A Tidings of Magpies

Joyful, joyful, joyful, as only dogs know how to be happy with only the autonomy of their shameless spirit. --Pable Neruda And lest I forget... also in the spirit of egalitarialism, GO CATS!! Set your clocks--8pm tonight. Be there. I'll bring the Hoppin' John.

Come right on in and sit down. We've been impatient to see you.

Proposals by Cecilia Woloch Mistaking me for someone else, he asked me to marry him. This has happened more than once. The first time, I was eighteen and the boy had a diamond ring in a box. It was the Fourth of July, it was dark, he said, Happy Independence Day. Of course, the ring was too large and slipped right off my finger into the grass. (It belonged to someone else: the woman he married, eventually.) And when I was twenty-one, that redhead, sloe-eyed and slinking out of his grief, said he'd imagined I'd be his wife. But he was mistaken. It wasn't me. Then a drunk who drove too fast, who threw the proposal over his shoulder like some glittering, tattered scarf. I staggered out of his car, saying, No thanks, No thanks, No thanks. And the man over eggs one morning, in the midst of an argument, saying he planned to wait for spring to ask for my hand, then he never asked. (So of course, I married that one for a while; spent years convincing him I was not his cup of coffee...

by Gary Johnson You made crusty bread rolls filled with chunks of brie And minced garlic and drizzled with olive oil And baked them until the brie was bubbly And we ate them thoughtfully, our legs coiled Together under the table And then salmon with dill And lemon and whole-wheat cous cous Baked with garlic and fresh ginger, and a hill Of green beans and carrots roasted with honey and tofu. it was beautiful, the candles and linens and silver, The winter sun setting on our snowy street, Me with my hand on your leg, you, my lover, In your jeans and green T-shirt and beautiful feet. How simple life is. We buy a fish. We are fed. We sit close to each other, we talk and then we go to bed.

by Pamela Porter That last day of the year we hung upside down on the world, air hot as exhaust from the black taxis of Buenos Aires, and while roses in Parque Rosedal opened their fragrant mouths like a Palestrina choir, the two of you ran to the window calling, "Snow!" From the windows of all the office towers, workers tossed the year's papers into the open air, faces serious as ice. December's memos, the first flakes, floated on the bitter wind; windshield wipers plowed the drifts of November's announcements. October fell, with the date and hour of a funeral, then September, August, the grey decisions of July, a list of those to let go, jealous tangos of June and May set free into the azure sky. We walked the Avenida in that bright disorder, the neatly tied loose ends flung open, the hoary edges of graphs flaming in the sun.

Spent the holidays in Neurodramaville, and "Hey!! Nobody died!!" Good days indeed. Boring as hell, but we set the bar low on wanting No Drama Today days.

The Marsh in Winter by Timothy Walsh If you stand and listen, you will hear the voice. Reeds sharp as rapiers rasp the wind. Frost creaks in the trees. Sunlight, ice-bright, falls from the sky. Scattered cedars and junipers loom like shadows. Sheathed in ice, a willow droops heavily Across the path. Driven snow packs the creviced bark of cottonwoods. Once-hidden bird nests now plainly marked by a white cap of snow... Out on the marsh, blue water shows through shifting ice. Tall brown reeds, slim as dancers, bend in the breeze. A hundred thousand cattails, each one lit by the low-angled light of a westering sun, each brown seed head blazing like the head of a saint.