A Tidings of Magpies

Air by Ruth Stone Through the open window, a confusion of gasoline fumes, lilacs, the green esters of grass. Edward Waite rides the lawn mower. Each summer his voice is more stifled. His emphysema is worse. "Three packs a day," he says, still proud of the fact. Before he got sick, he drove semis across the country. Every two weeks he drives his small truck up the mountain. He mows in long rows fitting swath to cut swath, overlapping the width. To please me he saves the wild paintbrush along the edge. Stripped to the waist, I see he has hung his blue shirt on my clothesline to dry out the sweat. The shirt, with its arms upraised, filled with the body of air, is deeply inhaling, exhaling its doppelgänger breath.

   Graduation by Louis Simpson My ex-wife comes over and invites me to sit with them. I say okay. There are a lot of speeches, all saying much the same, about the new generation, the future belongs to them. They're lining up for it, walking onto the stage. There she is, our Meredith. The sound of two hands clapping is mine. If there's one thing I know it's when something is over and done with, and it's time to go. Graduation has come and gone, though these chicks are smart enough to space out their parties through  the summer to enjoy them all and orientaion for BigFatUniversity is the end of June. Time moves on. HoneyHaired is the big grin in the middle and her dad and I are in the background watching and smiling, which is exactly where we should be. CollegeGrrrl is on her way up from the Town of Horses to give her well-lived advice on college life. As far as moving on, what is not moving is this kidne...

The zebra stood in the night by Kerry Hardie now it keeps flashing up on the screen of my mind, the lines on its body sharp and precise, no blurring of edges, no shading. I'm surprised that I seem so surprised at the hardship that's dwelling inside me. Black, white, black, white. No compromise. No bleed.

Just in case...

and HoneyHaired's last day of high school :>) Time really does fly when you're having fun.

by D.H.Lawrence This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up, and the flickering, watery rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, these sparks that puff in wild gyration, Faces of people streaming across my gaze. And I, what fountain of fire am I among This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed About like a shadow buffeted in the throng Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost. please note: art, Curvy Branches in Spring by Susanna Katherine Spring? It's 50 degress and raining. Feels like November and some mornings I wake up thinking we're gonna need to batten down for another round of winter. Difficult to summon forth the heart for it until I remember we shouldn't have to. I. Hope. Coming into the las...

Scary Movies by Kim Addonizio Today the cloud shapes are terrifying, and I keep expecting some enormous black-and-white B-movie Cyclops to appear at the edge of the horizon, to come striding over the ocean and drag me from my kitchen to the deep cave that flickered into my young brain one Saturday at the Baronet Theater where I sat helpless between my older brothers, pumped up on candy and horror—that cave, the litter of human bones gnawed on and flung toward the entrance, I can smell their stench as clearly as the bacon fat from breakfast. This is how it feels to lose it— not sanity, I mean, but whatever it is that helps you get up in the morning and actually leave the house on those days when it seems like death in his brown uniform is cruising his panel truck of packages through your neighborhood. I think of a friend's voice on her answering machine— Hi, I'm not here— the morning of her funeral, the calls filling up the tape and the ma...

Computer is back home after virus removal and a massive lightening of my wallet. What a major pain, but I have a new BFF, Norton 360. Long may we be friends.

There are sadnesses which cast in one's soul the shadows of monasteries. E. M. Cioran

Crossing State Lines [Shirtsleeved afternoons] by Rita Dove Shirtsleeved afternoons turn toward leather as the trees blush, scatter a last few bright, weary wisps across the great bruised heart of the South. The spirit cup drifts down the pond's moon-sparked highway. Far laughter, shadows. Love or poison? Your turn. Drink to the star-drenched latitudes!

Staff Sgt. Metz by Dorianne Laux Metz is alive for now, standing in line at the airport Starbucks in his camo gear and buzz cut, his beautiful new camel-colored suede boots. His hands are thick-veined. The good blood still flows through, given an extra surge when he slurps his latte, a fleck of foam caught on his bottom lip. I can see into the canal in his right ear, a narrow darkness spiraling deep inside his head toward the place of dreaming and fractions, ponds of quiet thought. In the sixties my brother left for Vietnam, a war no one understood, and I hated him for it. When my boyfriend was drafted I made a vow to write a letter every day, and then broke it. I was a girl torn between love and the idea of love. I burned their letters in the metal trash bin behind the broken fence. It was the summer of love and I wore nothing under my cotton vest, my Mexican skirt. I see Metz later, outside baggage claim, hunched over a cigarette, mumbling into his cel...