FOUR POETS
Tyree Campbell
When Poets Make LoveAfterwards we lay drained
quenched, sated,
The senses benumbed . . .
My hand comes to rest on
Your breast, the soft pad of my thumb
A moth on your nipple.
And if the acts that have exhausted us
Are all there be
If the memory of frictionless gliding
Within sweet liquid
Has faded
With the slowing of our heartbeats
You can withdraw from contact
Without murmur
. . . can't you?
But should I look down into your eyes
And see in them the words of your
Compositions to come
To be inscribed with the same ink
With which you have written yourself
Upon my body
Can I withdraw from you
As if it is done between us
Until the next urgency?
. . . can I?
Eric Marin
cold cribwaking to the hissing asp monitor
stumbling sleep-blurred down the hall
it lies still and watchful in the crib
death-cold and parchment-skinned
not our own you are not our own
feral orange eyes stare at me
from a hard-edged face
shock nips away budding tears
stifles hiccupping sobs
not our own you are not our own
a question called from our bedroom
my silence screams a reply
our baby girl is taken from us
and something alien left in her place
not our own you are not our own
Martin Willits
Smoke Signals In The E-MailI find myself wearing a blue coat
on the trail of tears
a rifle prodding the slow miles
an urgent hand thrusting a back
across a map of solitude
a motion of stars expanding away
Your words are moccasins of small pox
hesitant in harsh snow
I do not recognize you
carrying the kindling like a dead papoose.
a dog sled pulls a travolis of grief
to a place you do not belong
Or recognize as familiar.
But that was the past I was never a part of.
Empty moccasins shuffle by
in blue shadows pressed into long winter snow,
a deer print in a blizzard of clouds with snow tears.
If I had something in my hands, what would it be?
I would like it to be a stream of words, a return
of ghosts to their tribes, a trail of stars
opening its coat, a return to the familiar.
But that is not in my hands.
I can press these keys all night until they sob.
But that is not what is in my hands.
I can only imagine your hands,
the color of Georgia clay. You bring
a bundle of words to toss in a campfire.
My heart is restricted to the reservation.
You are the girl who could only look at candy
in the glass counter with poor hands.
You live a place you cannot call your own.
It would not be enough
to hand you the turquoise hard candy.
It would never be enough.
It would be cruel as winter.
It would not be enough.
Chris Zimmerman
90 Million Years of SuffocatingMy anxiety…similar to a fly getting trapped
in the quicksand-like resin of a Kauri pine tree,
it grows more desperate with time.
It loses control as first one tiny, delicate wing then
the other sinks deeper.
The fly ever so
s l o w l y
loses the ability to breathe as the resin covers it’s mirrored crown.
It’s lungs seal up like a freshly-cemented basement.
With every attempted movement, it grows more fatigued.
Every effort only grows its paralysis.
The turmoil inside cultivates…
The fly gives up and succumbs to its tomb.
Now the fly is swallowed
completely by the weeping resin.
It is frozen in time.
Flash forward 90 million years.
The fly in the resin.
Millions of years after it first oozed from
the Kauri tree, it is now an elegant piece of amber.
It hangs around the neck as a Stylish pendant or
is placed on a ring finger for all to admire.
Like the fly in the resin, anxiety can motivate
me to bleed my emotions onto canvas, capture
timeless memories on film, and make
procrastinated phone calls.
But I am sure that my lungs are closing up now.
I am having chest pains that feel like a freight
train hitting a newborn kitten at full speed.
My limbs tremor and shake and my body
temperature goes from tropical to frigid and back again.
The end is near.
I am desperate.
As desperate as a fly to get out
of 90 million years of suffocating.
