eternal notes crashing into unwilling surfaces

by Justin Hyde

Justin Hyde lives in Iowa, where he attempts to rehabilitate criminals. He can be contacted at jjjjhyde@yahoo.com. Justn appears more than once in "Enthalpy."

the trucker in a booth behind me flirting with a
woman in cleavland ohio on a headset phone and
finger-fucking a woman in dekalb illinois on his laptop while
his wife in yankton south dakota
folds laundry
listening to karen carpenter and
praying for her daughter
living with a paroled arsonist
who beats her
and the waitress just refilled my coffee,
there is a new bruise behind her ear, and
the sky will never come crashing down;
god's wrath is
a rubber snake on a summer roof
and this wooden indian with two flasks in his coat pocket
is lashed to the four winds
drowning in the
curse of sight.

I remember you on tip-toes

by Dan FloreDan is 29 years old. He does poetry workshops for people with serious mental illness, lives In Pennsylvania. Dan has several poems in "Enthalpy."

come to me
I dream
but touch nothing

only you remember
the forgotten hymns
could you sing one to me
like the night
hasn't froze
deep in my stomach?

I am a silent drum
a cloud
that hovers
against starlight
my eyes gasp
I remember you on tip-toes
can you reach for me now
before I melt
into the river?

The Stroke

by Don Schaeffer

It came to me almost in a vision that the victim of a stroke may see the event as a miracle and may see themselves as travelling far away to a world without others.



Part of last night
was a miracle. I
felt the shiver
of change. My head
lifted and the sky
was not the morning
on the earth.

I know how you
watch each other
and listen for words
and wait, but I
am going on a
journey beyond that.
My departure is now
and I don't care.

Away, everything is
new and mine, so I nod
only agreeably and
look away. I will
no longer satisfy,
transformed am I
into a far flung
wanderer.

The Finality Of Sparrows

by JR. Pearson



J.R.Pearson is a poet living and writing in Dalton Gardens, Idaho. He has published a few choice pieces of writing forthcoming online as well as in print from The Cherry Blossom Review, Dogzplot, Ditch, & The Indie Underground. Much of his poetry can be found here: J.R. Pearson .

This poem was recently published in "Ditch." It is used with the poet's kind permission.

"I love it."--Don.



It is enough for the woman to be
a pallid barn in Ohio.
Leaning over
...........wheat fields,
watching the sun lift
and moon descend,
like sinking ships,

their path a bright wheelbarrow rut.

The farmer formerly
housed his tractor
in her body.

Now her paint bakes
dandelions grow up & burst
with bubbles,
and the whole countryside quickens.
Maple & Oak blink autumn on & off
in field-lit neon,
crabgrass rockets from the earth
to an immediate white out,
snow haunts the scene as an attic,
boards bend & ache
to match the withheld horror
of petrified spruce.

Her roof leaks a fine light
shivering cobwebs on a space
where something once stood.

In morning
the farmer finds
her beams collapsed over
the fields,
...............ghost gone
gray
......in arcs of
.....................gold

...........Finally

Sparrows
...............fly
.......red
...........................from
....her
.............ruins.

Connection

Why I Am So Smarmy

by Don Schaeffer

I go ga ga over girls.
I don't know what to call them.
Girls are in
the audience of all my nightmares.

I ran away from girls
when I was just starting to feel their tug,
even though
they never chased me.

Something Else I Must Have Grown Tired of

Christine Kiefer


Christine practices law in the US midwest when she is not pretending to be a poet. Her work has been published in various on-line zines and can be found at her blog here: middleofusa.blogspot.com/


the last letter I wrote, I mean
wrote with a pen, and on paper,
it said I admired your trueness
and I acknowledged it wasn’t a word,
that truth was more appropriate, but then
again so was sparkly which I found also
to not be a word, but still the one
for the fervor and fever, the green of your eyes
while your lips matched your other parts
as you spoke of theories of trains
and I asked if the rest, if they felt shaken,
beaten, uprooted when the woman next to them
got up and moved to another car

for an instant

by Dan Flore




Dan is 29 years old. He does poetry workshops for people with serious mental illness, lives In Pennsylvania. Dan has several poems in "Enthalpy."





I caught her stride
as her summer dress
brushed against me
she is solar energy
I call for her in my sleep

people are only clouds
they drift, they settle
once in awhile she almost touches
the darkness under their eyes
or their lifeless breath
that blots out exclamations
and little whispers

you can only know her for an instant
then she passes into mystery
just a little beyond hello

but her memory crawls inside you
and blossoms into an ointment
that never goes dry

The Human Sea

by Don Schaeffer


1.
so much english
dammit.

in the bus
alone bathed
in language,

soaked in
messages
for now
until my ears dim.

2. When I last
had a conversation
I received a
compliment from
someone with
a pretty name.

When I get
nice compliments
from people with
pretty names
I feel
the kiss of angels
on my cheek.

Women

by Peter Lord


Peter Lord has been publishing about the growing warps and outright fissures of everyday occurences of reality since he was 16. And, "oh yeah, he says, "I've won a number (you'd be surprised) of awards for my work." Peter is also a visual artist with a large cult following including the emperor of Japan who has 3 of his pieces hanging in the imperial palace in kyoto."No shit," Peter says .




I caught a good bud
first thing this morning
already be afternoon
of limp grey haze, clouds
without effort, low down
& dirty money needs
a wash & dry

me a riverbed
of tears shed, awash
in gravelled futility
& shorn of reality
be the norm of mad
about you twist
in the vagaries
of mind under matter
of fact be the air
we breath toxic, slow
suicides of life begone
sooner than later
be another word
for too late

nites surge thru veins
fast as site, jackquick
images flow incessant
cross my vision be sharp
as sliding down granmas
gillette bannister leads
to spotting you be lean
trim to the bone be what
I need is you send me
into convulsions of hard
to figure your effect
got me in moods of
the tastes of love
floods our mouths
simultaniously be
the operative word
round here I usually
get what I want
& definately
what I need
be you & your eyes
sparkle with diamonds
reflection of my madness

has found
a new home
be where
the heart
throbs, content
for the moment
be fleet street
of dead in the end
passages of time
well spent, now
a memory of the hunt
gonna occur again
tonite be the nite
for supple contours
of redhead playtime
eyes full of definately
& all the way after
glows of yes, take me
kinda crinkles of lust
finally finding purchase
within my scope
starts when the sun
concedes defeat
& disappears into
yet another sunrise
be my favorite time
to carress your face
be the enigma of what
women be all about
be a mystery, cloaked
in shrouds of surreal

men
do write
poetry

Breast and Telephone

by Don Schaeffer


Everything is milk white
when I feel it poke against
the tender place. I do something
and the world comes in
through a hole in the field
sweet and rich.

When everything buzzes
with beeps and sirens
and the steam collects on the glass,
the sound breaks through
a hole in the field.

I pick it up and it is you,
sweet and rich
the code
of your intention
rushes into my mind
like milk.

Empathy for an Unborn Child

by Don Schaeffer



When I see
the image of what is inside her
I think it is an image inside everyone.

I don't quite trust
what was once hidden
and is now revealed.

It will be soft
and only need
without means to take.

I think need like that
is the wildest aspect
of my own heart.

A Wet Dream

by Kathryn Black

Kathryn Black grew up in Provincetown,Massachusetts and has studied poetry there and since.She has been involved in chapbooks (Three Rivers amongthem) and has been published in about 20 e-zines.Lately she's been focusing upon the novel, but stillwrites poetry on a regular basis. This is her second poem in Enthalpy.


I swing between two strong birch trees.
The leaves turn the color of hay,
and the sky is lit smokey quartz moving
to show the spectrum but in dimness.
How do I explain my fear of floods
and spiders? Already one eight-legged
beast is crawling down the rope, nothing
sleek about it but bulbous, chittering.

I have gone too high in my search for blue;
if I drop now, I’ll be dashed to the rocks.
The valley created by my feet is too deep.
Now the rain starts, falling in clumps
around and on me. The spider jumps into
my lap and I fly into the water soaked
puddle. I feel a stinging bite and jump
clear, waking on the wet floor with a glass.

Changeling at Brunch

by Don Schaeffer

Our fellow citizens
come after church on Sunday
for bacon, eggs and cushions,
all serious their faces
lined with the seriousness of
what they want; and the shining
instruments of their escape
wait for them on the edge
of the concrete ribbon.

They sit in rows
around the brunch buffet.

The server is like
a butterfly recently risen
from a chrysalis, face still
smooth and moist. But inside
metamorphizes a banker
and a merchant, a local ma and pa.
Her face contains the balding
bureaucrat, the inside sales consultant
putting in long days.

That stupid urge to be a famous recluse (content)

by Andrew (Sampo81)

Andrew lives in Taree, Australia. Studying for a BA degree. He recently developed an addiction to poetry. Major influences include Carlsberg and Marlboro.




Fuck the momentum of No
from his head-pendulum.
He could implode like his idols --

Drag that thick, green
blanket; lie laughing-up
his leftovers - extend
a marble finger toward
those anyone-after.

(Perhaps a sect to saint him
with a halo-epitaph --

Tethered to this round kennel,
he bayed the failure of fake daylight
until night fell gutted.)

But no forests are spun
to bind him; no leaves veined
with his mind choreography.

...Just the odour of ash
...stagnant in rum cans.
A phones tongue cut-out.
...Dylan's silver mouth
...drawling in the speaker.
And a family of frowns
under mortician-sheet clouds.

Town
to town.
(Nicotine-oiled window
to nicotine-oiled window -
Sun is the crude intruder.)
Traffic passes in distant grunts.
He writes his name
to see himself;
to throw himself away again.

To a Woman of Baptisms

by Dan Flore


Dan is 29 years old. He does poetry workshops for people with serious mental illness, lives In Pennsylvania. This is the third poem by Dan to appear in "Enthalpy."




it was always night when we were together
I guess we belonged there
in its breeze of disguise
so much of us
was purple and black
with only candles
to watch over us

now tonight
as nothing dreams
those candles are gone
there is only flames
I have tried to know the sky since then
but the darkness only speaks in past tense
when morning comes
I will try to listen to the river
that could only be heard
when our bodies joined

no woman of baptisms
I have not learned
the sounds that kiss
the blessed
I am only familiar with mountains
that have never viewed their peak
but sometimes when the waterfall sings
I see worlds
I almost touch with my faith

Finding the Abandoned

by M.E. Silverman

Silverman graduated with an MFA from McNeese State University in 1997. He now lives south of Atlanta, is a full-time dad, and seeks a publisher for "The Forgotten Songs of Mud Angels." Poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines, including Nexus, The Delta, The Review, The Flask Review, Orange Room Review, Blood Orange Review, Ceremony, and Midwest Poetry Review. Silverman won first place in The Journal of College Writing contest.



For years, I refused to return to the seasoned house
where my mother and father first lived and fought
the savage landscape. Now, flakes of sun-rinsed
pink paint and hungry rust coat the exterior.
From the front, I see dense decay through an open board—
mold spots the bathroom walls and master bedroom.
Three years they chopped and dug down,
strived to return the gabled house back
to its Craftsman roots. I suppose,
it matters little to see the false cypress
axed and the branchless trunk of my mother’s live oak
taken by disease or vine or perhaps pest.
Or the three crape myrtles stretching rampant,
their pink petals spilling across the Bermuda grass.
The river pebbles that lined the driveway
stolen from their beds. Gone are the rows
of sweet basil, parsley, and the thick layers of mint
for my mother’s julep and my father’s peach tea,
which once grew between the back fence and work shed.
Somewhere a family’s mower whirrs over weeds
and blades of grass swelled by summer.

This is no longer my house. I close my eyes to give in
to the moment, the reason why I’m here:
in the yard behind the house,
I imagine my father’s binoculars for birding
in the cup of my hands, the Sibley guide tucked
in the right pocket of my shorts. As if blackbirds,
cardinals, and thrashers could choir the history
of my trespasses. A bee brushes
a wing against my left ear, returns me to the present.
I wave it away and watch as it continues onward,
bumbling nectar to the hive. The whole yard feels
unchanged— I allow myself this lie. To peer within,
I approach the rear door where two green-thorn bushes
stand guard. I try not to notice the cuts
as they obstruct my view.

The hydrangeas droop their appendages and sway
like hula dancers. The purple-leafed smokebush
leans against the kitchen window— reminds me
of June afternoons and my mother, young and waiting
for their puffy plumes to bloom. The shed they rebuilt
in the shape of a brown barn smells of gasoline, motor oil,
and sawed wood with a hint of charcoal from barbeques
past. Chipmunks and fat-gray squirrels
trade barks and rummage the backyard.
The pink and purple butterfly bushes planted with such purpose
display an overlapping web of pink and white tubes
from several honeysuckle vines. A porch,
once screened from their planned heaven,
bares an openness I never saw before.

My mother would say it was not summer
until the smell of gardenias perfumed the neighborhood.
She knew each blossom by name, each yield,
when to cut back. My father could not wait to get away
from breathing the cold, to the days of furrows
and cut grass, to the pick-axe and seeding the songbird feeder.
They had that in common. Earthward and believing
in better days, both never found their perfect plot,
the ease of honeyed days, nor
have I— much time has passed since this bungalow
framed us three. I suppose,
it matters little that I pine for a kingdom where nothing
is vacant, and everything is returned
from where we abandoned.

Black Widow

by M. Kathryn Black



Kathryn Black grew up in Provincetown,
Massachusetts and has studied poetry there and since.
She has been involved in chapbooks (Three Rivers among
them) and has been published in about 20 e-zines.
Lately she's been focusing upon the novel, but still
writes poetry on a regular basis.


We thought we’d be till death
made of woven matter
like silk-weed husks
where Monarchs feed before flying
to the South, or spider nests
where eggs are laid waiting for the Spring.

But I decided to live half a life
then none lived whole with you.
I will eat fruit and nuts,
and sleep my dreams.
As you turn black and sleek, old
friend, you’ll kill husbands
in your web then eat them.

This Is How You Grow Old

The doctor talks to me frankly
and I ask:

Should I
not dye her hair anymore
as she lies there
losing teeth; and arms
next to useless
waiting for medicine to
bring her to nirvana?
As she has one spark
to return should I
abandon her, make her finally
a stranger? What
follows is a very long
parting.

Electric Bill: A Sonnet

by Graeme Mullen

Graeme grew up in Zimbabwe and moved to Massachusetts at the age of 16. He is currently living in Los Angeles where he spends his days slurpin' sodas, whittlin' wood and watching social Darwinism at play. Despite the many screenplays he has planted in the back seats of Maseratis (valet job), he has yet to secure a studio deal.



Just ask this lonely East Coast refugee
How come he's stranded here without a dime.
He'll tell you that his lover, drunk on wine
Stormed out on him, did not return his keys,

Did not replace the Chardonnay he'd bought,
But wandered out into the Eastern sea
And left him only in the company
Of Californian women, who he thought

Looked flat inside his T.V. screen, and so
He took off for Los Angeles, but there
The lights distracted him, he didn't hear

The meters clicking as the city cleaved
Away his days, and charged its hourly rate
That leaves a man too deep in debt to leave.

Trash Bags Beside the Highway

Only Seen in Peripheral Vision

by Dan Flore

Dan is 29 years old. He does poetry workshops for people with serious mental illness, lives In Pennsylvania. He has another poem in Enthalpy.






the fields are black
they carry me through her skin
clouds strangle me
I am only seen in peripheral vision now

a child laughed
and I prayed without knowing it
only the flesh of shadows touches me

I am the lost harmonicas'
final resurrecting hum
I am a mans last look
at a photo of himself as a child

my life belongs to the infants now
it flickers in their eyes
I sing songs that have no notes
songs that cling to church ceilings

Mozart

by Don Schaeffer

It has no location
since it moves
along the buzzing and hissing
lifeline of now,
made of a clot of time.

It invades from outside,
gets past cracks in your castle walls
and moves with you as you pass
along the strips of the present.
But it talks to you and dances,
moving up and down in a space
stretched like a web of time.

Oh the dances can be sweeter than sighs,
can quake your human sinew,
webbed over the bones of time,
can gesture gently as if you had eyes
that could envision the thin wires of time.

The Manitoba Story

I Don't Know How It Happened

by Ray Sweatman

Ray grew up in Jonesboro, GA. Wandered around. Came back. Tried to settle down a few times, but the ground kept moving. Got an MFA in playwriting from Columbia. Was too young to know playwriting was dead. But the real education was New York City and a woman named Jackie. Didn’t write anything for about 15 years. One of his exes called him the Smoker who talks about writing.


but the chickens have decided
they’d like to have lips
and the plastic chicken surgeon
was happy to oblige
he’d already made their breasts so big
it was a natural step
and now the butterflies have declared
they’d like to hold nets
and how we laughed
when they started chasing
the men in their silly shorts
and funny white hats
and almost cracked a rib
watching them pump
frantic legs
into the sunset
and here we are
the butterfly and me
sitting in the front row
watching brand new chickens
strut down the runway
as she says Oh Sweet Man
isn’t the world a lovely place?
and I reply Oh yes Miss Butterfly
and growing more so
by the minute.

Missouri Poem

by Dan Cuddy
Dan has been involved with the writing community in Baltimore,MD. His book of poems, "Handprint On The Window" was published by Three Conditions Press in 2003 (available on Amazon.com).



the river sludges by

I sit
how my parents hated that
get a job
do something with your life
I sit

pull blades of grass
wonder how Whitman
made an epic of them

me?
just a kid with a hand me down language
I can tell when poems are sophisticated
me?
too blunt too uneducated to advance anything
much less art

the water isn't pretty
and drinking?
beer is healthier

Virginia Woolf weighted herself down
with stones
with stones
I skip over the river's ripples
defy gravity
like words defy death
for a bit

I sit
watch
mumble to myself
no minuet of form
just mumbling
grumbling
people pass by
there is a road up there
they are busy
getting from here to there
but they don't stop
just water
effluent
carrying so much
to nowhere

I sit
mumble
repeating the same things over and over

the river is rising
I'm not moving
let it tear me away
I'm not moving
just sitting and mumbling
who cares?
the people who don't have time?

After If I Loved You

by Don Schaeffer

If I could betray you
life would make sense.

I could spend my days
empty in all the places

where things can fill them
with frightened titters

and come home
scared and fresh to a cold bed.

I would be off to the far vacuums
if I could betray you.

for the drunken failure he was

by Justin Hyde


Justin Hyde lives in Iowa, where he attempts to rehabilitate criminals. He can be contacted at jjjjhyde@yahoo.com.





my dad never once
missed a day
of work.

that is more
than i can claim
on another fake sick-day
sitting on a beanbag chair
in the downtown library
with carver
and two
flasks.

if we had
anything to do with each other
old man
i'd drink you
under a bar-stool

i'd tell you
i remember
how sometimes on the way out the door
to the bar
you'd grab my wrist
just so
making my hand
slam shut

the ten bucks
i stole
from mom's purse
to buy that spring-loaded
forearm-strengthener
from dan kamn

thinking maybe
if i ever could
open my hand up
you'd want to
stick around.

On Golden Pond

by Don Schaeffer


She clings to
the wool of his sweater,
grasping to prevent him from

falling away. She hangs on to
the familiarity of his breast
rising in breath,

the beat of his heart.
It isn't time
for you to leave.

Why do I cry only in movies
when there is so little kindness
and such a need for tears?

Football

Rainy Day

A Career of Burglarproof Doors

by Don Schaeffer


It's been over a year
since I closed the grey steel
burglarproof doors,
felt the magnetic eraser

zap away memories of what I did
that every day
drove me further from
kind voices and good deeds.

And, I left the building
without grace. Now, the judges
are all on the other side of the wall,
among the forgotten.

Lost Somewhere in Her Tan

by Dan Flore

Dan is 29 years old. He does poetry workshops for people with serious mental illness, lives In Pennsylvania.

I am lost somewhere in her tan
she spins and the earth turns in her direction
but she doesn't know it
God drips down
but only in things like manholes and mascara
she swears He's there
while part of her wishes He wasn't
she talks and everyone listens but her
she is in some sphere beyond sweat and sea
I move far when she stands
afraid my awkward walk will drift into her grace

"The Grocer" on You Tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8tVyNC-nKM

The World Opening Ritual

by Don Schaeffer


We attend
the reverse funeral on Wednesday.
It's all so clean
in the reverence of white.
The tiny secret gates to the world
are opened once again

and the confusion
of the earth bumps up by one.
We suck up our mourning
as new-eyes-and-new-mouth,
so common yet so grand, enters.

The event lasts
longer than a kiss,
immediately catching
the attention of God.

Act Five

by Dan Cuddy

Dan has been involved with the writing community in Baltimore,MD. His book of poems, "Handprint On The Window" was published by Three Conditions Press in 2003 (available on Amazon.com).

always they said "act your age"

I tried
until I became too old
to act any other way

now
as some faces harden into a pinched sneer
and others into a pouty drop of bittersweet
the tail high but drooped over itself
a parody of a Hershey's kiss
or a Daumier head with elfin hat

i
lost all my egotistic capitalization
burn like a candle at church
gloom surounding
the little self-illuminating nimbus

i
am now a reminiscer
the wake at the tail end of the boat
a water-skier holding to life
bouncing on the plough through the lake
which was once so liquid
and shined with spoonfuls of sun
with sprinkles of moon
but now it is almost solid
not with ice
that seasonal
but with the hard tile of age
dark
ungiving
unforgiving
paved congealed age

and the potty face looking on
sneers
"act your age"

i
act
because it is an act
in a drama
a comedy
ha-ha
the fool
i hang myself upside down
monkey of dreams
view the world
as if young

how cracked the face in the mirror
the road to hell

and this was before drugs

by Gary Horvitz (aka Nikko47)

Gary Horvitz is a health professional, truth-seeker, activist, dreamer and sometime poet living in the San Francisco Bay area who is perfecting the art of accepting things just as they are.


Fourteen I was,
back when time slowed down and I
began to clock the distance between
father and tomorrow
took my time to cover my tracks
measured out the difference between
school and the roadless anarchy
fractured under cover of darkness
a walking cadaver
toe tied to family meals
and algebra into moonrise
but in the mornings
sliding out from my slab of sleep
the symbols melted all over again

Week at a Hotel in a Foreign Country: Inspired by a Movie

by Don Schaeffer

An encounter
he thinks as he stands
shaking her hand
with all his attendants milling around
saying goodbye.

He wants to give her a kiss
instead of becoming
a stranger again.

He massaged her feet.
She trusted him.
They talked the deepest
and quietest speech.

And just as the sun
begins to set
and the door of the taxi
opens, he gives her a kiss
and creates big
purple and red
memories.

The Female and Myths

by Charlotte Thompson (aka Golden Illusions)

Charlotte Thompson is a very distinctive poet with a sense of the mystic and an enormous passion. She is always turning ideas of the feminine over in her mind. She raises prize Arabian horses.

Minus one.

Just a while ago I planted flowers and brought seeds to the trash. It doesn't matter the need of grow now. Just something on my mind like washing clothes or going to Nik's or beginning a tea shoppe and trying to believe in Santa Claus. This isn’t going to be social I think. This is going to be way recluse like the piano at night. Just something soft-please not loud or garish or split the divide of my clothes that hang on me-restless carried away by the birds even. Threads can’t be that bare. Until the cows come home and moo around me I will be unable to have peace.

One day you died.

Damn that death boy charging around you like that-fuck.I always thought of always. You know like Cinderella. I did. Be a total truth-I did. Well now it’s the other way around. Bring me no prince or cathedral in candles or until forever -silly princed out vows.I want no mass said in my name or priests telling me I will inherit the kingdom of God.That is a ridiculous thought and I will have no part of fairy tales again.

Regina O Regina.

Hail Mary mother of all women or so that’s what was said.
How much of this out of whack bull shit must females endure. We are the make of wind and trees of birds and oceans.
The divine music of art. That part that sustains a birth
brings home those fantasy rules and then slits their wrists
bleeding to death the old story of caballeros blanco. Bleed them.

Watch a storm grow.

All smooth of skin and hair-finely precious. Female.

Perversity

by Don Schaeffer


Not the feel of flesh,
nor the fragrance or
anything that touches the skin,
it's far away,
light entering my eyes,
a flutter brush with the outer filaments of nature,
the biology of far away,
hidden way back
in the angel breath of memory.

View From the Tobaggan Slide

I Do Remember

by Tom Prime

I do remember when She whispered, Her hair Red smokewind. We are One.


When Tom stayed at my home over night a couple of years ago, he was in the midst of his wandering across Canada. He told me so much about homelessness and travel. Tom is a magic, mystical free spirit. His poems reflect that.

Wife's Cousin

by Justin Hyde

she's on her side
on my living room floor,
legs slightly scissored.

also the wife is there,
sister in law
and her giant dullard
of a boyfriend.

they are playing
a board game
as i sit in corner,
nurse the forty,

try to act normal
to keep unstable peace
with wife.

cousin repositions
here and there
and her box
sings to me
from underneath
that denim.

nose
then my tongue
then my machinery
in there.

it wriggles,
taunting me
like sparrow
to cat
behind
screen-window.

i crouch
glaze-eyed
behind forty,

sweat drips
down my
machinery.

i think how screens
sometimes
pop out

and front doors
are accidentally
left open.


Justin Hyde is an internet poet who burst on the scene not too long ago with a freshness and frankness respected by an increasing army of fans. He has been published in a number of more liberal e-zine and print publications including "Zygote in My Coffee," "St.Vitus Press," "Literary Chaos."

My Son, Me and the Old Poets

by Anna Yin

We painted my son's room.
He chose the color blue,
it's supposed to be cool.

We end the day there.
He reads his book,
I read mine, we dream.

Nearby, a new library will be
an ocean of books. I will throw
him in so he can learn to swim.

I joined a new poetry group.
I am the youngest, surrounded
by deep lakes and old trees.

Thirty years from now
I will be like them, settled
in my meditation.

By then, my son
will be sailing on his ambition,
exploring beyond my ocean.


Anna Yin is a Canadian poet and literary translator whose native language and culture is Chinese. She has the courage to write poetry in English and the courage to try poetry in a variety of forms.

Welcome