clifton i need to know their names those women i would have walked with jauntily the way men go in groups swinging their arms, and the ones those sweating women whom i would have joined after a hard game to chew the fat what would we have called each other laughing joking into our beer? where are my gangs, my teams, my mislaid sisters? all the women who could have known me, where in the world are their names? Yeah...I need some of this...Come on, summer! please note: photo by Ben Errol Thomas

by Wesley McNair How were we to know, leaving your two kids behind in New Hampshire for our honeymoon at twenty-one, that it was a trick of cheap hotels in New York City to draw customers like us inside by displaying a fancy lobby? Arriving in our fourth-floor room, we found a bed, a scarred bureau, and a bathroom door with a cut on one side the exact shape of the toilet bowl that was in its way when I closed it. I opened and shut the door, admiring the fit and despairing of it. You discovered the initials of lovers carved on the bureau's top in a zigzag, breaking heart. How wrong the place was to us then, unable to see the portents of our future that seem so clear now in the naiveté of the arrangements we made, the hotel's disdain for those with little money, the carving of pain and love. Yet in that room we pulled the covers over ourselves and lay our love down, and in this way began our unwise and persistent and lucky life together.

by Eleanor Lerman It is a mild day in the suburbs Windy, a little gray. If there is sunlight, it enters through the kitchen window and spreads itself, thin as a napkin, beside the coffee cup, pie on a plate What am I describing? I am describing a dream in which nobody has died These are our mothers: your mother and mine It is an empty day; everyone else is gone. Our mothers are sitting in red chairs that look like metal hearts and they are smoking Your mother is wearing sandals and a skirt. My mother is thinking about dinner. The bread, the meat Later, there will be no reason to remember this, so remember it now: a safe day. Time passes into dim history. And we are their babies sleeping in the folds of the wind. Whatever our chances, these are the women. Such small talk before life begins please note: Advertisement quite happily found on Found in Mom's Basement

Baseball by John Updike It looks easy from a distance, easy and lazy, even, until you stand up to the plate and see the fastball sailing inside, an inch from your chin, or circle in the outfield straining to get a bead on a small black dot a city block or more high, a dark star that could fall on your head like a leaden meteor. The grass, the dirt, the deadly hops between your feet and overeager glove: football can be learned, and basketball finessed, but there is no hiding from baseball the fact that some are chosen and some are not—those whose mitts feel too left-handed, who are scared at third base of the pulled line drive, and at first base are scared of the shortstop's wild throw that stretches you out like a gutted deer. There is nowhere to hide when the ball's spotlight swivels your way, and the chatter around you falls still, and the mothers on the sidelines, your own among them, hold their breaths, and you whiff on a terrible pitch or in the infield achieve something w...

It seems a bit pointless to cook for Easter with half the clan gone, but I felt so kerflempt about it I broke down and stopped at the local IGA on my way home from Sunday morning pilates class. There were plenty of other folks buying goodies for the day and, although the pickings were sparce for easter basket candy, Hubby really only likes the malted milk balls and black jelly beans. Shockingly, those were still on the shelves. So we'll be having Pork Loin Roast with Orange, Cumin, and Cilantro with rice, or at least HoneyHaired and I will. Depending on when Hubby's able to get home he'll get some sooner or later. If it's super-fab I'll pass on the recipe. And, tomorrow's Opening Day. Basically a holy and sacred day for CinCity. Food is required for Opening Day Palooza at Big, Fat Teaching Hospital. Generally, I make the same pasta salad--garlic, basil, cherry tomatoes, oil and vinegar. What it lacks in imagination I make up for in garlic. HoneyHaired is home f...

The Saints of April by Todd Davis Coltsfoot gives way to dandelion, plum to apple blossom. Cherry fills our woods, white petals melting like the last late snow. Dogwood's stigmata shine with the blood of this season. How holy forsythia and redbud are as they consume their own flowers, green leaves running down their crowns. Here is the shapeliness of bodies newly formed, the rich cloth that covers frail bones and hides roots that hold fervently to this dark earth. --For Jack Ridl Blessings to all today.

The Acacia Trees Derek Walcott III You see those breakers coming around Pigeon Island bowing like nuns in a procession? One thing I know, when you're gone like my other friends, not to Thailand or Russia, but wherever it is loved friends go with their different beliefs, who were like a flock of seagulls leaving the mirror of the sand, or a bittern passing lonely Barrel of Beef, or the sails that an egret hoists leaving its rock; I go down to the same sea by another road with manchineel shadows and stunted sea grapes dwarfed by the wind. I carry something to read: the wind is bright and shadows race like grief, I open their books and see their distant shapes approaching and always arriving, their voices heard in the page of a cloud, like the soft surf in my head. please note: art by Linda Amundsen