A Tidings of Magpies

Sometimes the Air Surrounding Me Is Sudden with Flowers by Ander Monson In the busy machine of the emergency room, I talk with a man whose face is barely face, is mostly laceration—accident-remnant while driving his sister's car that he stole while drunk and drove and totaled. He's glad he didn't kill someone, he says. We are surrounded by: black eyes, blood blisters, broken legs, bruises in the shapes of circus animals, a variety of burns. Eight people have something protruding from their feet— fish hook, glass slab, syringe, syringe, staples (22—!), bolt, real big nail, syringe. At least there are no knives in eyes or gunshot wounds as far as I can see. We watch E.R. on the television above us. They are always resuscitating someone. The crowd cheers when this happens. A man with a fissure in his arm all the way down to the bone sits next to me. This patient is far more patient than I'd imagine, considering the bleeding. I ask him if it hurts and he says sure, what do...

by Robyn Sarah I grow to like the bare trees and the snow, the bones and fur of winter. Even the greyness of the nunneries, they are so grey, walled all around with grey stones — and the snow piled up on ledges of wall and sill, those grey planes for holding snow: this is how it will be, months now, all so still, sunk in itself, only the cold alive, vibrant, like a wire — and all the busy chimneys — their ghost-breath, a rumour of lives warmed within, rising, rising, and blowing away. please note: photo art by Patti Hinton

by Linda Pastan Somewhere in the world something is happening which will make its slow way here. A cold front will come to destroy the camellias, or perhaps it will be a heat wave to scorch them. A virus will move without passport or papers to find me as I shake a hand or kiss a cheek. Somewhere a small quarrel has begun, a few overheated words ignite a conflagration, and the smell of smoke is on its way; the smell of war. Wherever I go I knock on wood— on tabletops or tree trunks. I rinse my hands over and over again; I scan the newspapers and invent alarm codes which are not my husband's birthdate or my own. But somewhere something is happening against which there is no planning, only those two aging conspirators, Hope and Luck.

by Linda Pastan In the middle seat of an airplane, between an overweight woman whose arm takes over the armrest and a man immersed in his computer game, I am reading the inflight magazine about three perfect days somewhere: Kyoto this time, but it could be anywhere— Madagascar or one of the Virgin Islands. There is always the perfect hotel where at breakfast the waiter smiles as he serves an egg as perfectly coddled as a Spanish Infanta. There are walks over perfect bridges—their spans defying physics—and visits to zoos where rain is forbidden, and no small child is ever bored or crying. I would settle now for just one perfect day anywhere at all, a day without mosquitoes, or traffic, or newspapers with their headlines. A day without any kind of turbulence— certainly not this kind, as the pilot tells us to fasten our seatbelts, and even the flight attendants look nervous.

Our local grocery store is closed due to financial troubles and, though it sounds a bit melodramatic, I am heartbroken. Our entire neighborhood has been taken by surprise and the effect is more than the loss of a convenience. Many neighbors here don't drive so a local grocer is a necessity for them. We have two blind neighbors in Clifton. They could call ahead with their orders. At times the food was delivered or ready for pickup or an employee would walk with them through the store picking out items. More than that for me, I would see my neighbors there and find out the scuttlebutt of the week, solve the political problems of the city, see old friends from the days when my grrrls were in grade school and on soccer teams, and talk to the firefighters from the station house next door. Sold our pickup truck to police officer Wilson, who moonlighted there, and admired Detective Meyers' grandbaby photos--his daughter worked in my unit at BigFatTeaching Hospital. We've been to ...

by Tony Hoagland "I'm sorry," the novelist apologized— "my story has a beginning, middle and an end." Then she commenced her explication of the tapestry hanging on the wall. Usually these large, time-faded rectangles of textile woven in the fourteenth century depict some martial glory; two armies bivouacked on a plain beneath the fluttering pennants of their lords; knights galloping on horseback, a sky crisscrossed by arrows. Or sometimes, a damsel and her maids are picking flowers in a glen while from the left, the fiend disguised as an old peddler approaches on a mule— But in this case, a construction site is what we get— giant yellow bulldozers and dirty trucks arrayed around a squared-off hole of scraped-out, reddish dirt— Down in the pit, the foreman is shouting into a shoe-box sized, old-fashioned telephone— He...

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Happy Birthday, Dr. King, and thank you. please note: photo of stairs by Stu Worrall