Biscuits

Biscuits
by
Willa Schneberg




Mostly when I'm vacuuming the carpet
in Mr. Besdine's office
I don't worry, just do the work
and know I'll be sleeping in my own bed
when all the desks in all them offices
will have people sitting around them.
Sometimes I don't hear the vacuum cleaner
and I'm quiet like when I play
Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow
in the Mission Baptist Church.
There are other times I imagine fixing biscuits
unrolling my cloth from the coffee can,
flour still on it from the last time,
smoothing it out on the counter,
cloth white, flour white.
My mother's biscuit cutter
made from an old Pet Milk can,
not a tack of rust on it,
presses in easy as a body to a hammock.
Some like biscuits and gravy,
I myself fancy biscuits with my homemade
muscadine jelly that comes from the
muscadine grape that grows wild.

Stars In Her Pocket

Stars in Her Pocket

By Ken Nye


Millions lie before her.
She overlooks most, but here is one
that warrants inspection.
Something in the smooth roundness of the glistening wet stone
catches her eye,
like a shooting star.
Stooping, she plucks it from the foaming sand,
holds it in her hand,
rolls it over,
examines its veins
and blended colors.
But it lacks something.
She discards it
and begins again to scan the stars before her,
washed every few seconds
by an infinite number of swirling eddies,
one after the other, as she searches for the perfect stone.

Here is one of unusual…………What?
What is it about this stone
that gets her attention?
What is it
that refuels the possibility of selection?
A color that echoes a chord in her memory?
A design in the miracle mix of magma and malachite?
An elevation of the thrill of discovery,
the wonder of the limitless galaxy of miniature globes,
fresh and pure,
perennially washed and waiting for her?

She will do this all afternoon
and end up with a pocket
pulling the side of her shorts into a sag.
Returning to the blanket, she will disgorge the stars
onto a terry cloth towel and sit and gaze at them,
as one contemplates the heavens
on a crisp, moonless night in deep winter.

Chalice of mysteries,
each stone an untold story of creation,
journey,
infinite age,
flawless beauty even in its abundance.

Millions lie before her,
yet it is only these that she has chosen.
Do they recognize the honor?
Will they ever again,
in the infinite eons of time,
be judged worthy of wonder?

The Hereafter

The Hereafter

By Andrew Hudgins




Some people as they die grow fierce, afraid.
They see a bright light, offer frantic prayers,
and try to climb them, like Jacob's ladder, up
to heaven. Others, never wavering,
inhabit heaven years before they die,
so certain of their grace they can describe,
down to the gingerbread around the eaves,
the cottage God has saved for them. For hours
they'll talk of how the willow will not weep,
the flowering Judas not betray. They'll talk
of how they'll finally learn to play the flute
and speak good French.

Still others know they'll rot
and their flesh turn to earth, which will become
live oaks, spreading their leaves in August light.
The green cathedral glow that shines through them
will light grandchildren playing hide-and-seek
inside the grove. My next-door neighbor says
he's glad the buzzards will at last give wings
to those of us who've envied swifts as they
swoop, twist, and race through tight mosquito runs.

And some—my brother's one—anticipate
the grave as if it were a chair pulled up
before a fire on winter nights. His ghost,
he thinks, will slouch into the velvet cushion,
a bourbon and branch water in its hand.
I've even met a man who says the soul
will come back in another skin—the way
a renter moves from house to house. Myself,
I'd like to come back as my father's hound.
Or something fast: a deer, a rust-red fox.

For so long I have thought of us as nails
God drives into the oak floor of this world,
it's hard to comprehend the hammer turned
to claw me out. I'm joking, mostly. I love
the possibilities—not one or two
but all of them. So if I had to choose,
pick only one and let the others go,
my death would be less strange, less rich, less like
a dizzying swig of fine rotgut. I roll
the busthead, slow, across my tongue and taste
the copper coils, the mockingbird that died
from fumes and plunged, wings spread, into the mash.
And underneath it all, just barely there,
I find the scorched-nut hint of corn that grew
in fields I walked, flourished beneath a sun
that warmed my skin, swaying in a changing wind
that tousled, stung, caressed, and toppled me.

Your Family's Farm, Empty

Your Family’s Farm, Empty

"Buildings can't want."—Donald Rumsfeld

By Nick Lantz


Neither does the ax regret each tree it has bitten,
though it leans against the shed
like a drunk locked out of his own house.

The tractor doesn't moon
over the physique of its youth.
The dry birdbath makes no plans
for the future.

What can the barn recall of the day
you climbed the ladder into its loft and found
a pair of buzzard chicks
skulking among the hay bales?
Your grandfather shot them with a pistol
and kicked them out of the haymow for you
to carry to the ditch beyond the field.

Does the barn remember those shots
exploding inside it like a burst neuron?
The weight of those bodies thudding to earth?

Can the field remember your feet crossing it, the air
heavy with crickets?
Does the ditch remember the bones the coyotes
gnawed and scattered?

You stand here, where the walnut tree was felled,
one foot on the smooth disc of the stump.

The grass makes no demands on your soul.
The cow paths are as forgetful as the rain.

If it is possible,
the kennel
grown over with morning glories
is less than indifferent to silence.

For What Binds Us

For What Binds Us

by Jane Hirshfield


There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.


And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,


as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—


And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend

Seeing And Believing

Seeing and Believing
by
Edwin Romond



The girls giggled
but the boys laughed right out loud
when Mrs. Stone raged crimson
holding my eighth grade project:
"The Map of New Jersey."
"Get up here, boy!"
and I had no choice
but to walk the gangplank to her desk
where my map choked in her fist.
"What’s this jazz? Huh?
The ocean is not green, Bub, it’s blue.
Ya’ get it? Blue, blue, blue, blue!"
punching my map with each word into my chest.
My classmates roared a chorus
of "Green ocean! Green ocean!"
their voices rising in waves of laughter
as I carried the wrinkled and ripped map
back to my seat through their sneers.
Soon, all their maps perimetered the room
leaving me adrift in the memory of a Sunday
when, in the October air,
my father and I walked over seashells
and I, only nine,
remarked that the ocean looked green.
My father, peering out from beneath his cap,
said, "Yes, it does" and his fingers swam
through my hair.

Neighbors on West Boulevard

Neighbors on West Boulevard

“They have a Pit bull now, “ I heard my mom say.
“They live like niggers,” my dad answered, between his teeth.

I was instructed not to talk to the neighbors, to the tall boy
who was so skinny his chest caved in like a shallow bowl.
His hair was shaved on top and long in the back.
When he skate boarded by our window, holding a baby
lightly in his arms, a lollipop stuck in her squalling
mouth, my dad called Social Services. No one ever came.

My dad called city hall because they had painted their house
only as high as they could reach, a dull orange resting
on flaking blue. No one ever came. My dad had all this time
to make these calls because he was laid off from Twin Discs
for six months. Mom worked at 0 & H Bakery down
the street, getting up at four. My dad watched the neighbors a lot.

Beware of the Dog. My dad laughed at the new sign slapped
on their porch railing. “Beware of the wife!” he said. She was
a barrel-bodied, charcoal-voiced girl with a half-done cross tattoo
on her wide calf. “Close the fucking door!” she yelled to one
or all of her children. “Close your fucking mouth! “my dad said.
My mom, doling out Hungry Man Lasagna, gave him a look.

We were learning about all religions in my history class. I learned
about how Hindus had many gods: Shiva and Ganesh and the blue
Krishna. And how Hindus were to be kind to every living creature,
even cows. I carefully cut one of my mom's daffodils from her little
garden with my school scissors and laid it on the neighbor's
slanty porch. I came into our house, whistling Nutcracker Suite, bouncy

in my new Keds. Dad slapped me once on the cheek, hard.
“I told you not to go near that house, “he said. “It'll swallow you up.”


~Julie King

Getting It Right

Getting It Right


What could it hurt to rewrite my adolescence--
for instance, say this time I kiss Anna after the Junior Prom.

as our limo drives through a night so dark I see only her lips.
The Globe can offer a correction: due to an editorial error

my football-crazed dog, Rambo, never collided with the fender
of that cruising Toyota. At fifteen, family eating pasta, let's say my father

no longer informs us he has throat cancer, there's no surgery
that steals his voice. This time Anna can arrive at my sixteenth birthday party

in a swimsuit. It wouldn't change the course of known events
for me to say we retired to the bedroom where I touched parts

of Anna's body which called to me like distant church bells.
And this time no one moves out: my brother still lives

in the basement, spinning a record twenty years long, an Eagles poster
"Live at the Gardens" nailed above his bed. My sister spends eternity

in the bathroom perfecting the art of mascara,
morning after morning her blond lashes bring a May sunrise

into our kitchen. Let Rambo score a touchdown running
a ten-yard fade. Let my father's voice call me to dinner.

The Herald can publish a new story: my parents purchase
that '89 mini-van, its tank big enough to hold 30 years of gasoline--

hands on the wheel, everyone buckled, my father leads us in song,
"The Long Road Home," and Anna too sits in the back,

her voice joining ours as she reaches for me,
her red bikini brighter than any brake light
~ Steven Coughlin

Of Feathers, Of Flight

Of Feathers, Of Flight
by
Adele Kenny



“…if I look up into the heavens I think that it will all come right …
and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
– Anne Frank


That spring, a baby jay fell from its nest, and
we took it to Mrs. Levine, who told us the
mother would know our hands and never take
it back. Spring that year was a cardboard box,

a bird cradled in cotton, cries for eyedropper
food – the wide mouth that became a beak,
feather-stalks stretched into wings. We knew,
of course, that we couldn’t keep it. (Later, we

would mark the spot with stones and twigs –
where the bird fell, where we let it go – and
sometimes, stopped in the middle of play,
would point and say, there, right there.)

The day we freed it, it beat, a heart-clock
(wound and sprung in Ruth Levine’s old hand)
that, finally, finding the sky, flew higher than
all the briars strung like metal barbs above the

backyard fence – a speck of updraft ash and
gone. Heaven, fuller then for one small bird,
spread its blue wing over us and the tree and
Mrs. Levine who, breathing deeply, raised

her numbered arm to the light and moved
her thumb over each fingertip as if she could
feel to the ends of her skin the miracle edge
of freedom, of feathers, of flight.

Desire Under the Cheese Grater

Desire Under the Cheese Grater
by
Marilyn Annucci



Open the kitchen drawer—
I want to be idle as a tea ball. I want to lie
beside the wooden spoon, the carrot
peeler, the five plastic cups that fit one
inside the other: tidy travelers to the counter.
I want to be reckless as measuring spoons—
to fling my big, smaller, small heads back,
dream of ginger, of cinnamon,
sprawl akimbo on the tack paper.
I want to be called dramatic by the corn cob holders,
poor things, how they can only jab and stick;
so what if I want to be picked up.
Let me be. The way butter becomes a yellow river,
a place for the garlic to shout and moan;
how the onions give over to shine and sigh,
I want to be turned over and over
in competent kitchen hands.
I want to be surprised.
I want to grow shy as an egg poacher.

I Am Fishing for God

I Am Fishing for God


using my heart as bait.
It is just before dawn,
the slightest hint of

pink bleeds into the
night sky. I use my
pen knife to cut the

hole in my chest,
reaching behind the
pocket of my shirt.

What a tough muscle
to pull the hook through.
The heart is astonished

to be in this other world
and trembles and shivers like
a moth discovered in daylight.

I try to calm it by stroking it
by telling it that it will all be
ok, but what do I know.

The breeze picks up and chills the cavern
in my chest. It feels good to
be empty at last. I cast my heart

across the water. I cast it again
and again. Sometimes it floats on
the surface, other times it sinks

below. Something will strike at it
that I can't see. I pray
I am using the right bait.

The tough outer layers
soften in the water. The heart grows
smaller, more pliant.

It has become a beautiful
blue jewel. I begin
not to recognize it.

Was this me?
It waits. I wait.
The boat rocks

slightly in the breeze
lifted and lowered
by the tide.

~Stuart Kestenbaum

The Zen Buddhist in Produce at Our Local Wal*Mart

The Zen Buddhist in Produce At Our Local Wal*Mart
~Herb Kitson


First of all, he refuses to punch the time clock,
says it's against his religion,
that he's not here for the money.
And he takes so long to do anything!
Days, weeks, months...it's all the same.
Just the other day, in fact, he held a lemon in his hand
the whole second shift, stood there staring at it.
"It's the center of the universe," he said,
"bright, clean, like a new sun."
Management wuld like to fire him, but can't.
Discrimination, you know, equal opportunity employment.
They wouldn't want to anyway.
Compared to Zen masters at other Wal*Marts, he's quick.
Besides he pulls in lots of customers.
They love watching how he plays with time,
how when he steps into the store, it seems to stop.

Where Have All the Whistlers Gone?

Where Have All the Whistlers Gone?
by Cliff Lynn

at what point in our history did lazy wend
its way into a four lettered word? backyard


hammock days reading wooden fiction or
Mad magazine with our eyes closed or


whistling our way into town like tom
or huck or becky work wasn't the enemy


wasn't a concept worth a whittle of our
time. where have all the whistlers gone?


like earl hagen who whistled andie and opie
to the fishin' hole. I met earl he was a guest

at a high school assembly blind as a black-eyed
pea crossed the stage with his son as a crutch

but that old slacker he could still warble
with the best of 'em. seems we've become

wounded with wasted worry compound
fractures of day jobs head wounds of second

jobs of worry. snow white wondered why
we wouldn't just whistle while we worked. but

ms. white aside, old earl got it right. he didn't
whistle while he worked- whistling was his work.